The Sweetest Dream (34 page)

Some people have come to think that our–the human being's–greatest need is to have something or somebody to hate. For
decades the upper classes, the middle class, had fulfilled this useful
function, earning (in communist countries) death, torture and
imprisonment, and in more equable countries like Britain, merely
obloquy, or irritating obligations, like having to acquire a cockney
accent. But now this creed showed signs of wearing thin. The
new enemy, men, was even more useful, since it encompassed
half the human race. From one end of the world to the other,
women were sitting in judgement on men, and when Frances was
with
The Defender
women, she felt herself to be part of an all-female
jury that has just passed a unanimous verdict of Guilty. They sat
about, in leisure moments, solidly in the right, telling little
anecdotes of this man's crassness or that man's delinquency, they
exchanged glances of satirical comment, they compressed their
lips and arched their brows, and when men were present, they
watched for evidence of incorrect thought and then they pounced
like cats on sparrows. Never have there been smugger, more
self-righteous, unself-critical people. But they were after all only
a stage in this wave of the women's movement. The beginning
of the new feminism in the Sixties resembled nothing so much
as a little girl at a party, mad with excitement, her cheeks
scarlet, her eyes glazed, dancing about shrieking, ‘I haven't got
any knickers on, can you see my bum?' Three years old, and the
adults pretend not to see: she will grow out of it. And she did.
‘What
me
? I never did things like that . . . oh, well, I was just a
baby.'

Soberness soon set in, and if the price to be paid for solid
worth was an irritating self-righteousness, then surely it was a
small price for such serious, scrupulous research, the infinitely
tedious rooting about in facts, figures, government reports, history,
the work that changes laws and opinions and establishes justice.

And this stage, in the nature of things, would be succeeded
by another.

Meanwhile Frances had to conclude that working for
The
Defender
was not unlike being Johnny's wife: she had to shut up
and think her own thoughts. This was why she had always taken
so much work home. Keeping one's counsel, after all, takes it out
of you, wears you down, it had taken her much longer to see
that many of the journalists working for
The Defender
were the
offspring of the comrades, though one had to know them a while
before the fact emerged. If one had a Red upbringing, then one
shut up about it–too complicated to explain. But when others
were in the same boat? But it was not only
The Defender
. Amazing
how often one heard, ‘My parents were in the Party, you know.'
A generation of Believers, now discredited, had given birth to
children who disowned their parents' beliefs, but admired their
dedication, at first secretly, then openly. What faith! What passion!
What idealism! But how could they have swallowed all those lies?
As for them, the offspring, they owned free and roving minds,
uncontaminated by propaganda.

But the fact was, the atmosphere of
The Defender
and other
liberal organs had been ‘set' by the Party. The most immediately
visible likeness was the hostility to people not in agreement. The
left-wing or liberal children of parents they might describe as
fanatics maintained intact inherited habits of mind. ‘If you are not
with us, you are against us.' The habit of polarisation, ‘If you
don't think like us, then you are a fascist.'

And, like the Party in the old days, there was a plinth of
admired figures, heroes and heroines, usually not communists these
days, but Comrade Johnny was a prominent figure, a grand old
man, one of the Old Guard, to be pictured as standing eternally
on a platform shaking his clenched fist at a reactionary sky.
The Soviet Union still held hearts, if not minds. Oh, yes, ‘mistakes' had been made, and ‘mistakes' had been admitted to, but
that great power was defended, for the habit of it had gone too
deep.

There were people in the newspaper that were whispered
about: they must be CIA spies. That the CIA had spies
everywhere could not be in doubt, so they must be here too: no one
ever said that the KGB had its Soviet fingers in this pie,
manipulating and influencing, though that was the truth, not to be admitted
for twenty years. The USA was the main enemy: this was the
unspoken and often loudly asserted assumption. It was a fascist
militaristic state, and its lack of freedom and true democracy was
attacked continually in articles and speeches by people who went
there for holidays, sent their children to American universities,
and took trips across ‘the pond' to take part in demos, riots,
marches and meetings.

A certain naive youth, joining
The Defender
because of his
admiration for its great and honourable history of free and fair
thought, rashly argued that it was a mistake to call Stephen Spender
a fascist for campaigning against the Soviet Union and trying to
make people accept ‘the truth'–which phrase meant the opposite
of what the communists meant by it. This young man argued that
since everyone knew about the rigged elections, the show trials,
the slave camps, the use of prison labour, and that Stalin was
demonstrably worse than Hitler, then surely it was right to say
so. There was shouting, screaming, tears, a scene that almost came
to blows. The youth left and was described as a CIA plant.

Frances was not the only one who longed to leave this prickly
dishonest place. Rupert Boland, her good friend, was another.
Their secret dislike of the institution they worked for was what
first united them, and then when both could have left to get work
on other newspapers, they stayed–because of the other. Which
neither knew, for it was not confessed for a long time. Frances
had found she was in danger of loving this man, but then when
it was too late, she did. And why not? Things progressed in an
unhurried but satisfying way. Rupert wanted to live with Frances.
‘Why not move in with me?' he said. He had a flat in Marylebone.
Frances said that once in her life she wanted her own home. She
would have enough money in a year or so. He said, ‘But I'll lend
you the money to make the difference.' She baulked and made
excuses. It would not be entirely her place, the spot on the earth
where she could say, This is mine. He did not understand and
was hurt. Despite these disagreements their love prospered. She
went to his flat for nights, not too often, because she was afraid
of upsetting Julia, afraid of Colin. Rupert said, ‘But why? You're
over twenty-one?'

When you are getting on there occur often enough those
moments when whole tangles of bruised and bleeding history
simply wrap themselves up and take themselves off. She did not
feel she could explain it to him. And she didn't want to: let it all
rest. Basta. Finis. Rupert was not going to understand. He had
been married and there were two children, who were with their
mother. He saw them regularly, and now so did Frances. But he
had not been through the savage impositions of adolescence. He
said, just like Wilhelm, ‘But we aren't teenagers, hiding from the
grown-ups.' ‘I don't know about that. But in the meantime–it's
fun.'

There was something that could have been a problem, but
wasn't. He was ten years younger than she was. She was nearly
sixty, he ten years younger! After a certain age ten years here or
there don't make much difference. Quite apart from sex, which
she was remembering as a pleasant thing, he was the best of
company. He made her laugh, something she knew she needed.
How easy it was to be happy, they were both finding, and with
an incredulity they confessed. How could it be that things were
so easy that had been difficult, wearisome, painful?

Meanwhile, there seemed to be no accommodation for this
love, which was of the quotidian, daily-bread sort, not at all a
teenagers' romp.

***

The crowds for the celebration of the Independence of Zimlia
spilled from the hall on to the steps and the pavements and
threatened to clog the streets, as had earlier jamborees for Kenya,
Tanzania, Uganda, Northern Zimlia. Probably the larger part
of these celebrants had been at all the earlier festivities. Every kind
of victorious emotion was here, from the quiet satisfaction of
people who had worked for years, to the grinning inflated elation
of those who get as intoxicated on crowds as they do on love, or
hate, or football. Frances was here because Franklin had
telephoned. ‘I must have you there. No, you must come. All my old
friends.' It was very flattering. ‘And where is Miss Sylvia? She
must come too, please ask her.' That was why Sylvia was with
Frances, pushing through crowds, though Sylvia had said, and
kept on saying, ‘Frances, I have to talk to you about something.
It's important.'

Someone was tugging at Frances's sleeve. ‘Mrs Lennox?
You're Mrs Lennox?' An urgent young woman with red hair as
rough as a rag doll's and an air of general disorientation: ‘I need
your help.'

Frances stopped, Sylvia just behind her. ‘What is it?' Frances
shouted.

‘You were so wonderful with my sister. She owes you her
life. Please I must come and see you.' She was shouting too.

Light did dawn, but slowly. ‘I see. But I think you must be
wanting the other Mrs Lennox, Phyllida.'

Wild suspicion, frustration, then dismay contorted those
features. ‘You won't? You can't? You aren't . . .'

‘You have the wrong Mrs Lennox.' And Frances walked on,
with Sylvia holding to her arm. That Phyllida was to be seen in
this light–it needed time to take in. ‘That was Phyllida she was
talking about,' Frances said. ‘I know,' said Sylvia.

At the door into the hall it could be seen it was crammed and
there was no chance of getting in but Rose was a steward and so
was Jill, both with rosettes the size of plates, in Zimlian colours.
Rose cried out with enthusiasm on seeing Frances, and shouted
into her inclined ear, ‘It's like old family night, everyone's here.'
But now she saw Sylvia and her face twisted into indignation. ‘I
don't see why you think you're going to get a place. I've never
seen you at any of our demos.'

‘You haven't seen me either,' said Frances. ‘But I hope that
doesn't mean I'm a black sheep too.'

‘
Black
sheep,' sneered Rose. ‘Wouldn't you know it.'

But she stood aside for Frances, and then, of necessity, Sylvia,
but said, ‘Frances, I must speak to Franklin.'

‘Hadn't you better apply to Johnny? Franklin stays with him
when he's in London.'

‘Johnny doesn't seem to remember me–but I was part of
the family, wasn't I–for
ages
?'

A roar went up. The speakers were pushing on to the platform,
about twenty of them, Johnny among them, with Franklin, and
other black men. Franklin saw Frances, who had pushed her
way up to the front, and leaped down off the platform, laughing,
almost crying, rubbing his hands: he was dissolving in joy. He
embraced Frances and then looked around and said, ‘Where's
Sylvia?'

Franklin was staring at a thin young woman, with straight fair
hair tied back off a pale face, in a high-necked black sweater. His
gaze left her, wandered off, came back, in doubt.

‘But here is Sylvia,' shouted Sylvia above the din of the
clapping and shouting. On the platform just above them the speakers
stood waving their arms, clasping their hands above their heads,
and shaking them, giving the clenched fist salute to some entity
apparently just above the heads of the audience. They were smiling
and laughing, absorbing the crowd's love and sending it back in
hot rays that could positively be seen.

‘Here I am. You've forgotten me, Franklin.'

Never has a man looked more disappointed than Franklin did
then. For years he had held in his mind that little fluffy girl, like
a new yellow chick, as sweet as the Virgin and the female saints
on the Holy Pictures at the mission. This severe unsmiling girl
hurt him, he didn't want to look at her. But she came from behind
Frances, and hugged him, and smiled, and for a moment he was
able to think, Yes this is Sylvia . . .

‘Franklin,' they were shouting from the platform.

At this moment up came Rose, and insisted on embracing
him. ‘Franklin. It's me. It's Rose. Do you remember?'

‘Yes, yes, yes,' said Franklin, whose memories of Rose were
ambiguous.

‘I have to see you,' said Rose.

‘Yes, but I have to go up now.'

‘I'll wait for you after the meeting. It's to your advantage,
remember.'

He climbed up, and was now a shiny smiling black face among
the others, and next to Johnny Lennox, who was like a mangy
old lion, but dignified with it, greeting his followers down in the
audience with a shake of his fist. But still Franklin's eyes roamed
the hall, as if somewhere down there the old Sylvia was, and then
when he stared, forlornly for that moment, at where the real Sylvia
was, in a front seat, Sylvia waved at him and smiled. His own
face burst out again into happiness, and he opened his arms,
embracing the crowd, but really it was her.

Victory celebrations after a war do not have much to say about
the dead soldiers, or rather, they say a good deal or even sing
about the dead comrades ‘who made this victory possible', but
the acclamations and the noisy singing are designed to make the
victors forget about the bones lying in a cleft of rock on a kopje,
or in a grave so shallow the jackals have got there, scattering ribs,
fingers, a skull. Behind the noise there is an accusing silence, soon
to be filled with forgetfulness. In the hall that night were few
people–they were mostly white–who had lost sons and daughters
to a war, or who had fought in one, but the men on the platform,
some of them, had been in an army, or had visited the fighters.
There were also men who had been trained for political war, or
for guerilla war, in the Soviet Union, or in camps set up by the
Soviet Union, in Africa. And in that audience a good few had
known various bits of Africa ‘in the old days'. Between them and
the activists were gulfs, but they were all cheering.