Doris Lessing - The Sweetest Dream

'But it'smy flat.'

' Rose, I'm sorry. '

‘I can doss down in the sitting-room. '

‘No, Rose, you can't. '

' I've had my results. All As. '

' Congratulations. '

‘I’m going to university. I'm going to the LSE.'

‘But have you actually done something about being accepted?'

‘Oh, shit. '

‘Your parents don't know anything about it. '

‘I see, there's a conspiracy against me. '

Rose sat in a heap, that pudgy little face for once showing vulnerability. She was confronting – perhaps for the first time, but certainly not the last – her real nature, which was bound to land her in this kind of -'Shit,' she said again. 'Shit.' Then, 'I've got four As.'

‘My advice is to ask your parents if they'll pay. If so, go to your school and ask them to put in a word for you, then ask the LSE. But it's very late for this year. '

' Fuck you all,’ she said.

She got up, rather the way a shot bird labours up, picked up her great black sack, dragged herself and it to the door, went out, and there was a long silence from the hall. She was recovering herself? She was having second thoughts? Then the front door slammed. She did not go to the school, nor to her parents, but was seen about in London in the clubs and at demonstrations and political meetings.

No sooner was Phyllida installed than Jill arrived. It was a weekend, and Andrew was there. Frances and he were eating supper and they invited Jill to join them.

They did not ask what she had been doing. There were scars on both wrists now, and she was unhealthily fat. She had been a slim neat sleek blonde, but now she was too big for her clothes, and her features were lumpy. They did not ask but she told them. She had been in a psychiatric hospital, had run away, had gone back voluntarily, where she found herself helping the nurses with the other patients. She decided she was cured and they agreed. 'Do you think you could get the school to take me back? If I can just take my exams – I'm sure I could. I was even doing a bit of study in the bin.'

Again Frances said that it was a bit late for that year. ' If you could just ask them?’ said Jill, and Frances did, and an exception was made for Jill, who was expected to pass her A-levels, if she worked.

And where was she to live? They asked Phyllida if Jill could have the room that Franklin had used, and Phyllida said, ' Beggars can't be choosers. '

No sooner was Jill in than Phyllida began on her accusations, using her as a target. From the kitchen above they could hear the heavy complaining swing of Phyllida's voice, and on and on, and after only a day Jill had appealed to Sylvia, and the two girls had gone together to Frances and Andrew.

‘No one could stand it,’ said Sylvia. ' Don't blame her. '

‘I’m not,’ said Frances. ‘We' re not,’ said Andrew.

‘I could camp in the sitting-room,’ said Jill.

‘You could use our bathroom,’ said Andrew.

What had been impossible for Rose, was accepted for Jill, who would not fill the centre of the house with thunderclouds of rage and suspicion. And Julia said, ‘I knew it. I always knew it. And now at last this beautiful house is a doss-house. I'm surprised it didn't happen before. '

‘We hardly ever use the sitting-room,’ said Andrew.

' That isn't the point, Andrew. '

‘I know it isn't, Grandmother. '

And so that had been the situation, from the autumn of 1964, Andrew coming and going from Cambridge, Jill, studying hard, being responsible and good, Sylvia working so hard Julia wept and said the girl would be ill, Colin sometimes at home and sometimes not. Frances was working from home, and more and more on attractive enterprises with Rupert Boland, and often from the Cosmo. Phyllida was downstairs, behaving well, not tormenting Sylvia, who kept well away from her.

In 1965 Jill made friends with her parents and went to the LSE 'to be with all my mates'. She said she would never forget the kindness that had rescued her. 'You rescued me,' she said earnestly. ‘I’d have been done for, without you. ' Thereafter they heard about her from other people: she was in the thick of all the new wave of politics and saw a lot of Johnny and his comrades.

And so now it was the summer of 1968, and four years had passed.

It was a weekend. Neither Andrew nor Sylvia had gone off for a holiday, they were studying. Colin had come home and said he was going to write a novel. Julia had said, not in his hearing, though it had been reported to him: ‘Of course! The occupation for failures!' — so that first requisite for beginning novelists, discouragement from their nearest and dearest, had been provided, though Frances was careful to be non-committal, and Andrew whimsical.

Johnny telephoned to say he was going to drop in. ‘No, don't bother to cook, we will have eaten. ' This astounding bit of cheek was, Frances decided — while her blood pressure shot up, and subsided — probably merely Johnny's idea of being ingratiating. Intriguing, that ' they' . He could not mean Stella, who was in the States. She had gone off to join in the great battles that would end the worst of discrimination against black people in the South, and had become known for her bravery and her organisational skills. Threatened with the end ofher visitor's visa, she had married an American, ringing up Johnny to say it was only for form's sake, he must understand it was her revolutionary duty. She would be back when the battle had been won. Meanwhile, rumours flowing from across the Atlantic said that this marriage for form's sake was going along well, better than her sojourn with Johnny, which had been a bit of a disaster. She was much younger than Johnny, at first had been in awe of him, but had soon learned to see with her own eyes. She had had plenty of time for reflection, because she had found herself alone while he went to meetings and off on delegations to comradely countries.

Johnny would have liked to join the big American battles, he yearned after them like a child not invited to a party, but he could not get a visa. He allowed it to be understood that was because of his Spanish Civil War record. But soon there was France, and he was on each battlefront as it came into the news. But the events of '68 were in fact chastening for him. Everywhere were new young heroes, and their bibles were new ones too. Johnny had had to do a lot of reading.

He was not the only Old Guard who found himself returning to refresh himself at the pages of the Communist Manifesto. 'Now that's revolutionary writing,' he might murmur.

In France every hero had a group of girls who served him, they were all sleeping together, because of the new plank in the revolutionary platform – sexual freedom. There were no girls courting Johnny. He was seen not only as English, but as elderly. Nineteen sixty-eight, which would be remembered by hundreds of thousands of politicos who had taken part in the street fighting, the confrontations with the police, the stone-throwing, the running battles, the building of barricades, the sexual free-for-all, as the glittering peak of their youthful achievements, was not a year that Johnny was going to enjoy thinking about.

Seeing that Stella had no intention of coming back to him, he had returned to the flat vacated by Phyllida, which became a kind of commune, home for revolutionaries from everywhere, some dodging the Vietnam War, many from South America, and he usually had African politicians staying with him.

When Johnny arrived, the kitchen at once seemed over-full, and the three sitting at the table eating their supper felt themselves as dull and lacking in colour, for the newcomers were elated and full of vigour, having just come from a meeting. Comrade Mo and Johnny were enjoying a joke, and now Comrade Mo said to Frances, embracing her, 'Danny Cohn-Bendit has said that we won't have socialism until the last capitalist has been hanged with the guts of the last bureaucrat.'