62
DORIS LESSING
the sundowner, and the fifty or so people who came to the meetings
were all, whether in the forces, or refugees from Europe, or simply
Rhodesians, souls in need of congenial company. And they were
friendly occasions, those meetings, sometimes going on till dawn.
A girl none of us had seen before came to a public meeting.
She saw Harry, a handsome, confident, loquacious, energetic,
ef–
ficient young man. Everyone relied on him.
She fell in love, took him home, and her father, recognising
one of the world's born organisers, made him manager in his hard–
ware shop.
Which leaves the third, Dick. Now there are some people who
should not be allowed anywhere near meetings, debates or similar
intellect-fermenting agencies. He came to two meetings. Harry brought
him, describing him as "keen." It was Harry who was keen. Dick
sat on the floor on a cushion. Wild bohemian ways, these, for well–
brought-up young whites. His forehead puckered like a puppy's
while he tried to follow wild un-Rhodesian thought. He, like Tom,
was a neat, well-set-up youth. Perhaps the post office, or at least
in
Rhodesia, is an institution that attracts the well-ordered? I remem–
ber he reminded me of a boiled sweet, bland sugar with a chemical
tang. Or perhaps he was like a bulldog, all sleek latent ferocity, with
its little bulging eyes, its little snarl. Like Tom, he was one for ex–
tracting exact information. "I take it you people believe that human
nature can
be
changed?"
At the second meeting he attended, he sat and listened as be–
fore. At the end he enquired whether we thought socialism was a
good thing in this country where there was the white man's burden
to consider.
He did not come to another meeting. Harry said that he had
found us seditious and un-Rhodesian. Also insincere. We asked Harry
to go and ask Dick why he thought we were insincere, and to come
back and tell us. It turned out that Dick wanted to know why The
Left Club did not take over the government of the country and run
it, if we thought the place
ill
run. But we forgot Dick, particularly as
Harry, at the zenith of his efficiency and general usefulness, was
drifting off with his future wife to become a hardware-store man–
ager. And by then Tom was lost to us.
Suddenly we heard that "The Party for Democracy, Liberty,
and Freedom" was about to hold a preliminary mass meeting. One
