The Sweetest Dream (13 page)

‘James,' said Frances, ‘please go home.'

‘Are you throwing me out?' he said, good-humouredly. ‘I
don't blame you. Have I outstayed my welcome?'

‘For now, yes,' said Frances, who was by nature unable to
throw anyone out permanently. ‘But what about school, James?
Aren't you going to finish school?'

‘Of course he is,' said Andrew, revealing that admonitions
must have occurred. His four years seniority gave him the right.
‘It's ridiculous, James,' he went on, talking direct to James.
‘You've only got a year to go to A-levels. It won't kill you.'

‘You don't know my school,' said James, but desperation had
entered the equation. ‘If you did . . .'

‘Anyone can suffer for a year,' said Andrew. ‘Or even three.
Or four,' he said, glancing guiltily at his mother: he was making
revelations.

‘Okay,' said James. ‘I will. But . . .' and here he looked at
Frances, ‘without the liberating airs of Frances's house I don't
think I could survive.'

‘You can visit,' said Frances. ‘There's always weekends.'

There were left now Rose and the dark horse Jill, the always
well-brushed, well-washed, polite, blonde girl, who hardly ever
spoke, but listened, how she did listen.

‘I'm not going home,' said Rose. ‘I won't go.'

Frances said, ‘You do realise that your parents could sue me
for alienating your affections–well, that kind of thing.'

‘They don't care about me,' declared Rose. ‘They don't give
a fuck.'

‘That's not true,' said Andrew. ‘You may not like them but
they certainly care about you. They wrote to me. They seem to
think I am a good influence.'

‘That's a joke,' said Rose.

The hinterlands behind this tiny exchange were acknowledged
as glances were exchanged among the others.

‘I said I am not going,' said Rose. She was darting trapped
glances around at them all: they might have been her enemies.

‘Listen, Rose,' said Frances, with the intention of keeping her
dislike of the girl out of her voice, ‘Liberty Hall is closing down
over Christmas.' She had not specified for how long.

‘I can stay in the basement flat, can't I? I won't be in the
way.'

‘And how are you going to . . .' but Frances stopped.

Andrew had an allowance and he had been giving money to
Rose. ‘She could claim that I treated her badly,' said Andrew.
‘Well, she does complain, she tells everyone how I wronged her.
Like the wicked squire and the milkmaid. The trouble was, she
was all for me, but I wasn't for her.' Frances had thought, Or all
for the glamorous Eton boy and his connections? Andrew had
said, ‘I think that coming here was what did it. It was such a
revelation to her. It's a pretty limited set-up–her parents are very
nice . . .'

‘And are you–and Julia–going to keep her indefinitely?'

‘No,' said Andrew. ‘I've said, enough. After all, she's done
very well out of a kiss or two in the moonlight.'

But now they were faced with a guest who would not leave.

Rose looked as if she were being threatened with
imprisonment, with torture. An animal in a too small cage could look like
that, glaring out, glaring around.

It was all out of proportion, ridiculous . . . Frances persisted,
though the girl's violence was making her own heart beat, ‘Rose,
just go home for Christmas, that's all. Just do that. They must be
worried sick about you. And you have to talk to them about
school . . .' At this Rose exploded up out of the chair, and said,
‘Oh, shit, it just needed that . . .' and she ran out of the room,
howling, tears scattering. They listened to her thud down the
stairs to the basement flat.

‘Well,' said Geoffrey gracefully, ‘what a carry-on.'

Sylvia said, ‘But her school must be horrible if she hates it so
much.' She had agreed to go back to school, while she lived here,
‘with Julia,' as she put it. And she had said yes, she would stick
it out and study to be a doctor.

What was burning Rose up, consuming her with the acid of
envy, was that Sylvia–‘And she isn't even related, she's just
Johnny's stepchild'–was in this house, as a right, and that Julia
was paying for her. It seemed Rose believed that justice would
make Julia pay for her, Rose, to go to a progressive school, and
keep her here for as long as she liked.

Colin had said to her, ‘Do you think my grandmother's made
of money? It's a lot for her to take on Sylvia. She's already paying
for me and for Andrew.'

‘It isn't fair,' had been Rose's answer. ‘I don't see why she
should have everything.'

There now remained Jill, who had not said a word. Finding
them all looking at her, she said, ‘I'm not going home. But I'll
go to my cousin in Exeter for Christmas.'

Next morning Frances found Jill in the kitchen, boiling a
kettle for tea. Since there was plenty of everything in the basement
kitchen, this might mean Jill had hoped for a chat.

‘Let's sit down and have tea,' said Frances, and sat down.

Jill joined her, at the end of the table. This was obviously not
going to be like an encounter with Rose. The girl was watching
Frances, not with hostility, but was sad, serious, and sat holding
her arms around herself, as if she were cold.

Frances said, ‘Jill, you do see that I am in an impossible position
with your parents.'

The girl said, ‘Oh, I thought you were going to say you didn't
see why you should keep me. Fair enough. But . . .'

‘I wasn't going to say that. But don't you really see that your
parents must be going mad with worry?'

‘I told them where I was. I said I was here.'

‘Are you thinking of not going back to school?'

‘I don't see the point of it.'

She wasn't doing well at school, but at St Joseph's this was
not a final argument.

‘And don't you see that I must be worrying about you?'

At this the girl seemed to come alive, leave behind her cold
apprehension, and she leaned forward and said, ‘Oh, Frances, no,
you mustn't. It's so nice here. I feel so safe.'

‘And don't you feel safe at home?'

‘It's not that. They just . . . don't like me.' And she retreated
back inside her shell, hugging herself, rubbing her arms as if she
were really cold.

Frances noted that this morning Jill had painted great black
lines around her eyes. A new thing, on this neat little girl. And
she was wearing one of Rose's mini-dresses.

Frances would have liked to put her arms around the child
and hold her. She had never had such an impulse with Rose: she
wished Rose would simply take herself off. So, she liked Jill, but
did not like Rose. And so what difference could that make, when
she treated them exactly the same?

 • • •

Frances sat alone in the kitchen, and the table which she had
wiped and waxed shone like a pool. Really, it was a very nice
table, she thought, now that you can see it. Not a plate or a cup,
and no people. It was Christmas Day and she had shouted goodbye
to Colin and Sophie first, both dressed for Christmas lunch, even
Colin, who despised clothes. Then it was Julia, in a grey velvet
suit and a sort of bonnety thing with a rose on it, and a blueish
veil. Sylvia was wearing a dress bought for her by Julia, which
made Frances glad the jeans and T-shirt wearers had not seen it:
she didn't want them laughing at Sylvia, who could have gone
to church fifty years ago in that blue dress. She had refused to
wear a hat, though. Then off went Andrew, to console Phyllida.
He had put his head around the door to say, ‘We all envy you,
Frances. Well, all except Julia, she's upset that you will be alone.
And you must expect a little present. She was too shy to tell you.'

Frances sat alone. All over this country women laboured over
the stove, basting several million turkeys, while Christmas
puddings steamed. Brussels sprouts sent out sulphuric fumes. Fields of
potatoes were jammed around the birds. Bad temper reigned, but
she, Frances, was sitting like a queen, alone. Only people who
have known the pressure of exorbitant teenagers, or emotional
dependants who suck and feed and demand, can know the pure
pleasure of being free, even for an hour. Frances felt herself relax,
all through her body, she was like a balloon ready to float up and
away. And it was quiet. In other houses Christmas music exulted
or pounded, but here, in this house, no television, not even a
radio . . . but wait, was that something downstairs–was that Rose
down there? But she had said she was going with Jill to the cousins.
The music must be coming from next door.

So, on the whole, silence. She breathed in, she breathed out,
oh happiness, she had absolutely nothing to worry about, even
think about, for several hours. The doorbell rang. Cursing, she
went to find a smiling young man, in decorative gear, red, for
Christmas, and he handed her, with a bow, a tray enclosed in
white muslin, that was twisted up in the centre and held with a
red bow. ‘Merry Christmas,' he said, and then ‘Bon appetit.' Off
he went, whistling ‘Good King Wenceslas'.

Frances put the tray in the centre of the table. It had a card
on it announcing it was from an elegant restaurant, of the serious
kind, and when the muslin was opened, there was revealed a little
feast, with another card, ‘Best wishes from Julia.'
Best wishes
. It
was clearly Frances's fault that Julia could not say
With Love
, but
never mind, she was not going to worry about that today.

It was all so pretty she did not want to disturb it.

A white china bowl held a green soup, very cold, with shaved
ice on it, that a testing finger announced was a blend of velvety
unctuousness and tartness–what was it? Sorrel? A blue plate
decorated with frills of bright green lettuce pretending to be
seaweed held scallop shells and in them sliced scallops, with
mushrooms. Two quails sat side by side on a bed of sauteed celery. By
it a card said, ‘Please heat for ten minutes.' A little Christmas
pudding was made of chocolate and decorated with holly. There
was a dish of fruit Frances had not tasted and scarcely knew the
names of, Cape gooseberries, lychees, passion fruit, guavas. There
was a slice of Stilton. Little bottles of champagne, burgundy and
port fenced the feast. These days there would be nothing
remarkable in the witty little spread, which paid homage to the Christmas
meal, while it mocked, but then it was a glimpse of a vision from
celestial fields, a swallow visiting from the plenitudes of the future.
Frances could not eat it, it would be a crime. She sat down and
looked at it and thought that Julia must care for her, after all.

Frances wept. At Christmas one weeps. It is obligatory. She
wept because of her mother-in-law's kindness to her and to her
sons, and because of the charm of the meal, sparking off its
invitations, and because of her incredulity at what she had managed
to live through, and then, really getting down to it, she wept at
the miseries of Christmasses past. Oh my God, those Christmasses
when the boys were small, and they were in those dreadful rooms,
and everything so ugly, and they were often cold.

Then she dried her eyes and sat on, alone. An hour, two
hours. Not a soul in the house . . . that radio was downstairs, not
next door, but she chose to ignore it. It might have been left on,
after all. Four o'clock. The gas boards and electricity would be
relieved that once again they had coped with the national
Christmas lunch. Tired and cross women from Land's End to the
Orkneys would be sitting down and saying, ‘Now,
you
wash up.'
Well, good luck to them.

In armchairs and in sofas people would be dozing off and the
Queen's speech would be intermittently heard, interrupted by the
results of over-eating. It was getting dark. Frances got up, pulled
the curtains tight shut, switched on lights. She sat down again.
She was getting hungry but could not bring herself to spoil the
pretty feast. She ate a piece of bread and butter. She poured herself
a glass of Tio Pepe. In Cuba Johnny would be lecturing whoever
he was with on something: probably conditions in Britain.

She might go upstairs and have a nap, after all, she didn't often
get the chance of one. The door into the hall from outside opened,
and then the door into the kitchen and in came Andrew.

‘You've been crying,' he announced, sitting down, near her.

‘Yes, I have. A little. It was nice.'

‘I don't like crying,' he remarked. ‘It scares me, because I am
afraid I might never stop.'

Now he went red, and said, ‘Oh my God . . .'

‘Oh, Andrew,' said Frances, ‘I'm so sorry.'

‘What for? Damn it, how could you think . . .'

‘Everything could have been done differently, I suppose.'

‘What? What could? Oh,
God
.'

He poured out wine, he sat hunched into himself, not unlike
Jill, a few days ago.

‘It's Christmas,' said Frances. ‘That's all. The great provoker
of miserable memories.'

He as it were warded this thought off, with a hand that said,
Enough, don't go on. And leaned forward to inspect Julia's
present. As Frances had done, he dipped a finger into the soup: an
appreciative grimace. He sampled a slice of scallop.

‘I'm feeling a terrible hypocrite, Andrew. I've sent everyone
off, like good children, but I hardly went home after I left it. I'd
go home for Christmas Day and leave the next morning or even
that afternoon.'

‘I wonder if they went home for Christmas–your parents?'