Doris Lessing - The Sweetest Dream

'And I suppose you are going to defend Johnny, you always do.'

'I defend him? When have I ever ever defended his politics?' 'His politics! That's not politics, that's such – stupidity.' ' The politics of half the world, Julia. '

' It's still stupidity. Well, Frances, I do not like to see you more worried, with so much on your back, but I cannot help it. If you really are unable to pay for Colin then we could mortgage the house.'

'No, no, no... absolutely not.'

'Well, tell me if there are difficulties.' She went out.

There would be difficulties. Colin's school was very expensive, and he had agreed to do the full year. He was too old, nearly nineteen, and that was an embarrassment. The bill for the May-stock Clinic, the ' talking to '-it would be thousands. She would have to find more work. She would ask for a rise. She knew her articles had raised the circulation of The Defender. She could write for other newspapers, but under another name. These problems had been discussed with, of all people, Rupert Boland, in the Cosmo. He had financial problems too, unspecified. He would have liked to leave The Defender, which he claimed was no place for a man, but he was paid well. He was earning extra by doing research for television and radio: she could too. Even so, she would need more, she would need a lot. Johnny: she could perhaps ask him again? Julia was right, he lived the life of a – today's equivalent of a rajah, he went on delegations and good-will missions, always in the best hotels, all expenses paid, conveying comradely greetings from one part of the world to another. He must be getting money from somewhere: who was paying his rent? He didn't actually work, ever.

With that autumn began a bizarre situation. Colin came up by train twice a week from St Joseph's to go to the Maystock

Clinic, where he had appointments with a Doctor David. A man: Frances was delighted. Colin would have a man to talk to, a man outside his family situation. ('If that's what he needs,' said Julia, 'why not Wilhelm? He likes Colin.' 'But Julia, don't you see, he's too close, he's part of our world. ' 'No, I don't see. ' ) The trouble was that pursuing some psychoanalytic theory or other, Doctor David did not speak at all. He said good afternoon, sat himself in his chair, after a brisk handshake, and thereafter spoke not one word for the whole hour. Not a word. ' He just smiles, ' reported Colin. ‘I say something and he smiles. And then he says, The time is up, I'll see you on Thursday. '

Colin came straight home after the Maystock, and to wherever his mother was in the house. There he addressed to her all that he had not been able to say to Doctor David. It came pouring out, the complaints, the miseries, the angers that Frances had hoped he was at last able to unload on to the professional shoulders ofDoctor David. Who only sat silent, so Colin sat silent, frustrated and angry. He shouted at his mother that Doctor David was torturing him, and it was all the school's fault for making him go to the Maystock Clinic. And it was her fault he was in such a mess. Why had she married Johnny? – he shouted at her. That communist, everyone knew about communism but she had married him, Johnny was just a fascist commissar, and she, Frances, had married him and all that shit was landed on him and on Andrew. So he shouted, as he stood in the middle of her room, but it was at Doctor David he was shouting, because it was all pent up in him, it had to come out somewhere. All the way up to London in the little slow train, he rehearsed his accusations of life, his father, his mother, to tell Doctor David, but Doctor David only smiled. And so it had to come bursting out, and it was focused on his mother. And look, he shouted, on visit after visit, look at this house, full of people who have no right to be here. Why was Sylvia here? She wasn't their family. She took everything, they all took everything and Geoffrey had been leeching off them for years. Had Frances ever actually worked out what had been spent on Geoffrey over the years? They could have bought another house the size of Julia's with it. Why had Geoffrey always been here? Everyone said Geoffrey was his friend, but he had never liked Geoffrey much, the school had decided Geoffrey was his friend, Sam had decided they were complementary, in other words they didn't have a fucking thing in common, but it would be good for them, well it hadn't been good for him, Colin, and Frances connived with the school, she always had, sometimes he thought Geoffrey was more Frances's son than he was, and look at Andrew, he had lain on his bed for a whole year and smoked pot, and did Frances know, he had tried cocaine, well, she didn't know that? If not, why not? Frances never knew about anything, she just let everything go on, and how about Rose, what was Rose doing in this house at all, living at our expense, taking everything, he didn't want Rose here, he hated Rose, did Frances know that no one liked Rose, yet here she was downstairs and she had taken over the flat and if anyone else even put their heads around the door she shouted at them to get out. It was all Frances's fault, sometimes he thought he was the only sane person in the house, but it was he who had to go to the Maystock to be tortured by Doctor David.

Listening to Colin, as he stood and orated, taking his heavy black-rimmed glasses off, putting them back on, waving his hands about, stamping around, she was hearing what no human being should ever have to hear – another person's uncensored thoughts. (No one except Doctor David and his ilk, that is.) They were thoughts not dissimilar probably to many people's, when hot and lava-like. Just as well people were not able to hear what people thought of them, as she now had to, with Colin. The tirade of misery went on for an hour, the time he would have spent with Doctor David. Then he would say, in a quite friendly, normal voice, 'Now I have to go and catch my train.' Or, 'I'll stay the night and catch the first train in the morning.’And the Colin she knew was back, even smiling, though in a puzzled, frustrated sort of way. He must be absolutely exhausted after that outpouring.

'You don't have to go to the Maystock,' she reminded him. 'You can say no. Do you want me to tell them you've decided not to?'

But Colin did not want to stop coming to London twice a week, to the Maystock Clinic, to her, she knew, because without the frustration of the hour with the analyst he would not be able to shout and rave at her, to say what he had been thinking so long but had not said, never been able to let out.

After an hour of being shouted at, Frances was so tired that she went off to bed, or sat slumped in a chair. One evening, sitting there in the dark, Julia knocked, opened the door, saw the room was dark, and then that Frances was there. Julia turned on the light. She had heard Colin shouting at his mother, and had been disturbed by it but that was not what had brought her down. ‘Did you know that Sylvia has not come home?'

' It's only ten o ' clock. '

' May I sit down?’And Julia sat, her hands demolishing the little handkerchief in her lap. ' She's too young to be out so late, with a bad crowd of people. '

Sylvia sometimes after school went to a certain flat in Camden Town where Jake and his cronies were most afternoons and evenings. They were all fortune tellers, one or two professionally, or wrote horoscopes for newspapers, were initiates of rites, mostly invented by themselves, went in for table-turning, evoked spirits, and drank mysterious substances called Soul Balm, or Mind Mix, or Essence of Truth – usually not much more than herbal blends, or spices, and generally lived in a world of meaning and significance far removed from most people's. Sylvia was a great success with them. She was their pet, the neophyte those possessed with knowledge yearn for, and she was duly entrusted with secrets of higher meaning. She liked these people because they liked her, and she was always welcome. She never behaved irresponsibly, always telephoned to say she would be back later than usual, and if she stayed with them longer than she had said, telephoned Julia again.