The Sweetest Dream (69 page)

‘Yes, it is,' said Frances. ‘What are we taking on? Do you
realise, I'll be dead by the time they qualify?'

Rupert's arm tightened around her shoulder.

‘But we have to keep them,' said Colin, aggressive, tearful,
pleading with them. ‘If a couple of kittens try to crawl out of the
bucket they're being drowned in, you don't push them back in.'
The Colin who was speaking then Frances had not seen or heard
of for years: Rupert had not met that passionate youth. ‘You just
don't do it,' said Colin, leaning forward, his eyes holding his
mother's, then Rupert's. ‘You don't just push them back in.' A
howl broke out of him: a long time since Frances had heard that
howl. He dropped his head down on to his arms on the table.
Rupert and Frances communed, silently.

‘I think,' said Rupert, ‘that there is only one way you can
decide.'

‘Yes,' said Colin, lifting his head.

‘Yes,' said Frances.

‘Then, that's it. And now put the other out of your heads.
Now.'

‘I suppose once a Sixties' household, then always a Sixties'
household,' said Colin. ‘No, that's not my little
aperçu
, it is
Sophie's. She thinks it's all lovely. I did point out that it was not
she who would be doing the work. She said she would muck in–with everything, she said.' He laughed.

Back in bed Rupert said, ‘I don't think I could bear it if you
died. But luckily women live longer than men.'

‘And I can't imagine not being with you.'

These two people of the word had hardly ever said more than
this kind of thing. ‘We don't do too badly, do we?' was about
the limit. To be so thoroughly out of phase with one's time does
take a certain bravado: a man and a woman daring to love each
other so thoroughly–well, it was hardly to be confessed, even
to each other.

Now he said, ‘What was all that about the kittens?'

‘I have no idea. Not in this house, and I am sure not at his
school. Progressive schools don't drown kittens. Well, not so their
pupils can see.'

‘Wherever it happened, it went deep.'

‘And he's never mentioned it before.'

‘When I was a boy I saw a gang of kids torturing a sick dog.
That taught me more about the nature of the world than anything
else ever has.'

 • • •

Lessons began. Rupert tutored Clever and Zebedee in maths:
beyond knowing their multiplication tables they were as blank
sheets, he said, but they were so quick, they could catch up.
Frances found that their reading had been extraordinary: their
memories retained whole tracts of
Mowgli
and Enid Blyton, and
Animal Farm
and Hardy, but they had not heard of Shakespeare.
This deficiency she proposed to remedy; they were already reading
everything on the shelves in the sitting-room. Colin came in with
geography and history. Sylvia's little atlas had done good service,
the boys' knowledge of the world was wide, if not deep; as for
history, they did not know much beyond
The Renaissance Popes
–this being a book on Father McGuire's shelves. Sophie would
take them to the theatre. And then, without being asked, William
began teaching them from old textbooks, and it was this that really
did them good.

William said he was unnerved by their application: he himself
had to do well, but compared to them . . . ‘You'd think their
lives depended on it,' and added, making the discovery for himself,
‘I suppose their lives do depend on it. After all, I can always go and
be . . .' ‘What?' enquired the adults, grasping at this opportunity to
glimpse what really went on in his mind. ‘A gardener. I could be
a gardener at Kew,' said William gravely. ‘Yes, that's what I'd
really like. Or I could be like Thoreau and live by myself, near
a lake and write about Nature.'

Sylvia had died intestate, and so, the lawyers said, her money
would go to her mother, as the next of kin. A good sum it was,
well able to see the boys through their education. Andrew was
appealed to, as Phyllida's old mate, and, dropping into or through
London, he went to see Phyllida, where this conversation ensued.

‘Sylvia would have wanted her money to educate the two
African boys she seems to have adopted.'

‘Oh yes, the black boys, I have heard about them.'

‘I'm here formally to ask you to relinquish that money, because
we are sure that is what she would have wished.'

‘I don't remember her saying anything to me about it.'

‘But, Phyllida, how could she?'

Phyllida gave a little toss of her head, with a small triumphant
smile, that was amused, too, like someone applauding the vagaries
of Fate, having won a fortune in the sweepstake, perhaps. ‘Finders
keepers,' she said. ‘And anyhow, something nice is owed to me,
that's how I see it.'

There was a family discussion.

Rupert, though a senior editor in his newspaper, and
adequately paid, knew that even when he had finished paying for
Margaret's school fees (Frances now paid for William) he would
have to keep Meriel.

Colin's intelligent novels, described by Rose Trimble as ‘elite
novels for the chattering classes', were not going to provide for
more than the child, and Sophie, who as an actress was often
resting. He spent so little on himself he hardly counted.

Frances found herself in a familiar situation. She had been
offered a job helping to run a small experimental theatre: her
heart's desire, a lot of fun but not much money. Her reliable and
serious books, bought by every library in the land, brought in
good money. She would have to say no to the theatre and write
books. She said she would be responsible for Clever, and Andrew
would pay for Zebedee.

Andrew proposed to start a family, but he earned so well he
was sure he could manage Zebedee. Things did not turn out as
he expected. The marriage was already in trouble, would soon
dissolve, after not much more than a year, though Mona was
pregnant. Years of legal wrangling would follow, but when
Andrew did wrest time with his child from the jealous mother,
the little girl was mostly with her cousin Celia, sharing whatever
au pair was around, and Celia's daddy's attention. Colin, as Sophie
often wailed, was such a wonderful father, and she was such a
rotten mother. (‘Never mind,' prattled Celia, when Sophie said
this, ‘you are such a pretty yummy mummy we don't care.')

Where was everyone going to fit in?

Clever would have Andrew's old room, Zebedee Colin's.
Colin would use the sitting-room to work in. William was in a
room on Frances's and his father's floor. The au pair used Sylvia's
old room.

And the basement flat? Someone was in it. Johnny was in it.

Frances had been on her way to a bus stop when she heard
hurrying steps behind her and, ‘Frances, Frances Lennox.' She
turned to see a woman whose white hair was being blown about
while she tried to keep a scarf in place. Frances did not know her
. . . yes, she did, just: it was Comrade Jinny, from the old days,
and she was chattering, ‘Oh, I wasn't sure, but yes it's you, well
we're all getting on aren't we, oh dear, I simply had to . . . it's
your husband you see, I'm so worried about him.'

‘I left my husband fit and well not five minutes ago.'

‘Oh dear, oh dear, silly me, I meant Johnny, Comrade Johnny,
if only you two knew what you meant to me when I was young,
such an inspiration, Comrades Johnny and Frances Lennox . . .'

‘Look, I'm sorry, but . . .'

‘I hope I'm not speaking out of turn.'

‘Just tell me, what is it?'

‘He's so old now, poor old thing . . .'

‘He's my age.'

‘Yes, but some people wear better than others. I just felt you
ought to know,' said she, running off and sending back scared
but aggressive waves of the hand.

Frances told Colin who said that as far as he was concerned
his father could sink or swim. And Frances said that she was
damned if she was going to pick up Johnny's pieces for him. That
left Andrew, who dropped over from Rome for the afternoon.
He found Johnny in a quite pleasant room, in Highgate, in the
house of a woman he described as the salt of the earth. He was
a frail old man with fans of silvery hair around a shiny white
pate, all pathos and vulnerability. He was pleased to see Andrew
but he wasn't going to show it. ‘Sit down,' he said. ‘I'm sure
Sister Meg will make us all some tea.' But Andrew remained
upright, and said, ‘I've come because we hear you've fallen on
hard times.'

‘Which is more than you have done, so I'm told.'

‘I'm glad to say what you hear is all true.'

Not many people in the world would see Johnny's lot as a
hard one, but after all, he had spent probably two-thirds of his life
in comradely luxury hotels in the Soviet Union, Poland, China,
Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia; in Chile and Angola and Cuba–wherever there had been a comradely conference, Johnny had
been there, the world his barrel of oysters, his honeypot, his
ever-open jar of Beluga caviar, and here he was, in one room–a nice room, but one room. On his old-age pension. ‘And of
course the senior bus pass helps.'

‘A good member of the proletariat at last,' said Andrew, smiling
benevolently from the windows of his gravy train at his
dispossessed father.

‘And you got married, I hear. I was beginning to think you
must be a queer.'

‘Who knows these days? But never mind all that, we thought
you might like to come and live in the bottom flat?'

‘It's my house anyway, so don't make a favour out of it.'

But there were two good rooms, and everything paid for, and
he was pleased.

Colin went down to help settle him in and said that he mustn't
expect Frances to wait on him.

‘It's news to me that she ever did. She was always a lousy
housekeeper.'

But Johnny was far from dependent on his family for company.
His visitors brought him gifts and flowers as if to a shrine. Johnny
was in the process of becoming a holy man, the follower of a
senior Indian holy man, and was now often heard to remark, ‘Yes,
I was a bit of a Red once.' He would sit cross-legged on his
pillows on his bed, and his old gesture, palms extended outwards
as if offering himself to an audience, fitted in nicely with this new
persona. He had disciples, and taught meditation and the Fourfold
Sacred Way. In return they kept his rooms clean for him and
cooked dishes in which lentils played a leading role.

But this was his new self, perhaps one could describe it as a
role, in a play where Sisters and Brothers and Holy Mothers
replaced the comrades. His older self did sometimes resurface,
when other visitors, old comrades, came around to reminisce as
if the great failure of the Soviet Union had never happened, as if
that Empire was still marching on. Old men, old women, whose
lives had been illumined by the great dream, sat about drinking
wine in an atmosphere not unlike that of those far-off combative
evenings, except for one thing: they did not smoke now, whereas
once it would have been hard to see across a room for the smoke
that had been through their lungs.

Late, before the guests left, Johnny would lower his voice and
lift his glass, and propose a toast, ‘To Him.'

And with tender admiration they drank to possibly the cruellest
murderer who has ever lived.

They say that for decades after Napoleon's death old soldiers
met in taverns and bars and, secretly, in each other's hovels, raised
their glasses to The Other: they were the few survivors of the
Grand Armée (whose heroic feats had achieved precisely nothing,
except the destruction of a generation), crippled men, whose
health had gone and who had survived unspeakable sufferings.
But so what, it is always The Dream that counts.

Johnny had another visitor, Celia, who would descend on the
hand of Marusha or Bertha or Chantal and run to Johnny. ‘Poor
little Johnny.'

‘But that's your grandfather! You can't call him that.'

The faery child took no notice, stroked the old chastened
head, kissed it, and sang her little song, ‘That's my little
grandfather, that's my poor little Johnny.'

The conjunction of Colin and Sophie had produced a rare
being: everyone felt it. The big lads, William and Clever and
Zebedee, played with her delicately, almost humbly, as if this was
a privilege, a favour she was doing them.

Or they all sat around the table, Rupert and Frances, Colin
and William, Clever and Zebedee, and quite often Sophie too,
at the evening meal that might go on and on, and the child came
running in, evading bedtime. She wanted to be near them, but
not to be picked up, held, or sat on a knee. She was deep inside
her game, or play, talking softly to herself confidentially, in voices
they learned to recognise. ‘Celia's here, yes she is, this is Celia,
and there is my Frances and there is my Clever . . .' The tiny
child, in her scrap of a coloured dress, chattering there, but to
herself, perhaps using a bit of cloth, or a flower, or a toy to stand
in for some person or character or imagined playmate–she was
so perfectly beautiful that she silenced them, they sat watching,
charmed, awed . . . ‘And there's my William . . .' she reached out
to touch him, to be sure of him, but she was not looking at him,
perhaps at the flower or toy, ‘and my Zebedee . . .' Colin got up,
the big clumsy man, so coarse and heavy beside her, and stood
looking down. ‘And there–my Colin, yes, it's my daddy . . .'
Colin, tears running, bent down to her in something like an
obeisance of his whole being, holding out his hands with a groan,
‘Oh Frances, oh Sophie, did you ever see anything so . . .'