Doris Lessing - A Ripple from the Storm

These three men, the three officers of the society, sat prominently around a deal table at the front of the platform. Behind them sat the bank of respectable patrons.

The boring part of the meeting was now over. The next item on the agenda was ‘policy’; and everyone expected a fight. It was not, after all, enough simply to call the Soviet Union Russia.

Boris Krueger stood up from somewhere in the middle of the packed hall and proposed that the society should produce a book consisting of articles about Russia, financed by gift-advertisements, for mass sale. The committee had discussed this proposal one evening the week before from eight until three in the morning, with heat and ill-feeling. The faction represented by Messrs Perr, Forester and Pyecroft said that to sell a book of articles would be interpreted as making propaganda about Russia. The faction represented by Krueger, Anton Hesse and Andrew McGrew said it would be purely factual and nothing to do with propaganda. The real battle was over who was to control this society. That there was a battle was not understood by the respectable patrons, who did not attend the committee meetings. Since the committee could not agree, the battle was to be fought out now by the membership. Boris Krueger’s proposal was the flinging down of a gage in public.

Again Martha did not listen to what was being said: the shortest acquaintance with politics should be enough to teach anyone that listening to the words people use is the longest way around to an understanding of what is going on.

Mr Perr’s long lean body, now upright behind the table, was writhing with affronted rectitude of purpose; the light flashed continually from his agitated spectacles. Then Mr Forester’s equally angular shape jerked itself into various postures expressive of outrage. Mr Pyecroft rose beside them. For a few moments the three men were jerking up and down from their seats like three puppets manipulated by the strings of annoyance. Their faces, however, continued to appeal to the audience with intimate, deferential, but warning smiles.

Martha could see that the people packed on the chairs below the platform had responded to Boris Krueger who had spoken well and calmly, his pale, fattish, intellectual face making no concessions of appeal to them. Now they were feeling disquieted because of the excessive reaction of three officers.

Boris rose to his feet again, not to put forward any new arguments, for he repeated in different words what he had said before, but in order to reimpress his calm and objective image on the audience. The three men on the platform remained seated, in postures of warning anger, while half a dozen people got up one after another around the hall, to say that to produce such a booklet would cost nothing, since the printing would be a gift; and the distribution would of course be done by members of the society. An ironical voice shouted that the articles would cost nothing either, since obviously there were plenty of people prepared to write them for nothing! But everyone in the ballroom laughed at this: it was the laugh that occurs at a public meeting when something has been said which might have been dangerous: a laugh a little too ready, a little too loud, and accompanied by dozens of pairs of eyes seeking each other for confirmation. It was noticeable that at the laugh the three figures on the platform assumed more easy postures: in short, they would accommodate themselves to the mood of the meeting. They had been too ready to see danger.

Mr Perr stood up to say, in the easy amiable tone of his chairman’s address, that he would of course accept the majority opinion. Before he sat down, people were jumping up all over the hall to make suggestions about the practical side of the proposition: the thing had been accepted, in fact, without a vote.

At this moment Martha saw Jasmine and Jackie enter a side door. Jackie’s jacket buttons were undone again and his dark and satirical face was already expressing every sort of contempt. The man’s capacity to impress himself was such that although he had made no sound coming in, all the people on his side of the hall had turned to watch him, and the men on the platform were exchanging warning glances.

Jackie Bolton made his way to an empty chair, excusing himself smilingly, and every time he did so, he caught the eyes of the person he was disturbing and held them until he chose to nod and look into the next face. He seated himself in such a way that everyone expected him to rise to his feet for a speech.

Meanwhile, Jasmine had taken a chair beside Martha at the literature table. Her face expressed exactly what Jackie’s did: a conspiratorial contempt. It cut the current of sympathy between the two girls; and Martha whispered: ‘I hope he’s not going to speak. It’s not necessary now.’ Last night the group had decided that Comrade Jackie would get up to speak only as a last resort; and only to put forward facts, not to make revolutionary speeches! It was to be hoped that Jasmine had explained all this to Jackie while they were drinking in the other room?

‘Oh,’ said Jasmine composedly, rolling her eyes, ‘it won’t do them any harm to hear some home truths about themselves.’

Jackie’s voice could already be heard. He was standing, or rather lounging, at the back of the hall, and he was making that speech they had all decided it would be disastrous for him to make. Jackie had two voices. One was the most correct and colourless version of upper-class speech that could be imagined. He could use it blandly: in order to neutralize himself and his over-colourful personality. And he could use it with undertones of satirical comment, as if to say: This is what you sound like. (He also used it, as Martha had noted with resentment, when he was alone with a woman.) His other voice was the cockney of the streets he had come from and when he chose it he was a different person. The exaggerated contempt he carried with him in his other role became a shoulder-shrugging barrow-boy’s good-natured anarchy; his whole being became alive with darting critical comment. He sometimes dropped into his cockney voice from the pilot officer’s voice, becoming the working-man with admirable effect.

But tonight he was drunk and the two voices, the two personalities, slurred together. He was delivering an attack on the officers and committee of Aid for Our Allies. They were all cowardly, lily-livered social democrats; he, Jackie Bolton, in the name of the oppressed masses of the world, demanded a radical change of policy, the end of weak-minded shilly-shallying … He might have gone on for several minutes, but the chairman rapped on the table. Jackie Bolton heaved out his silent sarcastic laugh. Now Boris Krueger stood up, no longer calm and dignified, speaking directly to Jackie, saying that he would be the first to sympathize with anyone who wished to deliver the oppressed masses of the world from their chains, but this was neither the time nor the place … The chairman rapped again. Neither Boris nor Jackie sat down: they were facing each other over the heads of the silent and unhappy crowd.

‘If you don’t sit down I’ll …’ began the chairman; and stopped himself. He had lost his temper, and Jackie Bolton laughed out openly at the sight.

‘Sit down,’ shouted the chairman.

‘I understand,’ said Jackie pleasantly, ‘that you have agreed to publish the booklet. In that case I propose that a sub-committee to produce it be formed. I put forward the following names to be voted on.’ The names he proposed were: Jasmine Cohen, Anton Hesse, Andrew McGrew, Martha Knowell, Marjorie Pratt and – here his shoulders shook with sarcastic good-nature – ‘Myself.’

Mr Perr stood up and said that a vote had not yet been taken on whether this magazine should or should not be produced. The whole body of people stirred and shifted uneasily, as if they wanted to leave. At this William got up from behind his literature table to say that surely it had been understood before Pilot Officer Bolton’s remarks that there was no need for a vote? He could not understand why a vote had suddenly become necessary. He sat down again, offering Martha a conniving, cheeky smile. She understood that he had been coming to the rescue of a fellow-serviceman, and that he disapproved of Jackie as much as she did. But she did not like the schoolboy’s smile; she was ashamed of any association with Jackie Bolton – and ashamed of being ashamed, since, as a member of the group she was responsible for him.