The Sweetest Dream

  Sophie had finished drama school and was getting small parts. She came to Frances to complain that she was cast according to her looks. Frances did not say, ‘Don’t worry, time will cure that.’ She was living with Roland Shattock, who already had a name and had played Hamlet. She told Frances that she was not happy, and knew she should leave him.

  Frances had almost gone back to the theatre. She had actually said yes to a tempting part, but then again had to refuse. Money, it was money, again. Colin’s school fees were no longer an item, and Julia had said she could manage Sylvia and Andrew, but then Sylvia came to ask if Phyllida could live in the downstairs flat. This is what had happened. Johnny had telephoned Sylvia to say she must visit her mother. ‘And don’t say no, Tilly, it isn’t good enough.’

  Sylvia had found her mother waiting for her, dressed to make an impression of competence, but looking ill. There was nothing to eat in the place, not so much as a loaf of bread. Johnny had moved out to live with Stella Linch, and was not giving Phyllida money, nor paying the rent. ‘Get a job,’ he had said to her.

  ‘How can I get a job, Tilly?’ Phyllida had said to her daughter. ‘I am not well.’

  That was evident.

  ‘Why don’t you call me Sylvia?’

  ‘Oh, I can’t. I can always hear my little girl saying, “I’m Tilly.” Little Tilly, that’s how I remember you.’

  ‘You gave me the name Sylvia.’

  ‘Oh, Tilly, I will try.’ And before the real conversation had begun, Phyllida was dabbing her eyes with tissues. ‘If I could come and live in that flat then I could manage. I do sometimes get money from your father.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear about him,’ said Sylvia. ‘He was never a father to me. I hardly remember him.’

  Her father was Comrade Alan Johnson, as famous as Comrade Johnny. He had fought in the Spanish Civil War–he really had–and was wounded. He was described by Julia who had watched his emergence into stardom as a ‘roving Eminence Rouge–like Johnny’.

  ‘Johnny thinks I get more money than I do from Alan. I haven’t had a penny from him for over two years.’

  ‘I said, I don’t want to know.’

  They were sitting in a room almost bare of furniture, for Johnny had taken nearly everything for his new life with Stella. There was a small table, two chairs, an old settee.

  ‘I’ve had such a hard life,’ Phyllida began, on such a familiar note that Sylvia actually got up–no ruse, or tactic, this: she was impelled away from her mother, by fear. She was already feeling the beginning of the inner trembling that in the past had left her helpless, limp, hysterical.

  ‘It’s not my fault,’ said Sylvia.

  ‘It’s not my fault,’ said Phyllida, in the heavy see-sawing voice of her litany of complaint. ‘I’ve never done anything to deserve the way I’ve been treated. She now noticed that Sylvia stood across the room from her, as far as she could get, hand to her mouth and staring over it at her as if afraid she was going to be sick.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Please don’t go. Sit down, Tilly–Sylvia.’

  The girl returned, pulled the chair well away, sat down, and with a cold face, waited.

  ‘If I came to live in that flat I could manage. I’d ask Julia, but I’m afraid of Frances, she’d say no. Please ask her for me.’

  ‘Can you blame her?’ snapped Sylvia. People who knew and loved the delightful creature who, as Julia said, ‘lights up this old house like a little bird’, would not recognise that adamant face.

  ‘But it’s not my fault . . .’ Phyllida was off again, and then, seeing that Sylvia had sprung up to go, said, ‘Oh, stop, stop. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I can’t stand it when you complain and accuse me,’ said Sylvia. ‘Don’t you understand? I can’t bear it, Mother.’

  Phyllida tried to smile, and said, ‘I won’t do it, I promise.’

  ‘Do you really promise? I want to finish my exams and be a doctor. If you’re in the house getting at me all the time, I’ll simply run away. I can’t bear it.’

  Phyllida was shocked by this vehemence. She sighed, and said, ‘Oh, dear, was I really so bad?’

  ‘Yes, you are. And even when I was tiny you were always telling me it’s all your fault, without you I’d be doing this or that. Once you said you were going to make me put my head into the gas oven, with you, and die.’

  ‘Did I? I expect I had good cause.’

  ‘Mother.’ Sylvia got up. ‘I’m going. I’ll talk to Julia and Frances. But I’m not going to look after you. Don’t expect me to. You’ll only get at me all the time.’

  And so just as Frances had joyfully decided to give up journalism and Aunt Vera for ever, and the serious sociological articles, not to mention the odd bits of work she did with Rupert Boland, Julia said that she was going to have to give Phyllida an allowance and ‘generally look after her. She’s not like you, Frances. She can’t look after herself. But I’ve told her she must be self-contained, and not bother you.’

  ‘And, surely more important, not bother Sylvia.’

  ‘Sylvia says she believes she can cope with it.’

  ‘I do hope she can.’

  ‘But if I give Phyllida an allowance . . . can you do Andrew’s fees? Are you earning enough?’

  ‘Of course I am.’ And so there went the theatre again. All this had happened in the autumn of 1964, and so had this: Rose had gone. She knew she had done well in her exams: she did not need the results to tell her that. She came up at a time when Frances, Colin and Andrew were together to say, ‘And now I’ve got super news. I’m leaving. So you’ll be rid of me now. I’m off for good. I’m going to university.’ And she ran off down the stairs. Suddenly she wasn’t around. They waited for her to ring, write–but nothing. The flat had been left in a mess, clothes on the floor, bits of sandwich on a chair, in the bathroom tights hanging up to dry. But that was the general style of ‘the kids’ and need not mean anything.

  Frances rang Rose’s parents. No, they had heard nothing. ‘She says she is going to university.’ ‘Did she now? Well, I expect she’ll enlighten us in her own good time.’

  Should the police be told? But this did not seem appropriate for Rose. Going to the police over Rose, Jill, and over Daniel who had disappeared once for weeks, had always been discussed at length and on the basis of principles suitable for the Sixties, and had been rejected. The Fuzz, the Pigs, Old Bill, the upholders of fascist tyranny (Britain) could not be approached. July . . . August . . . Geoffrey had heard through the grapevine that then united the young continent to continent that Rose was in Greece with an American revolutionary.

  In August Phyllida had made her appeal, and took up residence in the downstairs flat. In September Rose had turned up, hitching over her shoulder a great black sack, which she dumped on the kitchen floor.

  ‘I’m back,’ said Rose, ‘with all my worldly goods.’

  ‘I hope you had a good time,’ said Frances.

  ‘Putrid,’ said Rose. ‘The Greeks are shits. Well, I’ll just get fixed up downstairs.’

  ‘You can’t. Why didn’t you let us know? The flat’s being lived in.’

  Rose subsided into a chair, for once shocked into defencelessness. ‘But . . . why? . . . I said . . . it isn’t fair!’

  ‘You told us that you were off. For good, we thought. And you didn’t try to get in touch and tell us what your plans were.’

  ‘But it’s my flat.’

  ‘Rose, I’m sorry.’

  ‘I can doss down in the sitting-room.’

  ‘No, Rose, you can’t.’

  ‘I’ve had my results. All As.’

  ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘I’m going to university. I’m going to the LSE.’

  ‘But have you actually done something about being accepted?’

  ‘Oh, shit.’

  ‘Your parents don’t know anything about it.’

  ‘I see, there’s a conspiracy against me.’

  Rose sat in a heap, that pudgy
little face for once showing vulnerability. She was confronting–perhaps for the first time, but certainly not the last–her real nature, which was bound to land her in this kind of–‘Shit,’ she said again. ‘Shit.’ Then, ‘I’ve got four As.’

  ‘My advice is to ask your parents if they’ll pay. If so, go to your school and ask them to put in a word for you, then ask the LSE. But it’s very late for this year.’

  ‘Fuck you all,’ she said.

  She got up, rather the way a shot bird labours up, picked up her great black sack, dragged herself and it to the door, went out, and there was a long silence from the hall. She was recovering herself? She was having second thoughts? Then the front door slammed. She did not go to the school, nor to her parents, but was seen about in London in the clubs and at demonstrations and political meetings.

  No sooner was Phyllida installed than Jill arrived. It was a weekend, and Andrew was there. Frances and he were eating supper and they invited Jill to join them.

  They did not ask what she had been doing. There were scars on both wrists now, and she was unhealthily fat. She had been a slim neat sleek blonde, but now she was too big for her clothes, and her features were lumpy. They did not ask but she told them. She had been in a psychiatric hospital, had run away, had gone back voluntarily, where she found herself helping the nurses with the other patients. She decided she was cured and they agreed. ‘Do you think you could get the school to take me back? If I can just take my exams–I’m sure I could. I was even doing a bit of study in the bin.’

  Again Frances said that it was a bit late for that year. ‘If you could just ask them?’ said Jill, and Frances did, and an exception was made for Jill, who was expected to pass her A-levels, if she worked.

  And where was she to live? They asked Phyllida if Jill could have the room that Franklin had used, and Phyllida said, ‘Beggars can’t be choosers.’

  No sooner was Jill in than Phyllida began on her accusations, using her as a target. From the kitchen above they could hear the heavy complaining swing of Phyllida’s voice, and on and on, and after only a day Jill had appealed to Sylvia, and the two girls had gone together to Frances and Andrew.

  ‘No one could stand it,’ said Sylvia. ‘Don’t blame her.’

  ‘I’m not,’ said Frances. ‘We’re not,’ said Andrew.

  ‘I could camp in the sitting-room,’ said Jill.

  ‘You could use our bathroom,’ said Andrew.

  What had been impossible for Rose, was accepted for Jill, who would not fill the centre of the house with thunderclouds of rage and suspicion. And Julia said, ‘I knew it. I always knew it. And now at last this beautiful house is a doss-house. I’m surprised it didn’t happen before.’

  ‘We hardly ever use the sitting-room,’ said Andrew.

  ‘That isn’t the point, Andrew.’

  ‘I know it isn’t, Grandmother.’

  And so that had been the situation, from the autumn of 1964, Andrew coming and going from Cambridge, Jill, studying hard, being responsible and good, Sylvia working so hard Julia wept and said the girl would be ill, Colin sometimes at home and sometimes not. Frances was working from home, and more and more on attractive enterprises with Rupert Boland, and often from the Cosmo. Phyllida was downstairs, behaving well, not tormenting Sylvia, who kept well away from her.

  In 1965 Jill made friends with her parents and went to the LSE ‘to be with all my mates’. She said she would never forget the kindness that had rescued her. ‘You rescued me,’ she said earnestly. ‘I’d have been done for, without you.’ Thereafter they heard about her from other people: she was in the thick of all the new wave of politics and saw a lot of Johnny and his comrades.

  And so now it was the summer of 1968, and four years had passed.

  It was a weekend. Neither Andrew nor Sylvia had gone off for a holiday, they were studying. Colin had come home and said he was going to write a novel. Julia had said, not in his hearing, though it had been reported to him: ‘Of course! The occupation for failures!’–so that first requisite for beginning novelists, discouragement from their nearest and dearest, had been provided, though Frances was careful to be non-committal, and Andrew whimsical.

  Johnny telephoned to say he was going to drop in. ‘No, don’t bother to cook, we will have eaten.’ This astounding bit of cheek was, Frances decided–while her blood pressure shot up, and subsided–probably merely Johnny’s idea of being ingratiating. Intriguing, that ‘they’. He could not mean Stella, who was in the States. She had gone off to join in the great battles that would end the worst of discrimination against black people in the South, and had become known for her bravery and her organisational skills. Threatened with the end of her visitor’s visa, she had married an American, ringing up Johnny to say it was only for form’s sake, he must understand it was her revolutionary duty. She would be back when the battle had been won. Meanwhile, rumours flowing from across the Atlantic said that this marriage for form’s sake was going along well, better than her sojourn with Johnny, which had been a bit of a disaster. She was much younger than Johnny, at first had been in awe of him, but had soon learned to see with her own eyes. She had had plenty of time for reflection, because she had found herself alone while he went to meetings and off on delegations to comradely countries.

  Johnny would have liked to join the big American battles, he yearned after them like a child not invited to a party, but he could not get a visa. He allowed it to be understood that was because of his Spanish Civil War record. But soon there was France, and he was on each battlefront as it came into the news. But the events of ’68 were in fact chastening for him. Everywhere were new young heroes, and their bibles were new ones too. Johnny had had to do a lot of reading.

  He was not the only Old Guard who found himself returning to refresh himself at the pages of the Communist Manifesto. ‘Now that’s revolutionary writing,’ he might murmur.

  In France every hero had a group of girls who served him, they were all sleeping together, because of the new plank in the revolutionary platform–sexual freedom. There were no girls courting Johnny. He was seen not only as English, but as elderly. Nineteen sixty-eight, which would be remembered by hundreds of thousands of politicos who had taken part in the street fighting, the confrontations with the police, the stone-throwing, the running battles, the building of barricades, the sexual free-for-all, as the glittering peak of their youthful achievements, was not a year that Johnny was going to enjoy thinking about.

  Seeing that Stella had no intention of coming back to him, he had returned to the flat vacated by Phyllida, which became a kind of commune, home for revolutionaries from everywhere, some dodging the Vietnam War, many from South America, and he usually had African politicians staying with him.

  When Johnny arrived, the kitchen at once seemed over-full, and the three sitting at the table eating their supper felt themselves as dull and lacking in colour, for the newcomers were elated and full of vigour, having just come from a meeting. Comrade Mo and Johnny were enjoying a joke, and now Comrade Mo said to Frances, embracing her, ‘Danny Cohn-Bendit has said that we won’t have socialism until the last capitalist has been hanged with the guts of the last bureaucrat.’

  Franklin–she had not immediately recognised this large young man in a good suit–said to the black man with him, ‘This is Frances, I told you about her, she was a mother to me. This is Comrade Matthew, Frances. He is our leader.’

  ‘I am honoured to meet you,’ said Comrade Matthew, unsmiling, formal, in the older style of the comrades, when Lenin-like severity had been the mode. (And would be again, quite soon.) It was easy to see he was ill at ease, and didn’t like being here. He stood unsmiling, and even glanced at his watch, while Franklin was being greeted by ‘the kids’, now grown up. He stood in front of Sylvia, who had risen, hesitating, then she opened her arms for a hug, and he closed his eyes in the embrace, and when he opened them they were full of tears.

  ‘Sit down,’ said Andrew, and pulled up chairs from wher
e they were stacked around the wall. Comrade Matthew sat down, frowning: he looked at his watch again.

  Comrade Mo, who since he had been here last had gone to China to bless the Cultural Revolution (as he had the Great Leap Forward and Let Every Flower Bloom), was now lecturing at universities around the world on its benefits for China and all humanity. Now he sat down, and reached for some bread.

  Franklin said to Frances, ‘Comrade Matthew is my cousin.’

  ‘We are of the same tribe,’ said the older man, correcting him.

  ‘Ah, but you must understand, tribe sounds backward,’ said Franklin. He was evidently a little frightened of confronting the leader.

  ‘I am aware that cousin is the English term.’

  They were all seated now except Johnny, who said to his sons, ‘Did you hear, Danny Cohn-Bendit has just said that . . .’ This threatened to send Comrade Mo off again into his fits of Ho, ho, ho, and Frances said, ‘We heard the first time. Poor boy, he had a terrible childhood. German father . . . French mother . . . no money . . . he was a war baby . . . she had to bring up the children alone.’ Yes, she was definitely doing it on purpose, while she smiled amiably, and first Andrew, then Colin, laughed, and Johnny said, annoyed, ‘I am afraid my wife has never had even the beginnings of an understanding of politics.’

  ‘Your ex-wife,’ said Frances. ‘Many times removed.’

  ‘These are my sons,’ said Johnny, and Andrew picked up his wine glass and emptied it, while Colin said, ‘We have that privilege.’

  The three black men seemed discommoded, but then Comrade Mo, who had been at large in the wide world for a decade or so, laughed heartily and said, ‘My wife blames me too. She does not understand that the Struggle must come before family obligations.’

  ‘Does she ever see you, I wonder?’ enquired Frances.

  ‘And is she pleased when she does?’ enquired Colin.

  Comrade Mo looked hard at Colin but saw only a smiling face. ‘It is my children,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘That is so hard for me–When I see them sometimes I hardly recognise them.’