The Sweetest Dream

  As far as she could see he did well in his first school, but Eton did not go well. His reports were not good. ‘He does not make friends easily.’ ‘A bit of a loner.’

  She asked him one holidays, manoeuvring him into a position where he could not escape easily, for he did evade direct questions and situations, ‘Tell me, Jolyon, has my being German made problems for you?’

  His eyes seemed to flicker, wanted to evade, but he faced her with his wide polite smile, and said, ‘No, mother, why should it?’

  ‘I wondered, that’s all.’

  She asked Philip if he would ‘talk’ to Jolyon, meaning, of course, Please change him, he’s breaking my heart.

  ‘He plays his cards pretty close to his chest,’ was her husband’s reply.

  Her worries were in fact soothed by the mere fact of Eton, the fact and the weight of it, a purveyor of excellence and a guarantee of success. She had surrendered her son–her only child–to the English educational system, and expected a quid pro quo, that Jolyon would turn out well, like his father. and in due course walk in his footsteps, probably as a diplomat.

  When Philip’s father died, and then, soon after, his mother, he wanted to move into the big house in Hampstead. It was the family house, and he, the son, would live in it. Julia liked the little house in Mayfair, so easy to run and keep clean and did not want to live in the big house with its many rooms. But that was what she found herself doing. She did not ever set her will against Philip’s. They did not quarrel. They got along because she did not insist on her preferences. She behaved as she had seen her mother do, giving way to her father. Well, one side had to give way, the way Julia saw it, and it did not much matter which. Peace in the family was the important thing.

  The furniture of the little house, most of it from the home in Germany, was absorbed quite easily into the Hampstead house where in fact Julia did not seem to do nearly as much entertaining, though there was so much space for everything. For one thing, Philip was not really a sociable man: he had one or two close friends and saw them, often by himself. And Julia supposed she must be getting old and boring, because she did not enjoy parties as much as she had. But there were dinner parties and, often, important people, and she was pleased she did it all so well, and that Philip was proud of her.

  She went home to Germany for visits. Her parents, who were getting old, were so glad to see their daughter, and she liked her brother, now her only brother. But going home was troubling, even frightening. Poverty and unemployment, and the communists and then the Nazis were everywhere, and gangs roamed the streets. Then there was Hitler. The von Arnes despised in equal measure the communists and Hitler, and believed that both unpleasant phenomena would simply go away. This was not their Germany, they said. It was certainly not what Julia remembered as her Germany, that is, of course, if she forgot the vicious rumourmongering during the war. A spy, they had said she was. Not serious people, of course, not educated people . . . well, yes, there were one or two. She decided she did not much like visiting Germany these days, and it was easier not to, when her parents died.

  The English were sensible people, after all, she had to agree to that. One couldn’t imagine allowing battles between communists and fascists in the streets–well, there were some scuffles, but one mustn’t exaggerate, there was nothing like Hitler.

  A letter arrived from Eton saying that Jolyon had disappeared, leaving behind a note saying that he was off to the Spanish Civil War, signed, Comrade Johnny Lennox.

  Philip used every influence to find out where their son was. The International Brigade? Madrid? Catalonia? No one seemed to know. Julia tended to sympathise with her son, for she had been shocked at the treatment of the elected government in Spain, by Britain and the French. Her husband, who was a diplomat after all, defended his government and his country but alone with her said he was ashamed. He did not admire the policies he was defending and conducting.

  Months passed. Then a telegram arrived from their son, asking for money: address, a house in the East End of London. Julia at once saw this meant he was wanting them to visit him, otherwise he would have designated a bank where he could pick up the money. Together she and Philip went to a house in a poor street, and found Jolyon being nursed by a decent sort of woman of the kind Julia at once thought of as a possible servant. He was in an upstairs room, ill with hepatitis, caught, presumably, in Spain. Then talking with this woman, who called herself Comrade Mary, it slowly became evident she knew nothing of Spain, and then that Jolyon had not been in Spain, but had been here, in this house, ill.

  ‘Took me a bit of time to see he was having a bit of a breakdown,’ said Comrade Mary.

  These were poor people. Philip wrote out a fair-sized cheque, and was told, politely enough, that they did not have a bank account, with the only just sarcastic implication that bank accounts were for the well off. Since they did not have that kind of money on them, Philip said that money would be delivered, next day, and it was. Jolyon, but he was insisting on being called Johnny, was so thin the bones of his face suggested the skeleton, and while he kept saying that Comrade Mary and her family were the salt of the earth, easily agreed to come home.

  That was the last his parents heard of Spain, but in the Young Communist League, where he now became a star, he was a Spanish Civil War hero.

  Johnny had a room, and then a floor, in the big house, and there many people came who disturbed the parents, and made Julia actively miserable. They were all communists, usually very young, and always taking Johnny off to meetings, rallies, weekend schools, marches. She said to Johnny that if he had seen the streets in Germany full of rival gangs he would have nothing to do with such people, and as a result of the quarrel that followed he simply left. He anticipated later patterns of behaviour by living in comrades’ houses, sleeping on floors or anywhere there was a corner for him, and asked his parents for money. ‘After all, I suppose you don’t want me to starve even if I am a communist.’

  Julia and Philip did not know about Frances, not until Johnny married her when he came on leave, though Julia was familiar enough with what she described as ‘that type of girl’. She had been observing the smart cheeky flirty girls who looked after the senior officials–some were attached to her husband’s department. She had asked herself, ‘Is it right to be having such a good time in the middle of this terrible war?’ Well, at least no one could say they were hypocrites. (An ancient lady, standing to spray white curls with a fixative and peering at herself mournfully in a mirror, said, decades later: ‘Oh, we had such a good time, such a good time–it was so glamorous–do you understand?’)

  Julia’s war could have been really terrible. Her name had been on a list of those Germans who were sent off to the internment camp on the Isle of Man. Philip told her: ‘There was never a question of your being interned, it was just an administrative error.’ But error or not, it had taken Philip’s intervention to get her name removed. This war afflicted Julia with memories of the last one, and she could not believe that yet again countries meant to be friends should be at war. She was not well, slept badly, wept. Philip was kind–he was always a kind man. He held Julia in his arms and rocked her, ‘There now, my dear, there now.’ He was able to hold Julia because he had one of the new clever artificial arms, which could do everything. Well, nearly everything. At night he took the arm off and hung it on its stand. Now he could only partially hold Julia, and she tended to hold him.

  The parent Lennoxes were not asked to the wedding of their son Jolyon with Frances. They were told about it, in a telegram, just as he was off again to Canada. At first Julia could not believe he was treating them like this. Philip held her and said, ‘You don’t understand, Julia.’ ‘No, I don’t, I don’t understand anything.’ With humour that made his voice grate, he said, ‘We’re class enemies, don’t you see? No, don’t cry Julia, he’ll grow up, I expect.’ But he was staring over her shoulder with a face set in the dismay that was what she felt–and felt more often and more strongly eve
ry day. A weeping, generalised, drizzling dismay, and she could not shake it off.

  They knew that Johnny was ‘doing well’ in Canada. What did doing well mean in this context? Soon after he had returned there, a letter arrived with a photograph of him and Frances on the steps of the register office. They were both in uniform, hers as tight as a corset, and she was a bright, apparently giggling, blonde. ‘Silly girl,’ judged Julia, putting the letter and photograph away. The letter had a censor’s stamp on it, as if it were out of bounds–which is what she felt. Then Johnny wrote a note to say, ‘You might drop in to see how Frances is doing. She is pregnant.’

  Julia did not go. Then came an airletter, saying a baby had been born, a boy, and he felt the least Julia could do was to visit her. ‘His name is Andrew,’ said the postscript, an afterthought, apparently; and Julia remembered the announcements of Jolyon’s birth, sent out in a large white thick envelopes, on a card like thin china, and the elegant black script that said, Jolyon Meredith Wilhelm Lennox. None of the recipients could have doubted that here was an important new addition to the human race.

  She supposed she should go and see her daughter-in-law, put it off, and when she reached the address Johnny had provided, found Frances gone. It was a dreary street that had a house sagging to its knees in ruins, because of a bomb. Julia was glad she did not have to enter any house there, but she was directed to another that seemed even worse. It was in Notting Hill; she was let in by a slatternly woman who did not smile, and she was told to knock on that door there, the one with the cracked skylight.

  She knocked, and an irritated voice called, ‘Wait a minute, okay, come in.’ The room was large, badly lit, and the windows were dirty. Faded green sateen curtains and frayed rugs. In the greenish half-dark sat a large young woman, her unstockinged legs apart, and her baby sprawled across her chest. She held a book in her hand, above the baby’s head; a rhythmically working little head, the spread-out hands opening and shutting on naked flesh. The exposed breast, large and lolling, exuded milk in sympathy.

  Julia’s first thought was that she had come to the wrong house, because this young woman could not be the one in the photograph. While she stood there forcing herself to admit that she was indeed looking at Frances, Jolyon Meredith Wilhelm’s wife, the young woman said, ‘Do sit down.’ She sounded as if having to say this, even to contemplate Julia’s being there, was the last straw. She frowned as she eased her breast out of a discomfort, the baby’s mouth popped off the nipple, and milky liquid ran down over the breast to a sagging waist. Frances eased the nipple back, the infant let out a choking cry and then fastened itself again on the nipple with a little shaking movement of its head Julia had observed in puppies ranged along the teats of a nursing bitch, her little pet dachshund, from long ago. Frances put a piece of cloth Julia could swear was a nappy over the resting breast.

  The women stared at each other, with dislike.

  Julia did not sit. There was a chair, but the seat was suspiciously stained. She could sit on the bed, which was unmade, but did not care to. She said, ‘Johnny wrote to ask me to find out how you are.’

  The cool, light, almost drawling voice, modulated according to some measure or scale known only to Julia, caused the young woman to stare again, and then she laughed.

  ‘I am as you see, Julia,’ said Frances.

  Julia was filling with panic. She thought this place horrible, a lower depth of squalor. The house she and Philip had found Johnny in at the time of the Spanish Civil War misadventure had been a poor one, thin-walled, temporary in feel, but it had been clean, and Mary the landlady was a decent sort of woman. In this place Julia felt trapped in a nightmare. That shameless young woman half-naked there, with her great oozing breasts, the baby’s noisy sucking, a faint smell of sick, or of nappies . . . Julia felt that Frances was forcing her, most brutally, to look directly at an unclean unseemly fount of life that she had never had to acknowledge. Her own baby had been presented to her as a well-washed bundle after he had been fed by the nurse. Julia had refused to breastfeed; too near the animal, she felt, but did not dare say. Doctors and nurses had tactfully agreed that she was not able to nurse . . . her health . . . Julia had often played with the little boy who arrived in the drawing-room with toys, and she actually sat on the floor with him, and enjoyed a play hour, measured by the nanny to the minute. She remembered the smell of soap, and baby powder. She remembered sniffing at Jolyon’s little head with such pleasure . . .

  Frances was thinking, It’s unbelievable. She is unbelievable, and derision was in danger of making her burst out in raucous laughter.

  Julia stood there in the middle of the room, in her neat wool crêpe grey suit, that had not a wrinkle, not a bulge. It was buttoned up to her throat where a silk scarf provided a hint of mauve. Her hands were in dove-grey kid gloves, and even though thoroughly protected from the unwashed surfaces around her, were making anxious little movements of rejection, and fussy disapproval. Her shoes were like shiny blackbirds, with brass buckles that seemed to Frances to be locks, as if making sure those feet couldn’t fly off, or even to begin to try out a few prim dance steps. Her grey hat was fenced with a little net veil that did not conceal her horrified eyes, and it, too, was caught with a metal buckle. She was a woman in a cage, and to Frances, under such pressures of loneliness, poverty, anxiety, her appearance in that room, which she loathed, and wished only to escape from, was like a deliberate taunting, an insult.

  ‘What am I to tell Jolyon?’

  ‘Who?–oh, yes. But . . .’ And now Frances energetically sat herself up, one hand cupping the baby’s head, the other holding the cloth over her exposed breast. ‘Don’t tell me Johnny asked you to come here?’

  ‘Well, yes, he did.’

  Now the two women shared a moment: it was incredulity, and their eyes actually did engage, in a query. When Julia had read the letter which commanded her to visit his wife, she said to Philip, ‘But I thought he hated us? If we weren’t good enough to see him married, then why is he ordering me to visit Frances?’

  Philip replied, dry enough, but remote too, because as always he was absorbed in his duties with the war, ‘I see that you are expecting consistency. Usually a mistake, in my view.’

  As for Frances, she had never heard Johnny refer to his parents as anything other than fascists, exploiters, at the best reactionaries. Then how could he be . . .

  ‘Frances, I would like very much to help you with some money.’ An envelope appeared from her handbag.

  ‘Oh, no, I am sure Johnny wouldn’t like that. He’d never take money from . . .’

  ‘I think you’ll find that he can and he will.’

  ‘Oh, no, no, Julia, please not.’

  ‘Very well then, goodbye.’

  Julia did not set eyes on Frances again until after Johnny had returned from the war, and Philip, who was by then ill and would shortly die, said he was worried about Frances and the children. Her memories of that visit caused Julia to protest that she was sure Frances did not want to see her, but Philip said, ‘Please, Julia. To set my mind at rest.’

  Julia went to the flat in Notting Hill, which she was convinced had been chosen because of the area’s seediness and ugliness. There were two children now. The one she had seen before, Andrew, was a noisy and energetic toddler, and there was a baby, Colin. Again, Frances was breastfeeding. She was large, shapeless, slatternly, and the flat, Julia was convinced, was a health hazard. On the wall was a food safe, and in it could be glimpsed a bottle of milk and some cheese. The wire net of the safe had been painted, the paint had clogged: air therefore could not circulate properly. Babies’ clothes were strung on fragile wooden contraptions that seemed about to collapse. No, Frances said, in a voice cold with hostility and criticism. No, she didn’t want any money, no, thank you.

  Julia stood there unconsciously all appeal, hands a-flutter, eyes full of tears.

  ‘But, Frances, think of the children.’

  It was as if Julia had deliberately
touched an already sore place with acid. Oh, yes, Frances thought often enough of how her own parents, let alone Johnny’s, must see her and how she lived, with the children. She said in a voice stiff with anger, ‘It seems to me that I never think of anything else but the children.’ Her tone said, How dare you!

  ‘Please let me help you, please–Johnny’s always so wrong-headed, he always has been, and it’s not fair on the children.’

  The trouble was, by now Frances agreed unreservedly about Johnny’s wrong-headedness. Any shreds of illusion had dissolved away, leaving a residue of unresolvable exasperation about him, the comrades, the Revolution, Stalin, Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all. But what was in question here was not Johnny, it was herself, a small, threatened sense of identity and of independence. That was why Julia’s Think of the children went home like a poisoned bullet. What right did she, Frances, have to fight for her independence, her own self at the cost of . . . but they were not suffering, they were not. She knew they were not.

  Julia went away, reported back to Philip, and tried not to think of those rooms in Notting Hill.

  Later, when Julia heard that Frances had gone to work in a theatre, Julia thought, A theatre! Of course, it would be! Then Frances was acting and Julia thought, Is she acting servants’ parts then?

  She went to the theatre, sat well back where she could not be seen, she hoped, and watched Frances in a small part in a quite nice little comedy. Frances was thinner, though still solid, and her fair hair was in frilly waves. She was a hotel owner, in Brighton. Julia could not see anything of that pre-war giggler in her tight uniform, but still, she was doing the part well enough, and Julia felt encouraged. Frances knew that Julia had been to watch her, because it was a small theatre, and Julia was wearing one of her inimitable hats, with a veil, and her gloved hands were on her lap. Not another woman in the audience wore a hat. Those gloves, oh those gloves, what a laugh.

  All through the war, particularly at bad moments, Philip had kept the memory of a certain little glove, in Swiss muslin, and those dots, white on white, and the tiny frill at the wrist, seemed to him a delicious frivolity, laughing at itself, and a promise that civilisation would return.