Sylvia was again in the Arrivals of Senga airport, as crowded as it had been when she was last here, and with the same two kinds of people divided by colour, but much more by status. But there had been a change. Four – no, five, years before, this had been a vigorously confident crowd, yes, but so soon after that war faces and the set of bodies still showed a practised apprehension, as if the news of Peace had not really been taken in by the whole person. Nerves were still set for bad news. But now this crowd was exuberant, triumphant with successful shopping in London, which was overloading the small and creaking carousel to the point where great suitcases, refrigerators, luggage, furniture toppled off to be hustled away by their laughing owners. Never has there been a more openly self-congratulatory population of travellers than this one; on the plane among the whites the words the new nomenklatura had circulated with the relish of gossip.
And, again, here was the same division in dress, the new black elite in their three-piece suits, wiping copious sweat from their beaming faces, and the casual be-jeaned and T-shirted whites off to a hundred different humble stations in the bush, or in the town. Soon, both these so very different categories of being were staring at one focus: a young black woman of perhaps eighteen, very pretty, wearing the advanced clothes of some designer or other, high heels like skewers and the petulant frown of the spoiled young. She had commandeered two of the porters. Off the carousel were being lifted one, two, three, four – was that all? – no, seven, eight, Vuitton suitcases. ' Boy, bring that here,’ she told them, in the high peremptory voice she had learned from the white madams of former times – none would dare to use it now.
'Boy – be quick.' She advanced to the front of the queue. 'Boy, show my cases to the officer.' A large black man in the queue said something to her, avuncular, proprietary, to establish his acquaintance with this dazzler to the crowd, while she tossed her head and gave him a smile half-pleased, and half Who are you to tell me what to do? All the blacks were proudly watching this accomplishment of their Independence, while the lesser mortals' white faces did not comment, though glances were certainly being exchanged. They would discuss the incident later when safely in their homes. At Customs she said, ' IamSoandSo's daughter'-a senior Minister – and to the porters, ' Boy... Boy – follow me. ‘And she went through Customs and then past Immigration as if it did not exist.
Sylvia had four large cases and a little hold-all for her clothes, and while watching whole households ofgoods being chalked okay by the Customs officials, she knew she could not expect the same. This time she had not been lucky in whom she had sitting beside her on the plane. She was looking along the faces of the Customs officials for the young, eager, friendly face of last time, but he was not on duty, or had evolved into one of these correct officials. When she got to the head of the line, a frowning man confronted her.
‘And what is all this you have here?'
' These are two sewing machines. '
‘And what do you want sewing machines for? Are they for your business?'
‘No, they are presents for the women at the Mission at Kwadere.'
' Presents. And what will they be paying you for them?'
‘Nothing,’ said Sylvia, smiling at him: she knew that the sewing machines had touched this man, perhaps he had watched his mother or sister working on one. But duty won.
' They will have to go to the depot. And you will be informed what you must pay on them.' The two boxes were lifted off to one side: Sylvia knew she was unlikely to see them again. They would be ' mislaid' .
'And now what is all this?' He knocked on the sides of the two cases as if they were doors.
'Books. For the Mission.'
At once on to the man's face appeared a look she knew too welclass="underline" hunger. He took a lever, prised up the top of one case -books. He picked one up, turning pages, taking his time, and sighed. He let the books fall back, used the lever to bang the top down, and stood undecided.
' Please – they are much needed, these books.'
It was touch and go. ' Okay, ' he said. She had traded two sewing machines for the books, but she knew which the women at the Mission would choose.
She went through Immigration without difficulty, and there stood Sister Molly waiting, smiling, outlined by that brilliance of light that means rain has recently cleared the air. The rainy season had come. Late, but it was here. But now, the question had to be, was it going to stay: the last three or four years, rains had indeed broken the long dryness, but then had taken themselves off again. The region was officially in a state of drought, but today you' d not know it, with complacent white clouds sailing on the blue, and puddles everywhere. The sunlight dazzled off Sister Molly's cross, shone off her strong brown legs. Healthy, that was the word for her. And healthy was this scene, everything strong and vigorous, newly-washed trees and bushes and a good-natured crowd disappearing into official cars and lowly buses. Sylvia felt herself again. Her visit to London had not been a success, except for her boxes of books. But that experience snapped shut behind her. London seemed unreal to her: this was real.
The back seat of Sister Molly's old car sank under the weight of the big cases. She at once began to talk, with the news that there had been scandals. Ministers had been accused of taking bribes and of stealing. She spoke with the relish that confirms a satisfaction in everything going on as expected. ‘And Father McGuire said there was trouble of some kind at the Mission. St Luke's has been accused of theft.'
'That's nonsense.'
'Nonsense can be very powerful.’And Sylvia thought that this nun's – she was that, after all – look at her was too admonitory – a warning? – for the occasion. There was something wrong. It did not do to dismiss anything she said. This was a very accomplished young woman. She ran a scheme that brought teachers from America and from Europe to teach for a couple of years in Zimlia, because of the shortage of black teachers, and this was -so far – welcomed by the black government because it saved on teachers' wages. Some teachers were in schools in remote areas, and Sister Molly was almost permanently on her rounds to see how her charges did. ' Some of them, they come from well-off families and they have no idea of what they are coming to, and then they find themselves at a school like the one at Kwadere and they can take it hard.' Breakdowns, fits of depression, collapses of all kinds were coped with by this competent young woman as a hazard of the work: and she was kind and consoling, and some sheltered young thing from Philadelphia or LA might find herself rocked on the bosom of the deep, ' There now, there now, ' in the arms of this Molly who had started life in a poor home in Galway. ‘And I hear there is trouble again at the school, the headmaster has absconded with the money, and Father McGuire is working double again. And now that is a curious thing, don't you think so? All these headmasters and naughty thieves they think they are invisible to the rest of us and to the police, and so what is it goes through their poor heads, do you think?'-but she did not want an answer, she wanted to talk, and for Sylvia to listen. Soon she was back on her real centre of gravity, which was the Holy Father and his deficiencies, for apart from being a man, he was 'putting ideas into the heads' of priests working in various parts of the world. To hear this sequence of words, in this context – for it had ever been a main grievance of the whites that missions ' put ideas' into black heads – was an odd exhilaration, the same used as fuel by Colin in his books – the infinite incongruity that life was capable of. (Not long before leaving for London, Sylvia had heard from Edna Pyne that the present delinquency of the blacks was due to having had ideas put into their heads too soon in their evolutionary development.)