MISSION STATEMENT

There was a great deal of entertaining up at the Manager’s house, weekends. On Monday morning a member of the kitchen and ground staff whose job it was set off to walk fifty miles to town with the master’s note for the liquor store. A case of Scotch whisky. The man walked back with twelve bottles in the case on his head, arriving on Friday. Every Friday. The feat was a famous dinner-party story, each weekend: that’s my man — what heads they have, eh, thick as a log!


Roberta Blayne née Cartwright works for an international aid agency, has been based both at headquarters in New York and Geneva, and posted abroad a number of times. Her first appointment to Africa came when she was nearly forty-six and felt she looked it; she had been married once, long ago it seemed to her. The journalist husband had fallen in love with a Chinese girl while on assignment in Beijing; the marriage was an intermittent one, so to speak, each of the pair generally somewhere else and it fell into desuetude amicably. He did not share her need to have some part in changing the world, which grew in inverse proportion to any other emotional need. There were no children as a reminder of the marriage; only the tragic-eyed swollen-bellied ones of the horde waiting, here, there, for succour through the bureaucratic processes she served. Not always, or often, the direct means of putting food in their gaped nestling-mouths, but projects of policy, infrastructure, communications, trade treaties, education, land distribution by which development aid was meant to satisfy all hungers.

Could have been India. Even the European countries brought to Third World conditions by civil wars. But it was Africa; a tour of duty, a territory in the process of transformation as in most others on the African continent. She unpacked at the type of house in the capital her aid agency hired for whatever personnel in middle-level position merited. The suburb must have dated from colonial times; verandah round three sides darkening rooms with fireplaces whose chimneys were now blocked by electric heaters, a garden where loquat and bougainvillaea, gnarled as old oak, tangled above stony red earth. The bedroom she chose — there were three — was obviously the best one, this confirmed by the aura of recent occupation by her predecessor and his or her bedmate, the hangers on the rods bearing the ghosts of clothes. Her own took their place; her papers and books spread where others had been cleared away. She was accustomed to this kind of takeover. Whatever lingering presence of others was quickly erased by hers. This was a confidence acquired by the nature of international work, routine as computer competency: you have to be in constant touch with headquarters, home base in New York or Geneva, and you occupy, where others were before you and will come after, designated quarters — even though the black man who insists on waking you with tea every morning and polishes the floors, and the other who squats to tend weeds that have taken the place of flower-beds, enact old colonial rituals of a home.

Her title was Assistant to the Administrator of the programmes for this country planned by experts in New York and Geneva according to their Mission Statement. Much of the application consisted of informing New York/Geneva tactfully as possible that the Agency’s plan for the country to enter globalisation couldn’t be achieved quite as visualised, and concealing how she and the Administrator were deviously, prudently finding out how to go about the process — not on their own well-trained theoretical model, but in the ways the Government itself best understood how the country might practise reforms and innovations according to the circumstances in which their constituents lived, often unimaginable in New York/Geneva, and the expectations, demands, prejudices, political rivalries within which Ministers thrashed about to keep their cabinet seats. This meant not only travel into the bush and up rivers to communities where the development plan saw the local school as being thrust into the new one world with information technology equipment — and where the Administrator and his Assistant found there was no electricity in the village — but also required attentive socialising with Ministers and their various Deputies, advisors, often unidentified figures attendant and clearly influential, who would pick up in mid-sentence some wandering statement by a Minister, clarifying it briskly. Who were these men — even a woman or two? How to approach them for inside facts, for warnings or encouragements about whom to seek out to breach a Minister’s generalisations, that slam of doors on undesirable realities.

She enjoyed field trips: she distrusted abstraction. — Then you’re working for the wrong outfit. — Her Administrator, a Canadian, taunted her; but they got on well, he had his wife and teenage son with him, the boy enrolled at a local school as evidence of the Administrator’s commitment to sharing the life of the local people wherever posted. As the bachelor woman (his wife dubbed her with mock envy), she was invited to drop in and share meals at their house where the same kind of resident tea-provider and floor-polisher had become a mate of the schoolboy, teaching him to play the guitar the traditional African way, and in turn being taught the latest pop music. In addition to the official gatherings and embassy parties, the Administrator’s house was where Government Ministers and officials, members of parliament, the capital’s dignitaries, judges, lawyers, businessmen, were entertained for what could be gleaned of use to the Agency’s mandate. Few brought their wives along; the female Minister of Welfare and two MPs were usually the only black women present, and they were strident in their interruptions of male discourse, as they had to be to distinguish them from the wives left at home. Roberta Blayne, the Administrator and his wife, Flora, had no particular sense of being white, in this company; all three had lived with black, yellow, all races in the course of their work around the world and accepted their own physical characteristic like that between eyes with or without the epithelioid fold, noses high-bridged or flat. They were also aware that they were not always accepted by the same token among all the eminent blacks present — it’s easier for the former masters to put aside the masks that hid their humanity than for the former slaves to recognise the faces underneath. Or to trust that this is not a new mask these are wearing.

For the first few months neither Ministers nor their satellites addressed Roberta Blayne beyond the usual general greeting, which then began at least to include her name — not a difficult one to recall: somebody’s assistant, home-grown or imported, a genus there to be ignored. But as her Administrator, Mr Alan D. Henderson, often spoke in the plural ‘we’ and turned to her for her interpretation of points in an interview or observations on a field trip, the dignitaries began to recognize her as, if not one of the company of Minister of Welfare and MPs — her manner was not strident — part of a delegation, another honorary man. Her status was marked by observation that she drank whisky with the Ministers instead of the beer that was the expected choice of any entourage. A dinner-table companion might turn to her sometimes with the usual questions of obligatory interest — where did she come from? — English, of course? — what does she think of our country? — ever been in Africa — first time? — First time. India, Bangladesh, Afghanistan — but not here. — You see you are welcome, we Africans are friendly people, don’t you find. — There was a lawyer who was witty and forthright, making her Administrator and her laugh at themselves, with his anecdotes and mimicry of encounters with officials from aid agencies. — One thing you development fundis don’t know about is the new kind of joke you’ve inspired among us in the taverns. — The Administrator was equal to the banter. — It’s a good sign when you hear you’re the butt of humour, means you’re accepted.—

The lawyer, with lips everted expectantly in a grin, saw the Assistant was about to speak — As what? Part of the community? Or part of the scene playing between donor and beneficiary? —

— Ah, she’s right on, man! — The lawyer flung himself back in his chair delightedly. — Is it a sitcom, miniseries starring the IMF and World Bank—

The Administrator was enjoying himself. — Oh not your standard villains—

This sort of pleasant exchange struck up only after the tap on a glass signalled that the host, Minister or Chairman, was about to make a welcoming speech, and discussion of the latest announcements or ‘pending’ announcements (development topics had their own evasive lingua franca) on trade tariffs, bills coming before parliament for land reform, proceedings of Mercasur, SADEC, the EU, had been respectfully listened to or contested (the listeners asserting themselves to become the listened to) over the skill of eating and drinking without appearing to be aware of this lowly function.

It was only then that whatever everyone had been drinking released the individual from the official; the volume rose convivially. The Administrator’s Assistant felt a hand on her arm or met an assessing smile — not at all bad, this aid agency woman, the flush on the flesh where breasts lift it above her dress.

But there were not many such moments, she wasn’t bothered by men; and that was perhaps not flattering. Earlier assignments, other parts of the world, it had been rather different. The attitude she had learned to convey to keep undesirables at bay without offending (aid agency work implied diplomacy above all, personal feelings must be discounted in the philosophy of equal partnership between donor agency and the people of a recipient country): that defence was scarcely needed, here; not this time; not any more.

There was even a man — not sure what he was, Assistant to a Deputy-Minister or Director-General in some portfolio or other — who did not greet her when he was seated round a conference table; one of those in official positions who do not see unimportant people: a simple defect in vision. Which meant that she did not turn to the voice, thought it was someone else in the corridor who was being addressed, when this man was saying, as she recognised him drawn level with her — Will you come for a drink? — In a pause, he added her name — You are Miss Blayne. — As if confirming an identity.

— I’m sorry … I didn’t …—

They were being carried along by politely hurrying people, sticks caught in a river current. — Here’s the bar.—

She was so unprepared that she trotted along with the man like a schoolgirl summoned. He and his appendage were greeted with the special attention accorded by waiters and barmen indiscriminately to any face known to be in Government. He rejected one table-nook and was immediately directed to a choice of others; only the stools at the bar were occupied. She could not remember his name and did not know how to open a conversation as his silence seemed to suggest she was expected to. The waiter came, the man looked to her: she ordered her usual brand of Scotch and he made it — Two doubles and what is there — chips, nuts. — He sent the chips back because they were stale. Then he began to speak, address — yes, he had been, he was addressing her — now, with questions about what she had had to say, at her Administrator’s request, in the meeting just ended. If he did not look at her or acknowledge her presence at these official sessions, it appeared that he — she unaware of this attention as he had shown himself of her existence — listened to her duly Agency-correct depositions. There had been a contentious discussion about the ratio of subsistence crops to cash crops, particularly those with potential for export, in rural development. He wanted to know how the Agency arrived at its recommended balance, and how, in other developing countries the rural people could be convinced that it was (he had the term ready from the Government’s unwritten primer) the way forward.

She was in a bar with this composed, impersonal man, but she had two good swallows of whisky bringing her to smile across his distance. — Of course. You try telling someone to grow wholesome grain and potatoes when he wants to sell tobacco leaf and afford a TV or enough cash to buy an old car, new clothes! And what about the big money from drug crops, marijuana …—

But from his side, the conversation in the beer-reeking dingy nook built during colonial rule in nostalgia for an English pub was being conducted as a continuation of the afternoon meeting where the Agency’s agenda (hidden agenda as the phrase-book defines these) and the Government’s counterpart were trawling for accommodation. She managed, through contexts of his questions, to find out that he was Deputy-Director-General in the Ministry of Land Affairs, handman-of-the-Minister’s-handman, the Director-General. When the waiter hovered, he waved him away over the two emptied whisky glasses; she wondered whether he expected her to acknowledge this session was over, and rise, or if that would seem presumptuous — Agency protocol must respect official precedence in such decisions. But she could tactfully indicate that it was time to leave: there was something acceptably conclusive about her referring her host to her Administrator: —I know Mr Henderson would be only too pleased to talk to you about our successes — and our problems! Afghanistan, Colombia … nothing he hasn’t experienced—

They walked out together. The corridor, like the whisky glasses, had emptied; they said goodnight and then as if remembering the most elementary protocol, he offered his hand to her.

Roberta Blayne told her Administrator that the Deputy-Director in the Ministry of Land Affairs had approached her with some further questions about the subsistence crop-cash crop debate; Henderson said they might make it their business to cultivate the man, he hadn’t been prominent in the debate that afternoon, nor was heard from much at other sessions where you’d expect him to speak up, mh? — but one didn’t know who was or was not influential behind the scenes in the cabinet. What was his name again?

A Saturday ten days later she was drying her hair when the phone rang and a secretarial voice informed her that the Deputy-Director in the Department of Land Affairs was on his way to visit her; was this convenient. But it was a statement, not a question. She had only just combed out her hair and wriggled bare feet into sandals when she heard a horn and from her window saw the man who woke her with tea and polished the floors, heels flung up as he raced to open the gates. A black car of the luxury models provided for officials just below ministerial level came crunching over the gravel, delivered the Deputy-Director of Land Affairs at the front door, and was directed by the houseman round to the yard.

She had the door open: there he was, Deputy-Director Gladwell Shadrack Chabruma, still formally dressed in a suit as he would be on official occasions, although it was Saturday. They shook hands once more. She led him to the livingroom. — You may have been in this house some other time — when Chuck Harris was the Agency’s man here, with his team? You probably know the place, anyway.—

— Thank you. No, I did not have the occasion to come to this particular house, of course I knew Mr Harris and his people. I was in the Ministry of Agriculture during that period.—

— Well that must have been an ideal preparation, for Land. I’ll get us some tea — you’d prefer coffee?—

— Whatever. It is a good background to have, that I agree, but the problems are different, yes, agriculture’s — they come after the question of ownership of the land—

She was at the passage leading to the kitchen. But when this man of few words at working breakfasts and meetings did begin to talk he expected no interruption. She had to hover there.

— The Ministry where I was … was deployed … before — Agriculture, we came up against it all the time, excellent opportunities from the point of view of developing better farming practices, introduction of new crops and so on — the best expertise from other countries, the agencies and all that. But to introduce this on little plots everywhere, all over, too small for anything but subsistence farming — where is the land.—

— Oh we understand only too well in what my boss calls our outfit — we know that until the land’s reclaimed that was taken from you in colonial times, the larger agricultural projects we advise can’t go further than enthusiasm … Even yours, if we convince you they’re good … That’s why we have to look at projects we’re able to get going now. The community ones people from those little plots can work on together — oh you’ve heard it all before—

She got away to order the tea, words trailing after her.

In the kitchen she found a uniformed driver and two men with the heavy shoulders, armed belts, and discreet communication contraptions in their ears — the display of bodyguards as the spread tail is the display of a peacock — seated round the kitchen table already drinking tea from the houseman’s big mugs. The houseman was animatedly hostly over them but set about at once putting some relic of a starched lace mat on a tray for the other serving he would bring to her and the occasion of her distinguished guest, a man from the Government.

The guest appeared to be still with the statement left behind in the passage, ignoring her ritual of serving him tea, before he spoke. It could have been unease, or the self-confidence of status. He had the gift of the closed face that blackness, in her experience, enviably makes obscure. The so-called inscrutability of the Chinese was no match. He was very black, no taint of colonial dilution in the blood, there.

— You are satisfied with the progress?—

Did he mean of the country or the Agency’s efforts within it? Safer to take it as reference to the Agency. — How could we be? Always want to achieve more, feel we could have done more. Progress is slow … our approach is to learn what’s needed, right where we are—

— How does it compare?—

So he had meant his country. Had he been sent by someone — another hidden agenda — to get something out of an unsuspecting female, not in a high position but in the know, close to the Administrator of funds.

Not so easy with this one, he was going to find; and let him wonder if she was too innocently stupid to suspect what he was after, or too alertly experienced in such devious politicking to let him get at it. She produced the Agency’s stock responses, reassuring appreciation of the Government’s sharing of objectives, unchallengeable knowledge of its own people, vital element of their history in influencing, guiding the possibilities of the present etc. All this compared, she would say, rather favourably (her tongue’s quick caution had held back ‘very’) with other territories where the Agency had operated.

— And you were always with him, so for you also, you know his impressions.—

— Always, no. But in the last few years. I’ve been fortunate enough to learn a lot from him. Experience with him.—

And for the half-hour or less the subject — whatever it really was — went no further. He followed the necessary preliminary of hitching the cuff of his striped shirt that protruded at the correct length from his jacket sleeve, looking at his watch. — I have a meeting.—

He named another province, a two-hour journey away.

She called to the kitchen, for him, and in the moments of silence as they walked together to the front door they could hear the loud and laughing farewells between his driver and bodyguards and her houseman.

As he was about to step into the car brought round with a flourish from the yard, he turned. — I hope I did not disturb your weekend.—

The protocol came instinctively to her, she left the verandah, protesting, her hand out for his.

The livingroom held the low emptiness left by a transient occupation in which there was no meeting: the only one was the political appointment for which the man had stopped by on the way. But the houseman Tomasi was so elated by the official visitors he had entertained that he kept up a bass hum as he went about his work, doing something tympanically noisy in the kitchen.

It was only when she was driving to lunch with the Hendersons on Sunday, she suddenly remembered: that afternoon after the strictly single glass of whisky she had told the man that her Administrator would be pleased to have a talk with him; but Alan Henderson had not asked her to arrange an appointment at the Deputy-Director’s convenience, and she had not reminded him of this. That was the unspoken message of the visit on Saturday!

She and her Administrator were playfully but firmly forbidden, by his wife, to chew over, as she put it, Agency stuff on Sundays, but while the Administrator’s Assistant and her boss were sitting out during a mixed doubles at tennis she took the chance to tell him of the Saturday visit — of course the man wanted to know why the Administrator of the Agency hadn’t approached him, was offended. Her dereliction of duty, really! — That’s what I’m for, to see that you take the hints passed on to me!—

They were being called to the court. — No aid in the doubles! — A cry from his wife Flora. They leapt to their feet in mock alacrity.

Roberta Blayne hastened with the genuine thing to call the Deputy-Director’s secretary and arrange the date and time when the Administrator would come to his office. Or would the Deputy-Director care to lunch with him?; whichever.


Alan Henderson was back in New York for a special briefing at headquarters and she had had a week of overwhelming work, dealing with what it was long tacitly agreed she could do as well as he, and stalling responses to requests that must await his return. She was on the telephone to him across the seven-hour time difference when she might have hoped to get some sleep. The computer screen, voice mail, e-mail, the cell phone’s summons: when she finally did get back to the house she could not tolerate another four walls and found herself walking round, up and down, the garden — so enclosingly over-grown that she felt like some animal let out only into an exercise pen. There was a party she was invited to at the witty lawyer’s with Flora Henderson, that Saturday night; she felt too tired to expect to enjoy herself but didn’t want to disappoint Flora. In the morning she was half-heartedly looking through her clothes for something to wear that evening when the telephone rang. Early in the Southern Hemisphere, middle of the night, across the world; wouldn’t be Alan, thank God.

There was the voice that seemed always to be addressing someone else: who, me? Roberta Blayne, yes, speaking. As if it could be other, unless that of the houseman Tomasi; or does the man think I don’t live alone.

Would she like to come out in the country, see something of the rural Eastern area, — I don’t think you have been.—

— Oh. Oh … When.—

— Today. I can fetch you from your house at nine-thirty. Or ten. What you like. It’s quite a long way, not good to leave too late.—

He had had his meeting with the Administrator before Alan left for America, so surely that was enough contact. But suddenly the idea of getting out of the glowering matted garden into space, grass and sky, the scent and feel of air not over-breathed by people and blasted by airconditioning — the appropriate responses came, never mind for whom. — Lovely, love to get away, thank you, can we make it ten? I didn’t have much sleep last night, got up late …—

Instead of the elegant silk trousers for the party she pulled out a pair of jeans less worn than those of her usual weekend wear; leather lace-ups instead of sandals—‘the country’ might include some rough walking, at least she hoped so.

He came driving himself in his own car. Also a luxury model but an older one and he was alone. The dark three-piece suit had been shed; Flora knew the wife of the local Indian, Expert Tailor & Gentleman’s Outfitter who made a lot of money in custom-cutting this only slightly varied uniform for parliamentarians. The Deputy-Director wore khaki pants and a blue shirt, open-necked, but with his unchanged air of formality. He held the passenger door wide for her as she settled herself chattering, and Tomasi, clearly delighted at the reappearance of the important visitor, stood to watch the car leave through the gates of what was his domain whatever transients from the Agency might occupy it.

— In your place, your home, there in England, you live in the country, you like the country life so much, Miss Blayne?—

She laughed. — You can’t spend the day giving me a breather, calling me ‘miss’—please, I’m Roberta.—

He did not try it out until they had been driving for a while and it was clear — his tone made it clear — that this usage was not to be taken as unwonted familiarity. His supposition that field trips with the Administrator would not have been in the direction taken now, was correct; that was a suitable opening for him to give her information about the countryside they were travelling, the people who lived there — migration from the West because of floods a few years ago, migration from the South because of more recent drought, cattle country here, maize on the plain, baboons, yes (she thought she saw something move on the rocks) and even a leopard sometimes, in the hills. But mostly shot out.

— Fur coats for ladies in Europe?—

— I wouldn’t say that. We have poaching pretty much under control in this area. The big game was really finished, anyway, long ago, the old days when the British were here. Many years of their governors’ hunting parties.—

Denunciation of the colonial period, whether bitter or merely derisive, was a stock subject in social exchanges among Government and other dignitaries’ circles, to which the Agency often contributed. Alan Henderson could always raise a laugh along with a glass — Thank my lucky stars I’m not a Brit! — It didn’t count that his Assistant apparently was; she didn’t matter. She had been in Deputy-Director Gladwell Shadrack Chabruma’s presence on such occasions; this present passing remark about the colonial governors was near as he had ever come to bitter historical judgments. Due to his being habitually the man of few words? Or it could be a sign of strength of character: no indulgence of dwelling on the past for every lack in the present; perhaps even the largesse of forgiveness — the same ‘Brits’ were being offered the grace of retribution by their providing more ‘soft’ loans. The way forward. She didn’t know the man; not even to the extent she felt she knew some of his colleagues by professional attention to the views most of them volubly expressed.

There were villages of the very kind where the Agency entered into local projects with the inhabitants; she could tell him, if he happened not to know of it, of the successful brick-making that employed women whose husbands had lost their jobs due to the closure of an old coal mine — the women provided bricks for the men to build a school and a clinic, and had begun to sell surplus production to make a living for themselves. The way forward. Well … inch by inch. This time he was the one to assure of suitable appreciation; land acquisition was on a grand scale, a difficult operation (for the first time he allowed himself a glance away from the road, at her, and she understood an unspoken reference to the forced occupation of white farmers’ land by the people in a neighbouring country). — Small is beautiful. Also. Isn’t that it. — And he smiled, she saw in profile, his attention on the road. Not far on there was a village with a store crouching under a broad sign BAMJEE’S DRINK COCA COLA PETER STUYVESANT. — What would you like? — He pulled up the car.

She was fine, didn’t want anything, thank you.

The children who were the frieze of her actions, her life, on Agency assignments everywhere, gathered slowly round the car while he was in the store. They are always the same children. Their black skin as if sandpapered grey, their leaking noses and shy giggles. One or two come up to her window silently; it is their way of begging. What could she have asked him for? What need could she possibly have, before these. It is the policy of the Agency not to give handouts; charity is not an answer, although caritas is part of an answer when you open your mouth and out comes ‘empowerment’ ‘development’. She was off duty; the man was not wearing his Deputy-Director’s garb: she fumbled in her locally-woven straw bag and brought up some useless small change to give before he appeared from the store.

Bottle-heads winked and the serrated topknot of a pineapple poked out of plastic bags he was carrying. In the rear-view mirror she saw him stacking the trunk. When he got into the driver’s seat he handed her a bottle of soda. — No mineral water … I’m sorry no cup, glass—

And now she thought it ridiculous, even rude, not to be using his name, if without permission. — Who needs a glass, thanks so much Gladwell — I realise I’m thirsty after all. — She tipped back her head and drank as he drove; paused, wiped the mouth on her shirt and offered the bottle to his hand on the wheel, but he merely lifted splayed fingers, kept the hand in place. — I had something in the shop.—

She wanted to say, I don’t have any communicable disease, but he was not a person with whom one could joke. (As if one could joke about anything ‘communicable’ these days when a new pestilence threatened intimacy.) Instead she asked him where they were making for — or was this going to be a circular drive, nowhere in particular. No, they were going to a place, there was a place where an uncle of his lived, he had some papers for him, something to arrange. — An old man doesn’t understand these matters. It’s on the edge of the forest, mopani trees, you know those? Illala palms.—

— A village?—

— Not really. Outside the village.—

— What does he grow? Does he farm cattle?—

— It’s not a cattle farming area. They can’t cultivate. His sons work in town and send some money to the old ones.—

There was a one-room-sized brick house with a tin roof and three or four satellite huts whose thatch hung like grey falling hair. In such a place, the car seemed grown twice its size, the sun clashing off its brilliant black surface. The Agency’s scarred station wagons she was used to arriving in were less blatant. An old man in a sagging dark jacket and trousers (could it be a cast-off parliamentary suit handed down) and a woman so round and heavy in her skirts she might have been the African version of a Russian doll with many clones of descending size inside her, came out of the house and warm greetings and exclamations were exchanged. His passenger didn’t know the language but gathered these were praise of the member of the family who was in Government.

She stood by smiling, as on a field trip with her Administrator. The couple had shown no reaction at the arrival of a white accompanying the Deputy-Director; no doubt a Government man, one of their own, could command a white secretary. Their member of the Government introduced her first in their language, and when the old man responded in English, Pleased to meet you, madam — This lady — she’s from the aid people in America who are helping the Government in our country. — So now the distinction of the visit was doubled, for the old couple. But with dignity of his own the old man gestured to his house — the Deputy-Director responded with some interjection that led to his taking his uncle reverently by the arm, and the two of them fetched three chairs and a stool from the house.

— The English lady enjoys the sun. — The old man bowed to her. His wife brought tea — the fellow-woman gesture of rising to help was met with an authorative side-to-side of the head on the ample neck. The guest took no part in the conversation, either, because the old woman spoke no English and the men seemed to have much to discuss in their own language; but Roberta Blayne was accustomed to this, too, in her role as the Administrator’s side-kick, alertly at ease, speaking up only when it was indicated by the sign language between them (a certain way he shrugged a shoulder almost imperceptibly in her direction) she ought to. Papers were signed, with the Deputy-Director leaning over the old man’s shoulder as the pen moved in a hand mummified by toil — that was the biblical word that came to her as the one for subsistence farming; while the men talked she learnt with her gaze around what the old couple’s life was: a hand-pump stood crookedly, there was a small patch of maize, white-plumed close to the house, the nagging complaint of a tethered goat, some potato plants, withered cabbages like severed heads and a few plump orange pumpkins. The sun was fierce; they moved into shade. Green handgrenades hung from the branches of the avocado tree.

This was, after all, her outing; she rose, smiling. — Gladwell, I think I’m going to go for a walk. Up to that hill over there, see the view.—

He broke off what he was saying to his uncle, head vehement. — No, no. You can’t walk around out there, there can be land mines still not cleared. No.—

It was as if the queer image that had come to her — fruit in the guise of weapons had been a warning. In countries where not long ago there had been one of those civil wars supplied with such weapons for both sides by foreign countries with ‘agendas’ of their own, the violence lies shallowly buried. The Agency had had enough experience of that. So the stout rubber-soled hiking boots were not to be put to use.

As the honoured guests were about to leave, he brought the plastic bags from his car and carried them into the house. Only then. She found this unexpectedly delicate, certainly in this man; he hadn’t wanted the old couple to start insisting that the guests share what was meant for themselves. The old man and woman followed him, protesting happily. The woman came back with a knife in her hand and cut down two avocados, presented them to the woman from the aid agency.

She weighed them, heavy, one in either hand, thank you, thank you.

Now they were fruit.

In the car she placed them on the rear seat. He seemed to contemplate a moment on the suitability of the gift. — They will get ripe.—


She forgot to take them with her when he dropped her at her house. It was dark, she’d had to shout for the houseman Tomasi, who ignored the horn, to come and unlock the gates.

On Sunday she went with Flora to fetch Alan Henderson from the airport, back from New York. He was elated. — We’ve a whole new allocation of funds!—

— Tell, tell!—

— One-and-a-half million more.—

His Assistant and his wife celebrated him: you’re a wizard, a Midas, how’d you do it, what’d you tell them. — We-e-ll — this country is stable, right — by standards of the newly emergent economies, it’s ditto democratic, on the way there, anyway, and if we want to help keep it on its feet, we must do more to promote good governance, while projects must be totally co-operative, real money must be put into them, theirs and ours—

His colleague knows that ‘specific project choices’ are what they’ll have to adapt, finagle, beyond fine intentions.

— And how’d they receive our ‘well-documented’ doubts about funds for IT?—

— That was the tough one. They came up with their solution: funds to supply generators for community centres and so on where we know there’s no local power plant. How feasible that is … we’ll work on it. They still see this continent left behind to be the Dark Continent again, Mister Kurz he dead, unless IT comes first—even before houses, schools and clinics. Maybe they’re right … On line into the world and what’s missing will follow. And there’s enthusiasm over our AIDS education strategy. They’re waking up over there in AmeroEurope to see if the new Plague isn’t stopped nothing much else we do will matter … that’s what’s going to bring about a Dark Continent in our age of globalisation.—

Over lunch he asked what she’d been up to.

As if he hadn’t been kept only too well informed — Minding the store for you. Plenty of problems I didn’t trouble you with, though.—

Flora was carving a leg of lamb. — Not now, not now, in your office on Monday.—

— But I did have a break. Out in the country yesterday. The Deputy-Director of Land Affairs turned up and took me for a drive, he had some chore and I suppose looked for useful company. Did you know there’re still land mines not cleared in the Eastern province?—

— Good grief, I’d been told it was all clear except for the frontier in the West! We’d better look into that with Safety and Security — Defence, maybe. Was he fishing again, an Agency sardine or two to dish up for his boss’s reports to the Minister? As he was doing with me, as well, when we lunched. We’ll never get these guys in Government to understand we have to keep out of political issues — or seem to. As if sinking a borehole in this village before that doesn’t become political. What does he think about IT — or does he only utter on land? If you see him again, bring it up; he must sit at all manner of closed meetings with his Director, he must have a general idea of what the Government’s prepared to do, we have to gather what we can to work on for cooperation from it. They can’t expect to leave it all to the big network donors … as you noticed, their stocks have gone wa-ay down, anyway.—


The Hendersons put Deputy-Director Gladwell Shadrack Chabruma and his wife along with the name of the Director of Land Affairs himself on the list for a cocktail party marking the Agency’s decade of service in Africa. The Director brought his wife, his Deputy came alone. As if there was no wife; but there’s always a wife, somewhere. When Roberta, co-host with the Hendersons, greeted him she was about to add as a pleasantry, I forgot the avocados, but did not. Turned with other pleasantries to a man from Home Affairs, arrived with the Minister of Welfare (rumours of another kind of affair, there) who always tried to manoeuvre her sisterly into a corner with some urgent situation of women that must be brought to the attention of the Agency.

These first weeks of Alan Henderson’s return were taken up in collaboration with the local World Health Organisation representative in meetings arranged for a senior man from WHO headquarters who was touring the continent in a campaign against HIV AIDS. There were visits to rural counselling centres set up in army surplus tents and to an old hospital still known by the name of a deceased English queen, now a hospice — euphemism for the last of the Stations of the disease. The Agency Administrator’s Assistant had had to face, and walk away from, to life — starvation in Bangladesh, in India, not just the living human head resculptured by it, but its final power manifest, wreaked upon the feet, the skeleton of feet no longer for standing, the feet, the hands, the hands the very last web-hold on existence. People deployed on the ground (as opposed to those tours of duty looking down from cloud-high windows of metropolitan headquarters) are like doctors, they must do what they have to do without the fatality of identification with sufferers. But in this red-brick relic of imperial compassion for its subjects the long-established discipline become natural to her failed; suddenly was not there. She groped for it within herself; the anguish of the bodies on beds and mats entered in its place. She could not look, she had to look, at the new-born-to-die and the rags of flesh and bone that were all that was left of the children they were to become if they did survive weeks, months, maybe a year. Food and clean water (the succour ready to be provided on other tours of duty): useless here.

Silenced by what they had seen, the official group was taken to a Holiday Inn where the Agency had arranged a private room and coffee was served. She was hearing as echoes sounding off the walls the practical responses to — what? Incurable. Something incurable in the nature of human life itself, taking many forms of which this was the latest, arising, returning in endless eras and guises — disease, wars, racism. That’s how people come to believe — have to believe — in the existence of the Devil along with God, Capital Initials for both. How else? How else answer why. But what there was in that place was not ontologically incurable! Just that a cure was not yet discovered. Preventable. That was the succour, in the meantime! Research facilities, preventive education — that was what, under the mantra of diffused tapes repeating pop songs, the people who were doing something about these were arguing, as the coffee revived blood run cold. And that was the code she belonged to: whatever there is, the ethic is do something about it. But she couldn’t respond when her Administrator, with his usual consideration of the worth of her views, looked to see if she was going to speak.


The official car drew up at the gates just as she arrived back at the house. Dismay difficult to overcome: not this afternoon, end of this day! Draw the curtains pour yourself a whisky, no-one but the face, familiar in this delegated house, this tour of duty, of the attendant Tomasi.

Nothing for it but to blast the horn for Tomasi to come and open the gates — and dismay gave way to embarrassment, the blast sounded exasperated, she had the duty of a polite show of welcome, at least. As the gates were opened she waved a hand to signal the car to precede hers. The Deputy-Director of Land Affairs was deposited at the front door and his car proceeded once again round to the yard. She left hers and produced a smile to greet her guest.

Tomasi the sprinter was already opening the front door. Once she and Gladwell Shadrack Chabruma were in the livingroom she excused herself — May I dump my papers and tidy myself up, we’ve been about out of the office all day. Please — be comfortable.—

He will have heard her flushing the loo, water coming from the old squeaking taps as she washed, she did not look at herself in the bathroom mirror. Hadn’t made himself comfortable. There in his parliamentary dress he was standing as if he had just entered. — Come. — She turned to the sofa; while he seated himself, she indeed drew the curtains and opened the cupboard where the hospitality bottles were.

— It’s too late for tea, don’t you agree. Gladwell. What’ll it be?—

— Whatever you are having.—

— Whisky? Soda, water?—

— I prefer soda.—

She drew up a little table for their drinks and joined him on the sofa. — We have a visitor from WHO in New York, we’ve been taking him around with people from the Ministry of Health, some from Welfare.—

— It is good when these principals come, see for themselves. Sometimes.—

— And other times?—

— They don’t understand what they see, what it means; what we are doing. — One of his pauses. — They’re seeing something else they bring along with them. What is it, the word … when I was a student at University of Virginia — a paradigm. Yes.—

Sometimes.

The curt proviso caught at her abstracted attention. The few occasions they had met, even in the opportunities of the weekend drive, he had not allowed himself any uncertainties. Now from this small indication that this official was also a man with doubts came the release coffee at the Holiday Inn had not brought her.

— I shouldn’t be doing this job.—

Spoken suddenly for herself. But as if overheard by both — the man was here so it must have been for him, too. — We were at that new water purification plant … two clinics they fund. And the old Queen Mary Hospital. You know.—

— Their AIDS programme.—

— WHO’s and ours, the Agency.—

— You have had a very busy day. Roberta.—

And she was the one who had not seen what there was to see: here was a reassuring presence seated in physical solidity, affirming her worth, the correctness of the three-piece suit a sign of order — like the gown of a judge in the discipline of the law, a surgeon in his white coat — in a shaking world. A man in command of himself. Strong perfectly articulated hands enlaced at rest on his knees.

— It was unbearable. You should go — no, don’t, don’t go, it’s what no-one’s meant to see, how can I say, the processes, what happens after death and it’s supposed to be buried away, but it’s all there — living. The babies just born and that means beginning to die, there in front of you.—

In profile she saw his mouth drawn stiffly, eyebrows contracted. That he did not look at her made it possible for her to control the stupid, useless indulgence of tears.

He picked up his glass and drank, then stirred slightly, towards her. — I told you not to walk out because of land mines still there, my uncle’s place. His youngest was home for school holidays and went with his dog to shoot a bird for his mother’s pot and he was blown up. Both legs gone. Sixteen years. He died. They can’t plant their fields.—

When the man had left she didn’t know whether he had meant to reproach her weakness, or comfort her with the proof — seen it for herself — that the old couple continues to live surrounded by the Death that had killed their son, lying in wait for them to step upon it.


The tour of the WHO representative ended. Roberta Blayne and her Administrator took up their usual activities until the next partner in development came. She was doing her job. In the social life promoted by Flora Henderson beyond official entertaining and being entertained (enough, enough aidshoptalk) the bachelor woman was always in the company of couples. She danced with other women’s husbands; no woman seemed to fear her. She couldn’t consider herself lonely, and the work was among the most fulfilling she had ever been assigned to, since Alan Henderson used her particularly in meetings where, in accordance with the Agency’s Mission Statement, local communities’ ideas of what they most needed — dams, access roads to markets, chicks and fingerlings to begin poultry- or fish-farming, roofing and desks for a new school — were to be joint projects with them. Many of those chosen by people to speak for them were women; somehow she created confidence: surely a woman would listen to them? — but the men respected her, too, an official position counters many traditional prejudices. Her Administrator would remark to Government officials, Roberta’s learning the language, you know, often she doesn’t need an interpreter! She would protest — she certainly did! But the fact that his Assistant was taking the trouble, in a tour of duty that lasts only a couple of years, to learn the main language of the country reflected well upon the Agency. Often the community would give her some small gift (no vicuna coat bribe — the Agency allowed acceptance as a token of trust) — a carved wooden spoon, woven straw bags, a clay pot; the house she’d been assigned to began to take on the signs of homely possession that come with objects which have their modest personal history.

The black car of the luxury model provided for the second echelons of Government office-bearers was in the yard — perhaps once a week, could be any day. The driver and bodyguards installed in the kitchen.

The Deputy-Director of Land Affairs was the one acquaintance among many in her job (she knew their names, faces round conference tables, gossip about them, by now) who had become a special kind of acquaintance; his presence at least claimed that. They progressed from exchanges and courteous argument about current events in the country and the continent, inevitably, as people do when such talk runs out, to link observations from the past: when I was young, when I was a kid, I remember I thought it would be, it was … and to offer experiences of childhood background. Without any confidentiality, of course. These ordinary anecdotes are common currency.

But you are what you were.

There, then, the experiences don’t meet; he began minding his father’s cattle, classic for a government career in Africa, she was at a girls’ school in an English cathedral town, the bells pealed while the basketball was aimed, the cattle lowed as they were driven under the herdboy’s whip. He had been to a mission school, then a college in some neighbouring African country from where there came his scholarship to America. He had once mentioned a university. University of Virginia, wasn’t it? Here, experience could be shared; well, she had studied for a year in the USA, exchange programme with an English university. He had wanted to go on to the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard; it was part of the limits of contact he apparently always set himself that he did not offer the sequel to the intention. She had learnt not to fill his silences, but sometimes there was the vacuum’s pressure to continue. Out of politeness he would have to make some sort of explanation.

— I was married, at home. Away a long time, I had to come back. Children.—

— They must be grown up now? Satisfaction to you … It’s a trade-off, I suppose. I was married, but no children, unfortunately. Or maybe fortunately as there was a divorce. But I wonder if you really missed much, Harvard, I mean. You’ve gone through another kind of school of government, haven’t you, right here.—

— We are all learners in the world. But academic things in a c.v., they impress people.—

— In government careers? At high level? I wouldn’t have thought so. The President hasn’t got a Harvard degree, not even a less grand university one from overseas, far as I know.—

— There are other qualifications to make up.—

He smiled at her in pride, lest she lure him to a lapse into criticism of the Head of State. — He was one of our first leaders in our war of liberation … he is a man who has not abandoned our culture the same time as he can take on the world. You know.—

— What are the children doing? Anyone interested in going into politics, like Dad?—

— Studying. — Subject closed.

One evening they had a second whisky and time had passed so unnoticed that she suggested some supper. The driver and bodyguards were already being fed maize meal and stew when she went to the kitchen to see what she and Tomasi could offer.

Over canned soup and cold chicken he told her of a farm in the Southern Province. — Your own farm? — Yes, he had a farm. (Doesn’t everyone in government acquire a farm or farms, don’t ask about how, nothing to do with the questions of land redistribution; but this was none of her business, certainly not at her own table with a guest.)

The next time the black car brought distinction to Tomasi’s yard the Deputy-Director of Land Affairs invited her to visit his farm the coming weekend. When she told him there were two gatherings she was obliged to attend he merely substituted: —The weekend after, then.—

— Oh I don’t want to spoil your plans, Gladwell, please—

— It’s the same for me. I go all the time.—

So that is home, the family home, not the official residence (to which she has never been invited) that must be in the suburb of guard-houses manned before swimming-pool and tennis-court endowed gardens, where Government office-bearers and foreign diplomats lived. She looked forward with mild curiosity to meeting the wife and family. He must belong somewhere else outside the parliamentary suit — as he did with the old uncle and aunt, that glimpse she’d had of him in personal mufti. The black car was at the gates early, not unexpected of this stickler for all disciplines. She recognised one of the bodyguards doubling as driver; perhaps, unlike the destination of the other outing on which she’d accompanied the Deputy-Director, the area they were bound for in this vast country presented some possible threat which made the discreet, disguised-by-function presence of at least half his usual Security a precaution? So she and Gladwell were together on the back seat, very comfortable, he had no need to give any attention to the road, his man at the wheel had the air of a horse making surely for the stable.

It was far away. They rose and descended round a mountain pass, and caused people in two country towns to stare back at the majestic car’s glossy blackness as the populace in distant times and far countries must have watched a royal carriage go by. In the third town he stopped (the other journey, he’d paused at a roadside store), this time before the town’s landmark, a supermarket, and went in attended by the driver-bodyguard, perhaps only to carry provisions. She had her own secreted in her largest straw bag. The shaming resort to charity: a dose of sugar in place of an answer to the state of beggary. The children were there, the same children. She handed out a pack of sweets. The bodyguard and his charge returned loaded with food — must have been a long list from the wife. Then his man was in attendance on a visit to a liquor store behind the battered iron-pillared-and-roofed pavement that was the style of old frontier towns — along with the shopkeeper’s Jewish name was pioneer immigrant provenance: I. SARETSKY EST. 1921. Bottles clanked in the trunk as the car moved off and the driver-bodyguard was instructed in their language to halt and rearrange his packing of provisions. Once more, refreshment had been brought for her; this time it was imported mineral water.

They talked between comfortable intervals — unlike his imposed silences — watching the country go by. The candelabra aloes were in bloom, flaming votive offerings to the ultimate cathedral that is the late winter sky when the heat has come, as it does, before the rains, a scouring to the bone that needs a term other than the one named Spring in Europe. The Cultural Attaché of the British had remarked to her at dinner last week, August’s the cruellest month, not T. S. Eliot’s April.

They came to the kind of terrain where activity by man has made savannah of what once was forest. Sparse scrub was nature’s attempt to return among weathered rubble, half-buried rust-encrusted unidentifiable iron parts, even a jagged section of a wall where foundations traced by weeds outlined what might have been a building. Beyond some sort of slag heaps a rise where the picked-over remains of what must have been elaborate structures — houses? — of a considerable size, in scale with the giant hulks of fallen trees too heavy to have been carted away for firewood, still made their statement as an horizon. In other parts of the country she had seen farmsteads abandoned by whites pillaged for whatever might be useful; nothing of this extent. — What was here?—

— Used to be a mine. Long time ago. Before.—

— Copper?—

— Yes.—

— But what happened? Why isn’t it still worked?—

— I don’t know. Maybe the ore was finished — but in the war they say it was attacked and flooded, underground, the pumps were smashed. You can ask the Minister of Mines; the Buffalo Mine.—


There was a great deal of entertaining up at the Manager’s house, weekends. On Monday morning a member of the kitchen and ground staff whose job it was set off to walk fifty miles to town with the master’s note for the liquor store. A case of Scotch whisky. The man walked back with twelve bottles in the case on his head, arriving Friday. Every Friday. The feat was a famous dinner-party story, each weekend: that’s my man — what heads they have, eh, thick as a log.

A stop at the last town to buy supplies the driver-bodyguard loaded. I. SARETSKY EST. 1921. A case of Scotch whisky. Twelve bottles on the head. That’s my man. Thick as a log. That’s my man.

Buffalo Mine.

The name is a hook, the anecdote comes up with it. (The driver-bodyguard has reduced speed in response to her movement, upright in her seat looking back at the site.)

First time in Africa? First time yes India Bangladesh Afghanistan not here.

Not only a dinner-party story of the long dead. What an old rogue, but such style! They don’t make them like that anymore. Tax evasion’s about the only territory of adventurers now. A child half-listening, an adolescent bored with the tradition of family fables recounted to later generations, around other tables, about that extraordinary character, the grandfather.

Been here before.

Not in her person. But in her blood-line. The history to which she belongs. There it was — is — Buffalo Mine. One of the houses that were up there on the rise she’s looking at was where the dinner parties heard the famous story, drank the whisky arrived every Friday. Every Friday head thick as a log.


— You know the Minister? I’ll introduce you. — Gladwell is in the position to obtain any privilege a curious visitor might wish.

— Enos can tell you all about these old places.—

She sank back in her seat as if dismissing a passing interest.

Nearby was her destination, their destination, the Deputy-Director’s farm. She had had in prospect a solid Colonialverandahed farmstead taken over: there, looking on wattle-fenced cattle kraals, mud huts, a troop of sheep and goats, chickens taking a dust-bath under roses gone wild, a scatter of children bowling old tyres, was a house set down out of the sky complete from California. The expanse of glass behind the patio preened in reflected splendour of the sun, a satellite dish held its great ear to the world. Close by was a structure she recognised as a powerful electricity generator. Men and women came out of the back of the house to the double garage whose fine wooden doors rolled away as the driver-bodyguard touched the electronic gadget in his hand. The people were servants or perhaps relatives (she had observed how poorer members of an official’s family often served in both capacities), some hastened to unload the car, a woman in a flounced floral overall that needn’t necessarily mean she was cooking or cleaning, but a mark of status, hugged the master of the house and brought her palms together in greeting to his guest. She was ready to meet the wife in the house and perhaps some of the couple’s grown children — of course the wife would speak English — anyway the social capabilities of her own training were automatically at hand for all such encounters.

There is an unmistakable atmosphere of absence in rooms where only servants have come and gone in the course of their daily tasks; no-one to fill these rooms has left presence there. Perhaps the arrival is unexpected, his wife is in some other wing of this house. He was following his guest’s usual hostly procedure when he visited her, pouring whisky taken from a cabinet where glasses hung upside down from their stems as in a smart bar; he had not gone to summon anyone.

— I’d like to meet your wife, first. — The protocol smile as she accepted her drink.

— She prefers town.—

— Oh that’s a disappointment.—

— The children come sometimes.—

— Well I’ll have to meet her in town, then. — It was a tentative claim to friendship of the kind she was used to, the bachelor woman taken into a family context.

They were served a four o’clock meal — the woman in the flowered outfit must have been forewarned, after all, to have ready. The whisky bottle came to the skating-rink shiny table they sat at in a room that led off the livingroom peopled only by framed photographs of weddings, sports teams and official occasions in which he was among the assembly. Lively voices out of sight indicated that the driver-bodyguard must be sociably at home in the kitchen just as he was in Tomasi’s.

She tucked in to stew and wild spinach, helped herself, under the permissive wave of the host’s hand, to the mound of stiff maize meal smoking vapour like a dormant volcano. There were wheels of sliced tomato arranged as a still life on a glass plate. He was controlledly annoyed to find there was to be no coffee (apparently forgotten when the purchases were made at the supermarket); she noticed then what must have been there all along in him, the attractive tilt of his eyebrows drawn upward at the inner corners enquiringly even when he was not — as now — irritated. A hieroglyph of vulnerability to be deciphered, if one were to be interested enough, in the closed self-possession of this functionary.

— Can I walk round your farm? — She caught herself out in time and did not add the assumption: No mines? This was something not for flippancy brought about by a full stomach and whisky at an unaccustomed time of day.

— You don’t want some tea? — To compensate for the missing coffee. — I’ll take you. You know I have horses — of course, you come from England, all the English like horses.—

So together they passed the cattle sheds and the old stonewalled sheep pen (there must once have been another kind of farmer on this land, with his memories of the Cotswolds, and a white-verandahed farmstead she had had in mind). Neat pyramids of cow dung dried and cut in squares for fuel were milestones where small dogs of their own unnamed breed lifted jaunty legs as they panted along. He pointed to the field of chili peppers ready for harvesting; she was intrigued — They’re red earrings hanging! — A flung arm showed his cattle grazing far off; there was maize stretching away as a head-high forest. — Three thousand bags this year, that’s not bad … but this was many hectares planted, you have to have the land to get a commercial crop like that … This place was nothing. Weeds and rubbish. Like the other.—

This was the moment for her anecdote. My grandfather owned that mine he lived there—the present moment would grow over the past safely, organically, as the maize and blood-bright peppers and the russet and white pattern of the distant cattle repossessed the land that was colonial booty. But the moment had passed; they’d come to a paddock where three horses seemed, as horses do when they are approached, to be waiting. She said (of course) — They’re beautiful. — And added — Specially the bay.—

He sucked his lips in round his tongue, used to making decisions for others. — Would you like to ride. She’s a nice animal. The quiet one.—

— Oh I’d love to! Even one that isn’t too quiet! I used to ride a lot, no chance now.—

— You see. I know the English.—

— You ride?—

He called out and a young boy appeared, was given an instruction.

— I also used to, when I was a kid, on the back of the old horse that pulled my father’s cart. But now, no, I bought these for my son. He’s in the States. His saddle’s here.—

The boy saddled the bay and her host gave her a leg up to mount the tall horse. The forgotten sensation of co-operative power with the creature carrying her came immediately she set off, the old pleasure in the air swiftly parting against her face. Unexpectedly, he did not give any directions or instructions of where she might ride; she galloped, free, alongside the maize fields disturbing minute birds like clouds of insects, she rode over the open ground towards the cattle, waved at the herdboy squatting with them, she turned back towards the city-slicker house and swerved away to where she made out what must be him, although something about the figure was different, not only from the parliamentary-suited one but also from the one in mufti of sports shirt and pants. There was another man with him and as she neared she found they were bent over some sort of pump installation. Now, up on the horse, she was beside them. He was different; he had stripped off his shirt, hands stained with grease and dirt he rose bare-breasted. Nothing significant in a man naked to the waist, as there is when every magazine cover uses the evident evocation of bare-breasted females. But perhaps because this man was always so fully dressed in the abstract as well as the material sense, what was revealed couldn’t have been guessed at. This torso seemed to belong to someone other in the gleaming beauty, sweat-painted, of perfectly formed muscle, the double path below pectorals, left and right, of smooth ribbing beneath lithe skin. Black. Simply black. No mark, no hairy pelt. Who is this man?

— Every time I’m here, it’s some problem. Pump packed up.—

She laughed. (The problems of the maison secondaire.) She was sweating, too, her forehead gleamed hot and rosy.

— The ride was good?—

Wonderful, wonderful.

He took a shower. She was directed to what must be the wife’s bathroom; a pink comb and an empty bath-oil bottle on the shelf, a gown hanging in folds like a crestfallen face.

They were having a farewell whisky on the patio — in the itinerary of her day’s treat — about to leave for the long drive back when the woman in charge of the house burst out flustered. A rising tempo of exchange began between her and the host; he followed her into the house with a gesture of exasperation. But when he came back to the patio he was his composed self, distanced from whatever this problem was.

— The man’s been drinking. My driver. They’re having a big party there, all the time.—

— Drunk?—

— He can’t drive.—

Not a tragedy. She spread her hands and cocked her head cheerfully. She was used to all sorts of necessary changes of arrangements, in the course of working journeys with her Administrator. — We can drive — you and I.—

— In the dark, at night. It’s not safe.—

— Oh I don’t mind, we’ll be all right, sharing, I’ve often driven in rural areas at night.—

— Not the driving. It’s not safe.—

Not safe. Ah yes, the drunk’s not just a driver, he’s a bodyguard.

— He’ll be back in his head in the morning. We can go very early. Is that okay for you? Sunday tomorrow — you don’t have some appointment? I’m sorry.—

— Well I suppose … nothing else for it. I mean if there’s risk, for you. No, I don’t have anything particular planned … Nobody expects me. Nobody sits up for me. — She smiled to assuage his concern. — That’s freedom.—

— I appreciate your attitude. Many women …—

The woman in charge of the house produced a tray with cold meats and bread and they drank whisky, talking ‘development shop’ in an indiscreet way, criticising, analysing this individual and that as they had never done (he would never allow himself to?) without the whisky, anywhere but hidden safe in the house that must have been a lit-up fantasy in ancient total darkness surrounding them. Not only the driver-bodyguard had made his escape, that night, from the restraints of official duty.

When both began to yawn uncontrollably he found it appropriate (every situation has its protocol) to rise from the sofa’s fake leopard-skin velvet and decide — I’ll show you where you can sleep.—

In the rhythm of their progress along a passage she told him — What a lovely day, and the ride — and he put an arm up around her shoulder, rather the gesture of a man towards a male friend.

There was no sign of whose room it was she was left in: the character of the misplaced Californian house that there were rooms for purposes that did not match needs where it had been set down. It seemed to have been intended as some sort of spacious dressing-room, adjunct to other quarters behind a second door which was blocked by a bed. There were blankets and pillows, no sheets. But she had no provision of pyjamas, nightthings, either; she was sitting on the bed a moment, contemplating this, the door to the passage still open, when he looked in to see if she wanted anything. She stood up to reassure, no, no, I’m fine, moving a few steps towards him to demonstrate self-sufficiency. He met her and whether she presented herself first or his arms went around her first wasn’t clear; the embrace became long, as if occupying one of his silences. His mouth moved from hers over her face and neck and his hands took her breasts. When they were naked he left her briefly without a word from either and came back into the room with the condom concealed in his hand as he might carry a ballot paper in a parliamentary process. On the bed that seemed to belong to nobody the torso revealed beside the faulty irrigation pump came down on her fulfilling all its promise. Sometime between the pleasuring, this man of few words, in his new guise, spoke her name as a lover does. — Roberta … Like a boy’s name, why did they call you … — Because they’d wanted a boy. — And after a moment, a breathy half-laugh against his neck — Why’d they call you Gladwell. Same thing? Wanted you to be something else. Make you a white Englishman.—

At six in the morning the driver-bodyguard had already brought the car round to the terrace, ready to go. He showed no sign of his night’s debauch. She was to wonder some time afterwards if he really had been drunk. Or had been given instruction that he was; but then who could measure the unexpressed will, hers as well as her host’s, that was ready for the pretext.


People in official positions, men and women with a public persona know how to accommodate officially unsuitable private circumstances for some sort of decorum within these positions and personae. Even someone with as low a level of official and public persona as Administrator’s Assistant in an international aid agency knows this; along with computer competency and the protocols of tact and diplomacy in relations with the recipient country; another unspoken code. Aid personnel are not permitted to make personal attachments to local individuals on the premise that these might influence aid decisions; if they do indulge in such attachments — and they did — they are trusted to honour the Agency’s objective integrity by following the rules of discretion on both sides — the individual’s in exchange for the Agency’s blind eye. For members of Government of course the circumstance is taken for granted — a man or woman in high office would be expected to have along with a luxury car and security guards, some woman, some man, for relaxation; faces outside the official portraits at home with the family.

The official car of the Deputy-Director of Land Affairs was often parked in the yard behind the house assigned by the Agency to the Administrator’s Assistant. The driver and security guards sat in Tomasi’s kitchen as habitués unremarked as any of his other friends. They might be called out and dismissed by their charge, the Deputy-Director, to leave the car and find their way home, return in the morning. Somehow though neither he nor she in their new-found rapport had to speak of it, neither would make love with the men talking and laughing in the kitchen.

She had only once before had a love affair abroad on a tour of duty, brief and in Europe in an hotel where the man arranged a room under a name other than his own (which the receptionist’s eyes made clear was well-known). The man’s wife was away and it was apparently his code of marital honour not to take a woman home in her convenient absence. But here, no doubt, there was the Deputy-Director’s commonsense idea that there was no call for special arrangements — there’s his farm, and the Agency house provided for the woman herself, alone. The guards and driver, the attendant Tomasi: they are there to serve needs, not to question whatever these may be; security has wide implications. Let them gossip and laugh, who knows what it might be about, in the kitchen; no-one’s going to take notice of whatever they might pass on to others at their social level.

The Administrator and his wife Flora rarely came to his Assistant’s bachelor woman house; it was so much more friendly to have her using as some sort of real temporary home the one Flora kept open to many, a household with food and drink and unquestioning welcome always just beyond the door, the young son plucking the guitar. Yet they must have guessed a new element had entered Roberta Blayne’s tour of duty, even before this became tacitly recognised and generally accepted through certain signs in the conduct of Deputy-Director Gladwell Shadrack Chabruma. If Flora in her all-embracing but fixed impressions of a personality on first acquaintance noticed nothing, it is certain that Alan Henderson, working beside Roberta every day, and dependent on the results of their exchanged observations of the people with whom they had to engage, was aware — and as only a man can be — of a warmed femaleness that emanates from a women who is being made love to, dormant in her before. He said nothing to his wife; put his private observation in the category of Agency matters that should fall into ‘aid talk’ which was, on her own dictate, not her business … But then as months went by and evidently the Deputy-Director gained confidence in the acceptance of his affair (maybe his colleagues in Government hierarchy even thought it might be useful: some woman from the aid Agency of which they had important financial expectations) he began to appear in public alone with Roberta Blayne. Flora, like others, became aware that her bachelor woman of retiring personality, not-so-young, was having an affair with a member of the Government. She was warned by her husband not to broach the subject. — But if Roberta talks to me? I mean it’s out of the blue! Who would have thought he’d … that up-tight fellow … and if he did, one of the young interns in his office or some speakerine from TV, like the others pick, that would be what he’d go for, if at all—

Roberta didn’t ‘talk’ to her, but as time passed Flora made clear with inoffensive remarks (Of course I don’t suppose you’ll come, you’ll have better things to do this weekend) that she knew of the affair and was pleased about it, for her friend the bachelor woman’s sake. Soon Roberta was able to respond quite naturally, yes, I’m going to the farm with Gladwell if he hasn’t got some special meeting coming up on Saturday. It was mutually understood with the Hendersons that much as they would have liked it, and surely Roberta too, he was not invited with her to intimate dinners at the Henderson house — too much of a defiant sign to others present that this was a particular relationship. When he came as of right to official parties there, both she and the hosts treated him on the same level of impersonal friendliness they did any other guest. There’s a protocol for every situation.

At the President’s celebration at State House on the anniversary of Independence Day she must have glanced over, without noticing, Flora tête-à-tête with someone in the crowd, a woman. Flora came up with the half-comic tolerant expression of having made an escape — Good soul, I’m sure, but what can you talk about with her — when you get onto the standby, what are her interests, she tells you about her favourite TV soapie. Homebody of the new kind, the city peasant — you know the poor dears — Flora stopped herself; then the aside — That’s Gladwell’s wife. Must have married her very young and apart from producing a brood … she’s sure no asset in furthering his career now.—

She looked across the room at the woman, as an intrusion on privacy; observing herself, rather, as the lover of the woman’s husband, squeamish; old conventions wagging a finger at her. It was the only time they met — or rather didn’t meet. He sometimes mentioned, in contexts where it was natural and inevitable, his wife: a car accident in which they’d both been slightly injured, subject come up when on one of the weekend trips to the farm the driver-bodyguard almost landed his passengers in a culvert (this time certainly did have a hangover).

There must have been some sort of accommodation with his wife; anyone, like Roberta Blayne, who has been once coupled knows there are many acknowledged sidetracks on the secret map of a marriage. Sometimes they met in a restaurant where he might be seen, by others in parliamentary suits, dining with a woman from the Agency personnel. His woman, no doubt. Many had theirs, if not in their company on that occasion. It was that sort of restaurant.

One day when she entered another restaurant he had chosen there was a young woman seated at the table with him. She hesitated a moment, whether she should approach, he saw her, lifted a palm, she came to it. He gave her name in introduction first. — Roberta Blayne. She is Assistant to Mr Henderson who heads the Agency here, now. — The girl half-rose with the casual acknowledgement of her generation and smiling, held out a hand to the woman standing before her. The hand was long, supple, ringed on fingers and thumb, nails painted fluorescent butterfly-wing blue; an attribute. She was a confidently attractive girl, her beauty arranged in contemporary high style — hair straightened and secured at the crown by a bobbing bunch of glossy curls to be bought in the shops, the liquid flash of slanting eyes, bold lips sculpted in purple-red. — Phila, my younger daughter, she’s just back for a break from her law studies in Nottingham. Your country. — So the two women, his women, talked about England, the girl’s impressions, what was endearing she said she found in ‘the Brits’, what was annoying, what in their ways made her laugh. — You miss England? You’re English, aren’t you?—

She supposed she was. But something of all the countries where there’d been tours of duty.

— How’re you finding Africa? I’ve only realised since I’ve been living away what it’s really like, here! My homeground, hometown. Weird! Really weird. My father doesn’t like to hear that, he says I’m forgetting who I am. Fat chance — the Brits keep me aware of that. But seriously — or rather not seriously, I’m having a great time. — She caught her father’s hand, flirtatiously reassuring any disapproval in his silence. A silence which otherwise was easy; his remarks to the girl now and then, over the food, no suggestion that the situation of the three present might evoke suspicion and another kind of disapproval: in the daughter.

She wanted to ask — sometime — why he had wanted his daughter to meet her, to reveal her, so to speak, to his family, his real life—that is how she thought of it. While she was not sure of what was hers, she was of his. The right time to ask never came. Perhaps he had not thought of the threesome in the way she had seen it; for him, simply some parental obligation to take his visiting daughter out to lunch.

If she had need to justify — exonerate — her presence at the table it would have to be in acceptance that she was not the first nor would be the last of the Deputy-Director’s affairs. Outside his real life.

What she knew was that she and this man were giving one another what each needed. Love, yes, in one of its many complex forms; one of the simplest. Not-so-young; what might be called the cerebral aspect of her (she knew she was no great intellect but she had a well-exercised intelligence of the workings of the contemporary world) first brought them together; he expected to engage seriously with her, draw from her opinions other than those he was supplied with officially, exchange different perceptions of motives, of what a newcomer saw happening here, his country, and the world she had had experience of quite widely.

In love-making there came an eloquence beyond speech. And this eloquence of pleasure brought her to the danger of confiding — part of the release of orgasm, handing over what can be used against you. In such a moment, the privacy that is like no other — Buffalo Mine. You know, the day I asked, that day. My grandfather owned it and he ran it like a slave plantation. 1920s. He sent a man on foot all the way to that liquor store, still there, you stopped at in town, to fetch a case of whisky for his weekend booze party and the man walked all the way back with a case of whisky bottles on his head. Went on Monday and was back on Friday. Every Monday every Friday. My grandfather made a famous joke of it, my man, what heads they have, thick as a log.—

He said nothing. Suddenly tears of shame, old shame unshed, what heads they have came from her and trickled to his shoulder. He released an arm from their embrace and brushed at the shoulder as if something had alighted there; the fingers discovered their wetness.

— What is the matter.—

— What we did here. In my family. The rest of us. What liars we are, coming to these countries as if we hadn’t ever been, marvelling at the primitive—oh yes it’s a dirty condescending racist word don’t ever use it but the sense of it’s there even in our commendment, our reports, our praise — don’t say it, naïve obtuseness thick-headed—oh the people’s capacity to endure burdens, the usefulness of this capacity, sound basis for development, hard as a log the possession of the power of money over it that’s my man — She could hear her raving whisper.

His voice in the dark a vibration through his breast. — Things like this happened long ago. Nothing to do with you. That’s how they were. That’s how it was with them. Those people. Such things … It was the tradition.—

They made love again and she sensed, from him, she must resist the desire to caress his head, pass her hand over its shape again and again to banish what cannot be changed, a past. Not even by development. She belongs, he belongs, to the present.


In every tour of duty that is going well there is a looming frustration that there will be recall, a new posting, another country, just when more time is needed to see projects fulfilled.

— What d’you think — should I ask for an extension? Would you stay?—

There was no innuendo in Alan Henderson’s question; he was thinking of their effectiveness as a working team. And she answered on the same practical level, using Agency-speak. — If you believe we really could get those five rural projects to the stage of capability they should have if they’re going to become viable under their own steam, when we do go. Worth a try, with New York?—

The Deputy-Director of Land Affairs knew — must have known — it was the business of Government to be ready for a change of the aid development team assigned to the country — that her tour of duty would end in a few months. She did not tell him her Administrator was applying for an extension. To her, this would somehow have taken away the integrity of her response to Alan Henderson; introduced an unacceptable factor in her code: commitment to her purpose in this country. For her to hope for the extension; that would make her the liar, descendant of liars. And as well she did not tell him. The Administrator’s request was refused; he was already lined up for another post, another country. No doubt she was too unimportant for a decision of where she would be ‘deployed’ to be made in advance of her return to headquarters. She and Alan Henderson redoubled their work to leave what they knew as a sustainable achievement behind them, and the hours and days of effort without a sense of time alternated intensely with nights when an official car was hidden in the Administrator’s Assistant’s yard, and the Sundays she was riding horses on the farm of the Deputy-Director of Land Affairs. The California house had come to life within its alien shell as two people talked, ate and drank, made love there. Her shampoo was in the bathroom. There were no reproachful ghosts to be met when they slept in the big bed, a couple’s bed. The wife prefers town. The only troubling matter for Roberta Blayne was a growing attachment to the farm. It was as if no-one had ever owned it before, because attachment, love for a place, is like love for a human being, it brings that place, that person, to heightened life. The love affair would end (the not-so-young know this), Gladwell Shadrack Chabruma would forget her, she would be elsewhere and forget him, they’d exchange Christmas cards until one or the other moved to a new address, but the farm, the rides alone in the sun and wind with the bony dogs running beside her, the children waving, prancing about, showing off, the red earrings of the pepper pods she had seen for the first time; the farm would be one of the experiences knotted into the integument of her life. In development jargon, yes, sustainable.

Oh there were times — times she knew when she would crave for this man, a dread distress of anticipation that this would happen. The reserve that characterised him — up-tight, withdrawn — was indeed: a reserve. A reserve of sensuous energy, tenderness and rousing powers of the body. Beneath the armour of the parliamentary suit there was the passionate assurance, for her, of being desired and — there’s another form of capability — the response of desire that revived in her, turned out to be still available from ten, twenty years back. But this coming parting was something other than the expected parting with pleasure. Leaving a country where she had been before and where, maybe — she shouldn’t indulge herself with the idea — maybe she had made up for the past in some way by her work. Leaving a man; the farm is what she will take away with her from here.

Three months, two months before the tour of duty ends. Meanwhile, something gratifying happened to the Deputy-Director; the Director of Land Affairs was involved in a corruption scandal, and Gladwell Shadrack Chabruma was appointed in his place. She felt a happy, unpossessive pride, on his behalf, another kind of pleasure; the real share in this recognition of his achievements belonged with his family.

Success now changed public reading of his taciturnity, brought the conclusion that it signalled integrity — protected high intelligence, ability, efficiency and honesty—he had come clean out of the inquiry that brought the Department into question and caught his superior with, if not a hand in the till, a hand extended to bribes in the granting of land rights to certain individuals and companies, local and international.

One month before the Administrator of the Agency and his Assistant were due to depart; their replacements had arrived, were temporarily accommodated in an hotel; Roberta Blayne was beginning to pack in bubble-wrap the collection of fragile gifts, the clay pots so likely to return, in transit, to the state of their origin, back to handsful of crumbling earth of the country. He came from a parliamentary sub-committee he had chaired, and was telling her about; through the window she saw the driver and bodyguards going off on foot down the drive calling goodbyes to the yard: so he was going to stay the night with her, they were going to make love. He had poured them each a whisky; he was watching her busied with her pots.

She thought she read his scepticism, laughed. — They’ll probably be thrown around by the luggage handlers anyway, but I might as well take a chance one or two could survive.—

— I’m going to marry you.—

He said it.

She went on placing a ribbon of sticky tape round the wrapped pot. The tape did not hold and curled back to her fingers.

That is what he said.

He sat down on the sofa where they had been side by side the first time he arrived. The Deputy-Director is coming to visit you.

She abandoned the package and came over to him, her fingers entangled in tape, her face a strange grimace of disbelief, amazement, and a loss of control that came out something like a laugh.

He looked at her openly, no need to say it again.

— I’d never be the cause of a divorce. Never. Gladwell. You may not understand that because, well, I know, I’ve been with you and all along there was your wife. Family. But we both understood. I’d never break up a marriage. Never. It’s been good together. I don’t have to tell you. I don’t know, it wasn’t my business to know what … the … position … arrangement is between you and her. In your life. I suppose I was wrong, but I assumed … how can I say it … we weren’t harming her. Oh I’m not such a hypocrite that I don’t know you’re harming a woman when you sleep with her husband, whether she’s aware of it or not, is aware of it and accepts … We’ve been happy — lucky — anyway I’ve been — lucky. — She turned and began to unwind the tangle of tape from her fingers, began binding her pot for transport; the gesture was there: I’m leaving in a month. I’m recalled. You’re recalled, my lover, home. The gesture was a tender and grateful conveyance.

— I am not talking about divorce. She is my wife, of course. Roberta, you will also be my wife. You respect her, I know. She will respect you. It is quite usual in our society. Legal. Always been. We don’t have to do what your people do, divorce, remarry, divorce, remarry, and so much trouble and unhappiness, broken homes you’re always hearing about. We don’t have to follow every custom of the West. You know that. It’s what you say in your work. Don’t worry. This country, it’s now yours, you do real work here you can’t do, over there. Good together. I know that, you know that, yes.—


And now she did talk. As bluntly as he did.

She went to the Henderson house on some ordinary pretext and she and Flora chatted pleasantly, desultorily for a while as usual among people with a way of life in common. Then she stopped; as if someone took her by the shoulders, brought her to herself.

— He said he’s going to marry me.—

No need to name the lover to this woman friend.

— He’s asked you to marry him? Roberta! So it’s become really serious? Roberta!—

— Not exactly asked. Said he was going to.—

— Oh well it’s just another way of asking, in an affair … What’d you say?—

— I would never be the cause of a divorce. Never. But he had no intention … — In order to phrase it at a formal distance: —It is to take another wife.—

Flora was smiling, moved by a proposal recognising the qualities of a surrogate marriageable daughter. — You.—

She was conscious of being studied; Flora might never have seen her before. If a love affair changes a woman, as Alan Henderson had privately noticed, the idea of marriage, for a bachelor woman like this one, also brings about a change in the perceptions of a beholder.

— I can’t believe it. — Her own voice, empty of expression.

Flora was excitedly intrigued. — But why not. The Minister of Environment and Tourism has two wives and families, I mean it’s less common nowadays, they just get divorced instead when they fancy someone else, but it’s still accepted. Even part of national pride, for some. There’s even talk the President would be happy to do likewise you know — but it wouldn’t do to have a meeting with the Queen or the American President with two of them in tow! Why shouldn’t the Director of Land Affairs want another wife — a different one. Not necessarily you … Why can’t you believe it!—

— Not him.—

— You think he’s too sophisticated? Our way. But it’s obviously because he’s serious about you, however you take it, it’s a recognition of status, you’re not just …—

Flora was flattered: for her. At least she had the tact not to ask what the Agency Assistant, bachelor woman, proposed to do next. Was that to be the latest dinner-party story.

Alan, her Administrator, closed the door in his office and he, too, looked at her from yet another perspective than that he had already noted. — Flora’s told me about Gladwell. I hope you don’t mind.—

— I was going to do so myself, anyway. But we’ve been so busy since … — The Agency was preparing to co-host with the Ministry of Health an international conference on malaria.

— I don’t mind admitting to you that Flora and I have talked a lot. She has the idea you are somehow offended by Gladwell. —

It was easier to speak to him than to his wife, there was the trust of their working relationship together.

— No, no, how could I be offended by the idea of being his wife — black man’s wife, is that how Flora thinks of it, that’s how people would think of it? — when we’ve been lovers all these months.—

— But Roberta you are offended at the idea of being taken as second wife, you see it as entering some kind of old harem …? So he’s offended you, there, no?—

— I can’t believe he would ever think of it. That the … situation … could be a normal part of his life. Now.—

—I’m going to be frank with you. I’m sure he’s become very attached to you, but there’s another aspect to this — proposal — his wife is a simple woman who takes care of the kids, there’s a boy of about ten as well as the grown ones making their way around the world — she shops for the official residence she’s so proud of, watches TV; and has nothing to say to him, he obviously can’t discuss his work, inside politics and problems of Government, not with her. And you notice she doesn’t appear with him at official dinners of the kind when a wife’s expected to be along to entertain the wives of visiting bigwigs. You think his idea’s a kind of regression, isn’t that so. But it’s because he needs a companion on his own wave-length at his stage of life and clearly that’s what he’s found these past months in you. He’s seen how astutely you hold your own at meetings, how you can have an — informed — exchange with all kinds of people! That’s how he thinks of a second wife. Not a handy bedmate.—

— Alan, you speak as if he’s told you all this. But you don’t know him that well …—

— I don’t need to, to know what I’ve said about his needs — I’ve my stored profile (touched at his forehead) of men in high public office in developing countries, where women may be beautiful and desirable but social disadvantages, pressures of all kinds — you know them — have deprived them of education, worldliness, if you like. Even now, there aren’t enough women here on the level of the Minister of Welfare, that great gal, one of the liveliest MPs, never mind the males … And there’s something else — strict confidence! — could relate to Gladwell’s decision. He’s strongly tipped to be made a Minister in the President’s cabinet reshuffle. So — just that you understand motives. See him from right kind of background perspective we use, you and I — all of us in Agency work. A respect for the others’ mores — traditions. Doesn’t imply you — we — have to adopt them, of course.—

What Alan Henderson didn’t tell her was that in the conclusion of discussion of the startling proposition with his wife, Flora had brought up another perspective on the future cabinet minister’s proposal to take Roberta Blayne as number two wife. — She’s not the type to go out to attract a man for herself, is she; this’s a chance with a man who’s somebody, plenty to offer for a woman like her, she’d have a high position, she loves this country, that farm of his, she’d be able to continue her commitment to development with his influence right up top … Not many chances likely to come her way, New York, Geneva … Not so young anymore.—


So her colleague the Administrator tacitly understood the rejection she was having to formulate for her lover. She rehearsed to herself in many different, useless ways, how she would have to tell him she couldn’t believe he, so completely in charge of himself, a man of the present, free, could want to dredge up into his life some remnant from the past — how could he not have seen that it was offensive, surely to him as to her; how disguise the aversion.

What was the protocol for this.

Then there came to her — Buffalo Mine. How he had received her shame: her taking from him the release of orgasm, blurting the dinner-party story, as if the pleasure were not what her blood-line disqualified her to share, illicit, an orgasm stolen from past betrayal of all that makes up human feeling between people. Every Monday on foot to I. Saretsky every Friday back on foot with the case of whisky head hard as a log. Grandfather’s ‘my man’; her man, making love to her. He had shown no shock; no revulsion as she blubbered out the shame. He calmed her matter-of-factly, how was it—‘It was their tradition’. And now she was primly struggling to conceal how she disdained him for expecting her to accept something he chose from his past; an honour; her ugly past was not his. He absolved her from her burden of ancestry — it’s got nothing to do with you: she was indicting him for his. It’s accepted, Flora said. Their tradition.


Her Administrator had shut the door of his office, once again. — How’s it going?—

— I haven’t found a way yet.—

— Look, I can arrange for you to go back ahead of me, reports — some such — I want headquarters to evaluate with you before I’m debriefed, you can prepare for me, answering their questions and so on, expanding … You could leave right away. Wouldn’t that help?—


Of course it would.

The official car arrived. He came to make love with her and it seemed to her the right ending for both of them. He had withdrawn into his old silent self-composure, awaiting her answer without any mention. When they lay together, afterwards, it was the time, coming out of the consolation offered that she still desired and received him. — I am going back to New York the day after tomorrow.—

Out of his silence. — You will resign there.—

— No. I have a new posting somewhere.—

She had not found the right words to explain that love affairs are a cul-de-sac on the marriage map. The shining official car concealed in the yard, the royal coach, had turned into a pumpkin. She was again a member of an aid agency’s changing personnel, walking away barefoot.

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