Doris Lessing - The Sweetest Dream

‘Are they coming to live here?'

' It seems that they are,’ said Colin.

‘Why should they?'

' Come on, old chap, don't be like that,’ said his father.

William's smile at Colin, whom they had to deduce he loved, was like a wail.

' They have no parents,’ said Colin. ' Their father has just died. ' He was afraid to say, of AIDS, because of the terror of the word, even though in this house AIDS was as distant as the Black Death. ' They are orphans. And they are very poor... I don't think it's possible for people like us to understand. And they've had no school except for Sylvia's lessons.' In all their minds briefly appeared an image of a room with desks, a blackboard, a teacher holding forth.

‘But why here? Why does it have to be us?' This routine reaction – But why me? — cannot be answered except with appeals to the majestic injustices of the universe.

' Someone has to take them in,’ said Frances.

' Besides, Sylvia will be here. She'll understand what to do. I agree that we' re not up to it,’ said Colin.

'But how can she be here? Where's she going to stay? Where's she going to sleep?'

If Sylvia's mind was a blur of panic because of the impossibility of being in Somalia and London at the same time, then these three adults were in a similar state: William was right.

‘Oh, we'll manage somehow,’ said Frances.

‘And we'll all have to help them,’ said Colin.

This meant, as William knew very well, We expect you to help them. They were younger than him, but that made it even more likely they would depend on him. ' If they don't get on here, will they go away?'

Colin said, 'We could send them back. But I understand everyone in their village has died of AIDS or is going to.'

William went white. 'AIDS! Have they got AIDS?'

‘No. Nor can they have it, Sylvia says. '

‘How does she know? Well, all right, she's a doctor but why does she look so sick, then? She looks ghastly. '

'She'll be all right. And the boys'll have to be tutored first, to catch up, but I am sure they will. '

' They can't be called Clever and Zebedee, not here. They'll be killed, with names like that. I hope they aren't going to my school.'

‘We can't just take their real names away from them. '

'Well, I'm not going to fight their battles for them.'

He said he had to go up: he had homework. He left: before homework, they knew, he would play a little with the baby, if she was awake. He adored her.

Sylvia did not reappear. She had flung herself down into the bosom of the old red sofa, her arms outstretched: she was at once asleep. She sank deep into her past, into arms that were waiting for her.

Rupert and Frances were in their rooms undressing when Colin came in to say he had checked on Sylvia, who was sleeping like the dead. Later, about four in the morning, uneasiness woke Frances, and she crept down and returned to tell Rupert, who had been awakened by her going, that Sylvia was dead asleep. She was about to slide into bed, but now heard what she had said and, retrospectively, what Colin had said. 'I don't like it,' she said. 'There's something wrong.' Rupert and Frances went down and into the sitting-room where on the sofa Sylvia was indeed dead asleep: she was dead.

The boys lay weeping on their beds. Frances's instinct, which was to put her arms around them, was stopped by that oldest of inhibitions: hers were not the arms they wanted. As the day wore on and the weeping did not cease, she and Colin went to the little room, and she with Clever and he with Zebedee, made them sit up and were close, arms around them, rocking them, saying that they should stop crying, they would be ill, they must come down and have a hot drink, and no one would mind if they were sad.

The first bad days were got through, and then the funeral, with Zebedee and Clever in prominent positions as mourners. Attempts were made to telephone the Mission, but a voice the boys did not know said that Father McGuire had taken all his things away and the new headmaster was not here yet. Messages were left. Sister Molly, left a message, at once rang back, loud and clear though she was miles from anywhere. She said at once, ‘Are you thinking what to do about the boys?' She believed that probably work could be found for them at the Old Mission, looking after the AIDS orphans. When the priest rang back the line was so bad that only intermittently could be made out his concern over Sylvia, 'Poor soul, she did have to work herselfinto the grave.’And, 'If you could see your way to keep the boys it would be best.’And, 'It is a sad business here.'

The boys' griefwas terrible, it was inordinate, it was frightening their new friends, who agreed that everything had been too much: after all, these children – and that was all they were – had been torn from what they had known, then thrust into... but 'culture shock' was hardly appropriate when that useful phrase may describe an agreeable dislocation felt travelling from London to Paris. No, it was not possible to imagine what depths of shock Clever and Zebedee had suffered, and therefore no notice should be taken of faces like tragic masks and tragic eyes. Haunted eyes?

There was something that the new friends had no conception of, and could not have understood: the boys knew that Sylvia had died because of Joshua's curse. Had she been there to laugh at them, and to say, ‘Oh, how can you think such nonsense?' they might not have believed her, but the guilt would have been less. As it was, they were being crushed by guilt, and they could not bear it. And so, as we all do with the worst and deepest pain, they began to forget.

Clear in their minds was every minute of the long days while they waited for Sylvia to return from Senga to rescue them, while Rebecca died and Joshua lay waiting to die until Sylvia came. The long agony of anxiety – they did not forget that, nor that moment when Sylvia reappeared like a little white ghost, to embrace them and whisk them away with her. After that the blur began, Joshua's bony grip on Sylvia's wrist and his murderous words, the frightening aeroplane, the arrival in this strange house, Sylvia's death... no, all that dimmed and soon Sylvia had become a friendly protective presence whom they remembered kneeling in the dust to splint up a leg, or sitting on the edge of the verandah between them, teaching them to read.

Meanwhile Frances kept waking, her stomach clenched with anxiety, and Colin said he was sleeping badly too. Rupert told them that not enough thought had gone into this decision, that was the trouble.

Frances, waking with a start and a cry, found herself held by Rupert, ' Come on downstairs. I'll make you some tea. ‘And when they reached the kitchen, Colin was already at the table, a bottle of wine in front of him.

Outside the window was the dark of 4 o'clock on a winter's night. Rupert drew the curtains, sat by Frances, put his arm around her. 'Now, you two, you've got to decide. And whatever it is you do decide, then you've got to put the other choice clean out of your minds. Otherwise you'll both be ill.'

'Right,' said Colin, and shakily reached for the wine bottle.

Rupert said, 'Now look, old son, don't drink any more, there's a good chap.'

Frances felt that apprehension a woman may feel when her man, not her son's father, takes the father's role: Rupert had spoken as if it were William sitting there.

Colin pushed away the bottle. 'This is a bloody impossible situation.'

'Yes, it is,' said Frances. 'What are we taking on? Do you realise, I'll be dead by the time they qualify?'

Rupert's arm tightened around her shoulder.

'But we have to keep them,' said Colin, aggressive, tearful, pleading with them. 'Ifa couple ofkittens try to crawl out of the bucket they're being drowned in, you don't push them back in.' The Colin who was speaking then Frances had not seen or heard offor years: Rupert had not met that passionate youth. 'You just don't do it,' said Colin, leaning forward, his eyes holding his mother's, then Rupert's. 'You don't just push them back in.' A howl broke out of him: a long time since Frances had heard that howl. He dropped his head down on to his arms on the table. Rupert and Frances communed, silently.