‘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 halfan 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 ofthat 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 cafe 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 cafe'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. '