Going Home - Doris May Lessing [105]
As for the young men, save for that one who spoke about troublemakers, they sat and said nothing, leaving their elders to speak for them.
At the hotel I found my room already shared by a young woman called Eileen. She was a fat, phlegmatic, freckled girl who sighed at every second breath, while she told me the story of her life, which she did at once.
It seemed that Eileen was thirty years old, and she lived with her Mom in Salisbury. Mom did not allow her to smoke or to drink, although she allowed her married sister to smoke and drink because she was married. Eileen was a typist, earning £65 a month; although she could earn far more if she wanted to move to another firm which was offering her £80. But she was used to her boss, and preferred being respected to earning more money. But last year she had got restless and went to Johannesburg, where she at once secured a job out of 120 applicants. But she got homesick at the end of the first week and went back to Salisbury. Then she got restless again and applied for a job on the Copper Belt at £80 a month, and got it; but Mom said: ‘You are a nice girl, Eileen, and you’ll never be happy with those rough types on the Copper Belt.’ So she had thrown up that job before even starting.
Almost at once, restlessness had set in again; and she had come up here with five other girls just to see.
‘And besides,’ said Eileen, ‘some of these men here earn more than £200 a month. You don’t catch me working after I am married.’
While she was telling me all this, she was dressing, and I lay on the bed and listened.
The indolence of heat emphasized her characteristic lassitude, and it took her over an hour to dress. Finally she stood before the looking-glass, in a tight dress with pink flowers all over it, pink beads, pink sash. A little girl’s dress. And the fat, timid face was that of a fifteen-year-old. She went out saying she must get a breath of fresh air; and ten minutes later I saw her on the verandah with a glass of whisky, half-full, a cigarette, and a young copper miner. There is a shortage of women on the Copper Belt.
This hotel may aim to offer other amenities, but it is a drinking hotel above all. I imagined that Southern Rhodesia was talented for drinking; but I had seen nothing till I went to the Copper Belt.
Around the corner from the hotel is a bar. Outside the bar are rows of cars. At sundown, the families come driving in; the men leave wives and children in the cars and go into the bar. From time to time they come out with a drink for the wife and a lemonade for the children, and then go back into the bar. And so they all spend the evening, until the bar closes.
As for me, I went back into the bedroom and studied the newspapers.
At that time the African National Congress had imposed a boycott on shops that had used unfair trade practices.
At that particular moment, in the early part of May, the boycott had been called off on the Copper Belt, but was still in effect in Broken Hill. The newspapers were full of it.
The boycott movement is more than an effort to force equal dealings in shops between black and white. It is also a trial of strength for Congress. Here is a news item from that time:
‘A warning to the Government that the African National Congress has already a Government within the Congress that will one day rule Northern Rhodesia was given at a meeting here today. The Congress warned the Government that they wanted no interference on boycotts. Resolutions passed at the meeting included: (1) A protest against the District Commissioner and the District Officer asking for identification certificates in the compound area and fining those without them. (2) The boycott would end when the person who was imprisoned for nine months on charges arising from the boycott was released. (3) The reasons for the boycott were the imposition of Federation,