The Sweetest Dream. Doris Lessing

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,