The Sweetest Dream

by Doris Lessing

  This reminded everyone that Sophie had to be upset, because her father had died of cancer last year, and the reason why she was here most evenings was because in her own home her mother wept, and claimed Sophie for grief. Kennedy’s death would of course . . .

  At the telephone Sophie sobbed, and they heard, ‘Oh, Colin, thank you, oh, thank you, you understand, Colin, oh, I knew you would, oh, you are coming, oh, thank you, thank you.’

  She returned to her place at the table, saying, ‘Colin’ll catch the last train tonight.’ She buried her face in her hands, long elegant hands pink-tipped in the shade prescribed that week by the fashion arbiters of St Joseph’s, of whom she was one. Long glistening black hair fell to the table, like the thought made visible that she would never ever have to sorrow alone for long.

  Rose said sourly, ‘We’re all sorry about Kennedy, aren’t we?’

  Shouldn’t Jill be at school? But from St Joseph’s pupils came and went, with little regard for time, tables or exams. When teachers suggested a more disciplined approach, they might be reminded of the principles that had established the school, self-development being the main one. Colin had gone off to school this morning, and was on his way back. Geoffrey had said he might go tomorrow: yes, he was remembering he was head boy. Had Sophie ‘dropped out’ altogether? She certainly seemed to be more often here than there. Jill had been down in the basement with her sleeping bag, coming up for meals. She had told Colin who had told Frances that she needed a break. Daniel had gone back to school, but could be expected to return, if Colin did: any excuse would do. She knew they believed that the moment they turned their backs all kinds of delightfully dramatic events occurred.

  There was a new face, at the end of the table, smiling placatingly at her, waiting for her to say, ‘Who are you? What are you doing here?’ But she only put a plate of soup in front of him, and smiled. ‘I’m James,’ he said, flushing. ‘Well, hello James,’ she said. ‘Help yourself to bread–or anything else.’ A large embarrassed hand reached out to take a thick hunk of (healthy) wholemeal. He sat with it in his hand, staring about him with evident delight.

  ‘James is my friend, well he’s my cousin actually,’ said Rose, managing to be both nervous and aggressive. ‘I said it would be all right if he came . . . I mean, for supper, I mean . . .’

  Frances saw that here was another refugee from a shitty family, and was mentally checking food she would need to buy tomorrow.

  Tonight there were only seven at the table, with herself. Johnny was standing, as stiff as a soldier, at the window. He wanted to be asked to sit down. There was an empty place. She was damned if she was going to ask him, did not care that her reputation with ‘the kids’ would suffer.

  ‘Before you go,’ she said, ‘tell us, who killed Kennedy.’

  Johnny shrugged, for once at a loss.

  ‘Perhaps it was the Soviets?’ suggested the newcomer, daring to claim his place with them.

  ‘That is nonsense,’ said Johnny. ‘The Soviet comrades do not go in for terrorism.’

  Poor James was abashed.

  ‘Perhaps it was Castro?’ said Jill. Johnny was already staring coldly at her. ‘I mean, the Bay of Pigs, I mean . . .’

  ‘He doesn’t go in for terrorism either,’ said Johnny.

  ‘Do give me a ring before you leave,’ said Frances. ‘A couple of days, you said?’

  But he still wasn’t leaving.

  ‘It was a loony,’ said Rose. ‘Some loony shot him.’

  ‘Who paid the loony?’ said James, having recovered again, though he was flushed with the effort of asserting himself.

  ‘We should not rule out the CIA,’ said Johnny.

  ‘We should never rule them out,’ said James, and earned approval from Johnny in a smile and a nod. He was a large young man, bulky, and surely older than Rose, older than any of them, except perhaps Andrew? Rose saw Frances’s inspection of James, and reacted at once: she was always on the alert for criticism. She said, ‘James is into politics. He is my elder brother’s friend. He is a drop-out.’

  ‘Well blow me down,’ said Frances, ‘what a surprise.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Rose, frantic, angry. ‘Why did you say that?’

  ‘Oh, Rose, it’s just a joke.’

  ‘She makes jokes,’ said Andrew, interpreting his mother, as it were vouching for her.

  ‘And talking about jokes,’ said Frances. When they had all run upstairs to watch the television news, she had seen on the floor two large carrier bags filled with books. She now indicated these to Geoffrey, who could not suppress a proud smile. ‘A good haul today I see?’ she said.

  Everyone laughed. Most of them shoplifted in an impulsive way, but Geoffrey made a business of it. He went regularly around bookshops, pilfering. School textbooks when he could, but anything he could get away with. He called it ‘liberating’ them. It was a Second World War joke, and a wistful link with his father, who had been a bomber pilot. Geoffrey had told Colin that he thought his father had not really noticed anything since the end of that war. ‘Certainly not my mother or me.’ His father might just as well have died in that war for all the good his family got of him. ‘Join the club,’ was what Colin had said. ‘The War, the Revolution, what’s the difference?’

  ‘God bless Foyle’s,’ said Geoffrey. ‘I’ve liberated more there than anywhere else in London. A benefactor to humankind, is Foyle’s.’ But he was glancing nervously at Frances. He said, ‘Frances doesn’t approve.’

  They knew Frances didn’t approve. She often said, ‘It’s my unfortunate upbringing. I was brought up to think stealing is wrong.’ Now, whenever she or anyone else criticised or did not go along with the others, they would chant, ‘It’s your unfortunate upbringing.’ Then Andrew had said, ‘That joke’s getting a bit tired.’

  There had been a wild half-hour of variations on tired jokes with unfortunate upbringings.

  Now Johnny began on his familiar lecture, ‘That’s right, you take anything you can get from the capitalists. They’ve stolen it all from you in the first place.’

  ‘Surely not from us?’–Andrew challenged his father.

  ‘Stolen from the working people. The ordinary people. Take them for what you can get, the bastards.’

  Andrew had never shoplifted, thought it inferior behaviour fit only for oiks, and said in a direct challenge, ‘Shouldn’t you be getting back to Phyllida?’

  Frances could be ignored, but his son’s rebuke took Johnny to the door. ‘Never forget,’ he admonished them generally, ‘you should be checking everything you do, every word, every thought, against the needs of the Revolution.’

  ‘So what did you get today?’ Rose asked Geoffrey. She admired him almost as much as she did Johnny.

  Geoffrey took books out of the carrier bags and made a tower of them on the table.

  They clapped. Not Frances, not Andrew.

  Frances took from her briefcase one of the letters to the newspaper which she had brought home. She read out, “‘Dear Aunt Vera” . . . that’s me . . .“Dear Aunt Vera, I have three children, all at school. Every evening they come home with stolen stuff, mostly sweets and biscuits. . .’” Here the company groaned. “‘But it can be anything, school books too . . .’” They clapped. “‘But today my oldest, the boy, came back with a very expensive pair of jeans.’” They clapped again. “‘I don’t know what to do. When the door bell rings I think, That’s the police.’” Frances gave them time for a groan. “‘And I am afraid for them. I would very much value your advice, Aunt Vera. I am at my wits’ end.” ’

  She inserted the letter back in its place.

  ‘And what are you going to advise?’ enquired Andrew.

  ‘Perhaps you should tell me what to say, Geoffrey. After all, a head boy should be well up in these things.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be like that, Frances,’ said Rose.

  ‘Oh,’ groaned Geoffrey, his head in his hands, making his shoulders heave as if with sobs, ‘she takes it serious
ly.’

  ‘I do take it seriously,’ said Frances. ‘It’s stealing. You are thieves,’ she said to Geoffrey, with the freedom licensed by his practically living with them, for years. ‘You are a thief. That’s all. I’m not Johnny,’ she said.

  Now a real dismayed silence. Rose giggled. The newcomer’s, James’s, scarlet face was as good as a confession.

  Sophie cried out, ‘But, Frances, I didn’t know you disapproved of us so much.’

  ‘Well, I do,’ said Frances, her face and voice softening, because it was Sophie. ‘So now you know.’

  ‘It’s her unfortunate upbringing . . .’ began Rose, but desisted, on a look from Andrew.

  ‘And now I’m going to catch the news, and I have to work.’ She went out, saying, ‘Sleep well, everyone.’ Giving permission, in this way, to anyone, James for instance, who might be hoping to stay the night.

  She did catch the news, briefly. It seemed that some madman had shot Kennedy. As far as she was concerned, another public man was dead. He probably deserved it. She would never have allowed herself to voice this thought, so very far from the spirit of the times. It sometimes seemed to her that the one useful thing she had learned in her long association with Johnny, was how to keep quiet about what she thought.

  Before settling down to work which, this evening, would be going through a hundred or so letters she had brought home, she opened the door to the spare room. Silence and dark. She tiptoed to the bed and bent over a shape under the bedclothes that could have been a child’s. And, yes, Tilly had her thumb in her mouth.

  ‘I’m not asleep,’ said a little voice.

  ‘I’m worried about you,’ said Frances, and heard her voice shake: she had promised herself not to get emotionally involved, because what good would that do? ‘If I made you a cup of hot chocolate, would you like that?’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  Frances made chocolate in her study, where she had a kettle and basic supplies, and took it to the girl, who said, ‘I don’t want you to think I’m not grateful.’

  ‘Shall I put the light on? Do you want to try drinking it now?’

  ‘Put it on the floor.’

  Frances did so, knowing that most likely the cup would be there, untouched, in the morning.

  She worked until late. She heard Colin come in, and then he and Sophie went to the big sofa, where they sat talking–she could hear them, or at least their voices, just below hers: the old red sofa was immediately under her desk. Immediately over it was Colin’s bed. She heard their lowered voices, and then careful footsteps just above her. Well, she was sure Colin knew how to be careful: he had said so, loudly, to his brother, who lectured him on these matters.

  Sophie was sixteen. Frances wanted to put her arms around the girl and protect her. Well, she never felt anything like that about Rose, Jill, Lucy, or the other young females who drifted in and out of this house. So why Sophie? She was so beautiful, that was it: that was what she wanted to guard and keep safe. And what nonsense that was–she, Frances, should be ashamed. She was ashamed about a good deal, this evening. She opened the door, and listened. Down in the kitchen, there seemed to be more than Andrew, Rose, James . . . she would find out tomorrow.

  She slept restlessly, twice went across the landing to see how Tilly was doing; on one occasion found a very dark room, stillness, and the faint stuffy smell of chocolate. Once she saw Andrew retreating upstairs from a similar mission, and went back to bed. She lay awake. The trouble was, the shoplifting. When Colin first went to St Joseph’s after his not very good comprehensive, articles she knew were not his began appearing, nothing much, a T-shirt, packets of biros, a record. She remembered being impressed that he had stolen an anthology of verse. She remonstrated. He complained that everyone did it and she was a square. Do not imagine the issue rested there. This was a progressive school! One of the first wave of schoolfriends, who came and went, but much less freely, since after all they were younger, a girl called Petula, informed Frances that Colin was stealing love: the housemaster had said so. This was discussed noisily at the supper table. No, not the love of her parents, but that of the headmaster, who had ticked off Colin for something or other. Geoffrey, already more or less a fixture then, five years ago, more, was proud of what he garnered from the shops. She had been shocked, but had not said more than, Well, then, don’t get caught. If she had not said, Don’t do it, that was because she would not have been obeyed, but also because she had no idea then of how prevalent it would become, shoplifting. And, too, and that was what now kept her awake, she had liked being one of them, the trendy youngsters who were the new arbiters of modes and morals. There was–had been–undoubtedly a feeling of we against them. Petula, that sparky girl (now in a school for diplomats’ children in Hong Kong) had said that stealing without being caught was an initiation rite, and adults should understand that.

  Today Frances was going to have to write a solid, long, and balanced article on this very subject. She was actually regretting she had ever said yes to this new job. She was going to have to take a stand on any number of issues, and it was her nature to see opposing points of view, and refuse to say more than, ‘Yes, it’s all very difficult.’

  Recently she had come to see stealing as very definitely wrong, and not because of her unfortunate upbringing, but because of listening for years to Johnny urging all kinds of anti-social behaviour, rather like a guerilla leader: hit and run. One day a simple truth had arrived in her mind. He wanted to pull everything down about his ears, like Samson. That was what it was all about. ‘The Revolution’ which he and his mates never stopped talking about would be like directing a flame-thrower over everything, leaving scorched earth, and then–well, simple–he and the mates would rebuild the world in their image. Once seen it was obvious, but the thought then had to be faced: how could people unable to organise their own lives, who lived in permanent disarray, build anything worthwhile? This seditious thought–and it was years in advance of its time, at least in any circles she had been introduced to–lived side by side with an emotion she hardly knew was there. She thought Johnny was . . . no need to spell that out . . . she had become very clear about what she thought, but at the same time she relied on an aura of hopeful optimism that surrounded him, the comrades, everything they did. She did believe–but hardly knew she did–that the world was going to get better and better, that they were all on an escalator of Progress, and that present ills would slowly dissolve away, and everyone in the world would find themselves in a happy healthy time. And when she stood in the kitchen, producing dishes of food for ‘the kids’, seeing all those young faces, listening to their irreverent confident voices, she felt that she was guaranteeing this future for them, in a silent promise. Where had this promise originated? From Johnny, she had absorbed it from Comrade Johnny, and while her mind was set in criticising him, more and more every day, she relied emotionally without knowing it on Johnny and his brave sweet new worlds.

  In a few hours she would sit down and write her article and say what?

  If she had not taken a stand against stealing, in her own home, and even when she had come most strongly to disapprove, then what right had she to tell other people what to do?

  And how confused these poor children were. As she had left the kitchen last night she had heard them laughing, but uneasily; had heard James’s voice louder than the others, because he wanted so much to be accepted by all these free spirits. Poor boy, he had fled from boringly provincial parents (as she had) to the delights of Swinging London, and a house described by Rose as Freedom Hall–she loved the phrase–where he had heard exactly the same condemnation–he was bound to be stealing, they all did–as he had from his parents.

  It was nine o’clock by now, late for her. She must get up. She opened the door on to the landing and saw Andrew sitting on the floor where he could look across at the door of the room where the girl was. It was open. He mouthed up at her: Look, just look.

  Pale November sun fell into the room opposit
e, where a slight erect figure with an aureole of fair hair, in an old-fashioned pink garment–a housecoat?–was perched on a high stool. If Philip were to see this vision now, how easily he could have been persuaded that this was the girl Julia, his long-ago love. On the bed, wrapped tight in her baby’s shawl, Tilly was held up by pillows, and staring with her unblinking gaze at the old woman.

  ‘No,’ came Julia’s cool precise voice, ‘no, your name is not Tilly. That is a very foolish name. What is your real name?’

  ‘Sylvia,’ lisped the girl.

  ‘So, why do you call yourself Tilly?’

  ‘I couldn’t say Sylvia when I was little, so I said Tilly.’ These were more words than any of them had heard from her, at one time.

  ‘Very well. I shall call you Sylvia.’

  Julia had in her hand a mug of something with a spoon in it. Now she carefully, beautifully, caused an appropriate amount of the mug’s contents–there was a smell of soup–to fill the spoon, which she held to Tilly’s, or Sylvia’s, lips. Which were tight shut.

  ‘Now, listen carefully to me. I am not going to let you kill yourself because you are foolish. I won’t allow it. And now you must open your mouth and begin eating.’

  The pale lips trembled a little, but opened, and all the while the girl was staring at Julia, apparently hypnotised. The spoon was inserted, and its contents disappeared. The watchers waited, breathless, to see if there was a swallowing movement. There was.

  Frances glanced down at her son and saw that he was swallowing in sympathy.

  ‘You see,’ Julia was going on, while the spoon was again being recharged, ‘I am your step-grandmother. I do not allow my children and grandchildren to behave so foolishly. You must understand me, Sylvia . . .’ In went the spoon–a swallow. And again Andrew made a swallowing movement. ‘You are a very pretty clever girl . . .’

  ‘I’m horrible,’ came from the pillows.

  ‘I don’t think you are. But if you have decided to be horrible then you will be, and I won’t allow that.’