Status Updates From A Ripple from the Storm (Ch...

This lady, in appearance like a newly washed Sealyham, with fluffy white hair under which fierce but faded eyes peeped out;

.. and once again the meeting became a free-for-all on brotherhood, freedom and racial equality. In the midst of this Mr Matushi and his two friends left, for the reason they always had to leave meetings early: it was after curfew time and they had no passes to be out late.

Had Brother Jack in fact said the things he was supposed to have said?
Every word, said Jack. In his view the British were rapacious imperialist exploiters of India and he insisted on his right to say so any time or any place he wanted.

On the top of a half-finished wall Piet sat straddled, setting bricks into place which were handed up to him by a black man. The rule was that Africans might mix mortar, collect bricks, hand mortar and bricks to the white men, but they might not set the bricks into place, which was skilled work reserved for the white men.

She was already pregnant, but her first child was her husband, and she thereby put herself beyond being hurt by him.

She was already pregnant, but her first child was her husband, and she thereby put herself beyond being hurt by him.

Athen said, not looking at Martha: ‘It has seemed to me like this for a long time – that this is a time which is difficult for women. Some women know it and fight. Some women, like Maisie, they don’t know it.’

‘Comrade Anton, you’re behaving like a capitalist government asked an awkward question – they always appoint a select committee and hope everything will blow over before the report is published.’

In the course of thirty minutes Mr Maynard offered twenty-odd African men the choice of a ten-shilling fine or a month in jail for being out in the white part of the town the night before without one or more of the obligatory passes. Most chose prison.

‘… you don’t want to talk about it? … Women are the salt of the earth. .. My mother was the salt of the earth. My dad died when I was ten and she brought up me and my two sisters on what she got by cleaning offices until I went to work and helped her out.’
‘Good, then let’s arrange things so that women have to work eighteen hours a day and die at fifty, worn out so that you can go on being sentimental about us.’

‘Good God,’ he exclaimed, really angry, speaking from his depths. ‘What do you suppose you are going to change? We happen to be in power, so we use power. What is history? A record of misery, brutality and stupidity. That’s all. That’s all it ever will be. What does it matter who runs a country? It’s always a bunch of knaves administering a pack of fools.

…between the attitudes of mind of the mass of the people living in the Colony, either white or black, and the small number of people that made up the ‘Trotskyists’ and ‘the group’ was a gulf so deep that from the other side of it the various sects making up the Left were practically indistinguishable, and described impartially as ‘Reds’ and ‘Bolshies’.

As usual a demon of impatience was snapping at her heels, pushing her into the future.

I am absolutely obsessed with Martha Quest and this series. Here's a passage from page 145 (no spoilers): "Murdoch said in his real voice -- seldom heard and, surprisingly even to himself, a voice neither rueful, nor humorously pained; but quiet, earnest: the voice of a boy confronting wonder: 'Do you know what this mucking place reminds of me of, Jimmy-boy, do you know?'"