The Sweetest Dream (20 page)

Rose was in the basement and announced that she was going
to stick it out at school. No one believed her and they were
wrong. In fact she was clever, knew it, and was determined ‘to
show them'. Show who? Frances would have to be first on that
list, but it was all of them really. ‘I'll show them,' she muttered,
and it was like a mantra repeated when it was time for homework,
and when the school's progressiveness seemed less than she had
hoped, as when she was asked please not to smoke in class.

Sylvia's determination to do well at school was not only for
Julia, but for Andrew too, who continued to be elder-brotherly,
affectionate, and kind: when he was there, and not at Cambridge.

 • • •

Financial problems . . . when Frances had come to this house the
arrangement was that Julia would pay the rates for the whole
house, but Frances would be responsible for the rest: gas,
electricity, water, telephones. Also for Mrs Philby, and the auxiliary
she brought in to help her when ‘the kids' got too much. ‘Kids?
Pigs, more like it.' Frances also bought food, generally supplied
the house with what it needed, and, in short, needed a lot of
money. She was earning it. The bill for Cambridge had arrived
weeks before, and Julia had paid: she said that Andrew's year off
from education had been a great help. The school bill for Sylvia
was paid, by Julia. Then came Colin's bill, and Frances took it
up to the little table on the landing at the top of the house where
Julia's mail was put, with considerable foreboding, which was
confirmed when Julia came down with the St Joseph's bill in her
hand. Julia was nervous too. Since the barriers between the women
had gone down, Julia had been more affectionate with Frances,
but also more testy and critical.

‘Do sit down, Julia.'

Julia sat, first removing a pair of Frances's tights.

‘Oh, sorry,' said Frances, and Julia accepted the apology with
a tight little smile.

‘What is all this about Colin and psychoanalysis?'

This is what Frances had dreaded: conversations had already
taken place between the school and herself and between Colin
and herself, and Sophie, too, had been involved. ‘Oh,
lovely
, Colin,
that'd be so
good
.'

‘It was described to me by the headmaster as Colin having
someone to talk to.'

‘They can call it what they like. It would cost thousands,
thousands, every year.'

‘Look, Julia, I know you don't approve of any of these psycho
things. But have you thought, he'll have a man to talk to. Well,
I hope it's a man. This is such a female house, and Johnny . . .'

‘He has a brother, he has Andrew.'

‘But they don't get on.'

‘Get on? What's that?' And now there was a pause, while Julia
stretched out and then clenched the fingers that lay on her knees.
‘My older brothers, they quarrelled sometimes. It is normal for
brothers to quarrel.'

Now, Frances did know that Julia had had brothers, and that
they had been killed in that old war. Julia's painfully working
fingers brought them into this room, Julia's past . . . dead brothers.
Julia's eyes had tears in them, Frances could swear, though she
sat with her back to the light.

‘I said yes to Colin talking to someone because . . . he's very
unhappy, Julia.'

Frances was still not sure whether Colin would say yes. What
he had actually said was, ‘Yes, I know, Sam told me.' The
headmaster. ‘I said to him it's my father who should be analysed.'
‘That would be the day,' Frances had said. He said, ‘Yes, and why
not you? I am sure you could do with a good talking to.' ‘Talking
with
.' ‘I don't see that I'm madder than anyone else.' ‘I'd agree
with that.'

Now Julia got up and said, ‘I think that there are some things
we are not likely to agree on. But that is not what I came to say.
Even without the stupid analysis I can't pay for Colin. I thought
he would be leaving school now, and then I hear he's going on
for another year.'

‘He agreed to try for the exams again.'

‘But I cannot pay for him and for Andrew, and for Sylvia too.
I will see them both through university until they are independent.
But Colin–I am not able to do it. And you are earning money
now, I hope it will be enough.'

‘Don't worry, Julia. I'm so sorry all this has fallen on you.'

‘And I suppose it is no use asking Johnny. He must have
money, he's always on some trip somewhere.'

‘He gets paid for.'

‘Why is that? Why do they pay for him?'

‘Oh, Comrade Johnny, you know. He's a bit of a star, Julia.'

‘He's a fool,' said Johnny's mother. ‘Why is that? I do not
think I am a fool. And his father was certainly not a fool. But
Johnny is an idiot.' Julia stood by the door, giving an expert glance
around the room which had once been her own private little
sitting-room. She knew Frances did not care for this furniture–such good furniture; nor the curtains, which would last another
fifty years, if properly looked after. Julia suspected the curtains
harboured dust and probably moths. The old carpet, which had
come from the house in Germany, was threadbare in patches.

‘And I suppose you are going to defend Johnny, you always
do.'

‘I defend him? When have I ever
ever
defended his politics?'

‘His politics! That's not politics, that's such–stupidity.'

‘The politics of half the world, Julia.'

‘It's still stupidity. Well, Frances, I do not like to see you more
worried, with so much on your back, but I cannot help it. If you
really are unable to pay for Colin then we could mortgage the
house.'

‘
No
, no, no . . . absolutely
not
.'

‘Well, tell me if there are difficulties.' She went out.

There would be difficulties. Colin's school was very expensive,
and he had agreed to do the full year. He was too old, nearly
nineteen, and that was an embarrassment. The bill for the
Maystock Clinic, the ‘talking to'–it would be thousands. She would
have to find more work. She would ask for a rise. She knew her
articles had raised the circulation of
The Defender
. She could write
for other newspapers, but under another name. These problems
had been discussed with, of all people, Rupert Boland, in the
Cosmo. He had financial problems too, unspecified. He would
have liked to leave
The Defender
, which he claimed was no place
for a man, but he was paid well. He was earning extra by doing
research for television and radio: she could too. Even so, she
would need more, she would need a lot. Johnny: she could perhaps
ask him again? Julia was right, he lived the life of a–today's
equivalent of a rajah, he went on delegations and good-will
missions, always in the best hotels, all expenses paid, conveying
comradely greetings from one part of the world to another. He
must be getting money from somewhere: who was paying his
rent? He didn't actually work, ever.

With that autumn began a bizarre situation. Colin came up
by train twice a week from St Joseph's to go to the Maystock
Clinic, where he had appointments with a Doctor David. A man:
Frances was delighted. Colin would have a man to talk to, a man
outside his family situation. (‘If that's what he needs,' said Julia,
‘why not Wilhelm? He likes Colin.' ‘But Julia, don't you see,
he's too close, he's part of our world.' ‘No, I don't see.') The
trouble was that pursuing some psychoanalytic theory or other,
Doctor David did not speak at all. He said good afternoon, sat
himself in his chair, after a brisk handshake, and thereafter spoke
not one word for the whole hour. Not a word. ‘He just smiles,'
reported Colin. ‘I say something and he smiles. And then he says,
The time is up, I'll see you on Thursday.'

Colin came straight home after the Maystock, and to wherever
his mother was in the house. There he addressed to her all that
he had not been able to say to Doctor David. It came pouring
out, the complaints, the miseries, the angers that Frances had
hoped he was at last able to unload on to the professional shoulders
of Doctor David. Who only sat silent, so Colin sat silent, frustrated
and angry. He shouted at his mother that Doctor David was
torturing him, and it was all the school's fault for making him go
to the Maystock Clinic. And it was her fault he was in such a
mess. Why had she married Johnny?–he shouted at her. That
communist, everyone knew about communism but she had
married him, Johnny was just a fascist commissar, and she, Frances,
had married him and all that shit was landed on him and on
Andrew. So he shouted, as he stood in the middle of her room,
but it was at Doctor David he was shouting, because it was all
pent up in him, it had to come out somewhere. All the way up
to London in the little slow train, he rehearsed his accusations of
life, his father, his mother, to tell Doctor David, but Doctor David
only smiled. And so it had to come bursting out, and it was
focused on his mother. And look, he shouted, on visit after visit,
look at this house, full of people who have no right to be here.
Why was Sylvia here? She wasn't their family. She took
everything, they all took everything and Geoffrey had been leeching
off them for years. Had Frances ever actually worked out what
had been spent on Geoffrey over the years? They could have
bought another house the size of Julia's with it. Why had Geoffrey
always been here? Everyone said Geoffrey was his friend, but he
had never liked Geoffrey much, the school had decided Geoffrey
was his friend, Sam had decided they were complementary, in
other words they didn't have a fucking thing in common, but it
would be good for them, well it hadn't been good for him, Colin,
and Frances connived with the school, she always had, sometimes
he thought Geoffrey was more Frances's son than he was, and
look at Andrew, he had lain on his bed for a whole year and
smoked pot, and did Frances know, he had tried cocaine, well,
she didn't know that? If not, why not? Frances never knew about
anything, she just let everything go on, and how about Rose,
what was Rose doing in this house at all, living at our expense,
taking everything, he didn't want Rose here, he hated Rose, did
Frances know that no one liked Rose, yet here she was downstairs
and she had taken over the flat and if anyone else even put their
heads around the door she shouted at them to get out. It was all
Frances's fault, sometimes he thought he was the only sane person
in the house, but it was he who had to go to the Maystock to
be tortured by Doctor David.

Listening to Colin, as he stood and orated, taking his heavy
black-rimmed glasses off, putting them back on, waving his hands
about, stamping around, she was hearing what no human being
should ever have to hear–another person's uncensored thoughts.
(No one except Doctor David and his ilk, that is.) They were
thoughts not dissimilar probably to many people's, when hot and
lava-like. Just as well people were not able to hear what people
thought of them, as she now had to, with Colin. The tirade of
misery went on for an hour, the time he would have spent with
Doctor David. Then he would say, in a quite friendly, normal
voice, ‘Now I have to go and catch my train.' Or, ‘I'll stay the
night and catch the first train in the morning.' And the Colin she
knew was back, even smiling, though in a puzzled, frustrated sort
of way. He must be absolutely exhausted after that outpouring.

‘You don't have to go to the Maystock,' she reminded him.
‘You can say no. Do you want me to tell them you've decided
not to?'

But Colin did not want to stop coming to London twice a
week, to the Maystock Clinic, to
her
, she knew, because without
the frustration of the hour with the analyst he would not be able
to shout and rave at her, to say what he had been thinking so
long but had not said, never been able to let out.

After an hour of being shouted at, Frances was so tired that
she went off to bed, or sat slumped in a chair. One evening,
sitting there in the dark, Julia knocked, opened the door, saw the
room was dark, and then that Frances was there. Julia turned on
the light. She had heard Colin shouting at his mother, and had
been disturbed by it but that was not what had brought her down.

‘Did you know that Sylvia has not come home?'

‘It's only ten o'clock.'

‘May I sit down?' And Julia sat, her hands demolishing the
little handkerchief in her lap. ‘She's too young to be out so late,
with a bad crowd of people.'

Sylvia sometimes after school went to a certain flat in Camden
Town where Jake and his cronies were most afternoons and
evenings. They were all fortune tellers, one or two professionally,
or wrote horoscopes for newspapers, were initiates of rites, mostly
invented by themselves, went in for table-turning, evoked spirits,
and drank mysterious substances called Soul Balm, or Mind Mix,
or Essence of Truth–usually not much more than herbal blends,
or spices, and generally lived in a world of meaning and
significance far removed from most people's. Sylvia was a great success
with them. She was their pet, the neophyte those possessed with
knowledge yearn for, and she was duly entrusted with secrets of
higher meaning. She liked these people because they liked her,
and she was always welcome. She never behaved irresponsibly,
always telephoned to say she would be back later than usual, and
if she stayed with them longer than she had said, telephoned Julia
again.

‘If you must be with such people, Sylvia, what can I say?'

Frances did not like it, but knew the girl would grow out of
it.