1/7

Nick and Veema arrived at Ryalls hotel together but with vastly different expectations of the evening that lay ahead. Veema, spectacularly turned out as usual, was looking forward to a night of sparkle and glamour in the company of politicians and diplomats even though she knew that any foreign diplomat posted to the newly independent Malawi would be rather small fry in terms of international clout and prestige. Nick on the other hand was keen to avoid the very people his wife longed to bump into; he looked and felt ill-at-ease as he always did in the black tie outfit the occasion called for.

Drinks were served on the lawn from where the couple could look across a small, narrow valley filled with graves towards the part of Blantyre city where they lived. It was 1969, and even though British rule was by then five years in the distant past, the band played only British music, mixing Vera Lynn in along with the Beatles. Nods and smiles were exchanged with Ambassadors, Military Attaches and a legion of Aides-de-Camp and other minor functionaries, but the President failed to put in an appearance much to Veema’s disappointment and Nick’s relief.

That was the night the rains arrived; not the main rainy season, but the chill wind that blew up from Mozambique drenching everything in fine drizzle for days on end and bringing a soft dirty mist down on the city. The party moved indoors where Veema was better able to take in the detail of who was wearing what and who was dancing with whom.

Nick of course felt more uncomfortable under the sharp glare of the lights and regretted having ridiculed the meagre beams that struggled out of the fairy lights strung inelegantly from tree to tree outside. In what passed for a ballroom there could be no escaping the interest of the old colonial types who hung around all such occasions uninvited, trying vainly to relive the long gone glories of the empire. Everything about those Colonels, Ladies and big game hunters smacked of anachronism – their clothes, titles, even the way they spoke. Gone were their familiar old shibboleths of empire – the Queen, the Regiment, the Church – and in had come the new slogan of Freedom and Unity and some other high sounding aspiration, and the old guard were all left at sea, belonging neither here nor there, neither Malawi nor England.