The Sweetest Dream

‘Perhaps you should talk to your son?’ said Frances. ‘He owes me a year’s maintenance.’ Then it was two years, three years.

Julia asked whether if she got a decent allowance from the family would she give up her job and look after the boys?

Frances said no.

‘But I wouldn’t interfere with you,’ said Julia. ‘I promise you that.’

‘You don’t understand,’ said Frances.

‘No, I do not. And perhaps you would explain it to me?’

Johnny left Comrade Maureen and returned to her, Frances, saying that he had made a mistake. She took him back. She was lonely, knew the boys needed a father, was sex-starved.

He left again for another real, genuine comrade. When he again returned to Frances, she said to him: ‘Out.’

She was working full time in a theatre, earning not much but enough. The boys were by then ten and eight. There was trouble all the time at the schools, and they were not doing well.

‘What do you expect?’ said Julia.

‘I never expect anything,’ said Frances.

Then things changed, dramatically. Frances was amazed to hear that Comrade Johnny had agreed that Andrew should go to a good school. Julia said Eton, because her husband had gone there. Frances was waiting to hear that Johnny had refused Eton, and then was told that Johnny had been there, and had managed to conceal this damaging fact all these years. Julia did not mention it because his Eton career had hardly covered him or them with glory. He had gone for three years, but dropped out to go to the Spanish Civil War.

‘You mean to say you are happy for Andrew to go to that school?’ Frances said to him, on the telephone.

‘Well, you at least get a good education,’ said Johnny airily, and she could hear the unspoken: Look what it did for me.

So – Julia paying – Andrew took off from the poor rooms his mother and brother were living in, for Eton, and spent his holidays with schoolfriends, and became a polite stranger.

Frances went to an end-of-term at Eton, in an outfit bought to fit what she imagined would suit the occasion, and the first hat she had ever worn. She did all right, she thought, and could see Andrew was relieved when he saw her.

Then people came to ask after Julia, Philip’s widow, and the daughter-in-law of Philip’s father: an old man remembered him, as a small boy. It seemed the Lennoxes went to Eton as a matter of course. Johnny, or Jolyon, was enquired after. ‘Interesting said a man who had been Johnny’s teacher. ‘An interesting choice of career.’

Thereafter Julia went to the formal occasions, where she was made much of, and was surprised at it: visiting Eton in those brief three years of Jolyon’s attendance there, she had seen herself as Philip’s wife, and of not much account.

Colin refused Eton, because of a deep, complicated loyalty to his mother whom he had watched struggling all these years. This did not mean he did not quarrel with her, fight her, argue, and did so badly at school Frances was secretly convinced he was doing it on purpose to hurt her. But he was cold and angry with his father, when Johnny did blow in to say that he was so terribly sorry, but he really did not have the money to give them. He agreed to go to a progressive school, St Joseph’s, Julia paying for everything.

Johnny then came up with a suggestion that Frances at last did not refuse. Julia would let her and the boys have the lower part of her house. She did not need all that room, it was ridiculous …

Frances thought of Andrew, returning to various squalid addresses, or not returning, certainly never bringing friends home. She thought of Colin who made no secret of how much he hated how they were living. She said yes to Johnny, yes to Julia, and found herself in the great house that was Julia’s and always would be.

Only she knew what it cost her. She had kept her independence all this time, paid for herself and the boys, and not accepted money from Julia, nor from her parents who would have been happy to help. Now here she was, and it was a final capitulation: what to other people was ‘such a sensible arrangement’ was defeat. She was no longer herself, she was an appendage of the Lennox family.

As far as Johnny was concerned, he had done as much as could be expected of him. When his mother told him he should support his sons, get a job that paid him a salary, he shouted at her that she was a typical member of an exploiting class, thinking only of money, while he was working for the future of the whole world. They quarrelled, frequently and noisily. Listening, Colin would go white, silent, and leave the house for hours or for days. Andrew preserved his airy, amused smile, his poise. He was often at home these days, and even brought friends.

Meanwhile Johnny and Frances had divorced because he had married properly, and formally, with a wedding that the comrades attended, and Julia too. Her name was Phyllida, and she was not a comrade, but he said she was good material and he would make a communist of her.

This little history was the reason why Frances was keeping her back to the others, stirring a stew that didn’t really need a stir. Delayed reaction: her knees trembled, her mouth seemed full of acid, for now her body was taking in the bad news, rather later than her mind. She was angry, she knew, and had the right to be, but she was angrier with herself than with Johnny. If she had allowed herself to spend three days inside a lunatic dream, fair enough – but how could she have involved the boys? Yet it was Andrew who had brought the telegram, waited until she showed it to him, and said, ‘Frances, your errant husband is at last going to do the right thing.’ He had sat lightly on the edge of a chair, a fair, attractive youth, looking more than ever like a bird just about to take off. He was tall and that made him seem even thinner, his jeans loose on long legs, and with long elegant bony hands lying palms up on his knees. He was smiling at her, and she knew it was meant kindly. They were trying hard to get on, but she was still nervous of him, because of those years of him rejecting her. He had said ‘your husband’, he had not said ‘my father’. He was friendly with Johnny’s new wife, Phyllida, while reporting back that she was on the whole a bit of a drag.

He had congratulated her on her part in the new play and had made graceful fun of agony aunts.

And Colin, too, had been affectionate, a rare thing for him, and had telephoned friends about the new play.

It was all so bad for them both, it was all terrible, but after all only another little blow in years and years of them – as she was telling herself, waiting for her knees to get back their strength, while she gripped the edge of a drawer with one hand and stirred with the other, eyes closed.

Behind her Johnny was holding forth about the capitalist press and its lies about the Soviet Union, about Fidel Castro, and how he was being misrepresented.

That Frances had been scarcely touched by years of Johnny’s strictures, or his lexicon, was shown by the way, after a recent lecture, she had murmured, ‘He seems quite an interesting person.’ Johnny had snapped at her, ‘I don’t think I’ve managed to teach you anything, Frances, you are unteachable.’

‘Yes, I know, I’m stupid.’ That had been a repetition of the great, primal, but at the same time final, moment, when Johnny had returned to her for the second time, expecting her to take him in: he had shouted that she was a political cretin, a lumpen petite bourgeois, a class enemy, and she had said, ‘That’s right, I’m stupid, now get out.’

She could not go on standing here, knowing that the boys were watching her, nervously, hurt because of her, even if the others were gazing at Johnny with eyes shining with love and admiration.

She said, ‘Sophie, give me a hand.’

At once willing hands appeared, Sophie’s and, it seemed, everyone’s, and dishes were being set down the centre of the table. There were wonderful smells as the covers came off.

They sat down at the head of the table, glad to sit, not looking at Johnny. All the chairs were full, but others stood by the wall, and, if he wanted, he could bring one up and sit down himself. Was he going to do this? He often did, infuriating her, though he believed, it was obvious, that it was a compliment. No, tonight, having made an impression, and got his fill of admiration (if he ever did) he was going to leave – surely? He was not leaving. The wine glasses were full, all around the table. Johnny had brought two bottles of wine: open-handed Johnny, who never entered a room without offerings of wine … she was unable to prevent this bile, these bitter words, arriving unwanted on her tongue. Just go away, she was mentally urging him. Just leave.

She had cooked a large, filling, winter stew of beef and chestnuts, from a recipe of Elizabeth David, whose French Country Cooking was lying open somewhere in the kitchen. (Years later she would say, Good Lord, I was part of a culinary revolution and didn’t know it.) She was convinced that these youngsters did not eat ‘properly’ unless it was at this table. Andrew was dispensing mashed potatoes flavoured with celeriac. Sophie ladled out stew. Creamed spinach and buttered carrots were being allotted by Colin. Johnny stood watching, silenced for the moment because no one was looking at him.

Why didn’t he leave?

Around the table this evening were what she thought of as the regulars: or at least some of them. On her left was Andrew, who had served himself generously, but now sat looking down at the food as if he didn’t recognise it. Next to him was Geoffrey Bone, Colin’s schoolfriend, who had spent all his holidays with them since she could remember. He did not get on with his parents, Colin said. (But who did, after all?) Beside him Colin had already turned his round flushed face towards his father, all accusing anguish, while his knife and fork rested in his hands. Next to Colin, was Rose Trimble, who had been Andrew’s girlfriend, if briefly: an obligatory flutter with Marxism had taken him to a weekend seminar entitled, ‘Africa Bursts Its Chains!’, and there Rose had been. Their affair (had it been that? – she was sixteen) had ended, but Rose still came here, seemed in fact to have moved in. Opposite Rose was Sophie, a Jewish girl in the full bloom of her beauty, slender, black gleaming eyes, black gleaming hair, and people seeing her had to be afflicted with thoughts of the intrinsic unfairness of Fate, and then of the imperatives of Beauty and its claims. Colin was in love with her. So was Andrew. So was Geoffrey. Next to Sophie, and the very opposite, in every way, of Geoffrey, who was so correctly good-looking, English, polite, well-behaved, was stormy and suffering Daniel, who had just been threatened with expulsion from St Joseph’s for shoplifting. He was deputy head boy, and Geoffrey was head boy, and had had to convey to Daniel that he must reform or else – an empty threat, certainly, made for the sake of impressing the others with the seriousness of what they all did. This little event, ironically discussed by these worldly-wise children, was confirmation, if any was needed, of the inherent unfairness of the world, since Geoffrey shoplifted all the time, but it was hard to associate that open eagerly-polite face with wrongdoing. And there was another ingredient here: Daniel worshipped Geoffrey, always had, and to be admonished by his hero was more than he could bear.

Next to Daniel was a girl Frances had not seen before, but she expected to be enlightened in good time. She was a fair well-washed well-presented girl whose name appeared to be Jill. On Frances’s right was Lucy, not from St Joseph’s: she was Daniel’s girlfriend from Dartington, often here. Lucy, who at an ordinary school would certainly have been prefect, being decisive, clever, responsible and born to rule, said that progressive schools, or at least Dartington, suited some people well, but others needed discipline, and she wished she was at an ordinary school with rules and regulations and exams one had to work for. Daniel said that St Joseph’s was hypocritical shit, preaching freedom but when it came to the point clamping down with morality. ‘I wouldn’t say clamping down,’ explained Geoffrey pleasantly to everyone, protecting his acolyte, ‘it was more indicating the limits.’ ‘For some,’ said Daniel. ‘Unfair, I’ll grant you,’ said Geoffrey.

Sophie said she adored St Joseph’s and adored Sam (the headmaster). The boys tried to look indifferent at this news.

Colin continued to do so badly at exams that his unthreatened life was a tribute to the school’s famous tolerance.

Of Rose’s many grievances against life, she complained most that she had not been sent to a progressive school, and when their virtues or otherwise were discussed, which happened frequently and noisily, she would sit silent, her always rubicund face ever redder with anger. Her shitty horrible parents had sent her to a normal girls’ school in Sheffield, but though she had apparently ‘dropped out’, and appeared to be living here, her accusations against it did not lessen, and she tended to burst into tears, crying out that they didn’t know how lucky they were. Andrew had actually met Rose’s parents, who were both officials in the local council. ‘And what is wrong with them?’ Frances had enquired, hoping to hear well of them, because she wanted Rose to go, since she did not like the girl. (And why did she not tell Rose to leave? That would not have been in the spirit of the times.) ‘I am afraid they are just ordinary,’ replied Andrew, smiling. ‘They are conventional small-town people, and I do think they are a bit out of their depth with Rose.’

‘Ah,’ said Frances, seeing the possibility of Rose’s returning home recede. And there was something else here too. Had she not said of her parents that they were boring and conventional? Not that they were shitty fascists, but perhaps she would have described them thus had the epithets been as available to her as they were to Rose. How could she criticise the girl for wanting to leave parents who did not understand her?

Second helpings were already being piled on to plates – all except Andrew’s. He had hardly touched his food. Frances pretended not to notice.

Andrew was in trouble, but how bad it was hard to say.

He had done pretty well at Eton, had made friends, which she gathered was what they were meant to do, and was going to Cambridge next year. This year, he said, he was loafing. And he certainly was. He slept sometimes until four or five in the afternoon, looked ill, and concealed – what? – behind his charm, his social competence.

Frances knew he was unhappy – but it was not news that her sons were unhappy. Something should be done. It was Julia who came down to her layer of the house to say, ‘Frances, have you been inside Andrew’s room?’

‘I wouldn’t dare go into his room without asking.’

‘You are his mother, I believe.’

The gulfs between them illumined by this exchange caused Frances, as always, to stare helplessly at her mother-in-law. She did not know what to say. Julia, an immaculate figure, stood there like Judgement, waiting, and Frances felt herself to be a schoolgirl, wanting to shift from foot to foot.