The Sweetest Dream (59 page)

Edna got into the driver's seat and Clever got in beside her.
He should be in the back seat, she thought, but without much
heat. She listened while he chattered about Doctor Sylvia and the
classes under the trees, the books, the exercise books, the biros,
much better than the school. She became curious and instead of
dropping the boy at the turn-off to make his way back to the
Mission, drove him there and parked.

It was still only half past twelve. Sylvia was sitting at the dining
table with the priest, having lunch, where she, Edna, had been
not so long before. Invited to sit down for lunch, Edna was going
to, but Sylvia said she had to get down to the village, Edna mustn't
take it personally. So Edna, a woman who liked her food, let
the priest make her a sandwich of some tomato slices between
unbuttered bread–yes, butter was hard to get at the moment,
with the drought–and she followed Sylvia. She did not know
what to expect, and was impressed. Everyone knew who Mrs
Pyne was, of course, and smiles of welcome came her way. They
brought her a stool, and forgot she was there. She sat with the
sandwich pushed into her bag, because she suspected some of
those present would be hungry, and she could not eat in front of
them. Good Lord, she thought. Who could ever believe that I'd
see a couple of bits of dry bread and a slice of tomato as a wicked
luxury?

She listened to Sylvia reading, in English, slowly pronouncing
every word, from an African writer she had never heard of, though
she did know that blacks wrote novels, while the people listened
as if . . . God, they might be in church. Then Sylvia invited a
young man, and then a girl, to tell the others what the story was
about. They got it right, and Edna realised she was relieved that
they did: she wanted this enterprise to be a success and was pleased
with herself that she did.

Sylvia was asking an old woman to tell them all about a
drought she remembered when she was a little girl. The old
woman spoke a jolting fumbling English, and Sylvia told a young
woman to repeat it in better English. That drought didn't
sound much different from this one. The white government had
distributed maize in the drought areas, said the old woman, and
there was some appreciative clapping which could only be a
criticism of their own government. When the tale was finished Sylvia
told the ones who could to write down what they remembered,
and the ones who couldn't to make a story which they could tell
tomorrow.

It was two thirty. Sylvia set the old woman who had told the
drought story over the others, about a hundred of them, and went
with Edna back up to the house. Now there would be a cup of
tea and she and Sylvia could sit and talk, she could have her talk
at last . . . but oddly, it seemed the need to talk and to be heard
had left her.

Sylvia said, ‘They are such good people. I can't bear it, the
way they are being wasted.'

They were standing outside the house, near the car.

‘Well,' said Edna, ‘I suppose we are all of us better than we
are given a chance to be.'

She could see from the way Sylvia turned to look hard at her,
that this was not the kind of thing people expected to hear from
her. And why not? ‘Would you like me to come and help you
with your school–or the patients?'

‘Oh, yes, would you, would you really?'

‘Let me know when you need me,' said Edna, and got into
the car and drove off, feeling she had made a big step into a new
dimension. She did not know that if she had said to Sylvia then
and there, ‘Can I start now?' Sylvia would have gratefully said,
‘Oh, yes, come and help me with this sick man, he's got malaria
so badly he's shaking himself to death.' But Sylvia decided that
politeness had spoken out of Edna and did not think about her
offer again.

As for Edna she felt all her life that she had missed an
opportunity, a door had opened but she had chosen not to see it. The
trouble was, she had been joking about do-gooders for years, and
for her to become one, just like that . . . yet she had made the
offer and had meant it. For a moment she had not been the Edna
Pyne she knew but someone very different. She did not tell Cedric
about driving the black woman into hospital: suppose he grumbled
about the petrol, and how hard it was to get any. She did mention
that she had seen the village where stuff stolen from the unfinished
hospital was evidence. ‘Good for them,' was his comment. ‘Better
that than it lies rotting in the bush.'

 • • •

Mr Edward Phiri, Inspector of Schools, had written to the
headmaster of Kwadere Secondary School to say he would arrive at
9 a.m. and would expect to have his midday meal with him and
the staff. His Mercedes, third-hand when bought–he wasn't a
Minister and worthy of a new one–had broken down not far
from the Pynes' signpost. He left his car and in a foul temper
walked the few hundred yards to the Pynes' house. There he
found Cedric and Edna at breakfast. He announced himself, said
that he must speak to Mr Mandizi at the Growth Point to come
and fetch him and drive him to the school, but heard that the
telephone line was down and had been for a month.

‘Then why has it not been mended?'

‘I am afraid you must ask the Minister for Communications
that question. The telephone system is always breaking down and
it can take weeks to be mended.' Edna spoke, but Mr Phiri looked
at the husband–the man, whose role it was to lead. Cedric
seemed unaware of his responsibility, and said nothing.

Mr Phiri stood looking at the breakfast table. ‘You have
breakfast late. I had mine it seems many hours ago.'

Edna said in the same accusing voice, ‘Cedric was out in the
fields just after five. It wasn't properly light. Perhaps you would like
to sit down and have some tea–or perhaps some more breakfast?'

Mr Phiri sat, good humour restored. ‘And perhaps I will. But I
am surprised to hear that you are at work so early,' he said to Cedric.
‘I was under the impression that you white farmers take it easy.'

‘I think you are under a good many false impressions,' said
Cedric. ‘But now I must ask you to excuse me. I have to get
back to the dam.'

‘Dam? Dam? There is no dam marked on the map.'

Edna and Cedric exchanged glances. They now suspected this
official of having faked a breakdown for the purpose of having a
look at their farm. He had as good as admitted it, when mentioning
the map.

‘Shall I have fresh tea made?'

‘No, this tea in the pot will do me well. And perhaps those
eggs you have left over? A pity to waste them, I think.'

‘They wouldn't be wasted. The cook will have them for his
breakfast.'

‘And now that surprises me. I don't believe in spoiling staff.
My boys get
sadza
, certainly not farm eggs.'

Mr Phiri was apparently unaware of his incorrectness and sat
smiling as Edna filled his plate with fried eggs, bacon, sausages.
As he began eating he said, ‘Perhaps I could accompany you to
see the dam? Since clearly I am not destined to get to the school
this morning?'

‘Why not?' said Edna. ‘I'll run you there in my car. And when
you are finished someone at the Mission will take you to the
Growth Point.'

‘And what about my car sitting helplessly on the road? It will
be stolen.'

‘That seems to me more than likely,' said Cedric, in the same
dry disliking tone he had used from the start, such a contrast to
the rawly emotional voice of his wife.

‘Then, perhaps you could order one of your workers to guard
my car?'

Again husband and wife exchanged looks. Edna, returned to
her responsible self by her husband's rage, which Mr Phiri was
unaware of, was silently urging compliance. Cedric got up, went
out to the kitchen, returned, said, ‘I have asked the cook to ask
the garden boy to guard your car. But perhaps we should be
taking steps to get it restarted?'

‘What a fine idea,' said Mr Phiri, who had finished his eggs
and was eating lumps of sugary sweets, which he clearly approved
of. ‘And how shall we do that?'

Edna knew that Cedric was suppressing something like, ‘And
why should I care?'–and said quickly, ‘Cedric, you could try
the radio.'

‘Ah, so you have a radio?'

‘The batteries are low. There are none available in the shops
just now, as I expect you have found yourself.'

‘That is true, but you could try?'

Cedric had not wanted to confess to the radio because he
didn't want to waste what power there was on Mr Phiri. ‘I'll try,
but I won't promise anything.' He disappeared again.

‘What is this delightful stuff I am eating?' said Mr Phiri, tucking
in.

‘Crystallised paw paw.'

‘You must give me the recipe. I'll tell my wife to make me
some.'

‘She must have it already. I got it from the radio programme,
Making the Best of Our Produce
.'

‘I am surprised you listen to a programme for poor black
women.'

‘This poor white woman listens to women's programmes. And
if your wife is too good for it then she is missing a lot.'

‘Poor. . .' Mr Phiri laughed, heartily, genuinely, and then
realising there had been a remark which he was sure had been
meant as a rudeness, said sourly, ‘Now that is a good joke.'

‘I am glad you like it.'

‘Okay.' Meaning, enough of that.

But Edna went on. ‘It is a very good programme. I have
learned a lot from it. Everything you see on this table is made on
the farm.'

Mr Phiri took his time surveying the spread, but did not want
to confess some of it was unfamiliar to him–fish pâté, liver pâté,
curried fish . . . ‘The jams, of course, and may I taste this one?'
He reached for a pot, ‘Rosella . . . rosella–but this grows wild
everywhere?'

‘So what, if it makes good jam.' Mr Phiri pushed the pot away
without tasting it. ‘I was told the nuns at the Mission won't eat
the marvellous peaches growing in the garden, they'll only eat
tinned peaches, because they don't want to be thought primitive
people.' She laughed, spitefully.

‘I hear your husband has bought the farm next to this
one?'

‘It was for sale. You people didn't want it. It was offered to
you. It was much against my will, I assure you.'

Here they looked at each other, but really, as had not happened
till now; their eyes had been doing anything but expressing a
willingness to try and like each other.

Mr Phiri did not like this woman. First, on principle: she was
a white farmer's wife, whom he thought of first of all as one of
the females who had taken up guns in the Liberation War and
defended homesteads, roads, ammunition points: this district was
an area where the war had been fierce. Yes, he could just see her
in battledress with a gun, aimed perhaps at him. Yet he had been
a boy in the war, safe in Senga: the war had not touched him at
all.

She disliked this class of black official, called them little Hitlers,
and delighted in repeating every bad thing she heard about
them. They treated their black servants like dirt, worse than any
white person had ever done, the blacks didn't want to work for
other blacks, tried to work for whites. They abused their power,
they took bribes, they were–and this was the real sin–incompetent. And this particular man she had disliked from the first
glance.

The two people, the over-tense dried-out white woman, the
large and confident black man, sat looking at each other, letting
their faces speak for them.

‘Okay,' said Mr Phiri at last.

Luckily, in came Cedric. ‘I got a message through just before
the bloody thing faded. Mandizi will be along. But he says he's
not well today.'

‘Mr Mandizi I am sure will be as quick as he can, but we shall
have time to see your new dam.'

The two men went out to the lorry, parked under a tree, and
neither even looked at the woman. She smiled to herself, the
practised bitter twist of the lips of one who feeds on bitterness.

Cedric drove fast, over the rough farm roads, through fields,
kopjes, patches of bush. Mr Phiri had scarcely in his life been out
of Senga, and like Rose did not know how to interpret what he
saw.

‘And what is this growing here?'

‘Tobacco. It is what is keeping your economy going.'

‘Ah, so that is the famous tobacco?'

‘You mean you've never seen tobacco growing?'

‘When I go out of Senga inspecting schools I am always in
such a hurry, I am a busy man. That is why I am so pleased to
have this chance of seeing a real farm, with a white farmer.'

‘Some of your black farmers are growing good tobacco, didn't
you know that?'

Mr Phiri was silent, because they were driving along the base
of a tumbling hill and there, in front of them, was a waste land
of raw yellow soil in heaps and piles and ridges, and an excavator
was labouring away, balancing on improbable slopes and
decliv-ities. ‘Here we are,' said Cedric, leaping out, and he went forward
without looking to see if the Inspector was following. A black
man, the excavator driver's mate, came forward to the farmer and
the two stood close together, conferring over a map of some kind,
on the edge of a hole in the dense yellow soil. Mr Phiri went
cautiously forward among the yellow heaps, trying to keep his
shoes clean. Dust blew off the tops of the heaps. His good suit
was already dusty.

‘Well, that's it.' Cedric returned.

‘But where is the dam?'

‘There.' Cedric pointed.

‘But–when it is finished how big will it be?'

Cedric pointed again. ‘There . . . there . . . from that line of
trees to the kopje, and from there to where we are standing.'