He will have heard her flushing the loo, water coming from the old squeaking taps as she washed, she did not look at herself in the bathroom mirror. Hadn’t made himself comfortable. There in his parliamentary dress he was standing as if he had just entered. — Come. — She turned to the sofa; while he seated himself, she indeed drew the curtains and opened the cupboard where the hospitality bottles were.
— It’s too late for tea, don’t you agree. Gladwell. What’ll it be?—
— Whatever you are having.—
— Whisky? Soda, water?—
— I prefer soda.—
She drew up a little table for their drinks and joined him on the sofa. — We have a visitor from WHO in New York, we’ve been taking him around with people from the Ministry of Health, some from Welfare.—
— It is good when these principals come, see for themselves. Sometimes.—
— And other times?—
— They don’t understand what they see, what it means; what we are doing. — One of his pauses. — They’re seeing something else they bring along with them. What is it, the word … when I was a student at University of Virginia — a paradigm. Yes.—
Sometimes.
The curt proviso caught at her abstracted attention. The few occasions they had met, even in the opportunities of the weekend drive, he had not allowed himself any uncertainties. Now from this small indication that this official was also a man with doubts came the release coffee at the Holiday Inn had not brought her.
— I shouldn’t be doing this job.—
Spoken suddenly for herself. But as if overheard by both — the man was here so it must have been for him, too. — We were at that new water purification plant … two clinics they fund. And the old Queen Mary Hospital. You know.—
— Their AIDS programme.—
— WHO’s and ours, the Agency.—
— You have had a very busy day. Roberta.—
And she was the one who had not seen what there was to see: here was a reassuring presence seated in physical solidity, affirming her worth, the correctness of the three-piece suit a sign of order — like the gown of a judge in the discipline of the law, a surgeon in his white coat — in a shaking world. A man in command of himself. Strong perfectly articulated hands enlaced at rest on his knees.
— It was unbearable. You should go — no, don’t, don’t go, it’s what no-one’s meant to see, how can I say, the processes, what happens after death and it’s supposed to be buried away, but it’s all there — living. The babies just born and that means beginning to die, there in front of you.—
In profile she saw his mouth drawn stiffly, eyebrows contracted. That he did not look at her made it possible for her to control the stupid, useless indulgence of tears.
He picked up his glass and drank, then stirred slightly, towards her. — I told you not to walk out because of land mines still there, my uncle’s place. His youngest was home for school holidays and went with his dog to shoot a bird for his mother’s pot and he was blown up. Both legs gone. Sixteen years. He died. They can’t plant their fields.—
When the man had left she didn’t know whether he had meant to reproach her weakness, or comfort her with the proof — seen it for herself — that the old couple continues to live surrounded by the Death that had killed their son, lying in wait for them to step upon it.
The tour of the WHO representative ended. Roberta Blayne and her Administrator took up their usual activities until the next partner in development came. She was doing her job. In the social life promoted by Flora Henderson beyond official entertaining and being entertained (enough, enough aidshoptalk) the bachelor woman was always in the company of couples. She danced with other women’s husbands; no woman seemed to fear her. She couldn’t consider herself lonely, and the work was among the most fulfilling she had ever been assigned to, since Alan Henderson used her particularly in meetings where, in accordance with the Agency’s Mission Statement, local communities’ ideas of what they most needed — dams, access roads to markets, chicks and fingerlings to begin poultry- or fish-farming, roofing and desks for a new school — were to be joint projects with them. Many of those chosen by people to speak for them were women; somehow she created confidence: surely a woman would listen to them? — but the men respected her, too, an official position counters many traditional prejudices. Her Administrator would remark to Government officials, Roberta’s learning the language, you know, often she doesn’t need an interpreter! She would protest — she certainly did! But the fact that his Assistant was taking the trouble, in a tour of duty that lasts only a couple of years, to learn the main language of the country reflected well upon the Agency. Often the community would give her some small gift (no vicuna coat bribe — the Agency allowed acceptance as a token of trust) — a carved wooden spoon, woven straw bags, a clay pot; the house she’d been assigned to began to take on the signs of homely possession that come with objects which have their modest personal history.
The black car of the luxury model provided for the second echelons of Government office-bearers was in the yard — perhaps once a week, could be any day. The driver and bodyguards installed in the kitchen.
The Deputy-Director of Land Affairs was the one acquaintance among many in her job (she knew their names, faces round conference tables, gossip about them, by now) who had become a special kind of acquaintance; his presence at least claimed that. They progressed from exchanges and courteous argument about current events in the country and the continent, inevitably, as people do when such talk runs out, to link observations from the past: when I was young, when I was a kid, I remember I thought it would be, it was … and to offer experiences of childhood background. Without any confidentiality, of course. These ordinary anecdotes are common currency.
But you are what you were.
There, then, the experiences don’t meet; he began minding his father’s cattle, classic for a government career in Africa, she was at a girls’ school in an English cathedral town, the bells pealed while the basketball was aimed, the cattle lowed as they were driven under the herdboy’s whip. He had been to a mission school, then a college in some neighbouring African country from where there came his scholarship to America. He had once mentioned a university. University of Virginia, wasn’t it? Here, experience could be shared; well, she had studied for a year in the USA, exchange programme with an English university. He had wanted to go on to the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard; it was part of the limits of contact he apparently always set himself that he did not offer the sequel to the intention. She had learnt not to fill his silences, but sometimes there was the vacuum’s pressure to continue. Out of politeness he would have to make some sort of explanation.
— I was married, at home. Away a long time, I had to come back. Children.—
— They must be grown up now? Satisfaction to you … It’s a trade-off, I suppose. I was married, but no children, unfortunately. Or maybe fortunately as there was a divorce. But I wonder if you really missed much, Harvard, I mean. You’ve gone through another kind of school of government, haven’t you, right here.—
— We are all learners in the world. But academic things in a c.v., they impress people.—
— In government careers? At high level? I wouldn’t have thought so. The President hasn’t got a Harvard degree, not even a less grand university one from overseas, far as I know.—
— There are other qualifications to make up.—
He smiled at her in pride, lest she lure him to a lapse into criticism of the Head of State. — He was one of our first leaders in our war of liberation … he is a man who has not abandoned our culture the same time as he can take on the world. You know.—