The doves cooed in the trees. It was the sleepy time of the day for all of them, and Sylvia's need for sleep dragged down her lids, but she would not sleep, she would not. Rebecca handed around water in stainless steel and aluminium basins stolen from the abandoned hospital. Not much water: the drought was biting, women were getting up at three and four in the morning to walk to a further river, the near one having run low and foetid, carrying jugs and cans on their heads. Not much washing was going on: clothes were certainly not being washed. It was as much as the women could do, to keep enough water for drinking and cooking. The smell from the crowd was strong. Sylvia now associated that smell with patience, with long-suffering, and with contained anger. When she took a sip from Rebecca's stolen basins she felt as she should do, but did not, when she drank the blood of Christ at Communion. The faces of the crowd, of all ages from children to old men and women, were rapt, hushed, attentive to every word. Education, this was education, for which most had hungered all their lives, and had expected to get when it had been promised by their government. At two thirty Sylvia called up from the crowd some boy or girl more advanced than the others, set them to read some paragraphs from Enid Blyton – a great favourite: from Tarzan – another; from the Jungle Book, which was more difficult, but liked: or from the prize of them all, Animal Farm which was their own story, as they said. Or the atlas was passed around at a page they had just done, to hammer in what they knew.
She visited the village anyway, every morning after making sure her hospital was going well. She brought with her either Clever or Zebedee, for one of them had to be left in charge of the patients. She had patients in the huts, the ones with the slow lingering diseases, over whom she and the n'ganga would exchange looks that acknowledged what they were careful not to say. For if there was one thing this bush doctor understood as well and better than any ordinary doctor, it was the value of a cheerful mind; and it was evident that most of his muti, spells, and practices were elaborated for this one purpose: to keep going an optimistic immune system. But when she and this clever man exchanged a certain kind of look, then it meant that before long their patient would soon be up among the trees in the new graveyard, which was in fact the AIDS or Slim cemetery, and well away from the village. The graves were dug deep, because it was feared the evil that had killed these people could escape and attack others.
Sylvia knew, because Clever had told her – Rebecca herself had not – that this sensible and practical woman, on whom both she and the priest relied, believed that her three children had died and a fourth was ill because her younger brother's wife, who had always hated her, had employed a stronger n'ganga than the local one to attack the children. She was barren, that was the trouble, and believed that Rebecca was responsible, having paid for charms and potions and spells to keep her childless.
Some believed she was childless because in her hut were to be found more stolen things from the abandoned hospital than any other. The object known to be most dangerous among the stolen goods was the dentist's chair that had once been in the middle of the village, where children played over it, but it had been taken away and thrown into a gulley, to get rid of its malign influences. Vervet monkeys played over it, without harm, and once Sylvia had seen an old baboon sitting in it, a piece of grass between his lips, looking around him in a contemplative way, like a grandfather sitting out his days on a porch.
Edna Pyne got into the old lorry to drive to the Mission because she was being pursued by what she called her black dog, which even had a name. 'Pluto is snapping at my heels again,' she might say, claiming that the two house dogs Sheba and Lusaka knew when this shadowy haunter was present and growled at it. Cedric would not laugh at this little fantasy when she made a joke of it all, but said she was getting as bad as the blacks with their superstitious nonsense. Even five years ago Edna had had women friends, on nearby farms, whom she could drive over to visit when she was down, but now none was left. They were farming in Perth (Australia), in Devon; they had 'taken the gap' to South Africa – they had gone. She hungered for women's talk, feeling she was in a desert ofmaleness, her husband, the men working in the house and garden, the people coming to the house, government inspectors, surveyors, contour ridge experts, and the new black busybodies always imposing more and more regulations. All were men. She hoped to find Sylvia free for a bit of a chat, though she did not like Sylvia as much as Edna knew she deserved: she was to be admired, yes, but she was a bit of a nut. When she got to Father McGuire's house, it seemed empty. She went into the cool dark inside, and Rebecca emerged from the kitchen with a cloth in her hands that should have been cleaner. But the drought was limiting the cleanliness in her own house too: the borehole was lower than it had ever been.
‘Is Doctor Sylvia here?'
' She is at the hospital. There's a girl in labour. And Father McGuire has taken the car and gone to visit the other Father at the Old Mission. '
Edna sat as if her knees had been hit. She let her head fall back against the chair, and shut her eyes. When she opened them Rebecca stood in front of her still, waiting.
' God,’ said Edna, ' I've had enough, I really have. '
‘I shall make you some tea,’ said Rebecca, turning to go.
‘How long do you think the doctor will be?'
'I don't know. It's a difficult birth. The baby's in the breech position.'
This clinical phrase made Edna open her eyes wide. Like most of the old whites she had a mind in compartments – that is, more than most of us. She knew that some blacks were as intelligent as most whites, but by intelligent she meant educated, and Rebecca was working in a kitchen.
When the tea tray was put in front of her and Rebecca turned to leave, Edna heard herself say: 'Sit down, Rebecca.’And added, 'Do you have time?'
Rebecca did not have time, she had been chasing after herself all morning. Since her son, the one who went to fetch the water for her from the river, was with his father, who had drunk last night to the point of raging insanity, she, Rebecca, had had to carry water down from this kitchen, having asked permission from the Father, not once but five times. The water in the house well was low: water seemed to be creeping back down into the earth everywhere, always harder to reach. But Rebecca could see that this white woman was in a state, and needed her. She sat and waited. She was thinking it was lucky Mrs Pyne was here with her car because the Father had taken the car and Sylvia had said it might be necessary to run the patient into hospital for a caesarean.
Words that had been bubbling and simmering inside Edna for hours, for days, now came out in a hot, resentful accusing self-pitying rush, though Rebecca was not the right auditor for them. Nor was Sylvia, if it came to that. ‘I don't know what to do, ' Edna said, her eyes wide and staring, not at Rebecca but at the edge of blue beads on the fly net over the tea tray. 'I'matmy wits' end. I think my husband has gone mad. Well, they are mad, aren't they, men, aren't they, wouldn't you agree?' Rebecca who last night had been dodging blows and embraces from her raving husband smiled and said that yes, men were sometimes difficult.
‘You can say that again. Do you know what he's done? He's actually bought another farm. He says that if he didn't one of the Ministers' d grab it, so why not him. I mean, if you people got it, that would be all right, but he says he can pay for it, it was offered to the government and they didn't want it so he's buying it. He is building a dam there, near the hills. '
' A dam,’ said Rebecca, coming to life: she had been drowsing as she sat. ' Okay... a dam... okay. '