whose precarious livelihood depends on President Moi's whim. The High Commission is not in the business of making life harder for them than it already is.”
“And you have British business interests to represent,” she reminds him playfully.
“That is not a sin, Tessa,” he retorts, trying to wrest the lower half of his gaze from the shadow of her breasts through the puff of dress. “Commerce is not a sin. Trading with emerging countries is not a sin. Trade helps them to emerge, as a matter of fact. It makes reforms possible. The kind of reforms we all want. It brings them into the modern world. It enables us to help them. How can we help a poor country if we're not rich ourselves?”
“Bullshit.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Specious, unadulterated, pompous Foreign Office bullshit, if you want its full name, worthy of the inestimable Pellegrin himself. Look around you. Trade isn't making the poor rich. Profits don't buy reforms. They buy corrupt government officials and Swiss bank accounts.”
“I dispute that absolutely—”
She cuts him short. “So it's file and forget. Right? No action at this time. Signed, Sandy. Great. The mother of democracies is once more revealed as a lying hypocrite, preaching liberty and human rights for all, except where she hopes to make a buck.”
“That's not fair at all! All right, Moi's Boys are crooks and the old man still has a couple of years to run. But good things are on the horizon. A word in the right ear—the collective withholding of donor nations' aid—quiet diplomacy—they're all having their effect. And Richard Leakey is being drafted into the Cabinet to put a brake on corruption and reassure donors that they can start giving again without financing Moi's rackets.” He is beginning to sound like a guidance telegram, and knows it. Worse, she knows it too, as evidenced by a very big yawn. “Kenya may not have much of a present but it has a future,” he ends bravely. And waits for a reciprocal sign from her to indicate that they are moving toward some kind of cobbled truce.
But Tessa, he remembers too late, is not a conciliator, neither is her bosom pal Ghita. They are both young enough to believe there is such a thing as simple truth. “The document I gave you supplies names and dates and bank accounts,” she insists remorselessly. “Individual ministers are identified and incriminated. Will that be a word in the right ear too? Or is nobody listening out there?”
“Tessa.”
She is slipping away from him when he came here to be closer to her.
“Sandy.”
“I take your point. I hear you. But for heaven's sake—in the name of sanity—you can't seriously be suggesting that HMG in the person of Bernard Pellegrin should be conducting a witchhunt against named ministers of the Kenyan government! I mean, my God—it's not as if we Brits were above corruption ourselves. Is the Kenyan High Commissioner in London about to tell us to clean up our act?”
“Sheer bloody humbug and you know it,” Tessa snaps, eyes flaming.
He has not reckoned with Mustafa. He enters silently, at the stoop. First with great accuracy he sets a small table midway between them on the carpet, then a silver tray with a silver coffeepot and her late mother's silver sweetmeat basket filled with shortbread. And the intrusion clearly stimulates Tessa's ever-present sense of theater, for she kneels upright before the little table, shoulders back, dress stretched across her breasts while she punctuates her speech with humorously barbed inquiries about his tastes.
“Was it black, Sandy, or just a touch of the cream?—I forget,” she asks with mock gentility. This is the Pharisaic life we lead—she is telling him—a continent lies dying at our door, and here we stand or kneel drinking coffee off a silver tray while just down the road children starve, the sick die and crooked politicians bankrupt the nation that was tricked into electing them. “A witch-hunt—since you mention
“And you have British business interests to represent,” she reminds him playfully.
“That is not a sin, Tessa,” he retorts, trying to wrest the lower half of his gaze from the shadow of her breasts through the puff of dress. “Commerce is not a sin. Trading with emerging countries is not a sin. Trade helps them to emerge, as a matter of fact. It makes reforms possible. The kind of reforms we all want. It brings them into the modern world. It enables us to help them. How can we help a poor country if we're not rich ourselves?”
“Bullshit.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Specious, unadulterated, pompous Foreign Office bullshit, if you want its full name, worthy of the inestimable Pellegrin himself. Look around you. Trade isn't making the poor rich. Profits don't buy reforms. They buy corrupt government officials and Swiss bank accounts.”
“I dispute that absolutely—”
She cuts him short. “So it's file and forget. Right? No action at this time. Signed, Sandy. Great. The mother of democracies is once more revealed as a lying hypocrite, preaching liberty and human rights for all, except where she hopes to make a buck.”
“That's not fair at all! All right, Moi's Boys are crooks and the old man still has a couple of years to run. But good things are on the horizon. A word in the right ear—the collective withholding of donor nations' aid—quiet diplomacy—they're all having their effect. And Richard Leakey is being drafted into the Cabinet to put a brake on corruption and reassure donors that they can start giving again without financing Moi's rackets.” He is beginning to sound like a guidance telegram, and knows it. Worse, she knows it too, as evidenced by a very big yawn. “Kenya may not have much of a present but it has a future,” he ends bravely. And waits for a reciprocal sign from her to indicate that they are moving toward some kind of cobbled truce.
But Tessa, he remembers too late, is not a conciliator, neither is her bosom pal Ghita. They are both young enough to believe there is such a thing as simple truth. “The document I gave you supplies names and dates and bank accounts,” she insists remorselessly. “Individual ministers are identified and incriminated. Will that be a word in the right ear too? Or is nobody listening out there?”
“Tessa.”
She is slipping away from him when he came here to be closer to her.
“Sandy.”
“I take your point. I hear you. But for heaven's sake—in the name of sanity—you can't seriously be suggesting that HMG in the person of Bernard Pellegrin should be conducting a witchhunt against named ministers of the Kenyan government! I mean, my God—it's not as if we Brits were above corruption ourselves. Is the Kenyan High Commissioner in London about to tell us to clean up our act?”
“Sheer bloody humbug and you know it,” Tessa snaps, eyes flaming.
He has not reckoned with Mustafa. He enters silently, at the stoop. First with great accuracy he sets a small table midway between them on the carpet, then a silver tray with a silver coffeepot and her late mother's silver sweetmeat basket filled with shortbread. And the intrusion clearly stimulates Tessa's ever-present sense of theater, for she kneels upright before the little table, shoulders back, dress stretched across her breasts while she punctuates her speech with humorously barbed inquiries about his tastes.
“Was it black, Sandy, or just a touch of the cream?—I forget,” she asks with mock gentility. This is the Pharisaic life we lead—she is telling him—a continent lies dying at our door, and here we stand or kneel drinking coffee off a silver tray while just down the road children starve, the sick die and crooked politicians bankrupt the nation that was tricked into electing them. “A witch-hunt—since you mention
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