Free Beer in the Snooker Club by Waguih Ghali

heartily shook hands with us.
    ‘You are very welcome here,’ he said, ‘and we don’t want you to feel in the least bit strangers. Come and meet the family. Ha,’ he said, looking at the flowers. ‘That’s very nice of you. That’s for Mother I expect; she’s in the kitchen and we’ll visit her in due course. But here, first, is my son and my daughters.’
    He had three daughters in their twenties and a thirty-year-old son who looked like his father. ‘That’s Jean, that’s Barbara, that’s Brenda and that’s my son John.’ We all shook hands and they said ‘hello, Ram’ and ‘hello, Font’.
    ‘Now come and meet Mother. We’re having a typical Sunday meal for you, and Mother is making sure it is one of her best.’
    We followed him to the kitchen. He put a hand each on our shoulders and sort of gave us to his wife.
    ‘Here they are, Mother.’
    She was also tall and rather thin, with a lively look in her bright blue eyes.
    ‘What lovely flowers,’ she said, wiping her hands; ‘it’s very nice of you to have thought of that.’ She shook hands with us and told us we were both welcome.
    We went back to the sitting-room and sat, rather shy, with our arms crossed, answering questions. Our old headmaster turned out to be Mrs Dungate’s brother, and we were told he had always loved Egyptians, ‘but unfortunately he is having trouble reconciling his views with those of the governing body of the school’. Dr Dungate was reading the letter to him about us.
    ‘Ah,’ he said, skipping a page, ‘we have this spot of bother about the visas. I cannot promise you anything and I do not want you to be disappointed, so I shall not give you any high hopes. You must bear in mind that if you are refused an extension of your stay, you must make sure you leave by the specified date.’ He lowered the letter and looked at us from above his spectacles by bending his head. There was both amusement and severity in his look. Mrs Dungate stood at the doorway listening.
    ‘If I were you I wouldn’t leave … if you want to stay, that is.’ It was John who said that.
    ‘Now don’t put any foolish ideas in their heads, John,’ his mother said. ‘I’m sure we’ll do all we can to have them stay, but they must not do anything against the law.’
    ‘I suppose you call eighty thousand of our soldiers in Suez against Egyptian wishes, not against the law?’ he said, standing up and walking about, his hands deep in his pockets.
    ‘Please, John.’
    ‘I’m sure every one of them has a visa duly stamped and paid for at the Egyptian consulate, otherwise they wouldn’t be in Suez. We English never break the law,’ he said; ‘it’s so malleable in our capable hands.’
    ‘We’ll jolly well see you stay,’ one of the girls said.
    ‘Now, now,’ Dr Dungate said, ‘we shall discuss the possibilities calmly, and see which is the best way of going about it. I am going to ask a Labour Member of Parliament I know to …’
    ‘Labour M.P.!’ pooh-poohed John. ‘Dad, you always refuse to see the true colours of most of those Labour M.Ps. Have you forgotten Sere …?’
    ‘I can hardly ask the Communist Party to help them, can I?’ his father said. John thrust his hands deeper in his pockets and sat down.
    Did Englishmen really rage against their own injustices? Font, his eyebrows reaching a good zenith of height, was staring at John with all his might.
    ‘I don’t think you would ask the Communist Party even if they could help,’ Brenda said. Brenda was the youngest and somehow different from her sisters. She wore a plain, neat dress and was simply combed, whereas Jean and Barbara wore trousers and had their hair in pony tails; which didn’t suit the eldest, Barbara, at all.
    Dr Dungate looked at us apologetically and smiled.
    ‘We have four different political opinions in this house,’ he said, ‘and I am supposed to be wholeheartedly in support of each one of them. John belonged to the Communist Party