The Sweetest Dream

  ‘What a lovely room,’ said the woman, and nearly fell. Colin and Frances laid her down on the big sofa, and at once she lifted her soiled hand and kept time while she sang . . . what was it?–yes, an old music-hall song, ‘I dillied and I dallied, I dallied and I dillied and I . . . yes, I did dilly, darlings, I did, and now I’m far from home.’ She had a light clear voice, accurate, sweet. The clothes she wore were not poor, and she did not seem to be poor, though she was certainly ill. There was no smell of alcohol on her breath. Now began another song, ‘Sally . . . Sally . . .’ The sweet voice rose true to the high note and held it. ‘Yes, darling, yes,’ she said to Colin, ‘you’ve a kind heart, I can see that.’ Big blue eyes, innocent eyes, even babyish eyes, were turned to Colin. She was ignoring Frances. ‘Kind, but be careful. Kind hearts get you into trouble, and who knows that better than Marlene?’

  ‘What’s your name, Marlene?’ asked Frances, holding a grubby hand which was too cold, and lacked vitality. It lay weakly trembling, in hers.

  ‘My name is lost, dear. It’s lost and gone, but Marlene will do.’ And now she spoke German, endearments, in German. Then more singing, fragments of songs. World War Two songs, with Lili Marlene again and then again, and more German. ‘Ich liebe dich,’ she told them, ‘Yes, I do.’

  Frances said, ‘I’ll get Julia.’ Up she went and found Julia having supper with Wilhelm, on either side of a small table set with silver and bright glass. She explained, and Julia said, meaning to be jocular, but it was a complaint, ‘I see this house has acquired another waif. There are limits to hospitality, Frances. Who is this lady?’

  ‘No lady,’ said Frances. ‘But a waif, certainly.’

  When she got back to the sitting-room, Andrew had arrived, with a glass of water, which he held to the unknown’s lips.

  ‘I’m not much of one for the water,’ she said, and lay back and sang that another little drink wouldn’t do her any harm. And then, again, it was German. Julia stood listening. She gestured to Wilhelm, and the two sat in chairs, side by side, prepared to give judgement.

  Wilhelm said, ‘May I call you Marlene?’

  ‘Call me what you like, dear, call me what you fancy. Sticks and stones may break my bones. They did once but it was a long time ago.’ And now she wept a little, with gulping sobs, like a child’s. ‘It hurt,’ she informed them. ‘It hurt when they did that. But the Germans were gentlemen. They were nice boys.’

  ‘Marlene, have you come from hospital?’ asked Julia.

  ‘Yes, darling. I’m an escapee from hospital, you could say that, but they’ll take poor Molly back, they are good to poor Molly.’ And she sang, ‘There’s none like pretty Sally. She is the darling of my heart . . .’ And then high and sweet, ‘Sally, Sally . . .’

  Julia got up, signed to Wilhelm to stay where he was, and gestured Frances out to the landing. Colin came too. He said, ‘I think we should take her in here. She’s ill, isn’t she?’

  ‘Ill and mad,’ said Julia. Then, with delicacy softening her sternness, she addressed Colin, ‘Do you know what she is–what she was?’

  ‘Not a clue,’ said Colin.

  ‘She was entertaining the Germans in Paris during the last war. She’s a whore.’

  Colin groaned, ‘But it’s not her fault.’

  The Spirit of the Sixties, with passionate eyes, a trembling voice, and outstretched pleading hands, was confronting the whole past of the human race, responsible for all injustice, embodied in Julia, who said, ‘Oh, you foolish boy, her fault, our fault, their fault, what does it matter? Who is going to look after her?’

  Frances said, ‘What’s an English girl doing working as a whore in Paris under the Germans?’

  And suddenly, in a tone neither of them had heard from her before, Julia said, ‘Whores don’t have any problems with passports, they’re always welcome.’

  Frances looked at Colin, Colin at Frances: what was that all about? But often with the old these moments arrive, in a change of voice, a painful grimace, a harshness–as now–which is all that is left of some hurt or disappointment . . . and then, that’s that, it’s over, it’s gone. No one will ever know.

  ‘I shall telephone Friern Barnet,’ said Julia.

  ‘Oh, no, no, no,’ said Colin.

  Julia went back into the room, interrupted Sally, and bent over to ask, ‘Molly? You are Molly? Tell me are you from Friern Barnet?’

  ‘Yes, I ran away for Christmas. I ran away to see my friends but where are they, I don’t know. But Friern is kind and Barnet is kinder, they’ll take poor Molly Marlene back.’

  ‘Go and telephone,’ said Julia to Andrew. He went out.

  ‘I’m not going to forgive anyone,’ said Colin, fierce, forlorn and rejected.

  ‘Poor boy,’ said Wilhelm.

  ‘Sending her back to . . . to . . .’

  ‘To a loony bin, that’s what you wanted to say, darling, but it’s all right, don’t be sad. Don’t be mad either,’ and she laughed.

  Andrew came back from telephoning. They all sat and waited, Colin with wet eyes, and they listened to the mad woman lying on the divan singing her Sally, over and over, and that high sweet clear note broke their hearts, not only Colin’s.

  Downstairs, the supper table was quietened by the crisis, which had been discussed, and had divided the company to the point where it had had to disperse.

  The doorbell rang. Andrew went down. He returned with a tired middle-aged woman in a grey garment like an overall, and over her arm was–yes, it was a straitjacket.

  ‘Now, Molly,’ said this woman reproachfully, to the wanderer. ‘What a time to do this to us. You know we are always short-staffed at Christmas.’

  ‘Bad Molly,’ said the sick woman, getting up, supported by Frances. And she actually smacked herself on the hand. ‘Naughty Molly Marlene.’

  The official examined her charge, and decided there was no need for force. She put her arm around Molly, or Marlene, and walked her to the door, and down the stairs, all but Julia following.

  ‘Goodbyeeee . . . don’t cryeeee . . .’ She turned in the hall to face them. ‘Those were good times,’ she said. ‘That was my happiest time. They always asked for me. They called me Marlene . . . that’s my war name really. They always wanted me to sing my Sally,’ and, singing her Sally she went out first, on the arm of her minder, who turned to say to them, ‘It’s Christmas, you see. They all of them get upset at Christmas time.’

  Colin, tears streaming, said to his mother, ‘How could we do that? We wouldn’t throw a dog out on a night like this,’ and went upstairs, Sophie, who was still in the kitchen, following him, to comfort and console. It was quite a mild night: as if that were the point.

  The next afternoon Colin took the bus to the mental hospital. All he knew about it was that it served north London. Vast, a mansion, its associations making it seem like the setting for a Gothic novel, it admitted Colin into a corridor that seemed a quarter of a mile long, painted a shiny vomit green. At its end he found stairs, and on them the woman who had come to take away poor mad Molly-Marlene last night. She told him that Molly Smith was in Room 23, and that he mustn’t be upset if she didn’t know him. She wore a plastic overall, had towels over her arm and a strong-smelling soap in her hand. Room 23 was large, with big windows, light and airy, but it needed painting. Bits of Christmas holly were stuck on the walls, by Sellotape. Men and women of various ages were sitting about on shabby chairs, some not looking at anything, some making the restless movements that were the visible expressions of dreams of being elsewhere, and a group of ten or so people sat as if at a tea-party, holding mugs of tea, passing biscuits, and conversing. One was Molly, or Marlene. Awkward and embarrassed, as helpless as a child in a room full of grown-ups, Colin said, ‘Hello, do you remember me? You were in our house last night.’

  ‘Oh, was I, dear? Oh, dear, I don’t remember. Was I wandering, then? Sometimes I do go wandering and then . . . but sit down, dear. What’s your name?’

  Colin sat in an
empty chair, near her, with the eyes of every person in the room on him: they all longed for something interesting to happen. He was trying to make conversation when the attendant, or nurse, or wardress, from last night, came in and said, ‘The bathroom’s free.’ A middle-aged man got up and went out.

  ‘Me next,’ said Molly, smiling with a vague but eager intent at Colin, who blurted, ‘How long–I mean, have you been here a long time?’

  ‘Oh, yes, dear, a long, long time.’

  The attendant, still wielding towels and soap, but standing at the door as if on guard, said to Colin, ‘This is her home. It is Molly’s home.’

  ‘Well, I don’t have another,’ said Molly, laughing merrily. ‘Sometimes I go wandering and then I come back again.’

  ‘Yes, you do wander and you don’t always come back and we have to find you,’ said the attendant, smiling away.

  Colin stuck it out, an hour of it, and then as he was thinking he must leave, he couldn’t bear it, in came a girl as confused as he was. It seemed that her home was one of those on whose doors Molly had knocked, not last night, but on Christmas Eve.

  The girl, a pretty, fresh little thing, her face showing all the dismay Colin felt, sat by Colin and told them all about her school, one of the good girls’ schools, chat to which Molly and her friends listened as if to news from far Tartary. Then the attendant said it was time for Molly’s bath.

  Relief all round. Up got Molly, and went off to her bath, the attendant or wardress with her. ‘Now, Molly, you be a good girl.’ Those that were left began squabbling about who was to go next: no one wanted to, because Molly left the bathroom a swamp.

  ‘It’s a swamp when she’s done,’ said an old wild woman, earnestly, to the youngsters. ‘You’d think a hippopotamus had been in it.’

  ‘What do you know about hippopotamuses?’ scorned an old wild man, clearly a sparring partner. ‘You’re always having your say out of turn.’

  ‘I do know all about hippos,’ said the angry crone. ‘I used to watch them from the verandah of our house on the banks of the Limpopo.’

  ‘Anyone can say they had a house by the Limpopo or the blue Danube,’ he said. ‘When no one can prove otherwise.’

  Colin and the girl, who was Mandy, left the hospital, and Colin took her home for supper, where they all wanted to know about the dreaded mental hospital and its inmates.

  ‘They’re just like us,’ said Colin, and Mandy said eagerly, ‘Yes, I don’t see why they have to be there.’

  Later Colin tackled Julia, then his mother. It is hard, very, for the older ones, world-whipped, when they have to listen while the idealistic young demand explanations for the sadness of the world. ‘Why, but why?’ Colin wanted to know, and it was not the end of it, for he did go back to the hospital, but found himself defeated since Molly had forgotten his visit to her. At last he left her his address and his telephone number, ‘In case you ever want anything’–to someone who wanted everything, above all, her wits. Mandy did the same.

  ‘That was a very foolish thing to do,’ Julia said.

  ‘That was very kind,’ said Frances.

  Mandy became for a time one of ‘the kids’ at the supper table, easy for her, since both her parents worked. She did not say they were shits but that they did their best. She was an only child. Then they whisked her off to New York. She and Colin wrote to each other for years.

  And twenty years were to pass before they met.

  In the Eighties, at the behest of another ideological imperative, all the mental hospitals and asylums were closed, and their inmates turned out to sink or swim. Colin got a letter in faint straggly writing: Colin–just that, and the address. He went down to Brighton where he found her in one of the lodging houses run by the philanthropists who were taking in former mental hospital patients and charging them every penny of their benefit, for conditions Dickens would have recognised.

  She was a sick old woman, whom he did not recognise, but she seemed to know him. ‘He had such a kind face,’ said Molly-Marlene Smith–if Smith was indeed her name. ‘Tell him, he has such a nice face, that boy. Do you know Colin?’

  She was dying of the drink. Well, of what else? . . . And, visiting her again, Colin found Mandy, a smart American matron now, with a child or two and a husband or two, and they met again at the funeral and then Mandy flew back to Washington, and out of his life.

  There was another event on that Christmas night.

  Late, long after midnight, Franklin crept up the stairs, listening for Rose, who seemed to be asleep. The kitchen was dark. Up he went, past the sitting-room, where Geoffrey and James were in their sleeping bags. Up to the next floor where he knew Sylvia had her room. There was a light on the landing. He knocked, not louder than a hen’s peck, on Sylvia’s door. Not a sound. He tried again, the gentlest knock: he didn’t dare knock louder. And then just above him, Andrew appeared.

  ‘What are you doing? Are you lost? That’s Sylvia’s room.’

  ‘Oh, oh, I’m so sorry. I thought . . .’

  ‘It’s late,’ said Andrew. ‘Go back to bed.’

  Franklin went down the stairs far enough to be out of Andrew’s sight, where he collapsed, bending over, head on his knees. He cried, softly though, not to be heard.

  Then he felt an arm across his shoulder, and Colin said, ‘Poor old Franklin. Never mind. Don’t you get upset about Andrew. He’s just one of the world’s natural prefects.’

  ‘I love her,’ sobbed Franklin. ‘I love Sylvia.’

  Colin increased the pressure of his arm and let his cheek lie against Franklin’s head. He rubbed it on the springy mat which seemed to send a message of health and strength, like heather. ‘You don’t really,’ he said. ‘She’s still a little girl, you know–yes, she may be sixteen or seventeen or whatever she is but she’s . . . not mature, you know? It’s all the fault of her parents. They’ve screwed her up.’ Here rather to his own surprise he felt laughter bubbling up: absurdity was confronting him. But he persevered: ‘They’re all shits,’ he informed Franklin, and turned a laugh into a cough.

  Franklin was more bewildered than ever. ‘I think your mother is so nice. She is so kind to me.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I suppose so. But it’s no good, Sylvia, I mean. You’ll have to fall in love with someone else. What about . . .’ And he began on a list of girl’s names from school, chanting them, like a song. ‘There’s Jilly and there’s–Jolly. There’s Milly and there’s Molly. There’s Elizabeth and Margaret, there’s Caroline and Roberta.’ He said in his usual voice, and with an ugly laugh, ‘No one could say they’re immature.’

  But I do love her, Franklin was saying to himself. That delicate pale girl, with her golden fluffy hair, she enchanted him, to hold her in his arms would be . . . He turned his face away from Colin, and was silent. Colin felt the shoulders under his arm hot and miserable. How well he identified with that misery, how well he did know that nothing he said would make Franklin feel better. He began rocking Franklin gently. Franklin was thinking that all he wanted was to go back to Africa tonight, go for ever, it was all too much, but he knew Colin was kind. And he did like sitting here, with the kind boy’s arms around him.

  ‘Would you like to bring your sleeping bag up to my room? Better than the company of Rose, and we can sleep as long as we like.’

  ‘Yes . . . no, no, it’s all right. I’ll go down now. Thanks, Colin.’ But I do love her, he was repeating to himself.

  ‘All right, then,’ said Colin. He got up, went up.

  And Franklin went down. He was thinking, I’m going to get it in the morning–meaning, from Andrew. But Andrew never mentioned it nor referred to it. And Sylvia never knew that Franklin had been forced by his longing to go up the stairs to knock on her door.

  When Franklin reached the bottom of the stairs into the basement flat, there was Rose, her hands on her hips, her face twisted with suspicion.

  ‘If you think you’re going to sleep with Sophie, then think again. Colin’s mad for her, even if Ro
land Shattock isn’t.’

  ‘Sophie?’ stammered Franklin.

  ‘Oh, yes, you all have the hots for Sophie.’

  ‘It was a mistake,’ said Franklin. ‘A mistake, that’s all.’

  ‘Really?’ said Rose. ‘You could have fooled me.’ And she turned her back on him and went to her bed.

  She certainly wasn’t in love with Franklin, or even fancied him, but she would have liked him to try. A sister, well she’d show him sister. She couldn’t say no to a black boy, could she, it would hurt his feelings.

  And Franklin in his bed was curled up and clenched, like a fist, weeping most bitterly.

  • • •

  That tumultuous year, 1968, was peaceful enough in Julia’s house, which for a long time had not been crammed with ‘the kids’ but rather with sober adults.

  Four years: it is a long time–that is, it is if you are young.

  Sylvia had turned out to be almost unnaturally brilliant, crammed two years’ work into one, took exams as if they were pleasurable challenges, seemed to have no friends. She had become a Roman Catholic, often saw a magnetic Jesuit priest called Father Jack, at Farm Street, and went every Sunday to Westminster Cathedral. She was on her way to becoming a doctor.

  Andrew had done well, too. He was home from Cambridge often. Why didn’t he have a girlfriend? worried his mother. But he said his teeth had been set on edge by all the sour grapes he had had to watch being consumed ‘by you lot’.

  Colin had agreed to take his final exams at school but dropped out. For weeks he stayed in bed shouting ‘go away’ to anyone who knocked on his door. One day he got up, as if nothing at all had happened, saying he was going to see the world. ‘It’s time I saw a bit of the world, Mother.’ And off he went, postcards arriving from Italy, Germany, the United States, Cuba. ‘You can tell Johnny from me he is barking mad. This place is a sink.’ Brazil, Ecuador. He would come back between trips, was polite but uninformative.