The Sweetest Dream (5 page)

And now these two lovers who would not have recognised
each other passing in a street, had to decide whether their dreams
of each other for all those terrible years were strong enough to
carry them through into marriage. Nothing was left of the
enchanting prim little girl, nor of the sentimental man who had,
until it crumbled away, carried a dead red rose next to his heart.
The great blue eyes were sad, and he tended to lapse into silences,
just like her younger brother, when remembering things that could
be understood only by other soldiers.

These two married quietly: hardly the time for a big German–English wedding. In London war fever was abating, though people
still talked about the Boche and the Hun. People were polite to
Julia. For the first time she wondered if choosing Philip had not
been a mistake, yet she believed they loved each other, and both
were pretending they were serious people by nature and not
saddened beyond curing. And yet the war did recede and the worst
of the war hatreds passed. Julia, who had suffered in Germany for
her English love, now tried to become English, in an act of will.
She had spoken English well enough, but took lessons again, and
soon spoke as no English person ever did, an exquisite perfect
English, every word separate. She knew her manners were formal,
and tried to become more casual. Her clothes: they were perfect
too, but after all, she was a diplomat's wife and had to keep up
appearances. As the English put it.

They started married life in a little house in Mayfair, and there
she entertained, as was expected of her, with the aid of a cook and
a maid, and achieved something like the standards she remembered
from her home. Meanwhile Philip had discovered that to marry
a German woman had not been the best prescription for an
unclouded career. Discussions with his superiors revealed that
certain posts would be barred to him, in Germany, for instance,
and he might find himself edged out of the straight highway to
the top, and find himself in places like South Africa or Argentina.
He decided to avoid disappointments, and switched to
administration. He would have a fine career, but nothing of the glamour
of foreign ministries. Sometimes he met in a sister's house the
Betty whom he could have married–and who was still unwed,
because of so many men being killed–and wondered how
different life could have been.

When Jolyon Meredith Wilhelm Lennox was born in 1920
he had a nurse and then a nanny. He was a long thin child, with
golden curls and combative critical blue eyes, often directed at his
mother. He had soon learned from his nanny that she was a
German: he had a little tantrum and was difficult for a few days.
He was taken to visit his German family, but this was not a success:
he disliked the place, and the different manners–he was expected
to sit at mealtimes with his hands beside him on either side of his
plate when not actually eating, speak when spoken to, and to
click his heels when he made a request. He refused to go back.
Julia argued with Philip about her child being sent off at seven
to school. This is not unusual now, but then Julia was being
brave. Philip told her that everyone of their class did this, and
anyway look at him!–he had gone to boarding school at seven.
Yes, he did remember he had been a bit homesick . . . never
mind, it wore off. That argument, ‘Look at me!', expected to
cast down opposition because of the speaker's conviction of his
superiority or at least rightness, did not convince Julia. In Philip
there was a place forever barred to her, a reserve, a coldness,
which at first she ascribed to the war, the trenches, the soldier's
hidden psychological scars. But then she had begun to doubt: she
had never achieved intimacy enough with the wives of her
husband's colleagues to ask if they too experienced this forbidden
place in their men, the area marked
VERBOTEN
, No Entrance–but she did observe, she noticed a good deal. No, she thought,
if you are going to take a child from its mother so young . . . She
lost the fight, and lost her son; who thereafter was polite, affable,
if often impatient.

As far as she could see he did well in his first school, but Eton
did not go well. His reports were not good. ‘He does not make
friends easily.' ‘A bit of a loner.'

She asked him one holidays, manoeuvring him into a position
where he could not escape easily, for he did evade direct questions
and situations, ‘Tell me, Jolyon, has my being German made
problems for you?'

His eyes seemed to flicker, wanted to evade, but he faced her
with his wide polite smile, and said, ‘No, mother, why should
it?'

‘I wondered, that's all.'

She asked Philip if he would ‘talk' to Jolyon, meaning, of
course, Please change him, he's breaking my heart.

‘He plays his cards pretty close to his chest,' was her husband's
reply.

Her worries were in fact soothed by the mere fact of Eton,
the fact and the weight of it, a purveyor of excellence and a
guarantee of success. She had surrendered her son–her only child–to the English educational system, and expected a quid pro quo,
that Jolyon would turn out well, like his father. and in due course
walk in his footsteps, probably as a diplomat.

When Philip's father died, and then, soon after, his mother,
he wanted to move into the big house in Hampstead. It was the
family house, and he, the son, would live in it. Julia liked the
little house in Mayfair, so easy to run and keep clean and did not
want to live in the big house with its many rooms. But that was
what she found herself doing. She did not ever set her will against
Philip's. They did not quarrel. They got along because she did
not insist on her preferences. She behaved as she had seen her
mother do, giving way to her father. Well, one side had to give
way, the way Julia saw it, and it did not much matter which.
Peace in the family was the important thing.

The furniture of the little house, most of it from the home
in Germany, was absorbed quite easily into the Hampstead house
where in fact Julia did not seem to do nearly as much entertaining,
though there was so much space for everything. For one thing,
Philip was not really a sociable man: he had one or two close
friends and saw them, often by himself. And Julia supposed she
must be getting old and boring, because she did not enjoy parties
as much as she had. But there were dinner parties and, often,
important people, and she was pleased she did it all so well, and
that Philip was proud of her.

She went home to Germany for visits. Her parents, who were
getting old, were so glad to see their daughter, and she liked her
brother, now her only brother. But going home was troubling,
even frightening. Poverty and unemployment, and the
communists and then the Nazis were everywhere, and gangs roamed the
streets. Then there was Hitler. The von Arnes despised in equal
measure the communists and Hitler, and believed that both
unpleasant phenomena would simply go away. This was not their
Germany, they said. It was certainly not what Julia remembered
as her Germany, that is, of course, if she forgot the vicious
rumourmongering during the war. A spy, they had said she was. Not
serious people, of course, not educated people . . . well, yes, there
were one or two. She decided she did not much like visiting
Germany these days, and it was easier not to, when her parents
died.

The English were sensible people, after all, she had to agree
to that. One couldn't imagine allowing battles between
communists and fascists in the streets–well, there were some scuffles,
but one mustn't exaggerate, there was nothing like Hitler.

A letter arrived from Eton saying that Jolyon had disappeared,
leaving behind a note saying that he was off to the Spanish Civil
War, signed, Comrade Johnny Lennox.

Philip used every influence to find out where their son was.
The International Brigade? Madrid? Catalonia? No one seemed
to know. Julia tended to sympathise with her son, for she had
been shocked at the treatment of the elected government in Spain,
by Britain and the French. Her husband, who was a diplomat
after all, defended his government and his country but alone with
her said he was ashamed. He did not admire the policies he was
defending and conducting.

Months passed. Then a telegram arrived from their son, asking
for money: address, a house in the East End of London. Julia at
once saw this meant he was wanting them to visit him, otherwise
he would have designated a bank where he could pick up the
money. Together she and Philip went to a house in a poor street,
and found Jolyon being nursed by a decent sort of woman of the
kind Julia at once thought of as a possible servant. He was in an
upstairs room, ill with hepatitis, caught, presumably, in Spain.
Then talking with this woman, who called herself Comrade Mary,
it slowly became evident she knew nothing of Spain, and then
that Jolyon had not been in Spain, but had been here, in this
house, ill.

‘Took me a bit of time to see he was having a bit of a
breakdown,' said Comrade Mary.

These were poor people. Philip wrote out a fair-sized cheque,
and was told, politely enough, that they did not have a bank
account, with the only just sarcastic implication that bank accounts
were for the well off. Since they did not have that kind of money
on them, Philip said that money would be delivered, next day,
and it was. Jolyon, but he was insisting on being called Johnny,
was so thin the bones of his face suggested the skeleton, and while
he kept saying that Comrade Mary and her family were the salt
of the earth, easily agreed to come home.

That was the last his parents heard of Spain, but in the Young
Communist League, where he now became a star, he was a Spanish
Civil War hero.

Johnny had a room, and then a floor, in the big house, and
there many people came who disturbed the parents, and made
Julia actively miserable. They were all communists, usually very
young, and always taking Johnny off to meetings, rallies, weekend
schools, marches. She said to Johnny that if he had seen the streets
in Germany full of rival gangs he would have nothing to do with
such people, and as a result of the quarrel that followed he simply
left. He anticipated later patterns of behaviour by living in
comrades' houses, sleeping on floors or anywhere there was a corner
for him, and asked his parents for money. ‘After all, I suppose
you don't want me to starve even if I am a communist.'

Julia and Philip did not know about Frances, not until Johnny
married her when he came on leave, though Julia was familiar
enough with what she described as ‘that type of girl'. She had
been observing the smart cheeky flirty girls who looked after the
senior officials–some were attached to her husband's department.
She had asked herself, ‘Is it right to be having such a good time
in the middle of this terrible war?' Well, at least no one could say
they were hypocrites. (An ancient lady, standing to spray white
curls with a fixative and peering at herself mournfully in a mirror,
said, decades later: ‘Oh, we had such a good time, such a good
time–it was so
glamorous
–do you understand?')

Julia's war could have been really terrible. Her name had been
on a list of those Germans who were sent off to the internment
camp on the Isle of Man. Philip told her: ‘There was never a
question of your being interned, it was just an administrative
error.' But error or not, it had taken Philip's intervention to get
her name removed. This war afflicted Julia with memories of the
last one, and she could not believe that yet again countries meant
to be friends should be at war. She was not well, slept badly,
wept. Philip was kind–he was always a kind man. He held Julia
in his arms and rocked her, ‘There now, my dear, there now.'
He was able to hold Julia because he had one of the new clever
artificial arms, which could do everything. Well, nearly
everything. At night he took the arm off and hung it on its stand. Now
he could only partially hold Julia, and she tended to hold him.

The parent Lennoxes were not asked to the wedding of their
son Jolyon with Frances. They were told about it, in a telegram,
just as he was off again to Canada. At first Julia could not believe
he was treating them like this. Philip held her and said, ‘You
don't understand, Julia.' ‘No, I don't, I don't understand anything.'
With humour that made his voice grate, he said, ‘We're class
enemies, don't you see? No, don't cry Julia, he'll grow up, I
expect.' But he was staring over her shoulder with a face set in
the dismay that was what she felt–and felt more often and more
strongly every day. A weeping, generalised, drizzling dismay, and
she could not shake it off.

They knew that Johnny was ‘doing well' in Canada. What
did doing well mean in this context? Soon after he had returned
there, a letter arrived with a photograph of him and Frances on
the steps of the register office. They were both in uniform, hers
as tight as a corset, and she was a bright, apparently giggling,
blonde. ‘Silly girl,' judged Julia, putting the letter and photograph
away. The letter had a censor's stamp on it, as if it were out of
bounds–which is what she felt. Then Johnny wrote a note to
say, ‘You might drop in to see how Frances is doing. She is
pregnant.'

Julia did not go. Then came an airletter, saying a baby had
been born, a boy, and he felt the least Julia could do was to visit
her. ‘His name is Andrew,' said the postscript, an afterthought,
apparently; and Julia remembered the announcements of Jolyon's
birth, sent out in a large white thick envelopes, on a card like
thin china, and the elegant black script that said,
Jolyon Meredith
Wilhelm Lennox
. None of the recipients could have doubted that
here was an important new addition to the human race.