The Sweetest Dream (36 page)

‘As you see.'

James was heartily at work on the food. ‘You're missing a
treat,' he said to his guide and mentor. He spoke in cockney, and
Julia went Tsk, tsk, in annoyance.

Johnny hesitated, then succumbed and sat down as a plate
arrived in front of him, Frances having known that this would be
the outcome.

Sylvia said, ‘This is serious. Johnny, James, we are having a
serious discussion.'

‘When are situations not serious?' said Johnny. He had nodded
at his sons on arriving, and now said to Andrew, ‘Pass the bread.'

‘Life,' said Colin, ‘as we all know, is intrinsically serious.'

‘Seriouser and seriouser, as far as I am concerned,' said
Andrew.

‘Stop it,' said Sylvia. ‘We've invited Johnny here for a reason.'

‘Shoot!' said Johnny.

‘There is a group of young doctors. We have formed a
committee. We have all been worried for some time, but the clinching
factor was a letter brought out of the Soviet Union . . .'

Johnny, with dramatic intent, laid down his knife and fork
and held up a hand to stop her.

She went on. ‘It was from a group of doctors in the Soviet
Union. They say there have been accidents at nuclear plants, a
lot of deaths and people dying. Large areas of country are
contaminated with fall-out . . .'

‘I am not interested in anti-Soviet propaganda,' said Johnny.
He resumed his place, back to the window, leaving his plate.
James, with reluctance, left his and stood by Johnny, captain and
lieutenant.

Sylvia said, ‘This letter was brought out by someone who was
there on a delegation. Smuggled out. It reached us. It is genuine.'

‘In the first place,' said Johnny, his speech becoming ever
more clipped, ‘the comrades in the Soviet Union are responsible
and would never permit nuclear installations to be faulty. And in
the second place, I am not prepared to listen to information which
so obviously comes from fascist sources.'

‘Oh, Lord,' said Sylvia. ‘Aren't you ashamed of yourself,
Johnny? Just going on and on saying the same old stuff everyone
knows . . .'

‘And who is this everybody?' sneered Johnny.

Julia broke in: ‘I want to know why your–mob–insists that
it is in some way criminal for a government and the Royal Family
to be kept safe in the event of war? I do not understand you.'

‘It is perfectly simple,' said Andrew. ‘These are people who
hate anybody in authority–as a matter of course.'

James said, laughing, ‘And quite right too.' And repeated it,
‘An' qui' righ' too.'

‘Children,' said Julia. ‘Idiot children. And they have such
influence. If you had lived through a war you would not talk
such nonsense.'

‘You forget,' said James. ‘Comrade Johnny fought in the
Spanish Civil War.'

Now, a silence. The younger ones had scarcely heard of
Johnny's feats, and the older ones had long ago tried to forget.
Johnny only looked modestly downwards, and then nodded,
taking control again, and said, ‘If the bomb falls then that will be
curtains, for everybody in the world.'

‘What bomb?' said Julia. ‘Why do you always talk about
the
bomb,
the
bomb?'

‘It's not the Soviet Union we should be worried about,' said
Johnny. ‘It's American bombs.'

Sylvia said, ‘Oh, Johnny, I do wish you'd be serious. You
always talk so much nonsense.'

Johnny, goaded by this nonentity, this squit of a girl, slowly
losing his temper. ‘I do not think I am often told that I talk
nonsense.'

‘That is because you only mix with people who talk nonsense,'
said Colin.

Frances, who was silent because from the moment Johnny
had entered she knew nothing sensible could be said or achieved,
was removing the plates and putting down glass bowls of lemon
cream, apricot mousse and whipped cream. James, seeing this,
actually groaned with greed, and resumed his place at the table.

‘Who makes pudding these days?' said Johnny.

‘Only lovely Frances,' said Sophie, tucking in.

‘And not often,' said Frances.

Sylvia said, ‘Very well, Johnny, let us assume that these terrible
nuclear accidents in the Soviet Union never happened . . .'

‘And of course they did not.'

‘Then what is your objection to the people of this country
being protected against fall-out? You won't even agree to
information about how to prepare a house against fall-out. You won't
agree to any kind of protection for people. I don't get it. None
of us can. The mere idea of any kind of protection and you all
start squealing.'

‘Because once you agree to shelters then it assumes war is
inevitable.'

‘But that is simply not logical,' said Julia.

‘Not to an ordinary mind,' said Rupert.

Sylvia said, ‘It amounts to this, Johnny. No government in
this country could even suggest protecting the people, even to
the minor extent of fall-out shelters, because of you and your lot.
The Campaign for Unilateral Nuclear Disarmament–it has such
power that the government is afraid of it.'

‘That's righ',' said James. ‘That's how i' ough'a be.'

‘Why do you talk in that ugly way?' said Julia. ‘That isn't how
you need to speak.'

‘If you don't talk ugly then you're posh,' said Colin, talking
posh. ‘And you don't get work in this free country. Another
tyranny.'

Johnny and James showed signs of leaving.

‘I'm going back to the hospital,' said Sylvia. ‘At least I can
have an intelligent conversation there.'

‘I want to see the letter you are talking about,' said Johnny.

‘Why?' asked Sylvia. ‘You aren't even prepared to discuss what
it says.'

‘Obviously,' said Andrew, ‘he wants to inform the Soviet
Embassy here of its contents. So that it can be traced, and the
writers can be sent to labour camps or shot.'

‘Labour camps do not exist,' said Johnny. ‘And if they did
once–to a certain extent–they have been exaggerated–then
they don't exist now.'

‘Oh, Lord,' said Andrew. ‘You really are a bore, Johnny.'

‘A bore isn't dangerous,' said Julia. ‘Johnny and his kind are
dangerous.'

‘That is very true,' said Wilhelm, politely, as ever, to Johnny.
‘You are very dangerous people. Do you realise, if there is a
nuclear accident here, in this country, or if a bomb is dropped
by some madman, let alone if there is a war, then millions of
people could die because of you?'

‘Well, thanks for the snack,' said Johnny.

‘Thanks for nothing,' said Sylvia, almost in tears. ‘I should
have known there was no point even in trying.'

The two men left. Andrew and Sophie left, their arms around
each other. Colin's sardonic smile at the sight did not go unnoticed
by them or by anybody.

Sylvia said, ‘Anyway, there's a committee. So far it's all doctors,
but we are going to expand.'

‘Enrol us all,' said Colin, ‘but expect to find glass in your
wine and frogs through the letterbox.'

Sylvia embraced Julia, and left.

‘Don't you think it is strange that stupid people should have
such power?' said Julia, almost weeping, because of Sylvia's careless
farewell.

‘No,' said Colin.

‘No,' said Frances.

‘No,' said Wilhelm Stein.

‘No,' said Rupert.

‘But this is England, this is England . . .' said Julia.

Wilhelm put his arm around her, and led her out and up the
stairs.

There were left Frances and Rupert, Colin and the dog. A little
situation: Rupert wanted to stay the night, and Frances wanted
him to, but she was afraid–she could not help it–of Colin's
reaction.

‘Well, you two,' said Colin, and it was an effort for him,
‘bedtime, I think.' Giving them permission. He began teasing the
dog until it barked.

‘There you are,' he said. ‘He always has the last word.'

 • • •

A couple of weeks later Frances with Rupert, Julia and Wilhelm,
Colin, were at a meeting called by the young doctors. There were
about two hundred there. Sylvia opened the meeting, speaking
well. Other doctors, and then more people followed. Members
of the opposition had got wind of the meeting, and there were a
group of thirty, who kept up a steady shouting, whistling, and
shouts of
Fascists! War mongers! CIA!
Some were from the staff
of
The Defender
. As our group left, some youths waiting at the
exit caught hold of Wilhelm Stein and threw him against railings.
Colin at once laid into them and put them to flight. Wilhelm was
shaken, it was thought no more than that, but he had cracked
ribs and he was taken to Julia's house and put to bed there.

‘And so, my dear,' he said, in a voice that was wheezy, and
old. ‘And so, Julia, I have achieved the impossible: I am living
with you at last.' This was the first the others had heard Wilhelm
wanted to move in.

He was put into the room that had been Andrew's and Julia
proved a devoted if fussy nurse. Wilhelm hated it, having seen
himself always as Julia's cavalier, her beau. And Colin too, that
abrasive young man, surprised the others, and perhaps himself, by
a charming attentiveness to the old man. He sat with him, and
told him stories about ‘my dangerous life on the Heath, and in
the Hampstead pubs', in which Vicious figured as something not
far off the Hound of the Baskervilles. Wilhelm laughed, and
begged Colin to desist, because his ribs hurt. Doctor Lehman
came, and told Frances and Julia and Colin that the old man was
on his way out. ‘These falls are not good at his age.' He prescribed
sedatives for Wilhelm and a variety of pills for Julia whom he was
at last permitting to think of herself as old.

Frances and Rupert at
The Defender
demanded their right to
put an opposing view to that of the unilateral disarmament people,
and wrote an article, which earned dozens of letters nearly all
furiously opposing, or abusive.
The Defender
offices seethed and
Frances and Rupert found curt or angry notes on their desks, some
anonymous. They realised this rage was too deep in some part of
the collective unconscious to be reasoned with. It was not about
protecting or not protecting the population: they had no idea
what it was really about. It was very unpleasant at
The Defender
.
They decided to leave, well before it suited either of them
financially. They were simply in the wrong place. Always had been,
Frances decided. And all those long well-reasoned articles on social
issues? Anyone could have written them, Frances said. Rupert
almost at once got another job on a newspaper described as fascist
by a typical
Defender
addict, but as Tory, by the populace. ‘I
suppose I must be a Tory,' said Rupert, ‘if we are going to take
these old labels seriously.'

The week they resigned a parcel of faeces was pushed through
the door of Julia's house, but not the front door, the one into
Phyllida's flat from the outside steps to the basement. A
death-threat arrived, anonymous, to Frances. And Rupert too was sent
a death-threat, together with some photographs of Hiroshima after
the bomb. Phyllida came up–the first time for months–to say
she objected to being drawn into this ‘ridiculous debate'. She was
not prepared to deal with shit, not on any level. She was leaving.
She was going to share a flat with another woman. And then she
was gone.

As for the poisonous debates over protecting or not protecting
the population, soon it would be generally agreed that war had
been prevented for so long because the possibly belligerent nations
had nuclear weapons and did not use them. There remained,
however, questions that this admission did not answer. Accidents
at nuclear installations might happen and often did, and were
usually hushed up. In the Soviet Union there had been accidents
that had poisoned whole districts. There were madmen in the
world who would not hesitate to drop ‘the bomb', or several, but
it was at least strange that this threat was usually referred to in the
singular. The population remained unprotected, but the violence,
the poison, the rage of the debates, simply fizzled out–stopped.
If there ever had been a threat, it existed now. But the hysteria
evaporated. ‘A strange thing,' said Julia, in her new, sorrowful,
slow voice.

Wilhelm was still at Julia's, and his big luxurious flat was
empty. He kept saying that he was going to bring all his books
over, and put an end to this ‘amazingly absurd situation', with
him neither living with Julia, nor not. He kept making dates with
the movers, and cancelling them. He was not himself. He had to
be humoured. Julia was as distressed. The two of them together
were now like sick people who wanted to be responsible for each
other, but their own weakness forbade it. Julia had succumbed to
pneumonia, and for a while the two invalids were on different
floors, sending notes to each other. Then Wilhelm insisted on
getting up to visit her. She saw this old man shuffling into her
room, holding on to the edges of doors, and chair tops, and
thought he looked like an old tortoise. He was in a dark jacket,
wore a small dark cap, for his head was always cold, and he poked
his head forward. And she–he was shocked by her, the bones
of her face prominent, her arms like sticks of bone.

Both were so sad, so distressed. Like people in a severe
depression, the grey landscape that lay about them now seemed
to be the only truth. ‘It seems I am an old man, Julia,' he jested,
trying to revive in him the courtly gent who kissed her hand
and stood between her and all difficulties. That had been the
convention. But he had been nothing of the sort, he now
perceived, only a lonely old thing dependent on Julia for, well,
everything. And she, the benevolent gracious lady, whose house
had sheltered so many, though she had grumbled about it often
enough, without him would have been an emotionally indigent
old fool, besotted with a girl who was not even her granddaughter.
So they seemed to each other and themselves, on their bad days,
like shadows a bare branch lays on the earth, a thin and empty
tracery, no warmth of flesh anywhere, and kisses and embraces
are tentative, ghosts trying to meet.