Going Home - Doris May Lessing [10]
Several times a term the house-mother summoned us, and gave us a pep-talk which began invariably: ‘Now, gals, I want you to take a pull on yourselves…’ For twenty minutes or so she would deal with the virtues of discipline and obedience; and then turned her whole person, which was whale-shaped and ponderous, in the direction of the intransigent group who sat, bored but bland, in desks at the back of the prep-room, meeting the stare of her full-blooded eyes and the jut of her dark jowl with calm but eager inquiry. ‘There are gals here who are so stoo-pid that they are wasting their valuable school life in playing the fool. Life will never give them another opportunity. In two years’ time they will leave to be shop assistants and clerks. While they are at school they think they are doing very well, because they mix with gals they will never see again once they leave. The system of education in this country unfortunately being what it is, they have a chance to improve themselves by mixing with their superiors. I want to plead with these gals, now, before it is too late, to change their low-class and cheap behaviour. I want them particularly to take a strong pull on themselves.’
This part of the good woman’s lecture always went over our heads, because class language was no part of our experience. We resented, collectively and individually, all attempts to divide us on these lines, but the resentment was too deep to be vocal. There were teachers we liked, teachers who played the traditional roles of butts and villains; but this woman’s self-satisfied stupidity repelled all myth-making. ‘It was as if a savage spoke.’ We recognized that hers was the voice of the Britain our parents had, in their various ways, escaped from. It was a voice peculiarly refined, holding timbres I did not recognize until I came to Britain and began to learn the game of accent-spotting.
But Jane’s voice, when I heard it on the plane, was indistinguishable from that of the hostess: the anonymous, immediately recognizable voice of the Southern African female, which is light and self-satisfied, poised on an assured femininity which comes of being the keeper of society’s conscience. It is the voice, in short, of Mom.
‘Is that you?’ said she to me, in her indolent voice—and it was really painful to see those pretty eyes unchanged among wads of well-fed flesh. ‘I thought it was you. You’ve been doing well for yourself, I must say.’
‘It looks,’ I said, ‘as if we both have.’
She regarded the solid citizen who was her husband with calm satisfaction. ‘My eldest son,’ she remarked, ‘has just got his degree in law.’
‘Jolly good,’ I said.
‘Do you remember Shirley? She’s done well for herself; she’s married a High Court Judge.’ Shirley was the most determinedly relaxed of the group.
‘And Caroline?’ I asked.
‘Well, poor Caroline, she did well for herself, but her old man works with the Native Department, and so she’s stuck in the middle of a Native Reserve. But she’s always gay, in spite of having nothing but Kaffirs all about.’
‘And Janet?’
‘Janet didn’t do well for herself the first time she got married, but he was killed in the war, and now she’s married to a Civil Servant and her daughter’s at Cape Town University. And have you heard about Connie?’
Connie was the odd-man-out of the group because her natural intelligence was such that she could not help passing examinations well even though she never did any work. This idiosyncrasy was regarded by the others with affectionate tolerance.
‘Connie began to be a doctor because her dad said she must, but she did not really like to work much, so she married a Civil Servant and she’s got