Doris Lessing - The Sweetest Dream

Andrew and Frances were sitting at the table when appeared Wilhelm Stein, Doctor of Philosophy and dealer in serious books. He went straight up to Julia, without coming into the kitchen, then descended, and stood in the doorway smiling, very slightly deferential, charming, an elderly gent as perfect in his way as Julia.

'I don't think it can be easy for you to understand the upbringing that Julia was victim of – yes, I can put it like that, because I believe it has severely incapacitated her for the world she now finds herself in.' He, like Julia, spoke a perfect idiomatic English, and Andrew was contrasting it with the exclamatory, expletory, excited French he had been listening to last night.

‘Do sit down, Doctor Stein,’ said Frances. ‘Do we not know each other well enough for Frances and Wilhelm? I think we do, Frances. But I shall not sit down now, I shall fetch the doctor. I have my car. ' He was about to leave, but turned back to say, feeling, evidently, that he had not adequately explained himself, ' The young people in this house – I except you, Andrew – are sometimes rather...’

'Rough,' said Andrew. 'I agree. Shocking types.' He spoke severely, and Doctor Stein acknowledged his small jest with a bow, and a smile.

‘I must tell you that when I was your age I was a shocking type. I was – rowdy. And I was rough. ' He grimaced at what he was remembering. ‘You might not think so to look at me now. ‘And he smiled again, in amusement at the picture he knew he was presenting – and he was presenting it consciously, a hand resting on the silver knob of his cane, his other spread out as if to say Yes, you must take in all of me. ' To look at me it would be hard to see me as... I was running around with the communists in Berlin, with all that that implies. With all it implies,' he insisted. ‘Yes, it was so. ' He sighed. ‘I think no one could disagree that we Germans run to extremes? Or we can do? Well, then, Julia von Arne was one extreme and I was another. I sometimes amuse myself by imagining what my twenty-one-year-old self would have said of Julia, as a girl. And we laugh about it together. And so, I have a key and I will let myself and the doctor in.'

In August there came to the house one Jake Miller, who had read a piece by Frances where she mocked the current fad for alien excitements like Yoga, and I-Ching, the Maharishi, Subud. The editor had said a funny piece was needed for the silly season, and it was that that had caused Jake Miller to telephone The Defender and ask Frances if he might visit. Curiosity said yes for her, and here he was in the sitting-room, a large infinitely smiling man, with gifts of mystic books. The smiles of unlimited love, peace, good-will, were soon to be obligatory on the faces of the good, perhaps one should say the young and the good, and Jake was a harbinger, though he was not young, he was in his forties. He was here dodging the Vietnam War. Frances resigned herself to a speech, but politics were not his interest. He was claiming her as a fellow conspirator in the fields of mystic experience. 'But I wrote it as a joke,' she protested, while he smiled and said, 'But I knew you were only writing like that because you had to, you were communicating with those of us who can understand. '

Jake claimed all kinds of special powers, for instance, that he could dissolve clouds by staring at them, and in fact, standing at the window looking up at a fast-moving sky, she watched clouds tumbling past and dissipating. ' It's easy,’ said he, ' even for quite undeveloped people. ' He could understand the language of birds, he said, and communicated with fellow minds through ESP. Frances might have protested that she was clearly no fellow mind, because he had had to telephone her, but this scene, mildly entertaining, mildly irritating, was ended by Sylvia coming in with a message from Julia – but Frances was never to hear the message. Sylvia was wearing a cotton jacket with the signs of the zodiac on it, bought because it fitted, and she was so small it was hard to find clothes: the jacket was in fact from Junior Miss. Her hair was in two thin pigtails on either side of her smiling face. His smiles and hers met and melded, and in a moment Sylvia was chatting with this new kind warm friend, who enlightened her about her sun sign, the I-Ching and her probable aura. In a moment the amiable American was on the floor casting the yarrow stalks for her, and the resulting reading so wowed her that she promised to go out and get the book for herself. Perspectives and possibilities she had never suspected filled her whole being, as if it had been quite empty before, and this girl who had hardly been able to go out of the house without Julia, now confidently went off with Jake from Illinois, to buy enlightening tracts. She did not return until late for her; it was past ten when she rushed up the stairs to Julia, who received her with arms held out for an embrace, but then let them fall, as she sat heavily down to stare at this girl who was in a state of vivacity she would not have thought possible for her. Julia heard Sylvia's chattering in a silence that became so heavy and disapproving that Sylvia stopped.

'Well, Sylvia, my poor child,' said Julia, 'where did you get all that nonsense?'

'But, Julia, it isn't nonsense, it really isn't. I'll explain, listen...' ' It is nonsense,’ said Julia, getting up and turning her back. It was to make coffee, but Sylvia saw a cold excluding back, and began to cry. And she did not know it, but Julia's eyes were full, and she was fighting with herself not to weep. That this child, her child, could so betray her – that was how she felt. Between the two of them, the old woman and her little love, the child to whom she had given her heart unreservedly and for the first time in her life – so she felt now – were only suspicion and hurt.

‘But, Julia; but, Julia...’ Julia did not turn around, and Sylvia ran down the stairs, flung herself on her bed, and cried so loudly that Andrew heard and went to her. She told him her story and he said, ‘Now stop. There is no point in that. I'll go up to grandmother and talk to her. '

He did.

‘And who is this man? Why did Frances let him in?'

'But you talk as if he's a thief or a conman.'

' A conman is what he is. He has conned poor Sylvia out of her senses. '

‘You know, grandmother, this kind of thing, the Yoga and all that, it's around – you lead a bit of a sheltered life, or you' d know that.' He spoke whimsically, but was dismayed by the old unhappy face. He knew very well what the real trouble was, but decided to persist on the level of simple causes. 'She's bound to come up against this sort of thing at school, you can't protect her from it. ‘And meanwhile Andrew was thinking that he read his horoscope every morning, though of course he didn't believe in it, and had toyed with the idea of having his fortune told. ‘I think you are making too much of it, ' he dared to say, and saw her at last nod, and then sigh.

' Very well,’ she said. ‘But how is it that this... this... disgraceful thing is everywhere suddenly?'

' A good question,’ said Andrew, embracing her, but she was a lump in his arms.

Julia and Sylvia made it up. ‘We've made it up, ' the girl told Andrew, as if a heavy unhappy thing had become light and harmless.

But Julia would not listen to Sylvia's new discoveries, would not throw the stalks for the I-Ching, nor talk about Buddhism, and so their perfect intimacy, the intimacy possible only between an adult and a child, confiding and trustful, and as easy as breathing, had come to an end. It has to end, for this young one to grow up, but even when the adult knows this and expects it, hearts must bleed and break. But Julia had never had this kind of love with a child, certainly not with Johnny, did not know that a child growing – and Sylvia had gone through a rapid process of growing up, with her – would become a stranger. Sylvia, suddenly, was no longer the maiden trotting happily around after Julia and afraid to be out of her sight. She was mature enough to interpret the yarrow stalks – which had been asked for advice – to mean that she must go and see her mother. She did, by herself, and found Phyllida not shrieking and hysterical, but calm, withdrawn and even dignified. She was alone: Johnny was at a meeting.