The Sweetest Dream

  Frances was not cooking. She might meet Andrew in the kitchen, making himself a sandwich, and he would offer to make her one. Or she, him. They sat at opposite ends of the great table and contemplated plenty: tomatoes that came from the Cypriot shops in Camden Town, dense with real sunlight, knobbly and even misshapen, but as the knife cut into them the rank and barbarous magnificence of their smell filled the kitchen. They ate tomatoes with Greek bread and olives, and sometimes spoke. He did remark that he supposed it was all right, his doing Law. ‘Why are you having doubts about it?’ ‘I think I’ll make it International Law. The clash of nations. But I must confess I’d be happy to spend my life lying on my bed and reading.’ ‘And sometimes eating tomatoes.’ ‘Julia says her uncle sat in his library all his life reading. And I suppose adjusting his investments.’

  ‘How much money does Julia have, I wonder?’

  ‘I’ll ask her one of these days.’

  A rude little incident interrupted this peace. One night when Frances had gone up to bed Andrew opened the door to two French lads who said they were friends of Colin’s, who had told them they could stay the night. One spoke excellent English, Andrew spoke good French. They sat at the table till late, drinking wine and eating whatever could be found, while that game went on when both sides want to practise the other’s language. The semi-silent one smiled and listened. It seemed Colin and they had become friends while picking grapes, then Colin had gone home with them, in the Dordogne, and now he was hitching in Spain. He had asked them to say hello to his family.

  They went up to Colin’s room where they spread sleeping bags, not using the bed, so as to make as little disruption as possible. Nothing could have been more amiable and civilised than these two brothers, but in the morning a misunderstanding had taken them to Julia’s bathroom. They were larking about, complaining that there was no shower, admiring the plenitude of hot water, enjoying bath salts and the violet-scented soap, and making a lot of noise. It was about eight: they planned to be off early on their travels. Julia heard splashing and loud young voices, knocked, knocked again. They did not hear her. She opened the door on two naked boys, one wallowing in her bath and blowing soap bubbles, the other shaving. There followed a volley of appropriate exclamations, merde being the loudest and most frequent. They then found themselves being addressed by an old woman, her hair in curlers, wearing a pink chiffon negligée, in the French she had learned in her schoolroom from a succession of mademoiselles fifty years ago. One boy leaped out of the bath, not even snatching up a towel to cover himself, while the other turned, razor in hand, mouth open. As it was evident the two were too stunned by her to respond, Julia retreated, and they picked up their things and fled downstairs where Andrew heard the tale and laughed. ‘But where did she get that French?’ they demanded. ‘Ancient regime, at least.’ ‘No, Louis Quartorze.’ So they jested, while they had coffee, and then the brothers departed to hitchhike around Devon, which in the mid-Sixties was the grooviest place after Swinging London.

  But Frances could not laugh. She went to Julia’s, and found the old woman not in her sitting-room dressed and exquisite, but on her bed, in tears. Julia saw Frances, and stood up, but unsteadily. Now Frances’s arms of their own accord embraced Julia, and what had seemed until then an impossibility was the most natural thing in the world. The frail old thing laid her head on the younger woman’s shoulder, and said, ‘I don’t understand. I have learned that I understand nothing.’ She wailed, in a way that Frances would not have believed possible, from her, and she flung herself out of Frances’s arms on to her bed. There Frances lay beside her and held her, while she sobbed and wailed. Evidently this was not any longer an affair of a bathroom being desecrated. When Julia was quieter she managed, ‘You just let in anybody,’ and Frances said, ‘But Colin has been staying with them.’ And Julia said, ‘Anybody can say that. And the next thing will be raga-muffins’ll turn up from America, and say they are friends of Geoffrey’s.’ ‘Yes, that seems to me more than likely. Julia, don’t you think it’s rather nice, the way these young things just travel about–like troubadours . . .’ though this was perhaps not the best simile, for Julia laughed angrily and said, ‘I am sure they had better manners.’ And then she started crying again, and again said, ‘You just let in anybody.’

  Frances asked if Wilhelm Stein should be asked to come, and Julia agreed.

  Meanwhile Mrs Philby was in the house, and wanted to know, like the bears in the story, ‘Who has been sleeping in Colin’s room?’ She was told. The old woman was the same vintage as Julia, as elegant and upright in her poor neat clean clothes, black hat, black skirt and print blouse, with an expression that refused any truck with this world that had come into being without any assistance from her. ‘Then they are pigs,’ she said. Up ran Andrew, and found that an orange had rolled from a backpack, and there were some croissant crumbs. If this amount of piggishness was enough to disorientate Mrs Philby–though surely by now she must have become used to it?–then what was she going to say about the bathroom which Sylvia and Julia left scarcely disturbed. ‘Christ!’ said Andrew, and rushed up to survey a stormy scene of spilled water and discarded towels. He did a preliminary tidying and informed Mrs Philby that she could go in now, and it’s only water.

  Andrew and Frances were sitting at the table when appeared Wilhelm Stein, Doctor of Philosophy and dealer in serious books. He went straight up to Julia, without coming into the kitchen, then descended, and stood in the doorway smiling, very slightly deferential, charming, an elderly gent as perfect in his way as Julia.

  ‘I don’t think it can be easy for you to understand the upbringing that Julia was victim of–yes, I can put it like that, because I believe it has severely incapacitated her for the world she now finds herself in.’ He, like Julia, spoke a perfect idiomatic English, and Andrew was contrasting it with the exclamatory, expletory, excited French he had been listening to last night.

  ‘Do sit down, Doctor Stein,’ said Frances.

  ‘Do we not know each other well enough for Frances and Wilhelm? I think we do, Frances. But I shall not sit down now, I shall fetch the doctor. I have my car.’ He was about to leave, but turned back to say, feeling, evidently, that he had not adequately explained himself, ‘The young people in this house–I except you, Andrew–are sometimes rather . . .’

  ‘Rough,’ said Andrew. ‘I agree. Shocking types.’ He spoke severely, and Doctor Stein acknowledged his small jest with a bow, and a smile.

  ‘I must tell you that when I was your age I was a shocking type. I was–rowdy. And I was rough.’ He grimaced at what he was remembering. ‘You might not think so to look at me now.’ And he smiled again, in amusement at the picture he knew he was presenting–and he was presenting it consciously, a hand resting on the silver knob of his cane, his other spread out as if to say Yes, you must take in all of me. ‘To look at me it would be hard to see me as . . . I was running around with the communists in Berlin, with all that that implies. With all it implies,’ he insisted. ‘Yes, it was so.’ He sighed. ‘I think no one could disagree that we Germans run to extremes? Or we can do? Well, then, Julia von Arne was one extreme and I was another. I sometimes amuse myself by imagining what my twenty-one-year-old self would have said of Julia, as a girl. And we laugh about it together. And so, I have a key and I will let myself and the doctor in.’

  ***

  In August there came to the house one Jake Miller, who had read a piece by Frances where she mocked the current fad for alien excitements like Yoga, and I-Ching, the Maharishi, Subud. The editor had said a funny piece was needed for the silly season, and it was that that had caused Jake Miller to telephone The Defender and ask Frances if he might visit. Curiosity said yes for her, and here he was in the sitting-room, a large infinitely smiling man, with gifts of mystic books. The smiles of unlimited love, peace, good-will, were soon to be obligatory on the faces of the good, perhaps one should say the young and the good, and Jake was a harbinger, though he was not young, he was in
his forties. He was here dodging the Vietnam War. Frances resigned herself to a speech, but politics were not his interest. He was claiming her as a fellow conspirator in the fields of mystic experience. ‘But I wrote it as a joke,’ she protested, while he smiled and said, ‘But I knew you were only writing like that because you had to, you were communicating with those of us who can understand.’

  Jake claimed all kinds of special powers, for instance, that he could dissolve clouds by staring at them, and in fact, standing at the window looking up at a fast-moving sky, she watched clouds tumbling past and dissipating. ‘It’s easy,’ said he, ‘even for quite undeveloped people.’ He could understand the language of birds, he said, and communicated with fellow minds through ESP. Frances might have protested that she was clearly no fellow mind, because he had had to telephone her, but this scene, mildly entertaining, mildly irritating, was ended by Sylvia coming in with a message from Julia–but Frances was never to hear the message. Sylvia was wearing a cotton jacket with the signs of the zodiac on it, bought because it fitted, and she was so small it was hard to find clothes: the jacket was in fact from Junior Miss. Her hair was in two thin pigtails on either side of her smiling face. His smiles and hers met and melded, and in a moment Sylvia was chatting with this new kind warm friend, who enlightened her about her sun sign, the I-Ching and her probable aura. In a moment the amiable American was on the floor casting the yarrow stalks for her, and the resulting reading so wowed her that she promised to go out and get the book for herself. Perspectives and possibilities she had never suspected filled her whole being, as if it had been quite empty before, and this girl who had hardly been able to go out of the house without Julia, now confidently went off with Jake from Illinois, to buy enlightening tracts. She did not return until late for her; it was past ten when she rushed up the stairs to Julia, who received her with arms held out for an embrace, but then let them fall, as she sat heavily down to stare at this girl who was in a state of vivacity she would not have thought possible for her. Julia heard Sylvia’s chattering in a silence that became so heavy and disapproving that Sylvia stopped.

  ‘Well, Sylvia, my poor child,’ said Julia, ‘where did you get all that nonsense?’

  ‘But, Julia, it isn’t nonsense, it really isn’t. I’ll explain, listen . . .’

  ‘It is nonsense,’ said Julia, getting up and turning her back. It was to make coffee, but Sylvia saw a cold excluding back, and began to cry. And she did not know it, but Julia’s eyes were full, and she was fighting with herself not to weep. That this child, her child, could so betray her–that was how she felt. Between the two of them, the old woman and her little love, the child to whom she had given her heart unreservedly and for the first time in her life–so she felt now–were only suspicion and hurt.

  ‘But, Julia; but, Julia . . .’ Julia did not turn around, and Sylvia ran down the stairs, flung herself on her bed, and cried so loudly that Andrew heard and went to her. She told him her story and he said, ‘Now stop. There is no point in that. I’ll go up to grandmother and talk to her.’

  He did.

  ‘And who is this man? Why did Frances let him in?’

  ‘But you talk as if he’s a thief or a conman.’

  ‘A conman is what he is. He has conned poor Sylvia out of her senses.’

  ‘You know, grandmother, this kind of thing, the Yoga and all that, it’s around–you lead a bit of a sheltered life, or you’d know that.’ He spoke whimsically, but was dismayed by the old unhappy face. He knew very well what the real trouble was, but decided to persist on the level of simple causes. ‘She’s bound to come up against this sort of thing at school, you can’t protect her from it.’ And meanwhile Andrew was thinking that he read his horoscope every morning, though of course he didn’t believe in it, and had toyed with the idea of having his fortune told. ‘I think you are making too much of it,’ he dared to say, and saw her at last nod, and then sigh.

  ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘But how is it that this . . . this . . . disgraceful thing is everywhere suddenly?’

  ‘A good question,’ said Andrew, embracing her, but she was a lump in his arms.

  Julia and Sylvia made it up. ‘We’ve made it up,’ the girl told Andrew, as if a heavy unhappy thing had become light and harmless.

  But Julia would not listen to Sylvia’s new discoveries, would not throw the stalks for the I-Ching, nor talk about Buddhism, and so their perfect intimacy, the intimacy possible only between an adult and a child, confiding and trustful, and as easy as breathing, had come to an end. It has to end, for this young one to grow up, but even when the adult knows this and expects it, hearts must bleed and break. But Julia had never had this kind of love with a child, certainly not with Johnny, did not know that a child growing–and Sylvia had gone through a rapid process of growing up, with her–would become a stranger. Sylvia, suddenly, was no longer the maiden trotting happily around after Julia and afraid to be out of her sight. She was mature enough to interpret the yarrow stalks–which had been asked for advice–to mean that she must go and see her mother. She did, by herself, and found Phyllida not shrieking and hysterical, but calm, withdrawn and even dignified. She was alone: Johnny was at a meeting.

  Sylvia was waiting for the reproaches and accusations she could not bear: she knew she would have to run away, but Phyllida said, ‘You must do what you think is best. I know it must be better for you there, with other young people. And your grandmother has taken to you, so I hear.’

  ‘Yes. I love her,’ said the girl simply, and then trembled for fear of her mother’s jealousy.

  ‘Love is easy enough if you’re rich,’ said Phyllida, but that was the nearest she got to criticism. Her determination to behave well, not let loose the demons that tore and howled inside her, made her slow and apparently stupid. She repeated: ‘It’s better for you, I know that.’ And, ‘You must decide for yourself.’ As if it had not all been decided long ago. She did not offer the girl tea, or a soft drink, but sat clutching the arms of a chair and staring at her daughter, blinking unevenly, and then, when it was all going to explode out of her, she said hurriedly, ‘You’d better run along, Tilly. Yes, I know you’re Sylvia now but you’re Tilly to me.’

  And Sylvia went off, knowing it had been touch and go whether she was screamed at.

  Colin returned first: he said it had been great, and that was all he said. He was a good deal in his room, reading.

  Sophie came to say she was starting at her acting school, and would make her home her base, because her mother still needed her. ‘But please can I come often–I do so love our suppers, Frances, I do so love our evenings.’ Frances reassured her, embraced her and knew from that touch the girl was troubled.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked. ‘Is it Roland? Didn’t you have a good time with him?’

  Sophie said, not intending to be humorous, ‘I don’t think I am old enough for him.’

  ‘Ah, I see. Did he say that?’

  ‘He said that if I had more experience I’d understand. It’s a funny thing, Frances. Sometimes I feel that he’s not there at all–he’s with me but . . . and yet he does love me, Frances, he says he does . . .’

  ‘Well, there you are.’

  ‘We did some lovely things. We walked for miles, we went to the theatre, we joined in with some other people and we had a groovy time.’

  Geoffrey was starting at the LSE. He dropped in to say that he felt he was a big boy now and it was time he had his own place. He was going to share with some Americans he had met demonstrating in Georgia; it was a pity Colin was a year younger than he was, or he could come and share too. He said he wanted to come here ‘like the old days’, he felt leaving this house was more like leaving home than if he was leaving his parents.

  Daniel, a year younger than Geoffrey, had another year at school, a year without Geoffrey.

  James was going to the LSE.

  Jill continued to be the dark horse. She did not return with Rose, who never told them where she had bee
n but who did say that Jill had been in Bristol with a lover. But she said she would be back.

  Rose was in the basement and announced that she was going to stick it out at school. No one believed her and they were wrong. In fact she was clever, knew it, and was determined ‘to show them’. Show who? Frances would have to be first on that list, but it was all of them really. ‘I’ll show them,’ she muttered, and it was like a mantra repeated when it was time for homework, and when the school’s progressiveness seemed less than she had hoped, as when she was asked please not to smoke in class.

  Sylvia’s determination to do well at school was not only for Julia, but for Andrew too, who continued to be elder-brotherly, affectionate, and kind: when he was there, and not at Cambridge.

  • • •

  Financial problems . . . when Frances had come to this house the arrangement was that Julia would pay the rates for the whole house, but Frances would be responsible for the rest: gas, electricity, water, telephones. Also for Mrs Philby, and the auxiliary she brought in to help her when ‘the kids’ got too much. ‘Kids? Pigs, more like it.’ Frances also bought food, generally supplied the house with what it needed, and, in short, needed a lot of money. She was earning it. The bill for Cambridge had arrived weeks before, and Julia had paid: she said that Andrew’s year off from education had been a great help. The school bill for Sylvia was paid, by Julia. Then came Colin’s bill, and Frances took it up to the little table on the landing at the top of the house where Julia’s mail was put, with considerable foreboding, which was confirmed when Julia came down with the St Joseph’s bill in her hand. Julia was nervous too. Since the barriers between the women had gone down, Julia had been more affectionate with Frances, but also more testy and critical.