A Guest of Honour Read Free

without his thinking about it. It was underfoot. It was around. 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. 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 coolmetallic taste of last night’s storm at the back of the throat, the airport building with the five pink frangipani and the enclosure where out-of-works and children still hooked their fingers on the diamondmesh wire and gazed. 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. 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. Waiting to be summoned to the customs officers’ booths, the companions of the journey ignored each other. Only the man with the flowered sponge-bag, as if unaware of this useful convention, insisted on a “Here we are again” smile. “You’re Colonel Bray?” He spoke round the obstacle of a woman standing between them. “Thought I recognized you in Rome. Welcome back.” “I must confess I don’t remember you. I’ve been away a long time.” 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. “I’ve only just come to live here—from down South. South Africa.” He made a resigned grimace assuming understanding— “My wife and I decided we couldn’t stick it any longer. So we try it out here. I don’t know; we’ll see. I read you were coming back, there was an article in the paper, my wife Margot sent it to me in Switzerland, so I thought it was you. You were just in front of me when we got out in Rome.”
    â€œYes, I suppose I won’t know my way around when I get into town.”
    â€œOh, it’s still not New York or London, don’t worry.” The man spoke with an accent, and a certain European kind of resignation. They laughed. “Well, in that case, we’ll probably bump into each other in Great Lakes Road.”
    â€œPlease! Nkrumah Road.”
    â€œI said I should have to learn my way round all over again.”
    The man looked about quickly and lowered his voice. “This country can do with a few more white people like you, take it from me. People with some faith. Sometimes I even think I’m down South again, that’s a fact. I’ve said it to my wife.”
    A young black man with sunglasses and a thick, springy mat of hair shaped to a crew-cut by topiary rather than barbering had cut through the crowd with the encircling movement of authority. “This way, Colonel, sir. Your luggage will be brought to the entrance, if you’ll just give me the tickets—”
    The other man, bobbing in the wash of this activity yet smiling at it in hostly assumption of his own established residence in the country, was talking across the black man and the exchange of pleasantries, tickets, thanks: “—at the Silver Rhino, of course, you remember the place. Any time—we’d be very pleased—”
    He thanked him, listening to the two men at once and hearing neither, and followed the firm rump in white shorts past barriers and through the reception hall. “That’s all right, officer, this is Colonel Bray.” “I’m looking after