Going Home - Doris May Lessing [90]
Most of this interview, like all the other interviews, was off the record; for he complained that people were such fools they always misunderstood him. It is no secret, I think, that Lord Malvern or Dr Huggins has never had much respect for other people’s intelligence; and this tendency has been strengthened because he has always been the most quick-minded, lively, sharp-tongued of the politicians in a country that is naturally short of able politicians. Now he gives the impression of being tired, no less asperous and impatient, a brooding and rather lonely figure.
He said he thought Federation was successful, though suffering from growing pains. When I suggested that perhaps the opposition and political feeling it had created among the Africans might ultimately wreck it, he said impatiently that I must not get the impression that the Congresses had any influence; they were just a few noisy agitators.
He said he understood I had Left Wing views. I said yes, strong Left Wing views, to which he replied that he believed in making haste slowly and the middle way.
He understood I wrote; what did I write about? This is a question which always annoys a writer; but I said that for the purposes of this discussion I wrote against the colour bar. To which he said: ‘Well, that’s all right. Of course you know there’s hardly any colour bar left in Southern Rhodesia.’
I asked him if he did not think, since he had got the public to swallow an interracial university, something that would have seemed impossible ten years ago, he could have pushed it through another stage and made it truly interracial and non-segregated. He said, no; it was touch and go as it was; and if those fools in England didn’t shut up, they’d defeat his purpose, scare off the whites and make a black university. ‘As it is they won’t send their daughters—not at the beginning.’
I said I knew one or two families who were sending their daughters, but he said impatiently: ‘I know these people. It’s no good rushing them. All this business of principle, of right and wrong—how can there be right and wrong in politics? You do what you can as you can.’
I said: ‘All you people seem much more scared of white public opinion than you are of African opinion.’
He said, very quickly: ‘No.’
‘You’re the first who hasn’t put it like that, just as plainly.’
‘There is no such thing as African public opinion. They’re not educated enough to have an opinion. We have to steer a middle road and hope the two extremes won’t start shouting. The thing is to make a beginning. After all, nothing’s static. In ten years’ time, when people have got used to the idea of a multi-racial university, we can go a step farther. I have no colour feeling myself—I wasn’t brought up in this country. But you have to recognize it exists.’
And then we got on to the Colonial Office, and kindred matters, and I agreed not to quote him.
10
As I might not be allowed to return to Salisbury, I spent a sentimental morning driving around it, looking at the innumerable places I have lived in. Most, so fast are things changing, no longer exist. Most are not to be regretted. The house I would have been pleased to see go was still there. In it, for over a year, I was very unhappy. I have since learned to distinguish between unhappiness which is simply temperamental, and has to be suffered through, like an attack of flu; and the unhappiness caused by circumstances. At that time I could not distinguish between them. I was dumbly, hopelessly unhappy; I could not believe I would ever have a hopeful thought or feeling again. It was therefore salutary to go and look at the small brick house, in its garden, warm in the sunlight, with children playing on the verandah. It was hard to identify it as the same place, indeed. A year is a long time to waste in being unhappy; a year is a good part of one’s life.
IN TIME OF DRYNESS
There is no dryness like this drought.
Thin flesh burns, skin cracks, lips strain.