The Sweetest Dream. Doris Lessing

but he recovered himself and civilisation was reinstated as he smiled, and the two men shook hands. This scene, which after all has repeated itself in various forms since then, did not then have as much weight on it as it would now. Irony, which celebrates that element which we persist in excluding from our vision of things, would have been too much for them to bear: we have become coarser-fibred.

      And now these two lovers who would not have recognised each other passing in a street, had to decide whether their dreams of each other for all those terrible years were strong enough to carry them through into marriage. Nothing was left of the enchanting prim little girl, nor of the sentimental man who had, until it crumbled away, carried a dead red rose next to his heart. The great blue eyes were sad, and he tended to lapse into silences, just like her younger brother, when remembering things that could be understood only by other soldiers.

      These two married quietly: hardly the time for a big German-English wedding. In London war fever was abating, though people still talked about the Boche and the Hun. People were polite to Julia. For the first time she wondered if choosing Philip had not been a mistake, yet she believed they loved each other, and both were pretending they were serious people by nature and not saddened beyond curing. And yet the war did recede and the worst of the war hatreds passed. Julia, who had suffered in Germany for her English love, now tried to become English, in an act of will. She had spoken English well enough, but took lessons again, and soon spoke as no English person ever did, an exquisite perfect English, every word separate. She knew her manners were formal, and tried to become more casual. Her clothes: they were perfect too, but after all, she was a diplomat’s wife and had to keep up appearances. As the English put it.

      They started married life in a little house in Mayfair, and there she entertained, as was expected of her, with the aid of a cook and a maid, and achieved something like the standards she remembered from her home. Meanwhile Philip had discovered that to marry a German woman had not been the best prescription for an unclouded career. Discussions with his superiors revealed that certain posts would be barred to him, in Germany, for instance, and he might find himself edged out of the straight highway to the top, and find himself in places like South Africa or Argentina. He decided to avoid disappointments, and switched to administration. He would have a fine career, but nothing of the glamour of foreign ministries. Sometimes he met in a sister’s house the Betty whom he could have married – and who was still unwed, because of so many men being killed – and wondered how different life could have been.

      When Jolyon Meredith Wilhelm Lennox was born in 1920 he had a nurse and then a nanny. He was a long thin child, with golden curls and combative critical blue eyes, often directed at his mother. He had soon learned from his nanny that he was a German: he had a little tantrum and was difficult for a few days. He was taken to visit his German family, but this was not a success: he disliked the place, and the different manners – he was expected to sit at mealtimes with his hands beside him on either side of his plate when not actually eating, speak when spoken to, and to click his heels when he made a request. He refused to go back. Julia argued with Philip about her child being sent off at seven to school. This is not unusual now, but then Julia was being brave. Philip told her that everyone of their class did this, and anyway look at him! – he had gone to boarding school at seven. Yes, he did remember he had been a bit homesick … never mind, it wore off. That argument, ‘Look at me!’, expected to cast down opposition because of the speaker’s conviction of his superiority or at least lightness, did not convince Julia. In Philip there was a place forever barred to her, a reserve, a coldness, which at first she ascribed to the war, the trenches, the soldier’s hidden psychological scars. But then she had begun to doubt: she had never achieved intimacy enough with the wives of her husband’s colleagues to ask if they too experienced this forbidden place in their men, the area marked VERBOTEN, NO Entrance – but she did observe, she noticed a good deal. No, she thought, if you are going to take a child from its mother so young … She lost the fight, and lost her son; who thereafter was polite, affable, if often impatient.

      As far as she could see he did well in his first school, but Eton did not go well. His reports were not good. ‘He does not make friends easily.’ ‘A bit of a loner.’

      She asked him one holidays, manoeuvring him into a position where he could not escape easily, for he did evade direct questions and situations, ‘Tell me, Jolyon, has my being German made problems for you?’

      His eyes seemed to flicker, wanted to evade, but he faced her with his wide polite smile, and said, ‘No, mother, why should it?’

      ‘I wondered, that’s all.’

      She asked Philip if he would ‘talk’ to Jolyon, meaning, of course, Please change him, he’s breaking my heart.

      ‘He plays his cards pretty close to his chest,’ was her husband’s reply.

      Her worries were in fact soothed by the mere feet of Eton, the fact and the weight of it, a purveyor of excellence and a guarantee of success. She had surrendered her son – her only child – to the English educational system, and expected a quid pro quo, that Jolyon would turn out well, like his father, and in due course walk in his footsteps, probably as a diplomat.

      When Philip’s father died, and then, soon after, his mother, he wanted to move into the big house in Hampstead. It was the family house, and he, the son, would live in it. Julia liked the little house in Mayfair, so easy to run and keep clean and did not want to live in the big house with its many rooms. But that was what she found herself doing. She did not ever set her will against Philip’s. They did not quarrel. They got along because she did not insist on her preferences. She behaved as she had seen her mother do, giving way to her father. Well, one side had to give way, the way Julia saw it, and it did not much matter which. Peace in the family was the important thing.

      The furniture of the little house, most of it from the home in Germany, was absorbed quite easily into the Hampstead house where in fact Julia did not seem to do nearly as much entertaining, though there was so much space for everything. For one thing, Philip was not really a sociable man: he had one or two close friends and saw them, often by himself. And Julia supposed she must be getting old and boring, because she did not enjoy parties as much as she had. But there were dinner parties and, often, important people, and she was pleased she did it all so well, and that Philip was proud of her.

      She went home to Germany for visits. Her parents, who were getting old, were so glad to see their daughter, and she liked her brother, now her only brother. But going home was troubling, even frightening. Poverty and unemployment, and the communists and then the Nazis were everywhere, and gangs roamed the streets. Then there was Hider. The von Ames despised in equal measure the communists and Hider, and believed that both unpleasant phenomena would simply go away. This was not their Germany, they said. It was certainly not what Julia remembered as her Germany, that is, of course, if she forgot the vicious rumour-mongering during the war. A spy, they had said she was. Not serious people, of course, not educated people … well, yes, there were one or two. She decided she did not much like visiting Germany these days, and it was easier not to, when her parents died.

      The English were sensible people, after all, she had to agree to that. One couldn’t imagine allowing battles between communists and fascists in the streets – well, there were some scuffles, but one mustn’t exaggerate, there was nothing like Hider.

      A letter arrived from Eton saying that Jolyon had disappeared, leaving behind a note saying that he was off to the Spanish Civil War, signed, Comrade Johnny Lennox.

      Philip used every influence to find out where their son was. The International Brigade? Madrid? Catalonia? No one seemed to know. Julia tended to sympathise with her son, for she had been shocked at the treatment of the elected government in Spain, by Britain and the French. Her husband, who was a diplomat after all, defended his government and his country but alone with her said he was ashamed. He did not admire the policies he was defending and conducting.

      Months passed. Then a telegram arrived from their son, asking for money: address, a house in the East End of London. Julia at once saw this meant he was wanting them to visit him, otherwise he would have designated a bank where he could pick up the money. Together she and Philip went to a house in a poor street, and found Jolyon being nursed by