Doris Lessing - The Sweetest Dream

A knock on the door: there was Andrew. He was white with exhaustion.

'May I sit down?' He sat. 'You have no idea how diverting it always is, ' he said, preserving his poise in spite of everything, ' to see you in this improbable setting. '

Frances saw herself in well-worn jeans, an old jersey, with bare feet, and then Julia's furniture which probably should be in a museum. She managed a smile and a shake of her head which meant, It's all too much.

' She says you are throwing her out. '

' If only we could. She says she is leaving. '

‘I’m afraid no such luck. '

' She says you got her pregnant. '

'What?'

' So she claims. '

' Penetration did not take place, ' he said. ‘We snogged – more of a lark than anything. Perhaps for an hour. It is amazing how these left-wing summer schools seem to...’ He hummed, '... every little breeze seems to whisper, Please, sex, sex, sex. '

‘What are we going to do? Why don't we just throw her out, my God, why don't we?'

‘But if we do she'll be on the streets. She won't go home. '

‘I suppose so. '

' It's only a year. We'll have to stick it out. '

' Colin is very angry because she's here. '

‘I know. You forget we can all hear his complaints about life. And about Sylvia. Probably me as well. '

' Me, most of all. '

‘And now I'm going right down to tell her that if she ever again says I made her pregnant... wait, I suppose I got her an abortion too?'

'She didn't say so, but I expect she will.'

'God, what a little bitch.'

‘But how effective, being a bitch. No one can stand up to her. ' ‘You just watch me. '

' So what are you going to do? Call the police? And by the way, where's Jill? She seems to have disappeared. '

'She and Jill quarrelled. I expect Rose just got rid of her.'

'So where is she? Does anyone know? I'm suppose to be in loco parentis.'

' Loco 's a good word in this context. ' He departed.

But Frances was learning that while she was seen by ' the kids' as a sort of benevolent freak of Nature, and they lucky enough to benefit, she was far from the only one in loco parentis. A letter had come from Spain after the summer, from an Englishwoman living in Seville, saying she had so much enjoyed Colin, Frances's charming son. (Colin, charming? Well, not in this house he wasn't.) ' A very nice crowd this summer. It's not always such plain sailing. Sometimes they have such problems! I do feel it is an extraordinary thing, the way they go off to other people's parents. My daughter makes excuses not to come home. She's got an alternative home in Hampshire with an ex-boyfriend. I suppose we must admit that that is what it amounts to. '

A letter from North Carolina. ' Hi there, Frances Lennox! I feel I know you so well. Your Geoffrey Bone was here for weeks, with others from various parts of the world, all to take part in the Struggle for Civic Rights. They come knocking at my door, waifs and strays of the world – no, no, I don't mean Geoffrey, I've never known a cooler young man. But I collect them and so do you, and so does my sister Fran in California. My son Pete will be in Britain this coming summer and I am sure he'll drop in. ' From Scotland, From Ireland. From France... letters that went into a file of similar ones that had been coming for years, from the time when she hardly saw Andrew.

Thus did the house-mothers, the earth-mothers, who proliferated everywhere in the Sixties slowly become aware of each other's presence out there, and understand that they were part of a phenomenon: the geist was at it again. They networked, before the term had become part of the language. They were a network of nurturers. Of neurotic nurturers. As 'the kids' had explained, Frances was working out some guilt or other, rooted in her childhood. (Frances had said she wouldn't be at all surprised.) As for Sylvia, she had a different 'line'. (Origin of 'line' – jargon of the Party.) Sylvia had learned from her groovy mystical mates that Frances was working on her karma, damaged in a previous life.

On one of Colin's visits home to shout at his mother, he brought with him Franklin Tichafa, from Zimlia, a British colony that, so Johnny said, was about to go the way ofKenya. All the newspapers were saying it too. Franklin was a round, smiling black boy. Colin told his mother that one could not use the word boy because of its bad connotations, but Frances said, ' He's not a young man, is he. If a sixteen-year-old can't be described as a boy, who can?' ' She does it on purpose,’ said Andrew. ' She does it to annoy. ' This was partly true. Johnny had long ago complained that Frances was sometimes deliberately politically obtuse, to embarrass him in front of the comrades, and indeed she had sometimes done it on purpose, and did now.

Everyone liked Franklin, who was named after Franklin Roosevelt, 'taking' literature at St Joseph's to please his parents, but planning to study economics and politics at university.

' That's what you are all studying,’ said Frances. ' Politics and economics. What is so extraordinary is that anyone should want to, when they never get it right, particularly the economists. '

This remark was so far in advance of its time that it was allowed to pass, was probably not even heard.

The evening when Franklin first came, Colin did not drop down to Frances's rooms for the usual session of accusations: he had not gone to the Maystock. Franklin was in his room on the floor in a sleeping bag. Frances could hear them just over her head, talking, laughing... her much-overused heart seemed to breathe easier, and she felt that all Colin really needed was a good friend, someone who laughed a lot: they larked about and as young men (or boys) will, went in for a lot of buffeting, pummelling and horseplay.

Franklin came again, and again, and Colin said he was fed up with the Maystock. He had actually caught Doctor David asleep, while he sat fidgeting in his patient's chair, hoping that the great man would at last say something.

'What's he being paid?' he asked.

Frances told him.

' Nice work if you can get it,’ said Colin. But was he bottling everything up again? Had he spent all his anger in those evenings of accusation with her? She had no idea. But he was doing badly at school still, and wanted to leave.

It was Franklin who told him it was silly. 'That would be a bad move,’ said he, at the supper table. ‘You'll be sorry when you're older.'

This last was a direct quote. In any company of young people, sayings, admonition, advice, that have emanated from the mouths of parents can be heard coming from theirs, in joke, in mockery, or in seriousness. ‘You'll be sorry when you' re older, ' had been said by Franklin's grandmother, in firelight – a log burned in the centre of the hut – in a village where a goat might push into open doorways hoping to find something to steal. An anxious black woman, whom Franklin had told he did not want to take up his scholarship to St Joseph's – he was in a funk – had said, ‘You'll be sorry when you' re older. '

‘I am older,’ said Colin.

It was November again, dark with drizzle. Because it was a weekend, everyone was here. At Frances's left sat Sylvia, and the others were careful not to notice that she was struggling with her food. She had left the magic circle of people who could never say anything without meaningful looks and voices heavy with import, saying, just as Julia might have done, 'They aren't very nice people. ' Jake had turned up, asked to see Frances, and was clearly anxious. ' There's a problem here, Frances. It's cultural. I think we' re more uninhibited in the States than you are here. '

‘I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage,’ said Frances. ' Sylvia has said nothing to us about why she...’