The two rooms, small and crammed, but very bright, had in them Maisie, a black nurse-girl, and the baby girl Rita, now about a year old. The child did not want to go to bed. She was fighting the nurse. ‘I-don’t-want-nursie, I-don’t-want,’ while the girl, indefatigably good-humoured, was trying to push windmilling arms and legs into scarlet pyjamas. ‘There Miss Rita, there now Miss Rita.’
Maisie surveyed this scene from the doorway between the rooms, smoking; the soft blue of her cotton dress pushed out in a great bulge by the hip she rested her weight on. She wore a white wool jacket, and as Martha came in, dusted ash off it with one hand, while she raised her eyes with the same cosmos-questioning gesture and shrug she had once used for: ‘And who’d be a woman, hey?’ But now she was saying: ‘Well, Matty, who’d be a mother, man? Just look at her.’
Nevertheless, she smiled, and the nurse-girl smiled, having safely accomplished the task of getting all four dissident little limbs disposed in the scarlet arms and legs of the pyjamas. Now Rita stuck her thumb in her mouth and blinked great black eyes, fighting each heavy blink, blink, with an obstinate tightening of her face. She was fighting sleep. Peace. Silence. The black girl smiled at Maisie, and began picking up garments from all over the room. Rita was scooped up by her mother, where she stood to attention, as it were, in her arms. Maisie tried to rock and cradle the child, but Rita would not go limp. A little stubborn bulldog, she tightened her lips in a determination not to sleep. Meanwhile Maisie, a cigarette hanging from her lips, blew smoke out above the small head. Suddenly, the child went limp, she was half-asleep. Maisie looked down into the child’s face, thoughtful, frowning. Martha came up close to look too. Martha did not touch the child. Last Saturday, when Rita had put her arms around the knees of her mother’s friend, Maisie had called her away and said: ‘Yes, I can see it must be hard for you, when you’ve not got your own kid, I can see that.’ Maisie was winding a piece of Rita’s black hair around her finger. But the hair was straight, and simply fell loose again. Maisie stood with a cigarette in her mouth, Rita cradled in one arm, trying with her free hand to make ringlets in Rita’s hair. Then she put up her hand to wind a strand of her own fair hair around her forefinger. It sprang off in a perfect ringlet. Ash scattered on the red pyjamas, and Martha rescued the cigarette. ‘Thanks, Matty, you’re a pal.’ The child sucked her thumb noisily, the small pink lips working around the white wet thumb. She blinked, blinked. Maisie gave up the attempt to make the heavy black hair curl, and took a cautious step towards the small bed beside her big one. The child opened her eyes and started up, struggling to stand in her mother’s arms.
‘Let me,’ said Martha, and nodded in response to Maisie’s quick look of enquiry. Rita went into Martha’s arms, staring in solemn curiosity into the new face close to hers.
‘She’s old for her age,’ said Maisie. ‘Do you know what, Matty? I think they’re born older than they used to be. Sometimes Rita just gives me the creeps, watching me, you’d think she knew everything already.’ Certainly it was a serious and knowledgeable look. Martha did not feel she held a tiny child in her arms, and it made things easier, for this was the first time she had held a baby since she had left her own. She held the solid heavy little girl, while Maisie stripped off her dress and said: ‘Poor Matty, but perhaps one of these days you’ll have another baby and then you’ll forget all your sorrow.’
‘Yes, I expect I will,’ said Martha. She sat on Maisie’s bed, holding the child carefully. Rita was at last going to sleep, at last she seemed a baby—small, warm, confiding. Maisie stood in her pink satin petticoat, her strong white legs planted firmly, and frowned into a mirror, while she wet her eyebrows with a forefinger. The nurse came in and said: ‘Can I go home now, missus?’ ‘Yes, you go home, nursie.’ ‘I’ll do Miss Rita’s washing in the morning.’ ‘Yes, that’s fine.’ ‘Good night, Miss Maisie.’ ‘Good night, nursie.’ The girl nodded at Martha, with a quick unconscious smile of love for the sleeping child, and went out.
‘She’s a good girl,’ said Maisie. ‘She’s got two kids of her own, she leaves them with her mom in the Location. I tell her she’s lucky to have her mom near her, I wish I did.’ She frowned, stretching her mouth to take lipstick. ‘Her husband, or so she calls him, has gone to the mines in Jo’burg, well, I tell her she’s lucky to be rid of him, men are more trouble than they are worth.’
Now she put on a cocktail dress, suitable for her calling as a barmaid. It was a bright blue crêpe, tight over the big hips, pleated and folded marvellously over the breasts, showing large areas of solid white neck and white shoulder. She put on diamanté ear-rings, a diamanté brooch. She inspected herself, then used thumb and forefinger to crimp her pale hair into waves around her face. Martha thought: I wonder what Andrew would say if he could see Maisie now, and this apparently communicated itself to Maisie, for she turned from the mirror, smiling unpleasantly, to say, ‘If Andrew could see me, he’d have a fit. Well, that’s his funeral, isn’t it?’ She now came over to Martha, lifted the baby, and slid her under the covers of the little bed. Off went the light. The room, dimmed, seemed larger. Except for the child’s bed, it was exactly the same as the bedroom in the flat where Maisie had lived with Andrew. The same plump blue shining quilt, the same trinkets and pictures. A girl’s bedroom. But no photographs—not a sign of them: Binkie and Maisie’s three husbands were not here.
‘Have you heard from Andrew yet?’
‘Yes, strangely enough. He said would I come to England to live. But I can’t see myself. Of course you want to go to England and I can see that it takes all sorts.’
She now sat near Martha on the bed, offered her a cigarette, lit one herself, and said: ‘Everything’s nuts. When the war was bad, well, we used to think, the war will be over soon, and so will our troubles. But it just goes on. Well, they say it’s going to be over soon but why should it? I mean, they had a war for a hundred years once, didn’t they? But Athen says it will be over soon.’
‘Have you seen Athen?’
Maisie’s face changed to an expression Martha had seen there before, when Athen was mentioned. A new look—resentment. ‘He came in to see me last week. Well, he’s too good for this world, I can tell you that!’ Then she sighed, lost her bitterness and said: ‘Yes, it’s a fact, he’s not long for this world.’ At Martha’s look she nodded and insisted: ‘Yes, it’s true when they say the good people go first. Look at my two first husbands, they’re dead, aren’t they?’ ‘And Andrew’s bad just because he’s still alive?’ said Martha, smiling.
At this Maisie jumped up and said: ‘We’ll wake Rita if we natter in here.’ She pushed open the window and instantly the room reeked from the spilt beer on the pavement just below. She shut the window again, saying: ‘Well, lucky it’ll be winter soon, I can have the windows shut. Sometimes I can’t stand the smell, and then the men from the bar start fighting and being sick so I can’t sleep sometimes.’
She went into the other room and Martha followed.
‘I’m late for the bar,’ said Maisie, and sat down calmly, to smoke. ‘Athen says he wants to see you, Matty.’
‘Well, I’m always happy to see him.’
‘Yes, he’s one of the people…’ Again resentment, a sighing, puzzled resentment. ‘All the same, Matty. He said I shouldn’t be working in a bar. I said to him: “All right then, you find me a job where I can have my baby, just above my work all the time, you find me that job and I’ll take it.” And then he went on and on, so I said: “And what about your mom and your sisters? Didn’t you tell me the things they had to do because they were poor? They had to do bad things. And your sister married a man she didn’t love because he said he’d pay your mom’s debts. Well, you said that didn’t you?” And he said: “Yes, but they were poor and you aren’t.” Well, Matty, that made me so mad…’ Her voice was shaking, her eyes full of tears. ‘Excuse me a sec, Matty.’ She went to the bedroom to fetch a handkerchief, and came back saying: ‘Well, who’d be a woman, eh?’ exactly as she u
sed to; and Martha saw the old, maidenly, fighting Maisie in the fat barmaid dressed garishly for her work.
Martha said, with difficulty: ‘You know, Maisie, I used to think you could love Athen if…’
Maisie gave Martha a look, first conscious, then defiant. ‘Love. That’s right. Well, he’s the best man I’ve ever known in my life, I’ll grant you that much. But what would he do with me in Greece? He doesn’t even know when they’re sending him back. There are six Greeks hanging about here, all trained to the ears to be pilots, but they don’t send them to Greece. Athen says it’s because of politics. Well, but he won’t be a pilot after the war, and he used to be a newspaper seller. But anyway, I wouldn’t be good enough for him, would I? I told you, he’s too good for this world and I told him that too.’
‘So he’s coming to see me?’
‘He’s got a message about something. Something political about the blacks, I think it was. He told me but I forgot. He said he’d come this week so expect him. And you can tell him from me I’m not a bad girl just because I work in a bar.’
‘Well, Maisie, I don’t believe he really thinks so.’
‘He says it, doesn’t he?’ Maisie lit a new cigarette, said again: ‘I should go down,’ but remained where she was: ‘There’s some brandy in the cupboard if you like, but I can’t stand drinking myself any more, after having to smell it every night down there.’ Martha got herself a brandy, and did not offer Maisie any; but when the bottle was put back, Maisie got up, went to the cupboard, poured herself a large brandy, and stood holding the glass between two hands against her breasts. The light fell through the rocking golden liquid and made spangles on the white flesh, and Maisie looked down, smiled. A great fat girl peered over a double chin and giggled because of the spinning lights from the liquid.
Giggling she said: ‘Well, let’s have it, Martha. It’s no good us sitting here and chatting about this and that just because we don’t like thinking about it.’
‘It’ was Mr Maynard, the Maynards, and their pressure on Maisie.
Some weeks before, Mr Maynard had telephoned Martha, demanding an interview. Martha had said that, since she had been told it was the Maynards who had arranged for Andrew, Maisie’s husband, to be posted from the Colony, she never wanted to see or hear of the Maynards again. And had put down the telephone.
Mr Maynard was waiting for her on the pavement when she left the office that evening. She tried to walk past him, but found her path blocked by a large, black-browed urbane presence who said: ‘My dear Martha, how very melodramatic, I am extremely surprised.’
He then proceeded to talk, or rather, inform, while she stood, half-listening, wishing to escape. When he had finished she said: ‘What you mean is, you want me to go down to Maisie’s, spy on her, find something wrong, and then come back and tell you so that you can persecute her.’
‘My dear Martha, the mother of my grandchild is working as a barmaid. You can’t expect me to like that. My grandchild is being brought up in one of the most sordid bars in the city. I’m not going to stand for it.’
‘The only thing is, it isn’t your grandchild.’
At which he said, calm, forceful, his handsome dark face compressed with determination: ‘That child was fathered by my son. She is my granddaughter.’
Martha could not stand up to him. She said, ‘I’ve got to go’—and literally ran away from him. That evening she had come to Maisie’s rooms late, when the bar was closed, to tell her that Mr Maynard was still on the scent.
Some hours later, waking at five in the morning, she realized, appalled at her’s and Maisie’s readiness to be bullied, that there was one simple way of defeating Mr Maynard—and that was to take no notice of him. She had telephoned Maisie that morning to say so. Maisie said she had written the old bastard a letter which would put him in his place for ever. ‘But Maisie, that’s just where we make our mistake, that’s what I’m telephoning for. You shouldn’t have written because he has no right to a letter, that’s the whole point.’
‘Oh don’t worry, Matty, I said what was right.’
The letter Mr Maynard got read:
‘Dear Mr Maynard,
My friend, Mrs Martha Hesse told me what you said. Please don’t worry, my Rita is being brought up properly. Just as well as Binkie would, I’m sure of that. Binkie had his chance and lost it. And there is another thing I want to say. I know who it was who had my husband Corporal Andrew McGrew sent away to England. And I wish to have nothing to do with you or with Binkie either. Please tell him so when he comes home.
Yours truly,
MAISIE MCGREW’
This letter, written at white-heat, was pondered by the Maynards for some days. Mr Maynard then again waylaid Martha outside her office.
‘Well, Martha, you seem to be playing some kind of double game.’
‘What do you mean? You know I’m with Maisie.’ She knew it was a mistake to say this; she should simply have walked past him. Now he smiled.
She said: ‘Mr Maynard, you haven’t got any legal right to that child. You haven’t got a moral right either.’
He smiled again, the commanding face presented to her so that she could feel the full pressure of its assurance. Again she walked off, thinking: There wasn’t anything he wanted to say, there was nothing new to say, so what was he waiting there for? At last she understood: Of course, he wants to know whether I can be bullied. And I can be. And so can Maisie.
She had therefore gone down to spend an afternoon with Maisie. It was a Saturday. They had walked in the park with the child, then gone back to the rooms and played with her. When she went off to sleep, they talked. Mr Maynard seemed remote. They laughed a great deal and said how ridiculous the Maynards were, pushing people around and thinking they could get away with it.
And again it had been only afterwards, waking in the night, that Martha understood the whole pleasant easy afternoon was in fact another victory for Mr Maynard. For one thing, his name, the Maynard name, had scarcely been off their tongues. Yet the essence of defeating Mr Maynard was to forget him.
And Martha’s being here now with Maisie was because Mr Maynard telephoned yesterday; ‘How’s my grandchild?’ ‘She’s not your grandchild, Mr Maynard.’
‘Maisie, the Maynards haven’t a legal right, they haven’t even a moral right to Rita. You’ve got to see it.’
‘They didn’t have a legal right or a moral right to send my husband away from this country. But they did it, didn’t they?’
‘That was because Mrs Maynard’s a cousin of the Commanding Officer.’
‘You know what I am saying, Matty, and it’s true.’
‘Yes, I know. But look, what do you suppose the Maynards could do? They can’t do a damned thing.’
‘After I posted that letter to Mr Maynard, I saw I’d put it into print.’
‘But Maisie, when you married Andrew, he became Rita’s father. The Maynards are out.’
‘But I’m divorced from Andrew.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘So you say. All I know is, the Maynards do as they like. And he’s a magistrate too. I lay awake last night thinking…’ Maisie stood in the middle of the little room, holding the glass of rocking liquid against her breasts, smiling, smiling nervously, while her serious blue eyes stared ahead, sombre with fear. She sipped the brandy nervously, held the glass against her breasts; sipped, smiled, pressed the glass against her flesh so that the white and gold and green lights made jewels on her flesh above the glitter of the diamanté brooch: she talked on, obsessively: ‘When Binkie gets back I’m going to see him and ask him to stop his parents driving me mad. He’s a decent kid, he’ll know it isn’t right. After all, it’s not his fault he’s got those old bastards for parents, he’ll tell them off, when I ask him.’
‘What’ll happen if Binkie still wants you back?’
‘He’s a decent kid, he’s not their kind, he’ll see right done. And anyway, he won’t be back for ages yet. Perhaps years. How do
we know how long the war’ll go on? Perhaps he’ll be killed, how do we know? Anyway, I’ve got to get down to work. My boss will be flaming mad as it is. You’re a pal, helping me like this, and I don’t like turning you out, but money’s got to be earned, when all’s said and done.’
Martha got up, the two young women kissed, and Martha went out, saying: ‘Yes of course,’ in reply to Maisie’s anxious: ‘If Mr Maynard comes after you again, you’ll let me know, won’t you?’
In every city of the world there is a café or a third-rate restaurant called Dirty Dick’s. Or Greasy Joe’s; or—In this case Dirty Dick’s was called so because Black Ally’s, beloved of the RAF, had closed down last year and there had to be somewhere to feel at home. The old one had been run by a good-humoured Greek who served chips and eggs and sausages and allowed the local Reds to put newspapers and pamphlets on the counter for sale to anyone interested. This restaurant was run by a small, sad, grey-haired man who was going home to Salonika when the war was over, and who would not allow his counter to be used as a bookshop because, as he said, he had a brother fighting against the communists in Greece at that very moment—and where was the sense in it? No hard feelings against you personally, Mrs Hesse…
When he knew that his place was called Dirty Dick’s, his sound commercial sense exulted and he at once made plans for taking the floor over his present one; which second restaurant, to be on an altogether smarter level than this, would be called ‘Mayfair’ to distinguish it from ‘Piccadilly’, the name which was painted in gold on the glass frontages that faced a waste lot where second-hand cars were sold.
He nodded at Martha as she came into the large room, recently a warehouse, which had one hundred tables arranged in four lines. Every table was occupied by the RAF, so that the place looked like a refectory or mess for the armed forces. ‘Mr Cohen is in the back room,’ he said.