The Sweetest Dream (26 page)

Colin, tears streaming, said to his mother, ‘How could we do
that? We wouldn't throw a dog out on a night like this,' and
went upstairs, Sophie, who was still in the kitchen, following him,
to comfort and console. It was quite a mild night: as if that were
the point.

The next afternoon Colin took the bus to the mental hospital.
All he knew about it was that it served north London. Vast, a
mansion, its associations making it seem like the setting for
a Gothic novel, it admitted Colin into a corridor that seemed a
quarter of a mile long, painted a shiny vomit green. At its end he
found stairs, and on them the woman who had come to take away
poor mad Molly-Marlene last night. She told him that Molly
Smith was in Room 23, and that he mustn't be upset if she didn't
know him. She wore a plastic overall, had towels over her arm
and a strong-smelling soap in her hand. Room 23 was large, with
big windows, light and airy, but it needed painting. Bits of
Christmas holly were stuck on the walls, by Sellotape. Men and women
of various ages were sitting about on shabby chairs, some not
looking at anything, some making the restless movements that
were the visible expressions of dreams of being elsewhere, and a
group of ten or so people sat as if at a tea-party, holding mugs of
tea, passing biscuits, and conversing. One was Molly, or Marlene.
Awkward and embarrassed, as helpless as a child in a room full of
grown-ups, Colin said, ‘Hello, do you remember me? You were
in our house last night.'

‘Oh, was I, dear? Oh, dear, I don't remember. Was I
wandering, then? Sometimes I do go wandering and then . . . but sit
down, dear. What's your name?'

Colin sat in an empty chair, near her, with the eyes of every
person in the room on him: they all longed for something
interesting to happen. He was trying to make conversation when the
attendant, or nurse, or wardress, from last night, came in and said,
‘The bathroom's free.' A middle-aged man got up and went out.

‘Me next,' said Molly, smiling with a vague but eager intent
at Colin, who blurted, ‘How long–I mean, have you been here
a long time?'

‘Oh, yes, dear, a long, long time.'

The attendant, still wielding towels and soap, but standing at
the door as if on guard, said to Colin, ‘This is her home. It is
Molly's home.'

‘Well, I don't have another,' said Molly, laughing merrily.
‘Sometimes I go wandering and then I come back again.'

‘Yes, you do wander and you don't always come back and
we have to find you,' said the attendant, smiling away.

Colin stuck it out, an hour of it, and then as he was thinking
he must leave, he couldn't bear it, in came a girl as confused as
he was. It seemed that her home was one of those on whose
doors Molly had knocked, not last night, but on Christmas Eve.

The girl, a pretty, fresh little thing, her face showing all the
dismay Colin felt, sat by Colin and told them all about her school,
one of the good girls' schools, chat to which Molly and her friends
listened as if to news from far Tartary. Then the attendant said it
was time for Molly's bath.

Relief all round. Up got Molly, and went off to her bath, the
attendant or wardress with her. ‘Now, Molly, you be a good girl.'
Those that were left began squabbling about who was to go next:
no one wanted to, because Molly left the bathroom a swamp.

‘It's a swamp when she's done,' said an old wild woman,
earnestly, to the youngsters. ‘You'd think a hippopotamus had
been in it.'

‘What do you know about hippopotamuses?' scorned an old
wild man, clearly a sparring partner. ‘You're always having your
say out of turn.'

‘I do know all about hippos,' said the angry crone. ‘I used to
watch them from the verandah of our house on the banks of the
Limpopo.'

‘Anyone can say they had a house by the Limpopo or the
blue Danube,' he said. ‘When no one can prove otherwise.'

Colin and the girl, who was Mandy, left the hospital, and
Colin took her home for supper, where they all wanted to know
about the dreaded mental hospital and its inmates.

‘They're just like us,' said Colin, and Mandy said eagerly,
‘Yes, I don't see why they have to be there.'

Later Colin tackled Julia, then his mother. It is hard, very, for
the older ones, world-whipped, when they have to listen while
the idealistic young demand explanations for the sadness of the
world. ‘Why, but
why
?' Colin wanted to know, and it was not
the end of it, for he did go back to the hospital, but found himself
defeated since Molly had forgotten his visit to her. At last he left
her his address and his telephone number, ‘In case you ever want
anything'–to someone who wanted everything, above all, her
wits. Mandy did the same.

‘That was a very foolish thing to do,' Julia said.

‘That was very kind,' said Frances.

Mandy became for a time one of ‘the kids' at the supper table,
easy for her, since both her parents worked. She did not say they
were shits but that they did their best. She was an only child.
Then they whisked her off to New York. She and Colin wrote
to each other for years.

And twenty years were to pass before they met.

In the Eighties, at the behest of another ideological imperative,
all the mental hospitals and asylums were closed, and their inmates
turned out to sink or swim. Colin got a letter in faint straggly
writing:
Colin
–just that, and the address. He went down to
Brighton where he found her in one of the lodging houses run
by the philanthropists who were taking in former mental hospital
patients and charging them every penny of their benefit, for
conditions Dickens would have recognised.

She was a sick old woman, whom he did not recognise, but
she seemed to know him. ‘He had such a kind face,' said
Molly-Marlene Smith–if Smith was indeed her name. ‘Tell him, he
has such a nice face, that boy. Do you know Colin?'

She was dying of the drink. Well, of what else? . . . And,
visiting her again, Colin found Mandy, a smart American matron
now, with a child or two and a husband or two, and they met
again at the funeral and then Mandy flew back to Washington,
and out of his life.

There was another event on that Christmas night.

Late, long after midnight, Franklin crept up the stairs, listening
for Rose, who seemed to be asleep. The kitchen was dark. Up
he went, past the sitting-room, where Geoffrey and James were
in their sleeping bags. Up to the next floor where he knew Sylvia
had her room. There was a light on the landing. He knocked,
not louder than a hen's peck, on Sylvia's door. Not a sound. He
tried again, the gentlest knock: he didn't dare knock louder. And
then just above him, Andrew appeared.

‘What are you doing? Are you lost? That's Sylvia's room.'

‘Oh, oh, I'm so sorry. I thought . . .'

‘It's late,' said Andrew. ‘Go back to bed.'

Franklin went down the stairs far enough to be out of
Andrew's sight, where he collapsed, bending over, head on his
knees. He cried, softly though, not to be heard.

Then he felt an arm across his shoulder, and Colin said, ‘Poor
old Franklin. Never mind. Don't you get upset about Andrew.
He's just one of the world's natural prefects.'

‘I love her,' sobbed Franklin. ‘I love Sylvia.'

Colin increased the pressure of his arm and let his cheek lie
against Franklin's head. He rubbed it on the springy mat which
seemed to send a message of health and strength, like heather.
‘You don't really,' he said. ‘She's still a little girl, you know–yes, she may be sixteen or seventeen or whatever she is but she's
. . . not mature, you know? It's all the fault of her parents. They've
screwed her up.' Here rather to his own surprise he felt laughter
bubbling up: absurdity was confronting him. But he persevered:
‘They're all shits,' he informed Franklin, and turned a laugh into
a cough.

Franklin was more bewildered than ever. ‘I think your mother
is so nice. She is so kind to me.'

‘Oh, yes, I suppose so. But it's no good, Sylvia, I mean. You'll
have to fall in love with someone else. What about . . .' And he
began on a list of girl's names from school, chanting them, like a
song. ‘There's Jilly and there's–Jolly. There's Milly and there's
Molly. There's Elizabeth and Margaret, there's Caroline and
Roberta.' He said in his usual voice, and with an ugly laugh, ‘No
one could say they're immature.'

But I do love her, Franklin was saying to himself. That delicate
pale girl, with her golden fluffy hair, she enchanted him, to hold
her in his arms would be . . . He turned his face away from Colin,
and was silent. Colin felt the shoulders under his arm hot and
miserable. How well he identified with that misery, how well he
did know that nothing he said would make Franklin feel better.
He began rocking Franklin gently. Franklin was thinking that all
he wanted was to go back to Africa tonight, go for ever, it was
all too much, but he knew Colin was kind. And he did like sitting
here, with the kind boy's arms around him.

‘Would you like to bring your sleeping bag up to my room?
Better than the company of Rose, and we can sleep as long as we
like.'

‘Yes . . . no, no, it's all right. I'll go down now. Thanks,
Colin.' But I do love her, he was repeating to himself.

‘All right, then,' said Colin. He got up, went up.

And Franklin went down. He was thinking, I'm going to get
it in the morning–meaning, from Andrew. But Andrew never
mentioned it nor referred to it. And Sylvia never knew that
Franklin had been forced by his longing to go up the stairs to
knock on her door.

When Franklin reached the bottom of the stairs into the
basement flat, there was Rose, her hands on her hips, her face twisted
with suspicion.

‘If you think you're going to sleep with Sophie, then think
again. Colin's mad for her, even if Roland Shattock isn't.'

‘Sophie?' stammered Franklin.

‘Oh, yes, you all have the hots for Sophie.'

‘It was a mistake,' said Franklin. ‘A mistake, that's all.'

‘Really?' said Rose. ‘You could have fooled me.' And she
turned her back on him and went to her bed.

She certainly wasn't in love with Franklin, or even fancied
him, but she would have liked him to try. A sister, well she'd
show him sister. She couldn't say no to a black boy, could she,
it would hurt his feelings.

And Franklin in his bed was curled up and clenched, like a
fist, weeping most bitterly.

 • • •

That tumultuous year, 1968, was peaceful enough in Julia's house,
which for a long time had not been crammed with ‘the kids' but
rather with sober adults.

Four years: it is a long time–that is, it is if you are young.

Sylvia had turned out to be almost unnaturally brilliant,
crammed two years' work into one, took exams as if they were
pleasurable challenges, seemed to have no friends. She had become
a Roman Catholic, often saw a magnetic Jesuit priest called Father
Jack, at Farm Street, and went every Sunday to Westminster
Cathedral. She was on her way to becoming a doctor.

Andrew had done well, too. He was home from Cambridge
often. Why didn't he have a girlfriend? worried his mother. But
he said his teeth had been set on edge by all the sour grapes he
had had to watch being consumed ‘by you lot'.

Colin had agreed to take his final exams at school but dropped
out. For weeks he stayed in bed shouting ‘go away' to anyone
who knocked on his door. One day he got up, as if nothing at
all had happened, saying he was going to see the world. ‘It's time
I saw a bit of the world, Mother.' And off he went, postcards
arriving from Italy, Germany, the United States, Cuba. ‘You can
tell Johnny from me he is barking mad. This place is a sink.'
Brazil, Ecuador. He would come back between trips, was polite
but uninformative.

Sophie had finished drama school and was getting small parts.
She came to Frances to complain that she was cast according to
her looks. Frances did not say, ‘Don't worry, time will cure that.'
She was living with Roland Shattock, who already had a name
and had played Hamlet. She told Frances that she was not happy,
and knew she should leave him.

Frances had almost gone back to the theatre. She had actually
said yes to a tempting part, but then again had to refuse. Money,
it was money, again. Colin's school fees were no longer an item,
and Julia had said she could manage Sylvia and Andrew, but then
Sylvia came to ask if Phyllida could live in the downstairs flat.
This is what had happened. Johnny had telephoned Sylvia to say
she must visit her mother. ‘And don't say no, Tilly, it isn't good
enough.'

Sylvia had found her mother waiting for her, dressed to make
an impression of competence, but looking ill. There was nothing
to eat in the place, not so much as a loaf of bread. Johnny had
moved out to live with Stella Linch, and was not giving Phyllida
money, nor paying the rent. ‘Get a job,' he had said to her.

‘How can I get a job, Tilly?' Phyllida had said to her daughter.
‘I am not well.'

That was evident.

‘Why don't you call me Sylvia?'

‘Oh, I can't. I can always hear my little girl saying, “I'm Tilly.”
Little Tilly, that's how I remember you.'

‘
You
gave me the name Sylvia.'

‘Oh, Tilly, I will try.' And before the real conversation had
begun, Phyllida was dabbing her eyes with tissues. ‘If I could
come and live in that flat then I could manage. I do sometimes
get money from your father.'