The Sweetest Dream (6 page)

She supposed she should go and see her daughter-in-law, put
it off, and when she reached the address Johnny had provided,
found Frances gone. It was a dreary street that had a house sagging
to its knees in ruins, because of a bomb. Julia was glad she did
not have to enter any house there, but she was directed to another
that seemed even worse. It was in Notting Hill; she was let in by
a slatternly woman who did not smile, and she was told to knock
on that door there, the one with the cracked skylight.

She knocked, and an irritated voice called, ‘Wait a minute,
okay, come in.' The room was large, badly lit, and the windows
were dirty. Faded green sateen curtains and frayed rugs. In the
greenish half-dark sat a large young woman, her unstockinged
legs apart, and her baby sprawled across her chest. She held a book
in her hand, above the baby's head; a rhythmically working little
head, the spread-out hands opening and shutting on naked flesh.
The exposed breast, large and lolling, exuded milk in sympathy.

Julia's first thought was that she had come to the wrong house,
because this young woman could not be the one in the
photograph. While she stood there forcing herself to admit that she was
indeed looking at Frances, Jolyon Meredith Wilhelm's wife, the
young woman said, ‘Do sit down.' She sounded as if having to
say this, even to contemplate Julia's being there, was the last straw.
She frowned as she eased her breast out of a discomfort, the baby's
mouth popped off the nipple, and milky liquid ran down over
the breast to a sagging waist. Frances eased the nipple back, the
infant let out a choking cry and then fastened itself again on the
nipple with a little shaking movement of its head Julia had
observed in puppies ranged along the teats of a nursing bitch, her
little pet dachshund, from long ago. Frances put a piece of cloth
Julia could swear was a nappy over the resting breast.

The women stared at each other, with dislike.

Julia did not sit. There was a chair, but the seat was suspiciously
stained. She could sit on the bed, which was unmade, but did
not care to. She said, ‘Johnny wrote to ask me to find out how
you are.'

The cool, light, almost drawling voice, modulated according
to some measure or scale known only to Julia, caused the young
woman to stare again, and then she laughed.

‘I am as you see, Julia,' said Frances.

Julia was filling with panic. She thought this place horrible, a
lower depth of squalor. The house she and Philip had found
Johnny in at the time of the Spanish Civil War misadventure had
been a poor one, thin-walled, temporary in feel, but it had been
clean, and Mary the landlady was a decent sort of woman. In this
place Julia felt trapped in a nightmare. That shameless young
woman half-naked there, with her great oozing breasts, the baby's
noisy sucking, a faint smell of sick, or of nappies . . . Julia felt that
Frances was forcing her, most brutally, to look directly at an
unclean unseemly fount of life that she had never had to
acknowledge. Her own baby had been presented to her as a well-washed
bundle after he had been fed by the nurse. Julia had refused to
breastfeed; too near the animal, she felt, but did not dare say.
Doctors and nurses had tactfully agreed that she was not able to
nurse . . . her health . . . Julia had often played with the little boy
who arrived in the drawing-room with toys, and she actually sat
on the floor with him, and enjoyed a play hour, measured by the
nanny to the minute. She remembered the smell of soap, and
baby powder. She remembered sniffing at Jolyon's little head with
such pleasure . . .

Frances was thinking, It's unbelievable.
She
is unbelievable,
and derision was in danger of making her burst out in raucous
laughter.

Julia stood there in the middle of the room, in her neat wool
crêpe grey suit, that had not a wrinkle, not a bulge. It was buttoned
up to her throat where a silk scarf provided a hint of mauve. Her
hands were in dove-grey kid gloves, and even though thoroughly
protected from the unwashed surfaces around her, were making
anxious little movements of rejection, and fussy disapproval. Her
shoes were like shiny blackbirds, with brass buckles that seemed
to Frances to be locks, as if making sure those feet couldn't fly
off, or even to begin to try out a few prim dance steps. Her grey
hat was fenced with a little net veil that did not conceal her
horrified eyes, and it, too, was caught with a metal buckle. She
was a woman in a cage, and to Frances, under such pressures of
loneliness, poverty, anxiety, her appearance in that room, which
she loathed, and wished only to escape from, was like a deliberate
taunting, an insult.

‘What am I to tell Jolyon?'

‘Who?–oh, yes. But . . .' And now Frances energetically sat
herself up, one hand cupping the baby's head, the other holding
the cloth over her exposed breast. ‘Don't tell me Johnny asked
you to come here?'

‘Well, yes, he did.'

Now the two women shared a moment: it was incredulity,
and their eyes actually did engage, in a query. When Julia had
read the letter which commanded her to visit his wife, she said
to Philip, ‘But I thought he hated us? If we weren't good enough
to see him married, then why is he ordering me to visit Frances?'

Philip replied, dry enough, but remote too, because as always
he was absorbed in his duties with the war, ‘I see that you are
expecting consistency. Usually a mistake, in my view.'

As for Frances, she had never heard Johnny refer to his parents
as anything other than fascists, exploiters, at the best reactionaries.
Then how could he be . . .

‘Frances, I would like very much to help you with some
money.' An envelope appeared from her handbag.

‘Oh, no, I am sure Johnny wouldn't like that. He'd never
take money from . . .'

‘I think you'll find that he can and he will.'

‘Oh, no, no, Julia, please not.'

‘Very well then, goodbye.'

Julia did not set eyes on Frances again until after Johnny had
returned from the war, and Philip, who was by then ill and would
shortly die, said he was worried about Frances and the children.
Her memories of that visit caused Julia to protest that she was
sure Frances did not want to see her, but Philip said, ‘Please, Julia.
To set my mind at rest.'

Julia went to the flat in Notting Hill, which she was convinced
had been chosen because of the area's seediness and ugliness. There
were two children now. The one she had seen before, Andrew,
was a noisy and energetic toddler, and there was a baby, Colin.
Again, Frances was breastfeeding. She was large, shapeless,
slatternly, and the flat, Julia was convinced, was a health hazard. On
the wall was a food safe, and in it could be glimpsed a bottle of
milk and some cheese. The wire net of the safe had been painted,
the paint had clogged: air therefore could not circulate properly.
Babies' clothes were strung on fragile wooden contraptions that
seemed about to collapse. No, Frances said, in a voice cold with
hostility and criticism. No, she didn't want any money, no, thank
you.

Julia stood there unconsciously all appeal, hands a-flutter, eyes
full of tears.

‘But, Frances, think of the children.'

It was as if Julia had deliberately touched an already sore place
with acid. Oh, yes, Frances thought often enough of how her
own parents, let alone Johnny's, must see her and how she lived,
with the children. She said in a voice stiff with anger, ‘It seems
to me that I never think of anything else but the children.' Her
tone said,
How dare you!

‘Please let me help you, please–Johnny's always so
wrong-headed, he always has been, and it's not fair on the children.'

The trouble was, by now Frances agreed unreservedly about
Johnny's wrong-headedness. Any shreds of illusion had dissolved
away, leaving a residue of unresolvable exasperation about him,
the comrades, the Revolution, Stalin, Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and
all. But what was in question here was not Johnny, it was herself,
a small, threatened sense of identity and of independence. That
was why Julia's
Think of the children
went home like a poisoned
bullet. What right did she, Frances, have to fight for her
independence, her own self at the cost of . . . but they were not suffering,
they were not. She knew they were not.

Julia went away, reported back to Philip, and tried not to
think of those rooms in Notting Hill.

Later, when Julia heard that Frances had gone to work in a
theatre, Julia thought, A theatre! Of course, it would be! Then
Frances was acting and Julia thought, Is she acting servants' parts
then?

She went to the theatre, sat well back where she could not
be seen, she hoped, and watched Frances in a small part in a quite
nice little comedy. Frances was thinner, though still solid, and her
fair hair was in frilly waves. She was a hotel owner, in Brighton.
Julia could not see anything of that pre-war giggler in her tight
uniform, but still, she was doing the part well enough, and Julia
felt encouraged. Frances knew that Julia had been to watch her,
because it was a small theatre, and Julia was wearing one of
her inimitable hats, with a veil, and her gloved hands were on
her lap. Not another woman in the audience wore a hat. Those
gloves, oh those gloves, what a laugh.

All through the war, particularly at bad moments, Philip had
kept the memory of a certain little glove, in Swiss muslin, and
those dots, white on white, and the tiny frill at the wrist, seemed
to him a delicious frivolity, laughing at itself, and a promise that
civilisation would return.

Soon Philip died of a heart attack, and Julia was not surprised.
The war had been hard on him. He had worked to all hours and
brought home work at nights. She knew he had been involved
in all kinds of daring and dangerous ventures, and that he grieved
for men he had sent into danger, sometimes to their deaths. He
had become an old man, during the war. And, like her, this war
was forcing him to relive the last one: she knew this, from the
small dry remarks he did allow himself to drop. These two people,
who had been so fatally in love, had lived always in patient
tenderness, as if they had decided to protect their memories, like a bruise,
from any harsh touch, refusing ever to look too closely at them.

Now there was Julia alone in the big house, and Johnny came
and said he wanted the house, and she should move out into a
flat. For the first time in her life Julia stood her ground and said
No. She was going to live here, and she did not expect Johnny
or anyone else to understand her. Her own home, the von Arne
house, had been lost. Her young brother had been killed in the
Second World War. The house had been sold and the proceeds
had come to her. This house, where she had been so reluctant to
live, was now her home, the only link with that Julia who had a
home, who expected to have one, who was defined by a place,
with memories. She was Julia Lennox, and this was her home.

‘You are selfish and greedy, like all your class,' said Johnny.

‘You and Frances may come and live here, but I shall be here.'

‘Thank you so much, Mutti, but we shall decline.'

‘Why Mutti? You never called me that when you were a
child.'

‘Are you trying to conceal the fact that you are a German,
Mutti?'

‘No, I don't think I am doing that.'

‘I do. Hypocritical. It's what we expect from people like you.'

He was really furious. His father had not left him anything,
it had all gone to Julia. He had planned to live in this house and
to fill it with comrades needing a home. Everyone was poor,
living from hand to mouth, after the war, and he was subsisting
on the proceeds of work for the Party, some of it illegal. He had
been furious with Frances for refusing to accept an allowance from
Julia. When Frances had said, ‘But, Johnny, I don't understand,
how can you want to take money from the class enemy?' Johnny
had hit her, for the only time in their lives. She hit him back,
harder. She had not meant her question as a taunt or a criticism,
she genuinely wanted to have it explained to her.

Julia was well off, but not rich. Paying for the two lots of
school fees, Andrew's and Colin's, was within her scope, but if
Frances had not agreed to move in, she had planned to let part
of the house. Now she was economising in ways that would have
made Frances laugh, if she had known. Julia did not buy new
clothes. She dismissed the housekeeper who had been living in
the basement, depended on a woman who came in twice a week,
and did a good bit of her own housework. (This woman, Mrs
Philby, had to be coaxed and flattered and given presents to go
on working when Frances and her ill-bred ways arrived.) She no
longer bought food at Fortnum's, but she discovered now, when
Philip was dead, that her own tastes were frugal, and that the
standards required of a wife married to a Foreign Office official
had never really been hers.

When Frances arrived, to take over all the house except for
Julia's top floor, it was a relief to Julia. She still did not like
Frances, who seemed determined to shock her, but she loved the
boys, and intended to shield them from their parents. In fact, they
were afraid of her, at least to start with, but she never found this
out. She thought Frances was keeping her from them, did not
know that Frances urged them to visit their grandmother. ‘Please,
she's so good to us. And she'd love it if you did.' ‘Oh,
no
, it's
too
much, do we have to?'

 • • •

Frances visited the newspaper to establish her job, and she knew
how right she had been to prefer the theatre. As a freelance she
had had little experience of institutions, and did not look forward
to a communal working life. As soon as she set foot in the building
that housed
The Defender
, she recognised there an atmosphere:
this was an
esprit de corps
all right.
The Defender
's venerable history,
going back into the nineteenth century, as a fighter for any number
of good causes, was being continued, so it was generally felt, and
most particularly by the people who worked for it; this period,
the Sixties, was able to stand up to any of the great times of the
past. Frances was being welcomed into the fold by one Julie
Hackett. She was a soft, not to say womanly woman, with bundles
of strong black hair fastened here and there with a variety of
combs and pins, a resolutely unfashionable figure, because she saw
fashion as an enslaver of women. She observed everything around
her with a view to correcting errors of fact and belief, and she
criticised men in every sentence, taking it for granted, as believers
tend to do, that Frances agreed with her in everything. She had
been keeping an eye on Frances, had seen articles by her here and
there, and in
The Defender
too, but one article had decided her
to get her on to the staff. It was a satirical, but good-natured piece
about Carnaby Street, which was in the process of becoming a
symbol for trendy Britain, and attracting youngsters, not to
mention the young in heart, from all over the world. Frances had
said that they must all be suffering from some sort of collective
hallucination, since the street was grubby, tatty, and if the clothes
were attractive–some of them–they were no better than others
in streets that did not have the magic syllables
Carnaby
attached
to them. Heresy! A brave heresy, judged Julie Hackett, seeing
Frances as a kindred soul.