Nadine Gordimer - A Guest of Honour

“I never see Mr. Dando,” she said fastidiously.

Bray laughed, and her father was forced to smile, admitting: that’s how she is.

Bray took a beer to the same rickety deck — chair in the garden, his back to the bar and the hotel. Suddenly two sticky hands smelling of liquorice pressed over his eyes, and the chair was jiggled and bumped amid giggles. Vivien Bayley’s children ambushed him, while Vivien, grown pregnant since he saw her last, stood waiting by, smiling for it to be over. “Enough now. You’ve given James a surprise. Now let him get up. Enough, Eliza! Enough!”

He gathered a couple of the children by arms and legs, and came over to her, limbs agitating in all directions. He dropped them on the grass, and kissed her. She had the neglected air — forgetful of herself — of a child — bearing woman. “We saw you at the traffic lights at the railway bridge. They insisted.”

The children were yelling, “Caught you, caught you!”

“I phoned when I arrived, just after lunch.”

“I’d gone to pick them up at school. Neil’ll be thrilled. He’s just been to Dar-es-Salaam for a week and it’s so flat to be home again. James, you’re looking slim and beautiful, and as you see—” They laughed together, over her.

“I’ve sweated it off, Christ, it’s been killing sometimes this month.”

“Well, I know, but mine isn’t the kind that will melt, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, it’ll be shed all at once one day, though, and no keeping off bread—” Their liking for each other came alive instantly, as it always did, the pilot flame turned up by meeting.

She carried him off for dinner; that was the way it was, in the capital, nothing had changed. Homeward traffic was thick in the hour after the shops closed; an hour later, and the streets would be those of a country town, warm and empty in the dark. They passed Mweta’s residence with the sentries in their boxes. In the Bayleys’ garden Vivien brought him up to date, while the children ate their supper on the grass. The Pettigrews had been posted to Beirut, and were pleased, Jo — Ann would do some work at the university there; David Rathebe, the South African refugee, had disappeared for two months and reappeared, he was supposed to have been in Algiers; Timothy Odara had been offered the Secretaryship for Health, but Evelyn had made him refuse because she wanted him to take up a post — graduate research scholarship in America. They hadn’t seen much of Mweta and Joy, though the children had been to a birthday party at the Residence last week; Joy had got rid of the flower — arranging Englishwoman and was much happier, running the place very competently in her own way, with the help of that nice sensible woman, an aunt of hers, who had been housekeeper for twenty years or so to the General Manager of one of the gold — mining companies. Mweta was certainly being very successful in wooing foreign capital, at the industrial level, if not on the international money marts; there was even going to be a Golden Plate dinner where white businessmen could meet the President at a cost of a mere fifty pounds a ticket, money to go to the university scholarship fund.

Neil Bayley came home and was the centre of tumbling, shouting children. He still looked more like a student than a registrar. It was natural for him to deal with a number of different people and situations at once; he plunged into greetings for Bray, shadow — boxed his son, patted his wife on the backside: “How-you, girlie? Good God, I’ve just been acting father — confessor to a gorgeous, red — haired eighteen — year-old peach — of-a-thing … if you … bloom’d come off if you so much as … They’re told they can come to me to discuss any problem so long as it’s not sex, religion, or politics, James.”

After a lot of wine at dinner Bray felt the desire to talk mastering him. He wanted to talk about Shinza, to bring the figure of Shinza, barefoot in his dressing — gown, up over their horizon; to see what Neil would look up and interpret it as. He talked round the figure in his mind, instead. What were the rumours of Mweta’s difficulties with some of the Ministers? Any idea of the basis? “Paul Sesheka’s always given a bit of trouble, from the beginning, as you know,” Neil said. “And there’s been some talk lately about Dhlamini Okoi lobbying for him — the allocation of funds vote, and so on. A lot of squabbling about that because inevitably, everyone wants to be able to say they’ve done this and that for the development of the area they come from. Everybody wants to be the brown — eyed boy back home, because he’s got them a cotton ginnery or an abattoir. Nobody wants to leave it to the development planning commission to decide which area needs what. Yes, Okoi and Moses Phahle’ve been showing signs of making ready to attach themselves to Sesheka, as if the pilot fish’s going places — but I don’t know, I can’t see Sesheka really threatening Mweta, do you? I don’t see him lasting five minutes with Mweta, I don’t think he has the stuff. He wavered badly over this hydro — electric scheme, now. You must have read that? First he pressed the P.M. to go ahead, he “regretted” that so little was being done to demonstrate the practical friendship and brotherhood and so on with neighbouring African territories. Then he suddenly changed his mind and put forward the claims of the lake for a scheme of our own — which wouldn’t be a bad idea, if it weren’t for the fact that we’d have to bear the whole cost alone, whereas the other scheme’s a shared one and anyway the finance is already assured, America and West Germany and France are paying—”

“That’s the line the morning paper took, I saw.”

“I know. Just coincidence. I don’t think Sesheka has any influence there. That’s just Evan Black wanting to keep the circulation up by being provocative.”

Vivien said, “Unfair, Neil. You know Evan thinks the people up north are being forgotten.”

“But if it were someone more forceful than Sesheka, would Mweta have to worry?” Bray asked.

Neil belched, shaking his head, and when he could speak: “Aha! But that’s another story, James. That’s always something to worry about; if it were to be a Tola Tola, for instance, even if there isn’t any genuine grievance for him to climb up by.”

“You don’t think there’s any genuine grievance?”

“No I don’t. By genuine grievance I mean that Mweta would have to be failing to make use of what is available to him for this country.”

“Hjalmar tells me industrialists are paying fifty pounds just to dine with him.”

Neil grinned. “My God, he’s a glutton for punishment, old Mweta.”

They talked of Bray’s work and Bray told an anecdote or two about Gala — how his name had been up at the club for weeks until the bold draper seconded it. Vivien was in conversation with a friend on the telephone; she came back after a while and said, “Did you know Mweta’s going to speak over the radio at midnight? Apparently it’s been announced every hour all afternoon.”

Neil opened another bottle of wine. “The contract’s been given to the Chinese. France, West Germany and America have called off the loan. Or they’re going to build both dams — the lake one as well. My, my. We can’t go to bed.”

Vivien looked at Bray. She said, “He’s tired, he’s driven hundreds of miles.”

He was feeling embarrassed for Mweta. Why midnight? Who advised him about such things? Perhaps he didn’t know that Hitler used to choose odd hours of the night or early morning for his speeches, entering through the territory of dreams, invading people’s minds when blood pressure and nervous resistance are at lowest ebb. “Certainly midday would be a pleasanter time to report back on his dam.”