Women Are Bloody Marvellous! And Other Stories Read online

  You got off light didn't you.

  Wilson, Kepple and Betty do their exit.

  Uncle Fred nips into the Gents.

  New Man talks me through the echoing corridors of Justice, and to the Reserved for Magistrates Only car park.

  A few lines. 'Dear Lord Chancellor...'

  Inevitable really ... this day.

  New Man has gone. I turn the key in the ignition and the engine roars at the empty underground desolation.

  My spirits rise.

  A brief note. 'Dear Lord Chancellor...' and it will be over.

  Off the Bench.

  Off the Fence.

  You got off light didn't you!

  Taff at the kiosk says, you late today Luv. Working you overtime again are they. You want to come out on strike. We laugh, Taff still wears his 'Coal not Dole' sticker. I look for my Pass. It's all right Luv, I don't want to see it.

  Taff doesn't want to see my Pass for the last time.

  Above ground it is an ordinary January Friday.

  'Dear Lord Chancellor, I have decided to ... sod off!'

  THE WRITER

  THE WRITER

  It was the sort of gathering where art has a capital A and the guests hurl superlatives. Shrill 'Darlings!' Starlings. Cocktails laid on — me, Visiting Author and Critic. Somebody asked what I thought of the new 'Credo'. Supposing this was yet another cult or dynamic arts magazine — 'Credo' being the kind of title in vogue at the time — I didn't respond with much interest.

  'I've never heard of it,' I said.

  The woman who had arranged the party (all that I knew of her was that her name was Gussie Goedere) pressed the red-tipped fingers of one hand to her breast.

  'Not it, my dear Maria, he! Oh, and you've not read him. Imagine that! My dear, he is supreme!'

  She raised her voice.

  'Freddy, do come. Maria has never read Credo!'

  He came.

  'Freddy knows Credo — he's done him in tempera, haven't you darling?'

  'Acrylic, actually,' he said.

  'Well!' said Gussie Goedere. 'Just fancy, I'd have thought, a writer with your views, Maria ... he's absolute genius! Our home-grown...'

  Oh God! Another local genius. I'd had it up to here on this last lecture tour with up and coming Steinbecks, Roy Campbells and Thomases of all kinds — R.S.s, D.M.s, and Dylans.

  '...our Zulu Shakespeare.'

  Of course — Shakespeare, who else!

  Before she twirled off to another part of the room she instructed Freddy to brief me on this Credo.

  It must have shown in my face.

  'I know what you're thinking,' Freddy said, 'but don't be put off because he happens to be Gussie's Genius of the Month. Credo's good, but you must judge for yourself. Tell you what, I'll send you round something of his.'

  I said, that'll be nice, and a couple of days later I received a nice little note and a book, which made Freddy unusual — he remembered a promise he'd made at a cocktail party. A hardback entitled My People — Credo Vuzamazulu Mutwa. I said it out loud, 'Credo Vuzamazulu Mutwa', more noticeable on a book cover than Maria Maugham.

  I put the book into my suitcase with bits I had collected on this tour, and would probably not have given it a second thought had it not been that in the evening paper my attention was caught by the headline 'Threats to Life of Author!', and a photo of Credo Mutwa. An article said that the Zulu prophet and writer was in some danger because his latest book revealed tribal secrets.

  Prophet! That was going some. Not just that, he was, according to the news item, a Zulu shangan, descended from the Great Shangan of Dingana. The accompanying photograph was, for security reasons, the report stated, the first ever published of him. It didn't explain why, now that his life had been threatened, it was all right to publish it.

  Black Shakespeare or not, he's got a really good publicity agent hyping the book — Zulu/witchdoctor/ writer, and prophet too for goodness' sake, and with threats to his life, it couldn't fail. So, when I took my after-supper drink out on to the veranda I decided to have a look at the book.

  In the blurb Credo was quoted as saying, 'If you think Africans are primitive, superstitious, riff-raff, try hurling a dead pig into a mosque and see what happens.' I liked that. I wanted to see what else he had to say.

  It was a Saturday evening, and black workers in the gold mines were rehearsing their tribal dances for the tourist show next day. The sound of their drumming carried from the compound far out of the city. I don't know whether the sound of the drums helped create a mood, but before I reached the end of the first chapter I was immersed in a new experience of words — and I was delighted.

  The Beginning

  There were no stars, no sun, moon or earth. Nothing existed but darkness itself — nothing existed but nothingness. It was a nothingness neither hot nor cold, dead nor alive — a nothingness frightening in its utter nothingness ... there arose from it the great Mother Goddess.

  The great Earth Mother with her quivering, four-breasted body, liquid fire flowing through her veins, breathing clouds of red-hot searing luminescence that could melt elephants. And the mate she longed for, a monstrous Tree of Life with its dozens of bloodshot eyes burning with lecherous hunger, scaly and studded with granite, diamonds and iron-ore.

  Kei-Lei-Si who took her cyclopean child to the Kaa-U-La bird. And Az-Ha-Rrellel who owned metal beasts that crushed wild animals and made them into men.

  I didn't know what to make of the book. Of course, not Shakespeare, but oh, lovely to read. Part history, part autobiography, part philosophy and a bit of politics.

  I said some of the names aloud, mastering the new syllables, the new words, the Zulu names. I became absorbed in them, and when I had finished, the short night had gone and the dawn was coming pink in the sky.

  Stretching out upon the bed I closed my eyes, but could not sleep for thinking about some of the things the author had written about himself. There had been a woman he was going to marry, but she was killed in the Sharpeville shootings. He wrote about riots in Rhodesia, apartheid, and retold the massacre of Dingana's women by Retief — yet said that he accepted the political fact of apartheid. I couldn't make the man out.

  I wanted very much to see Mutwa before I went back to England. I knew that if I didn't see him now there wouldn't be another opportunity, because when my next novel was published it wasn't likely that I would be welcome in the country again.

  I can't remember now what I had expected when I started reading. Because of Gussie's description 'black Shakespeare', possibly sonnets, or a kind of parallel Hamlet or Lear. How many good, new writers are blighted by being taken up by the Gussies. Credo Mutwa is Credo Mutwa and nobody else.

  After that first reading, I really didn't care about his place in literature, but I did want to see the writer who had given me something new to think about — and I wanted to write again, for the first time in months.

  I phoned Freddy to thank him, and mentioned that my interest had been aroused.

  'Gussie said that you knew him ... you painted him, didn't you? Do you think you could arrange for me to meet him?'

  He didn't answer immediately, then he said with an embarrassed laugh, 'This isn't England, you know.'

  'I'm not with you,' I said.

  'Sorry,' he said. 'Times like this I feel I have to apologize for our ridiculous laws. The fact that he's a writer doesn't mean that...' He stumbled on. 'It wouldn't be easy ... you know what I mean? ... Credo lives in township ... You would have to get a permit.'

  It was obvious he didn't want to become involved.

  'Of course,' I said. 'I didn't think.'

  I knew that he was making an excuse, he could have invited the writer to his studio, and I could have met him there.

  'I'm sorry,' he said again.

  'Ah well,' I said, 'it was just a thought.'

  'You could apply for a permit. It would take about a week. Ah, but then you will have gone, won't you?'

  'Yes, I sha
ll be in Sweden in a week,' I said.

  We politely said, 'Shame', so near, etcetera, etcetera, perhaps next time, and I thanked him again for the book. I should have realized that although starlings pose as free-thinking radicals, it's only talk.

  Then I realized that perhaps I might be able to see the Zulu writer. The newspaper report mentioned that he worked in a curio shop — I could go there, and even if there was no chance of talking to him, I could possibly satisfy my curiosity.

  I set off on the burning pavements of the city.

  Johannesburg, like New York and many modern cities, is built to a boring but eminently logical plan, which is why I can't understand how I came to find myself in an area that was unmarked on my map.

  Never mind, the novel that I was beginning to work out would have to be set in such streets as I found myself in. An allegory. The legend of the Earth Mother's desire for a mate and how he came to her, the terrible Tree of Life studded with granite, diamonds and iron-ore. The story of black African women pursued relentlessly by manufacturers and image-makers to become mere outlets for commodities like Western women.

  I wandered about, no longer trying to find my way back to the street where I would find Credo Mutwa in his curio shop. My instincts had led me to this part of the city. Here were the characters I would need.

  My sandals became covered by red dust; a not-quite unpleasant smell of rotting fruit pervaded the thick air. I looked into the dim interiors of rackety shops with black-looking carcases of meat; a store crammed with bolts of bright cloth, vivid sweets, pots, pans and cheap jewellery; another where, behind a cracked and fly-blown window, were displayed jars of bright powder, seeds, herbs and the mummified body of a monkey-like creature.

  Squatting women, some with babies slung in shawls, sorted coloured beads and dried melon-seeds making necklaces for tourists; a light-coloured man ordered about a few young African boys who were dismantling clapped-out old bikes; a little group of excited men rattled dice and threw them down with panache.

  I had looked into the black shiny faces of the squatting women, the bicycle scavengers, roasted corn vendors, messenger and delivery boys, and thought I saw their tribal past as Credo Mutwa had written of it, that time when the Zulu danced and pounded the dry soil of the veldt to red dust — and I was sure that I knew them.

  It was like a morning spent writing, I felt I had been brushing shoulders with my characters in a world of my own creation. I decided that when I met Credo I would tell him my idea for the new novel, speaking with him would crystallize the mass of atoms of ideas.

  I don't know what got into me that day. My imagination led me into the future, lecture notes gathered in my head ... 'The Art of Credo Mutwa' ... the American college circuit ... what a dramatic opening to a lecture ... Mutwa appearing on the podium, feathered head-dress ... enormous possibilities.

  Eventually I found the curio shop and suddenly became nervous. In my tours lecturing and promoting my books, I have met a premier, two prime ministers, a head of state and two winners of Nobel prizes for literature — yet I felt apprehensive at the thought of meeting this obscure Zulu writer.

  Near the shop was a large concrete container of shrubs and canna lilies, and I sat pretending to look at them, but in reality trying to see inside the place where the writer worked. The picture that had appeared in the newspaper had shown a light-brown young man with plump arms, draped in a lynx-skin, and posed 'throwing the bones', while the dust-jacket of his book showed him sitting amid witch-doctor accoutrements, resplendent in the high feathered head-dress, collars and beads of a shangan.

  He had an intelligent face and looked proud and splendid, and I had a momentary vision of him looking down his noble nose at this five-foot-tall, plump Englishwoman whose novels he had probably never heard of.

  A black man came out of the shop. I watched as he mopped water over the window and squeezed it off. He had left the shop door open, making it easier for me to make up my mind to go in.

  The traffic was heavy while I waited to cross the road to the curio shop. As I started to cross, a car hooted. The cleaner looked at me as I jumped back on to the pavement. The incident was over in two seconds. One second in which I recognized the 'boy', and one to realize that I was no different from Gussie when it came to Credo Vuzamazulu Mutwa — no, that's not exactly right, I did have the sense to take the notes I had made that morning, and thrust them into the nearest litter bin.

  THE SNOW FOX

  THE SNOW FOX

  I was eighty-three yesterday. Not that I look it, so everybody says, and I still love to get myself up properly when I go out.

  Our lads — lads! they're all a piece above fifty — well, they booked up to take me out to dinner. I like the kind of restaurants they go to now they've got to be directors and managers and the like. Places where they set fire to steaks and nobody pays with money. It's a chance to dress up, have a peach rinse, wear dangly earrings, high-heels — not as high as at one time, but high enough. I don't like to look like an old woman.

  Anyway, we were ready to go when Peggy says, 'Hold on a minute', and she went off upstairs and came down carrying a fur stole.

  'It's mink,' she said. 'More your style than mine. Here, put it on.'

  'Eh, it's absolutely beautiful,' I said. And as I said it and felt the fur against my face, I was back sixty-odd years looking in the window of Moxon's Emporium.

  Them days — for girls anyroad — soon as you left school it were service or one of the mills. I'd heard enough about service from my mother, so I went as a runner-on at the knitwear factory. I'd have loved to go on at school or work in the Post Office but ... ah well, there you are. Nobody liked mill-work, not really, and after we had finished our shift, we used to burst out of the mill-gates and try to reach the end of the jitty before the hooter stopped. It was daft, but we weren't supposed to leave us benches until the hooter had gone, so getting to the end of the jitty like that felt like putting one over on them.

  The jitty came out in the Market Place and we used to slow down and have a shop-window randy before we went home to us tea. Eight or ten girls flaunting around, making out we didn't care about the lads calling and whistling. That was the time when Moxon's was new. It was a big attraction. They had this window-dresser who went in for displays that would knock your eye out.

  This day I'm telling you about, we got to Moxon's and the centre window, the big one by the revolving door, had been all done out in black satin background, and mounds of fake snow all sprinkled with glitter and laying on this snow, with its tail curled round so as it looked like real, was this beautiful animal. It was white, with blue glass eyes and a great fluffy tail. I tell you, I'd never seen owt like it. There wasn't any price on it, Moxon's was too posh for that, there was just this card with copper-plate letters saying 'Exclusive — Snow Fox'.

  'Eh, that's absolutely beautiful!' I said.

  Rose, that's my sister, you know, the one that died a year or two back, said, 'You know who'll buy that, don't you?'

  'Aye, Mrs Tibbett,' one of the girls said. And everybody said of course she would, because Henry Tibbett was a buttie at the pit and butties' wives always dressed like ladies, and Henry Tibbett's wife reckoned to be best dressed of the lot.

  'She'll not,' I said. 'I shall.'

  Well they all laughed, they knew how I was about clothes and getting all dolled up. Sometimes, when we were having us break, somebody would say, 'Hey, Jess, tell us what you'd get if you had a hundred pound.' And I would let my fancy fly. Oh, I knew what I'd buy; dance-dresses with bugle beads, a cloak with silk lining, French shoes and gloves with little pearl buttons right up to the elbow — so, of course, when I said I would have the snow fox, they thought it was a bit more of my romancing.

  But it were not. I looked at it and I knew I must have it. White fur like that didn't go with a neck of some old woman like Henry Tibbett's wife — why she must have been getting on forty — it belonged round a young neck like mine.

  I was eighte
en, I couldn't have been older because I was still living at home and working at the knitwear mill. All of us girls used to do running-on, it was the sort of work we did better than anybody, we had quick fingers. They still do it, it's a skilled job, they didn't pay much, but we didn't do too bad on piece-work.

  I made above fifteen shilling a week. When our Rose and me tipped up our wages on a Friday, my mother always left us something for ourselves. She took out enough for us board and left us about five shilling apiece for ourselves — that's twenty-five pence in this new money, but it was worth a lot more then.

  When we were working we use to gossip. A lot about lads — some of the girls were courting, but not me. I couldn't understand them always wanting to be with the same one. All I wanted was a good-looking smart arm to parade about on when I was in my finery. To be honest, I don't think I gave a thought to anything except clothes. Not the sort of clothes, though, mill-girls usually wore, but fashion, class. Flouncy dresses and hats that made people look twice.

  I can hear our Rose now. 'Eh, our Jess, you're never going to buy that? Why they've got same thing up at Stores a quarter the price.' But she didn't understand. No amount of telling her would make her see the difference between the style and finish of what I wanted, and what they sold at Stores — Co-op like, as they say down your way.

  It wasn't only our Rose, all the girls were like that, always thinking how cheap you could get something for, or how long it would last. Well, you can understand, I suppose, if you think about it we didn't have a lot of money. But to me that seemed all the more reason to spend what you did have on something worth having. So when any of them rolled their eyes at a little bit of a hat that had cost four-and-elevenpence ... that were a week's money, so that'll tell you ... well, I used to say 'Why not? I've worked for it!' I know they thought I was daft with my money, but they saw it was fair enough if that's what I wanted.