The Sweetest Dream. Doris Lessing

heard, ‘Oh, Colin, thank you, oh, thank you, you understand, Colin, oh, I knew you would, oh, you are coming, oh, thank you, thank you.’

      She returned to her place at the table, saying, ‘Colin’ll catch the last train tonight.’ She buried her face in her hands, long elegant hands pink-tipped in the shade prescribed that week by the fashion arbiters of St Joseph’s, of whom she was one. Long glistening black hair fell to the table, like the thought made visible that she would never ever have to sorrow alone for long.

      Rose said sourly, ‘We’re all sorry about Kennedy, aren’t we?’

      Shouldn’t Jill be at school? But from St Joseph’s pupils came and went, with little regard for time, tables or exams. When teachers suggested a more disciplined approach, they might be reminded of the principles that had established the school, self-development being the main one. Colin had gone off to school this morning, and was on his way back. Geoffrey had said he might go tomorrow: yes, he was remembering he was head boy. Had Sophie ‘dropped out’ altogether? She certainly seemed to be more often here than there. Jill had been down in the basement with her sleeping bag, coming up for meals. She had told Colin who had told Frances that she needed a break. Daniel had gone back to school, but could be expected to return, if Colin did: any excuse would do. She knew they believed that the moment they turned their backs all kinds of delightfully dramatic events occurred.

      There was a new face, at the end of the table, smiling placatingly at her, waiting for her to say, ‘Who are you? What are you doing here?’ But she only put a plate of soup in front of him, and smiled. ‘I’m James,’ he said, flushing. ‘Well, hello James,’ she said. ‘Help yourself to bread – or anything else.’ A large embarrassed hand reached out to take a thick hunk of (healthy) wholemeal. He sat with it in his hand, staring about him with evident delight.

      ‘James is my friend, well he’s my cousin actually,’ said Rose, managing to be both nervous and aggressive. ‘I said it would be all right if he came … I mean, for supper, I mean …’

      Frances saw that here was another refugee from a shitty family, and was mentally checking food she would need to buy tomorrow.

      Tonight there were only seven at the table, with herself. Johnny was standing, as stiff as a soldier, at the window. He wanted to be asked to sit down. There was an empty place. She was damned if she was going to ask him, did not care that her reputation with ‘the kids’ would suffer.

      ‘Before you go,’ she said, ‘tell us, who killed Kennedy.’

      Johnny shrugged, for once at a loss.

      ‘Perhaps it was the Soviets?’ suggested the newcomer, daring to claim his place with them.

      ‘That is nonsense,’ said Johnny. ‘The Soviet comrades do not go in for terrorism.’

      Poor James was abashed.

      ‘Perhaps it was Castro?’ said Jill. Johnny was already staring coldly at her. ‘I mean, the Bay of Pigs, I mean …’

      ‘He doesn’t go in for terrorism either,’ said Johnny.

      ‘Do give me a ring before you leave,’ said Frances. ‘A couple of days, you said?’

      But he still wasn’t leaving.

      ‘It was a loony,’ said Rose. ‘Some loony shot him.’

      ‘Who paid the loony?’ said James, having recovered again, though he was flushed with the effort of asserting himself.

      ‘We should not rule out the CIA,’ said Johnny.

      ‘We should never rule them out,’ said James, and earned approval from Johnny in a smile and a nod. He was a large young man, bulky, and surely older than Rose, older than any of them, except perhaps Andrew? Rose saw Frances’s inspection of James, and reacted at once: she was always on the alert for criticism. She said, ‘James is into politics. He is my elder brother’s friend. He is a drop-out.’

      ‘Well blow me down,’ said Frances, ‘what a surprise.’

      ‘What do you mean?’ said Rose, frantic, angry. ‘Why did you say that?’

      ‘Oh, Rose, it’s just a joke.’

      ‘She makes jokes,’ said Andrew, interpreting his mother, as it were vouching for her.

      ‘And talking about jokes,’ said Frances. When they had all run upstairs to watch the television news, she had seen on the floor two large carrier bags filled with books. She now indicated these to Geoffrey, who could not suppress a proud smile. ‘A good haul today I see?’ she said.

      Everyone laughed. Most of them shoplifted in an impulsive way, but Geoffrey made a business of it. He went regularly around bookshops, pilfering. School textbooks when he could, but anything he could get away with. He called it ‘liberating’ them. It was a Second World War joke, and a wistful link with his father, who had been a bomber pilot. Geoffrey had told Colin that he thought his father had not really noticed anything since the end of that war. ‘Certainly not my mother or me.’ His father might just as well have died in that war for all the good his family got of him. ‘Join the club,’ was what Colin had said. ‘The War, the Revolution, what’s the difference?’

      ‘God bless Foyle’s,’ said Geoffrey. ‘I’ve liberated more there than anywhere else in London. A benefactor to humankind, is Foyle’s.’ But he was glancing nervously at Frances. He said, ‘Frances doesn’t approve.’

      They knew Frances didn’t approve. She often said, ‘It’s my unfortunate upbringing. I was brought up to think stealing is wrong.’ Now, whenever she or anyone else criticised or did not go along with the others, they would chant, ‘It’s your unfortunate upbringing.’ Then Andrew had said, ‘That joke’s getting a bit tired.’

      There had been a wild half-hour of variations on tired jokes with unfortunate upbringings.

      Now Johnny began on his familiar lecture, ‘That’s right, you take anything you can get from the capitalists. They’ve stolen it all from you in the first place.’

      ‘Surely not from us?’ – Andrew challenged his father.

      ‘Stolen from the working people. The ordinary people. Take them for what you can get, the bastards.’

      Andrew had never shoplifted, thought it inferior behaviour fit only for oiks, and said in a direct challenge, ‘Shouldn’t you be getting back to Phyllida?’

      Frances could be ignored, but his son’s rebuke took Johnny to the door. ‘Never forget,’ he admonished them generally, ‘you should be checking everything you do, every word, every thought, against the needs of the Revolution.’

      ‘So what did you get today?’ Rose asked Geoffrey. She admired him almost as much as she did Johnny.

      Geoffrey took books out of the carrier bags and made a tower of them on the table.

      They clapped. Not Frances, not Andrew.

      Frances took from her briefcase one of the letters to the newspaper which she had brought home. She read out, ‘“Dear Aunt Vera” … that’s me …”Dear Aunt Vera, I have three children, all at school. Every evening they come home with stolen stuff, mostly sweets and biscuits …” ‘Here the company groaned. ‘“But it can be anything, school books too …” ‘They clapped. ‘ “But today my oldest, the boy, came back with a very expensive pair of jeans.’” They clapped again. “? don’t know what to do. When the door bell rings I think, That’s the police.”’ Frances gave them time for a groan. ‘ “And I am afraid for them. I would very much value your advice, Aunt Vera. I am at my wits’ end.” ‘

      She inserted the letter back in its place.

      ‘And what are you going to advise?’ enquired Andrew.

      ‘Perhaps you should tell me what to say, Geoffrey. After all, a head boy should be well up in these things.’

      ‘Oh, don’t be