The Sweetest Dream (19 page)

But Frances could not laugh. She went to Julia's, and found
the old woman not in her sitting-room dressed and exquisite, but
on her bed, in tears. Julia saw Frances, and stood up, but unsteadily.
Now Frances's arms of their own accord embraced Julia, and what
had seemed until then an impossibility was the most natural thing
in the world. The frail old thing laid her head on the younger
woman's shoulder, and said, ‘I don't understand. I have learned
that I understand nothing.' She wailed, in a way that Frances
would not have believed possible, from her, and she flung herself
out of Frances's arms on to her bed. There Frances lay beside her
and held her, while she sobbed and wailed. Evidently this was
not any longer an affair of a bathroom being desecrated. When
Julia was quieter she managed, ‘You just let in anybody,' and
Frances said, ‘But Colin has been staying with them.' And Julia
said, ‘Anybody can say that. And the next thing will be
raga-muffins'll turn up from America, and say they are friends of
Geoffrey's.' ‘Yes, that seems to me more than likely. Julia, don't
you think it's rather nice, the way these young things just travel
about–like troubadours . . .' though this was perhaps not the best
simile, for Julia laughed angrily and said, ‘I am sure they had better
manners.' And then she started crying again, and again said, ‘You
just let in anybody.'

Frances asked if Wilhelm Stein should be asked to come, and
Julia agreed.

Meanwhile Mrs Philby was in the house, and wanted to know,
like the bears in the story, ‘Who has been sleeping in Colin's room?'
She was told. The old woman was the same vintage as Julia, as
elegant and upright in her poor neat clean clothes, black hat, black
skirt and print blouse, with an expression that refused any truck with
this world that had come into being without any assistance from
her. ‘Then they are pigs,' she said. Up ran Andrew, and found that
an orange had rolled from a backpack, and there were some croissant
crumbs. If this amount of piggishness was enough to disorientate
Mrs Philby–though surely by now she must have become used
to it?–then what was she going to say about the bathroom which
Sylvia and Julia left scarcely disturbed. ‘Christ!' said Andrew, and
rushed up to survey a stormy scene of spilled water and discarded
towels. He did a preliminary tidying and informed Mrs Philby
that she could go in now, and it's only water.

Andrew and Frances were sitting at the table when appeared
Wilhelm Stein, Doctor of Philosophy and dealer in serious books.
He went straight up to Julia, without coming into the kitchen,
then descended, and stood in the doorway smiling, very slightly
deferential, charming, an elderly gent as perfect in his way as Julia.

‘I don't think it can be easy for you to understand the
upbringing that Julia was victim of–yes, I can put it like that, because
I believe it has severely incapacitated her for the world she now
finds herself in.' He, like Julia, spoke a perfect idiomatic English,
and Andrew was contrasting it with the exclamatory, expletory,
excited French he had been listening to last night.

‘Do sit down, Doctor Stein,' said Frances.

‘Do we not know each other well enough for Frances and
Wilhelm? I think we do, Frances. But I shall not sit down now,
I shall fetch the doctor. I have my car.' He was about to leave, but
turned back to say, feeling, evidently, that he had not adequately
explained himself, ‘The young people in this house–I except
you, Andrew–are sometimes rather . . .'

‘Rough,' said Andrew. ‘I agree. Shocking types.' He spoke
severely, and Doctor Stein acknowledged his small jest with a
bow, and a smile.

‘I must tell you that when I was your age I was a shocking
type. I was–rowdy. And I was rough.' He grimaced at what he
was remembering. ‘You might not think so to look at me now.'
And he smiled again, in amusement at the picture he knew he
was presenting–and he was presenting it consciously, a hand
resting on the silver knob of his cane, his other spread out as if
to say Yes, you must take in all of me. ‘To look at me it would
be hard to see me as . . . I was running around with the communists
in Berlin, with all that that implies. With
all
it implies,' he insisted.
‘Yes, it was so.' He sighed. ‘I think no one could disagree that
we Germans run to extremes? Or we can do? Well, then, Julia
von Arne was one extreme and I was another. I sometimes amuse
myself by imagining what my twenty-one-year-old self would
have said of Julia, as a girl. And we laugh about it together. And
so, I have a key and I will let myself and the doctor in.'

***

In August there came to the house one Jake Miller, who had read
a piece by Frances where she mocked the current fad for alien
excitements like Yoga, and I-Ching, the Maharishi, Subud. The
editor had said a funny piece was needed for the silly season, and
it was that that had caused Jake Miller to telephone
The Defender
and ask Frances if he might visit. Curiosity said yes for her, and
here he was in the sitting-room, a large infinitely smiling man,
with gifts of mystic books. The smiles of unlimited love, peace,
good-will, were soon to be obligatory on the faces of the good,
perhaps one should say the young and the good, and Jake was a
harbinger, though he was not young, he was in his forties. He
was here dodging the Vietnam War. Frances resigned herself to
a speech, but politics were not his interest. He was claiming her
as a fellow conspirator in the fields of mystic experience. ‘But I
wrote it as a joke,' she protested, while he smiled and said, ‘But
I knew you were only writing like that because you had to, you
were communicating with those of us who can understand.'

Jake claimed all kinds of special powers, for instance, that he
could dissolve clouds by staring at them, and in fact, standing at
the window looking up at a fast-moving sky, she watched clouds
tumbling past and dissipating. ‘It's easy,' said he, ‘even for quite
undeveloped people.' He could understand the language of birds,
he said, and communicated with fellow minds through ESP.
Frances might have protested that she was clearly no fellow mind,
because he had had to telephone her, but this scene, mildly
entertaining, mildly irritating, was ended by Sylvia coming in with a
message from Julia–but Frances was never to hear the message.
Sylvia was wearing a cotton jacket with the signs of the zodiac
on it, bought because it fitted, and she was so small it was hard
to find clothes: the jacket was in fact from Junior Miss. Her hair
was in two thin pigtails on either side of her smiling face. His
smiles and hers met and melded, and in a moment Sylvia was
chatting with this new kind warm friend, who enlightened her
about her sun sign, the I-Ching and her probable aura. In a
moment the amiable American was on the floor casting the yarrow
stalks for her, and the resulting reading so wowed her that she
promised to go out and get the book for herself. Perspectives and
possibilities she had never suspected filled her whole being, as if
it had been quite empty before, and this girl who had hardly been
able to go out of the house without Julia, now confidently went
off with Jake from Illinois, to buy enlightening tracts. She did not
return until late for her; it was past ten when she rushed up the
stairs to Julia, who received her with arms held out for an embrace,
but then let them fall, as she sat heavily down to stare at this girl
who was in a state of vivacity she would not have thought possible
for her. Julia heard Sylvia's chattering in a silence that became so
heavy and disapproving that Sylvia stopped.

‘Well, Sylvia, my poor child,' said Julia, ‘where did you get
all that nonsense?'

‘But, Julia, it isn't nonsense, it really isn't. I'll explain, listen . . .'

‘It is nonsense,' said Julia, getting up and turning her back. It
was to make coffee, but Sylvia saw a cold excluding back, and
began to cry. And she did not know it, but Julia's eyes were full,
and she was fighting with herself not to weep. That this child,
her
child, could so betray her–that was how she felt. Between
the two of them, the old woman and her little love, the child to
whom she had given her heart unreservedly and for the first time
in her life–so she felt now–were only suspicion and hurt.

‘But, Julia; but, Julia . . .' Julia did not turn around, and Sylvia
ran down the stairs, flung herself on her bed, and cried so loudly
that Andrew heard and went to her. She told him her story and
he said, ‘Now stop. There is no point in that. I'll go up to
grandmother and talk to her.'

He did.

‘And who is this man? Why did Frances let him in?'

‘But you talk as if he's a thief or a conman.'

‘A conman is what he is. He has conned poor Sylvia out of
her senses.'

‘You know, grandmother, this kind of thing, the Yoga and
all that, it's around–you lead a bit of a sheltered life, or you'd
know that.' He spoke whimsically, but was dismayed by the old
unhappy face. He knew very well what the real trouble was, but
decided to persist on the level of simple causes. ‘She's bound to
come up against this sort of thing at school, you can't protect her
from it.' And meanwhile Andrew was thinking that he read his
horoscope every morning, though of course he didn't believe in
it, and had toyed with the idea of having his fortune told. ‘I think
you are making too much of it,' he dared to say, and saw her at
last nod, and then sigh.

‘Very well,' she said. ‘But how is it that this . . . this . . .
disgraceful thing is everywhere suddenly?'

‘A good question,' said Andrew, embracing her, but she was
a lump in his arms.

Julia and Sylvia made it up. ‘We've made it up,' the girl
told Andrew, as if a heavy unhappy thing had become light and
harmless.

But Julia would not listen to Sylvia's new discoveries, would
not throw the stalks for the I-Ching, nor talk about Buddhism,
and so their perfect intimacy, the intimacy possible only between
an adult and a child, confiding and trustful, and as easy as breathing,
had come to an end. It has to end, for this young one to grow
up, but even when the adult knows this and expects it, hearts
must bleed and break. But Julia had never had this kind of love
with a child, certainly not with Johnny, did not know that a child
growing–and Sylvia had gone through a rapid process of growing
up, with her–would become a stranger. Sylvia, suddenly, was
no longer the maiden trotting happily around after Julia and afraid
to be out of her sight. She was mature enough to interpret the
yarrow stalks–which had been asked for advice–to mean that
she must go and see her mother. She did, by herself, and found
Phyllida not shrieking and hysterical, but calm, withdrawn and
even dignified. She was alone: Johnny was at a meeting.

Sylvia was waiting for the reproaches and accusations she could
not bear: she knew she would have to run away, but Phyllida
said, ‘You must do what you think is best. I know it must be
better for you there, with other young people. And your
grandmother has taken to you, so I hear.'

‘Yes. I love her,' said the girl simply, and then trembled for
fear of her mother's jealousy.

‘Love is easy enough if you're rich,' said Phyllida, but that
was the nearest she got to criticism. Her determination to behave
well, not let loose the demons that tore and howled inside her,
made her slow and apparently stupid. She repeated: ‘It's better for
you, I know that.' And, ‘You must decide for yourself.' As if it
had not all been decided long ago. She did not offer the girl tea,
or a soft drink, but sat clutching the arms of a chair and staring
at her daughter, blinking unevenly, and then, when it was all
going to explode out of her, she said hurriedly, ‘You'd better run
along, Tilly. Yes, I know you're Sylvia now but you're Tilly to
me.'

And Sylvia went off, knowing it had been touch and go
whether she was screamed at.

Colin returned first: he said it had been great, and that was
all he said. He was a good deal in his room, reading.

Sophie came to say she was starting at her acting school, and
would make her home her base, because her mother still needed
her. ‘But please can I come often–I do so love our suppers,
Frances, I do so love our evenings.' Frances reassured her,
embraced her and knew from that touch the girl was troubled.

‘What's wrong?' she asked. ‘Is it Roland? Didn't you have a
good time with him?'

Sophie said, not intending to be humorous, ‘I don't think I
am old enough for him.'

‘Ah, I see. Did he say that?'

‘He said that if I had more experience I'd understand. It's a
funny thing, Frances. Sometimes I feel that he's not there at all–he's with me but . . . and yet he does love me, Frances, he says
he does . . .'

‘Well, there you are.'

‘We did some lovely things. We walked for miles, we went
to the theatre, we joined in with some other people and we had
a groovy time.'

Geoffrey was starting at the LSE. He dropped in to say that
he felt he was a big boy now and it was time he had his own
place. He was going to share with some Americans he had met
demonstrating in Georgia; it was a pity Colin was a year younger
than he was, or he could come and share too. He said he wanted
to come here ‘like the old days', he felt leaving this house was
more like leaving home than if he was leaving his parents.

Daniel, a year younger than Geoffrey, had another year at
school, a year without Geoffrey.

James was going to the LSE.

Jill continued to be the dark horse. She did not return with
Rose, who never told them where she had been but who did say
that Jill had been in Bristol with a lover. But she said she would
be back.