Nadine Gordimer - A Guest of Honour

“You’re saying socialism is the absolute?” Neil loved strong sentiments, as a form of entertainment. He at once took charge. “The standard of reference by which any political undertaking is to be judged?”

“Yes! Must be, if we believe, people like Roly and me, what we’ve been saying all our lives — the lawyer and the civil servant. Yes! What else?”

“But I am still a lawyer and you are no longer a civil servant,” Dando said, looking at him. Their eyes engaged; and then he withdrew, under Dando’s gaze of a man who stands watching another go out of sight.

The talk had gone back to Tola Tola, the Foreign Minister. “But what about the Msos,” Hjalmar was insisting. “Neil — how will Mweta get him out without causing trouble for himself there?”

Neil Bayley stood about among his seated guests like a ringmaster, running his hands up through his bright curly aureole of beard and hair. “Ah, there’s the advantage of the strange position of Tola Tola — although he’s nominally Mso, it seems he actually comes from the Congo … someone’s dug that up. It’s clearly not an Mso name … is it, James? Tola Tola?”

“Probably not; you don’t get the two — syllable repetition …”

“—So even though he’s got an Mso seat, there’s some”—he swivelled his hand right and left, fingers fanned stiffly— “ambiguity about the whole business. But Mweta’d have to put an Mso in his place, that’s the snag. Apparently the Msos would want Msomane. Or rather Msomane would want to make sure he was the man. He’s mad keen to get rid of Labour, which is hardly surprising.”

Bray said, “Neil, would you say Mosmane was one of the people who’re pushing Mweta?”

“Depends what way. It’s always a tricky business to keep the Mso faction happy. Without making too much of them.”

“I don’t mean that. Would he have had enough influence with Mweta to get him to approve the Company setting up its private army?”

“Is that story true?”

“Hjalmar has to be told twenty times if it’s something he doesn’t want to believe,” Margot said. “You’d have to run him over with a tank first.”

“My source of information only mentioned armoured cars,” Bray put in lightly to protect poor Hjalmar. And Vivien’s clear commanding voice that stamped her origin as undeniably as any princely birthmark on the backside of a foundling: “Hjalmar, I’m just like you. I wouldn’t have believed it if one of the Company mothers who picks up children at Eliza’s school hadn’t told me how much safer she feels now. — I told her how much less safe I feel.”

Neil still held the floor. “Cyprian Kente’s more likely to be the one who’s done the pushing, and even Guka, maybe. If your Interior and Defence boys give advice, it’s difficult not to take it.”

“And no one’s asked any questions in the House.”

“It’s been done so discreetly … the first anyone heard was when these men appeared out of the blue last month at Ngweshi Mine — the report was that ‘police’ reinforcements had come down from here. Then it leaked out that they were a new kind of police.… But when the House sits again”—his mind went back to the “worry” about Mweta he had begun with earlier. “Of course, it looks so sinister. I don’t doubt that he’s tough enough to keep it under control. But it would have been better to keep the Company in the background — could have been called a force of civilian reservists, some such. He’s been badly advised to let the Company’s name come in openly — I wouldn’t agree that he shouldn’t use the resources of the Company if he needs them, one may have to use existing resources—”

“It doesn’t help me to talk about the Company as if it were a natural phenomenon,” Vivien said. “It still looks like the old days we read about down in Zambia and Rhodesia, with the old Chartered policing the place for the Great White Queen.… What sort of thugs will the Company recruit, anyway? It’s terrifying. All those mercenaries from the Congo wandering around Africa looking for a job …”

“I gather it’s a black affair, mainly, no whites—” Neil dismissed her.

“And the Company administrators are running an army? You believe that?” Vivien laughed at him.

“Well I suppose they’ve borrowed a few people from George Guka. Anyway, you’re exaggerating as usual.”

Vivien’s speckled blue eyes balanced the two men in a sceptical challenge, inquiringly. “Tell Rebecca I’m keeping my riot bag packed. … I am so glad that Gordon’s disappeared again, everyone is always much more content without him.” Perhaps Rebecca had made a confidante of her; Bray didn’t know. But she spoke so easily, linking him naturally with Rebecca as a friend who lived in the same place; it might have been — as this was Vivien — a way of showing him her acceptance of his relationship and her calm and capable intention to protect Rebecca and him from the others.

He said, “Oh the children didn’t seem to think so. They loved having him around.”

“Yes, exactly, Gordon rouses expectations and that’s always exciting — he makes people feel all sorts of things are going to be changed. But if he stays, they aren’t. So it’s always better for him to move on, you know. Now they’ll see him in the school holidays, and that will be fun for them without lasting long enough for any damage to be done. Rebecca shouldn’t worry about them. She’s managed awfully well. I really ought to send our young to my mother or somewhere for a while; they’ve been too unrelievedly in my company. Neil objects for some reason or other.” He knew she didn’t believe it; she was establishing, in this company, the ordinariness of Rebecca’s situation. But her husband said swaggeringly, “I’m here, my girl, not digging some bloody dam for Vorster and Caetano at Cabora Bassa.”

Ras Asahe and Emmanuelle burst in with a few of Ras’s satellites. One was a lecturer at the university, a young black man who caught a pink end of tongue between his perfect teeth in amusement as Neil, his registrar, mimicked the staff at a recent meeting, drawing him into a professional privilege of burlesquing their institution. The gathering began to change character, with more drinks and disjointed chatter. The subjects they had been talking about were dropped; whether this was a matter of mood, or because it was not possible, once again now, for black and white to talk in a general way of these things without seeming to extract from the blacks secret loyalties and alliances that might be dangerous for them. It had been like that before; before Independence, when the Governor’s hospitality in detention camps and prisons waited at the other end of candour become indiscretion. The ease in between — the ease of a few months ago — belonged to a time when the people from Europe were neither in a position of power on their own behalf, nor as witnesses of a situation in which the Africans had something to fear from each other. He felt a wave of impatience with the capital. While he was drinking and lending himself to the air that it was “marvellous” to be back among these friends again, he wanted to be off, driving alone through the night for home, Gala.

Before he left he telephoned Rebecca at the boma and told her to send him a letter granting him her power of attorney. She sounded chastened, on the other end of a bad line, as people often do at the idea of urgency. He prepared himself to be kept a few days, hanging about in Roly’s house. But she must have made some arrangement for the letter to come up by air courier in the government bag — he hoped she had not discussed the contents with Aleke — because it was delivered to him at Roly’s very promptly, by government messenger. Folded as an afterthought round the formal letter whose wording he had dictated, was a half — sheet of green copy — paper with a foolish password of endearment scribbled on it; exclamation marks. She was an awkward letter — writer; the things he got from her reminded him of his daughters’ letters from school. He carefully burned the half — sheet and smiled, aware that the other document was the kind that would be best burned, too.