The Sweetest Dream

Now a real dismayed silence. Rose giggled. The newcomer’s, James’s, scarlet face was as good as a confession.

Sophie cried out, ‘But, Frances, I didn’t know you disapproved of us so much.’

‘Well, I do,’ said Frances, her face and voice softening, because it was Sophie. ‘So now you know.’

‘It’s her unfortunate upbringing …’ began Rose, but desisted, on a look from Andrew.

‘And now I’m going to catch the news, and I have to work.’ She went out, saying, ‘Sleep well, everyone.’ Giving permission, in this way, to anyone, James for instance, who might be hoping to stay the night.

She did catch the news, briefly. It seemed that some madman had shot Kennedy. As far as she was concerned, another public man was dead. He probably deserved it. She would never have allowed herself to voice this thought, so very far from the spirit of the times. It sometimes seemed to her that the one useful thing she had learned in her long association with Johnny, was how to keep quiet about what she thought.

Before settling down to work which, this evening, would be going through a hundred or so letters she had brought home, she opened the door to the spare room. Silence and dark. She tiptoed to the bed and bent over a shape under the bedclothes that could have been a child’s. And, yes, Tilly had her thumb in her mouth.

‘I’m not asleep,’ said a little voice.

‘I’m worried about you,’ said Frances, and heard her voice shake: she had promised herself not to get emotionally involved, because what good would that do? ‘If I made you a cup of hot chocolate, would you like that?’

‘I’ll try.’

Frances made chocolate in her study, where she had a kettle and basic supplies, and took it to the girl, who said, ‘I don’t want you to think I’m not grateful.’

‘Shall I put the light on? Do you want to try drinking it now?’

‘Put it on the floor.’

Frances did so, knowing that most likely the cup would be there, untouched, in the morning.

She worked until late. She heard Colin come in, and then he and Sophie went to the big sofa, where they sat talking – she could hear them, or at least their voices, just below hers: the old red sofa was immediately under her desk. Immediately over it was Colin’s bed. She heard their lowered voices, and then careful footsteps just above her. Well, she was sure Colin knew how to be careful: he had said so, loudly, to his brother, who lectured him on these matters.

Sophie was sixteen. Frances wanted to put her arms around the girl and protect her. Well, she never felt anything like that about Rose, Jill, Lucy, or the other young females who drifted in and out of this house. So why Sophie? She was so beautiful, that was it: that was what she wanted to guard and keep safe. And what nonsense that was – she, Frances, should be ashamed. She was ashamed about a good deal, this evening. She opened the door, and listened. Down in the kitchen, there seemed to be more than Andrew, Rose, James … she would find out tomorrow.

She slept restlessly, twice went across the landing to see how Tilly was doing; on one occasion found a very dark room, stillness, and the faint stuffy smell of chocolate. Once she saw Andrew retreating upstairs from a similar mission, and went back to bed. She lay awake. The trouble was, the shoplifting. When Colin first went to St Joseph’s after his not very good comprehensive, articles she knew were not his began appearing, nothing much, a T-shirt, packets of biros, a record. She remembered being impressed that he had stolen an anthology of verse. She remonstrated. He complained that everyone did it and she was a square. Do not imagine the issue rested there. This was a progressive school! One of the first wave of schoolfriends, who came and went, but much less freely, since after all they were younger, a girl called Petula, informed Frances that Colin was stealing love: the housemaster had said so. This was discussed noisily at the supper table. No, not the love of her parents, but that of the headmaster, who had ticked off Colin for something or other. Geoffrey, already more or less a fixture then, five years ago, more, was proud of what he garnered from the shops. She had been shocked, but had not said more than, Well, then, don’t get caught. If she had not said, Don’t do it, that was because she would not have been obeyed, but also because she had no idea then of how prevalent it would become, shoplifting. And, too, and that was what now kept her awake, she had liked being one of them, the trendy youngsters who were the new arbiters of modes and morals. There was – had been – undoubtedly a feeling of we against them. Petula, that sparky girl (now in a school for diplomats’ children in Hong Kong) had said that stealing without being caught was an initiation rite, and adults should understand that.

Today Frances was going to have to write a solid, long, and balanced article on this very subject. She was actually regretting she had ever said yes to this new job. She was going to have to take a stand on any number of issues, and it was her nature to see opposing points of view, and refuse to say more than, ‘Yes, it’s all very difficult.’

Recently she had come to see stealing as very definitely wrong, and not because of her unfortunate upbringing, but because of listening for years to Johnny urging all kinds of anti-social behaviour, rather like a guerilla leader: hit and run. One day a simple truth had arrived in her mind. He wanted to pull everything down about his ears, like Samson. That was what it was all about. ‘The Revolution’ which he and his mates never stopped talking about would be like directing a flame-thrower over everything, leaving scorched earth, and then – well, simple – he and the mates would rebuild the world in their image. Once seen it was obvious, but the thought then had to be faced: how could people unable to organise their own lives, who lived in permanent disarray, build anything worthwhile? This seditious thought – and it was years in advance of its time, at least in any circles she had been introduced to – lived side by side with an emotion she hardly knew was there. She thought Johnny was … no need to spell that out … she had become very clear about what she thought, but at the same time she relied on an aura of hopeful optimism that surrounded him, the comrades, everything they did. She did believe – but hardly knew she did – that the world was going to get better and better, that they were all on an escalator of Progress, and that present ills would slowly dissolve away, and everyone in the world would find themselves in a happy healthy time. And when she stood in the kitchen, producing dishes of food for ‘the kids’, seeing all those young faces, listening to their irreverent confident voices, she felt that she was guaranteeing this future for them, in a silent promise. Where had this promise originated? From Johnny, she had absorbed it from Comrade Johnny, and while her mind was set in criticising him, more and more every day, she relied emotionally without knowing it on Johnny and his brave sweet new worlds.

In a few hours she would sit down and write her article and say what?

If she had not taken a stand against stealing, in her own home, and even when she had come most strongly to disapprove, then what right had she to tell other people what to do?

And how confused these poor children were. As she had left the kitchen last night she had heard them laughing, but uneasily; had heard James’s voice louder than the others, because he wanted so much to be accepted by all these free spirits. Poor boy, he had fled from boringly provincial parents (as she had) to the delights of Swinging London, and a house described by Rose as Freedom Hall – she loved the phrase – where he had heard exactly the same condemnation – he was bound to be stealing, they all did – as he had from his parents.

It was nine o’clock by now, late for her. She must get up. She opened the door on to the landing and saw Andrew sitting on the floor where he could look across at the door of the room where the girl was. It was open. He mouthed up at her: Look, just look.

Pale November sun fell into the room opposite, where a slight erect figure with an aureole of fair hair, in an old-fashioned pink garment – a housecoat? – was perched on a high stool. If Philip were to see this vision now, how easily he could have been persuaded that this was the girl Julia, his long-ago love. On the bed, wrapped tight in her baby’s shawl, Tilly was held up by pillows, and staring with her unblinking gaze at the old woman.

‘No,’ came Julia’s cool precise voice, ‘no, your name is not Tilly. That is a very foolish name. What is your real name?’

‘Sylvia,’ lisped the girl.

‘So, why do you call yourself Tilly?’

‘I couldn’t say Sylvia when I was little, so I said Tilly.’ These were more words than any of them had heard from her, at one time.

‘Very well. I shall call you Sylvia.’

Julia had in her hand a mug of something with a spoon in it. Now she carefully, beautifully, caused an appropriate amount of the mug’s contents – there was a smell of soup – to fill the spoon, which she held to Tilly’s, or Sylvia’s, lips. Which were tight shut.

‘Now, listen carefully to me. I am not going to let you kill yourself because you are foolish. I won’t allow it. And now you must open your mouth and begin eating.’

The pale lips trembled a little, but opened, and all the while the girl was staring at Julia, apparently hypnotised. The spoon was inserted, and its contents disappeared. The watchers waited, breathless, to see if there was a swallowing movement. There was.

Frances glanced down at her son and saw that he was swallowing in sympathy.

‘You see,’ Julia was going on, while the spoon was again being recharged, ‘I am your step-grandmother. I do not allow my children and grandchildren to behave so foolishly. You must understand me, Sylvia …’ In went the spoon – a swallow. And again Andrew made a swallowing movement. ‘You are a very pretty clever girl …’

‘I’m horrible,’ came from the pillows.

‘I don’t think you are. But if you have decided to be horrible then you will be, and I won’t allow that.’

The spoon went in, a swallow.

‘First, I shall make you well again, and then you will go to school and take your examinations. After that you will go to university and be a doctor. Now I am sorry I wasn’t a doctor, but you can be a doctor in my place.’

‘I can’t. I can’t. I can’t go back to school.’

‘Why can’t you? Andrew has told me that you were clever at your lessons, before you became foolish. And now take this cup and drink the rest by yourself.’

The observers hardly breathed, at this moment of – surely? – crisis. Suppose Tilly-Sylvia refused the cup with its life-giving soup, and put that thumb back in her mouth? Suppose she shut her lips tight? Julia was holding the mug against the hand that was not clutching the shawl around her. ‘Take it.’ The hand trembled, but opened. Julia put the mug carefully into the hand, and held the hand around the cup. The hand did lift, the cup reached the lips and over it came the whisper, ‘But it’s so hard.’

‘I know it’s hard.’

The trembling hand was holding the cup to her lips, while Julia steadied it. The girl took a sip, swallowed. ‘I’m going to be sick,’ she whispered.

‘No, you are not. Stop it, Sylvia.’

Again Frances and her son waited, holding their breaths. Sylvia wasn’t sick, though she had to conquer retching, when Julia said, ‘Stop it.’

Meanwhile, down the stairs from the ‘boys’ floor’ came Colin, and behind him, Sophie. The two stopped. Colin was blushing bright red, and Sophie was half laughing, half crying, and seemed about to run back upstairs, but instead came to Frances, put her arms around her, and said, ‘Dear, dear Frances,’ and ran off down the stairs, laughing.

‘It’s not what you think,’ said Colin.

‘I’m not thinking anything,’ said Frances.

Andrew merely smiled, keeping his counsel.

Now Colin saw the little scene through the door, took it in, and said, ‘Good for Grandma,’ and went off down the stairs in big leaps.