A Guest of Honour by Nadine Gordimer Page A

see. By now the party had been joined by a woman with blonde baby-hair drawn up on top of her head in thin curls. Like many women, she bore the date of her vintage year in the manner of her make-up: the pencil-line of the Dietrich eyebrows on the bald fine English skin above each blue eye, the well-powdered nose and fuchsia-pink mouth. She wore navy blue with a small diamond brooch somewhere towards one shoulder. Bray was introduced to Mrs. Harrison with the quick, smooth exchange of people who have learned the same basic social conventions in the same decade and country. Mweta and Bray and Joy were gossiping about the Independence celebrations; the children were jumping up round Wilfrid Asoni and Small, reaching for the camera. “Wait, wait, Mangaliso—do you want your picture taken? Not even with Bimbo?”
    Mrs. Harrison’s high clear Englishwoman’s voice sailed in: “Children—I wonder who’s been borrowing my
sécateur?
Do
you
know, Mangaliso? I should think Mangaliso might know, wouldn’t you, Telema?”
    The children dropped to earth, cut down. They stood there, wriggling, turning their feet on the grass, looking at each other. Under her eyes were made plain the shoes and socks tossed about, the wet patch drying between the little one’s legs.
    â€œMangaliso!” said Joy.
    â€œI shall give you a pair of
sécateur
for your birthday,” the woman said to the child, “but you must be sure not to borrow mine. I need my
sécateur,
you know.”
    He smiled at her, frowning, pleading to be out of the limelight; he had taken the pruning—shears, but he didn’t know what
“sécateur”
meant.
    â€œThat’s a good boy,” Mrs. Harrison said. “Mrs. Mweta, I’m afraid if you don’t go into lunch cook’s soufflé will be a pancake. He’s in quite a state.”
    â€œOh my goodness—what time is it? We were having a photo—Adamson,we must have lunch.” She was laughing and bustling, confused. The children were sent off, with some difficulty; Mrs. Harrison was standing in the sitting—room, her eyes taking some sort of private inventory, when the party filed through. Then they had to wait a few minutes for Joy, who had taken the children to their quarters. She came back giggling and apologizing and fell in with Bray. “They can’t understand why we don’t eat together any more.”
    â€œWell, can’t you, sometimes? When you’re alone.”
    â€œNever alone!” she explained, with a slight lift of the shoulders to indicate Small and Asoni. “Even if there’re no visitors.”
    â€œYou’re not letting that Mrs. Whatnot run the place?” Bray said accusingly.
    She laughed at him. “No, no, there’s a cousin of mine from home, and my sister-in-law’s little sister. They’ve come to help. You know, during the celebrations there were some days when I never had time to see the children at all.” She had dropped her voice, perhaps because the atmosphere of the cool dining-room, as they entered, was so different from the noisy family party on the terrace. Her large, matronly but still young body took the chair at the foot of the table sub-duedly. Mweta took the head with something like resignation, as if it were the conference table. Behind each person a servant stood. Mweta did not even seem aware of their presence, but Joy would catch the smooth inattention of one or another, now and then, and half-whisper something in the local language. There was smoked salmon. And a cheese soufflé, and cold duck. Mweta, while talking about American foreign policy, carefully removed every vestige of the thin layer of aspic that covered the meat. “I really don’t see it matters whether it’s due to having got overinvolved in Vietnam, or whether, as this authority you’ve mentioned says, America’s reached the end of an outward-looking