The Sweetest Dream (16 page)

‘Now that sounds familiar.'

‘What sort of guarantee can you give me that I won't have
these girls up in front of me in a week or so?'

‘I can't,' said Frances. ‘No guarantee. Both are quarrelling
with parents and they've landed on me. Both are school drop-outs,
but I expect they will go back.'

‘I understand. A friend of my son's–a schoolfriend–is with
us more often than he goes home.'

‘Does he say his parents are shits?'

‘They don't understand him, he says. But I don't either. Tell
me, did you have to do a lot of research for your article?'

‘A good bit.'

‘But you didn't provide any answers.'

‘I don't know the answers. Can you tell me why a girl–I'm referring to the dark girl out there, Rose Trimble–who has
just had all her difficulties sorted out, should choose just
that moment to do something she knows might spoil
everything?'

‘I call it brink-walking,' said Mrs Kent. ‘They like to test
limits. They walk out on a tightrope but hope someone'll catch
them. And you are catching them, aren't you?'

‘I suppose so.'

‘You'd be surprised how often I hear the same story.'

The two women stood close together at the window, linked
by a sort of despair.

‘I wish I knew what was going on,' said Mrs Kent.

‘Don't we all.'

They went back into the office where the girls, who had been
giggling and laughing at the older women's expense, resumed
their silence and their sulky looks.

Mrs Kent said, ‘I'm going to give you another chance. Mrs
Lennox says she will help you. But in fact I am exceeding my
brief; I hope you both understand that you have had a very narrow
escape. You are both fortunate girls, to have a friend in Mrs
Lennox.' This last remark was a mistake, though Mrs Kent could
not know that. Frances could positively hear the seethe of
resentment in the girls, in Rose at least, that they could owe anyone
anything.

Outside the building, on the pavement, they said they would
go off shopping.

‘If I told you not to shoplift,' said Frances, ‘would you take
any notice?'

But they went off without looking at her.

That night they announced at supper that they had nicked the
two Biba, or Biba-type dresses they were wearing, both so short
they could only have been chosen with the intention of inviting
shock or criticism.

And Sylvia did say she thought they were too short, in an
effort that cost her a good deal to assert herself.

‘Too short for what?' jeered Rose. She had not looked at
Frances once, all evening, and this morning's crisis might never
have happened. Jill, though, did say in a hurried mutter that
combined politeness with aggression, ‘Thanks, Frances, thanks a
million.'

Andrew told the girls they were bloody lucky to have got off,
and Geoffrey, the accomplished shoplifter, told them it was easy
not to get caught if you were careful.

‘You can't be careful on the Underground,' said Daniel, who
did not buy tickets, in emulation of his idol, Geoffrey. ‘It's luck.
You either get caught or you don't.'

‘Then don't travel on the Underground without a ticket,' said
Geoffrey. ‘Not more than twice. It's stupid.'

Daniel, publicly criticised by Geoffrey, went red and said he
had travelled ‘for years' without a ticket and had only been caught
twice.

‘And the third time?' said Geoffrey, instructing him.

‘Third time unlucky,' chorused the company.

That was the week that Jill allowed herself to get pregnant,
no, invited it.

All these dramas had played themselves out in the four months
since Christmas and, as if nothing had happened, here were the
protagonists, here were the boys and girls, sitting around the table
on that spring evening making plans for the summer.

Geoffrey said he would go to the States and join the fighters
for racial equality ‘on the barricades'. A useful experience for
Politics and Economics at the LSE.

Andrew said he would stay here and read.

‘Not
The Ordeal of Richard Feverel
,' said Rose. ‘What crap.'

‘That too,' said Andrew.

Sylvia, invited to go with Jill to her cousins in Exeter (‘It's a
groovy place, they've got horses') said no, she would stay here
and read too. ‘Julia says I should read more. I did read some of
Johnny's books. You'd never believe it, but until I got to this
house I didn't know there were books that weren't about politics.'
This meant, as everyone knew, that Sylvia could not leave Julia:
she felt too frail to stand on her own.

Colin said he might go and pick grapes in France, or perhaps
try his hand at a novel: at this there was a general groan.

‘Why shouldn't he write a novel?' said Sophie, who always
stuck up for Colin because he had hurt her so terribly.

‘Perhaps I shall write a novel about St Joseph's,' said Colin.
‘I shall put us all in.'

‘That isn't fair,' said Rose at once. ‘You can't put me in
because I'm not at St Joseph's.'

‘How very true that is,' said Andrew.

‘Or perhaps I could write a novel all about you,' said Colin.
“‘The Ordeals of a Rose.” How about that?'

Rose stared at him, then, suspiciously around. They all stared
solemnly at her. Baiting Rose had become a far too frequent sport,
and Frances tried to defuse the moment, which threatened tears,
by asking, ‘And what are your plans, Rose?'

‘I'll go and stay with Jill's cousin. Or I might hitchhike in
Devon. Or I might stay here,' she added, facing Frances with a
challenge. She knew Frances would be pleased to have her
gone, but did not believe this was because of any unpleasant
qualities in herself. She did not know she was unlikeable. She
was usually disliked, and thought that this was because of the
general unfairness of the world: not that she would have used
the word
dislike
or even have thought it: people picked on her,
they put their shit on her. People who are kind or
good-looking or charming or all three; people who trust others, never
have any idea of the little hells inhabited by someone like
Rose.

James said he was going to a summer camp, recommended
by Johnny, to study the senescence of capitalism and the inner
contradictions of imperialism.

Daniel said forlornly that he supposed he would have to go
home, and Geoffrey said kindly, ‘Never mind, the summer won't
be for ever.'

‘Yes, it will,' said Daniel, his face flaming with misery.

Roland Shattock said he was going to take Sophie on a walking
tour in Cornwall. Noting signs of misgiving on certain faces–Frances's, Andrew's–he said, ‘Oh, don't panic, she'll be safe with
me, I think I'm gay.'

This announcement which now would be met by nothing
much more than, ‘Really?', or perhaps sighs from the women,
was too casual then to be tactful, and there was general
discomfort.

Sophie at once cried out that she didn't care about that, she
just liked being with Roland. Andrew looked gracefully rueful,
and could almost be heard thinking that
he
wasn't queer.

‘Oh, well, perhaps I'm not,' amended Roland. ‘After all,
Sophie, I'm crazy about you. But have no fear, Frances, I'm not
one to abduct minors.'

‘I'm nearly sixteen,' said Sophie indignantly.

‘I thought you were much older when I saw you dreaming
so beautifully in the park.'

‘I am much older,' said Sophie, truthfully: she meant her
mother's illness, her father's death, and then Colin's ill-treatment
of her.

‘Beautiful dreamer,' said Roland, kissing her hand, but in a
parody of the continental hand kiss that salutes the air above a
glove, or, as in this case, knuckles ever so slightly odorous from
the chicken stew she had been stirring, to help Frances. ‘But if I
do go to prison, it will have been worth it.'

As for Frances, she expected peaceful and productive weeks.

 • • •

The incendiary letter came addressed to ‘J . . . indecipherable . . .
Lennox', and was opened by Julia, who, having seen it was for
Johnny,
Dear Comrade Johnny Lennox
, and that the first sentence
was, ‘
I want you to help me open people's eyes to the truth
', read it,
then again, and, having let her thoughts settle, telephoned her
son.

‘I have a letter here from Israel, a man called Reuben Sachs,
for you.'

‘A good type,' said Johnny. ‘He has maintained a consistently
progressive position as a non-aligned Marxist, advocating peaceful
relations with the Soviet Union.'

‘However that is, he wants you to call a gathering of your
friends and comrades to hear him speak about his experiences in
a Czech prison.'

‘There must have been a good reason for him to be there.'

‘He was arrested as a Zionist spy for American imperialism.'
Johnny was silent. ‘He was inside for four years, tortured and
brutally treated and finally released . . . I would take it as a favour
if you did not say,
Unfortunately mistakes have sometimes been made
.'

‘What do you want, Mutti?'

‘I think you should do as he asks. He says he would like to
open people's eyes to the truth about the methods used by the
Soviet Union. Please do not say that he is some kind of
provocateur.'

‘I am afraid I don't see why it would be useful.'

‘In that case I shall call a meeting myself. After all, Johnny, I
am in the happy position of knowing who your associates are.'

‘Why do you think they would come to a meeting called by
you, Mutti?'

‘I shall send everyone a copy of his letter. Shall I read it to
you?'

‘No, I know the kind of lies that are being spread.'

‘He will be here in two weeks' time, and he is coming to
London just for that–to address the comrades. He is also going
to Paris. Shall I suggest a date?'

‘If you like.'

‘But it must be one convenient for you. I don't think he
would be pleased if you didn't attend.'

‘I'll telephone you with a date. But I must make it clear that
I shall disassociate myself from any anti-Soviet propaganda.'

On the evening in question the big sitting-room received an
unusual collection of guests. Johnny had invited colleagues and
comrades, and Julia had asked people that she thought Johnny
should have invited, but had not. There were people still in the
Party, some who had left over various crisis points–the Hitler–Stalin Pact, the Berlin Rising, Prague, Hungary, even one or two
who went back to the attack on Finland. About fifty people; and
the room was crammed tight with chairs, and people standing
around the walls. All described themselves as Marxists.

Andrew and Colin were present, having first complained that
it was all so boring. ‘Why are you doing this?' Colin asked his
grandmother. ‘It's not your kind of thing, is it?'

‘I am hoping, though I am probably just a foolish old woman,
that Johnny might be made to see some sense.'

The St Joseph's contingent were taking exams. James had left
for America. The girls downstairs had made a point of going to
a disco: politics were just shit.

Reuben Sachs had supper with Julia, alone: Frances could have
agreed with the girls, and even their choice of language. He was
a round little man, desperate, and earnest and could not stop
talking about what had happened to him, and the meeting, when
it began, was only a continuation of what he had been telling
Julia, who having informed him that she had never been a
communist and did not need his persuasions, kept quiet, since it was
evident that what he needed was to talk while she–or anyone
at all–listened.

He had maintained for years a difficult political position in
Israel, as a socialist, but rejecting communism and asking that the
non-aligned socialists of the world should support peaceful
relations with the Soviet Union: this meant that they would
necessarily be in an unhappy situation with their own governments.
He had been reviled as a communist throughout the Cold War.
His temperament was not suited by nature to being permanently
out on a limb, being shot at from all sides. This could be seen by
his agitated, fervent discourses, his pleading and angry eyes, while
the words that repeated themselves like a refrain were, ‘I have
never compromised with my beliefs.'

He had been on a fraternal visit to Prague, on a Peace and
Goodwill Mission, when he had been arrested as a Cosmopolitan
Zionist spy for American Imperialism. In the police car he
addressed his captors thus, ‘How can you, representatives of a
Workers' State, sully your hands with such work as this?' and
when they hit him and went on hitting him, he continued to use
these words. As he did in prison. The warders were brutes, and
the interrogators too, but he continued to address them as civilised
beings. He knew six languages, but they insisted on interrogating
him in a language he did not know, Romanian, which meant that
at first he did not know what he was being accused of, which
was every sort of anti-Soviet and anti-Czech activity. But: ‘I am
good at languages, I have to explain. . .' He learned enough
Romanian during the interrogation to follow, and then to argue
his case. For days, months, years, he was beaten up, reviled, kept
for long periods without food, kept without sleep–tortured in
all the ways beloved by sadists. For four years. And he went on
insisting on his innocence, and explained to his interrogators and
his jailers that in doing this kind of work they were dirtying the
honour of the people, of the Workers' State. It took a long time
for him to realise that his case was not unique, and that the prison
was full of people like him, who tapped out messages on the walls
to say they were as surprised to find themselves in prison as he
was. They also explained that, ‘Idealism is not appropriate in these
circumstances, comrade.' The scales fell from his eyes, as he said.
Just about the time he stopped appealing to the better natures and
class situation of his tormentors, having lost faith in the long-term
possibilities of the Soviet Revolution, he was released in one of
the new dawns in the Soviet Empire. And found he was still a
man with a mission, but now it was to open the eyes of the
comrades who were still deluded about the nature of communism.