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 The reserve that characterised him — up-tight, withdrawn — was indeed: a reserve.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.—