The Sweetest Dream

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Sophie is pregnant,’ he said, ‘and so we are about to get married.’

  ‘Poor Colin,’ she said, and then coloured up from shame–after all, she did not really know . . .

  ‘Not entirely poor Colin. After all, I am very fond of Sophie.’

  She resumed her sandwich, but put it down: Colin’s news had clamped her stomach shut. ‘Well, go on. I can see you are miserable.’

  ‘Perspicacious Sylvia. Well, you always were, while apparently only little miss-I-am-not-here-at all.’

  This hurt, and he had meant it to. ‘No, no, I’m sorry. I really am. I’m not myself. You’ve caught me at a . . . Well, perhaps I am myself, at that.’

  He poured more wine.

  ‘Don’t drink until I’ve heard.’

  He set down his glass. ‘Sophie is forty-three. It’s late.’

  ‘Yes, but quite often old mothers . . .’ She saw him wince.

  ‘Quite so. An old mother. But believe it or not Down’s Syndrome babies–ever so jolly I hear they are?–and all the other horrors are not the worst. Sophie is convinced that I am convinced she coaxed the baby into her reluctant womb, to make use of me, because it is getting late for her. I know she didn’t do it on purpose, it is not her nature. But she won’t let it go. Day and night I hear her wails of guilt: “Oh, I know what you’re thinking . . .” ’–And Colin wailed the words, with great effect. ‘Do you know something? yes, of course you do. There is no pleasure to compete with the pleasure of guilt. She is rolling in it, wallowing in it, my Sophie is, she’s having the time of her life, knowing that I hate her because she has trapped me and nothing I can say will stop her because it’s such fun, being guilty.’ This was as savage as she had heard ever from savage Colin, and she saw him lift his glass and down the lot in a gulp.

  ‘Oh, Colin, you’re going to be drunk and I see you so seldom.’

  ‘Sylvia–you’re right.’ He refilled his glass. ‘But I will marry her, she is already seven months, and we will live upstairs in Julia’s old flat–four rooms, and I shall work down at the bottom of the house–when it’s empty.’ Here his face, reddened and angry as it was, spread into that exhilaration of pleasure that goes with the contemplation of life’s relentless sense of drama. ‘You did know that Frances took on two kids with her new bloke?’

  ‘Yes, she wrote.’

  ‘Did she tell you there is a wife, a depressive? She is downstairs, in the flat where Phyllida was.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘No buts. It has worked out as well as might be. She has recovered from her depression. The two children are upstairs where Andrew and I used to be. Frances and Rupert are in the flat she always had.’

  ‘So it has worked out?’

  ‘But the two children reasonably enough think that now their mother has broken off with her fancy man, then why shouldn’t their father and mother get together again, and Frances should just fade out.’

  ‘So they are being horrible to Frances?’

  ‘Not at all. Much worse. They are very polite and reasonable. The merits are argued out over every meal. The little girl, a real little bitch by the way, says things like, “But it would be so much better for us if you went away, wouldn’t it, Frances?” It’s the little girl really, not the boy. Rupert is hanging on to Frances for dear life. Understandably, if you know Meriel.’

  Sylvia was thinking about Rebecca with her six children, two of them dead, probably from AIDS–but perhaps not–her usually absentee husband, working eighteen hours a day, and never complaining.

  She sighed, saw Colin’s look: ‘How lucky you are, Sylvia, to be so far away from our unedifying emotional messes.’

  ‘Yes, I am sometimes glad I am not married–sorry. Go on. Meriel . . .’

  ‘Meriel–well, now she’s a prize. She’s cold, manipulative, selfish and has always treated Rupert badly. She’s a feminist–you know? With all the law of the jungle behind her? She has always told Rupert that it is his duty to keep her, and she made him pay for her taking a degree in some rubbish or other, the higher criticism, I think. She has never earned a penny. And now she is trying to get a divorce where he keeps her in perpetuity. She belongs to a group of women, a secret sisterhood–you don’t believe me?–whose aim it is to screw men for everything they can get.’

  ‘You’re making it up.’

  ‘Sweet Sylvia, I seem to remember you never could believe in the nastier aspects of human nature. But now Fate has taken a turn, and you’ll never believe . . . Meriel went to Phyllida for therapy. Frances paid for it. Then Frances went to see Phyllida who is quite a reasonable female after all–you are surprised?’

  ‘Of course I am.’

  ‘And she asked Phyllida to train Meriel as a counsellor, and she would pay.’

  And now Sylvia began to laugh. ‘Oh, Colin. Oh, Colin . . .’

  ‘Yes, quite so. Because you see, Meriel is quite unqualified. She didn’t finish her degree. But as a counsellor she will be self-supporting. Counselling has become the resource of the unqualified female–it has replaced the sewing machine, for earlier generations.’

  ‘Not in Zimlia is hasn’t. The sewing machine is alive and well and earning women’s livings.’ And she laughed again.

  ‘At last,’ said Colin. ‘I had begun to think you would never smile.’ And he poured her more wine. She had actually drunk all hers. And he poured more for himself. ‘And so. Meriel is going to move out to live with Phyllida, because Phyllida’s partner is setting herself up as an independent physio, and our flat downstairs will be free and I shall use it to write in. And of course to evade my responsibilities as a father.’

  ‘Which doesn’t solve the problem of Frances being set up as a cruel stepmother. Apart from the children, is she happy?’

  ‘She’s delirious. First, she really likes this Rupert, and who could blame her? But you haven’t heard? She’s back in the theatre.’

  ‘What do you mean? I didn’t know she was ever in it.’

  ‘How little we know about our parents. It turns out that the theatre has always been my mother’s first love. She is in a play with my Sophie. At this very moment the applause is ringing out for both of them.’ And now his voice was slurred, and he frowned, concentrating on his speech. ‘Damn,’ he said. ‘I am drunk.’

  ‘Please, dear Colin, don’t drink, please don’t.’

  ‘Spoken like Sonia. Well done.’

  ‘Oh, Chekhov. Yes. I see. But I’m on her side, all right.’ She laughed, but unhappily. ‘There’s a man at the Mission . . .’ But how was she going to convey the reality of Joshua to Colin? ‘A black man. If he’s not high on pot he’s drunk. Well, if you knew his life . . .’

  ‘And mine doesn’t justify alcohol?’

  ‘No, it doesn’t. So you’d rather it wasn’t Sophie . . .’

  ‘I’d rather it wasn’t a woman of forty-three.’ And now a howl broke out of him, it had been waiting there all this time. ‘You see, Sylvia, I know this is ridiculous, I know I am a sad pathetic fool, but I wanted happy families, I wanted mummy and daddy and four children. I wanted all that and I’m not going to have anything like it with my Sophie.’

  ‘No,’ said Sylvia.

  ‘No.’ He was trying not to cry, rubbing his fists over his face like a child. ‘And if you don’t want to be here to greet my happy Sophie and my triumphant mother, both high on Romeo and Juliet . . .’

  ‘You mean Sophie is playing Juliet?’

  ‘She looks about eighteen. She looks wonderful. She is wonderful. Pregnancy suits her. You don’t have to notice she’s pregnant. The newspapers are making a thing of it, though. Sarah Bernhardt played Juliet aged a hundred and one with a wooden leg–that kind of thing. A pregnant Juliet adds an unexpected dimension to Romeo and Juliet. But the audiences love her. She’s never had bigger applause. She is wearing white flowing robes and white flowers in her hair. Sylvia, do you remember her hair?’ And now he began to cry, after all.

  Sylvia w
ent to him, persuaded him out of his chair, and then up the stairs, and where she had sat with Andrew, she held Colin and listened while he sobbed himself to sleep.

  She didn’t know where in this house she could find a bed. So she left a note for Colin. She told him she wanted him to ‘write the truth about Zimlia’. Someone should.

  She walked off into the streets and when she saw a hotel, went in.

  She had said she would appear for lunch. In the morning she went to the bookshops and bought, and bought: two big containers of books arrived with her at Julia’s house–it was still that, for Sylvia. She was admitted by Frances, who, as Colin had done, took her into the kitchen, embraced her like a long-lost daughter, and put her in the old place, next to her.

  ‘Don’t tell me I need feeding,’ said Sylvia. ‘Don’t.’

  Frances set on the table a basket full of cut-up bread, and Sylvia looked at it and thought how much Father McGuire would relish that sight: she would take a loaf of good bread back for him. A plate full of curls of sparkling butter: well, she couldn’t take that. Sylvia looked at the food and thought of Kwadere, and Frances moved about, laying the table. She was a large handsome woman, her yellow hair–dyed–in a cut that had cost the earth. She was well-dressed: Julia would at last have approved.

  Four places . . . who? In came a tall child who stopped to examine Sylvia, the stranger. ‘This is William,’ said Frances, ‘and Sylvia used to live here. This is Sylvia, Meriel’s friend Phyllida’s daughter.’

  ‘Well, hi,’ he said, as formally as a how-do-you-do, and sat down, a beautiful boy, knitting his fair brows together and frowning as he tried to sort it all out. Then he gave it up with, ‘Frances, I have to be at swimming at two. Please may I eat quickly?’

  ‘And I have to be at rehearsal. I’ll serve you first.’

  What was being served was far from the abundant home food of the past. All kinds of bought dishes were appearing, and Frances put a pizza into the microwave and then in front of William. He at once began to eat.

  ‘Salad,’ commanded Frances.

  With a look of heroic endeavour the boy forked two frills of lettuce and a radish on to his plate and ate them like medicine.

  ‘Well done,’ said Frances. ‘I suppose Colin has told you all our news, Sylvia?’

  ‘I think so.’ The two women allowed their eyes to communicate. From which Sylvia gathered that Frances would say more if the child were not present. ‘It seems I am going to miss a wedding,’ she said.

  ‘I would hardly call it that. A dozen people at the register office.’

  ‘I’d like to be there, all the same.’

  ‘But you can’t. You don’t like leaving your–hospital?’

  That hesitation told Sylvia that Andrew had described the place unkindly, to Frances. ‘You can’t judge there by our standards.’

  ‘I wasn’t judging. We are wondering if your skills aren’t being wasted. After all, you were in some pretty classy jobs.’

  Now Sophie made an entrance. She wore something like an old-fashioned teagown, or peignoir, white with big black flowers, and was a vision, like Ophelia floating on the water, her long black hair streaked dramatically with white, her lovely eyes unchanged. Her pregnancy was the most elegant little lump imaginable.

  ‘Seven months,’ said Sylvia. ‘How do you do it?’

  She was lost in Sophie’s embrace. Both wept, and while this was no more than could be expected of Sophie, and it became her, Sylvia said, ‘Damn,’ and wiped her eyes. Frances was crying too. The boy watched with detached seriousness over bites of pizza. Sophie reclined in the big chair at the foot of the table, her eloquent hands outlining her belly.

  ‘Sylvia,’ she said tragically, ‘I am forty-three.’

  ‘I know. Cheer up. Have you had the tests?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, then.’

  ‘But Colin . . .’ and she began weeping again. ‘Will he ever forgive me?’

  ‘Oh, nonsense,’ said Frances, impatient, having had too much of this particular tune.

  ‘From what he was saying last night,’ said Sylvia, ‘I don’t think forgiving or not forgiving is the point.’

  ‘Oh, Sylvia, you are so kind. Everyone is so kind. And to come here to this house, this house, I’ve always felt it is my real home, and Frances . . . you were as much my mother as my mother and now she’s gone, poor soul.’

  ‘Not so much a mother as a nurse,’ said Frances.

  ‘Yes, did you know, she is playing the Nurse–oh, wonderfully,’ said Sophie. ‘But now we’re going to have a real nurse in this house because I shall go on acting and of course Frances is acting too.’

  ‘No, I don’t think I am prepared to take on a small baby,’ said Frances.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Sophie, but it was clear that she had in fact been hoping for just that.

  ‘And besides,’ said Frances, ‘you forget, I and Rupert and the children will be moving out.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ mourned Sophie, ‘please don’t. Please. There’s plenty of room for everyone.’

  The boy was sitting straight up, eyes panicky, staring at them. ‘Why, where are we going? Why, Frances?’

  ‘Well, this is Colin’s and Sophie’s house now and they’re going to have a baby.’

  ‘But there’s so much room,’ said William loudly, as if shouting them all down. ‘I don’t see why.’

  ‘Hush,’ said Sophie ineffectually, and looked to Frances, who must soothe the boy’s desperation.

  ‘I like this house,’ William insisted. ‘I don’t want to go away. Why should we?’ He began to cry, the difficult painful gulping tears of a child who cries a good deal, but alone, hoping no one will hear. He got up and rushed out. No one said anything.

  Then, Sophie said, ‘But, Frances, Colin hasn’t said you must go, has he?’

  ‘No, he hasn’t.’

  ‘I don’t want you to go either.’

  ‘We always forget Andrew. He is going to have ideas about what to do with this house.’

  ‘Why should he? He’s having a lovely time running the world. He wouldn’t want us to be unhappy.’

  Sylvia said, ‘You shouldn’t overdo things, Sophie. Surely you aren’t going to go on acting till the end?’ Now that Sophie was not aflame with the excitements of welcome, it could be seen that she was strained, drawn, and evidently overtired.

  Sophie twisted her hands about over her lump. ‘Well . . . I had thought . . . but perhaps . . .’

  ‘Have some sense,’ Frances said. ‘Bad enough that . . .’

  ‘That I’m so old, oh, yes, I know.’

  ‘Well,’ said Sylvia, ‘I wanted a word with Colin.’

  ‘He’s working,’ said Sophie. ‘No one dares to interrupt when he’s working.’

  ‘That’s too bad, because I must.’

  As Sophie went past Frances on her way up she quickly hugged her and said, ‘Don’t go, Frances. Please don’t. I am sure no one wants you to go.’

  Frances followed her, and found William crouching on his bed, like an animal wary for danger, or like someone in pain. He was saying aloud, ‘I don’t want to go. I don’t want to.’

  She put her arms around him and said, ‘Stop. It may never happen. It probably won’t.’

  ‘Promise, then.’

  ‘How can I? You should never promise something if you aren’t sure.’

  ‘But you are nearly sure, you are, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so. Yes.’

  She waited, while he readied himself to go swimming, and then said, ‘I don’t think Margaret is all that keen on staying here, is she?’

  ‘No. She wants to live with her mother. But I don’t. Meriel hates me because I am a man. I want to stay with you and my father.’

  Frances went to get ready for rehearsal, thinking that it was a long time since she had even remembered that she had intended to get her own place and live in it, self-sufficient and self-supporting. The money she had saved to pay for it had alarmi
ngly dwindled. A slice had gone to pay for Meriel’s therapy. She was also paying Meriel’s monthly allowance. Rupert had sold the flat in Marylebone, and two-thirds of that had gone to Meriel. Rupert and Frances were jointly paying a fair rent for living here, in this house–the two of them and two children. He was paying the children’s school fees. Frances earned money from various books, pamphlets, reprints, but when she did her little sums, a good part of it had gone to Meriel. She was in that familiar position for our times: she was supporting a first wife.

  She went into the marital bedroom, with its two beds, the one where she had slept alone for so long, and the big bed which was now the emotional centre of her life. She sat on her spinster bed and looked over at Rupert’s pyjamas, lying folded on his pillow. They were of a greeny-blue poplin, serious pyjamas indeed, but, when you touched them, silky and tender. Rupert, when you met him, must give the impression of solidity, strength, but then you saw the delicacy in his face, the sensitive hands . . . Frances sat on Rupert’s side of the bed and caressed the pyjamas.

  Did Frances regret having said yes to Rupert, his children, the situation–nor situation? Never, not for one moment. She felt as if she had stumbled so late in her life, as in a fairy tale, into a glade full of sunshine, and she even dreamed scenes like these, and knew it was Rupert she was dreaming of. Both of them had been married, had thought that these thoroughly unpleasant partners could be said to sum up marriage, but had found a happiness they had not expected or even believed in. Both had busy outward lives, he at his newspaper, she at the theatre, both knew what seemed to be hundreds of people, but all that was the outer life, and what was at the heart of it was this great bed, where everything was understood and nothing needed to be said. Frances would wake from a dream and tell herself, and then Rupert, that she had been dreaming of happiness. Let them mock who would, and they certainly did, but there was such a thing as happiness and here it was, here they were, both of them, contented, like cats in the sun. But these two middle-aged people–courtesy would call them that–cuddled to themselves a secret they knew would shrivel if exposed. And they were not the only ones: ideology has pronounced their condition impossible and so, people keep quiet.