| 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; |
| s-204
| the look of weary, bottomless distaste in the wrinkled mugs of certain breeds of dogs. |
| s-205
| They'll die off, I suppose. |
| s-206
| There's that to be said for it. |
| s-207
| But God knows what we'll get then. |
| s-208
| I met Gwenzi's brother in London one day while he was at Gray's Inn; |
| s-209
| he told me he was going to be the first African at the bar here. |
| s-210
| When Dando's opinion of someone was really low he did not seem to hear his name. |
| s-211
| Don't think I don't know I've got some bad times coming to me, he said, as if taking up, in private, current talk about himself. |
| s-212
| When I said yes to Mweta I knew it and every time I walk past the title on my office door I know it. |
| s-213
| The day will come when I'll have deportation orders to sign that I won't want to sign. |
| s-214
| Warrants of arrest. Or worse. |
| s-215
| He ate a mouthful of the left-over granadilla pudding, and there was the smallest tremor, passing for a moment through his head. |
| s-216
| Poor old Dando. |
| s-217
| Anyone who's stayed on is a fool if he hasn't thought about that, said Bray. |
| s-218
| And I'll be instructing the State Prosecutor to act when I'd rather not, too. |
| s-219
| That I can count on. |
| s-220
| What if Shinza should make a bit of trouble at the next elections, what if he were to feel himself bloody well discounted as he certainly is, and start up a real opposition with all the tricks that he taught PIP, eh? |
| s-221
| What if he brought the whole Lambala-speaking crowd out in a boycott, with all the old beatingsup at the polls, hut burnings – you think I wouldn't find myself the one to put Shinza inside, this time? |
| s-222
| Well, I know. |
| s-223
| But why on earth should it come to that? |
| s-224
| I knew it when I said yes to Mweta. |
| s-225
| Poor bloody Dando. |
| s-226
| The blacks' dirty work isn't any cleaner than the whites'. |
| s-227
| That's what they'll be happy to note. |
| s-228
| But what their contented little minds will never know is that I knew it when I took the job, I knew it all along, and I'll say it now as loud as I'd say it then... |
| s-229
| Who'll be happy? |
| s-230
| Dando refilled the brandy glasses again. |
| s-231
| My colleagues! |
| s-232
| Those worthy fellows who've gone down South to Rhodesia and South Africa where they can feel confident they'll never have a black man on the Bench to give a verdict as biased as a white man's. |
| s-233
| It was after midnight when they got to bed. |
| s-234
| Bray went to the kitchen to fill his brandy glass with water for the night. |
| s-235
| Cockroaches fled, pausing, from what they regarded as positions of safety, to twirl their antennae. |
| s-236
| A furry black band of ants led up a cupboard door to some scrap that had flicked from a plate. |
| s-237
| He stood at the sink, drinking cold water and looking at the avocado pear pip growing suspended by three matchsticks in the neck of a pickle jar of water on the sill. |
| s-238
| He was conscious of a giddy swing of weight from one foot to the other that was not of his volition; it seemed he had been standing there a long time – he was not sure. |
| s-239
| He heard Dando, forced by the old Labrador into the garden, walking about outside the guest hut and talking reproachfully to the dog; |
| s-240
| and then it was morning and Festus's assistant was at the door with the early tea. |
| s-241
| A helicopter snored over the celebrations, drowning the exchange of greetings when Bray was introduced to someone in the street, expunging conversation in bars and even speeches. |
| s-242
| Nobody knew what it was for... a security measure, some were satisfied to assume, while others accepted it as vaguely appropriate, the symbol of progress inseparable from all industrial fairs and agricultural shows and therefore somehow relevant to any public display. |
| s-243
| There was a moment in the stadium at the actual Independence ceremony when he heard it on the perimeter of the sky just as Kenyatta began to speak, and he and Vivien Bayley, the young wife of the registrar of the new university, sitting beside him, collided glances of alert apprehension... |
| s-244
| Later it was discovered to have been giving flips at half-a-crown a time to a section of the population who were queueing up, all through the ceremony, at the nearby soccer field; |
| s-245
| a publicity stunt for an international cigarette-making firm. |
| s-246
| Neil Bayley was the one to find this out, because of some domestic mishap or misunderstanding that made his arrival at the visitors' stand very late. |
| s-247
| Bray was conscious of furious tension between the young couple at his side as he sat with the great stir of tiers of people behind, and the space in front of him, before the velvet-draped and canopied dais, filled with press photographers and radio and television crews, who all through the solemnities raced about bent double on frantic tiptoe, snaking their wires, thrusting up their contraptions manipulating shutters and flashlights. |
| s-248
| It was as if with all made splendidly ready for a theatrical performance, a party of workmen with their gear had been left behind. |
| s-249
| This activity and the risen temper along the back of a silent quarrel beside him provided the strong distraction of another, disorderly level of being that always seemed to him to take away from planned great moments what they were meant to hold heady and pure. |
| s-250
| Here was the symbolic attainment of something he had believed in, willed and worked for, for a good stretch of his life: |
| s-251
| expressed in the roar that rocked back and forth from the crowd at intervals, the togas, medalled breasts and white gloves, the ululating cries of women, the soldiers at attention, and the sun striking off the clashing brass of the bands. |
| s-252
| Or in the icecream tricycles waiting at the base of each section of an amphitheatre of dark faces, the mongrel that ran out and lifted its leg on the presidential dais? |
| s-253
| Mweta had the mummified look of one who has become a vessel of ritual. |
| s-254
| But once the declaration of independence was pronounced he came, as out of a trance, to an irresistibly lively self, sitting up there seeing everything around him, a spectator, Bray felt, as well as a spectacle. |
| s-255
| Bray was half-embarrassed to find that he even caught his eye, once, and there was a quick smile; but Mweta was used to having eyes on him, by now. |
| s-256
| He talked to the elderly English princess who sat beside him with her knees peaked neatly together in the Royal position curiously expressive of the suffering of ceremonies, and Bray saw him point out the contingent of Gala women, their faces and breasts whitened for joy, who were lined up among the troops of musicians and dancers from various regions. |
| s-257
| And yet when that ceremony was over, and in between all the other official occasions – State Ball, receptions, cocktail parties, banquets, and luncheons – a mood of celebration grew up, as it were, outside the palace gates. |
| s-258
| He attended most of the official occasions (he and Roly saluted each other with mock surprise when they met in the house, half-dressed in formal dinner clothes every night) but the real parties took place before and after. |
| s-259
| These grew spontaneously one out of the other, and once you had been present at the first, you got handed on to all the others. |
| s-260
| He really knew only some of the people but all of them seemed to know about him, and many were the friends of friends. |
| s-261
| Dando took him to the Bayleys; but Neil was a friend of Mweta, and Vivien was the niece of, of all people, Sir William Clough, the last governor, who had been a junior with Bray in the colonial service in Tanganyika. |
| s-262
| The Bayleys were friends of Cyprian Kente, Mweta's Minister of the Interior, and his wife Tindi, and Timothy Odara, one of the territory's few African doctors, whom Bray, of course, knew well. |
| s-263
| Through each individual the group extended to someone else and drew in, out of the new international character of the little capital, Poles, Ghanaians, Hungarians and Israelis, South African and Rhodesian refugees. |
| s-264
| After the State Ball there was a private all-night party in a marquee. |
| s-265
| Roly Dando had promised to drop by, and of course Bray was with him. |
| s-266
| Cheers went up from the people already present who had not been at the ball; they had decided to dress for once, too, and the two groups of women mingled and exclaimed over each other, everyone began to talk about what the ball was like, champagne came in, a Congolese band whipped up their pace, and the absurd and slightly thrilling mood of the State Ball and the cosy gaiety of the party swept together. |
| s-267
| The tent was filled with chairs and divans borrowed from people's houses, and flowers from their gardens. |
| s-268
| Someone had put up a board with a collage of blown-up pictures of Mweta – speaking, laughing, yawning, touching a piece of machinery with curiosity, leaving, arriving, even threatening. |
| s-269
| Many other people Bray had seen at the ball streamed in in their finery: |
| s-270
| they had contributed to the arrangements for this party. |
| s-271
| The trouble everyone had taken gave a sense of occasion to even the wildest moments of the night. |
| s-272
| Vivien Bayley, queenly at twenty-six, with her beautiful, well-mannered, disciplined face, came to hover beside Bray between responsible permutations about the room to make sure that this young girl was not being bothered too much by the attentions of someone older and rather drunk, or that young man was not being overlooked by the girls who ought to be taking notice of him. |
| s-273
| Bray surprised her by asking her to dance, swaying stiffly to a rhythm he didn't know, but nevertheless keeping the beat, so that they wouldn't make fools of themselves among the complicated gyrations of the Africans. |
| s-274
| I'm so glad you dance, she said; he was ashamed that he had asked her only out of politeness. |
| s-275
| Neil won't ... I think it's a mistake to let oneself forget these things because of vanity. |
| s-276
| Tindi Kente is a wonderful dancer, wonderful, isn't she... just like a snake brought out by music, and sometimes he'll try with her. |
| s-277
| He loves to flirt with her when Cyprian's not looking, but get her doing her marvellous wriggle on the floor and he just stands there like Andrew, dragging his feet. |
| s-278
| Andrew was probably one of her children; |
| s-279
| being accepted with such immediate casual friendliness by everyone was rather like being forced to learn a foreign language by finding oneself alone among people who spoke nothing else: |
| s-280
| it was assumed that he would pick up family and other relationships merely by being exposed to them. |
| s-281
| Someone called to Vivien and they were drawn away from the dancers to a crowded table. |
| s-282
| A young woman leaned her elbows on it and her white breasts pursed forward within the frame of her arms. |
| s-283
| Have my glass, she said, as there were no spare ones to go round. |
| s-284
| She went off to dance, holding in her stomach as she squeezed past and balanced her soft-looking body. |
| s-285
| The heat was heightened by drink and animation and the glass filled by the long, narrow black hand of his neighbour was marked by the fingerprints of the white woman who had relinquished it. |
| s-286
| You don't remember me? |
| s-287
| Ras Asahe, I came to your place in England once. |
| s-288
| The young man said he was in broadcasting now, so-called assistant to the Director of English Language Services. |
| s-289
| And how's your father? |
| s-290
| Good Lord, I'd like to see him again! |
| s-291
| Joseph Asahe was one of Edward Shinza's lieutenants in the early days of PIP. |
| s-292
| He's old now. |
| s-293
| It was not the right question to have asked; |
| s-294
| what the young man dismissed was any possible suggestion that he was to be thought of in connection with Shinza. |
| s-295
| His clothes, watch, cufflinks were those of a man who feels he must buy the best for himself, he had the Mussolini-jaw quite common among the people in the part of the country he came from but those hands were the lyrical, delicately strong, African ones that escaped the international blandness of businessmen's hands as Bray had marvelled to see them escape the brutalizing of physical hardship. |
| s-296
| Convicts broke stones with hands like that, here. |
| s-297
| They made conversation about the radio and television coverage of the celebrations, and from this broke into talk that interested them both: |
| s-298
| the problem of communication in a country with so many different language groups. |
| s-299
| I wonder how much use could be made of a radio classroom in country schools, whether it couldn't help considerably to ease the shortage of teachers, here, and maintain some sort of standard where teachers are perhaps not very well qualified. |
| s-300
| I'd like to talk to somebody about it... your man? |