The Sweetest Dream

Father McGuire sat at the table, a hissing paraffin lamp beside him, drinking orange juice. A glass of it waited for her.

'We do have electricity, but there's a power cut,' he said.

Rebecca appeared with a tray and the information that Aaron sent a message that he would stay with his friend that night down at the hospital.

‘Why, does he live here?'

The priest, not looking at her, said that Aaron had a family in the village but he was going to sleep in this house at nights now.

Rebecca's face and his told her that here was a situation they were embarrassed about, so she enquired. It was an absurd thing, said Father McGuire, a ridiculous thing, and he could only apologise, but the young man would be living in the house for the sake of appearances. Sylvia had not understood. The priest seemed impatient, even offended at her, making him spell it out. ' It is not considered suitable, ' he said, ' for a priest to have a female living with him. '

'What?’ said Sylvia. She was annoyed, as he was.

Rebecca commented that people always talked, and that was a thing to be expected.

Sylvia said bitterly, and primly, that people had dirty minds, and Father McGuire said placidly that yes, that was so.

He then went on to say, but after a pause, that it had been suggested Sylvia should live with the nuns up the hill.

What nuns?'

We have the good sisters, in a house up the hill. But since you are not a religious, I thought you would be better here. '

So much was not being said, and Sylvia sat looking from him to Rebecca.

Our good sisters are supposed to be helping in the hospital, but not everyone is cut out for the dirty work of nursing. '

They are nurses?'

No, I would not say that. They have done courses in basic nursing. But I suggest you arrange for them to wash bandages and dressings and bedclothes. Well now, you will not be having stores of disposable dressings? No. You should arrange for Joshua to convey what needs to be washed to the sisters' house every day. And I will instruct them that they should do this work as a service to God. '

'Joshua will not like doing that, Father,' said Rebecca.

'And you would not like doing it either, Rebecca, so we are in difficulties.'

' It is Joshua's work, not mine. '

'And so here is a little difficulty for you to sort out, Sylvia, and I shall be waiting with interest to see how you do it. '

He got up, said goodnight and went to his bed, and Rebecca, without looking at Sylvia, said goodnight and left.

It was a month later. The hole in the shed wall was mended, and there was a lock and a key. Around two of the grass shelters were blinds made of the hessian used to bale tobacco, which could be adjusted to keep out wind and dust, if not heavy rain. A new hut had been built, with grass walls and grass roof, a big one, with holes cut in the walls to let in light. It was cool and fresh inside. The floor was of stamped earth. In it the really sick people could shelter. Sylvia had cured cases of long-standing deafness, caused by nothing worse than old impacted wax. She had cured cataracts. She had got medicines from Senga and was able to do something for the malaria cases, but most of them were old sufferers. She set limbs and cauterized wounds and sewed them up, and gave out medicines for sore throats and coughs, sometimes using, when they ran out, old wives' cures remembered by Father McGuire from Ireland. She had a maternity clinic, and delivered babies. All this was satisfactory enough, but she was in permanent frustration because she was not a surgeon. She needed to be. Bad and urgent cases could be driven to a hospital twenty miles away but sometimes delays were damaging, or fatal. She ought to be able to do caesareans and appendixes, amputate a hand, or open up a badly fractured knee. There was a shadowy area where it was hard to say if she was on the right side of the law or not: she might slice an arm to get at an ulcer, open up a suppurating wound to clean it, using surgeons' instruments. If only she had known how badly she would need a surgeon's skills then, when she was taking all kinds of courses that were not useful to her now...

She was also doing the kind of work that did not come the way of doctors in Europe. She had toured nearby villages to inspect water supplies, and found dirty rivers and polluted wells. Water was running low at this time of the year, and often stood in stagnant pools that bred bilharzia. She taught women from these villages how to recognise some diseases and when to bring sufferers in. More and more people came in to her, because she was being seen as a bit of a miracle worker, chiefly because of ears syringed free of wax. Her reputation was being spread by Joshua, for it helped his reputation, tarnished by association with the bad doctor. He and Sylvia were 'getting on', but she was overlooking his often violent accusations of the whites. Sometimes she cracked with, ‘But, Joshua, I wasn't here, how could I be to blame?'

' That is your bad luck, Doctor Sylvia. You are to blame if I say so. Now we have a black government what I say goes. And one day this will be a fine hospital, and we'll have our own black doctors.'

‘I hope so. '

‘And then you can go back to England and cure your own sick people. Do you have sick people in England?'

‘Of course we do. '

‘And poor people?'

'Yes.'

' As poor as we are?'

‘No, nothing like. '

' That is because you have stolen everything from us. '

' If you say so, Joshua, then so it is. '

'And why aren't you at home looking after your own sick people?'

'A very good question. I often wonder the same thing.'

‘But don't leave just yet. We need you until we get our doctors.'

‘But your own doctors won't come and work in poor places like this. They want to stay in Senga. '

'But this won't be a poor place. It will be a fine rich place, like England. '

Father McGuire said to her, ‘No, listen to me, my child, I'm going to talk to you seriously, as your confessor and adviser. '

‘Yes, Father. '

This had become a little comic turn: while it was not true to say she had shed her Catholicism, she was certainly having to redefine her beliefs. She had become a Catholic because of Father Jack, a lean austere man, consuming himself with an asceticism that didn't suit him. His eyes accused the world around him, and his movements were all vigilance against error and sin. She had been in love with him, and she believed he was not indifferent to her. So far, he had been the love of her life. Father Jack had stood for priesthood, for the Faith, for her religion, and now she was in this house in the bush with Father McGuire, an easy-going elderly man who loved his food. You would think that on a diet of porridge and beef and tomatoes and mostly tinned fruit, seldom fresh, that it was not possible to be a gourmet. Nonsense. Father Kevin shouted at Rebecca if the porridge wasn't right, and his beef had to be just so, medium rare, and the potatoes... Sylvia was fond of Kevin McGuire, he was a good man, as Sister Molly had said, but what she had responded to was the passionate abstinence of a very different man, and to the glories of Westminster Cathedral and – once – a brief trip to Notre Dame which burned in her memory like everything she loved most made visible. Once a week on Sunday evenings at a little church made of unadorned brick, furnished with local native stools and chairs, the people of the district came for Mass, and it was conducted in the local language, and danced... the women got up from their seats and powerfully danced their worship, and sang – oh, beautifully, yes, they did – and it was a noisy convivial occasion, like a party. Sylvia was wondering if she had ever really been a true Catholic, and if she was one now, though Father McGuire, in his role as her mentor, reassured her. She asked herself if in the little chapel where the dust drifted in, the service had been conducted in Latin, and the worshippers had stood and kneeled and responded, according to the old way, she would have liked that better. Yes, she would, she hated the Mass as conducted by Father Kevin McGuire, she hated the fleshy dancing, and the exuberance of the singing which she knew was a loosening of the bonds of their poor restricted lives. And she certainly did not like the nuns in their blue and white habits, like schoolgirls' uniforms.