Читать книгу The Sweetest Dream - Doris Lessing - Страница 9

‘No. Sophie’s ma has gone all Jewish on her and says what has Christmas got to do with her? But they’ve always had Christmas.’ He had finished the soup. ‘Why don’t you cook food like this?’ he accused Frances. ‘Now that’s a soup.’

‘How many quails do you think I’d have to cook for each of you, with your appetites?’

‘Hang on a minute,’ said Andrew. ‘Fair’s fair.’ He brought a plate to the table, then another, for Colin, and another knife and fork. He put a quail on to his plate.

‘You are supposed to heat those up for ten minutes,’ said Frances.

‘Who cares? Delicious.’

They were eating in competition with each other. And having reached the end of the quails, their spoons hovered together over the pudding. And that vanished, in a couple of mouthfuls.

‘No Christmas pudding?’ said Colin. ‘No Christmas pudding at Christmas?’

Frances got up, fetched a can of Christmas pudding from the high shelf where it had been quietly maturing, and in a moment had it steaming on the stove.

‘How long will that take?’ asked Colin.

‘An hour.’

She put loaves of bread on the table, then butter, cheese, plates. They polished off the Stilton, and began serious eating, the vandalised tray pushed aside.

‘Mother,’ said Colin, ‘we’ve got to ask Sophie to come and live here.’

‘But she is practically living here.’

‘No – properly. It’s got nothing to do with me … I mean, I’m not saying Sophie and me are a fixture, that isn’t it. She can’t go on at home. You wouldn’t believe what she’s like, Sophie’s mother. She cries and grabs Sophie and says they must jump off a bridge together, or take poison. Imagine living with that?’ It sounded as if he were accusing her, Frances, and, hearing that he did, said differently, even apologetically, ‘If you could just get a taste of that house, it’s like walking into the Black Hole of Calcutta.’

‘You know how much I like Sophie. But I don’t really see Sophie going down into the basement to share with Rose and whoever turns up. I take it you aren’t expecting her to move in with you?’

‘Well … no, it’s not … that’s not on. But she could camp in the living-room, we hardly ever use it.’

‘If you’ve packed up with Sophie, do I have your permission to take my chance?’ enquired Andrew. ‘I’m madly in love with Sophie, as everyone must know.’

‘I didn’t say …’

And now these two young men reverted to the condition schoolboy, began jostling each other, elbow to elbow, knee to knee.

‘Happy Christmas,’ said Frances, and they desisted.

‘Talking of Rose, where is she?’ said Andrew. ‘Did she go home.’

‘Of course not,’ said Colin. ‘She’s downstairs, alternately sobbing her heart out and making up her face.’

‘How do you know?’ asked Andrew.

‘You forget the advantages of a progressive school. I know all about women.’

‘I wish I did. While my education is in every way better than yours, I fail continually in the human department.’

‘You’re doing pretty well with Sylvia,’ said Frances.

‘Yes, but she isn’t a woman, is she? More the ghost of a little child someone has murdered.’

‘That’s awful,’ said Frances.

‘But how true,’ said Colin.

‘If Rose is really downstairs, I suppose we had better ask her up,’ said Frances.

‘Do we have to?’ said Andrew. ‘It’s so nice en famille for once.’

‘I’ll ask her,’ said Colin, ‘or she’ll be taking an overdose and then saying it’s our fault.’

He leaped up and off down the stairs. The two who remained said nothing, only looked at each other, as they heard the wail from beneath, presumably of welcome, Colin’s loud commonsensical voice, and then Rose came in, propelled by Colin.

She was heavily made up, her eyes pencilled in black, false black eyelashes, purple eye-shadow. She was angry, accusing, appealing, and was evidently about to cry.

‘There’ll be some Christmas pudding,’ said Frances.

But Rose had seen the fruit on the tray and was picking it over. ‘What’s this?’ she demanded aggressively, ‘What is it?’ She held up a lychee.

‘You must have tasted that, you get it after a Chinese meal, for pudding,’ said Andrew.

‘What Chinese meal? I never get Chinese meals.’

‘Let me.’ Colin peeled the lychee, the crisp fragments of delicately indented shell exposing the pearly, lucent fruit, like a little moon egg, which, having removed the shiny black pip he handed to Rose who swallowed it, and said, ‘That’s nothing much, it’s not worth the fuss.’

‘You should let it he on your tongue, you should let its inwardness speak to your inwardness,’ said Colin. He allowed himself his most owlish expression, and looked like an apprentice judge who lacked only the wig, as he cracked open another lychee, and handed it to Rose, delicately, between forefinger and thumb. She sat with it in her mouth, like a child refusing to swallow, then did, and said, ‘It’s a con.’

At once the brothers swept the plate of fruit towards them, and divided it between them. Rose sat with her mouth open, staring, and now she really was going to cry. ‘Ohhhhh,’ she wailed, ‘you are so horrible. It’s not my fault I’ve never had a Chinese meal.’

‘Well, you’ve had Christmas pudding and that’s what you are going to get next,’ said Frances.

‘I’m so hungry,’ wept Rose.

‘Then eat some bread and cheese.’

‘Bread and cheese at Christmas?’

‘That’s all I had,’ said Frances. ‘Now shut up, Rose.’

Rose stopped mid-wail, stared incredulously at Frances, and allowed to develop the full gamut of the adolescent misunderstood: flashing eyes and pouring lips, and heaving bosom.

Andrew cut a piece of bread, loaded it with butter, then cheese. ‘Here,’ he said.

‘I’ll get fat, eating all that butter.’

Andrew took his offering back and began eating it himself. Rose sat swelling with outrage and tears. No one looked at her. Then she reached for the loaf, cut a thin slice, smeared on a little butter, put on a few crumbs of cheese. She didn’t eat however, but sat staring at it: Look at my Christmas dinner.

‘I shall sing a Christmas carol,’ said Andrew, ‘to fill in the time before the pudding.’

He began on ‘Silent Night’, and Colin said, ‘Shut up, Andrew, it’s more than I can bear, it really is.’

‘The pudding is probably eatable already,’ said Frances.

The great glistening dark mass of pudding was set on a very fine blue plate. She put out plates, spoons, and poured more wine. She stuck the sprig of holly from Julia’s offering on to the pudding. She found a tin of custard.

They ate.

Soon the telephone rang. Sophie, in tears, and so Colin went up a floor to talk to her, at length, at very great length, and then came down to say he would return to Sophie’s, to stay the night there, poor Sophie couldn’t cope. Or perhaps he would bring her back here.

Then Julia’s taxi was heard outside, and in came Sylvia, flushed, smiling, a pretty girl: who would have thought that possible, a few weeks ago? She dropped a curtsy to them in her good-girl’s dress, both liking it and amused at the lace collar, lace cuffs and embroidery. Julia came in behind her. Frances said, ‘Oh, Julia, do please sit down.’

But Julia had seen Rose, who was like a clown now that her make-up had smeared with crying, and was cramming in Christmas pudding.

‘Another time,’ said Julia.

It could be seen that Sylvia would have stayed with Andrew, but she went up after Julia.

‘Stupid dress,’ said Rose.

‘You’re right,’ said Andrew. ‘Not your style at all.’

Then Frances remembered she had not thanked Julia and, shocked at herself, ran up the stain. She caught Julia up on the top landing. Now she should embrace Julia. She should simply put her arms around this stiff, critical old woman and kiss her. She could not, her arms simply would not lift, would not go out to hold Julia.

‘Thank you,’ said Frances. ‘That was such a lovely thing to do. You have no idea what it did for me …’

‘I am glad you liked it,’ said Julia, turning to go in her door, and Frances said after her, feeling futile, ridiculous, ‘Thank you, thank you so much.’ Sylvia had no difficulty in kissing Julia, allowing herself to be kissed and held, and she even sat on Julia’s knee.

It was May, and the windows were open on to a jolly spring evening, the birds hard at it, louder than the traffic. A light rain sparkled on leaves and spring flowers.

The company around the table looked like a chorus for a musical, because they were all wearing tunics striped horizontally in blue and white, over tight black legs. Frances wore black and white stripes, f eeling that this might do something to assert a difference. The boys wore the same stripes over jeans. Their hair was, had to be, well below their ears, a statement of their independence, and the girls all had Evansky haircuts. An Evansky haircut, that was the heart’s desire of every with-it girl, and by hook, or most likely by crook, they had achieved it. This cut was between a 1920s bob, and the shingle, with a fringe to the eyebrows. Straight, it went without saying. Curly hair out. Even Rose’s hair, the mass of crinkly black, was Evansky. Little neat heads, little-ickle cutesy girls, little bitsey things and the boys like shaggy ponies, and all in the blue and white stripes that had originated in matelot shirts, matching the blue and white mugs they used for breakfast. When the geist speaks, the zeit must obey. Here they were, the girls and the boys of the sexual revolution, though they didn’t know yet that was what they would be famed for.

There was one exception to the Evansky imperative, every bit as strong as Vidal Sassoon’s. Mrs Evansky, a decided lady, had refused to cut Sophie’s hair. She had stood behind the girl, lifting those satiny black masses, letting them slide through her fingers, and then had pronounced: ‘I am sorry, I can’t do it.’ And then, as Sophie protested, ‘Besides you’ve a long face. It wouldn’t do anything for you.’ Sophie had sat, rejected, cast out, and then Mrs Evansky had said, ‘Go away and think about it, and if you insist – but it would kill me: cutting this off’

And so, alone among the girls, Sophie sat with her sparkling black tresses intact, and felt she was some kind of freak.

The whirligigs of the time had done pretty well for four months. What was four months? – nothing, and yet everything had changed.

First, Sylvia. She too had achieved full uniformity. Her haircut, begged from Julia, did not really suit her, but everyone knew it was important for her to feel normal and like the others. She was eating, if not well, and obeyed Julia in everything. The old woman and the very young girl would sit together for hours in Julia’s sitting-room, while Julia made Sylvia little treats, fed her chocolates given her by her admirer Wilhelm Stein, and told her stories about pre-war Germany – pre-First-World-War Germany. Sylvia did once ask, gently, for she would have died rather than hurt Julia, ‘Didn’t anything bad ever happen, then?’ Julia was taken aback and then she laughed. ‘I’m not going to admit it, even if bad things did happen.’ But she genuinely could not remember bad things. Her girlhood seemed to her, in that house full of music and kind people, like a paradise. And was there anything like that now, anywhere?

Andrew had promised his mother and his grandmother that he would go to Cambridge in the autumn, but meanwhile he hardly left the house. He loafed about and read, and smoked in his room. Sylvia visited him, knocking formally, and tidied his room, and scolded him. ‘If I can do it, so can you.’ Meaning, now, smoking pot. For her, who had frayed so badly apart, and come together with such difficulty, anything was a threat – alcohol, tobacco, pot, loud voices, and people quarrelling sent her back under her bedclothes with her fingers in her ears. She was going to school, and already doing well. Julia sat with her over her homework every evening.

Geoffrey, who was clever, would do well in his exams, and then go to the London School of Economics to do – well, of course – Politics and Economics. He said he wouldn’t bother with Philosophy. Daniel, Geoffrey’s shadow, said he would go to the LSE too, and take the same.

Jill had had an abortion, and was in her usual place, apparently untouched by the experience. The impressive thing was that ‘the kids’ had managed it all, without the adults. Neither Frances nor Julia had been told, and not Andrew, who was apparently considered too adult and a possible enemy. It was Colin who had gone to the girl’s parents – she was afraid to go – and told them she was pregnant. They believed that Colin was the father, and would not accept his denials. Who was? No one knew, or would ever know, though Geoffrey was accused: he was always blamed for broken hearts and broken faith, being so good-looking.

Colin got the money for the abortion out of Jill’s parents, and he went to the family doctor, who did at last suggest an appropriate telephone number. Afterwards, when Jill was safely back in the basement flat, Julia, Frances and Andrew were told. But the parents said Jill could not return to St Joseph’s, if that was the kind of thing that could happen there.

Sophie and Colin had separated. Sophie, who would never in her life do anything by halves, had been too much for Colin: she loved him to death, or at least into something like an illness. ‘Go away,’ he had actually shouted at her at last, ‘leave me alone.’ And would not come out of his room for some days. Then he went to Sophie’s house and said he was sorry, it was all his fault, he was just ‘a little screwed up’, and please come back to our house, please, we all miss you, and Frances keeps saying, Where’s Sophie? And when Sophie did return, all apology, as if it were her fault, Frances hugged her and said, ‘Sophie, you and Colin is one thing, but your coming here when you like is another.’

At weekends Sophie came down to London with the St Joseph’s contingent, spent Friday evenings with them, went home to her mother whom she claimed was better. ‘Though she doesn’t look it. She just slumps around and looks awful.’ Depression, let alone clinical depression, had not entered the general vocabulary and consciousness. People were still saying, ‘Oh, God, I’m so depressed,’ meaning they were in a bad mood. Sophie, a good daughter as far as she could bear to be, went home for Saturday nights but was not there in the daytime. Saturday and Sunday evenings she was in her place at the big table.

Something wonderful had happened to her. She often walked down the hill to Primrose Hill and then through Regent’s Park, to dancing and singing lessons. There in a grassy glade full of flowerbeds is a statue of a young woman, with a little goat, and it is called ‘The Protector of the Defenceless’. This girl in stone drew Sophie to her. She found herself laying a leaf on the pedestal, then a flower, then a little posy. Soon she would bring a bit of biscuit, and stood back to watch sparrows or a blackbird fly up to the statue’s feet to carry off crumbs. Once she put a wreath around the little goat’s head. Then, one day on the pedestal, was a booklet called The Language of Flowers, and tied to it with a ribbon was a bouquet of lilac and red roses. She could not see anyone likely nearby, only some people strolling in the garden. She was alarmed, knowing she had been watched. At the supper table she told the story, laughing at herself because of her love for the stone girl, and produced The Language of Flowers for everyone to pass around and look. at. Lilac meant First Emotions of Love, and a red rose, Love.

‘You’re not going to answer him?’ demanded Rose, furious.

‘Lovely Rose,’ said Colin, ‘of course she’s going to answer.’

And they all pored over the book to work out a suitable message. But what Sophie wanted to say was, ‘Yes, I am interested but don’t jump to conclusions.’ Nothing in the book seemed suitable. In the end they all decided on snowdrops, for Hope – but they had already come and gone, and periwinkle, Early Friendship. Sophie said she thought there were some in her mother’s garden. And what else?

‘Oh, go on,’ said Geoffrey. ‘Live dangerously. Lily of the valley – Return of Happiness. And phlox – Agreement.’

Sophie put her posy on the pedestal, and lingered; went away, came back, and found her flowers gone. But someone else might have taken them? No, for when she went there the next day there was a young man who said he had been watching her ‘for ages’ and had been too shy to approach her without the language of flowers. A likely story, for shy he was not. He was an actor, studying at the Academy where she planned to go in the autumn. This was Roland Shattock, haggardly handsome and dramatic in everything and he was some kind of Trotskyism He came often to the supper table and was here tonight. Older than the others, a year older even than Andrew, he wore a worldly-wise look, and a suede jacket dyed purple with fringes, and his presence was felt as a visitation from the adult world, and something like an entrance ticket to it. If he did not regard them as ‘kids’, then … It never crossed their idealistic minds that he was often in need of a good meal.

When Roland was there Colin tended to be silent, and even went upstairs early, particularly when Johnny dropped in, for the arguments between the young Trotskyist and the old Stalinist were loud, and fierce and often ugly. Sylvia fled upstairs too, and went to Julia.

Johnny had been in Cuba, and had arranged to make a little flim. ‘But it won’t bring in much money, I am afraid, Frances.’ Meanwhile he had gone to visit independent Zambia, with Comrade Mo.

Now Rose: there were difficulties all the way, for what seemed like every day of the four months. She would not go back to her school, and she would not go home. She was prepared to go to St Joseph’s, if she could base herself here, in this house. Andrew travelled to see 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.

‘Too short for what?’ jeered Rose. She had not looked at Frances once, all evening, and this morning’s crisis might never have happened. Jill, though, did say in a hurried mutter that combined politeness with aggression, ‘Thanks, Frances, thanks a million.’

Andrew told the girls they were bloody lucky to have got off, and Geoffrey, the accomplished shoplifter, told them it was easy not to get caught if you were careful.

‘You can’t be careful on the Underground,’ said Daniel, who did not buy tickets, in emulation of his idol, Geoffrey. ‘It’s luck. You either get caught or you don’t.’

‘Then don’t travel on the Underground without a ticket,’ said Geoffrey. ‘Not more than twice. It’s stupid.’

Daniel, publicly criticised by Geoffrey, went red and said he had travelled ‘for years’ without a ticket and had only been caught twice.

‘And the third time?’ said Geoffrey, instructing him.

‘Third time unlucky,’ chorused the company.

That was the week that Jill allowed herself to get pregnant, no, invited it.

All these dramas had played themselves out in the four months since Christmas and, as if nothing had happened, here were the protagonists, here were the boys and girls, sitting around the table on that spring evening making plans for the summer.

Geoffrey said he would go to the States and join the fighters for racial equality ‘on the barricades’. A useful experience for Politics and Economics at the LSE.

Andrew said he would stay here and read.

‘Not The Ordeal of Richard Feverel,’ said Rose. ‘What crap.’

‘That too,’ said Andrew.

Sylvia, invited to go with Jill to her cousins in Exeter (‘It’s a groovy place, they’ve got horses’) said no, she would stay here and read too. ‘Julia says I should read more. I did read some of Johnny’s books. You’d never believe it, but until I got to this house I didn’t know there were books that weren’t about politics.’ This meant, as everyone knew, that Sylvia could not leave Julia: she felt too frail to stand on her own.

Colin said he might go and pick grapes in France, or perhaps try his hand at a novel: at this there was a general groan.

‘Why shouldn’t he write a novel?’ said Sophie, who always stuck up for Colin because he had hurt her so terribly.

‘Perhaps I shall write a novel about St Joseph’s,’ said Colin. ‘I shall put us all in.’

‘That isn’t fair,’ said Rose at once. ‘You can’t put me in because I’m not at St Joseph’s.’

‘How very true that is,’ said Andrew.

‘Or perhaps I could write a novel all about you,’ said Colin. ‘“The Ordeals of a Rose.” How about that?’

Rose stared at him, then, suspiciously around. They all stared solemnly at her. Baiting Rose had become a far too frequent sport, and Frances tried to defuse the moment, which threatened tears, by asking, ‘And what are your plans, Rose?’

‘I’ll go and stay with Jill’s cousin. Or I might hitchhike in Devon. Or I might stay here,’ she added, facing Frances with a challenge. She knew Frances would be pleased to have her gone, but did not believe this was because of any unpleasant qualities in herself. She did not know she was unlikeable. She was usually disliked, and thought that this was because of the general unfairness of the world: not that she would have used the word dislike or even have thought it: people picked on her, they put their shit on her. People who are kind or good-looking or charming or all three; people who trust others, never have any idea of the little hells inhabited by someone like Rose.

James said he was going to a summer camp, recommended by Johnny, to study the senescence of capitalism and the inner contradictions of imperialism.

Daniel said forlornly that he supposed he would have to go home, and Geoffrey said kindly, ‘Never mind, the summer won’t be for ever.’

‘Yes, it will,’ said Daniel, his face flaming with misery.

Roland Shattock said he was going to take Sophie on a walking tour in Cornwall. Noting signs of misgiving on certain faces – Frances’s, Andrew’s – he said, ‘Oh, don’t panic, she’ll be safe with me, I think I’m gay.’

This announcement which now would be met by nothing much more than, ‘Really?’, or perhaps sighs from the women, was too casual then to be tactful, and there was general discomfort.

Sophie at once cried out that she didn’t care about that, she just liked being with Roland. Andrew looked gracefully rueful, and could almost be heard thinking that he wasn’t queer.

‘Oh, well, perhaps I’m not,’ amended Roland. ‘After all, Sophie, I’m crazy about you. But have no fear, Frances, I’m not one to abduct minors.’

‘I’m nearly sixteen,’ said Sophie indignantly.

‘I thought you were much older when I saw you dreaming so beautifully in the park.’

‘I am much older,’ said Sophie, truthfully: she meant her mother’s illness, her father’s death, and then Colin’s ill-treatment of her.

‘Beautiful dreamer,’ said Roland, kissing her hand, but in a parody of the continental hand kiss that salutes the air above a glove, or, as in this case, knuckles ever so slightly odorous from the chicken stew she had been stirring, to help Frances. ‘But if I do go to prison, it will have been worth it.’

As for Frances, she expected peaceful and productive weeks.

The incendiary letter came addressed to ‘J … indecipherable … Lennox’, and was opened by Julia, who, having seen it was for Johnny, Dear Comrade Johnny Lennox, and that the first sentence was, ‘I want you to help me open people’s eyes to the truth’, read it, then again, and, having let her thoughts settle, telephoned her son.

‘I have a letter here from Israel, a man called Reuben Sachs, for you.’

‘A good type,’ said Johnny. ‘He has maintained a consistently progressive position as a non-aligned Marxist, advocating peaceful relations with the Soviet Union.’

‘However that is, he wants you to call a gathering of your friends and comrades to hear him speak about his experiences in a Czech prison.’

‘There must have been a good reason for him to be there.’

‘He was arrested as a Zionist spy for American imperialism.’ Johnny was silent. ‘He was inside for four years, tortured and brutally treated and finally released … I would take it as a favour if you did not say, Unfortunately mistakes have sometimes been made.’

‘What do you want, Mutti?’

‘I think you should do as he asks. He says he would like to open people’s eyes to the truth about the methods used by the Soviet Union. Please do not say that he is some kind of provocateur.’

‘I am afraid I don’t see why it would be useful.’

‘In that case I shall call a meeting myself. After all, Johnny, I am in the happy position of knowing who your associates are.’

‘Why do you think they would come to a meeting called by you, Mutti?’

‘I shall send everyone a copy of his letter. Shall I read it to you?’

‘No, I know the kind of lies that are being spread.’

‘He will be here in two weeks’ time, and he is coming to London just for that – to address the comrades. He is also going to Paris. Shall I suggest a date?’

‘If you like.’

‘But it must be one convenient for you. I don’t think he would be pleased if you didn’t attend.’

‘I’ll telephone you with a date. But I must make it clear that I shall disassociate myself from any anti-Soviet propaganda.’

On the evening in question the big sitting-room received an unusual collection of guests. Johnny had invited colleagues and comrades, and Julia had asked people that she thought Johnny should have invited, but had not. There were people still in the Party, some who had left over various crisis points – the Hider– Stalin Pact, the Berlin Rising, Prague, Hungary, even one or two who went back to the attack on Finland. About fifty people; and the room was crammed tight with chairs, and people standing around the walls. All described themselves as Marxists.

Andrew and Colin were present, having first complained that it was all so boring. ‘Why are you doing this?’ Colin asked his grandmother. ‘It’s not your kind of thing, is it?’

‘I am hoping, though I am probably just a foolish old woman, that Johnny might be made to see some sense.’

The St Joseph’s contingent were taking exams. James had left for America. The girls downstairs had made a point of going to a disco: politics were just shit.

Reuben Sachs had supper with Julia, alone: Frances could have agreed with the girls, and even their choice of language. He was a round little man, desperate, and earnest and could not stop talking about what had happened to him, and the meeting, when it began, was only a continuation of what he had been telling Julia, who having informed him that she had never been a communist and did not need his persuasions, kept quiet, since it was evident that what he needed was to talk while she – or anyone at all – listened.

He had maintained for years a difficult political position in Israel, as a socialist, but rejecting communism and asking that the non-aligned socialists of the world should support peaceful relations with the Soviet Union: this meant that they would necessarily be in an unhappy situation with their own governments. He had been reviled as a communist throughout the Cold War. His temperament was not suited by nature to being permanently out on a limb, being shot at from all sides. This could be seen by his agitated, fervent discourses, his pleading and angry eyes, while the words that repeated themselves like a refrain were, ‘I have never compromised with my beliefs.’

He had been on a fraternal visit to Prague, on a Peace and Goodwill Mission, when he had been arrested as a Cosmopolitan Zionist spy for American Imperialism. In the police car he addressed his captors thus, ‘How can you, representatives of a Workers’ State, sully your hands with such work as this?’ and when they hit him and went on hitting him, he continued to use these words. As he did in prison. The warders were brutes, and the interrogators too, but he continued to address them as civilised beings. He knew six languages, but they insisted on interrogating him in a language he did not know, Romanian, which meant that at first he did not know what he was being accused of, which was every sort of anti-Soviet and anti-Czech activity. But: ‘I am good at languages, I have to explain …’ He learned enough Romanian during the interrogation to follow, and then to argue his case. For days, months, years, he was beaten up, reviled, kept for long periods without food, kept without sleep – tortured in all the ways beloved by sadists. For four years. And he went on insisting on his innocence, and explained to his interrogators and his jailers that in doing this kind of work they were dirtying the honour of the people, of the Workers’ State. It took a long time for him to realise that his case was not unique, and that the prison was full of people like him, who tapped out messages on the walls to say they were as surprised to find themselves in prison as he was. They also explained that, ‘Idealism is not appropriate in these circumstances, comrade.’ The scales fell from his eyes, as he said. Just about the time he stopped appealing to the better natures and class situation of his tormentors, having lost faith in the long-term possibilities of the Soviet Revolution, he was released in one of the new dawns in the Soviet Empire. And found he was still a man with a mission, but now it was to open the eyes of the comrades who were still deluded about the nature of communism.

Frances had decided she did not want to listen to ‘revelations’ that she had absorbed decades ago, but crept into the back of the room when it was full, and found herself sitting next to a man she did seem to remember but who obviously remembered her well, from his greeting. Johnny was in a comer, listening without prejudice. His sons sat with Julia across the room, and did not look at their father. On their faces was the strained unhappy look she had been seeing there for years now. If they avoided their father’s eyes, they did send supportive smiles to her, which were too miserable to be convincing as irony, which is what they had intended. In that room were people who had been around through their early childhoods, some whose children they had played with.

When Reuben began his tale with, ‘I have come to tell you the truth of the situation, as it is my duty to do …’ the room was silent, and he could not have complained that his audience was not attentive. But those faces … they were not the expressions usually seen at a meeting, responding to what is said, with smiles, nods, agreement, dissent. They were polite, kept blank. Some were still communists, had been communists all their lives and would never change: there are people who cannot change once their minds are made up. Some had been communists, might criticise the Soviet Union, and even passionately, but all were socialists, and kept a belief in progress, the ever-upwards-reaching escalator to a happier world. And the Soviet Union had been so strongly a symbol of this faith, that – as it was put decades later by people who had been immersed in dreams – ‘The Soviet Union is our mother, and we do not insult our mothers.’

They were sitting here listening to a man who had done four years’ hard labour in a communist prison, been brutally treated, a painfully emotional tale, so that at times Reuben Sachs wept, explaining that it was because of ‘the sullying and dirtying of the great dream of humankind’, but what was being appealed to was their reason.

And that was why the faces of the people who had come to this evening’s meeting, ‘to hear the truth’, were expressionless, or even stunned, listening as if the tale did not concern them. For an hour and a half the emissary from ‘the truth of the situation’ talked, and then ended with a passionate appeal for questions, but no one said anything. As if nothing at all had been said, the meeting ended because people were getting up and having thanked Frances, under the impression that she was the hostess, and nodded to Johnny, drifted out. Nothing was said. And when they began talking to each other it was on other subjects.

Reuben Sachs sat on, waiting for what he had come to London for, but he might have been talking about conditions in medieval Europe or even Stone Age Man. He could not believe what he was seeing, what had happened.

Julia continued to sit in her place, watching, sardonic, a little bitter, and Andrew and Colin were openly derisive. Johnny went off, with some others, not looking at his sons or his mother.

The man next to Frances had not moved. She felt she had been right not to have wanted to come: she was being attacked by ancient unhappinesses, and needed to compose herself.

‘Frances,’ he said, trying to get her attention, ‘that was not pleasant hearing.’

She smiled more vaguely than he liked, but then saw his face and thought that there was one person there at least who had taken in what had been said.

‘I’m Harold Holman,’ he said. ‘But you don’t seem to remember me? I was around a lot with Johnny in the old days … I came to your place when all our kids were small – I was married to Jane then.’