The Sweetest Dream

Frances said, ‘Jill, you do see that I am in an impossible position with your parents.’

The girl said, ‘Oh, I thought you were going to say you didn’t see why you should keep me. Fair enough. But …’

‘I wasn’t going to say that. But don’t you really see that your parents must be going mad with worry?’

‘I told them where I was. I said I was here.’

‘Are you thinking of not going back to school?’

‘I don’t see the point of it.’

She wasn’t doing well at school, but at St Joseph’s this was not a final argument.

‘And don’t you see that I must be worrying about you?’

At this the girl seemed to come alive, leave behind her cold apprehension, and she leaned forward and said, ‘Oh, Frances, no, you mustn’t. It’s so nice here. I feel so safe.’

‘And don’t you feel safe at home?’

‘It’s not that. They just … don’t like me.’ And she retreated back inside her shell, hugging herself, rubbing her arms as if she were really cold.

Frances noted that this morning Jill had painted great black lines around her eyes. A new thing, on this neat little girl. And she was wearing one of Rose’s mini-dresses.

Frances would have liked to put her arms around the child and hold her. She had never had such an impulse with Rose: she wished Rose would simply take herself off. So, she liked Jill, but did not like Rose. And so what difference could that make, when she treated them exactly the same?

Frances sat alone in the kitchen, and the table which she had wiped and waxed shone like a pool. Really, it was a very nice table, she thought, now that you can see it. Not a plate or a cup, and no people. It was Christmas Day and she had shouted goodbye to Colin and Sophie first, both dressed for Christmas lunch, even Colin, who despised clothes. Then it was Julia, in a grey velvet suit and a sort of bonnety thing with a rose on it, and a blueish veil. Sylvia was wearing a dress bought for her by Julia, which made Frances glad the jeans and T-shirt wearers had not seen it: she didn’t want them laughing at Sylvia, who could have gone to church fifty years ago in that blue dress. She had refused to wear a hat, though. Then off went Andrew, to console Phyllida. He had put his head around the door to say, ‘We all envy you, Frances. Well, all except Julia, she’s upset that you will be alone. And you must expect a little present. She was too shy to tell you.’

Frances sat alone. All over this country women laboured over the stove, basting several million turkeys, while Christmas puddings steamed. Brussels sprouts sent out sulphuric fumes. Fields of potatoes were jammed around the birds. Bad temper reigned, but she, Frances, was sitting like a queen, alone. Only people who have known the pressure of exorbitant teenagers, or emotional dependants who suck and feed and demand, can know the pure pleasure of being free, even for an hour. Frances felt herself relax, all through her body, she was like a balloon ready to float up and away. And it was quiet. In other houses Christmas music exulted or pounded, but here, in this house, no television, not even a radio … but wait, was that something downstairs – was that Rose down there? But she had said she was going with Jill to the cousins. The music must be coming from next door.

So, on the whole, silence. She breathed in, she breathed out, oh happiness, she had absolutely nothing to worry about, even think about, for several hours. The doorbell rang. Cursing, she went to find a smiling young man, in decorative gear, red, for Christmas, and he handed her, with a bow, a tray enclosed in white muslin, that was twisted up in the centre and held with a red bow. ‘Merry Christmas,’ he said, and then ‘Bon appetit.’ Off he went, whistling ‘Good King Wenceslas’.

Frances put the tray in the centre of the table. It had a card on it announcing it was from an elegant restaurant, of the serious kind, and when the muslin was opened, there was revealed a little feast, with another card, ‘Best wishes from Julia.’ Best wishes. It was clearly Frances’s fault that Julia could not say With Love, but never mind, she was not going to worry about that today.

It was all so pretty she did not want to disturb it.

A white china bowl held a green soup, very cold, with shaved ice on it, that a testing finger announced was a blend of velvety unctuousness and tartness – what was it? Sorrel? A blue plate decorated with frills of bright green lettuce pretending to be seaweed held scallop shells and in them sliced scallops, with mushrooms. Two quails sat side by side on a bed of sauteed celery. By it a card said, ‘Please heat for ten minutes.’ A little Christmas pudding was made of chocolate and decorated with holly. There was a dish of fruit Frances had not tasted and scarcely knew the names of, Cape gooseberries, lychees, passion fruit, guavas. There was a slice of Stilton. Little bottles of champagne, burgundy and port fenced the feast. These days there would be nothing remarkable in the witty little spread, which paid homage to the Christmas meal, while it mocked, but then it was a glimpse of a vision from celestial fields, a swallow visiting from the plenitudes of the future. Frances could not eat it, it would be a crime. She sat down and looked at it and thought that Julia must care for her, after all.

Frances wept. At Christmas one weeps. It is obligatory. She wept because of her mother-in-law’s kindness to her and to her sons, and because of the charm of the meal, sparking off its invitations, and because of her incredulity at what she had managed to live through, and then, really getting down to it, she wept at the miseries of Christmases past. Oh my God, those Christmases when the boys were small, and they were in those dreadful rooms, and everything so ugly, and they were often cold.

Then she dried her eyes and sat on, alone. An hour, two hours. Not a soul in the house … that radio was downstairs, not next door, but she chose to ignore it. It might have been left on, after all. Four o’clock. The gas boards and electricity would be relieved that once again they had coped with the national Christmas lunch. Tired and cross women from Land’s End to the Orkneys would be sitting down and saying, ‘Now, you wash up.’ Well, good luck to them.

In armchairs and in sofas people would be dozing off and the Queen’s speech would be intermittently heard, interrupted by the results of over-eating. It was getting dark. Frances got up, pulled the curtains tight shut, switched on lights. She sat down again. She was getting hungry but could not bring herself to spoil the pretty feast. She ate a piece of bread and butter. She poured herself a glass of Tio Pepe. In Cuba Johnny would be lecturing whoever he was with on something: probably conditions in Britain.

She might go upstairs and have a nap, after all, she didn’t often get the chance of one. The door into the hall from outside opened, and then the door into the kitchen and in came Andrew.

‘You’ve been crying,’ he announced, sitting down, near her.

‘Yes, I have. A little. It was nice.’

‘I don’t like crying,’ he remarked. ‘It scares me, because I am afraid I might never stop.’

Now he went red, and said, ‘Oh my God …’

‘Oh, Andrew,’ said Frances, ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘What for? Damn it, how could you think …’

‘Everything could have been done differently, I suppose.’

‘What? What could? Oh, God.’

He poured out wine, he sat hunched into himself, not unlike Jill, a few days ago.

‘It’s Christmas,’ said Frances. ‘That’s all. The great provoker of miserable memories.’

He as it were warded this thought off, with a hand that said, Enough, don’t go on. And leaned forward to inspect Julia’s present. As Frances had done, he dipped a finger into the soup: an appreciative grimace. He sampled a slice of scallop.

‘I’m feeling a terrible hypocrite, Andrew. I’ve sent everyone off, like good children, but I hardly went home after I left it. I’d go home for Christmas Day and leave the next morning or even that afternoon.’

‘I wonder if they went home for Christmas – your parents?’

‘Your grandparents.’

‘Oh, yes, I suppose they must be. Have been.’

‘I don’t know. I know so little about them. There was the war, like a sort of chasm across my life, and on the other side, that life. And now they are dead. When I left home I thought about them as little as I could. I simply couldn’t cope with them. And so I didn’t see them and now I’m hard on Rose when she doesn’t want to go home.’

‘I take it you weren’t fifteen when you left home?’

‘No, eighteen.’

‘There you are, you’re in the clear.’

This absurdity made them laugh. A wonderful understanding: how well she was getting on with her elder son. Well, this had been true since he grew up – not all that long ago, in fact. What a pleasure it was, what a consolation for …

‘And Julia, she didn’t do much going home for Christmas, did she?’

‘But how could she, when she was here?’

‘How old was she when she came to London?’

‘Twenty, I think.’

‘What?’ He actually brought his hands up to cover his mouth and lower face, and let them drop to say, ‘Twenty. That’s what I am. And sometimes I think I haven’t learned to tie my shoelaces yet.’

In silence they contemplated a very young Julia.

She said, ‘There’s a photograph. I’ve seen it. A wedding photo. She’s wearing a hat so loaded with flowers you can hardly see her face.’