Nadine Gordimer - A Guest of Honour

She stood there, a schoolgirl about to stuff her hand into her mouth to stifle a give — away of hysterical guilt before authority. He was amazed at her as much as angry at himself for in some way appearing to himself as a fool. He was about to say, And what we think — my dear girl, doesn’t it occur to you that I don’t really want to meet him — but the children running like puppies before the man burst into chatter, almost upon them, and a voice that he thought of immediately as somehow Irish in its effortless persuasiveness was making an entry, talking, talking— “—That’s a tree for a tree — house, Clivie, now! That’s what you call a tree! You could build one big enough to put a camp bed in, there—” “And a stove, to cook—” The skinny little girl jumped up and down for attention. “I’ll show you — I always climb it!”—The smaller boy scrambled ahead, ignoring his mother and Bray. “Don’t you say good morning to James, don’t you say good morning?” She caught him up and held him struggling— “Leave me! Leave me! Leave me!” She laughed, imprisoning him vengefully, while he kicked and blazed at her, his black eyes fierce with tears.

“Becky, for God’s sake — why does it have to be mayhem and murder wherever we walk in.”

She dropped the child, laughing at its huge rage and at the reproach. The little boy trying half — fearfully to kick at his mother’s shins always had had the definitive cast of features that in a child shows a strongly inherited resemblance. Now Bray saw the face that had been there in the child’s. The husband was surprising; but perhaps he would have been so however he had materialized, simply because he hadn’t existed for Bray at all. He was unusually good — looking in a very graceful and well — finished way, rather a small man — but, again, that was perhaps only from Bray’s height. Five foot ten or so — tall enough to stand sufficiently for male pride above Rebecca. He wore young men’s clothes elegantly, tight beige trousers belted on the hips, a foulard tied in the open neck of his shirt. Rebecca in her yellow dress and rubber — thong sandals looked shabby beside him. He wore a small bloodstone on one of the little fingers of his strong, olive — coloured hands and his face was smoothly olive — coloured with the large, even — gazing shining black eyes of the little boy, and the dull — red fresh mouth. On the man the face had a C — shaped line of laughter just marking the end of the lips on either side, and fine quizzical spokes at the outer corners of the eyes. His dark hair was prematurely silvering, like an actor’s streaked for distinction. He was saying, “I suppose you’re used to all this racket my crowd kick up. I think Becky’s let them run a bit wild, she’s too soft. Yes — I’m going to have to tan your bottoms for you—” He turned with a mock growl on the children, who shrieked with laughter, the little one still with tears undried. “—But that’s a marvellous tree there you’ve got for a tree — house, I don’t think I’d be able to keep my hands off it, even if I didn’t have any children around, I’d have a little retreat of my own up there, electric light, and pull the ladder up after me—”

And Bray the good — humoured friend was saying, “Oh I make do with this old thing on the ground, as you see—” while Rebecca in the same blazing, flirtatious, exaggerated way she had used with him, attacked— “Gordon, for heaven’s sake! Don’t put the idea into their heads! At least leave Bray in peace with his tree, you don’t know how he loves his tree—”

While they all went on talking in this friendly ease he noted the slip — even she with all her apparent skill, born of long practice. For a woman to use a man’s surname like that couldn’t be mistaken as formality; it was a tell — tale inverted intimacy, sticking out, so to speak, from under the hastily made bed. He felt some small satisfaction in catching her out. She said, “I’d better leave you two, much as I like your company — Aleke needs his secretary. I’m about half an hour late already.” “Phone the fellow and tell him you’re taking the afternoon off,” the handsome man instructed. “D’you want me to do it?” “Oh no Gordon, I can’t, he gave me yesterday and tomorrow’s the weekend anyway. Everything’ll be piled up for Monday.” He shrugged. “Well get cracking then, if you got to go, go—” She put her head on one side: “Keys?” He tossed car keys to her; she missed, they both ducked for them. “No wonder my sons can’t play cricket—” He gave her a pat on the backside. “Shoo! And no damn nonsense about overtime or anything. D’you hear? There are people coming at six. D’you hear me?”

She ran, turning her head back to them, nodding it like a puppet’s. Her thighs jerked as they did the day she came out of the water, on the island.

The children were climbing the fig tree and pelting each other with its shrivelled fruit; they had never behaved like that before, eithersubdued little creatures, running in with a sidelong glance and saving their fierce quarrels and boastful games for when they were living by some law of their own away from the awesome grown — ups. By contrast, Bray’s daughters had been such self — assured children, perfectly composed in conversation with a visiting Colonial Secretary at nine or ten, politely offering an opinion to an African nationalist over lunch at fourteen. Like their mother, they could talk to anybody and kept their distance from everybody.

The husband stood about with the instant and meaningless friendliness of the wanderer. This way he was at home in the bars and hotels of Africa; a man who, since he never stays anywhere long, assumes the air of the familiar personality at once, wherever he is. This way he would stand about in conversation with the garage proprietor in a remote Congo village where (as he was relating to Bray) his car had broken down, just as he now did with the middle — aged Colonel for whom his wife did a bit of typing. He was “crazy enough” to have business interests in the Congo— “But I’ve had the fun and games. I’ve pulled out. There’s still money to be made there, mind you. But the Belgians have moved back in such a big way and they push everybody else out … the Congolese wide boys would rather work with the devils they know than with devils like me. They would.” (Shinza’s old saw about Mweta coming up again in a new context.) “I know a chappie — Belgian chappie — who’s back for the fourth time. First he had a natural gas concession up in the Kivu — the volcanic lakes, there’s a fortune lying there for someone, someday, if you can live that long. Then he was in industrial diamonds in the Kasai, they were going to break away and he was all set to get a consortium to finance their diamond industry when they kicked out Union Minière.” He gave his slow, relishing smile, sharp yet humorously worldly, the teeth good. “Don’t know what it was the third time round. Now he’s in the currency racket between Lubumbashi and the Zambian border. He told me he feels ‘useless’ in Europe. Here he says people want help to keep things going — they’ll take it whatever way they can get it, and they know you don’t get it out of the goodness of someone’s heart. While the Russians and the Chinese and Americans are each watching to see what the other one will give, you have to go on living.”

“You think of us as devils?” Bray said.

Present company was waved away. “You know as well as I do. White men don’t hang around in Black Africa for their health or anybody else’s. Wherever a vacuum comes up, there are the boys who won’t hesitate to fill it. Good God, you should just meet some of them the way I do. — Okay that’s enough — out of that tree, now. And clear the mess you’ve made on that table — James’ll never let you put up a tree — house if you drop things on his papers—” He grinned at his own audacity, always confident it would be well received, at once took command again: “Wha’d’you think of it, putting Becky in that sort of accommodation, though? If they need her they must damn well find somewhere for her to live, eh? There must be a house in this place. And if there isn’t, they must find one. That’s the way it is — you want somebody’s services, you have to be prepared to pay for them. I told Aleke straight off, yesterday: you need her, you find her a house.”