A Guest of Honour by Nadine Gordimer

Author:Nadine Gordimer
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2002-03-03T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

He was writing to Mweta when he looked up just as the yellow dress that he knew so well became visible, approaching through the scrub. She was hidden and appeared again, nearer; he stood up to wait. Just this way sometimes, in the early mornings or evenings, he kept dead still while a female buck that probably fed on the golf—course during the night moved silently, quite near. But his body had associations of its own with the yellow dress, robust but no less tender; there was a surge of pleasure that he would press against her in a moment, when they met. And then she came hurrying out onto the garden grass and there was a check—something different about her—as if she had sent someone else, smiling, in her place. As she reached him he saw that, of course, her hair was pulled up and tied back. He said, “Darling, I was hoping you’d notice the car was back, as soon as you got up—” and as he put his hand out behind her head he was suddenly checked again, and this time of her volition as she stopped dead a foot away from him, her palms raised for silence or to hold him off, her face bright, conspiratorial, pained and yet half—giggling. “They’re just behind me—the children, Gordon. We’re coming to invite you to drinks for him tonight. I’ve told him I’ve been doing typing for you in the evenings. It’s all right.”

His body died back first, before his mind. He said, “Why bring him here, Rebecca?”

She was gazing at him, passionately, flirtatious, giggling, ablaze. He had never seen her like that. “The children, you ass. They keep on talking about you. It’s obvious we’re running in and out your house all the time. It’d look funny if we didn’t come now.”

“My God, why didn’t you say when he was coming. I could have stayed away for a few days.” He withdrew into what she had called his “elderly” voice, meaning, he knew, in her generous and unresentful way, that it put the distance of social background, education and assurance, rather than age, between them.

“Oh don’t be idiotic.” She pleaded, tears like tears of laughter standing hot in her eyes. “It’s perfectly all right. You don’t know him. He’d never think anything. He’s not like that. He’s very attractive to women. It never occurs to him that I could ever look at anybody else. I’ve told you. He’ll go away again soon. It’s quite all right.”

She stood there, a schoolgirl about to stuff her hand into her mouth to stifle a give—away of hysterical guilt before authority. He was amazed at her as much as angry at himself for in some way appearing to himself as a fool. He was about to say, And what we think—my dear girl, doesn’t it occur to you that I don’t really want to meet him—but the children running like puppies before the man burst into chatter, almost upon them, and

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