The Sweetest Dream (63 page)

At the house the priest was drinking tea. ‘Sylvia, my dear, I
think you should take a little holiday.'

‘And what would that do?'

‘Give it time to blow over.'

‘Do you think it will blow over?'

He was silent.

‘Where shall I go, Father? I feel now that this is my home.
Until the other hospital is built these people need me here.'

‘Let us see what Mr Mandizi says when he comes.'

These days Mr Mandizi was a friend, and it was a long time
since he had been rude and suspicious, but what was coming was
an official doing his duty.

When he came, there was nothing to know him by but his
name. This was Mr Mandizi, he said he was, but really he was
dreadfully ill.

‘Mr Mandizi, should you not be in bed?'

‘No, doctor. I can do my job. In my bed, there is my wife.
She is very sick. Two of us, side by side–no, I do not think I
would like that.'

‘Did you have the tests done?'

He was silent, then sighed, then said, ‘Yes, Doctor Sylvia, we
had the tests.'

Rebecca brought in the meat, the tomatoes, the bread for
lunch, saw the official and said, shocked, ‘Shame, oh shame, Mr
Mandizi.'

Since Rebecca was always thin and small and her face bony
under her kerchief, he could not see she was ill, and so he sat
there like the doomed man at the feast, surrounded by the
healthy.

‘I am so sorry, Mr Mandizi,' said Rebecca and went out to
her kitchen, crying.

‘And so now you must tell me everything, Doctor Sylvia.'

She told him.

‘Would she have died if you didn't operate?'

‘Yes.'

‘Was there a chance of saving her?'

‘A bit of a chance. Not much. You see, I don't have penicillin,
it ran out and . . .'

He made the movement of his hand she knew so well: don't
criticise me for things I can't help. ‘I shall have to tell the big
hospital.'

‘Of course.'

‘They will probably want a post mortem.'

‘They will have to be quick. She is in her coffin. Why don't
you just say it was my fault. Because I am not a surgeon.'

‘Is it a difficult operation?'

‘No, one of the easy ones.'

‘Would a real surgeon have done anything different?'

‘Not much, no, not really.'

‘I don't know what to say, Doctor Sylvia.'

It was clear he wanted to say more. He sat with his eyes
lowered, glanced up at her, doubtfully, then looked at the priest.
Sylvia could see they knew something she didn't.

‘What is it?' she said.

‘Who is this friend of yours, Matabele Bosman Smith?'

‘Who?'

Mr Mandizi sighed. He sat with his untouched food in front
of him. So did Sylvia. The priest ate steadily, frowning. Mr
Mandizi rested his head on his hand, and said, ‘Doctor Sylvia, I
know there is no
muti
for what I have, but I am getting these
headaches, headaches, I didn't know there could be headaches
like these.'

‘I have something for your headaches. I'll give you the pills
before you go.'

‘Thank you, Doctor Sylvia. But I have to say something . . .
there is something. . .' Again, he glanced at the priest, who
nodded reassurance. ‘They are going to close down your hospital.'

‘But these people need this hospital.'

‘There will be our new hospital soon . . .' Sylvia brightened,
saw that the official was only cheering himself up, and she nodded.
‘Yes, there will be one I am sure of it,' said Mr Mandizi. ‘Yes,
that is the situation.'

‘Okay,' said Sylvia.

‘Okay,' said Mr Mandizi.

 • • •

A week later arrived a short typewritten letter addressed to Father
McGuire, instructing him to close down the hospital ‘as from this
date'. On the same morning a policeman arrived on a motorbike.
He was a young black man, perhaps twenty, or twenty-one, and
he was ill at ease in his authority. Father McGuire asked him to
sit down, and Rebecca made them tea.

‘And now, my son, what can I do for you?'

‘I am looking for stolen property.'

‘Now I understand. Well, you won't find any in this house.'
Rebecca stood by the sideboard. She said nothing. The policeman
said to her, ‘Perhaps I will come with you to your house and
look around for myself.'

Rebecca said, ‘We have seen the new hospital. There are bush
pig living in it.'

‘I too have visited the new hospital. Yes, bush pig, and I think
baboons too.' He laughed, stopped himself, and sighed. ‘But
there is a hospital here, I think, and my orders are that I must see
it.'

‘The hospital is closed.' The priest pushed over the official
letter, the policeman read it, and said, ‘If it is closed, then I do
not see any problem.'

‘That is my opinion too.'

‘I think I must discuss this situation with Mr Mandizi.'

‘That is a good idea.'

‘But he is not well. Mr Mandizi is not well and I think we
shall soon have a replacement.' He got up, not looking at Rebecca,
whose house he knew he ought to be investigating. Off he went,
his bike roaring and coughing through the peaceful bush.

Meanwhile Sylvia was supposed to be closing down her
hospital.

There were patients in the beds, and Clever and Zebedee
were doling out medicines.

She said to the priest, ‘I am going in to Senga to see Comrade
Minister Franklin. He was a friend. He came to us for holidays.
He was Colin's friend.'

‘Ah. Nothing more annoying than the people who knew you
before you were Comrade Minister.'

‘But I'm going to try.'

‘Wouldn't you perhaps think to put on a nice clean dress?'

‘Yes, yes.' She went into her room and emerged in her
going-to-town outfit, in green linen.

‘And perhaps you should take a nightdress or whatever you
need for the night?'

Again she went into her room and emerged with a hold-all.

‘And now shall I ring the Pynes and ask if they plan a trip to
Senga?'

Edna Pyne said she would be glad of an excuse to get away
from the bloody farm, and was over in half an hour. Sylvia jumped
into the seat beside her, waved at Father McGuire, ‘See you
tomorrow.' And so did Sylvia leave for what would be an absence
of weeks.

Edna kept up her complaints all the way into town, and then
said she had something shocking to tell, she shouldn't be
mentioning it but she had to. Cedric had been approached by one of
those crooks to say that in return for giving up his farms ‘now-now' a sum amounting to a third of their value would arrive in
his bank account in London.

Sylvia took this in, and laughed.

‘Exactly, laugh. That's all we can do. I tell Cedric, just take
it, and let's get out. He says he's not accepting a third of the
value. He wants to stick out for the full value. He says the new
dam alone will put up the value of the new farm by a half. I just
want to get out. What I can't stand, is the bloody hypocrisy. They
make me sick.' And so Edna Pyne chattered all the way in to
Senga where she dropped Sylvia outside the government offices.

When Franklin was told that Sylvia Lennox wanted to see
him he panicked. While he had thought she ‘might try something
on', he did not expect it so soon. He had signed the order to
close the hospital a week ago. He temporised: ‘Tell her I am in
a meeting.' He sat behind his desk, his hands palms down in front
of him, staring dolefully at the wall which had on it the portrait
of the Leader which adorned all the offices in Zimlia.

When he thought of that house he had gone to for his holidays,
in north London, it was as if he had touched some blessed place,
like a shady tree, that had no connection with anything before or
since. It had been home when he felt homeless, kindness when
he had longed for it. As for the old woman, he had seen her, like
an old secretary bird going in and out, but he had scarcely noticed
her, this terrible Nazi. But he had never heard any Nazi talk in
that house, surely? And there had been little Sylvia, with her
shining wisps of gold hair, and her angel's face. As for Rose
Trimble, when he thought of her he found himself grinning; a proper
little crook, well he had benefited, so he shouldn't complain. And
now she had written that nasty piece . . . surely she had been a
guest in that house, like him? Yet she had been there much longer
than he had, and so what she wrote had to be taken seriously.
But what he remembered was welcome, laughter, good food, and
Frances, in particular, like a mother. Later, when it was Johnny's
place he stayed at, now that was a different thing. It wasn't a large
flat, nothing like that great house where Colin had been so kind,
yet it was always crammed with people from everywhere,
Americans, Cubans, other countries in South America, Africa . . . It was
an education in revolution, Johnny's flat. He remembered at least
two black men (with false names) from this country who were
training in Moscow for guerilla war. And the guerilla war had
been won, and he owed his sitting here, behind this desk, a senior
Minister, to men like those. While he kept an eye out for
them, at rallies and big meetings, he had never seen them since.
Presumably they were dead. Now something confusing was
happening. He knew what was being said about the Soviet Union,
he was not one of the innocents who never left Zimlia. The word
communist was becoming something like a curse: elsewhere, not
here, where you had only to say
Marxism
to feel you were getting
a good mark from the ancestors. (And where were they in all
this?) A funny thing: he felt that that house in London had more
in common with the ease and warmth of his grandparents' huts
in the village (as it happened not all that far from St Luke's Mission)
than anything since. And yet in the file on his desk was that nasty
piece. He was feeling with every minute deeper resentment–against Sylvia. Why had she done those bad things? She had
stolen goods from the new hospital, she had done operations when
she shouldn't, and she had killed a patient. What did she expect
him to do now? Well what
did
she expect? That hospital of
hers, it had never had any real legal existence. The Mission
decides to start a hospital, brings in a doctor, nothing in the files
recorded permissions being asked or given . . . these white people,
they come here, they do as they like, they haven't changed, they
still . . .

He sent out for sandwiches for lunch, in case Sylvia was
hanging about somewhere waiting to catch him, and when Sylvia's
second request arrived, ‘Please, Franklin, I must see you', scribbled
on an envelope–who did she think she was, treating him like
this–he ordered that she must be told he had been called away
on urgent business.

He went to the window, and lifted the slats of the blind and
there was Sylvia walking down there. Passionate accusations which
he might reasonably have directed against Life Itself were focused
on Sylvia's back with an intensity that surely she should have felt:
little Sylvia, that little angel, as fresh and bright in his memory as
a saint on a Holy Card, but she was a middle-aged woman with
dry dull hair tied by black ribbon, no different from any of these
white wrinkled madams whom he tried not to look at, he disliked
them so much. He felt Sylvia had betrayed him. He actually wept
a little, standing there holding up the slat and watching the green
blob that was Sylvia merge into the pavement crowd.

Sylvia walked straight into a tall distinguished gentleman who
took her in his arms and said, ‘Darling Sylvia'. It was Andrew,
and he was with a girl in dark glasses with a very red mouth,
smiling at her. Italian? Spanish?

‘This is Mona,' said Andrew. ‘We've got married. And I am
afraid the ramshackle streets of Senga are a shock to her.'

‘Nonsense, darling, I think it's cute.'

‘American,' said Andrew. ‘And she's a famous model. And as
beautiful as the day, as you can see.'

‘Only when I have all my paint on,' said Mona and excused
herself saying she must lie down, she was sure they had a lot to
talk about.

‘The altitude is getting to her,' said Andrew, solicitously kissing
her and waving her off into Butler's Hotel, a few steps away.

Sylvia was surprised to hear that 6,000 feet was considered
altitude, but did not care: this was her Andrew and now she was
going to sit and talk to him, so he said, in that café there. And
there they went, and held hands, while fizzy drinks arrived and
Andrew demanded to know everything about her.

She had opened her mouth to begin, thinking that here was
one of the important men in the world, and that surely the little
matter of the closing of the hospital at St Luke's could be reversed
by a word from him, when a group of very well-dressed people
filled the café, and he greeted them and they him and a lot of
badinage began about this conference they were all attending here,
in Senga. ‘It's quite the coolest new place for conferences, but it's
not exactly Bermuda,' someone said.

Sylvia did know that Senga was being touted as just the place
for any sort of international get together, and, seeing these bright
clever smart people, understood how much she had slid away, in
the stark exigencies of Kwadere, from being able to take part in
this talk.

Andrew continued to hold her hand, smiled at her often, then
said perhaps this was not the place to have a chat. More delegates
crowded in, joking at the café's smallness, which was somehow
being equated with Zimlia's lack of sophistication, and these
experts on absolutely everything you can think of, in this particular
case, ‘The Ethics of International Aid', sounded rather like
children comparing the merits of parties their respective parents had
recently given. There was so much noise, laughter and enjoyment
that Sylvia begged Andrew to be allowed to leave. But he said
she must come to the dinner tonight: ‘There's the big end of
conference dinner, and you must come.'