The Sweetest Dream

  • • •

  Julia grieving, grieving, though she could not have said for what if it wasn’t Sylvia, or her whole life, studied newspapers, flung them down, tried again, and when Wilhelm walked her to the Cosmo, she tried to take in what was being said around her. The Vietnam War, that was what they talked about. Sometimes Johnny came in, with his entourage, dramatic, forceful, and he might nod at her, or even give her the clenched fist salute. Often, Geoffrey was with him, whom she knew so well, a handsome young man, like Lochinvar from the West, as she said scornfully to Wilhelm. Or Daniel, with his red hair, like a beacon. Or James, who came to her saying, ‘I am James, do you remember me?’ But she remembered no one with a cockney accent.

  ‘It’s the correct thing, now,’ Wilhelm explained. ‘They speak cockney.’

  ‘But what for, when it’s so ugly?’

  ‘To get jobs. They are opportunists. If you want to get a job in television or in films, you have to lose your educated voice.’

  Around them, cigarette smoke, and often angry voices. ‘Why is it when it’s politics, then there’s always quarrelling?’

  ‘Ah, my dear, if we understood that . . .’

  ‘It reminds me of the old days, when I visited home, the Nazis . . .’

  ‘And the communists.’

  She remembered the fighting, the shouting, the flung stones, the running feet–yes, waking at night to hear feet running, running. After some atrocious thing, they ran through the streets shouting.

  Julia sat in her chair, surrounded by newspapers, until her thoughts pushed her up to prowl around her rooms, clicking her tongue with annoyance as she found an ornament out of place, or a dress anyhow on the back of a chair. (What was Mrs Philby thinking of?) All her sorrows were becoming focused on the Vietnam War. She could not bear it. Wasn’t it enough, that old war, the first one, so terrible and then the second, what more did they want, killing, killing, and now this war. And the Americans, were they mad, sending their young men, no one cared about the young men, when there was a war the young men were herded up and driven off to be killed. As if they were good for nothing but that. Again and again. No one learned anything, it was a lie to say we learned from history, if any lessons had been learned, the bombs would not be falling into Vietnam, and the young men . . . Julia was dreaming about her brothers, for the first time in years. She had nightmares about this war. On the television she watched Americans fighting the police, Americans not wanting the war, and she didn’t want it, she was on the side of the Americans who rioted in Chicago or at the universities, and yet when she had left Germany to marry Philip she had chosen America, she was on that side. Philip had wanted Andrew to go to school in the States, and if he had, then by now he would probably be part of that America that turned hoses and teargas on the Americans who protested. (Julia knew Andrew was conservative by nature, or perhaps better say, on the side of authority.) Johnny’s new woman, who apparently had abandoned him, was fighting in the streets against the war. Julia hated and feared street fighting, even now she had nightmares about what she had seen in the Thirties, when she went home to visit, in Germany, which was being destroyed by the gangs that rioted and smashed and shouted and ran at nights through the streets. Julia’s head and mind and heart were whirling with violently opposing pictures, thoughts, emotions.

  And her son Johnny was constantly in the papers, speaking against this war, and she felt he was right. Yet Johnny had never been right, she was sure of that, but suppose he was right now?

  Julia, without telling Wilhelm, put on her hat, the one that concealed her face best, with its close-meshed veil, and chose gloves that would not show every mark–she associated politics with dirt–and took herself off to hear Johnny speak at a meeting to oppose the Vietnam War.

  It was in a hall she thought of as communist. The streets around it seethed with young people. The taxi put her down outside the main entrance, and as she went in young people dressed like gypsies or hoodlums stared at her. The ones who had seen her arrive by taxi told each other she must be a CIA spy, while others, seeing this old lady–there was not one person here over fifty–said she must be here by mistake. Some said that with that hat she must be the cleaning lady.

  The hall was full. It seemed to heave and swell and sway. The smell was horrible. Immediately in front of Julia were two heads of greasy unwashed blonde hair–what girls could have so little self-respect? Then she saw that they were men. And they stank. The noise was so loud that she did not at once see that the speeches had begun. Up there were Johnny, and Geoffrey, whose clean well-ordered face she knew so well, but he had Viking’s hair, and stood with his feet apart, and his right hand pounding the air, as if stabbing something, and he was sneering agreement with what Johnny was saying, which was variations on what she had heard so often, American imperialism . . . roars of agreement; the industrial–military complex–groans and boos; lackeys, jackals, capitalist exploiters, sell-outs, fascists. It was hard to hear, the roars of agreement were so loud. And there was James, so much the public man, large and affable, who had become a cockney, and there was a black man beside Johnny she was sure she knew. A lot of people up there on the platform. Every face was alive and elated with conceit and self-righteousness and triumph. How well she did know all that, how it frightened her. They swaggered about up there, under strong lights, spilling out their phrases which she could anticipate, each one, before it arrived. And the audience was a unit, it was whole, it was a mob, it could kill or run riot, and it was aflame with–hatred, yes that is what it was. Yet strip off the stupid clichés, and she was agreeing with them, she was on their side; how could she be, when they were foul, they were frightful; yet the violence of war was everything she hated most. She was finding it hard to keep upright–she was standing against a wall, and surrounded by Yahoos who might as well be carrying clubs. She took a long last look up at the platform, saw her son had recognised her, and that his stare was both triumphant and hostile. If she did not leave he might be making her a target for his sarcasms. She pushed her way through the crowd back to the door. Luckily she was not far away from it. Her hat was knocked awry, Julia believed deliberately. She was right. The muttering that she was a CIA spy was following her. She tried to hold her hat on, and at the door saw a large young woman with a big face reddened by excitement and by alcohol. She had a steward’s badge. Recognising Julia she said loudly for the benefit of her colleagues, ‘Well, what do you know? It’s Johnny Lennox’s ma.’ ‘Let me get past,’ said Julia, who by now was beginning to panic. ‘Let me out.’

  ‘What, can’t you take it? Can’t you take the truth?’ sneered a young man whose smell was literally making her sick. She held her hand over her mouth.

  ‘Julia,’ said Rose, ‘does Johnny know you’re here? What are you doing? Keeping a check on him?’ She glanced around, grinning, for approval.

  Julia had got through the door, but the outer room was full of people who had not got in.

  ‘Make way for Johnny Lennox’s ma,’ shouted Rose, and the crowd opened. Out here, where the speeches were being relayed, was less of the atmosphere of a mob, of imminent violence. Young people were staring at Julia, at her hat, which was crooked, and her distressed face. She got to the outer door. There, feeling faint, she clung to the door frame.

  Rose said, ‘Julia, do you want a taxi?’

  ‘I don’t remember asking you to call me Julia,’ said the old woman.

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, Mrs Lennox,’ said Rose, glancing around for approval. And then, laughing, ‘What shit.’

  ‘The ancien régime, I guess,’ said an American voice.

  Julia had reached the edge of the pavement. She knew she was going to faint. Rose stood on the steps behind her and said loudly, ‘Johnny Lennox’s ma. She’s drunk.’

  A taxi came, and Julia waved, but it was not going to stop for this disreputable old woman. Rose ran after it, shouting, and it did stop.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Julia, climbing in. She still held the han
dkerchief to her face.

  ‘Oh, don’t mention it, please,’ said Rose daintily, and looked around for laughs, which she got. As Julia was driven away she heard through the windows come bursts of applause, derision, shouts, chanting, ‘Down with American imperialism. Down with . . .’

  Rose took this lucky opportunity, when Johnny made his way out, to waylay Comrade Johnny the star and say to him, like an equal, ‘Your mother was here.’ ‘I saw her,’ he said, not looking at her: he always ignored her. ‘She was drunk,’ she dared, but he pushed past, not saying anything.

  • • •

  Sylvia had not forgotten her promise. She had made an appointment for Julia with a certain Doctor Lehman. Wilhelm knew him and that he was a specialist in the problems of the old. ‘Our problems, dear Julia.’

  ‘Geriatrics,’ said Julia.

  ‘What’s in a word? You can make an appointment for me too.’

  Julia sat in front of Doctor Lehman, a quite likeable man, she thought, if so young–in fact he was middle-aged. German, like her? With that name? Then, Jewish? A refugee from her kind? It was remarkable how often she found herself thinking these thoughts.

  He had an impeccable English voice and accent: evidently doctors did not have to talk cockney.

  She knew he had taken in a great many facts about her from watching her walk to the chair, and that he would have heard more from Sylvia, and that since he had analysed her urine, taken her blood pressure, and checked her heart, he knew more about her than she knew herself.

  He said, smiling, ‘Mrs Lennox, you have been sent to me because of problems to do with old age.’

  ‘So it seems,’ she said, and knew he had not missed the resentment. He smiled a little.

  ‘You are seventy-five years old.’

  ‘That is so.’

  ‘That isn’t very old, not these days.’

  She succumbed with, ‘Doctor, I sometimes feel I am a hundred.’

  ‘You allow yourself to think you are.’

  This was not what she had expected, and, reassured, she smiled at this man who was not going to oppress her with her age.

  ‘There is nothing wrong with you, physically. Congratulations. I wish I were in as good a shape. But there you are, everyone knows doctors don’t follow their own advice.’

  Now she allowed herself to laugh, and nodded, as if to say, Very well, now get on with it.

  ‘I see this quite often, Mrs Lennox. Somebody who has been talked into feeling old when it is too early for them.’

  Wilhelm? wondered Julia. Did he . . .

  ‘Or has talked themselves into feeling old.’

  ‘Have I done that? Well . . . perhaps I have.’

  ‘I am going to say something that may seem shocking.’

  ‘No, doctor, I don’t shock easily.’

  ‘Good. You can decide to become old. You are at a crossroads, Mrs Lennox. You can decide to get old and then you’ll die. But you can decide not to get old. Not yet.’

  She sat thinking, and then she nodded.

  ‘I believe you have had a shock of some kind. A death? but it doesn’t matter what. You seem to me to be showing signs of grief.’

  ‘You are a very clever young man.’

  ‘Thank you, but I am not so young. I am fifty-five.’

  ‘You could be my son.’

  ‘Yes, I could. Mrs Lennox, I want you to get up from that chair, and walk away from–the situation you are now in. You can decide to do it. You are not an old woman. You don’t need a doctor. I am going to prescribe you vitamins and minerals.’

  ‘Vitamins!’

  ‘Why not? I take them. And come back in five years time and we’ll discuss whether it is time for you to be old.’

  ***

  Hazy golden clouds were throwing down brilliants that scattered around and on the taxi, exploding into smaller crystals, or sliding down the windows, and their shadows made dots and splodges which imitated the theme of Julia’s little spotted veil that was held on the crown of her head with a serious jet clasp. The April sky of sunshine and showers was a cheat, for in fact it was September. Julia was dressed as she always was. Wilhelm had said to her, ‘My dear, liebling, my dearest Julia, I am going to buy you a new dress.’ Protesting and grumbling, but pleased, she was taken around the best shops, where he enlisted the aid of superior, but then charmed, young women, and Julia ended up with a claret-coloured velvet suit indistinguishable from those she had been wearing for decades. Upright inside it she was supported by thoughts of the tiny silk stitches on collar and cuffs and the perfectly fitting pink silk lining which she felt as a defence against barbarians. On the seat beside her Frances was doubled low in the task of changing her stockings and sensible shoes for high-heeled ones and black sheers. Otherwise, her working clothes–Julia had picked Frances up from the newspaper–were clearly expected to be adequate. Andrew had said there would be a little celebration, but they mustn’t dress up. What could he mean? Celebrate what?

  They were making the inevitably slow progress towards Andrew, side by side, in companionable and wary silence. Frances was thinking that all the years of living in Julia’s house had led to occasions when they sat together in a cab so few she could list them. And Julia was thinking that there was no intimacy between them, and yet the young woman–come on, Julia, she was certainly not that!–was able to strip off stockings, exposing solid white legs, without a moment’s embarrassment. It was likely no one had seen Julia’s naked legs except her husband and doctors since she became adult. Had Wilhelm? No one knew.

  They had gone so far as to agree that the celebration was probably because Andrew had been offered a job in one of the great international organisations that inhale and exhale money and order the world’s affairs. When he had gained his second degree in law–he had done very well–he had left his grandmother’s house for the second time for a flat shared with other young people, but he did not expect to be there for long.

  By the time they had reached Gordon Square the light had gone. Large raindrops fell from a dark sky and splashed invisibly about them. It was a good house, no one need be ashamed of it: Julia had wondered if the reason Andrew had not invited them before was because he was ashamed of his address and if so, why had he left home at all? It did not enter her mind that he found her and Frances a crushing weight of authority or at least of accomplishment. ‘What me?–you’re joking!’ parents say, as this situation repeats itself through the generations. ‘Me? A threat? This small so easily crushed thing that I am, always just clinging on to the edges of life.’ Andrew had had to leave home, for survival, but things had been better during his return to it, to obtain the second degree, because he discovered he no longer feared his strict disapproving grandmother or the thoughts aroused in him by his mother’s unsatisfactory life.

  There was no lift, but Julia went briskly up steep stairs whose carpet had once been a good one, and the flat, when it was opened to them by Andrew, continued the theme, for it was large and full of varied furniture, and some of it had been grand but was ending its days. This had been a students’ flat, or for young people beginning their working life, for decades, and the next step for most things here would be the rubbish dump. Andrew did not take them into the big general room, but into a small one at one end, parted from it by a glass wall. There were a couple of young men and a girl reading, or watching television in the big room, but here was a prettily-laid table, for four–white linen, glass, flowers, silver and proper napkins. Andrew said, ‘We are going to have to drink our aperitifs at the table, otherwise we won’t be able to hear ourselves speak.’

  And so they sat, the three of them, and a still empty place waited for its occupant.

  Andrew, his mother thought, looked tired. With adolescents dark circles around the eyes, a pasty look, fatness, spots, or a certain trembling self-possession on the edge of a threatened collapse–all these are signs of expected emotional disarray, but when adults look like Andrew, one has to think, Life is so hard now, it’s cr
uel . . . Andrew was smiling, he was all charm, as always, he was well-dressed enough for a big occasion, but he was radiating anxiety. His mother was determined not to ask, but Julia said, ‘You’re keeping us on the edge of our seats. What is your news?’

  Andrew allowed himself a little chuckle–a delightful sound–and he said, ‘Prepare yourself for a surprise.’

  Here a young woman came in from a kitchen next door with a tray of drinks. She was smiling and at ease and said to Andrew, ‘Andy, we’re a bit low in the alcohol department. This is the last of the decent sherry.’

  ‘This is Rosemary,’ said Andrew. ‘She’s cooking for us tonight.’

  ‘I cook to earn my keep,’ said Rosemary.

  ‘She’s at London University, doing law,’ said Andrew.

  She dipped them a mock curtsy, and said, ‘Tell me when you’re ready for soup.’

  ‘This isn’t about my job,’ said Andrew. ‘I’m waiting to have that confirmed.’ Now he hesitated, on the brink: something was about to become real that was still an airy or a sombre phantom: telling the family, now that’s getting real, all right. ‘It’s Sophie,’ he said at last. ‘Sophie and me . . . We are . . .’

  The women sat silent, stunned. Sophie and Andrew! For years Frances had wondered if Colin and Sophie . . . but they went for walks together, he was always at her first nights, and she came to weep on his shoulder when Roland was again being impossible. Mates. Siblings. So they said.

  The same practical thoughts were making their way through the two women’s minds. Andrew was going abroad to work, probably to New York, and Sophie was an increasingly well-considered actress in London. Was she planning to throw up her career for his? Women did: they did, too often, when they should not. And both were thinking that Sophie was unsuitable as the consort of a public man, being so emotional and dramatic.