The Sweetest Dream (21 page)

For Julia it was a tragedy, her little lamb lost to her, enticed
away by sick lunatics.

‘These people are not normal, Frances,' she said tonight,
distressed and ready to cry.

Frances did not jest, ‘Who is?'–Julia would have embarked
on definitions. Frances knew Julia had come down for more than
her anxiety over Sylvia, and waited.

‘And how is it that a son may talk to his mother as Colin does
to you?'

‘He has to say it to someone.'

‘But it is ridiculous, the things he says . . . I can hear it all,
the whole house can hear.'

‘He can't say it to Johnny, and so he says it to me.'

‘It is so astonishing to me,' said Julia, ‘that they are allowed
to behave like this? Why are they?'

‘They're screwed up,' said Frances. ‘Isn't it odd, Julia, don't
you think it is strange?'

‘It is very strange how they behave,' said Julia.

‘No, listen, I think about this. They are all so privileged, they
have everything, they have more than any of us ever had–well,
you might have been different.'

‘No, I did not have a new dress every week. And I did not
steal.' Julia's voice rose. ‘That thieves' kitchen of yours, Frances,
they are all thieves and they have no morals. If they want
something they go and steal it.'

‘Andrew doesn't. Colin doesn't. I don't think Sophie ever
did.'

‘The house is full of . . . you allow them here, they take
advantage of you and they are thieves and liars. This was an
honourable house. Our family was honourable, and we were
respected by everyone.'

‘Yes, and I wonder why they are like that. They all have so
much, they have more than any generation ever had, and yet they
are all . . .'

‘They are screwed up,' said Julia, getting up to go. Then she
stood in front of Frances, hands apart, as if holding there an
invisible thing–a person?–which she was wringing, like a cloth.
‘It's a good expression, that:
screwed up
. I know why they are.
Disturbed, did you say Colin was? They're all war children, that
is why. Two terrible wars and this is the result. They are children
of war. Do you think there can be wars like that, terrible terrible
wars and then you can say, All right, that's over, now back to
normal. Nothing's normal now. The children aren't normal. And
you too . . .' but she stopped herself, and Frances was not to hear
what Julia thought of her. ‘And now Sylvia, with those spiritualists,
they call themselves, did you know they turn out the lights and
sit holding hands and some idiot woman pretends to be talking
to a ghost?'

‘Yes, I know.'

‘And yet you sit there, you always just listen, but you don't
stop them.'

Frances said, as the old woman went out, ‘Julia, we can't stop
them.'

‘I shall stop Sylvia. I shall tell her she can go back home to
her mother, if she wants to run around with those people.'

The door shut and Frances said aloud into the empty room,
‘No, Julia, you will not do that, you are merely muttering to
yourself like an old witch, to let off steam.'

On that same evening, when Julia's ‘This was an honourable
house' still sounded in Frances's ears, the doorbell rang, late,
and Frances went down. On the doorstep were two girls, of
about fifteen, and their hostile but demanding looks warned
Frances of what she would hear which was, ‘Let us in. Rose is
expecting us.'

‘I wasn't expecting you. Who are you?'

‘Rose says we can live here,' said one, apparently about to
push her way in past Frances.

‘It isn't for Rose to say who can live here and who can't,' said
Frances, quite amazed at herself for standing her ground. Then,
as the girls stood hesitating, she said, ‘If you want to see Rose
then come tomorrow at a reasonable time. I think she'll be asleep
by now.'

‘No, she isn't.' And Frances looked down to the window of
the basement flat, to see Rose energetically gesticulating to her
friends. She heard, ‘I told you she's an old cow.'

The girls went off, with
what can you expect
gestures to Rose.
One said loudly over her shoulder, ‘When we've won the R
evolution you'll be laughing on the other side of your face.'

Frances went straight down to Rose, who stood waiting,
quivering with rage. Her black hair, no longer tamed by the Evansky
haircut, seemed to bristle, her face was red, and she actually seemed
to be on the point of physically attacking Frances.

‘What the hell do you mean by telling people they can come
and live here?'

‘It's my flat, isn't it? I can do what I like in my own flat.'

‘It's not your flat. We are allowing you to stay in it until
you've finished school. But if there are other people who need
it, they'll be using the second room.'

‘I'm going to let that room,' said Rose.

And now Frances was startled into silence, because of the
impossibility of what was happening, hardly an unfamiliar situation
with Rose. Then she saw that Rose stood triumphant, because she
had not been contradicted, and she said, ‘We're not charging you
to live here. You live here absolutely free, so how can you imagine
for a moment that you could let out a room?'

‘I have to,' shouted Rose. ‘I can't live on what my parents are
giving me. It's just peanuts. They're so mean.'

‘Why should you need more when you're not paying anything
at all for living here, and you eat with us, and your school's all
paid for?'

But now Rose was on a roll of rage, out of control. ‘Shits, all
of you, that's all you are. And you don't care about my friends.
They have nowhere to go. They've been sleeping on a bench at
King's Cross. I suppose that's what you want me to do.'

‘If that's what you want, then off you go,' said Frances. ‘I'm
not stopping you.'

Rose shouted, ‘Your precious Andrew knocks me up and then
you throw me out like a dog.'

This did take Frances aback, but she reminded herself it was
not true . . . and then she had to remember that Jill's abortion
had been arranged without her knowing anything about it. This
hesitation gave Rose the advantage, and she screamed, ‘And look
at Jill, you made her have an abortion when she didn't want one.'

‘I didn't know she was pregnant. I didn't know anything about
it,' said Frances, and understood she was arguing with Rose, which
no sane person would do.

‘And I suppose you didn't know about me either? All this
lovey-dovey be nice to Rose, but you're covering up for Andrew.'

Frances said, ‘You are lying. I know when you are lying.'
And then was shocked again: Colin said she never knew anything
that went on: suppose Rose had been pregnant? But, no, Andrew
would have told her.

‘And I'm not going to go on living here when you're so
horrible to me. I know when I'm not wanted.'

The grotesqueness of this last statement actually made Frances
laugh but it was also from relief at the thought that Rose might
actually go. The degree of relief told her just how great a burden
the presence of Rose was. ‘Good,' she said. ‘Well, Rose, I agree
with you. It is obviously better for you to leave, when you feel
like that.'

And she went up the stairs, in a silence like the one they say
lies at the heart of a storm. A glance showed Rose's face lifted up
in what seemed to be a prayer–but then she howled.

Frances shut the door on her, ran up to her room, and flung
herself on her bed. Oh, my God, to get rid of Rose, just to get
rid of Rose: but commonsense crept back with, But of course she
won't go.

She heard Rose thundering past up the stairs, heard the
hammering on Andrew's door. She was up there a good long time.
Frances–indeed, the whole house–could hear the sobs, the
cries, the threats.

Then, well past midnight, she crept back down past Frances's
rooms, and there was silence.

A knock on the door: there was Andrew. He was white with
exhaustion.

‘May I sit down?' He sat. ‘You have no idea how diverting
it always is,' he said, preserving his poise in spite of everything,
‘to see you in this improbable setting.'

Frances saw herself in well-worn jeans, an old jersey, with
bare feet, and then Julia's furniture which probably should be in
a museum. She managed a smile and a shake of her head which
meant, It's all too much.

‘She says you are throwing her out.'

‘If only we could. She says she is leaving.'

‘I'm afraid no such luck.'

‘She says you got her pregnant.'

‘What?'

‘So she claims.'

‘Penetration did not take place,' he said. ‘We snogged–more
of a lark than anything. Perhaps for an hour. It is amazing how
these left-wing summer schools seem to. . .' He hummed,
‘. . . every little breeze seems to whisper, Please, sex, sex, sex.'

‘What are we going to do? Why don't we just throw her out,
my God, why don't we?'

‘But if we do she'll be on the streets. She won't go home.'

‘I suppose so.'

‘It's only a year. We'll have to stick it out.'

‘Colin is very angry because she's here.'

‘I know. You forget we can all hear his complaints about life.
And about Sylvia. Probably me as well.'

‘Me, most of all.'

‘And now I'm going right down to tell her that if she ever
again says I made her pregnant . . . wait, I suppose I got her an
abortion too?'

‘She didn't say so, but I expect she will.'

‘God, what a little bitch.'

‘But how effective, being a bitch. No one can stand up to her.'

‘You just watch me.'

‘So what are you going to do? Call the police? And by the
way, where's Jill? She seems to have disappeared.'

‘She and Jill quarrelled. I expect Rose just got rid of her.'

‘So where is she? Does anyone know? I'm suppose to be
in
loco parentis
.'

‘Loco's a good word in this context.' He departed.

But Frances was learning that while she was seen by ‘the kids'
as a sort of benevolent freak of Nature, and they lucky enough
to benefit, she was far from the only one
in loco parentis
. A letter
had come from Spain after the summer, from an Englishwoman
living in Seville, saying she had so much enjoyed Colin, Frances's
charming son. (Colin, charming? Well, not in this house he
wasn't.) ‘A very nice crowd this summer. It's not always such
plain sailing. Sometimes they have such problems! I do feel it is
an extraordinary thing, the way they go off to other people's
parents. My daughter makes excuses not to come home. She's
got an alternative home in Hampshire with an ex-boyfriend. I
suppose we must admit that that is what it amounts to.'

A letter from North Carolina. ‘Hi there, Frances Lennox! I
feel I know you so well. Your Geoffrey Bone was here for weeks,
with others from various parts of the world, all to take part in the
Struggle for Civic Rights. They come knocking at my door, waifs
and strays of the world–no, no, I don't mean Geoffrey, I've
never known a cooler young man. But I collect them and so do
you, and so does my sister Fran in California. My son Pete will
be in Britain this coming summer and I am sure he'll drop in.'
From Scotland, From Ireland. From France . . . letters that went
into a file of similar ones that had been coming for years, from
the time when she hardly saw Andrew.

Thus did the house-mothers, the earth-mothers, who
proliferated everywhere in the Sixties slowly become aware of each other's
presence out there, and understand that they were part of a
phenomenon: the
geist
was at it again. They networked, before
the term had become part of the language. They were a network
of nurturers. Of
neurotic
nurturers. As ‘the kids' had explained,
Frances was working out some guilt or other, rooted in her
childhood. (Frances had said she wouldn't be at all surprised.) As for
Sylvia, she had a different ‘line'. (Origin of ‘line'–jargon of the
Party.) Sylvia had learned from her groovy mystical mates that
Frances was working on her karma, damaged in a previous life.

 • • •

On one of Colin's visits home to shout at his mother, he brought
with him Franklin Tichafa, from Zimlia, a British colony that, so
Johnny said, was about to go the way of Kenya. All the newspapers
were saying it too. Franklin was a round, smiling black boy. Colin
told his mother that one could not use the word
boy
because of
its bad connotations, but Frances said, ‘He's not a young man, is
he. If a sixteen-year-old can't be described as a boy, who can?'

‘She does it on purpose,' said Andrew. ‘She does it to annoy.'

This was partly true. Johnny had long ago complained that
Frances was sometimes deliberately politically obtuse, to embarrass
him in front of the comrades, and indeed she had sometimes done
it on purpose, and did now.

Everyone liked Franklin, who was named after Franklin
Roosevelt, ‘taking' literature at St Joseph's to please his parents,
but planning to study economics and politics at university.

‘That's what you are all studying,' said Frances. ‘Politics and
economics. What is so extraordinary is that anyone should want
to, when they never get it right, particularly the economists.'

This remark was so far in advance of its time that it was
allowed to pass, was probably not even heard.

The evening when Franklin first came, Colin did not drop
down to Frances's rooms for the usual session of accusations: he
had not gone to the Maystock. Franklin was in his room on the
floor in a sleeping bag. Frances could hear them just over her
head, talking, laughing . . . her much-overused heart seemed to
breathe easier, and she felt that all Colin really needed was a good
friend, someone who laughed a lot: they larked about and as young
men (or boys) will, went in for a lot of buffeting, pummelling and
horseplay.