Nadine Gordimer - Loot and Other Stories

The protocol came instinctively to her, she left the verandah, protesting, her hand out for his.

The livingroom held the low emptiness left by a transient occupation in which there was no meeting: the only one was the political appointment for which the man had stopped by on the way. But the houseman Tomasi was so elated by the official visitors he had entertained that he kept up a bass hum as he went about his work, doing something tympanically noisy in the kitchen.

It was only when she was driving to lunch with the Hendersons on Sunday, she suddenly remembered: that afternoon after the strictly single glass of whisky she had told the man that her Administrator would be pleased to have a talk with him; but Alan Henderson had not asked her to arrange an appointment at the Deputy-Director’s convenience, and she had not reminded him of this. That was the unspoken message of the visit on Saturday!

She and her Administrator were playfully but firmly forbidden, by his wife, to chew over, as she put it, Agency stuff on Sundays, but while the Administrator’s Assistant and her boss were sitting out during a mixed doubles at tennis she took the chance to tell him of the Saturday visit — of course the man wanted to know why the Administrator of the Agency hadn’t approached him, was offended. Her dereliction of duty, really! — That’s what I’m for, to see that you take the hints passed on to me!—

They were being called to the court. — No aid in the doubles! — A cry from his wife Flora. They leapt to their feet in mock alacrity.

Roberta Blayne hastened with the genuine thing to call the Deputy-Director’s secretary and arrange the date and time when the Administrator would come to his office. Or would the Deputy-Director care to lunch with him?; whichever.

Alan Henderson was back in New York for a special briefing at headquarters and she had had a week of overwhelming work, dealing with what it was long tacitly agreed she could do as well as he, and stalling responses to requests that must await his return. She was on the telephone to him across the seven-hour time difference when she might have hoped to get some sleep. The computer screen, voice mail, e-mail, the cell phone’s summons: when she finally did get back to the house she could not tolerate another four walls and found herself walking round, up and down, the garden — so enclosingly over-grown that she felt like some animal let out only into an exercise pen. There was a party she was invited to at the witty lawyer’s with Flora Henderson, that Saturday night; she felt too tired to expect to enjoy herself but didn’t want to disappoint Flora. In the morning she was half-heartedly looking through her clothes for something to wear that evening when the telephone rang. Early in the Southern Hemisphere, middle of the night, across the world; wouldn’t be Alan, thank God.

There was the voice that seemed always to be addressing someone else: who, me? Roberta Blayne, yes, speaking. As if it could be other, unless that of the houseman Tomasi; or does the man think I don’t live alone.

Would she like to come out in the country, see something of the rural Eastern area, — I don’t think you have been.—

— Oh. Oh … When.—

— Today. I can fetch you from your house at nine-thirty. Or ten. What you like. It’s quite a long way, not good to leave too late.—

He had had his meeting with the Administrator before Alan left for America, so surely that was enough contact. But suddenly the idea of getting out of the glowering matted garden into space, grass and sky, the scent and feel of air not over-breathed by people and blasted by airconditioning — the appropriate responses came, never mind for whom. — Lovely, love to get away, thank you, can we make it ten? I didn’t have much sleep last night, got up late …—

Instead of the elegant silk trousers for the party she pulled out a pair of jeans less worn than those of her usual weekend wear; leather lace-ups instead of sandals—‘the country’ might include some rough walking, at least she hoped so.

He came driving himself in his own car. Also a luxury model but an older one and he was alone. The dark three-piece suit had been shed; Flora knew the wife of the local Indian, Expert Tailor & Gentleman’s Outfitter who made a lot of money in custom-cutting this only slightly varied uniform for parliamentarians. The Deputy-Director wore khaki pants and a blue shirt, open-necked, but with his unchanged air of formality. He held the passenger door wide for her as she settled herself chattering, and Tomasi, clearly delighted at the reappearance of the important visitor, stood to watch the car leave through the gates of what was his domain whatever transients from the Agency might occupy it.

— In your place, your home, there in England, you live in the country, you like the country life so much, Miss Blayne?—

She laughed. — You can’t spend the day giving me a breather, calling me ‘miss’—please, I’m Roberta.—

He did not try it out until they had been driving for a while and it was clear — his tone made it clear — that this usage was not to be taken as unwonted familiarity. His supposition that field trips with the Administrator would not have been in the direction taken now, was correct; that was a suitable opening for him to give her information about the countryside they were travelling, the people who lived there — migration from the West because of floods a few years ago, migration from the South because of more recent drought, cattle country here, maize on the plain, baboons, yes (she thought she saw something move on the rocks) and even a leopard sometimes, in the hills. But mostly shot out.

— Fur coats for ladies in Europe?—

— I wouldn’t say that. We have poaching pretty much under control in this area. The big game was really finished, anyway, long ago, the old days when the British were here. Many years of their governors’ hunting parties.—

Denunciation of the colonial period, whether bitter or merely derisive, was a stock subject in social exchanges among Government and other dignitaries’ circles, to which the Agency often contributed. Alan Henderson could always raise a laugh along with a glass — Thank my lucky stars I’m not a Brit! — It didn’t count that his Assistant apparently was; she didn’t matter. She had been in Deputy-Director Gladwell Shadrack Chabruma’s presence on such occasions; this present passing remark about the colonial governors was near as he had ever come to bitter historical judgments. Due to his being habitually the man of few words? Or it could be a sign of strength of character: no indulgence of dwelling on the past for every lack in the present; perhaps even the largesse of forgiveness — the same ‘Brits’ were being offered the grace of retribution by their providing more ‘soft’ loans. The way forward. She didn’t know the man; not even to the extent she felt she knew some of his colleagues by professional attention to the views most of them volubly expressed.

There were villages of the very kind where the Agency entered into local projects with the inhabitants; she could tell him, if he happened not to know of it, of the successful brick-making that employed women whose husbands had lost their jobs due to the closure of an old coal mine — the women provided bricks for the men to build a school and a clinic, and had begun to sell surplus production to make a living for themselves. The way forward. Well … inch by inch. This time he was the one to assure of suitable appreciation; land acquisition was on a grand scale, a difficult operation (for the first time he allowed himself a glance away from the road, at her, and she understood an unspoken reference to the forced occupation of white farmers’ land by the people in a neighbouring country). — Small is beautiful. Also. Isn’t that it. — And he smiled, she saw in profile, his attention on the road. Not far on there was a village with a store crouching under a broad sign BAMJEE’S DRINK COCA COLA PETER STUYVESANT. — What would you like? — He pulled up the car.