A Guest of Honour Read Online Free PDF Page B

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. “I’m soglad you dance,” she said; he was ashamed that he had asked her only out of politeness. “Neil won’t—I think it’s a mistake to let oneself forget these things because of vanity. 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. 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.” Andrew was probably one of her children; 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: it was assumed that he would pick up family and other relationships merely by being exposed to them.
    Someone called to Vivien and they were drawn away from the dancers to a crowded table. A young woman leaned her elbows on it and her white breasts pursed forward within the frame of her arms. “Have my glass,” she said, as there were no spare ones to go round. She went off to dance, holding in her stomach as she squeezed past and balanced her soft-looking body. 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. “You don’t remember me?—Ras Asahe, I came to your place in England once.” The young man said he was in broadcasting now, “so-called assistant to the Director of English Language Services.”
    â€œAnd how’s your father? Good Lord, I’d like to see him again!” Joseph Asahe was one of Edward Shinza’s lieutenants in the early days of PIP.
    â€œHe’s old now.” It was not the right question to have asked; what the young man dismissed was any possible suggestion that he was to be thought of in connection with Shinza. 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. Convicts broke stones with hands like that, here.
    They made conversation about the radio and television coverage ofthe celebrations, and from this broke into talk that interested them both—the problem of communication in a country with so many different language groups. “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. I’d like to talk to somebody about it—your man? I’m not keen to go straight to the Director-General—”
    â€œIt won’t make much difference. They”—Ras Asahe meant the whites— “all know that after the end of the year they’ll be on contract, and that means they’ll be replaced in three years. Not that they ever made an effort. Sheltered employment all these years, what d’you expect? You don’t need ideas, you don’t need to move out of your chair, you simply go on producing a noise out of the magic box to keep the natives quiet—and now, boom, it’s all gone, including the only incentive they ever had, their pension. They’re pathetic, man; certainly they haven’t much to offer when they look for jobs with the BBC. They’re just not going to find any.