A Guest of Honour (32 page)

Sampson Malemba was there (his shy wife hardly ever came to such European—style gatherings, even if they were held by Africans); Nongwaye Tlume, the agricultural officer, and his wife; Hugh and Sally Fraser, the young doctors from the mission hospital; and Lebaliso, dropped in an uncomfortable old deck—chair before the guests as if by a gesture of Aleke's, saying,
There,
that's all he is—a bit of a joke with his 1914-1918 moustache aping the white man he replaced, and his spit—and-polished shoes—brown and shiny as his cheeks—giving away long apprenticeship in the ranks. Malemba and Bray at once began to talk about the letter. Over beer, and with the comments of the company, it appeared much funnier than it was. In fact, the first sentence in particular, the one about the Club having “served the community” since 1928, with its still inevitable assumption that the “community” meant the whites only, made them laugh so much, with such an exchange of wild interjections, that one of the smallest children (a Tlume offspring) crept up the steps towards the noise in dribbling—mouthed fascination, and then rose swaying to its feet like a snake charmed before music. Rebecca Edwards picked it up and cuddled it before the trance could turn to fear.

“And where do you go from there?” Fraser asked; he looked like a stage pirate, black curly hair, and hairy tanned forearms, a touch of beer foam at his lips.

“What do you say, Sampson?” Bray challenged.

“We'll have to consider.”

“There goes the schoolmaster!” Aleke's remarks were amiable, critical, a hand rumpling his guests' hair.

Hugh Fraser rolled his eyes. “Let us preserve for ever the venerable, ivy—covered walls of the Gala Club, steeped in the history of so many memorable Saturday night dances, and so many noble performances of Agatha Christie.”

“No, but really, James?” Aleke said lazily. He kept cocking an eyebrow at the Tlume infant, and slowly, it slid from Rebecca's lap and crawled to his leg.

“It'll have to be the Gandhi Hall, next. Don't you think, eh, Sampson.”

“Simple enough. Get an order to commandeer whatever premises you need.” Everyone laughed again in acknowledgement of the context of Sally Fraser's remark—the aura of Bray's friendship with the President.

“Oh, I'm not an Aleke or a Lebaliso!”

The policeman took it as a compliment, chuckling round to the company, pleased with himself: “Now Colonel, now Colonel …” Aleke half—acknowledged the feint by pulling a face. At that moment his wife said that food was ready and he announced, “Aren't I the cleverest damn P.O. there has ever been in Gala district? You know who cooked? My secretary, here. Yes”—she was smiling, shrugging it off, as he hooked an arm round her neck— “I get her to cook, too.” “Nonsense. I gave Agnes the recipe, that's all.” “She's been here the whole afternoon, making dinner for me,” Mrs. Aleke said calmly. “I gave you the afternoon off, didn't I, Becky? I'm the best boss you've ever had, aren't I, Becky?”

Bray had not bought anything for the Edwards children but the Bayleys had. He was able to say to the girl now, “Vivien sent some things for you—a parcel. I'm sorry I haven't delivered it yet.”

“Oh it doesn't matter. I can send one of the children.” She extricated herself gently from Aleke's big forearm.

Next day he went to see Joosab. There could be something in the club secretary's suggestion that one might “mention the scheme in the course of conversation”—if not with Gala Club members, then with a member of the Indian community. Joosab said nothing; his large black eyes in wrinkled skin the colour and texture of a scrotum kept their night—light steadiness through Bray's outline of the scheme, the confidence about the white club's refusal, and what he knew was coming: the suggestion that the Gandhi Hall and the private Indian school of which it was part could provide premises. Although the Indians of Gala were mainly Moslem, like many such communities in Africa, they claimed Gandhi for the prestige he had brought to India and the third world in general, and perhaps also had some vague notion—in the uncertainty of their own position among Africans—
that the Mahatma's condemnation of caste and race prejudice might somehow soften incipient African prejudice against themselves. Of course the hall and school were in what was known—according to colonial custom by which the whites had placed various races at different removes from themselves—as the “bazaar,” a small quarter, not more than a few streets, behind the Indian stores on the fringe of the white town. “But this will be a good thing, don't you think, Joosab—to break down these worn old distinctions of who belongs where, which are taking so long to die … ? Your people would be setting an example to the Europeans that should make them think again … and it certainly couldn't seem less, to the Africans, than proof of your good faith as citizens of this country .… Don't mistake me, either—we hope any Indians who are interested will take any course that may be useful, Joosab—”

Bray had never called him “Joosab” before, without the prefix “Mr.”; the tailor was aware that if it had been dropped now, this was not because of the distance that other white people put between himself and them by not granting it to him, but because it had come to these two men that they had known one another a long time, and through many changes.

He smiled, “All our people have received education, Colonel. Since the first days, we have had our own school.”

“I know. In fact, I'm counting on getting some teachers from you … I intend to see Mr. Patwa about that.”

Outside the shop, one of Joosab's grandchildren was sitting on a gleaming new tricycle, ringing the bell imperiously while being pushed along by a ragged little African male “nursemaid”; every time the boy straightened himself, grinning, panting, the small girl screamed at him in furious Gujerati.

Permission came from the committee of the Indian school for the Gandhi Hall and the school wood—workshop to be used by the adult—education scheme, with the provision that this should not interfere with ordinary school hours or days of religious observance. Bray was writing a letter of thanks for Malemba and himself, sitting in his usual place under the fig tree. One of the Edwards children appeared—he didn't know whether it was a boy or a girl, they all had the same cropped hair and shorts. A clear, girl's voice asked for the parcel for mummy. Rebecca Edwards was in her shabby car in the road
with the other two children. She waved apologetically. He carried out the Bayley present and they chatted at the car window; inside, her boys were blowing up a plastic seal and giant ball, their swimming trunks tied round their heads—it was Sunday morning. He said to them all, “Water is the natural element of this family. I associate you with water.”

She smiled, looking at her children. “I like your new office; I always see you sitting there when I pass. Like Buddha under the sacred banyan. But what a good place to work. Certainly an improvement on the
boma.”

“Well, it was you who pointed out to me that I was superfluous at the
boma.”

“I? But I've never done anything of the kind?”

“Don't worry—and now I'm grateful. It's magnificent, my fig, isn't it. Now that it's cooler it's a perfect place to be.”

She was quick to be alarmed and embarrassed. The blood died back from her face, leaving only a brightness in the eyes. “But when did I say it?”

“Oh never mind. You were being considerate and excused me for not thinking to give you a lift when your car was in the garage.”

“Oh then—but you misunderstand—”

“Yes, I know, one sometimes hits on a little truth, just by mistake.” She was soothed, if slightly puzzled. Nothing was said for a few moments, they simply paused quietly with the morning sun on their faces, as people do, outdoors. “What happened about the Indians?”

“We're getting the Gandhi Hall so long as it isn't on high—days and holidays. Fair enough.”

“Oh
that's
good.”

He said, “Poor devils. What could they say. They hope it may help.”

She shook her head interrogatively, making a line between her eyes. “Of course it'll help. It's a start for you.”

“Help them. If things should look like going badly for them sometime.”

“They're all right, though? Nobody's said a word about them?”

He said to her, “They see what's happened round about. Kenya, Uganda. Rumbles in other places. Everywhere they kept out of the African movements in order to keep in with the Colonial Office, they
hesitated to give up a British nationality until it wasn't worth the paper it was declared on. When I was here, before, they refused to let the PIP branch hold meetings in the Gandhi Hall, and the bigwigs on the Islamic committee never failed to inform me of the fact. Now they're going to allow a lot of bush Africans in where they've never set foot before—it's in the same sort of hope, although their situation isn't exactly a reversal of what it was … there's no alternative power now, it's the Africans or nothing. But the instinct's the same. The instinct to play safe; why does playing safe always seem to turn out to be so dangerous?”

“It's unlucky.” She said it with the conviction that people give only to superstition.

He laughed. But she said firmly—she might have been reading a palm, “No, I mean it. Unlucky because you're too scared to take a chance.”

“It's unlucky to lack courage?”

“That's it. You have to go ahead into what's coming, trust to luck. Because if you play safe you don't have any, anyway.”

“It's forfeited?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you're right so far as the Indians are concerned … whatever their motives for giving us the hall—whether they had decided to give it to us or not, it's not going to count if things go wrong.”

He saw in her face that she suddenly thought of his connection with Mweta; that recognition that always embarrassed him because it seemed to invest him with a sham importance. “Why do you say if things go wrong?”

His tone was quick to disclaim. “A profound cycle of change was set up here three or four hundred years ago, with the first of us foreign invaders. We're inclined to think it comes to a stop, full circle, with Independence … but that's not so … it's still in process—that's all. One mustn't let oneself forget. And as for the invaders—we still don't know whether, finally, the remnants will be spewed out once and for all, or ingested. So far, the states that go socialist become the most exclusively African, the capitalist ones have as many or nearly as many descendants of the invaders as they did before. Not surprising. But it can all alter …”

“My people went to settle in England—my parents,” she said. “I
don't know … I feel I'd be too lazy, you know? I'm not talking about washing dishes—I mean, to live another life.”

“Where were you before here?”

“Oh, Kenya. I was born there, and my brother. When he was replaced he went down to Malawi, and when Gordon—my husband's contract wasn't renewed we pushed off to Tanzania, to begin with. Clive was born there.” She dangled her hand over the child's nape, and he wriggled it off. He said, “Is
he
coming to swim with us?”

“Silly-billy, we came to pick up the present from Vivien, you know that—” The children began to clamour to open it. When she drove off they were worrying at the wrappings like puppies wrangling over a bone. She turned to smile good—bye; she was getting a line of effort between her brows.

He went back to his fig tree and sat there before the notes, reports, and newspaper cuttings that awaited him. He lighted a cigar and flicked away ants that dropped from the branches and crawled over the lines of his handwriting. There was the problem of the bottleneck that would arise if, in the zeal of getting every child to school, the output of primary schools exceeded the number of places available in secondary schools. It was comparatively easy to build and staff primary schools all over the country; but what then? Kenya. He saw that he had made a note: For every child who wins entry into secondary schools in Kenya, four to five fail to find a place. He wrote, in his mind but not on the paper before him. There must be a realistic attempt to turn primary—school leavers towards agriculture, where for the next two generations, at least, most will need to make their lives, anyway. His eye ran heedlessly as one of the ants down the table he had made of the number of teachers, schools, and government expenditure on education in comparable territories. There was a letter from Olivia, with photographs: Venetia's baby lay naked, looking up with the vividness of response that is the first smile. Shinza had held the pinkish—yellow infant in one hand. The third page of Olivia's letter, lying uppermost, took up like a broken conversation:
not at all, as you might expect, one of your own over again. A different sort of love. You know, it's closer to the ideal where any child, just because it is a child, makes the same claim on you. I feel freed rather than bound.
He contemplated with fascination that distant landscape of the reconciliation of personal passion and impersonal love, of attachment
and detachment, that had been her liberal—agnostic's vision of grace. As it turned out, grandmotherly grace. His wife was nearly his own age; they had married during the war. A few years younger than Shinza. Her attainment was the appropriate one, matched step by step to the stage of her life; he felt a tenderness towards the blonde slender girl with the small witch's gap between her front teeth, who had become this—it was like the recollection of someone not heard of for many years, of whom one has asked, “And what happened to … ?”

There was a note from Mweta in the mail, too. The plain typewritten envelope had given no indication of who the writer might be, and when he opened the sheet inside and saw the handwriting it was with a sense of the expected, the inevitable, rather than surprise. Mweta hoped the grant “was enough”; he urged again—what about a decent house? When was Olivia coming? He had thought he would have a letter by now, but perhaps Bray had been on the move again, about the country? “We mustn't lose touch.”