Doris Lessing - The Sweetest Dream

‘But there was nothing to tell, you must believe me. '

Sylvia confided to Andrew that what had 'upset' her was not wild Satanic rites that the others had imagined and even joked about, while she told them they were just silly, or seances that had gone wrong – or right, depending on how you looked at it, bringing noisy apparitions with something urgent to impart, such as that Sylvia should always wear blue and a turquoise amulet, but that Jake had kissed her and told her she was too old to be a virgin. She had slapped him, hard, and told him he was a dirty old man. To Andrew it was clear that Jake had been offering arcane sexual delights, but Sylvia said, ' He's old enough to be my grandfather.' He was, too. Just.

Andrew was here for the weekend, because Colin had telephoned to say that Sylvia was having a setback. It was Colin who rang: so what did his wild ravings about Sylvia's being here at all amount to, then? ‘You've got to come, Andrew. You always know what to do. ‘And Julia? – did she not know what to do? Apparently not any longer. Julia, hearing that Sylvia was in her room again, and not out night after night, had said in the heavily sorrowful voice that now seemed to be permanently hers, ‘Yes, Sylvia, and that's what you can expect when you mix with such people.'

‘But nothing happened, Julia, ' Sylvia had whispered, and had tried to embrace her. Julia's arms, that had so recently easily embraced her, did hold her, but not as they had, and Sylvia cried in her room, because of those stiff old arms, that reproached her.

Sylvia was sitting, fork in hand, turning over a fragment of potato done in cream, cooked because she liked it.

Andrew was next to Sylvia. Colin was next to Andrew, and beside him, Rose. Not a word or a look did they exchange. James was there from his school, and he would also sleep on the living-room floor. Opposite Rose was Franklin, who had had a little too much to drink. Bottles of wine stood about the table brought by Johnny who was at his post by the window. Next to Franklin was Geoffrey, in his first term at the LSE. He looked like a guerilla fighter, in army surplus. He was there because he had run into Johnny at the Cosmo, had heard that he would be coming that evening. Sophie was not here, but she had visited that afternoon, to see darling Frances. She was finding life hard, not because of acting school where she was doing brilliantly, but because of Roland Shattock. Tonight she was with him at a disco. Next to Frances was Jill, who had reappeared that afternoon. She asked timidly if she could stay to supper. She had a bandage on her left wrist and looked pretty bad. Rose had greeted her with, 'Oh, so what do you think you're doing here?' Jill waited until there was laughter and noise enough, and said to Frances, ' Can I come and live in the other room downstairs? It's for you to say who can be there, isn't it?' The trouble was, Colin had said that he wanted Franklin to have the use of that room, and to be invited for Christmas. And, obviously, Jill and Rose could not be together.

‘Are you planning to go back to school?' asked Frances.

'I don't know if they'll have me,' said Jill, with a timid pleading look at Frances, that meant, Will you ask them if they'll have me back?

But where was she going to live?

‘Have you been in hospital?'

The girl nodded. Then, still in a whisper, ' I've been in there a month. ' That meant, a psychiatric ward, and Frances was intended to understand this. 'Couldn't I just sleep in the sitting-room?'

Andrew, apparently absorbed in Sylvia, encouraging her, laughing with her when she made a joke about her difficulties, was also listening to the exchange between his mother and Jill, and now he caught Frances's eye and shook his head. The thumbs-down could not have been more clear, though it was only a little no, meant to be unobserved. But Jill had seen it. She sat silent, eyes kept down, lips trembling.

' The trouble is, where are we going to put you?' Frances said. And Jill probably would not be able to cope with school, even if Frances could get her admitted. What was to be done?

This sad little drama was going on at Frances's end of the table; at the other it was all noisy good humour. Johnny was telling them about his trip with a delegation of librarians to the Soviet Union, and the jokes were at the expense of the non-Party members, who had made one gaffe after another. One had demanded to be reassured – at a meeting in the Union of Soviet Writers – that there was no censorship in the Soviet Union. Another had wanted to know if the Soviet Union, ' like the Vatican' , kept an index of forbidden books. ‘I mean,’ said Johnny, 'that is really an unforgivable level of political naivety.'

Then, there was the recent election that had returned the Labour Party. Johnny had been active: a tricky business, because while on the one hand obviously the Labour Party was a greater threat to the working masses than the Tories (confusing minds with incorrect formulations), on the other, tactical considerations had ordained that it should be supported. James was listening to the ins and outs of this as ifto favourite music. Johnny had greeted him with a comradely nod and a hand laid on his shoulder, but now he was concentrating on the newcomer, still to be won, Franklin. He delivered a short history of the colonial policy towards Zimlia, recounted the crimes of colonial policy in Kenya, with particular relish for whenever Britain had behaved badly, and began exhorting Franklin to fight for the freedom of Zimlia.

'The nationalist movements of Zimlia are not as developed as the Mau Mau, but it is up to young people like you to free your people from oppression.' Johnny had a glass in one hand, the left, and was leaning forward, eyes holding Franklin's, while he shook the forefinger of his right hand at him, as if targeting him with a revolver. Franklin was shifting about, smiling uncomfortably, and then he said, 'Excuse me,' and went out – to the toilet as it happened, but it looked like running away, and when he came back he smiled, and handed his plate to Frances for a second helping, and did not look at Johnny, who had been waiting for him to return. ‘Your generation in Africa has more responsibility laid on your shoulders by history than any other has had. How I wish I was young again, how I wish I had it all in front of me.'

And for once his features, usually set into a martial authority, were softened into wistfulness. Johnny was getting on, an ageing fighter now, and how he must hate it, Frances thought, for with every day came news of new younger avatars of the Revolution. Poor Johnny was on the shelf. At the same moment Franklin lifted his glass, in a wild gesture that looked like parody, and said, ' To the Revolution in Africa, ' and fell forward on to the table, out, while Jill got up from the table and said, ' Excuse me, excuse me, I'll go now.'

‘Do you want to sleep here tonight? There's the sitting-room. James and you can keep each other company. '

Jill stood shaking her head, supporting herself with a hand -as it happened – on Frances's arm, and then fainted away, at Frances's feet.

' Here's a carry-on,’ said Johnny heartily, and watched while Geoffrey and Colin roused Franklin, and held a glass of water to his lips, and Frances lifted up Jill. Rose sat on, eating as if nothing was happening. Sylvia whispered that she wanted to go to bed, and Andrew took her up.

Franklin was assisted downstairs to the second room in the basement flat, and Jill was put into a sleeping bag in the sitting-room. James said he would look after her, but he went straight off to sleep. Frances came down in the night to have a look at Jill, and found them both asleep. In the dim light from the door on to the landing, Jill looked terrible. She needed looking after. Obviously the girl's parents must be rung and told the situation: they probably did not know it. And in the morning Jill must be asked to go home.