Nadine Gordimer - A Guest of Honour

“Well, the job is done, one asks nothing more but to fold one’s tents….. He’s a good chap, if they’ll let him alone, he’s learnt a lot, and one’s done what one could … if he keeps his head, and that one can’t be sure of, not even with him, mmh? Not even with him.” An elderly servant came in with a silver tray of glasses and bottles, and Clough interrupted himself to say with the sweet forbearance of one who does not spare himself, encouraging where others would give way to exasperation, “It would be so nice if we could have a few slices of lemon … and more ice? — Yes, all I’ve said to Mweta, again and again — make your own pace. Make your own pace and stick to it. He knows his own mind but he’s not an intransigent fellow at all — well, of course, you know. Some time ago — a word in your ear, I said, you’d be unwise to lose Brigadier Radcliffe. Well, they’ve been clamouring away, of course, but he’s refused to touch the army. Oh, I think I can say we’ve come out of it quite good friends.” It was a modest disclaimer, with the effect of assuming in common the ease with Africans that he believed Bray to have. He looked pleasantly into the martini jug and put it down again patiently. The elderly servant who brought ice and lemon had the nicks at the outer corner of the eyes that Northern Gala people wore. “That’s perfect. Thank you so much.”

Bray greeted the servant in Gala with the respectful form of address for elders and the man dumped the impersonality of a servant as if it had been the tray in his hands and grinned warmly, showing some pigmentation abnormality in a pink inner lip spotted like a Dalmatian. The ex-Governor looked on, smiling. The servant bowed confusedly at him, walking backwards, in the tribal way before rank, and then recovering himself and leaving the room with an anonymous lope.

“I’ll pour Dorothy’s martini as well, maybe that’ll bring her. If only one could be transported on a magic carpet … anyway, we shall have three months in London now, with perhaps a week or two in Ireland. What’ve you been doing all these years in your ivory tower in Wiltshire? Were you a golfer, I can’t quite remember …?”

“It was tennis … and afterwards we took the girls for beer to the old Dar-es-Salaam hotel with the German eagle?”

Dorothy Clough came in and Clough cried out, “Does it fit? Come and have a drink with James—”

“My dear James— it must be a hundred years—”

“We’ve had a crate made to transport Fritzi, and she’s been trying it on him.”

“My niece Vivien found a carpenter. She has the most extraordinary contacts, that girl. It’s very useful!”

William Clough took a pecking sip at his martini. He said with gallant good humour, “Reposting was child’s play compared with this. One has had to learn how to camp out … I’m sure it’s terribly good, keeps the mind flexible.”

“Denis thinks your angle lamp’s been left at Government House, did he tell you?” Dorothy Clough sat forward in her chair, as if she had alighted only for a moment.

“For heaven’s sake, let them have it, it’s someone else’s turn to burn the midnight oil there, now — wha’d’you say, James …”

Roly Dando asked with grudging interest about the visit. “He’s never been sent anywhere where there was anything left to do,” he said. “Clough only goes in for the last year, after self-government’s been granted and the date for independence’s been given. An early date.”

Bray was slightly embarrassed by gossip, when quite sober, and said hesitantly, smiling, “The impression was that he and his wife were slipping away quietly after the field of battle.”

“Since he arrived eighteen months ago there’s been damn all for him to do except go fishing up at Rinsala.”

At the Pettigrews’ house that night, Dando’s voice came from the group round someone basting a sheep on the home-made spit: “… damn all except go fishing with his secretary acting ghillie….” Rebecca Edwards had just told Neil Bayley that Felix Pasilis, the Pettigrews’ Greek friend, was furious with her because she’d forgotten some essential herb that he wanted for his sheep— “If I were Felix I’d make you go back home and get it, my girl,” Neil said, and the look of inattentive exhaustion on her rather heavy young face moved Bray in fellow-feeling to distract attention from her, saying, “My God, I’m afraid I behaved like a child at Cloughs’! I showed off by making a point of speaking to the servant in Gala.” Neil and Rebecca Edwards laughed. “Poor Uncle Willie.” “He was quite a nice young man in Dar-es-Salaam. He took Swahili lessons conscientiously and he certainly spoke it better than I did.” They laughed at him again.

Everyone was gathering round for servings from the roast sheep, and the fair stocky man from the airport signalled a greeting with a piece of meat in his fingers. “Wentz, Hjalmar Wentz, we met on the plane.”

“How are you? Roland Dando said we probably should be seeing you at the Rhino.” They moved off with their plates of food, and Wentz said to a woman settled in one of the canvas chairs, “Margot, here is Colonel Bray.”

“No, no, please stay where you are.”

In the fuss to find somewhere to sit he saw the light of the fire under the spit running along the shiny planes of the woman’s face as it did on glasses and the movement of knives and forks. Bright hair was brushed up off a high round forehead and behind the ears, in a way he associated with busy, capable women.

“Try some, Margot, it’s wonderful—”

“Aren’t I fat enough—” But she took a tidbit of crisp fat from her husband’s fork.

“To tell the truth, this’s the first time for a week we’ve had time to sit down to eat. Honestly. Margot’s had to be in the kitchen herself from six in the morning, and some nights it’s been until ten. She literally hasn’t sat down to a meal….”

“Oh, not quite … I must have had hundreds of cups of coffee….”

“Yes, with one hand while you were busy stirring a pot with the other. The cook went to the Independence ceremony and we haven’t seen him since — just for the afternoon, he said, just to see the great men he’s seen in the papers — well, what can you say?”

“We felt it was his day, after all.” The woman showed a well-shaped smile in the dark.

Bray asked, “How on earth have you managed?”

She gestured and laughed, but her husband was eager to break in, holding up his hands over the plate balanced on his knees— “A hundred and twenty-two for dinner! That’s what it was on Thursday. And yesterday—”

“Only a hundred and nine, that’s all—” They laughed.

Bray raised his beer mug of wine to her.

“What about my assistant cook? You mustn’t forget I’ve got help,” she said. Wentz put down his glass beside his chair, to do the justice of full attention to what he was going to say. “Her assistant cook. I got him from the new labour exchange— I thought, well, let’s try it, so they send him along, five years’ experience, everything fine.”

His wife was listening, laughing softly, sitting back majestically for a moment. “Fine.”

“Five years’ experience, but d’you know what as? — You know the barbers under the mango trees there just before you get to the second-class trading area?”

“Our son’s comment was the best, I think. ‘Mother, if only Barnabas had worked for a butcher and learnt to cut meat instead of hair!’”

“Well, here’s to three crazy people,” said Wentz, excitedly picking up his glass. “Everyone knows you must be crazy to come of your own free will to one of these countries.”

“Colonel Bray isn’t going to run a hotel.” She had a soft, dry voice and her accent was slighter than her husband’s.