The Sweetest Dream (49 page)

She walked off into the streets and when she saw a hotel,
went in.

She had said she would appear for lunch. In the morning she
went to the bookshops and bought, and bought: two big
containers of books arrived with her at Julia's house–it was still that,
for Sylvia. She was admitted by Frances, who, as Colin had done,
took her into the kitchen, embraced her like a long-lost daughter,
and put her in the old place, next to her.

‘Don't tell me I need feeding,' said Sylvia. ‘Don't.'

Frances set on the table a basket full of cut-up bread, and
Sylvia looked at it and thought how much Father McGuire would
relish that sight: she would take a loaf of good bread back for
him. A plate full of curls of sparkling butter: well, she couldn't
take that. Sylvia looked at the food and thought of Kwadere, and
Frances moved about, laying the table. She was a large handsome
woman, her yellow hair–dyed–in a cut that had cost the earth.
She was well-dressed: Julia would at last have approved.

Four places . . . who? In came a tall child who stopped to
examine Sylvia, the stranger. ‘This is William,' said Frances, ‘and
Sylvia used to live here. This is Sylvia, Meriel's friend Phyllida's
daughter.'

‘Well, hi,' he said, as formally as a how-do-you-do, and sat
down, a beautiful boy, knitting his fair brows together and
frowning as he tried to sort it all out. Then he gave it up with, ‘Frances,
I have to be at swimming at two. Please may I eat quickly?'

‘And I have to be at rehearsal. I'll serve you first.'

What was being served was far from the abundant home food
of the past. All kinds of bought dishes were appearing, and Frances
put a pizza into the microwave and then in front of William. He
at once began to eat.

‘Salad,' commanded Frances.

With a look of heroic endeavour the boy forked two frills of
lettuce and a radish on to his plate and ate them like medicine.

‘Well done,' said Frances. ‘I suppose Colin has told you all
our news, Sylvia?'

‘I think so.' The two women allowed their eyes to
communicate. From which Sylvia gathered that Frances would say more if
the child were not present. ‘It seems I am going to miss a wedding,'
she said.

‘I would hardly call it that. A dozen people at the register
office.'

‘I'd like to be there, all the same.'

‘But you can't. You don't like leaving your–hospital?'

That hesitation told Sylvia that Andrew had described the
place unkindly, to Frances. ‘You can't judge
there
by our standards.'

‘I wasn't judging. We are wondering if your skills aren't being
wasted. After all, you were in some pretty classy jobs.'

Now Sophie made an entrance. She wore something like an
old-fashioned teagown, or peignoir, white with big black flowers,
and was a vision, like Ophelia floating on the water, her long
black hair streaked dramatically with white, her lovely eyes
unchanged. Her pregnancy was the most elegant little lump
imaginable.

‘Seven months,' said Sylvia. ‘How do you do it?'

She was lost in Sophie's embrace. Both wept, and while this
was no more than could be expected of Sophie, and it became
her, Sylvia said, ‘Damn,' and wiped her eyes. Frances was crying
too. The boy watched with detached seriousness over bites of
pizza. Sophie reclined in the big chair at the foot of the table, her
eloquent hands outlining her belly.

‘Sylvia,' she said tragically, ‘I am forty-three.'

‘I know. Cheer up. Have you had the tests?'

‘Yes.'

‘Well, then.'

‘But Colin . . .' and she began weeping again. ‘Will he ever
forgive me?'

‘Oh, nonsense,' said Frances, impatient, having had too much
of this particular tune.

‘From what he was saying last night,' said Sylvia, ‘I don't think
forgiving or not forgiving is the point.'

‘Oh, Sylvia, you are so kind. Everyone is so kind. And to
come here to this house,
this
house, I've always felt it is my real
home, and Frances . . . you were as much my mother as my
mother and now she's gone, poor soul.'

‘Not so much a mother as a nurse,' said Frances.

‘Yes, did you know, she is playing the Nurse–oh,
wonderfully,' said Sophie. ‘But now we're going to have a real nurse in
this house because I shall go on acting and of course Frances is
acting too.'

‘No, I don't think I am prepared to take on a small baby,'
said Frances.

‘Of course not,' said Sophie, but it was clear that she had in
fact been hoping for just that.

‘And besides,' said Frances, ‘you forget, I and Rupert and the
children will be moving out.'

‘Oh,
no
,' mourned Sophie, ‘please don't. Please. There's plenty
of room for everyone.'

The boy was sitting straight up, eyes panicky, staring at them.
‘Why, where are we going? Why, Frances?'

‘Well, this is Colin's and Sophie's house now and they're
going to have a baby.'

‘But there's so much room,' said William loudly, as if shouting
them all down. ‘I don't see why.'

‘Hush,' said Sophie ineffectually, and looked to Frances, who
must soothe the boy's desperation.

‘I like this house,' William insisted. ‘I don't want to go away.
Why should we?' He began to cry, the difficult painful gulping
tears of a child who cries a good deal, but alone, hoping no one
will hear. He got up and rushed out. No one said anything.

Then, Sophie said, ‘But, Frances, Colin hasn't said you must
go, has he?'

‘No, he hasn't.'

‘I don't want you to go either.'

‘We always forget Andrew. He is going to have ideas about
what to do with this house.'

‘Why should he? He's having a lovely time running the world.
He wouldn't want us to be unhappy.'

Sylvia said, ‘You shouldn't overdo things, Sophie. Surely you
aren't going to go on acting till the end?' Now that Sophie was
not aflame with the excitements of welcome, it could be seen
that she was strained, drawn, and evidently overtired.

Sophie twisted her hands about over her lump. ‘Well . . . I
had thought . . . but perhaps . . .'

‘Have some sense,' Frances said. ‘Bad enough that . . .'

‘That I'm so
old
, oh, yes, I know.'

‘Well,' said Sylvia, ‘I wanted a word with Colin.'

‘He's working,' said Sophie. ‘No one dares to interrupt when
he's working.'

‘That's too bad, because I must.'

As Sophie went past Frances on her way up she quickly hugged
her and said, ‘Don't go, Frances. Please don't. I am sure no one
wants you to go.'

Frances followed her, and found William crouching on his
bed, like an animal wary for danger, or like someone in pain. He
was saying aloud, ‘I don't want to go. I don't want to.'

She put her arms around him and said, ‘Stop. It may never
happen. It probably won't.'

‘Promise, then.'

‘How can I? You should never promise something if you
aren't sure.'

‘But you are nearly sure, you are, aren't you?'

‘Yes, I suppose so. Yes.'

She waited, while he readied himself to go swimming, and
then said, ‘I don't think Margaret is all that keen on staying here,
is she?'

‘No. She wants to live with her mother. But I don't. Meriel
hates me because I am a man. I want to stay with you and my
father.'

Frances went to get ready for rehearsal, thinking that it was a
long time since she had even remembered that she had intended
to get her own place and live in it, self-sufficient and
self-supporting. The money she had saved to pay for it had alarmingly
dwindled. A slice had gone to pay for Meriel's therapy. She was
also paying Meriel's monthly allowance. Rupert had sold the flat
in Marylebone, and two-thirds of that had gone to Meriel. Rupert
and Frances were jointly paying a fair rent for living here, in this
house–the two of them and two children. He was paying the
children's school fees. Frances earned money from various books,
pamphlets, reprints, but when she did her little sums, a good part
of it had gone to Meriel. She was in that familiar position for our
times: she was supporting a first wife.

She went into the marital bedroom, with its two beds, the
one where she had slept alone for so long, and the big bed which
was now the emotional centre of her life. She sat on her spinster
bed and looked over at Rupert's pyjamas, lying folded on his
pillow. They were of a greeny-blue poplin, serious pyjamas
indeed, but, when you touched them, silky and tender. Rupert,
when you met him, must give the impression of solidity, strength,
but then you saw the delicacy in his face, the sensitive hands . . .
Frances sat on Rupert's side of the bed and caressed the pyjamas.

Did Frances regret having said yes to Rupert, his children, the
situation–nor situation? Never, not for one moment. She felt as
if she had stumbled so late in her life, as in a fairy tale, into a
glade full of sunshine, and she even dreamed scenes like these,
and knew it was Rupert she was dreaming of. Both of them
had been married, had thought that these thoroughly unpleasant
partners could be said to sum up marriage, but had found a
happiness they had not expected or even believed in. Both had busy
outward lives, he at his newspaper, she at the theatre, both knew
what seemed to be hundreds of people, but all that was the outer
life, and what was at the heart of it was this great bed, where
everything was understood and nothing needed to be said. Frances
would wake from a dream and tell herself, and then Rupert, that
she had been dreaming of happiness. Let them mock who would,
and they certainly did, but there was such a thing as happiness
and here it was, here they were, both of them, contented, like
cats in the sun. But these two middle-aged people–courtesy
would call them that–cuddled to themselves a secret they knew
would shrivel if exposed. And they were not the only ones:
ideology has pronounced their condition impossible and so, people
keep quiet.

 • • •

To come back to a house that loved you, took you in, kept you
safe, a house that put its arms around you, that you pulled over
your head like a blanket, and burrowed into like a lost little animal–but now it is not your home, it is other people's . . . Sylvia
went up those stairs, her feet knowing every step, every turn: here
she had crouched, listening to the noise and laughter from the
kitchen, thinking that she would never ever be accepted by it;
and here Andrew had found her and carried her up to bed, tucked
her in, given her chocolate from his pocket. Here had been her
room but she must walk past it. Here had been Andrew's room,
and Colin's. And now she was going up the last flight to Julia's
and did not know on the landing which door to knock at, but
guessed right, for Colin's voice said Come in, and she was in
Julia's old sitting-room and Colin was at–no, that was not Julia's
little desk, but a big one, that filled a wall. If all the things that
had been Julia's had been removed, and now it was all new
furniture, it would have been easy, but here was Julia's chair and
her little footstool, and it was as if the room both welcomed and
repelled her. Colin looked thoroughly dissipated. He was bloated,
a big man who would soon be all puffy fat if he . . . He said,
‘Sylvia, why did you just run away like that? When they told me
this morning . . .'

‘Never mind. It doesn't matter. I really want to talk to you
about something.'

‘And I am sorry. Forget what I said last night. You got me at
a bad moment. If I was criticising Sophie–forget it. I love Sophie.
I always did. Do you remember–we were always a–team?'

Sylvia sat in Julia's chair, knowing that her heart was going
to ache if she didn't watch out, for Julia, and she didn't want
that, didn't want to waste time on . . . Colin was opposite, his
back to the big desk, in a swivel chair. He sprawled there, legs
extended, and then he grinned, the savage self-criticism of his
drunkenness.

‘And there's another thing. What right have we to expect any
sort of normality? With the history of our family? All war and
disruption and the comrades? What nonsense!' He laughed, and
the smell of alcohol filled the room.

‘You'll have to stop drinking, if you're going to have a baby.
You might drop it or . . .'

‘What? I might what, little Sylvia?'

She sighed and said gently, humbly presenting this to him like
showing him a picture in a book: ‘Joshua, that's the man I told
you about–a black man of course . . . he dropped his two-year-old
into the fire. He was so badly burned that . . . of course, if it
happened in this country there would have been proper treatment
for him.'

‘Well, Sylvia, I don't think I'm going to drop our child into
a fire. I am perfectly aware that I am . . . that I could be more
satisfactory.' This was so comical that she laughed and Colin did
laugh but not at once. ‘I'm a mess. But what do you expect of
Comrade Johnny's progeny? But do you know something? As
long as I was just a bear in a cave, sallying forth to a pub, or an
affair here and a
relationship
–now that's a word that evades any
real issue–well, I did not strike myself as a mess. But as soon as
my Sophie moved in and it was happy families I knew I am just
a bear that was never house-trained. I don't know why she puts
up with me.'

‘Colin, I would really like to talk to you about something.'

‘I tell her that if she perseveres she may make a husband out
of me yet.'