There are other South Africans in London, thousands of them, if he is to believe report. There are Canadians too, Australians, New Zealanders, even Americans. But these people are not immigrants, are not here to settle, to become English. They have come to have fun or to study or to earn some money before going on a tour of Europe. When they have had enough of the Old World they will go home and take up their real lives.
There are Europeans in London as well, not only language students but refugees from the Eastern Bloc and, further back, from Nazi Germany. But their situation is different from his. He is not a refugee; or rather, a claim on his part to be a refugee will get him nowhere with the Home Office. Who is oppressing you, the Home Office will say? From what are you fleeing? From boredom, he will reply. From philistinism. From atrophy of the moral life. From shame. Where will such a plea get him?
Then there is Paddington. He walks along Maida Vale or Kilburn High Road at six o’clock in the evening and sees, under the ghostly sodium lights, throngs of West Indians trudging back to their lodgings, muffled against the cold. Their shoulders are bowed, their hands are thrust deep in their pockets, their skins have a greyish, powdery hue. What draws them from Jamaica and Trinidad to this heartless city where the cold seeps up from the very stones of the streets, where the hours of daylight are spent in drudgery and the evenings huddled over a gas fire in a hired room with peeling walls and sagging furniture? Surely they are not all here to find fame as poets.
The people he works with are too polite to express their opinion of foreigner visitors. Nevertheless, from certain of their silences he knows he is not wanted in their country, not positively wanted. On the subject of West Indians they are silent too. But he can read the signs. NIGGER GO HOME say slogans painted on walls. NO COLOURED say notices in the windows of lodging houses. Month by month the government tightens its immigration laws. West Indians are halted at the dockside in Liverpool, detained until they grow desperate, then shipped back to where they came from. If he is not made to feel as nakedly unwelcome as they are, it can only be because of his protective coloration: his Moss Brothers suit, his pale skin.
Thirteen
‘After careful consideration I have reached the conclusion …’ ‘After much soul-searching I have come to the conclusion …’
He has been in the service of IBM for over a year: winter, spring, summer, autumn, another winter, and now the beginning of another spring. Even inside the Newman Street bureau, a box-like building with sealed windows, he can feel the suave change in the air. He cannot go on like this. He cannot sacrifice any more of his life to the principle that human beings should have to labour in misery for their bread, a principle he seems to adhere to though he has no idea where he picked it up. He cannot forever be demonstrating to his mother in Cape Town that he has made a solid life for himself and therefore that she can stop worrying about him. Usually he does not know his own mind, does not care to know his own mind. To know one’s own mind too well spells, in his view, the death of the creative spark. But in this case he cannot afford to drift on in his usual haze of indecision. He must leave IBM. He must get out, no matter how much it will cost in humiliation.
Over the past year his handwriting has, beyond his control, been growing smaller, smaller and more secretive. Now, sitting at his desk, writing what will be the announcement of his resignation, he tries consciously to make the letters larger, the loops fatter and more confident-seeming.
‘After lengthy reflection,’ he writes at last, ‘I have reached the conclusion that my future does not lie with IBM. In terms of my contract I therefore wish to tender one month’s notice.’
He signs the letter, seals it, addresses it to Dr B. L. McIver, Manager, Programming Division, and drops it discreetly in the tray marked INTERNAL. No one in the office gives him a glance. He takes his seat again.
Until three o’clock, when the mail is next collected, there is time for second thoughts, time to slip the letter out of the tray and tear it up. Once the letter is delivered, however, the die will be cast. By tomorrow the news will have spread through the building: one of McIver’s people, one of the programmers on the second floor, the South African, has resigned. No one will want to be seen speaking to him. He will be sent to Coventry. That is how it is at IBM. No false sentiment. He will be marked as a quitter, a loser, unclean.
At three o’clock the woman comes around for the mail. He bends over his papers, his heart thumping.
Half an hour later he is summoned to McIver’s office. McIver is in a cold fury. ‘What is this?’ he says, indicating the letter that lies open on his desk.
‘I have decided to resign.’
‘Why?’
He had guessed McIver would take it badly. McIver is the one who interviewed him for the job, who accepted and approved him, who swallowed the story that he was just an ordinary bloke from the colonies planning a career in computers. McIver has his own bosses, to whom he will have to explain his mistake.
McIver is a tall man. He dresses sleekly, speaks with an Oxford accent. He has no interest in programming as a science or skill or craft or whatever it is. He is simply a manager. That is what he is good at: allotting tasks to people, managing their time, driving them, getting his money’s worth out of them.
‘Why?’ says McIver again, impatiently.
‘I don’t find working for IBM very satisfying at a human level. I don’t find it fulfilling.’
‘Go on.’
‘I was hoping for something more.’
‘And what may that be?’
‘I was hoping for friendships.’
‘You find the atmosphere unfriendly?’
‘No, not unfriendly, not at all. People have been very kind. But being friendly is not the same thing as friendship.’
He had hoped the letter would be allowed to be his last word. But that hope was naïve. He should have realized they would receive it as nothing but the first shot in a war.
‘What else? If there is something else on your mind, this is your chance to bring it out.’
‘Nothing else.’
‘Nothing else. I see. You are missing friendships. You haven’t found friends.’
‘Yes, that’s right. I’m not blaming anyone. The fault is probably my own.’
‘And for that you want to resign.’
‘Yes.’
Now that the words are out they sound stupid, and they are stupid. He is being manoeuvred into saying stupid things. But he should have expected that. That is how they will make him pay for rejecting them and the job they have given him, a job with IBM, the market leader. Like a beginner in chess, pushed into corners and mated in ten moves, in eight moves, in seven moves. A lesson in domination. Well, let them do it. Let them play their moves, and let him play his stupid, easily foreseen, easily countered return moves, until they are bored with the game and let him go.
With a brusque gesture McIver terminates the interview. That, for the moment, is that. He is free to return to his desk. For once there is not even the obligation to work late. He can leave the building at five, win the evening for himself.
The next morning, through McIver’s secretary — McIver himself sweeps past him, not returning his greeting — he is instructed to report without delay to IBM Head Office in the City, to the Personnel Department.