Doris Lessing - The Sweetest Dream

The graveyard filled with dark, as the sky lightened, and the gravestones shone bright and ghostly, and they leaned against the yew in the blackness under it, and looked out, watching the moonlight strengthen. Then they walked through the graves, all old ones, no one here younger than the century, and soon were in the room in the old-fashioned hotel where they had registered as Harold Holman and Frances Holman.

She was actually thinking, Oh, why not, I could marry this man, we could be happy, after all people do marry and are happy - but the thought of the weight and complexity of Julia's house pushed aside this nonsense, and she banished that thought too, in her intention to be happy for this one night.

And so she was, so they were. ' Made for each other, ' he breathed in her ear, and then exclaimed it aloud, exulting. They lay side by side, enlaced, while outside the brief night hurried past towards a dawn that was not going to be delayed by cloud: the moonlight glittered on the panes. 'I've been in love with you for years,' he said, 'years. Ever since I saw you first with those little boys of yours. Johnny's wife. You don't know how often I fantasised about ringing you up and asking you to sneak around the corner for a drink. But you were Johnny's wife, and I was so in awe of him. '

Frances's spirits were taking a fall, and she wished that he would not go on: but he would have to, that was obvious, for here was the sad face of the truth. ' That must have been in that dreadful flat in Notting Hill.'

‘Was it dreadful? But we didn't go in for gracious living in those days. ‘And he laughed loudly, from an excess of everything, and said, 'Oh, Frances, if you've ever had a dream you thought would never come true, then tonight is that, for me. '

She was thinking of herself then, overweight and worried, with the small children always at her or on her, clutching her, climbing up her, competing for her lap. ' Just what did you see in me then, I’d like to know?'

He was silent for a while. 'It was everything. Johnny – he was such a hero to me then. And you were Johnny's wife. You were such a couple, I envied you both and I envied Johnny. And the little boys – I hadn't had children then. I wanted to be like you.'

' Like Johnny. '

‘I can't explain. You were such – a holy family, ' he laughed and flung his limbs about, and then sat on the edge of the bed, stretching up his arms into the moony light of the room and said, ‘You were wonderful. Calm... serene... nothing phased you. And I did realise that Johnny wasn't necessarily the easiest... I'm not criticising him. '

'Why not? I do.’Was she really going to demolish this dream – she couldn't. Oh, yes, she could. ‘Did you have any idea how much I hated Johnny then?'

'Well, of course we hate our dear loved ones sometimes. Jane – she was a pain.'

'Johnny was consistently a pain.'

‘But what a hero!'

She was sitting with her arm around his neck, as close as she could, to be near that exulting vitality. Her breasts were against his arm. How much she did like her body tonight, because he did. Smooth heavy breasts, and her arms – she could grant that they were beautiful. ‘When I saw Johnny in that room the other night, I wondered if you two still...'

' Good God, no, ' and she withdrew from him, body, mind, and even liking, for just that moment. ‘How could you think that?’Well, why shouldn'the...’ Never mind Johnny,’ she said. ' Come back here. ' She lay down and he came to lie by her, smiling.

‘I admired that man more than anyone in my life. For me he was a sort of god. Comrade Johnny. He was much older than I was...’ He lifted his head to look at her.

' That means I am much older than you are. '

'Not tonight you aren't. I was in a bit of a mess when I first met Johnny – at a meeting, it was. I was a green boy. I had failed my exams. My parents said, ' ' If you are a communist don't darken our doors.' ‘And Johnny was kind to me. A father figure. I decided to be worthy of him. '

Here she controlled the muscles ofher diaphragm, but whether to forestall laughter or tears, it was hard to say.

‘I found a room in a comrade's house. I took my exams again. I was a teacher for a bit, I was in the Union then... but the point is, I owe it all to Johnny. '

‘Well, what can I say? Good for him. But surely, good for you?'

' If I had believed then that I could be with you tonight, hold you in my arms, I think I’d have gone mad with joy. Johnny's wife, in my arms. '

They made love again. Yes, it was love, a friendly, even amorous love, while laughter bubbled in the cauldron, well out of his hearing, but not out of hers.

They slept. They woke. And then it seemed he had bad dreams, for he started awake and lay on his back, holding her, but in a way that said Wait. At last he said unhappily, 'That was a bad blow, you know, what that man Sachs said.'

She decided to let it go.

‘You can't say it wasn't a shock. '

She decided she would speak. ' Newspapers,’ she spelled it out. 'Newspaper reports for years. Television. Radio. The Purges, the camps. The laagers, the murders. For years. '

A long silence. ‘Yes, ' he said at last, ' but I didn't believe it. Well, some of it of course... but nothing like – what he told us. '

‘How could you not have believed it?'

'I didn't want to, I suppose.'

'Exactly.’ And then she heard herself say, 'And I bet we haven't heard the half of it yet.'

‘Why do you say that? It sounds as if you are quite pleased with yourself. '

‘I suppose I am. It is something to have been proved right, after years of having been put down and – trampled on. Of being put down now,' 'she said.

And now he was dismayed. But she went on, ‘I didn't agree with him. Not after the very first days...' She suppressed, When he came back from the Spanish Civil War. Since after all, he hadn't. She suppressed, When I saw what a dishonest hypocrite he was. Because after all, how could he be called dishonest? He believed every word of it.

‘I fell for all that glamour,’ she said. ‘I was nineteen. But it didn't last. '

He didn't like that, no, he didn't like it all, and she lay there silent by him, enough at one with him to be hurt because he was.

There was a long drowsing silence: outside it was already a full hot day, and the traffic had begun.

'It seems it was all for nothing,' he said at last. 'It was all... lies and nonsense.' She could hear the tears in his voice. 'What a waste. All that effort... people killed for nothing. Good people. No one is going to tell me they weren't. ' A silence. ‘I don't want to make a thing of it, but I did make such sacrifices for the Party. And it was all for nothing. '

' Except that Comrade Johnny inspired you to great things. '

' Don't mock. '

‘I’m not. I'm going to allot Johnny one good mark. At least he was good to you. '

‘I haven't taken it in yet. I haven't begun to take it all in. '

And so they lay side by side, and if he was letting go dreams, such dreams, such sweet sweet dreams, she was thinking, Obviously I'm a very selfish person, just as Johnny always said. Harold is thinking about the golden future of the human race, postponed indefinitely, but I am thinking what I have shut out of my life. She could hardly bear the pain of it. The sweet warm weight of a man sleeping in her arms, his mouth on her cheek, the tender heaviness of a man's balls in her hand, the delicious slipperiness of...

'Let's go down to breakfast,' he said. 'I think I'm going to cry otherwise. '

They breakfasted soberly, in a decorous little room, and left the hotel, noting that this morning the graveyard seemed neglected and shabby, and the magic of last night was going to seem like bathos if they did not remove themselves. Which they did, and went off to a place where lying on a grassy hill he told her that here, where they were, landscapes rolling away in all directions, that this was the very heart of England. And then, and she understood it absolutely, he wept, this big man, face on his arm, on the grass, he wept for his lost dream, and she thought, We suit each other so well, but we won't be together again. It was the ending of something. For him. And for her too: what am I doing prancing around the heart of England with a man heartbroken because of – well, not because of me?