Olura Read Online Free

the colour of his skin was to them as unimportant as the colour
of his shirt. In their gay, bird-like discussion of the lovely English lady and her obviously distinguished friend there was absolutely no undercurrent of Beauty and the Beast. The British,
however, who belonged to the same class of bourgeoisie in prosperity and education, were uneasy. Their women verged upon prurient curiosity. I would have liked to add to my field ethnology some
further examples of weary French cynicism, but Vigny and des Aunes had paid their bill and left the hotel.
    The next day was glorious from dawn to dusk, and the sun truly Spanish rather than Atlantic. After idling over breakfast on the terrace and still seeing no sign of Olura or Mr Mgwana I strolled
westwards along the beach aiming for the delicious complex of miniature islands and peninsulas on the way to the Maya Estuary, where one could choose sun or shade and take one’s sea calm or
rough according to mood.
    When I turned round to look at the attractive front of the hotel with its three tiers of stone balconies, Olura was leaning on the balustrade outside her room. I had put all of a quarter of a
mile between myself and the hotel, and only a third of her was visible; but I knew very well who it was. I had discovered—let us call it sentimental curiosity—that her room was
separated by two balconies from my own.
    I waved to her, without much expectation that she would notice. She waved back at once. I went on my way with a faint hope that Mr Mgwana was recovering from his political exertions by staying
in bed till lunch and that Olura might accidentally choose my patch of beach. High-minded though she was, she was not at all averse to admiration—and I was the only person, unattached and of
the right age, to give it.
    Half an hour later I was ashamed of that cheap ‘accidentally.’ Another woman might have come a roundabout way or settled in some half-hidden crescent of rocks where she could be sure
I would find her. Not so, Olura. She was always true to her self-imposed frankness. She walked straight up to me and merely remarked that she knew I would be there.
    She was quite dazzling. No Red Riding Hood that morning. Not much, in fact, of anything at all. What there was seemed to be constructed of petals of pale green, with a wholly frivolous
thigh-length wrap of some material utterly unknown to me, white, pleated, and very possibly unique.
    She swam, I observed, violently, using far too much energy. When we had settled down to sun ourselves, I congratulated her on choosing an original spot for Mr Mgwana.
    ‘What did you think of him?’
    I replied that he was a remarkable man, and that I saw what his last Governor-General had meant.
    ‘It was wicked to treat him as a criminal,’ she said.
    ‘The poor Governor was only doing what Whitehall told him he must. And even with a leader like Mgwana his people weren’t really ready for independence.’
    ‘Who is?’ she asked. ‘But it’s a right. Look at ourselves! No country which is prepared to use the Bomb deserves independence.’
    I laid off that one, for I always find myself in complete agreement with both sides of the argument, and can’t help showing it. In the heated nuclear atmosphere that does not increase
one’s popularity.
    ‘Independence is, I suppose, a right,’ I agreed, ‘but it would have been hardly fair to hand over the government to Mgwana without first making sure that he had something
governable.’
    She rolled her delicious body over to face me, drawing up one smooth and intoxicating thigh to support it, and accused me of talking like a civil servant in the Athenaeum. I reminded myself
carefully that there might be a whole week ahead of us and that it would be unwise to point out too academically that she had no more idea than I of civil servants’ small talk in the
Athenaeum.
    ‘I don’t know enough about you, Miss Manoli,’ I said. ‘Is your interest in politics