In Pursuit of the English - Doris Lessing [13]
‘For the Lord’s sake,’ I said, ‘don’t shout.’
‘There, what did I tell you? Already you are asking me to lower my voice. The English will finish you, man. Ya.’
‘All the same, I wish you could hurry on that boat. I’ve been here six weeks, and I’m very unhappy. Apart from anything else, there’s an English couple across the passage and we have morning tea together all the time. And as soon as I say anything at all, about anything, they look very nervous and change the subject. It’s a bad augury for my life in England.’
‘Poor little one. Poor child. There, what did I tell you?’ He roared with delight. I heard a door open on to the passage.
‘Piet. And there’s a woman called Mrs Barnes. She’s very bad-tempered.’
‘Poor woman,’ he said. He took two large soundless strides to the door, opened it with a jerk, and there was Mrs Barnes in the passage. She frowned. He smiled. Slowly, unwillingly, and hating every second of it, she smiled. Then, furious, she went dark plum colour, glared at us both, and went into her room, slamming the door hard.
‘It is a terrible thing,’ said Piet sentimentally, ‘A bad-tempered woman. It is all the fault of her husband. I suppose he’s English.’
‘Scottish.’
‘It is all the same thing. That reminds me …’ He told a story. By the time he had ended I was laughing too hard to ask him to lower his voice. He was rolling in an agony of laughter back and forth over the floor. The whole boarding house was hushed.
‘That reminds me,’ said Piet again. He talked, listening with delight to the silence of his invisible audience. Then he told his story about his visit to a brothel in Marseilles. Unfortunately it is too indecent to write down. It was not too indecent for him to shout at the top of his voice. The end of the story was: ‘Imagine me, in her room, in such a predicament, and the boat was leaving. It was giving out long, sad hoots of pain, to warn us all there was no time to waste. And there I was. My friends came in. They bandaged me. And I walked down to the ship through the streets of Marseilles, cheered on by the onlookers, with a bloodstained bandage a foot and a half long sticking out in front of me. I climbed up the gangway, supported on either side by my loyal friends, watched by the captain, a very fine fellow, and at least five thousand women. That was the proudest day of my life. That afternoon they gave me the gold medal for my artistic talent was nothing compared to it.’
Mrs Barnes came in. ‘I am afraid I have to tell you that I have had no alternative but to complain to the management.’ She went out.
‘Poor woman,’ said Piet. ‘It is a very sad thing, a woman like that. Don’t worry. I shall now go to Mrs Coetzee and tell her I’ll paint a picture for her.’
Half an hour later I went to the kitchen. Mrs Coetzee was wheezing out helpless, wet laughter. Jemima, her face quite straight, her eyes solemn, had her hand cupped over her mouth, to catch any laughter that might well up and press it back again. Her narrow little body shook spasmodically. ‘I told you,’ said Piet. ‘It is all right. I have explained to her that she must have a picture of this fine boarding house. I shall paint it for her, at a medium cost. I shall also make a copy and donate it to the city’s archives, for the memory of a building such as this must not be lost to mankind. I feel it will be the finest pondokkie I have ever painted. Poor woman, she is very bitter. The war makes her unhappy.’ ‘She’s doing very nicely out of it.’
‘No, the Boer War. Those concentration camps you had. Ya, ya, the English were never anything but savages. Now, please, think no more about it. I have made everything right for you.’
He went. Almost at once Mrs Coetzee came in, with Jemima. It was a visit of goodwill. She was smiling. Then she noticed the picture, which unfortunately Piet had forgotten. Her face sagged into folds of