Bray said, “You’re the President.”
“But not with you.”
“Oh yes.” Bray put himself firmly in his place.
Mweta looked deserted. He had the strange combination — the smile affirming life, and in the eyes, the politician’s quick flicker. “I don’t even know where my books are. I think they must still be over at Freedom Building.”
“I was up there to have a look at the old place on Friday.” The shoddy block behind the main streets of the town, leased from an Indian merchant, had been PIP headquarters from the years when all they could afford was one back room.
“Well, Freedom Building is over at parliament now!”
“Of course it’ll be seen to that the Party machine doesn’t run down,” Bray said.
But Mweta had not forgotten the polite English way of making a warning sound like an assumption. He laughed.
“How could that be?”
“Well, I’m glad to hear it. Specially in the rural areas. People could feel nearly as remote from what goes on in parliament as they did when it wasn’t their government, you know.”
“That’s what I’ve got ministers of local government for. And I’ll still see as many people as possible, myself. I want to tour the whole country at least every few months, but already I’ve had to take on this fellow … at Freedom Building people used to come and see me any time of the day or night, and sometimes when Joy got up in the morning she found someone already sitting in the yard….”
“He’s essential, I should say. For the time being, anyway. People will get used to it. They’ll learn to understand.”
“Oh he manages very well. But it’s not what I want.”
“What’s she doing here — the Englishwoman?”
“She was here before — she did the flower vases, things like that,” said Mweta. “And for the celebrations, Joy wanted someone, she wasn’t sure she could manage.”
“Everything went off splendidly,” said Bray. “Not a hitch anywhere.”
“Let’s go out there.” Mweta stood up in the middle of the room as if he were shedding it. They took the first door from the corridor into the park and fell into strolling step together, over the rough grass and under the sprinkled shade, as they had done, walking and talking, years ago. Mweta was smaller and more animated than Bray, and seen from the distance of the house, as they got farther away their progress would have been a sort of dance, with the small man surging a step ahead and bringing up short the attention of the taller one. They paused or went on, in pace with the rise and fall of discussion. Mweta was telling a story that displayed the unexpected shrewdness of Jason Malenga, the Minister of Finance, about whom Bray had heard many doubts expressed, not only by Roly Dando. “Of course if I’d kept Foreign Affairs for myself, Tola Tola would have been the one for Finance, but it was decided I couldn’t hope to do it.”
“No, how could you.” No mention of the obvious choice of Shinza.
“Well, others have tried. In any case”—they exchanged a look— “Tola Tola’s always there if Malenga needs advice.” Again, in spite of the silence over Shinza, so much taken for granted between them brought a qualifying remark: “If Malenga would ever admit it.”
They dismissed this with smiles. “What I might do”—Mweta gave way to the urge to seek reassurance for the rightness of decisions already made— “in a few months time — next year — if I reshuffle, I’d give Tom Msomane the Interior, shift Talisman Gwenzi to Finance, perhaps a double portfolio, let him keep Mines—” Bray’s silence stopped him. “I know what people say about Tom. But he’s a chap who can handle things, you know? — he’s shrewd but he can pick up a delicate situation without smashing it. He’s got, you know, tact. And for the Interior — problems of refugees, deportations, and so on. You should see the file. Just waiting for the celebrations to be over, and then they must be opened.” He gave a rough, nervous sniff. “I am thinking seriously about Tom.”
Bray said, “But for the Interior. Doesn’t he take too personal a view? Won’t he be inclined to settle old scores?”
“Well, maybe, that may be, but being in office, the responsibilities and so on. I think he’ll be all right. Sometimes you have to take one risk against another.”
Bray didn’t know whether Mweta was inviting a question about Mso support, or not. His face was screwed up, momentarily, in a grimace against the sun or his thoughts; perhaps he felt he had made enough confessions.
“I’d rather see him safe in Posts and Telegraphs, myself.”
Mweta nodded to acknowledge the joke, rather than in agreement.
“Adamson, you never thought about Shinza — for Foreign Minister?” He phrased it carefully that way, but Mweta was quick to take it up the way it really was— “Look, I’m prepared to do something for Edward because”—he shook his head wildly as if to get rid of something— “because he thinks he taught me everything, and — because the past is the past, I’m not the one to try to get away from that. — But what it can be, I don’t know, that’s my trouble.”
“He’s a brilliant man.”
“You still think so?”
“Oh come, you know so.”
“James,” Mweta said, making it clear this was to please him, “what can I offer Shinza? You think an under — secretaryship or something like that? Because that’s all I’ve got. And it wouldn’t be what he wants. He wants to change the world and use me and this country to do it for him, never mind what happens to the country in the meantime. I can make him an under-secretary — that’s all.”
“You can’t do that.”
Mweta opened his firm lips and closed them again without having spoken.
“I should be inclined,” said Bray, hearing himself come out more gently pontifical than he had wished, “to find him some special position not directly involved in actual government, but recognizing his claims to elder-statesmanship-out-of-office. Mm? I should have thought he’d have done darned well as representative at U.N., for instance. For a start.” He remained old-maidishly composed while Mweta stared at him in bitter astonishment. “Our ambassador to United Nations? Edward Shinza? After what he said? After what he said to the Commonwealth Secretary? His so-called minority reports at the last conference, not six months before Independence? After what we’ve had from him?”
“Make him spokesman for the majority and you’ll see. You talk as if he’d started a rival party.”
“He acts as if he has! A lot of people think it would be better if he had! Come out in the open!” Mweta began levelling with his heel a trail of fresh molehills on the grass. “—What a nuisance, these things — If he stops sulking away down there at home, well … It’s up to him….”
“I hope you’re not going to let him sulk.”
“You’ve been to see him, James?”
“I don’t know if I’ll get the chance. I couldn’t believe he wouldn’t be here for Independence.”
Mweta shrugged; appealed suddenly. “We’re going to talk every few weeks like this. We’ll make it a regular thing.” They had turned back towards the house, rising red and solid out of the hazy, unassertive shapes of the bush.
“But my dear Adamson, I shall have to go back pretty soon. I was thinking of next week. You’re all getting down to work again now. Time the guests left.”
Mweta stopped again. “Back? But you are back.”
“I don’t know what I could do, if I stayed,” Bray said, smiling.
The conventions would make it easy for them both; whenever they reached this point they had simply to go on following his polite pretence that he had never thought of himself as anything but a visitor, and Mweta’s polite pretence that a place had been provided for him as something other than that. It was so easy, very tempting — he looked at the ugly house looming up in their way — one could walk round the past they had inhabited, as one does round a monument.