Status Updates From Landlocked

It was rumoured among the white railway workers that the strike was well prepared,that the black workers had been warned against agentsprovocateurs;that the air of the Africans going off work this evening had been reassuringly calm.The white workers,in their roles as whites,had been alarmed &indignant.In their roles as workers,they had been impressed,&had even wished their black colleagues good luck as they went off.

Every fibre of Martha’s body, everything she thought, every movement she made, everything she was, was because she had been born at the end of one world war, and had spent all her adolescence in the atmosphere of preparations for another which had lasted five years and had inflicted such wounds on the human race that no one had any idea of what the results would be.

In short, Mrs Quest was like ninety-nine per cent of humanity: if she spent an afternoon jam-making, while her mind was filled with thoughts envious, spiteful, lustful—violent; then she had spent the afternoon making jam.