Doris Lessing - The Sweetest Dream

The crowds for the celebration of the Independence of Zimlia spilled from the hall on to the steps and the pavements and threatened to clog the streets, as had earlier jamborees for Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Northern Zimlia. Probably the larger part of these celebrants had been at all the earlier festivities. Every kind of victorious emotion was here, from the quiet satisfaction of people who had worked for years, to the grinning inflated elation of those who get as intoxicated on crowds as they do on love, or hate, or football. Frances was here because Franklin had telephoned. 'I must have you there. No, you must come. All my old friends.' It was very flattering. 'And where is Miss Sylvia? She must come too, please ask her.' That was why Sylvia was with Frances, pushing through crowds, though Sylvia had said, and kept on saying, ' Frances, I have to talk to you about something. It's important. '

Someone was tugging at Frances's sleeve. ' Mrs Lennox? You' re Mrs Lennox?' An urgent young woman with red hair as rough as a rag doll's and an air of general disorientation: ‘I need your help. '

Frances stopped, Sylvia just behind her. ‘What is it?' Frances shouted.

‘You were so wonderful with my sister. She owes you her life. Please I must come and see you. ' She was shouting too.

Light did dawn, but slowly. ‘I see. But I think you must be wanting the other Mrs Lennox, Phyllida. '

Wild suspicion, frustration, then dismay contorted those features. ‘You won't? You can't? You aren't...’

‘You have the wrong Mrs Lennox. ‘And Frances walked on, with Sylvia holding to her arm. That Phyllida was to be seen in this light – it needed time to take in. 'That was Phyllida she was talking about, ' Frances said. ‘I know,’ said Sylvia.

At the door into the hall it could be seen it was crammed and there was no chance of getting in but Rose was a steward and so was Jill, both with rosettes the size of plates, in Zimlian colours. Rose cried out with enthusiasm on seeing Frances, and shouted into her inclined ear, 'It's like old family night, everyone's here.’But now she saw Sylvia and her face twisted into indignation. 'I don't see why you think you're going to get a place. I've never seen you at any of our demos.'

‘You haven't seen me either,’ said Frances. ‘But I hope that doesn't mean I'm a black sheep too. '

'Black sheep,' sneered Rose. 'Wouldn't you know it.'

But she stood aside for Frances, and then, of necessity, Sylvia, but said, ' Frances, I must speak to Franklin. '

' Hadn't you better apply to Johnny? Franklin stays with him when he's in London. '

'Johnny doesn't seem to remember me – but I was part of the family, wasn'tI – for ages?'

A roar went up. The speakers were pushing on to the platform, about twenty of them, Johnny among them, with Franklin, and other black men. Franklin saw Frances, who had pushed her way up to the front, and leaped down off the platform, laughing, almost crying, rubbing his hands: he was dissolving in joy. He embraced Frances and then looked around and said, ‘Where's Sylvia?'

Franklin was staring at a thin young woman, with straight fair hair tied back off a pale face, in a high-necked black sweater. His gaze left her, wandered off, came back, in doubt.

‘But here is Sylvia,’ shouted Sylvia above the din of the clapping and shouting. On the platform just above them the speakers stood waving their arms, clasping their hands above their heads, and shaking them, giving the clenched fist salute to some entity apparently just above the heads of the audience. They were smiling and laughing, absorbing the crowd's love and sending it back in hot rays that could positively be seen.

' Here I am. You've forgotten me, Franklin. '

Never has a man looked more disappointed than Franklin did then. For years he had held in his mind that little fluffy girl, like a new yellow chick, as sweet as the Virgin and the female saints on the Holy Pictures at the mission. This severe unsmiling girl hurt him, he didn't want to look at her. But she came from behind Frances, and hugged him, and smiled, and for a moment he was able to think, Yes this is Sylvia...

'Franklin,' they were shouting from the platform.

At this moment up came Rose, and insisted on embracing him. 'Franklin. It's me. It's Rose. Do you remember?'

‘Yes, yes, yes,’ said Franklin, whose memories of Rose were ambiguous.

‘I have to see you,’ said Rose.

‘Yes, but I have to go up now. '

‘I’ll wait for you after the meeting. It's to your advantage, remember.'

He climbed up, and was now a shiny smiling black face among the others, and next to Johnny Lennox, who was like a mangy old lion, but dignified with it, greeting his followers down in the audience with a shake of his fist. But still Franklin's eyes roamed the hall, as if somewhere down there the old Sylvia was, and then when he stared, forlornly for that moment, at where the real Sylvia was, in a front seat, Sylvia waved at him and smiled. His own face burst out again into happiness, and he opened his arms, embracing the crowd, but really it was her.

Victory celebrations after a war do not have much to say about the dead soldiers, or rather, they say a good deal or even sing about the dead comrades ' who made this victory possible' , but the acclamations and the noisy singing are designed to make the victors forget about the bones lying in a cleft of rock on a kopje, or in a grave so shallow the jackals have got there, scattering ribs, fingers, a skull. Behind the noise there is an accusing silence, soon to be filled with forgetfulness. In the hall that night were few people – they were mostly white – who had lost sons and daughters to a war, or who had fought in one, but the men on the platform, some of them, had been in an army, or had visited the fighters. There were also men who had been trained for political war, or for guerilla war, in the Soviet Union, or in camps set up by the Soviet Union, in Africa. And in that audience a good few had known various bits of Africa 'in the old days'. Between them and the activists were gulfs, but they were all cheering.

Twenty years of war, beginning with isolated outbreaks of ' civil unrest' or ' disobedience' or strikes, or sullen angers erupting into murder or arson, but all those rivulets had become the flood that was the war, twenty years ofit and soon to be forgotten except in celebratory occasions. The noise in the hall was tumultuous, and did not abate. People shouted and wept and embraced each other and kissed strangers and on the platform speakers followed each other, black and white. Franklin spoke, then again. The crowd liked him, this round cheerful man who – so it was said – would soon be in a government formed by Comrade Matthew Mungozi who had unexpectedly won a majority in the recent elections: President Mungozi, until recently only one name among half a dozen potential leaders. And there was Comrade Mo, arriving late, grinning, waving, excited, jumping up on the platform to describe how he had just returned from the lines of freedom fighters giving up their weapons, and planning how to make real the sweet dreams that had kept them going for years. Comrade Mo, gesticulating, agitated, weeping, told the audience of those dreams: they had been so occupied with news of the war that they had not had time to think how soon they would hear, ‘And now we shall build a future together.' Comrade Mo was not actually a Zimlian, but never mind, no one else there had actually so recently been with the freedom fighters, not even Comrade Matthew, who had been too busy with discussions with Whitehall and in international meetings. Most of the world's leaders had already assured him of their support. Overnight, he had become an international figure.

There was no way for Frances and Sylvia to leave, and the shouting and tears and speeches went on till the hall's caretaker came to say there were ten minutes left of paid-for time. Groans and boos and cries of fascists. Everyone pressed towards the doors. Frances stayed looking up at Johnny, thinking that surely he should at least acknowledge her presence, and he did give her a stern and unsmiling nod. There, climbing up on the platform was Rose, to greet Johnny, who did acknowledge her with a nod. Then Rose stood in front of Franklin, blocking the people who wanted to shake his hand, embrace him, or even carry him shoulder high out of the hall.