Nadine Gordimer - Loot and Other Stories

Three months, two months before the tour of duty ends. Meanwhile, something gratifying happened to the Deputy-Director; the Director of Land Affairs was involved in a corruption scandal, and Gladwell Shadrack Chabruma was appointed in his place. She felt a happy, unpossessive pride, on his behalf, another kind of pleasure; the real share in this recognition of his achievements belonged with his family.

Success now changed public reading of his taciturnity, brought the conclusion that it signalled integrity — protected high intelligence, ability, efficiency and honesty —he had come clean out of the inquiry that brought the Department into question and caught his superior with, if not a hand in the till, a hand extended to bribes in the granting of land rights to certain individuals and companies, local and international.

One month before the Administrator of the Agency and his Assistant were due to depart; their replacements had arrived, were temporarily accommodated in an hotel; Roberta Blayne was beginning to pack in bubble-wrap the collection of fragile gifts, the clay pots so likely to return, in transit, to the state of their origin, back to handsful of crumbling earth of the country. He came from a parliamentary sub-committee he had chaired, and was telling her about; through the window she saw the driver and bodyguards going off on foot down the drive calling goodbyes to the yard: so he was going to stay the night with her, they were going to make love. He had poured them each a whisky; he was watching her busied with her pots.

She thought she read his scepticism, laughed. — They’ll probably be thrown around by the luggage handlers anyway, but I might as well take a chance one or two could survive.—

— I’m going to marry you.—

He said it.

She went on placing a ribbon of sticky tape round the wrapped pot. The tape did not hold and curled back to her fingers.

That is what he said.

He sat down on the sofa where they had been side by side the first time he arrived. The Deputy-Director is coming to visit you.

She abandoned the package and came over to him, her fingers entangled in tape, her face a strange grimace of disbelief, amazement, and a loss of control that came out something like a laugh.

He looked at her openly, no need to say it again.

— I’d never be the cause of a divorce. Never. Gladwell. You may not understand that because, well, I know, I’ve been with you and all along there was your wife. Family. But we both understood. I’d never break up a marriage. Never. It’s been good together. I don’t have to tell you. I don’t know, it wasn’t my business to know what … the … position … arrangement is between you and her. In your life. I suppose I was wrong, but I assumed … how can I say it … we weren’t harming her. Oh I’m not such a hypocrite that I don’t know you’re harming a woman when you sleep with her husband, whether she’s aware of it or not, is aware of it and accepts … We’ve been happy — lucky — anyway I’ve been — lucky. — She turned and began to unwind the tangle of tape from her fingers, began binding her pot for transport; the gesture was there: I’m leaving in a month. I’m recalled. You’re recalled, my lover, home. The gesture was a tender and grateful conveyance.

— I am not talking about divorce. She is my wife, of course. Roberta, you will also be my wife. You respect her, I know. She will respect you. It is quite usual in our society. Legal. Always been. We don’t have to do what your people do, divorce, remarry, divorce, remarry, and so much trouble and unhappiness, broken homes you’re always hearing about. We don’t have to follow every custom of the West. You know that. It’s what you say in your work. Don’t worry. This country, it’s now yours, you do real work here you can’t do, over there. Good together. I know that, you know that, yes.—

And now she did talk. As bluntly as he did.

She went to the Henderson house on some ordinary pretext and she and Flora chatted pleasantly, desultorily for a while as usual among people with a way of life in common. Then she stopped; as if someone took her by the shoulders, brought her to herself.

— He said he’s going to marry me.—

No need to name the lover to this woman friend.

— He’s asked you to marry him? Roberta! So it’s become really serious? Roberta!—

— Not exactly asked. Said he was going to.—

— Oh well it’s just another way of asking, in an affair … What’d you say?—

— I would never be the cause of a divorce. Never. But he had no intention … — In order to phrase it at a formal distance: —It is to take another wife.—

Flora was smiling, moved by a proposal recognising the qualities of a surrogate marriageable daughter. — You.—

She was conscious of being studied; Flora might never have seen her before. If a love affair changes a woman, as Alan Henderson had privately noticed, the idea of marriage, for a bachelor woman like this one, also brings about a change in the perceptions of a beholder.

— I can’t believe it. — Her own voice, empty of expression.

Flora was excitedly intrigued. — But why not. The Minister of Environment and Tourism has two wives and families, I mean it’s less common nowadays, they just get divorced instead when they fancy someone else, but it’s still accepted. Even part of national pride, for some. There’s even talk the President would be happy to do likewise you know — but it wouldn’t do to have a meeting with the Queen or the American President with two of them in tow! Why shouldn’t the Director of Land Affairs want another wife — a different one. Not necessarily you … Why can’t you believe it!—

— Not him.—

— You think he’s too sophisticated? Our way. But it’s obviously because he’s serious about you, however you take it, it’s a recognition of status, you’re not just …—

Flora was flattered: for her. At least she had the tact not to ask what the Agency Assistant, bachelor woman, proposed to do next. Was that to be the latest dinner-party story.

Alan, her Administrator, closed the door in his office and he, too, looked at her from yet another perspective than that he had already noted. — Flora’s told me about Gladwell. I hope you don’t mind.—

— I was going to do so myself, anyway. But we’ve been so busy since … — The Agency was preparing to co-host with the Ministry of Health an international conference on malaria.

— I don’t mind admitting to you that Flora and I have talked a lot. She has the idea you are somehow offended by Gladwell. —

It was easier to speak to him than to his wife, there was the trust of their working relationship together.

— No, no, how could I be offended by the idea of being his wife — black man’s wife, is that how Flora thinks of it, that’s how people would think of it? — when we’ve been lovers all these months.—

— But Roberta you are offended at the idea of being taken as second wife, you see it as entering some kind of old harem …? So he’s offended you, there, no?—

— I can’t believe he would ever think of it. That the … situation … could be a normal part of his life. Now.—

—I’m going to be frank with you. I’m sure he’s become very attached to you, but there’s another aspect to this — proposal — his wife is a simple woman who takes care of the kids, there’s a boy of about ten as well as the grown ones making their way around the world — she shops for the official residence she’s so proud of, watches TV; and has nothing to say to him, he obviously can’t discuss his work, inside politics and problems of Government, not with her. And you notice she doesn’t appear with him at official dinners of the kind when a wife’s expected to be along to entertain the wives of visiting bigwigs. You think his idea’s a kind of regression, isn’t that so. But it’s because he needs a companion on his own wave-length at his stage of life and clearly that’s what he’s found these past months in you. He’s seen how astutely you hold your own at meetings, how you can have an — informed — exchange with all kinds of people! That’s how he thinks of a second wife. Not a handy bedmate.—