The Sweetest Dream. Doris Lessing

her parents again. They believed that this charming, and so upper-class young man had plans for their daughter, and this made it easier for them to agree, not to St Joseph’s, which was beyond their means, but to a day school in London. They would pay the fees for that and give her an allowance for clothes. But they would not pay for Rose’s board and keep. They allowed it to be understood that it was Andrew’s responsibility to pay for her. That meant Frances, in effect.

      Perhaps she could be asked to do something in return, like housework – for there were always problems with keeping the place clean, in spite of Julia’s Mrs Philby, who would never do much more than vacuum floors. ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Andrew. ‘Can you imagine Rose lifting a finger?’

      A school of a progressive kind was found in London, and Rose agreed to everything. ‘If she could just stay here, she wouldn’t be any trouble.’ Then Andrew came to Frances to say there was a big problem. Rose was afraid to tell Frances. And it was Jill, too. The girls had been caught without tickets on the Underground, and it was the third rime for both of them. They were summoned to see the juvenile delinquency officer, in the office of the Transport Police. There would certainly be fines, and Borstal was a real possibility. Frances was too angry, in her all too familiar way with Rose, a dull dispirited emotion, like chronic indigestion, to confront her, but asked Andrew to tell the girls she would go with them to their interview. On the appointed morning she came down to find the two sullen girls united in hatred for the world, in the kitchen, smoking. They were both made up to look like pandas, with their white eye-paint and black-circled eyes and black painted nails. They wore little mini-dresses from Biba’s, stolen of course. They could not have found an appearance more likely to prejudice Authority against them.

      Frances said, ‘If you do really care about getting off with just a lecture, you could wash your faces.’ She was wondering if the girls were determined to make things as difficult as they could, perhaps even that they were harbouring ambitions to be sent to Borstal. This would of course serve Frances right: one is not in loco parentis without at some point taking punishment that is in fact aimed at delinquent parents.

      Rose at once said, ‘I don’t see why I should.’

      Frances waited, curious, for what Jill might reply. This formerly quiet, good, conforming girl, who might sit through a whole evening saying nothing, only smiling, was hardly discernible behind her paint and her anger.

      Taking her cue from Rose: ‘I don’t see why either.’

      They went by Underground, Frances buying tickets for them all, and noting their sarcastic smiles as she did so. They were soon in the office where non-payers of fares, juveniles, met their fate in the person of Mrs Kent, who wore a navy-blue uniform of a generic kind that suggested the majesty of officialdom. Her face, however, was kindly, while she kept up a severe look, to inspire respect.

      ‘Please sit down,’ she said, and Frances sat to one side, while the girls, having stood, like obstinate horses, for long enough to make a point, slumped, in a way that was meant to suggest they had been pushed.

      ‘It’s very simple,’ said Mrs Kent, though her sigh, of which she was certainly unaware, suggested otherwise. ‘You have both been warned twice. You knew the third time would be the last time. I could send you to the magistrate, and it would be up to him if you are taken into care or not, but if you will give guarantees of good behaviour, you will be let off with a fine, but your parents, or parent, or guardian will have to take responsibility for you.’ She said this, or something like it, so often that her biro expressed boredom and exasperation, doodling jagged patterns on a notepad. Having ended, she smiled at Frances.

      ‘Are you the parent of either of these two girls?’

      ‘No. I am not.’

      ‘A guardian? In some kind of legal capacity?’

      ‘No, but they are living with me – in our house, and they will be going to school from there.’ While she knew Rose would be, she didn’t know about Jill, and so she was telling a he.

      Mrs Kent was taking a long look at the girls, who sat sulking, their legs apart, their legs crossed high, knees raised, showing black tights to the crotch. Frances noted that Jill was trembling: she would not have believed this cool girl capable of it.

      ‘Could I have a word with you in private?’ Mrs Kent said to Frances. She got up and said to the girls, ‘We won’t be one minute.’ She showed Frances to the door, and followed her in to a little private room, evidently her refuge from the strain of these interviews.

      She went to the window, and so did Frances. They looked down over a little garden where two lovers licked at one ice-cream cone. Mrs Kent said, ‘I liked your article about Juvenile Crime. I cut it out.’

      ‘Thank you.’

      ‘It’s beyond me, why they do it. We understand when poor kids do it, and there’s a policy of leniency in hard cases, but they come in here, boys and girls, dressed up to the nines, and I don’t get it. One of them said the other day – he was at a good school, mind you – that not paying fares was a question of principle; I asked what principle and he said he was a Marxist. He wants to destroy capitalism, he said.’

      ‘Now that sounds familiar.’

      ‘What sort of guarantee can you give me that I won’t have these girls up in front of me in a week or so?’

      ‘I can’t,’ said Frances. ‘No guarantee. Both are quarrelling with parents and they’ve landed on me. Both are school drop-outs, but I expect they will go back.’

      ‘I understand. A friend of my son’s – a schoolfriend – is with us more often than he goes home.’

      ‘Does he say his parents are shits?’

      ‘They don’t understand him, he says. But I don’t either. Tell me, did you have to do a lot of research for your article?’

      ‘A good bit.’

      ‘But you didn’t provide any answers.’

      ‘I don’t know the answers. Can you tell me why a girl – I’m referring to the dark girl out there, Rose Trimble – who has just had all her difficulties sorted out, should choose just that moment to do something she knows might spoil everything?’

      ‘I call it brink-walking,’ said Mrs Kent. ‘They like to test limits. They walk out on a tightrope but hope someone’ll catch them. And you are catching them, aren’t you?’

      ‘I suppose so.’

      ‘You’d be surprised how often I hear the same story.’

      The two women stood close together at the window, linked by a sort of despair.

      ‘I wish I knew what was going on,’ said Mrs Kent.

      ‘Don’t we all.’

      They went back into the office where the girls, who had been giggling and laughing at the older women’s expense, resumed their silence and their sulky looks.

      Mrs Kent said, ‘I’m going to give you another chance. Mrs Lennox says she will help you. But in fact I am exceeding my brief; I hope you both understand that you have had a very narrow escape. You are both fortunate girls, to have a friend in Mrs Lennox.’ This last remark was a mistake, though Mrs Kent could not know that. Frances could positively hear the seethe of resentment in the girls, in Rose at least, that they could owe anyone anything.

      Outside the building, on the pavement, they said they would go off shopping.

      ‘If I told you not to shoplift,’ said Frances, ‘would you take any notice?’

      But they went off without looking at her.

      That night they announced at supper that they had nicked the two Biba, or Biba-type dresses they were wearing, both so short they could only have been chosen with the intention of inviting shock or criticism.

      And Sylvia did say she thought they were too short, in an effort that cost her a good deal to assert herself.