60
DORIS LESSING
had "told." Tom was upset, when everybody began speculating
about his probable supercession by Harry, or even Dick. The way
he saw it was that his complete frankness with both us and
his
chief
was surely deserving of reward. He ought to be left in the job. God
knows how he saw the future. Probably that both his
boss
and our–
selves would continue to employ him. We would use him to find
out how our letters were slowly moving through the toils of censor–
ship, and to hurry them on, if possible;
his
Chief would use him to
spy on us. When I say employ, I don't want anyone to imagine
this
implies payment. Or at least, certainly not from our side. Ideology
had to be his spur, sincerity his reward.
It
will
by now have been noticed that our Tom was not as
bright as he might have been. But he was a pleasant enough youth.
He was rather good-looking too, about twenty-two. His physical
characteristic was neatness. His clothes were always just so; he had
a small alert dark moustache; he had glossy dark well-brushed hair.
His rather small hands were well manicured - the latter trait bound
to be found offensive by good colonials, whose eyes for such anti–
masculine evidence as they were bound to see it, then if not now,
were acute. But he was a fairly recent immigrant, from just before the
war, and had not yet absorbed the mores. He probably had not
noticed that real Rhodesians, in those days at least, did not like
men who went in for a careful :tppearance.
Tom, in spite of our humourous forecast that he would be
bound to tell his boss that he had told us, and his stiff and wounded
denials that such a thing was possible, found himself impelled to do
just that. He reported back that his Chief had "lost
his
rag with him."
But that was not the end. He was offered the job of learning
how to censor letters. He had said to his boss that he felt in honour
bound to tell us, and his boss said: "Oh for Christ's sake. Tell them
anything you damned well like. You won't be choosing what is to
be
censored."
As I said,
this
was an unsophisticated town in those days, and
the condition of "everybody knowing everybody else" was bound to
lead to such warm human situations.
He accepted the offer because: "My mother always told me
that
sh~
wanted me to do well for myself, and I'll increase my rating
into Schedule Three as soon as I start work on censoring, and that
means an increment of £50 a year."
