'Johnny doesn't seem to remember me – but I was part of the family, wasn'tI – for ages?'
A roar went up. The speakers were pushing on to the platform, about twenty of them, Johnny among them, with Franklin, and other black men. Franklin saw Frances, who had pushed her way up to the front, and leaped down off the platform, laughing, almost crying, rubbing his hands: he was dissolving in joy. He embraced Frances and then looked around and said, ‘Where's Sylvia?'
Franklin was staring at a thin young woman, with straight fair hair tied back off a pale face, in a high-necked black sweater. His gaze left her, wandered off, came back, in doubt.
‘But here is Sylvia,’ shouted Sylvia above the din of the clapping and shouting. On the platform just above them the speakers stood waving their arms, clasping their hands above their heads, and shaking them, giving the clenched fist salute to some entity apparently just above the heads of the audience. They were smiling and laughing, absorbing the crowd's love and sending it back in hot rays that could positively be seen.
' Here I am. You've forgotten me, Franklin. '
Never has a man looked more disappointed than Franklin did then. For years he had held in his mind that little fluffy girl, like a new yellow chick, as sweet as the Virgin and the female saints on the Holy Pictures at the mission. This severe unsmiling girl hurt him, he didn't want to look at her. But she came from behind Frances, and hugged him, and smiled, and for a moment he was able to think, Yes this is Sylvia...
'Franklin,' they were shouting from the platform.
At this moment up came Rose, and insisted on embracing him. 'Franklin. It's me. It's Rose. Do you remember?'
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ said Franklin, whose memories of Rose were ambiguous.
‘I have to see you,’ said Rose.
‘Yes, but I have to go up now. '
‘I’ll wait for you after the meeting. It's to your advantage, remember.'
He climbed up, and was now a shiny smiling black face among the others, and next to Johnny Lennox, who was like a mangy old lion, but dignified with it, greeting his followers down in the audience with a shake of his fist. But still Franklin's eyes roamed the hall, as if somewhere down there the old Sylvia was, and then when he stared, forlornly for that moment, at where the real Sylvia was, in a front seat, Sylvia waved at him and smiled. His own face burst out again into happiness, and he opened his arms, embracing the crowd, but really it was her.
Victory celebrations after a war do not have much to say about the dead soldiers, or rather, they say a good deal or even sing about the dead comrades ' who made this victory possible' , but the acclamations and the noisy singing are designed to make the victors forget about the bones lying in a cleft of rock on a kopje, or in a grave so shallow the jackals have got there, scattering ribs, fingers, a skull. Behind the noise there is an accusing silence, soon to be filled with forgetfulness. In the hall that night were few people – they were mostly white – who had lost sons and daughters to a war, or who had fought in one, but the men on the platform, some of them, had been in an army, or had visited the fighters. There were also men who had been trained for political war, or for guerilla war, in the Soviet Union, or in camps set up by the Soviet Union, in Africa. And in that audience a good few had known various bits of Africa 'in the old days'. Between them and the activists were gulfs, but they were all cheering.
Twenty years of war, beginning with isolated outbreaks of ' civil unrest' or ' disobedience' or strikes, or sullen angers erupting into murder or arson, but all those rivulets had become the flood that was the war, twenty years ofit and soon to be forgotten except in celebratory occasions. The noise in the hall was tumultuous, and did not abate. People shouted and wept and embraced each other and kissed strangers and on the platform speakers followed each other, black and white. Franklin spoke, then again. The crowd liked him, this round cheerful man who – so it was said – would soon be in a government formed by Comrade Matthew Mungozi who had unexpectedly won a majority in the recent elections: President Mungozi, until recently only one name among half a dozen potential leaders. And there was Comrade Mo, arriving late, grinning, waving, excited, jumping up on the platform to describe how he had just returned from the lines of freedom fighters giving up their weapons, and planning how to make real the sweet dreams that had kept them going for years. Comrade Mo, gesticulating, agitated, weeping, told the audience of those dreams: they had been so occupied with news of the war that they had not had time to think how soon they would hear, ‘And now we shall build a future together.' Comrade Mo was not actually a Zimlian, but never mind, no one else there had actually so recently been with the freedom fighters, not even Comrade Matthew, who had been too busy with discussions with Whitehall and in international meetings. Most of the world's leaders had already assured him of their support. Overnight, he had become an international figure.
There was no way for Frances and Sylvia to leave, and the shouting and tears and speeches went on till the hall's caretaker came to say there were ten minutes left of paid-for time. Groans and boos and cries of fascists. Everyone pressed towards the doors. Frances stayed looking up at Johnny, thinking that surely he should at least acknowledge her presence, and he did give her a stern and unsmiling nod. There, climbing up on the platform was Rose, to greet Johnny, who did acknowledge her with a nod. Then Rose stood in front of Franklin, blocking the people who wanted to shake his hand, embrace him, or even carry him shoulder high out of the hall.
When Frances and Sylvia had reached the foyer Rose arrived, bursting with her triumph. Franklin had promised her an interview with Comrade Matthew. Yes, at once. Yes, yes, yes, he promised, he would speak to Comrade Matthew who would be in London next week and Rose would get her interview.
'See?' Rose said to Frances, ignoring Sylvia. 'And so I'mon my way.'
‘Where to?' was the expected reply, and Frances made it.
‘You'll see,’ said Rose. ' All I wanted was a break, that's all. '
She went off to resume her duties as a steward.
Frances and Sylvia stood on the pavement, while happy people unwilling to part from each other, milled about them.
'I have to see you, Frances,' said Sylvia. 'It's important – not just you, everybody. '
' Everybody!'
‘Yes, you'll see why. '
They would all meet in a week, and Sylvia would come home for the whole night, she promised.
Rose read every article she could find on comrade Matthew, President Mungozi. Not so much on Zimlia. A great deal was being said, and most of it complimentary, by people who had often written unpleasantly. For one thing, he was a communist. What was that going to mean, in the Zimlian context, was being asked. Rose did not intend to pose such questions, or at least not in a confrontational manner. She had written a draft of her interview before even meeting The Leader, all taken from other interviews. As a freelance journalist she had written little pieces about local issues, mostly on information supplied to her by Jill, now on several committees on the Council. She had always fitted together information, or other people's articles, to make her articles, so this job was the same, only larger in import and – she hoped – in consequences. She used none of the criticism of Comrade Matthew, and ended with a couple of paragraphs of optimistic euphemism of the kind she had heard so often from Comrade Johnny.
This article, she took, in draft, for her interview to The Leader, at his hotel. He was not a communicative interviewee, at least to start with, but when he had read her draft he lost his suspicions, and gave her some helpful quotes. 'As President Mungozi told me...'
It was a week later. Frances had extended the table to its former state, hoping people would say, Just like old times. She had cooked a stew and made a pudding. Who was coming? Told that Sylvia was, Julia said she would come down, and bring Wilhelm. Colin, hearing of the subject of what Sylvia was calling ' a meeting'said he would certainly be there. Andrew, who had been on a honeymoon with Sophie – his word, though they were not married – said they would both come.