The Sweetest Dream (52 page)

Cedric Pyne let out a short barking laugh. ‘Pretty good,' he
said. ‘Come on, Edna, that's pretty clever.'

‘If you say so, dear. Well, it worked. But then it seemed you
went over and helped yourself. That broke the spell.'

‘Half a dozen bedpans. We didn't have even one at our
hospital.'

‘Half a dozen too many,' said Cedric.

‘Why didn't anyone tell me? Six women from our village
came with me and Rebecca. They just–helped themselves. They
didn't tell me anything.'

‘Well, they wouldn't, would they? You're the Mission, you're
God the Father and the Church and Father McGuire is on at
them for being superstitious. But with you there, they probably
thought God's
muti
was stronger than the medicine man's.'

‘Well, it hasn't turned out to be. Because now people are
dying and it is because they stole from the cases. So Rebecca says.
But it's AIDS.'

‘Oh, AIDS.'

‘Why do you say it like that? It's a fact.'

‘It's the last bloody straw,' said Edna Pyne, ‘that's why. They
come up from the compound and want
muti
. I tell them there
isn't
muti
for AIDS, and they seem to think I've got
muti
but
won't give it to them.'

‘I know the
n'ganga
,' said Sylvia. ‘Sometimes I ask him to help
me.'

‘Well,' said Cedric, ‘that's an innocent walking into the lion's
den, if you like.'

‘Don't touch it–' said Edna, sounding peevish, at the end of
her tether, and intending to sound it.

‘When I have cases our medicine doesn't reach–such as I've
got–I ask him to come when Rebecca tells me they think they've
got the evil eye put on them. I ask him to tell them they haven't
been–cursed, or whatever . . . I say to him, I don't want to
meddle in his medicine. I just wanted his help. Last time he went
to each of the people who were lying there–I thought they were
going to die. I don't know what he said, but some of them just
got up and walked off–they were cured.'

‘And the others?'

‘The
n'gangas
know about AIDS–about Slim. They know
more about it than the government people do. He said he couldn't
cure AIDS. He said he could treat some of the symptoms, like
coughs. Don't you see–I'm glad to use his medicine, I have so
little. Half the time I don't even have antibiotics. When I went
into the medicine hut this afternoon–I've been in London–there was hardly anything there, most of what I had was stolen.'
She was sounding shrill, then tearful.

The Pynes glanced at each other, and Edna said, ‘It's getting
on top of you. It's no good taking things to heart.'

‘And who's talking?' said Cedric.

‘Fair enough,' said Edna. And to Sylvia. ‘I know how it is.
You get back from England, and you're on a rush of adrenalin
and you just go on, and then–whoomph, you're whacked, and
can't move for a couple of days. Now you go and lie down for
an hour. I'll ring the Mission and tell them.'

‘Wait a minute,' said Sylvia, remembering the most important
thing she wanted to ask them. At lunch Sylvia had heard that she–Sylvia–was a South African spy.

Weeping, because it seemed she was unable to stop, she told
them this, and Edna laughed and said, ‘Think nothing of it. Don't
waste tears on that. We are supposed to be spies too. Give a dog
a bad name and hang it. You can steal farms off South African
spies with a good conscience.'

‘Don't be silly, Edna,' said Cedric. ‘They don't need that.
They can just take them.'

Inside the circle of Edna's strong arm Sylvia was led to a large
room at the back of the house, and put on a bed. Edna drew
the curtains and left. Over the thin cotton of the curtains cloud
movements laid swift shadows, the yellow sunlight of late
afternoon came back, then there was sudden darkness, and thunder
crashed, and the rain came down on the iron roof in a
pandemonium. Sylvia slept. She was woken by a smiling black man
with a cup of tea. During the Liberation War the Pynes' trusted
cook had shown the guerillas the way into the house, and then
had left, to join them. ‘He didn't have any alternative but to join
them,' Father McGuire had said. ‘He's not a bad sort of man.
He's working now for the Finlays over at Koodoo Creek. No,
of course they don't know his history, what good would that do?'
The priest's comments on passing events were as detached as a
historian's, even if his personal grumbles were not. Interesting
that: judging by the tones of a voice, Father McGuire's indigestion
was of the same scale of importance as Sister Molly's disapproval
of the Pope, the Pynes' complaints about the black government–or Sylvia's tears because her medicine hut was empty.

Sundowners on the verandah: the storm had gone, the bushes
and flowers sparkled, the birds were singing their hearts out.
Paradise. And if she, Sylvia, had made this farm, built this house,
worked so hard, would she not have felt as the Pynes did, for a
violent sense of injustice was poisoning them. As the drinks were
poured, and titbits thrown to Lusaka and Sheba, while their claws
scraped and clacked on the cement, as they jumped up, jaws
snapping, and while Sylvia listened, the Pynes talked and talked,
obsessed and bitter. Once she had said on this verandah–but she
had been a neophyte then–‘But if you, I mean the whites, had
educated the blacks, then there wouldn't be all this trouble now,
would there? They'd be trained and efficient.'

‘What do you mean? Of course we educated them.'

‘There was a ceiling in the Civil Service,' said Sylvia. ‘They
couldn't go higher than a pretty low level.'

‘Nonsense.'

‘Not nonsense,' Cedric had conceded. ‘No, we made
mistakes.'

‘Who is we?' said Edna. ‘We weren't here then.'

But if
mistakes
are writ into a landscape, a country, a history,
then . . . A hundred years ago the whites had arrived in a country
the size of Spain, with a quarter of a million black people in all
that enormous territory. You'd think–the
you
here is the Eye
of History, from the future–that there had been no need to
take anyone's land, with so much. But what that Eye, using a
commonsensical view, would be discounting were the pomps and
greed of Empire. Besides, if the whites wanted land to have and
to hold, with tidy fences and clear-cut boundaries, while the
blacks' attitude to land was that it was their mother and could
not be individually owned, then there was also the question of
cheap labour. When the Pynes had come in the Fifties there were
still only a million and a half blacks in all this fair land, and not
even 200,000 whites. An empty landscape, according to the eyes
of overcrowded Europe. When the Pynes had taken on this farm,
the national movements of Zimlia had not been born. Innocent,
not to say ignorant, souls, they had come from a small country
town in Devon, prepared to work hard and prosper.

Now they sat watching the birds swoop from poinsettias
sparkling with raindrops to the birdbath, saw the hills standing close
because of the clean-washed air, and one of them said that nothing
would induce him to leave, and the other that she was fed up
with being called a villain, she had had enough.

Sylvia thanked them for their kindness, from the heart,
knowing that they thought her an odd little thing with over-sentimental
ideas, and she drove herself back through the darkening bush to
the Mission. There she again brought up the subject, at supper,
of being a South African spy, and Father McGuire said he had
been accused of that himself. It had been when he was protesting
to Mr Mandizi that the school was a disgrace to a civilised country,
where were the textbooks?

‘There is a pretty advanced form of paranoia around, my child,'
he said. ‘It would be a good thing if you were not to fret your
brains about it.'

 • • •

At five next morning, the sun still a small yellow glow behind
the gums, Sylvia came out on to the little verandah and saw in
the dawn light a tragic figure, hands squeezed together in front
of him, his head bent in pain, or in grief . . . she recognised Aaron.

‘What is the matter?'

‘Oh, Doctor Sylvia. Oh, Doctor Sylvia . . .' he came up to
her in a sideways dawdle, slowed by conflict: tears ran down his
usually cheerful face. ‘I didn't mean it. Oh I am so-so-so-sorry.
Forgive me, Miss Sylvia. The devil got into me. I am sure that is
the reason I did it.'

‘Aaron, I have no idea what you are talking about.'

‘I stole your picture, and that is why Father beat me.'

‘Aaron,
please
 . . .'

He collapsed on to the brick floor of the verandah, put his
head against the thin pillar there and sobbed. It was too early for
Rebecca to be in the kitchen. Sylvia sat beside the lad, and did
not say anything, merely was there. And there a few minutes later
Father McGuire found them, coming out to taste the early
morning freshness.

‘And now what is this? I told you not to tell Doctor Sylvia.'

‘But I am ashamed. And please tell her to forgive me.'

‘Where have you been these last three days?'

‘I am afraid. I have been hiding in the bush.'

That accounted for his shivering–he was cold because he
was hungry: heat was already emanating from the East.

‘Go into the kitchen, make yourself some good strong tea
with plenty of milk and sugar and cut yourself some bread and
jam.'

‘Yes, Father. I am very sorry, Father.'

Aaron went off, in no hurry for his restoring meal, though he
must have been desperate for it: he was looking over his shoulder
as he went at Sylvia.

‘Well, Father?'

‘He stole your little photograph in its pretty silver frame.'

‘But . . .'

‘And no, Sylvia, you must not now give it to him. It is back
on your table. He said he liked the face of the old woman. He
wanted to look at it. I think he has no notion of the value of the
silver.'

‘Then it's over and done with.'

‘But I beat him, and I beat him too hard. There was blood.
This old man is not at his wisest and best.' The sun was up, hot
and yellow. A cicada started, then another, and a dove began its
plaint. ‘I shall have extra time to do in purgatory.'

‘Have you been taking your vitamin pills?'

‘In my defence I must say that these people understand far
too well that to spoil the child you must spare the rod. But–that's no excuse. And I am supposed to be teaching Aaron to be
a man of God. And he cannot be allowed to steal.'

‘It's vitamin B you need, Father. For your nerves. I brought
you some from London.'

Voices in altercation from the kitchen, Rebecca's, Aaron's.
The priest called out, ‘Rebecca, Aaron must be fed.' The voices
stilled. ‘It's getting hot, let's go in.' He went in, she followed,
and on the table Rebecca was setting down the tray with the early
morning tea.

‘He has eaten all the bread I baked yesterday.'

‘Then, Rebecca, you must bake some more.'

‘Yes, Father.' She hesitated. ‘I think he meant to put back the
picture. He wanted to look at it while Sylvia was away.'

‘I know. I beat him too hard.'

‘Okay.'

‘Yes.'

‘Sylvia, who is that old lady?' asked Rebecca. ‘She has a nice
face.'

‘Julia, her name was Julia. She is dead. She was my–I think
she probably saved my life when I was very young.'

‘Okay.'

 • • •

A man may be austere by temperament rather than as a result of
a decision to punish the flesh. The Leader was hardly one to
examine his life with a view to improving his character, feeling
that having been accepted by the Jesuits was enough of a guarantee
for Heaven; and when it did come to his attention that frugality
was supposed to be a good thing, he remembered an early
childhood where he had often been short of food and everything else.
In some parts of the world the virtues of abstinence come easily.
His father worked on a Jesuit mission as a handyman, and was
often drunk. His mother was a silent woman, usually sick, and he
was the only child. When drunk his father might beat him, and
his mother was beaten because of her inability to have more
children. He was still not ten years old when he confronted his
father, shielding his mother, and the blows meant for her reached
his arms and legs, leaving scars.

He was a clever little boy, was noticed by the Fathers, and
chosen for higher education. Thin as a stray dog–Father Paul's
description of him–short, physically clumsy, he could not play
games and was often a butt, and particularly of Father Paul, who
disliked him. There were other Fathers, teachers and curers of
souls, but it was Father Paul who was the child's experience of
the white world, a meagre little man from Liverpool, formed by
a bitter childhood, with a tongue that ran contempt for the blacks.
The kaffirs were savages, animals, not much better than baboons.
Even more than the other teachers, he did not spare the rod. He
beat Matthew for obstinacy, for insolence, for the sin of pride,
for speaking his own language, and for translating a Shona proverb
into English and using it in an essay. ‘Don't quarrel with your
neighbour if he is stronger than you.'

It was a major responsibility, so Father Paul saw it, to rid his
pupils of such backwardness. Matthew loathed everything about
Father Paul: his smell revolted him, he sweated freely, did not
wash enough, and his black robes had a sour animal odour.
Matthew hated the reddish hairs that sprouted from his ears and
nostrils and on the backs of his thin bony white hands. The boy's
physical dislike was sometimes so strong, waves of pure murder
rose up in him, and he contained them, trembling, his eyes
burning.