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elementary protocol, he offered his hand to her.
    Roberta Blayne told her Administrator that the Deputy-Director in the Ministry of Land Affairs had approached her with some further questions about the subsistence crop-cash crop debate; Henderson said they might make it their business to cultivate the man, he hadn’t been prominent in the debate that afternoon, nor was heard from much at other sessions where you’d expect him to speak up, mh?—but one didn’t know who was or was not influential behind the scenes in the cabinet. What was his name again?
    A Saturday ten days later she was drying her hair when the phone rang and a secretarial voice informed her that the Deputy-Director in the Department of Land Affairs was on his way to visit her; was this convenient. But it was a statement, not a question. She had only just combed out her hair and wriggled bare feet into sandals when she heard a horn and from her window saw the man who woke her with tea and polished the floors, heels flung up as he raced to open the gates. A black car of the luxury models provided for officials just below ministerial level came crunching over the gravel, delivered the Deputy-Director of Land Affairs at the front door, and was directed by the houseman round to the yard.
    She had the door open: there he was, Deputy-Director Gladwell Shadrack Chabruma, still formally dressed in a suit as he would be on official occasions, although it was Saturday. They shook hands once more. She led him to the livingroom.—You may have been in this house some other time—when Chuck Harris was the Agency’s man here, with his team? You probably know the place, anyway.—
    â€”Thank you. No, I did not have the occasion to come to this particular house, of course I knew Mr Harris and his people. I was in the Ministry of Agriculture during that period.—
    â€”Well that must have been an ideal preparation, for Land. I’ll get us some tea—you’d prefer coffee?—
    â€”Whatever. It is a good background to have, that I agree, but the problems are different, yes, agriculture’s—they come after the question of ownership of the land—
    She was at the passage leading to the kitchen. But when this man of few words at working breakfasts and meetings did begin to talk he expected no interruption. She had to hover there.
    â€”The Ministry where I was … was deployed … before—Agriculture, we came up against it all the time, excellent opportunities from the point of view of developing better farming practices, introduction of new crops and so on—the best expertise from other countries, the agencies and all that. But to introduce this on little plots everywhere, all over, too small for anything but subsistence farming—where is the land.—
    â€”Oh we understand only too well in what my boss calls our outfit—we know that until the land’s reclaimed that was taken from you in colonial times, the larger agricultural projects we advise can’t go further than enthusiasm … Even yours, if we convince you they’re good … That’s why we have to look at projects we’re able to get going now. The community ones people from those little plots can work on together—oh you’ve heard it all before—
    She got away to order the tea, words trailing after her.
    In the kitchen she found a uniformed driver and two men with the heavy shoulders, armed belts, and discreet communication contraptions in their ears—the display of bodyguards as the
spread tail is the display of a peacock—seated round the kitchen table already drinking tea from the houseman’s big mugs. The houseman was animatedly hostly over them but set about at once putting some relic of a starched lace mat on a tray for the other serving he would bring to her and the occasion of her distinguished guest, a man from the Government.
    The guest appeared to be still with the statement