Flora was smiling, moved by a proposal recognising the qualities of a surrogate marriageable daughter. — You.—
She was conscious of being studied; Flora might never have seen her before. If a love affair changes a woman, as Alan Henderson had privately noticed, the idea of marriage, for a bachelor woman like this one, also brings about a change in the perceptions of a beholder.
— I can’t believe it. — Her own voice, empty of expression.
Flora was excitedly intrigued. — But why not. The Minister of Environment and Tourism 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!—
— Not him.—
— 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.—
— 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.
— 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.
— 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.—
— 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?—
— I can’t believe he would ever think of it. That the … situation … could be a normal part of his life. Now.—
—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.—
— Alan, you speak as if he’s told you all this. But you don’t know him that well …—
— 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 strongly tipped to be made a Minister in the President’s cabinet reshuffle. So — just that you understand motives. See him from right kind of background perspective we use, you and I — all of us in Agency work. A respect for the others’ mores — traditions. Doesn’t imply you — we — have to adopt them, of course.—
What Alan Henderson didn’t tell her was that in the conclusion of discussion of the startling proposition with his wife, Flora had brought up another perspective on the future cabinet minister’s proposal to take Roberta Blayne as number two wife. — She’s not the type to go out to attract a man for herself, is she; this’s a chance with a man who’s somebody, plenty to offer for a woman like her, she’d have a high position, she loves this country, that farm of his, she’d be able to continue her commitment to development with his influence right up top … Not many chances likely to come her way, New York, Geneva … Not so young anymore.—
So her colleague the Administrator tacitly understood the rejection she was having to formulate for her lover. She rehearsed to herself in many different, useless ways, how she would have to tell him she couldn’t believe he, so completely in charge of himself, a man of the present, free, could want to dredge up into his life some remnant from the past — how could he not have seen that it was offensive, surely to him as to her; how disguise the aversion.
What was the protocol for this.
Then there came to her — Buffalo Mine. How he had received her shame: her taking from him the release of orgasm, blurting the dinner-party story, as if the pleasure were not what her blood-line disqualified her to share, illicit, an orgasm stolen from past betrayal of all that makes up human feeling between people. Every Monday on foot to I. Saretsky every Friday back on foot with the case of whisky head hard as a log. Grandfather’s ‘my man’; her man, making love to her. He had shown no shock; no revulsion as she blubbered out the shame. He calmed her matter-of-factly, how was it—‘It was their tradition’. And now she was primly struggling to conceal how she disdained him for expecting her to accept something he chose from his past; an honour; her ugly past was not his. He absolved her from her burden of ancestry — it’s got nothing to do with you: she was indicting him for his. It’s accepted, Flora said. Their tradition.
Her Administrator had shut the door of his office, once again. — How’s it going?—
— I haven’t found a way yet.—
— Look, I can arrange for you to go back ahead of me, reports — some such — I want headquarters to evaluate with you before I’m debriefed, you can prepare for me, answering their questions and so on, expanding … You could leave right away. Wouldn’t that help?—
Of course it would.
The official car arrived. He came to make love with her and it seemed to her the right ending for both of them. He had withdrawn into his old silent self-composure, awaiting her answer without any mention. When they lay together, afterwards, it was the time, coming out of the consolation offered that she still desired and received him. — I am going back to New York the day after tomorrow.—
Out of his silence. — You will resign there.—
— No. I have a new posting somewhere.—
She had not found the right words to explain that love affairs are a cul-de-sac on the marriage map. The shining official car concealed in the yard, the royal coach, had turned into a pumpkin. She was again a member of an aid agency’s changing personnel, walking away barefoot.