Doris Lessing - The Sweetest Dream

' There you are. But your government never has a good word for any of us.'

She was crying, a dismal weeping, like an over-tired child. Rebecca knew this woman was not weeping for the hungry people but because of what Rebecca called all-too-much. ' It's all-too-much,’ she would say to Sylvia, ' too-much for me to bear. ‘And she would sit herself down, and put her hands up to her face and rock and set up a regular wailing, while Sylvia fetched pills -sedatives – which Rebecca obediently swallowed down.

‘I sometimes think that everything is too much, it gets on top of me, ' wept Edna, but actually sounded better. ' Bad enough before the drought, but now the drought and the government and everything...'

Here Clever appeared in the doorway to say to Rebecca that Doctor Sylvia said he must run over to the Pynes and ask someone to bring a car to take the woman in labour to the hospital.

And there was Edna Pyne! His face lit up and he actually did a little dance right there on the verandah. 'Okay. Now she won't die. The baby's stuck,' he informed them, 'but if she can get to hospital in time...’ He darted off down the hill and soon Sylvia appeared, supporting a woman draped in a blanket.

‘I see I'm some use after all,’ said Edna, and went to help Sylvia hold up the woman, who was sobbing and moaning.

' If only they' d get on with that new hospital,’ said Sylvia.

' Dream time. '

' She's scared of the caesarean. I keep telling her it's nothing. ' ‘Why can't you do the operation?'

‘We make these mistakes. The one awful stupid ridiculous unforgivable mistake I made was not to do surgery. ' She spoke in a flat dry voice, but Edna recognised it as the same as her emotional outburst: Sylvia was letting off steam and no notice should be taken. ‘I’m sending Clever with you. I've got a really sick man down there. '

‘I hope I'm not going to have to deliver a baby. '

‘Well, you' d do as well as anyone. But Clever's very good. And I've given her something to delay the baby a little. And her sister's going too. '

At the car a woman was waiting. She extended her arms, the woman in labour went into them and began wailing.

Sylvia ran back down to her hospital. The car set off. It was bad road, and the drive took nearly an hour, because the patient cried out when the car went over a bump. Edna saw the two black women into the hospital, an old one built under the whites, meant to serve a few thousand people but now expected to care for half a million.

Edna got into the driver's seat and Clever got in beside her.

He should be in the back seat, she thought, but without much heat. She listened while he chattered about Doctor Sylvia and the classes under the trees, the books, the exercise books, the biros, much better than the school. She became curious and instead of dropping the boy at the turn-off to make his way back to the Mission, drove him there and parked.

It was still only half past twelve. Sylvia was sitting at the dining table with the priest, having lunch, where she, Edna, had been not so long before. Invited to sit down for lunch, Edna was going to, but Sylvia said she had to get down to the village, Edna mustn't take it personally. So Edna, a woman who liked her food, let the priest make her a sandwich of some tomato slices between unbuttered bread – yes, butter was hard to get at the moment, with the drought – and she followed Sylvia. She did not know what to expect, and was impressed. Everyone knew who Mrs Pyne was, of course, and smiles of welcome came her way. They brought her a stool, and forgot she was there. She sat with the sandwich pushed into her bag, because she suspected some of those present would be hungry, and she could not eat in front of them. Good Lord, she thought. Who could ever believe that I’d see a couple of bits of dry bread and a slice of tomato as a wicked luxury?

She listened to Sylvia reading, in English, slowly pronouncing every word, from an African writer she had never heard of, though she did know that blacks wrote novels, while the people listened as if... God, they might be in church. Then Sylvia invited a young man, and then a girl, to tell the others what the story was about. They got it right, and Edna realised she was relieved that they did: she wanted this enterprise to be a success and was pleased with herself that she did.

Sylvia was asking an old woman to tell them all about a drought she remembered when she was a little girl. The old woman spoke a jolting fumbling English, and Sylvia told a young woman to repeat it in better English. That drought didn't sound much different from this one. The white government had distributed maize in the drought areas, said the old woman, and there was some appreciative clapping which could only be a criticism of their own government. When the tale was finished Sylvia told the ones who could to write down what they remembered, and the ones who couldn't to make a story which they could tell tomorrow.

It was two thirty. Sylvia set the old woman who had told the drought story over the others, about a hundred of them, and went with Edna back up to the house. Now there would be a cup of tea and she and Sylvia could sit and talk, she could have her talk at last... but oddly, it seemed the need to talk and to be heard had left her.

Sylvia said, 'They are such good people. I can't bear it, the way they are being wasted. '

They were standing outside the house, near the car.

‘Well,’ said Edna, ‘I suppose we are all of us better than we are given a chance to be. '

She could see from the way Sylvia turned to look hard at her, that this was not the kind of thing people expected to hear from her. And why not? ‘Would you like me to come and help you with your school – or the patients?'

‘Oh, yes, would you, would you really?'

‘Let me know when you need me,’ said Edna, and got into the car and drove off, feeling she had made a big step into a new dimension. She did not know that if she had said to Sylvia then and there, ' Can I start now?' Sylvia would have gratefully said, ‘Oh, yes, come and help me with this sick man, he's got malaria so badly he's shaking himself to death.’But Sylvia decided that politeness had spoken out of Edna and did not think about her offer again.

As for Edna she felt all her life that she had missed an opportunity, a door had opened but she had chosen not to see it. The trouble was, she had been joking about do-gooders for years, and for her to become one, just like that... yet she had made the offer and had meant it. For a moment she had not been the Edna

Pyne she knew but someone very different. She did not tell Cedric about driving the black woman into hospital: suppose he grumbled about the petrol, and how hard it was to get any. She did mention that she had seen the village where stuff stolen from the unfinished hospital was evidence. 'Good for them,' was his comment. 'Better that than it lies rotting in the bush.'

Mr Edward Phiri, Inspector of Schools, had written to the headmaster of Kwadere Secondary School to say he would arrive at 9 a.m. and would expect to have his midday meal with him and the staff. His Mercedes, third-hand when bought – he wasn'ta Minister and worthy of a new one – had broken down not far from the Pynes'signpost. He left his car and in a foul temper walked the few hundred yards to the Pynes' house. There he found Cedric and Edna at breakfast. He announced himself, said that he must speak to Mr Mandizi at the Growth Point to come and fetch him and drive him to the school, but heard that the telephone line was down and had been for a month. ' Then why has it not been mended?'

‘I am afraid you must ask the Minister for Communications that question. The telephone system is always breaking down and it can take weeks to be mended.' Edna spoke, but Mr Phiri looked at the husband – the man, whose role it was to lead. Cedric seemed unaware of his responsibility, and said nothing.