The Sweetest Dream

by Doris Lessing Little Dorrit

'Well... no, it's not... that's not on. But she could camp in the living-room, we hardly ever use it. '

  ' If you've packed up with Sophie, do I have your permission to take my chance?' enquired Andrew. ‘I’m madly in love with Sophie, as everyone must know. '

  ‘I didn't say...’

  And now these two young men reverted to the condition schoolboy, began jostling each other, elbow to elbow, knee to knee.

  ' Happy Christmas,’ said Frances, and they desisted.

  ' Talking of Rose, where is she?’ said Andrew. ‘Did she go home.'

  ‘Of course not,’ said Colin. ' She's downstairs, alternately sobbing her heart out and making up her face. '

  ‘How do you know?' asked Andrew.

  ‘You forget the advantages of a progressive school. I know all about women. '

  ‘I wish I did. While my education is in every way better than yours, I fail continually in the human department. '

  ‘You' re doing pretty well with Sylvia,’ said Frances.

  'Yes, but she isn't a woman, is she? More the ghost of a little child someone has murdered. '

  'That's awful,' said Frances.

  ‘But how true,’ said Colin.

  'If Rose is really downstairs, I suppose we had better ask her up,’ said Frances.

  'Do we have to?’ said Andrew. 'It's so nice en famille for once.'

  ‘I’ll ask her,’ said Colin, ' or she'll be taking an overdose and then saying it's our fault. '

  He leaped up and off down the stairs. The two who remained said nothing, only looked at each other, as they heard the wail from beneath, presumably of welcome, Colin's loud common-sensical voice, and then Rose came in, propelled by Colin.

  She was heavily made up, her eyes pencilled in black, false black eyelashes, purple eye-shadow. She was angry, accusing, appealing, and was evidently about to cry.

  'There'll be some Christmas pudding,' said Frances.

  But Rose had seen the fruit on the tray and was picking it over. ‘What's this?’ she demanded aggressively, ‘What is it?' She held up a lychee.

  ‘You must have tasted that, you get it after a Chinese meal, for pudding,’ said Andrew.

  ‘What Chinese meal? I never get Chinese meals. '

  ‘Let me. ' Colin peeled the lychee, the crisp fragments of delicately indented shell exposing the pearly lucent fruit, like a little moon egg, which, having removed the shiny black pip he handed to Rose who swallowed it, and said, ' That's nothing much, it's not worth the fuss. '

  ‘You should let it lie on your tongue, you should let its inwardness speak to your inwardness,’ said Colin. He allowed himself his most owlish expression, and looked like an apprentice judge who lacked only the wig, as he cracked open another lychee, and handed it to Rose, delicately, between forefinger and thumb. She sat with it in her mouth, like a child refusing to swallow, then did, and said, ' It's a con. '

  At once the brothers swept the plate of fruit towards them, and divided it between them. Rose sat with her mouth open, staring, and now she really was going to cry. 'Ohhhhh,' she wailed, ' you are so horrible. It's not my fault I've never had a Chinese meal.'

  ‘Well, you've had Christmas pudding and that's what you are going to get next,’ said Frances.

  ‘I’m so hungry, ' wept Rose.

  ' Then eat some bread and cheese. '

  'Bread and cheese at Christmas?'

  'That's all I had,' said Frances. 'Now shut up, Rose.'

  Rose stopped mid-wail, stared incredulously at Frances, and allowed to develop the full gamut of the adolescent misunderstood: flashing eyes and pouting lips, and heaving bosom.

  Andrew cut a piece of bread, loaded it with butter, then cheese. ' Here, ' he said.

  ‘I’ll get fat, eating all that butter. '

  Andrew took his offering back and began eating it himself. Rose sat swelling with outrage and tears. No one looked at her. Then she reached for the loaf, cut a thin slice, smeared on a little butter, put on a few crumbs of cheese. She didn't eat however, but sat staring at it: Look at my Christmas dinner.

  'I shall sing a Christmas carol,' said Andrew, 'to fill in the time before the pudding. '

  He began on Silent Night' , and Colin said, Shut up, Andrew, it's more than I can bear, it really is. '

  The pudding is probably eatable already,’ said Frances.

  The great glistening dark mass of pudding was set on a very fine blue plate. She put out plates, spoons, and poured more wine. She stuck the sprig ofholly from Julia's offering on to the pudding. She found a tin of custard.

  They ate.

  Soon the telephone rang. Sophie, in tears, and so Colin went up a floor to talk to her, at length, at very great length, and then came down to say he would return to Sophie's, to stay the night there, poor Sophie couldn't cope. Or perhaps he would bring her back here.

  Then Julia's taxi was heard outside, and in came Sylvia, flushed, smiling, a pretty girl: who would have thought that possible, a few weeks ago? She dropped a curtsy to them in her good-girl's dress, both liking it and amused at the lace collar, lace cuffs and embroidery. Julia came in behind her. Frances said, Oh, Julia, do please sit down.'

  But Julia had seen Rose, who was like a clown now that her make-up had smeared with crying, and was cramming in Christmas pudding.

  'Another time,' said Julia.

  It could be seen that Sylvia would have stayed with Andrew, but she went up after Julia.

  'Stupid dress,' said Rose.

  ‘You' re right,’ said Andrew. ‘Not your style at all. '

  Then Frances remembered she had not thanked Julia and, shocked at herself, ran up the stairs. She caught Julia up on the top landing. Now she should embrace Julia. She should simply put her arms around this stiff, critical old woman and kiss her. She could not, her arms simply would not lift, would not go out to hold Julia.

  ' Thank you,’ said Frances. ' That was such a lovely thing to do. You have no idea what it did for me...’

  ‘I am glad you liked it,’ said Julia, turning to go in her door, and Frances said after her, feeling futile, ridiculous, ' Thank you, thank you so much.' Sylvia had no difficulty in kissing Julia, allowing herself to be kissed and held, and she even sat on Julia's knee.

  It was May, and the windows were open on to a jolly spring evening, the birds hard at it, louder than the traffic. A light rain sparkled on leaves and spring flowers.

  The company around the table looked like a chorus for a musical, because they were all wearing tunics striped horizontally in blue and white, over tight black legs. Frances wore black and white stripes, feeling that this might do something to assert a difference. The boys wore the same stripes over jeans. Their hair was, had to be, well below their ears, a statement of their independence, and the girls all had Evansky haircuts. An Evansky haircut, that was the heart's desire of every with-it girl, and by hook, or most likely by crook, they had achieved it. This cut was between a 1920s bob, and the shingle, with a fringe to the eyebrows. Straight, it went without saying. Curly hair out. Even Rose's hair, the mass of crinkly black, was Evansky. Little neat heads, little-ickle cutesy girls, little bitsey things and the boys like shaggy ponies, and all in the blue and white stripes that had originated in matelot shirts, matching the blue and white mugs they used for breakfast. When the geist speaks, the zeit must obey. Here they were, the girls and the boys of the sexual revolution, though they didn't know yet that was what they would be famed for.

  There was one exception to the Evansky imperative, every bit as strong as Vidal Sassoon's. Mrs Evansky, a decided lady, had refused to cut Sophie's hair. She had stood behind the girl, lifting those satiny black masses, letting them slide through her fingers, and then had pronounced: 'I am sorry, I can't do it.’And then, as Sophie protested, 'Besides you've a long face. It wouldn'tdo anything for you. ' Sophie had sat, rejected, cast out, and then Mrs Evansky had said, 'Go away and think about it, and if you insist – but it would kill me: cutting this off.'

  And so, alone among th
e girls, Sophie sat with her sparkling black tresses intact, and felt she was some kind of freak.

  The whirligigs of the time had done pretty well for four months. What was four months? – nothing, and yet everything had changed.

  First, Sylvia. She too had achieved full uniformity. Her haircut, begged from Julia, did not really suit her, but everyone knew it was important for her to feel normal and like the others. She was eating, ifnot well, and obeyed Julia in everything. The old woman and the very young girl would sit together for hours in Julia's sitting-room, while Julia made Sylvia little treats, fed her chocolates given her by her admirer Wilhelm Stein, and told her stories about pre-war Germany – pre-First-World-War Germany. Sylvia did once ask, gently, for she would have died rather than hurt Julia, ' Didn't anything bad ever happen, then?' Julia was taken aback and then she laughed. ‘I’m not going to admit it, even if bad things did happen. ‘But she genuinely could not remember bad things. Her girlhood seemed to her, in that house full of music and kind people, like a paradise. And was there anything like that now, anywhere?

  Andrew had promised his mother and his grandmother that he would go to Cambridge in the autumn, but meanwhile he hardly left the house. He loafed about and read, and smoked in his room. Sylvia visited him, knocking formally, and tidied his room, and scolded him. 'If I can do it, so can you.' Meaning, now, smoking pot. For her, who had frayed so badly apart, and come together with such difficulty, anything was a threat – alcohol, tobacco, pot, loud voices, and people quarrelling sent her back under her bedclothes with her fingers in her ears. She was going to school, and already doing well. Julia sat with her over her homework every evening.

  Geoffrey, who was clever, would do well in his exams, and then go to the London School of Economics to do – well, of course – Politics and Economics. He said he wouldn't bother with Philosophy. Daniel, Geoffrey's shadow, said he would go to the LS E too, and take the same.

  Jill had had an abortion, and was in her usual place, apparently untouched by the experience. The impressive thing was that ' the kids' had managed it all, without the adults. Neither Frances nor Julia had been told, and not Andrew, who was apparently considered too adult and a possible enemy. It was Colin who had gone to the girl's parents – she was afraid to go – and told them she was pregnant. They believed that Colin was the father, and would not accept his denials. Who was? No one knew, or would ever know, though Geoffrey was accused: he was always blamed for broken hearts and broken faith, being so good-looking.

  Colin got the money for the abortion out of Jill's parents, and he went to the family doctor, who did at last suggest an appropriate telephone number. Afterwards, when Jill was safely back in the basement flat, Julia, Frances and Andrew were told. But the parents said Jill could not return to St Joseph's, if that was the kind of thing that could happen there.

  Sophie and Colin had separated. Sophie, who would never in her life do anything by halves, had been too much for Colin: she loved him to death, or at least into something like an illness. 'Go away,' he had actually shouted at her at last, 'leave me alone.’And would not come out of his room for some days. Then he went to Sophie's house and said he was sorry, it was all his fault, he was just ' a little screwed up' , and please come back to our house, please, we all miss you, and Frances keeps saying, Where's Sophie? And when Sophie did return, all apology, as if it were her fault, Frances hugged her and said, ' Sophie, you and Colin is one thing, but your coming here when you like is another.'

  At weekends Sophie came down to London with the St Joseph's contingent, spent Friday evenings with them, went home to her mother whom she claimed was better. ' Though she doesn't look it. She just slumps around and looks awful.' Depression, let alone clinical depression, had not entered the general vocabulary and consciousness. People were still saying, ‘Oh, God, I'm so depressed,' meaning they were in a bad mood. Sophie, a good daughter as far as she could bear to be, went home for Saturday nights but was not there in the daytime. Saturday and Sunday evenings she was in her place at the big table.

  Something wonderful had happened to her. She often walked down the hill to Primrose Hill and then through Regent's Park, to dancing and singing lessons. There in a grassy glade full of flowerbeds is a statue of a young woman, with a little goat, and it is called 'The Protector of the Defenceless'. This girl in stone drew Sophie to her. She found herselflaying a leafon the pedestal, then a flower, then a little posy. Soon she would bring a bit of biscuit, and stood back to watch sparrows or a blackbird flyup to the statue's feet to carry off crumbs. Once she put a wreath around the little goat's head. Then, one day on the pedestal, was a booklet called The Language of Flowers, and tied to it with a ribbon was a bouquet of lilac and red roses. She could not see anyone likely nearby, only some people strolling in the garden.

  She was alarmed, knowing she had been watched. At the supper table she told the story, laughing at herself because of her love for the stone girl, and produced The Language of Flowers for everyone to pass around and look at. Lilac meant First Emotions of Love, and a red rose, Love.

  'You're not going to answer him?' demanded Rose, furious. 'Lovely Rose,' said Colin, 'of course she's going to answer.’And they all pored over the book to work out a suitable message. But what Sophie wanted to say was, ‘Yes, I am interested but don't jump to conclusions. ‘Nothing in the book seemed suitable. In the end they all decided on snowdrops, for Hope – but they had already come and gone, and periwinkle, Early Friendship. Sophie said she thought there were some in her mother's garden. And what else?

  'Oh, go on,' said Geoffrey. 'Live dangerously. lily of the valley – Return of Happiness. And phlox – Agreement.'

  Sophie put her posy on the pedestal, and lingered; went away, came back, and found her flowers gone. But someone else might have taken them? No, for when she went there the next day there was a young man who said he had been watching her ' for ages' and had been too shy to approach her without the language of flowers. A likely story, for shy he was not. He was an actor, studying at the Academy where she planned to go in the autumn. This was Roland Shattock, haggardly handsome and dramatic in everything and he was some kind of Trotskyist. He came often to the supper table and was here tonight. Older than the others, a year older even than Andrew, he wore a worldly-wise look, and a suede jacket dyed purple with fringes, and his presence was felt as a visitation from the adult world, and something like an entrance ticket to it. If he did not regard them as ' kids' , then... It never crossed their idealistic minds that he was often in need of a good meal.

  When Roland was there Colin tended to be silent, and even went upstairs early, particularly when Johnny dropped in, for the arguments between the young Trotskyist and the old Stalinist were loud, and fierce and often ugly. Sylvia fled upstairs too, and went to Julia.

  Johnny had been in Cuba, and had arranged to make a little film. 'But it won't bring in much money, I am afraid, Frances.' Meanwhile he had gone to visit independent Zambia, with Comrade Mo.

  Now Rose: there were difficulties all the way, for what seemed like every day of the four months. She would not go back to her school, and she would not go home. She was prepared to go to St Joseph's, if she could base herself here, in this house. Andrew travelled to see her parents again. They believed that this charming, and so upper-class young man had plans for their daughter, and this made it easier for them to agree, not to St Joseph's, which was beyond their means, but to a day school in London. They would pay the fees for that and give her an allowance for clothes. But they would not pay for Rose's board and keep. They allowed it to be understood that it was Andrew's responsibility to pay for her. That meant Frances, in effect.

  Perhaps she could be asked to do something in return, like housework – for there were always problems with keeping the place clean, in spite of Julia's Mrs Philby, who would never do much more than vacuum floors. 'Don't be silly,' said Andrew. 'Can you imagine Rose lifting a finger?'

  A school of a progressive kind was found in London,
and Rose agreed to everything. ' If she could just stay here, she wouldn'tbe any trouble. ' Then Andrew came to Frances to say there was a big problem. Rose was afraid to tell Frances. And it was Jill, too. The girls had been caught without tickets on the Underground, and it was the third time for both of them. They were summoned to see the juvenile delinquency officer, in the office of the Transport Police. There would certainly be fines, and Borstal was a real possibility. Frances was too angry, in her all too familiar way with Rose, a dull dispirited emotion, like chronic indigestion, to confront her, but asked Andrew to tell the girls she would go with them to their interview. On the appointed morning she came down to find the two sullen girls united in hatred for the world, in the kitchen, smoking. They were both made up to look like pandas, with their white eye-paint and black-circled eyes and black painted nails. They wore little mini-dresses from Biba's, stolen of course. They could not have found an appearance more likely to prejudice Authority against them.

  Frances said, 'If you do really care about getting off with just a lecture, you could wash your faces.' She was wondering if the girls were determined to make things as difficult as they could, perhaps even that they were harbouring ambitions to be sent to Borstal. This would of course serve Frances right: one is not in loco parentis without at some point taking punishment that is in fact aimed at delinquent parents.

  Rose at once said, 'I don't see why I should.'

  Frances waited, curious, for what Jill might reply. This formerly quiet, good, conforming girl, who might sit through a whole evening saying nothing, only smiling, was hardly discernible behind her paint and her anger.

  Taking her cue from Rose: 'I don't see why either.'

  They went by Underground, Frances buying tickets for them all, and noting their sarcastic smiles as she did so. They were soon in the office where non-payers of fares, juveniles, met their fate in the person of Mrs Kent, who wore a navy-blue uniform of a generic kind that suggested the majesty of officialdom. Her face, however, was kindly, while she kept up a severe look, to inspire respect.