The Sweetest Dream

'And who's talking?’ said Cedric.

'Fair enough,' said Edna. And to Sylvia. 'I know how it is. You get back from England, and you're on a rush of adrenalin and you just go on, and then – whoomph, you're whacked, and can't move for a couple of days. Now you go and lie down for an hour. I'll ring the Mission and tell them.'

‘Wait a minute,’ said Sylvia, remembering the most important thing she wanted to ask them. At lunch Sylvia had heard that she – Sylvia – was a South African spy.

Weeping, because it seemed she was unable to stop, she told them this, and Edna laughed and said, ' Think nothing of it. Don't waste tears on that. We are supposed to be spies too. Give a dog a bad name and hang it. You can steal farms off South African spies with a good conscience. '

' Don't be silly, Edna,’ said Cedric. 'They don't need that. They can just take them. '

Inside the circle of Edna's strong arm Sylvia was led to a large room at the back of the house, and put on a bed. Edna drew the curtains and left. Over the thin cotton of the curtains cloud movements laid swift shadows, the yellow sunlight of late afternoon came back, then there was sudden darkness, and thunder crashed, and the rain came down on the iron roof in a pandemonium. Sylvia slept. She was woken by a smiling black man with a cup of tea. During the Liberation War the Pynes' trusted cook had shown the guerillas the way into the house, and then had left, to join them. ' He didn't have any alternative but to join them, ' Father McGuire had said. ' He's not a bad sort of man. He's working now for the Finlays over at Koodoo Creek. No, of course they don't know his history, what good would that do?' The priest's comments on passing events were as detached as a historian's, even if his personal grumbles were not. Interesting that: judging by the tones ofa voice, Father McGuire's indigestion was of the same scale of importance as Sister Molly's disapproval of the Pope, the Pynes' complaints about the black government – or Sylvia's tears because her medicine hut was empty.

Sundowners on the verandah: the storm had gone, the bushes and flowers sparkled, the birds were singing their hearts out. Paradise. And if she, Sylvia, had made this farm, built this house, worked so hard, would she not have felt as the Pynes did, for a violent sense of injustice was poisoning them. As the drinks were poured, and titbits thrown to Lusaka and Sheba, while their claws scraped and clacked on the cement, as they jumped up, jaws snapping, and while Sylvia listened, the Pynes talked and talked, obsessed and bitter. Once she had said on this verandah – but she had been a neophyte then – 'But if you, I mean the whites, had educated the blacks, then there wouldn't be all this trouble now, would there? They'd be trained and efficient.'

‘What do you mean? Of course we educated them. '

' There was a ceiling in the Civil Service,’ said Sylvia. ' They couldn't go higher than a pretty low level. '

‘Nonsense. '

‘Not nonsense, ' Cedric had conceded. ‘No, we made mistakes.'

‘Who is we?’ said Edna. ‘We weren't here then. '

But if mistakes are writ into a landscape, a country, a history, then... A hundred years ago the whites had arrived in a country the size of Spain, with a quarter of a million black people in all that enormous territory. You'd think – the you here is the Eye of History, from the future – that there had been no need to take anyone's land, with so much. But what that Eye, using a commonsensical view, would be discounting were the pomps and greed of Empire. Besides, if the whites wanted land to have and to hold, with tidy fences and clear-cut boundaries, while the blacks' attitude to land was that it was their mother and could not be individually owned, then there was also the question of cheap labour. When the Pynes had come in the Fifties there were still only a million and a half blacks in all this fair land, and not even 200,000 whites. An empty landscape, according to the eyes of overcrowded Europe. When the Pynes had taken on this farm, the national movements of Zimlia had not been born. Innocent, not to say ignorant, souls, they had come from a small country town in Devon, prepared to work hard and prosper.

Now they sat watching the birds swoop from poinsettias sparkling with raindrops to the birdbath, saw the hills standing close because of the clean-washed air, and one of them said that nothing would induce him to leave, and the other that she was fed up with being called a villain, she had had enough.

Sylvia thanked them for their kindness, from the heart, knowing that they thought her an odd little thing with over-sentimental ideas, and she drove herself back through the darkening bush to the Mission. There she again brought up the subject, at supper, of being a South African spy, and Father McGuire said he had been accused of that himself. It had been when he was protesting to Mr Mandizi that the school was a disgrace to a civilised country, where were the textbooks?

'There is a pretty advanced form of paranoia around, my child,' he said. 'It would be a good thing if you were not to fret your brains about it. '

At five next morning, the sun still a small yellow glow behind the gums, Sylvia came out on to the little verandah and saw in the dawn light a tragic figure, hands squeezed together in front of him, his head bent in pain, or in grief... she recognised Aaron. ‘What is the matter? '

‘Oh, Doctor Sylvia. Oh, Doctor Sylvia...’ he came up to her in a sideways dawdle, slowed by conflict: tears ran down his usually cheerful face. ‘I didn't mean it. Oh I am so-so-so-sorry. Forgive me, Miss Sylvia. The devil got into me. I am sure that is the reason I did it. '

' Aaron, I have no idea what you are talking about. '

‘I stole your picture, and that is why Father beat me. '

'Aaron, please…’

He collapsed on to the brick floor of the verandah, put his head against the thin pillar there and sobbed. It was too early for Rebecca to be in the kitchen. Sylvia sat beside the lad, and did not say anything, merely was there. And there a few minutes later Father McGuire found them, coming out to taste the early morning freshness.

‘And now what is this? I told you not to tell Doctor Sylvia. '

‘But I am ashamed. And please tell her to forgive me. '

‘Where have you been these last three days?'

‘I am afraid. I have been hiding in the bush. '

That accounted for his shivering – he was cold because he was hungry: heat was already emanating from the East.

' Go into the kitchen, make yourself some good strong tea with plenty of milk and sugar and cut yourself some bread and jam.'

‘Yes, Father. I am very sorry, Father. '

Aaron went off, in no hurry for his restoring meal, though he must have been desperate for it: he was looking over his shoulder as he went at Sylvia.

'Well, Father?'

' He stole your little photograph in its pretty silver frame. '

‘But...’

‘And no, Sylvia, you must not now give it to him. It is back on your table. He said he liked the face of the old woman. He wanted to look at it. I think he has no notion of the value of the silver. '

' Then it's over and done with. '

‘But I beat him, and I beat him too hard. There was blood. This old man is not at his wisest and best. ' The sun was up, hot and yellow. A cicada started, then another, and a dove began its plaint. ‘I shall have extra time to do in purgatory. '

‘Have you been taking your vitamin pills?'

' In my defence I must say that these people understand far too well that to spoil the child you must spare the rod. But that's no excuse. And I am supposed to be teaching Aaron to be a man of God. And he cannot be allowed to steal.'

'It's vitamin B you need, Father. For your nerves. I brought you some from London. '