The Sweetest Dream

by Doris Lessing

  As for Andrew, he said, ‘I’ll go and help Julia with our guest, poor man,’ and left her with a smile that was both complicit and a warning, though it was doubtful he was aware of this.

  A woman who has shut a door on her amorous self as thoroughly as Frances had, has to be surprised when suddenly it opens. She liked Harold, that was obvious, from the way she was coming to life, pulses stirring, animation seizing hold of her.

  And yet why? Why him? He had got under her guard, all right. How very extraordinary. The occasion had been extraordinary, who could believe such a thing, if they hadn’t seen it? She wouldn’t be at all surprised if this Harold was the only person there who had allowed himself to take in what Reuben Sachs had said. A good phrase, take in. You can sit for an hour and a half listening to information that should shoot your precious citadel of faith to fragments, or that doesn’t match easily with what is already in your brain, but you don’t take it in. You can take a horse to water . . .

  Frances did not sleep well that night, and it was because she was allowing herself to dream like a girl in love.

  He telephoned next afternoon, and asked her to go with him for a weekend to a certain little town in Warwickshire, and she said she would, as easily as if she did this often. And she had to wonder again what it was about this man who could turn a key so easily in a door that she had kept shut. He was a solid, smiling, fairish man, whose characteristic look was of cool, humorous assessment. He was, or had been, an official in some educational organisation. A trade union official?

  She supposed the usual assortment of kids would arrive for the weekend, and went up to Julia to say that she would like to take the weekend off. Using those words.

  Julia seemed to smile a little. Was that a smile? Not an unkind one . . .‘Poor Frances,’ she said, surprising her daughter-in-law. ‘You live a dull sort of life.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘I think you do. And the young ones can look after themselves for once.’

  And, as Frances went out she heard the low, ‘Come back to us, Frances,’ and this surprised her so much she turned, but found that Julia had already picked up her book.

  Come back to us . . . oh, that was perceptive of her, uncomfortably so. For she had been seized with a rebellion against her life, the relentless slog of it, and had wandered into a landscape of feverish dreams, where she would lose herself–and never return to Julia’s house.

  And there were her sons, and that was no joke. Told that their mother would be away that weekend, both reacted as if she had said she was off for a six-month jaunt.

  Colin, from school, said on the telephone, ‘Where are you going? Who are you going with?’

  ‘A friend,’ said Frances, and there was a suspicious silence.

  And Andrew gave her the bleakest smile, which was full of fear, but he certainly did not know that.

  She was the stable thing in their lives, always had been, and it was no use saying both were old enough to allow her some freedom. But at what age do such insecurely-based children no longer need a parent to be there, always? This was their mother, taking off for the weekend with a man, and they knew it. If she had ever done anything like it before . . . but how obedient she had always been to their situation, their needs, as if she was making up for Johnny’s lacks. ‘As if’?–she had tried to make up for Johnny.

  • • •

  On the Saturday Frances crept out of the house knowing that Andrew would be on the look-out, for he was a restless sleeper, and Colin might have decided to wake earlier than his usual mid-morning. She glanced up at the front of the house, dreading to see Andrew’s face, Colin’s–but there were no faces at the windows. It was seven in the morning of a wonderful summer’s day, and her spirits, in spite of her guilt, were threatening to shoot her up into an empyrean of irresponsibility, and here he was, her beau, her date, smiling, obviously enjoying what he saw, this blonde woman (she had had her hair done) in her green linen dress, settling herself beside him, and turning to him to share a laugh at this adventure.

  They drove comfortably through the suburbs of London, and were in the country, and she was enjoying his enjoyment of her, and her pleasure in him, this handsome sandy man, and meanwhile she combated thoughts of the helpless unhappy faces of her sons.

  Dear Aunt Vera, I am divorced and I bring up two boys. I am tempted to have an affair but I am afraid of upsetting my sons. They watch me like hawks. What shall I do? I’d like to have some fun. Don’t I have any rights?

  Well, if she, Frances, was in line for some fun then do it: and she shut her sons firmly out of her thoughts. Either that, or say to this man, Turn around and go back, I have made a mistake.

  They stopped by the river near Maidenhead and had breakfast, rested later in a town whose public gardens looked inviting, drove on, were invited by an attractive pub, and had lunch in another garden while sparrows hopped about them in the dust.

  He said once, ‘Are you having difficulty suspending disbelief?’

  ‘Yes,’ and stopped herself saying, It’s the boys, you see.

  ‘I thought so. As for me, I am having no difficulty at all.’ And his laughter had enough triumph in it to make her examine him for the reason. There was something in all this she was not understanding–but never mind. She was quite recklessly happy. What a dull life she did lead: Julia was right. They drove up side roads to avoid the motorways, got themselves lost, and all the time their looks and smiles promised, Tonight we are going to lie in each other’s arms. The day continued warm, with a silky golden haze, and in the late afternoon they sat in another garden, by a river, observed by blackbirds, a thrush, and a large friendly dog who sat by them, until it gained its bit of cake from both of them, and wandered off, its tail slowly swinging.

  ‘A fat dog,’ said Harold Holman, ‘and that’s what I shall be, after this weekend.’ Replete, yes, he looked that, but as well there was this other ingredient, a pleasure in her, in the situation, which made her say, without planning to, ‘Just what are you so pleased with yourself about?’ He at once understood, so that the aggressiveness of it, which she regretted, for it contradicted the radiant content she felt, was annulled as he said, ‘Ah, yes, you are right, you are right,’ and gave her a laughing look, and she thought that he looked like a lazy lion, his paws crossed in front of him, lifting a commanding head in a slow lazy yawn. ‘I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you everything. But first, I want to get somewhere when the light is like this.’ And off they drove again, into Warwickshire, and he parked outside their hotel, and came to open the door for her. ‘Come and look at this.’ Across the street were trees, gravestones, shrubs, an old yew. ‘I was looking forward to showing you this–no, you’re wrong, I’ve not brought a woman here before, but I had to stop in this town, months ago, and I thought, it’s magic, this place. But I was alone.’

  They crossed the street hand in hand and stood in the old graveyard where the yew seemed almost as tall as the little church. It was an early summer dusk, and a moon was emerging bright into a darkening sky. The pale gravestones leaned about and seemed to want to speak to them. Breaths of warm summer air, wisps of cool mist, brushed their faces, and they stood in each other’s arms, and kissed and then were close for a long time, listening to the messages from each other’s bodies. And then the pressure of unshareable emotions made them step back from each other, though they still held hands, and he said, ‘Yes,’ with a quiet regret she did not need to have explained. She was thinking, ‘I could have married somebody like this, instead of . . .’ Julia called him an imbecile. Since Johnny did not telephone Julia after that little meeting, ‘so that everyone could hear the truth’, Julia had rung him to find out what he thought, or rather, what he was prepared to say. ‘Well?’ she had enquired. ‘Surely that was worth thinking about . . . what that Israeli said?’ ‘You must learn to take a long-term perspective, Mutti.’ ‘Imbecile.’

  The graveyard filled with dark, as the sky lightened, and the gravestones shone bright and ghostly, and
they leaned against the yew in the blackness under it, and looked out, watching the moonlight strengthen. Then they walked through the graves, all old ones, no one here younger than the century, and soon were in the room in the old-fashioned hotel where they had registered as Harold Holman and Frances Holman.

  She was actually thinking, Oh, why not, I could marry this man, we could be happy, after all people do marry and are happy–but the thought of the weight and complexity of Julia’s house pushed aside this nonsense, and she banished that thought too, in her intention to be happy for this one night.

  And so she was, so they were. ‘Made for each other,’ he breathed in her ear, and then exclaimed it aloud, exulting. They lay side by side, enlaced, while outside the brief night hurried past towards a dawn that was not going to be delayed by cloud: the moonlight glittered on the panes. ‘I’ve been in love with you for years,’ he said, ‘years. Ever since I saw you first with those little boys of yours. Johnny’s wife. You don’t know how often I fantasised about ringing you up and asking you to sneak around the corner for a drink. But you were Johnny’s wife, and I was so in awe of him.’

  Frances’s spirits were taking a fall, and she wished that he would not go on: but he would have to, that was obvious, for here was the sad face of the truth. ‘That must have been in that dreadful flat in Notting Hill.’

  ‘Was it dreadful? But we didn’t go in for gracious living in those days.’ And he laughed loudly, from an excess of everything, and said, ‘Oh, Frances, if you’ve ever had a dream you thought would never come true, then tonight is that, for me.’

  She was thinking of herself then, overweight and worried, with the small children always at her or on her, clutching her, climbing up her, competing for her lap. ‘Just what did you see in me then, I’d like to know?’

  He was silent for a while. ‘It was everything. Johnny–he was such a hero to me then. And you were Johnny’s wife. You were such a couple, I envied you both and I envied Johnny. And the little boys–I hadn’t had children then. I wanted to be like you.’

  ‘Like Johnny.’

  ‘I can’t explain. You were such–a holy family,’ he laughed and flung his limbs about, and then sat on the edge of the bed, stretching up his arms into the moony light of the room and said, ‘You were wonderful. Calm . . . serene . . . nothing phased you. And I did realise that Johnny wasn’t necessarily the easiest . . . I’m not criticising him.’

  ‘Why not? I do.’ Was she really going to demolish this dream–she couldn’t. Oh, yes, she could. ‘Did you have any idea how much I hated Johnny then?’

  ‘Well, of course we hate our dear loved ones sometimes. Jane–she was a pain.’

  ‘Johnny was consistently a pain.’

  ‘But what a hero!’

  She was sitting with her arm around his neck, as close as she could, to be near that exulting vitality. Her breasts were against his arm. How much she did like her body tonight, because he did. Smooth heavy breasts, and her arms–she could grant that they were beautiful. ‘When I saw Johnny in that room the other night, I wondered if you two still . . .’

  ‘Good God, no,’ and she withdrew from him, body, mind, and even liking, for just that moment. ‘How could you think that?’ Well, why shouldn’t he . . . ‘Never mind Johnny,’ she said. ‘Come back here.’ She lay down and he came to lie by her, smiling.

  ‘I admired that man more than anyone in my life. For me he was a sort of god. Comrade Johnny. He was much older than I was . . .’ He lifted his head to look at her.

  ‘That means I am much older than you are.’

  ‘Not tonight you aren’t. I was in a bit of a mess when I first met Johnny–at a meeting, it was. I was a green boy. I had failed my exams. My parents said, “If you are a communist don’t darken our doors.” And Johnny was kind to me. A father figure. I decided to be worthy of him.’

  Here she controlled the muscles of her diaphragm, but whether to forestall laughter or tears, it was hard to say.

  ‘I found a room in a comrade’s house. I took my exams again. I was a teacher for a bit, I was in the Union then . . . but the point is, I owe it all to Johnny.’

  ‘Well, what can I say? Good for him. But surely, good for you?’

  ‘If I had believed then that I could be with you tonight, hold you in my arms, I think I’d have gone mad with joy. Johnny’s wife, in my arms.’

  They made love again. Yes, it was love, a friendly, even amorous love, while laughter bubbled in the cauldron, well out of his hearing, but not out of hers.

  They slept. They woke. And then it seemed he had bad dreams, for he started awake and lay on his back, holding her, but in a way that said Wait. At last he said unhappily, ‘That was a bad blow, you know, what that man Sachs said.’

  She decided to let it go.

  ‘You can’t say it wasn’t a shock.’

  She decided she would speak. ‘Newspapers,’ she spelled it out. ‘Newspaper reports for years. Television. Radio. The Purges, the camps. The laagers, the murders. For years.’

  A long silence. ‘Yes,’ he said at last, ‘but I didn’t believe it. Well, some of it of course . . . but nothing like–what he told us.’

  ‘How could you not have believed it?’

  ‘I didn’t want to, I suppose.’

  ‘Exactly.’ And then she heard herself say, ‘And I bet we haven’t heard the half of it yet.’

  ‘Why do you say that? It sounds as if you are quite pleased with yourself.’

  ‘I suppose I am. It is something to have been proved right, after years of having been put down and–trampled on. Of being put down now,’ she said.

  And now he was dismayed. But she went on, ‘I didn’t agree with him. Not after the very first days . . .’ She suppressed, When he came back from the Spanish Civil War. Since after all, he hadn’t. She suppressed, When I saw what a dishonest hypocrite he was. Because after all, how could he be called dishonest? He believed every word of it.

  ‘I fell for all that glamour,’ she said. ‘I was nineteen. But it didn’t last.’

  He didn’t like that, no, he didn’t like it all, and she lay there silent by him, enough at one with him to be hurt because he was.

  There was a long drowsing silence: outside it was already a full hot day, and the traffic had begun.

  ‘It seems it was all for nothing,’ he said at last. ‘It was all . . . lies and nonsense.’ She could hear the tears in his voice. ‘What a waste. All that effort . . . people killed for nothing. Good people. No one is going to tell me they weren’t.’ A silence. ‘I don’t want to make a thing of it, but I did make such sacrifices for the Party. And it was all for nothing.’

  ‘Except that Comrade Johnny inspired you to great things.’

  ‘Don’t mock.’

  ‘I’m not. I’m going to allot Johnny one good mark. At least he was good to you.’

  ‘I haven’t taken it in yet. I haven’t begun to take it all in.’

  And so they lay side by side, and if he was letting go dreams, such dreams, such sweet sweet dreams, she was thinking, Obviously I’m a very selfish person, just as Johnny always said. Harold is thinking about the golden future of the human race, postponed indefinitely, but I am thinking what I have shut out of my life. She could hardly bear the pain of it. The sweet warm weight of a man sleeping in her arms, his mouth on her cheek, the tender heaviness of a man’s balls in her hand, the delicious slipperiness of. . .

  ‘Let’s go down to breakfast,’ he said. ‘I think I’m going to cry otherwise.’

  They breakfasted soberly, in a decorous little room, and left the hotel, noting that this morning the graveyard seemed neglected and shabby, and the magic of last night was going to seem like bathos if they did not remove themselves. Which they did, and went off to a place where lying on a grassy hill he told her that here, where they were, landscapes rolling away in all directions, that this was the very heart of England. And then, and she understood it absolutely, he wept, this big man, face on his arm, on the grass,
he wept for his lost dream, and she thought, We suit each other so well, but we won’t be together again. It was the ending of something. For him. And for her too: what am I doing prancing around the heart of England with a man heartbroken because of–well, not because of me?

  In the late afternoon she asked him to set her down where she could take a taxi, because she could not face being seen with him, outside the house with its jealous hungry eyes. They kissed, full of regrets. He saw her step into a taxi, and they drove off in different directions. Up the steps ran Frances, lightly, full of the energy of love-making, and went straight to her bathroom, afraid she smelled too much of sex. Then she went up to Julia’s, and knocked, and waited for the close cool inspection–which she got. Then, because it was not unfriendly, but kind, she sat and said nothing, only smiled at Julia, her lips trembling.

  ‘It’s hard,’ said Julia, and she sounded as if she knew how hard. She went to a cupboard, full of interesting bottles, poured a cognac, and brought it to Frances.

  ‘I shall stink of alcohol,’ said Frances.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Julia, and lit the flame of her little coffee-maker. She stood by it, with her back to Frances, who knew it was tact, because of how much Frances needed to cry. Then a cup of strong black coffee arrived beside the cognac.

  The door opened–no knock; Sylvia ran in. ‘Oh, Frances,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know you were here. I didn’t know she was here, Julia.’ She stood hesitating, smiling, then rushed to Frances and put her arms around her, her cheek against Frances’s hair. ‘Oh, Frances, we didn’t know where you were. You went away. You left us. We thought you’d got fed up with us all and left us.’

  ‘Of course I couldn’t,’ said Frances.

  ‘Yes,’ said Julia. ‘Frances has to be here, I think.’

  • • •

  The summer lengthened and loosened, breathed slow, then slower, and time seemed to lie all around like shallow lakes where one could float and dawdle: all this would end when ‘the kids’ came back. The two already here took up little space in the big house. Frances caught glimpses of Sylvia, across the landing, lying on her bed with a book, from where she waved, ‘Oh, Frances, this is such a lovely book,’ or running up the stairs to Julia. Or the two could be seen progressing down the street to go shopping–Julia with her little friend Sylvia. Andrew also lay on his bed, reading. Frances had–guiltily, it goes without saying–knocked on his door, heard ‘Come in,’ had gone in, and no, the room was clear of smoke. ‘There you are, mother,’ he drawled, for everything about him had slowed too, like her own pulses, ‘you should have more confidence in me. I am no longer a hophead on his way to perdition.’