A Guest of Honour Read Online Free PDF

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. 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?
    Mweta had the mummified look of one who has become a vessel of ritual. 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. 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. 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.
    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. 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. These grew spontaneouslyone out of the other, and once you had been present at the first, you got handed on to all the others. He really knew only some of the people but all of them seemed to know about him, and many were the friends of friends. 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. 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. 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.
    After the State Ball there was a private all-night party in a marquee. Roly Dando had promised to drop by, and of course Bray was with him. Many other people Bray had seen at the ball streamed in in their finery: they had contributed to the arrangements for this party. 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. The tent was filled with chairs and divans borrowed from people’s houses, and flowers from their gardens. 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. The trouble everyone had taken gave a sense of occasion to even the wildest moments of the night. 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. Bray surprised her by asking her