'And what ideas may they be?' Sylvia did manage to interpolate, and heard only Molly's old refrain that the Pope was sexist and did not understand the trials of women. Birth control, said Sister Molly, that was the key, and the Pope might have the keys of Heaven, and she did not want to argue with that, but he did not understand this earth. Let him be brought up with a tribe of nine brats and not enough money to put food into their mouths, and he would sing to a different tune. And in a state of mild and agreeable indignation, Sister Molly drove all the way to St Luke's Mission where she left Sylvia with her boxes of books. 'No, I'm not coming in. Otherwise I'll have to visit the nun-house. ‘And Sylvia heard, as she had been meant to, hen-house.
The priest's house, standing in the dust, the raggedy gum trees, the sun marking the nuns' house and the half dozen roofs of the school on its ridge – so paltry did all this seem, such a shallow incursion on the old landscape – she was back home, yes she felt that – and it could all be blown away by a breath. She stood with the smell of wet earth in her nostrils and a warmth striking up from it on to her legs. Then Rebecca appeared, with the cry of, ' Sylvia. Oh, Sylvia' , and the two women embraced. ‘Oh, Sylvia I have missed you too much. ‘But Sylvia was feeling that what she was embracing matched her feelings of evanescence, impermanence. Rebecca's body was like the frailest bundle of light bones, and when Sylvia held her away to look into that face, she saw Rebecca's eyes deep in her head, under the old faded kerchief.
‘What's wrong, Rebecca?'
'Okay,' said Rebecca, meaning, I shall tell you. But first she took Sylvia's hand and led her into the house, where she sat her down at the table with herself opposite. ‘My Tenderai is sick. ‘No concealment, while the two pairs of eyes searched each other. Two of Rebecca's children had died, another had been sick for a long time, and now there was Tenderai. The source of the disease was Rebecca's husband, still apparently in good health, if thin and drinking. By all the rules of probability Rebecca should be HIV positive, but without a test, who could know? And if she were, what could be done? She was not likely to be sleeping around, spreading the fatal thing.
Sylvia had been away a week.
'Okay,' said Sylvia, in her turn, using this new, or newish idiom, which now seemed to begin every sentence. She meant that she had absorbed the information and shared Rebecca's fears. She said, ‘I’ll examine him and see. Perhaps it is just a temporary disease.'
‘I hope it is,’ said Rebecca, and then, putting behind her family worries, said, ‘And Father McGuire is working too-too hard. '
‘I heard. And what is this business about theft?'
' It is a foolishness. It is about the cases of equipment at the hospital we went to. They are saying you stole them. '
Now, Sylvia had been thinking, for in London her thoughts had been with the mission, that it was only commonsense to return to the ruinous hospital and take away anything that could be used. But there was something more here, and Rebecca was not coming out with it. She looked away into the air, and her face was tight with embarrassment and the apprehension of trouble.
' Please tell me, Rebecca. What is it?'
Rebecca still did not look at Sylvia, but said that it was all a big foolishness. There was a spell on the cases – she used the English word, and then added, 'The n'ganga said bad things would happen to anyone who stole anything from the hospital. ‘And now she got up, and said it was time to get Father McGuire's lunch, and she hoped Sylvia was hungry, because she had cooked some special rice pudding.
While Rebecca had sat opposite, and in their minds had been Tenderai and the other children, dead and living, between the two women had been an absolute openness and trust. But now
Sylvia knew that Rebecca would not tell her more, for on this subject Rebecca knew she would not understand.
Sylvia sat on her bed surrounded by brick walls, and looked at the Leonardo women, whom she felt were welcoming her home. Then she turned to the crucifix behind her bed, with a deliberate intention of affirming certain ideas that had been growing clamorous in her mind. Someone subscribing to the miracles of the Roman Catholic Church should not accuse others of superstition: this was her train ofthought, and it was far from a criticism of the religion. On Sundays the congregations that came to take the Eucharist with Father McGuire were told that they drank the blood and ate the flesh of Christ. She had slowly come to understand how deeply the lives of the black people she lived among were embedded in superstition, and what she wanted was to understand it all, not to make what she thought of as 'clever intellectual remarks'. Of the kind Colin and Andrew would make, she told herself. But the fact remained: there was an area where she, Sylvia, could not go, and must not criticise, in Rebecca just as much as any black casual worker, although Rebecca was her good friend.
She would have to go over to the Pynes, if Father McGuire would not help. At lunch she brought the subject up, while Rebecca stood by the sideboard listening, and adding when the priest appealed to her for confirmation, 'Okay. It is true. And now the people who took the things are falling ill and people are saying it is because of what the n'ganga said.'
Father McGuire did not look well. He was yellow and the hectic patches on his broad Irish cheekbones flared. He was impatient and cross. This was the second time in five years he was having to teach twice his normal hours. And the school was falling apart and Mr Mandizi only repeated that he had informed Senga of the situation. The priest went back to the school without taking his usual nap, and Sylvia and Rebecca unpacked the books, and made shelves from planks and bricks and soon all of one wall, on either side of the little dressing-table, was covered with books.
Rebecca had wept to hear the sewing machines had been impounded – she had hoped to make a little extra money sewing on hers, but her tears when looking at and touching the books were from joy. She even kissed the books. 'Oh, Sylvia, it was so wonderful you thought of us and brought us the books.'
Sylvia went down to the hospital, where Joshua sat dozing under his tree, as if he had not left it in her absence, and where the little boys clamorously welcomed her, and she attended to her patients, many because of the coughs and colds that come with the sudden changes of temperature at the start of the rains. Then she took the car and went over to the Pynes, who filled a precise place in her life: when she needed information, that is where she went.
The Pynes had bought their farm, after the Second World War, in the Fifties, on that late wave of white immigration. They grew mostly tobacco and had been successful. The house was on a ridge, looking out over to tall tumbling hills that in the dry season were blue with smoke and haze, but now were sharply green – the foliage; and grey – granite boulders. The pillared verandah was wide enough to have parties on, and before Liberation parties had been many, but were few now, with so many of the whites gone. The floor was polished red, and on it were scattered low tables and dogs and some cats. Cedric Pyne sat gulping tea, while he stroked the head of his favourite dog, a ridgeback bitch called Lusaka. Edna Pyne, smart in her slacks and shirt, her skin glistening with sun-creams, sat by the tea tray, her dog, Lusaka's sister Sheba, as close as she could get by her chair. She listened to her husband holding forth about the deficiencies of the black government. Sylvia drank tea and listened too.
If she had had to hear Sister Molly out on the subject of the Pope and his inveterate maleness; had had to listen every day to Father McGuire saying he was an old man and he was no longer up to it, he was going back to Ireland; if she had had to listen to Colin lament his situation with Sophie, now she had to bide her time again before she could introduce her own concerns.