Free A Guest of Honour by Nadine Gordimer

that made it of the present. A small party of white people out to dinner came in, the patina of well-being on heads fresh from the hairdresser, faces shiny from a second shave. Laughter, the worldly kind that causes quiet paroxysms beneath well-fitting suits, had taken a huddle of three white men sitting farther up the bar counter as they said to each other urgently, “Wait—wait—” and then added a twist to the anecdote that set them off again. A black man in an American tartan jacket was with another in a dark-blue suit, talking to him without looking at him, his mind elsewhere. Orange fingernails scratched up cashew nuts; a woman who called everybody “sweetie” protested because there was no olive in her martini, protested again when the barman was reproached. Two more black men came in and looked over the heads conspiratorially, haughtily, then saw the raised finger of the man in tartan and broke into the sort of hearty formalities of hand-shaking and back-slapping that the white men would have winked about before, but that now simply brought a momentary distant look to their eyes.
    The occasion for the party with the ladies was clearly the need to entertain a tall, blond young man from out of town to whom they all listened with the bright show of attention accorded to wits or experts. He was what is recognized as a Guards officer type, perhaps a little too typical ever to have been one. Not so young as all that, either; his small, handsome, straight-backed head on broad shoulders had longish, silky hair thinning on the pate, and when he smiled his teeth were bony-looking. He had a way of bearing down with his nostrils and drawing air audibly through them, to express exasperation or raise a laugh. Certainly his friends found this irresistible. His diction was something no longer heard, in England, anyway. Most likely explanation was that he must have taken part in amateur theatricalsunder the direction of someone old enough to have modelled himself on Noel Coward. Amateur theatre had been popular among the civil servants and settlers; even Olivia had once appeared in one of those dusty thrillers set in Lord Somebody’s country house.
    â€œâ€¦ Oh Lord yes. Her father’s getting right out too.
Right
out. The place at Kabendi Hills has gone. Carol’s heart—broken over the horses … to Jersey, I think.… Chief Aborowa said to me last week, there’s going to be trouble over the culling—some of these chaps’ve had that bloody great government stud bull the department’s spent a fortune on—and I said, my dear chap, that’s
your
worry, I hope there’ll be a couple of billion gallons of sea between me and your cows and your wives and the whole damned caboodle.… ‘I don’t want Pezele near my stool.’ I said don’t be a damned fool, Aborowa—as soon as I see him alone there’s no nonsense, I talk to him like a Dutch uncle, we were drinking brandy together—”
    â€œâ€”Priceless!” One of the women was so overcome she had to put down her glass.
    â€œâ€”Heavens, that’s nothing—Carol buys old Aborowa’s wife’s corsets for her.”
    More laughter.
    â€œHis senior wife. Poor old baggage, she doesn’t know where the bouz begins and the derrière ends. Colossal. Such a dear old soul. I don’t know what she’ll do without Carol, they adore Carol. Yes, buys her corsets for her, bloomers, I don’t know what … Special department at Harrods, for the fat ladies of circuses or something …” He drew breath through pinched nostrils while they looked at each other delightedly. “I don’t know who’s going to replace
that
service when we go, I can tell you, central government or provincial authority or what the devil these gentlemen’re going to call themselves. M’lord Pezele—great fat Choro gentleman from the Eastern Province, he