The Sweetest Dream (57 page)

‘These South African spies?'

‘Yes, spies. That is the right word. They are everywhere. It
is they who are responsible for the lies. Our Security people have
proof. It is their aim to destabilise Zimlia so that South Africa
may take over our country and add it to their evil empire. Did
you know how they are attacking Mozambique? Now they are
spreading everywhere.' He peered at her to see what effect he
was having. ‘And so you will write some articles for us, in the
English newspapers, explaining the truth?'

He began struggling out of his chair, panting a little. ‘My wife
tells me that I should go on a diet, but it is hard when you are
seated in front of a good meal–and unfortunately we Ministers
have to attend so many functions . . .'

The moment of parting. Rose was hesitating. A flush of
reminiscent warmth for the boy Franklin, for whom she had after all
stolen clothes–no, more, taught him how to steal for himself–insisted she should put her arms around him. And if he did embrace
her that would count for a lot. But he held out his hand and she
took it. ‘No, that's not the way, Rose. You must use our African
handclasp, like this, like this . . .' and indeed it was inspiring, the
handshake that said it was hard to let go of a good friend. ‘And
I am waiting to hear good news from you. You will send me
copies of your articles. I am waiting for them.' And he went off
to the door of the Lounge where a couple of bulky men were
waiting for him–his bodyguards.

She had told Frank Diddy that she achieved an interview with
the Minister Franklin, had seen that he was impressed. Now she
described the interview as if it had been an achievement and,
more, one up on him, but all he said was, ‘Join the club. Perhaps
you'd like to try your hand at one of our little editorials?'

She decided she did not want to write about the drought,
anyone could do that. She needed something . . . in
The Post
which she was reading with professional contempt at the breakfast
table she saw: ‘Police report the theft of equipment from the new
hospital in Kwadere. Thousands of dollars' worth has disappeared.
It is suspected that local people are the thieves.'

Rose's pulses definitely quickened. She showed the item to
Frank Diddy, but he shrugged and said, ‘That sort of thing goes
on all the time.'

‘Where could I find out?'

‘Don't bother, it's not worth it.'

Kwadere. Barry had said Sylvia was there. Yes, there was
something else. When Andrew came to London this was often
announced in the papers: Andrew was News, or at least Global
Money was. Last time, months ago, she had rung him, ‘Hi,
Andrew, this is Rose Trimble.'

‘Hi, Rose.'

‘I am working on
World Scandals
these days.'

‘I don't think my doings would interest
World Scandals
.'

But there had been a previous time, some years ago, when
he had agreed to meet her for a cup of coffee. Why had he? Her
first thought was, guilt, that was it! While she had forgotten she had
ever said he had made her pregnant–liars having bad memories–she did know that he owed her. And that meeting reminded her
she had once found him so attractive she had not been able to let
him go. He was still attractive: that casual elegance, that charm.
She told herself it had broken her heart. She had been ready to
elevate Andrew into the position of ‘The man I loved best in my
life', but slowly realised that he was warning her. All this smiling
waffle was meant to tell her that she must lay off the Lennoxes.
Who did he think he was! As a journalist it was her job to tell
the truth! Just like that upper-class arrogance! He was trying to
subvert the freedom of the Press! The cup of coffee lasted for
quite a time, while he ponced about hinting this and that, but
she had got out of him news of the family, for one that Sylvia
was in Kwadere, she was a doctor. Yes, that was what had been
at the back of her mind. Now she had the fact that Sylvia, whom
she still hated, was a doctor in Kwadere, where hospital equipment
was being stolen. She had found her subject.

 • • •

Some days after Sylvia and Rebecca had arranged the new books
along the walls in Sylvia's rooms, a group of villagers stood waiting
as she emerged to go down to the hospital. A youth came forward,
smiling. ‘Doctor Sylvia, please give me a book. Rebecca has told
us you have brought us books.'

‘I have to go to the hospital now. Come back this evening.'

How reluctantly they went off, with glances back at Father
McGuire's house, where the new books were calling to them.

All day she worked with Clever and Zebedee, who had been
holding the fort while she was in London. They were so quick,
so nimble, and they made her heart ache, because of their potential
and what was likely to happen to them. She was thinking–had
to think–where in London, no, where in England, or in Europe,
are children as hungry for knowledge as these? They had taught
themselves to read English off the print on food packets. Both,
when they finished work with her, sat at home reading, by
candlelight, progressively more difficult books.

Their father still sat all day drowsing under this tree, one big
skeleton hand drooping over a raised knee, which was a bony
lump between two lanky bones covered with dry greyish skin.
He had had pneumonia several times. He was dying of AIDS.

At sundown there was a crowd of a hundred waiting outside
Father McGuire's house. He was standing there as she came up
from the hospital. ‘And now, my child, it is time, you must do
something.'

She turned to the crowd and said she was going to disappoint
them tonight, but she would arrange for the books to be stationed
in the village.

A voice asked: ‘And who will keep them safe for you? They
will be stolen.'

‘No, no one will steal them. Tomorrow I'll do it all.'

She and the priest watched as the again disappointed people
wandered off into the darkening bush, through boulders, through
grasses, along ways not visible to them, and he said, ‘I sometimes
think they see with their feet. And now you will come inside and
you will sit down and you will eat and then share your evening
with me, and we will listen to the radio. We have the new batteries
you brought us.'

Rebecca was not there in the evenings. She prepared some
sort of meal, and left it on plates in the refrigerator, and was in
her own home by two in the afternoon. But today she came in
while they were eating and said, ‘I have come because I must tell
you.'

‘Sit down,' said the priest.

There was a protocol, apparently never formally agreed to,
that Rebecca would not sit at the table with them when she was
in her capacity as a servant, and suggestions from Father McGuire
that she should had been vetoed, by her: It would not be right.
But when she was paying a visit, as now, she sat, and when invited
took a biscuit from a plate and laid it down before her: they knew
she would take it to her children. Sylvia pushed the plate towards
her and Rebecca counted five more biscuits. At their enquiring
looks–she had three surviving children–she said she was feeding
Zebedee and Clever.

‘We must arrange for the books. I have been talking about it
with everyone. There is an empty hut–Daniel's, you know who
he was.'

‘We buried him last Sunday,' said the priest.

‘Okay. And his children died too before. But no one wants
to take that hut now. They say it is unlucky'–she was using
their word.

‘Daniel died of AIDS, and not because of any nonsense about
bad
muti
.' Using her word for the
n'ganga'
s potions.

Rebecca and the priest had had in their long association many
bouts of argument, which he had to win because he was the priest
and she was a Christian, but now she smiled, and said ‘Okay'.

‘You mean, it isn't unlucky for books?'

‘No, Sylvia, that is true, it is okay for books. And so we will
take the shelves and bricks from your room and we will make
the shelves in Daniel's hut, and my Tenderai will look after them.'

This youth was very sick, with probably only a few months
to live: everyone knew he had had a curse put on him.

Rebecca read in their faces, and said quietly, ‘He is well enough
to guard the books. And he can enjoy the books and so he will
not be so unhappy.'

‘There are not enough books for everyone.'

‘Yes, there are enough. Tenderai will make them take a book
out for one week, and bring it back. He will cover the books in
newspaper. He will make everyone pay . . .' And, as Sylvia was
about to protest, ‘no, just a little bit, perhaps ten cents. Yes, it is
nothing, but it is enough to tell everyone the books are expensive
and we must all look after them.'

She got up. She did not look well. Sylvia scolded her that she
worked too hard, with her sick children who woke her at night,
and she said again now, ‘Rebecca, you work too hard.'

‘I am strong, I am like you, Sylvia. I can work well because
I am not fat. A fat dog lies in the sun with the flies crawling over
it and sleeps but a thin dog is awake and snaps at the flies.'

The priest laughed. ‘I shall use that for my sermon on Sunday.'

‘You're welcome, Father.' She made her curtsy to him as
taught her at school, due to anyone older. She pressed her thin
hands together and smiled at him. Then to Sylvia she said, ‘I'll
get some boys to come and carry your books down to the hut,
and the planks and bricks. Put your books on your bed, so they
don't take them too.'

She went out.

‘What a pity Rebecca couldn't run this poor country instead
of the incompetents we're saddled with.'

‘Do we really have to believe that a country gets the
government it deserves? I don't think these poor people deserve their
government.'

Father McGuire nodded, then spoke. ‘Have you thought that
perhaps the reason these gross clowns have not had their throats
cut is because the
povos
would like to be in their place, and know
they would do the same if they had the chance?'

Sylvia said, ‘Is that really what you believe?'

‘It is not for nothing that we have the prayer, “Lead us not
into temptation”. And there is the other, its companion, “Thank
you, Lord, for delivering me from evil”.'

‘Are you really saying that virtue is merely a question of not
being tempted?'

‘Ah, virtue, now there's a word I find it hard to use.'

Sylvia, it was clear, was not far off tears, and the priest saw it.
He went to a cupboard, returned with two glasses and a bottle
of good whisky–she brought it back with her. He poured
generously for himself and for her, nodded at her and drank his
down.

Sylvia looked at the golden liquid making patterns in the
lamplight, a rich oily swirl that settled into a pond of amber. She
took a sip. ‘I have often thought I could become an alcoholic.'

‘No, Sylvia, you could not.'

‘I understand why in the old days they had sundowners.'

‘Why the old days? The Pynes have their sundowners on the
dot.'

‘When the sun goes down I often think I'd give anything to
drink a bottle empty. It's so sad, when the sun sets.'

‘It is the colour in the sky, reminding us of the splendours of
the Lord that we are exiled from.' She was surprised: he did not
usually go in for this kind of thing. ‘I have many times wished
myself away from Africa but I have only to see the sun go down
over those hills and I'd not leave for anything in the world.'

‘Another day gone and nothing achieved,' said Sylvia. ‘Nothing changed.'

‘Ah, so you're a world-changer, after all.'

This struck into a sensitive area. She thought: Perhaps Johnny's
nonsense got into me and spoiled me. ‘How could one not want
to change it?'

‘How could one not want it changed? But wanting to change
it oneself–no, there's the devil in that.'

‘And who could disagree, after what we have learned?'

‘And if you have learned that, then you have done better than
most. But it is too potent a dream to let its victims go.'

‘Father, when you were a young man, are you telling me that
you never had a fit of shouting in the streets and throwing stones
at the Brits?'

‘You forget, I was a poor boy. I was as poor as some of those
people down there in the village. There was only one way out
for me. I only ever had one road. I didn't have a choice.'

‘Yes, I cannot see you as anything other than a priest, by
nature.'

‘It is true–no choice, but the only one for me.'

‘But when I hear Sister Molly go on and on, if she didn't
have a cross on her chest, you'd never know she was a nun.'

‘Have you ever thought that for poor girls anywhere in Europe
there was only one choice? They became nuns to spare their
families the cost of feeding them. And so the convents have been
stuffed with young women who'd have been better off raising
families or–or any kind of work in the world. Sister Molly fifty
years ago would be going mad in a convent, because she should
never have been in it. But now–did you know?–she said to
her Superiors, I am leaving this convent and I shall be a nun in
the world. And one day I expect that she will say to herself, I'm
not a nun. I never was a nun. And she will simply leave her
Order, just like that. She was a poor girl and she took the way
out. That is all. Yes, and I know what you are thinking–it will
not be so easy for those poor black sisters up the hill to leave as
it is for Sister Molly.'