Free Loot by Nadine Gordimer

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!—
    â€”Not him.—
    â€”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.—
    â€”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.
    â€”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.
    â€”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.—
    â€”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?—
    â€”I can’t believe he would ever think of it. That the … situation … could be a normal part of his life. Now.—
    â€” 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.—
    â€”Alan, you speak as if he’s told you all this. But you don’t know him that well …—
    â€”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