The Sweetest Dream (27 page)

‘I don't want to hear about him,' said Sylvia. ‘He was never
a father to me. I hardly remember him.'

Her father was Comrade Alan Johnson, as famous as Comrade
Johnny. He had fought in the Spanish Civil War–he really had–and was wounded. He was described by Julia who had watched
his emergence into stardom as a ‘roving Eminence Rouge–like
Johnny'.

‘Johnny thinks I get more money than I do from Alan. I
haven't had a penny from him for over two years.'

‘I said, I don't want to know.'

They were sitting in a room almost bare of furniture, for
Johnny had taken nearly everything for his new life with Stella.
There was a small table, two chairs, an old settee.

‘I've had such a hard life,' Phyllida began, on such a familiar
note that Sylvia actually got up–no ruse, or tactic, this: she was
impelled away from her mother, by fear. She was already feeling
the beginning of the inner trembling that in the past had left her
helpless, limp, hysterical.

‘It's not my fault,' said Sylvia.

‘It's not
my
fault,' said Phyllida, in the heavy see-sawing voice
of her litany of complaint. ‘I've never done anything to deserve the
way I've been treated. She now noticed that Sylvia stood across the
room from her, as far as she could get, hand to her mouth and staring
over it at her as if afraid she was going to be sick.

‘I'm sorry,' she said. ‘Please don't go. Sit down, Tilly–Sylvia.'

The girl returned, pulled the chair well away, sat down, and
with a cold face, waited.

‘If I came to live in that flat I could manage. I'd ask Julia, but
I'm afraid of Frances, she'd say no. Please ask her for me.'

‘Can you blame her?' snapped Sylvia. People who knew
and loved the delightful creature who, as Julia said, ‘lights up this
old house like a little bird', would not recognise that adamant
face.

‘But it's not my fault . . .' Phyllida was off again, and then,
seeing that Sylvia had sprung up to go, said, ‘Oh, stop, stop. I'm
sorry.'

‘I can't stand it when you complain and accuse me,' said
Sylvia. ‘Don't you understand?
I can't bear it
, Mother.'

Phyllida tried to smile, and said, ‘I won't do it, I promise.'

‘Do you really promise? I want to finish my exams and be a
doctor. If you're in the house getting at me all the time, I'll simply
run away.
I can't bear it
.'

Phyllida was shocked by this vehemence. She sighed, and said,
‘Oh, dear, was I really so bad?'

‘Yes, you are. And even when I was tiny you were always
telling me it's all your fault, without you I'd be doing this or that.
Once you said you were going to make me put my head into the
gas oven, with you, and die.'

‘Did I? I expect I had good cause.'

‘
Mother
.' Sylvia got up. ‘I'm going. I'll talk to Julia and Frances.
But I'm not going to look after you. Don't expect me to. You'll
only get at me all the time.'

And so just as Frances had joyfully decided to give up
journalism and Aunt Vera for ever, and the serious sociological articles,
not to mention the odd bits of work she did with Rupert Boland,
Julia said that she was going to have to give Phyllida an allowance
and ‘generally look after her. She's not like you, Frances. She can't
look after herself. But I've told her she must be self-contained, and
not bother you.'

‘And, surely more important, not bother Sylvia.'

‘Sylvia says she believes she can cope with it.'

‘I do hope she can.'

‘But if I give Phyllida an allowance . . . can you do Andrew's
fees? Are you earning enough?'

‘Of course I am.' And so there went the theatre again. All
this had happened in the autumn of 1964, and so had this: Rose had
gone. She knew she had done well in her exams: she did not need
the results to tell her that. She came up at a time when Frances, Colin
and Andrew were together to say, ‘And now I've got super news.
I'm leaving. So you'll be rid of me now. I'm off for good. I'm going
to university.' And she ran off down the stairs. Suddenly she wasn't
around. They waited for her to ring, write–but nothing. The flat
had been left in a mess, clothes on the floor, bits of sandwich on a
chair, in the bathroom tights hanging up to dry. But that was the
general style of ‘the kids' and need not mean anything.

Frances rang Rose's parents. No, they had heard nothing. ‘She
says she is going to university.' ‘Did she now? Well, I expect she'll
enlighten us in her own good time.'

Should the police be told? But this did not seem appropriate
for Rose. Going to the police over Rose, Jill, and over Daniel
who had disappeared once for weeks, had always been discussed
at length and on the basis of principles suitable for the Sixties, and
had been rejected. The Fuzz, the Pigs, Old Bill, the upholders of
fascist tyranny (Britain) could not be approached. July . . . August
. . . Geoffrey had heard through the grapevine that then united
the young continent to continent that Rose was in Greece with
an American revolutionary.

In August Phyllida had made her appeal, and took up residence
in the downstairs flat. In September Rose had turned up, hitching
over her shoulder a great black sack, which she dumped on the
kitchen floor.

‘I'm back,' said Rose, ‘with all my worldly goods.'

‘I hope you had a good time,' said Frances.

‘Putrid,' said Rose. ‘The Greeks are shits. Well, I'll just get
fixed up downstairs.'

‘You can't. Why didn't you let us know? The flat's being
lived in.'

Rose subsided into a chair, for once shocked into
defencelessness. ‘But . . . why? . . . I said . . . it isn't fair!'

‘You told us that you were off. For good, we thought. And
you didn't try to get in touch and tell us what your plans were.'

‘But it's my flat.'

‘Rose, I'm sorry.'

‘I can doss down in the sitting-room.'

‘No, Rose, you can't.'

‘I've had my results. All As.'

‘Congratulations.'

‘I'm going to university. I'm going to the LSE.'

‘But have you actually done something about being accepted?'

‘Oh, shit.'

‘Your parents don't know anything about it.'

‘I see, there's a conspiracy against me.'

Rose sat in a heap, that pudgy little face for once showing
vulnerability. She was confronting–perhaps for the first time,
but certainly not the last–her real nature, which was bound to
land her in this kind of–‘Shit,' she said again. ‘Shit.' Then, ‘
I've
got four As
.'

‘My advice is to ask your parents if they'll pay. If so, go to
your school and ask them to put in a word for you, then ask the
LSE. But it's very late for this year.'

‘Fuck you all,' she said.

She got up, rather the way a shot bird labours up, picked up
her great black sack, dragged herself and it to the door, went out,
and there was a long silence from the hall. She was recovering
herself? She was having second thoughts? Then the front door
slammed. She did not go to the school, nor to her parents, but
was seen about in London in the clubs and at demonstrations and
political meetings.

No sooner was Phyllida installed than Jill arrived. It was a
weekend, and Andrew was there. Frances and he were eating
supper and they invited Jill to join them.

They did not ask what she had been doing. There were scars
on both wrists now, and she was unhealthily fat. She had been a
slim neat sleek blonde, but now she was too big for her clothes,
and her features were lumpy. They did not ask but she told them.
She had been in a psychiatric hospital, had run away, had gone
back voluntarily, where she found herself helping the nurses with
the other patients. She decided she was cured and they agreed.
‘Do you think you could get the school to take me back? If I can
just take my exams–I'm sure I could. I was even doing a bit of
study in the bin.'

Again Frances said that it was a bit late for that year. ‘If you
could just ask them?' said Jill, and Frances did, and an exception
was made for Jill, who was expected to pass her A-levels, if she
worked.

And where was she to live? They asked Phyllida if Jill could
have the room that Franklin had used, and Phyllida said, ‘Beggars
can't be choosers.'

No sooner was Jill in than Phyllida began on her accusations,
using her as a target. From the kitchen above they could hear the
heavy complaining swing of Phyllida's voice, and on and on, and
after only a day Jill had appealed to Sylvia, and the two girls had
gone together to Frances and Andrew.

‘No one could stand it,' said Sylvia. ‘Don't blame her.'

‘I'm not,' said Frances. ‘We're not,' said Andrew.

‘I could camp in the sitting-room,' said Jill.

‘You could use our bathroom,' said Andrew.

What had been impossible for Rose, was accepted for Jill, who
would not fill the centre of the house with thunderclouds of rage
and suspicion. And Julia said, ‘I knew it. I always knew it. And
now at last this beautiful house is a doss-house. I'm surprised it
didn't happen before.'

‘We hardly ever use the sitting-room,' said Andrew.

‘That isn't the point, Andrew.'

‘I know it isn't, Grandmother.'

And so that had been the situation, from the autumn of 1964,
Andrew coming and going from Cambridge, Jill, studying hard,
being responsible and good, Sylvia working so hard Julia wept
and said the girl would be ill, Colin sometimes at home and
sometimes not. Frances was working from home, and more and
more on attractive enterprises with Rupert Boland, and often
from the Cosmo. Phyllida was downstairs, behaving well, not
tormenting Sylvia, who kept well away from her.

In 1965 Jill made friends with her parents and went to the
LSE ‘to be with all my mates'. She said she would never forget
the kindness that had rescued her. ‘You rescued me,' she said
earnestly. ‘I'd have been done for, without you.' Thereafter
they heard about her from other people: she was in the thick of
all the new wave of politics and saw a lot of Johnny and his
comrades.

And so now it was the summer of 1968, and four years had
passed.

It was a weekend. Neither Andrew nor Sylvia had gone off
for a holiday, they were studying. Colin had come home and said
he was going to write a novel. Julia had said, not in his hearing,
though it had been reported to him: ‘Of course! The occupation
for failures!'–so that first requisite for beginning novelists,
discouragement from their nearest and dearest, had been provided,
though Frances was careful to be non-committal, and Andrew
whimsical.

Johnny telephoned to say he was going to drop in. ‘No, don't
bother to cook, we will have eaten.' This astounding bit of cheek
was, Frances decided–while her blood pressure shot up, and
subsided–probably merely Johnny's idea of being ingratiating.
Intriguing, that ‘they'. He could not mean Stella, who was in the
States. She had gone off to join in the great battles that would
end the worst of discrimination against black people in the South,
and had become known for her bravery and her organisational
skills. Threatened with the end of her visitor's visa, she had married
an American, ringing up Johnny to say it was only for form's sake,
he must understand it was her revolutionary duty. She would be
back when the battle had been won. Meanwhile, rumours flowing
from across the Atlantic said that this marriage for form's sake was
going along well, better than her sojourn with Johnny, which had
been a bit of a disaster. She was much younger than Johnny, at
first had been in awe of him, but had soon learned to see with
her own eyes. She had had plenty of time for reflection, because
she had found herself alone while he went to meetings and off
on delegations to comradely countries.

Johnny would have liked to join the big American battles, he
yearned after them like a child not invited to a party, but he could
not get a visa. He allowed it to be understood that was because
of his Spanish Civil War record. But soon there was France, and
he was on each battlefront as it came into the news. But the events
of '68 were in fact chastening for him. Everywhere were new
young heroes, and their bibles were new ones too. Johnny had
had to do a lot of reading.

He was not the only Old Guard who found himself returning
to refresh himself at the pages of the
Communist Manifesto
. ‘Now
that's
revolutionary writing,' he might murmur.

In France every hero had a group of girls who served him,
they were all sleeping together, because of the new plank in the
revolutionary platform–sexual freedom. There were no girls
courting Johnny. He was seen not only as English, but as elderly.
Nineteen sixty-eight, which would be remembered by hundreds
of thousands of politicos who had taken part in the street fighting,
the confrontations with the police, the stone-throwing, the
running battles, the building of barricades, the sexual free-for-all, as
the glittering peak of their youthful achievements, was not a year
that Johnny was going to enjoy thinking about.

Seeing that Stella had no intention of coming back to him,
he had returned to the flat vacated by Phyllida, which became a
kind of commune, home for revolutionaries from everywhere,
some dodging the Vietnam War, many from South America, and
he usually had African politicians staying with him.

When Johnny arrived, the kitchen at once seemed over-full,
and the three sitting at the table eating their supper felt themselves
as dull and lacking in colour, for the newcomers were elated and
full of vigour, having just come from a meeting. Comrade Mo
and Johnny were enjoying a joke, and now Comrade Mo said to
Frances, embracing her, ‘Danny Cohn-Bendit has said that we
won't have socialism until the last capitalist has been hanged with
the guts of the last bureaucrat.'