| s-104
| Everything was just as it was. |
| s-105
| But everything was changed. |
| s-106
| All had turned over in the barrel of the world and steadied itself again. |
| s-107
| She knew, if he didn't, that he was going. |
| s-108
| It was night in Europe all the way. |
| s-109
| Dark rain in the afternoon in London when the plane took off, at Rome the airport a vast, bleary shopwindow shining blurred colours through rain. |
| s-110
| He hauled down his coat again to get out at Athens. |
| s-111
| The metal rail of the steps wheeled against the plane was icy-wet to his palm and in the streaming rain he did not smell the Aegean or thyme, as he had remembered from other journeys to Africa. |
| s-112
| Inside the airport under the yellow light the passengers sat down again on exhausted-looking chairs, bundled deep in their heavy clothing. |
| s-113
| An old woman with crinkly grey hair woke up at her post outside the lavatory and opened the door, smiling and grasping a filthy cleaning rag. |
| s-114
| He walked around to ease the cramp in his knees but there was a small circumference and within a few strides one found oneself back again at the shop, before which women and child passengers were drawn to gaze at embroidered aprons and evzone dolls. |
| s-115
| A girl of ten or eleven with the badges of the cantons of Switzerland sewn to the sleeve of her coat had exactly the look of Venetia at that age. |
| s-116
| He bought a postcard of brilliant blue sea and dazzling white ruins and tried to write, in what he could remember of Greek: |
| s-117
| Winter and darkness here but in Cambridge, perhaps, there's already spring yelling its head off? |
| s-118
| My love to you, James. |
| s-119
| Venetia had had a first in Greek, herself, only a year ago, and could laugh over the mistakes. |
| s-120
| But that was the end of Europe. |
| s-121
| At Kano a huge moon shone and in a light brighter than a European winter afternoon the passengers made their way across the tarmac at three in the morning against the resistance of a heat of the day persisting all through the night as the sun persists in a stone it has warmed. |
| s-122
| There was a smell of woodsmoke; |
| s-123
| the men moving about beneath the belly of the plane had bare black feet. |
| s-124
| When the passengers climbed aboard again, their clothes felt hairy and the plane was airless. |
| s-125
| He put the coat away on the rack, apologizing, trying not to hamper other people in the general move to rearrange gear; the anticipation of arrival, still some hours off, aroused in them not so much common purpose as a spread of instinct as in the lifted heads of a herd become aware of the promise of water. |
| s-126
| When the sun rose some slumped off into sleep, but women began to examine the plastic bags in which they kept their hats, and, as the hard beams of the sun struck into the cabin on hairnets, pale lips, and stubble, queues formed for the lavatories. |
| s-127
| While he was writing on the customs and immigration form, BRAY, Evelyn James, and the number of his passport, someone was reading his name over his shoulder; he flexed it awkwardly, not because he minded, but in mild embarrassment. |
| s-128
| The queue for the lavatory moved along a notch, he glanced up and the man, carrying a flowered sponge-bag, caught his eye with a tired vacant stare that changed to an expression of greeting. |
| s-129
| The woman who had dozed beside him all night communicating the intimate rhythm of her breathing but never exchanging a word, suddenly began to talk like a bird who has the cover taken off its cage. |
| s-130
| He wedged himself between the seats to recover the shoe she had lost somewhere over a distant desert; |
| s-131
| she laughed, protested apologetically, and shook cologne down into her freckled bosom. |
| s-132
| Dragging back the little curtain from the oval window, she looked into the dazzling glare of space and said, Glorious morning up here! and they discussed with animation the cold and sudden winter that was left behind. |
| s-133
| As he did not have a window seat he did not see the bush and the earth red as brick-dust and the furze of growth along the river-beds: |
| s-134
| not until the plane had come to a stop on the runway, and they were waiting for the health inspector to come aboard. |
| s-135
| He unhooked his safety belt and leaned over to look at an angle through the bleary lens on the far side of the aisle; and there it was, tiny and distorted and real, bush, earth, exactly as it remained in his mind always, without his thinking about it. |
| s-136
| It was underfoot. |
| s-137
| It was around. |
| s-138
| A black man in khaki shorts (used to be a white man in white stockings) sprayed a cloyingly perfumed insecticide over the passengers' heads as a precaution against the plane harbouring mosquitoes and tsetse flies. |
| s-139
| The doors opened; voices from without came in on currents of air; he emerged among the others into heady recognition taken in at all the senses, walking steadily across the tarmac through the raw-potato whiff of the undergrowth, the fresh, early warmth on hands, the cool metallic taste of last night's storm at the back of the throat, |
| s-140
| The disembarking passengers were all strangers again, connected not with each other but to the mouthing, smiling faces and waving hands on the airport balcony. |
| s-141
| He knew no one but the walk was processional, a reception to him, and by the time he entered the building over the steps where, as always, dead insects fallen from the light during the night had not been swept away, it was all as suddenly familiar and ordinary as the faces other people were greeting were, to them. |
| s-142
| Waiting to be summoned to the customs officers' booths, the companions of the journey ignored each other. |
| s-143
| Only the man with the flowered sponge-bag, as if unaware of this useful convention, insisted on a Here we are again smile. |
| s-144
| You're Colonel Bray? |
| s-145
| He spoke round the obstacle of a woman standing between them. |
| s-146
| Thought I recognized you in Rome. |
| s-147
| Welcome back. |
| s-148
| I must confess I don't remember you. |
| s-149
| I've been away a long time. |
| s-150
| The man had long coarse strands of sun-yellowed hair spread from ear to ear across a bald head and wore sunglasses that rested on fine Nordic cheekbones. |
| s-151
| I've only just come to live here... from down South. South Africa. |
| s-152
| Who was that I don't know... one of the people from the plane... a baldish fair man with an accent, I didn't catch the name. |
| s-153
| He'd recently moved up here. |
| s-154
| Oh Hjalmar Wentz must have been. |
| s-155
| He and his wife took over the Silver Rhino last year. |
| s-156
| I like old Hjalmar. |
| s-157
| He's just been to Denmark or somewhere because his mother died. |
| s-158
| We'll go in and have a steak there one evening, they're trying to make a go of it with a charcoal grill and whatnot. |
| s-159
| What happened to McGowan? |
| s-160
| Good God, they've been gone at least five or six years. |
| s-161
| There've been three other managers since then. |
| s-162
| It's difficult to do anything with that place now; |
| s-163
| it's got the character of the miners' pub it was, but it's very handy for the new government offices, not too overawing, so you get quite a few Africans coming in. |
| s-164
| A genteel lot, very conscious of their dignity, man-about-town and all that, you can imagine how the white toughies feel about all those white collars round black necks in the bar. |
| s-165
| Hjalmar's as gentle as a lamb and he has to keep the peace somehow. |
| s-166
| Oh I'll tell you who's still around though – Barry Forsyth. |
| s-167
| Yes, and making money. |
| s-168
| Forsyth Construction. You'll see the board everywhere. |
| s-169
| They tell me he's got the contract for the whole Isoza River reclamation scheme... employs engineers from Poland and Italy |
| s-170
| Because of the mosquitoes, they moved into the house. |
| s-171
| The spiders came out from behind the pictures and flattened like starfish against the walls. |
| s-172
| There was no air at all in the living-room, and a strong smell of hot fat. |
| s-173
| Every now and then, while dinner was awaited, their conversation was backed by intensely sociable sounds – pitched talk – let in from the kitchen as the servant went in and out, laying the table. |
| s-174
| There was another large meal, and an exchange about a bottle of white wine between Dando and his cook, Festus. |
| s-175
| Of course I don't open wrong kind bottle. |
| s-176
| I know when is eat-e chicken, I know when is eat-e beef. |
| s-177
| Well it is the wrong one, because I told you this morning I wanted the round flat bottle put in the fridge. |
| s-178
| You say I cook chicken, isn't it? |
| s-179
| I look, I see the round bottle is red wine inside... |
| s-180
| It's pink. |
| s-181
| I specially didn't say anything about the colour because I didn't want to muddle you up. |
| s-182
| I know how obstinate you are, Festus... |
| s-183
| They argued self-righteously as two old-maid sisters. |
| s-184
| Festus could be heard retailing the exchange, confidently in the right, in the kitchen; |
| s-185
| Dando, equally assured, went on talking as if without interruption. |
| s-186
| It's not an exaggeration to say that what they're having to do is introduce a so-called democratic social system in place of a paternalist discipline. |
| s-187
| You haven't replaced the District Commissioner by appointing a district magistrate. |
| s-188
| You've only replaced one of his functions. |
| s-189
| You've still got to get country people to realize that these functions are now distributed among various agencies: |
| s-190
| it's no good running to the magistrate if someone needs an ambulance to take him to the next town, for instance... |
| s-191
| In bush stations there wasn't anything we weren't responsible for. |
| s-192
| Exactly. |
| s-193
| But now people have to learn that there's a Department of Public Health to go to. |
| s-194
| A good thing! |
| s-195
| A good thing for everybody! |
| s-196
| What a hopeless business it was, hopeless for the D.C. and for the people. |
| s-197
| Dependency and resentment hand in hand. |
| s-198
| Whatever the black magistrates are like, whatever the administration's like, it won't be like that. |
| s-199
| The magistrates are all right, don't you worry. |
| s-200
| A damned sight better than some of our fellows. |
| s-201
| I'm not worried at that level. |
| s-202
| The Bench doesn't change of course. |
| s-203
| Bray laughed at Dando's expression; |