Doris Lessing - The Sweetest Dream

'What, can't you take it? Can't you take the truth?’ sneered a young man whose smell was literally making her sick. She held her hand over her mouth.

'Julia,' said Rose, 'does Johnny know you're here? What are you doing? Keeping a check on him?' She glanced around, grinning, for approval.

Julia had got through the door, but the outer room was full of people who had not got in.

' Make way for Johnny Lennox's ma,’ shouted Rose, and the crowd opened. Out here, where the speeches were being relayed, was less of the atmosphere of a mob, of imminent violence. Young people were staring at Julia, at her hat, which was crooked, and her distressed face. She got to the outer door. There, feeling faint, she clung to the door frame.

Rose said, ' Julia, do you want a taxi?'

‘I don't remember asking you to call me Julia,’ said the old woman.

‘Oh, I'm so sorry, Mrs Lennox,’ said Rose, glancing around for approval. And then, laughing, 'What shit.'

'The ancien régime, I guess,' said an American voice.

Julia had reached the edge of the pavement. She knew she was going to faint. Rose stood on the steps behind her and said loudly, ' Johnny Lennox's ma. She's drunk. '

A taxi came, and Julia waved, but it was not going to stop for this disreputable old woman. Rose ran after it, shouting, and it did stop.

' Thank you,’ said Julia, climbing in. She still held the handkerchief to her face.

‘Oh, don't mention it, please,’ said Rose daintily, and looked around for laughs, which she got. As Julia was driven away she heard through the windows come bursts of applause, derision, shouts, chanting, ' Down with American imperialism. Down with...’

Rose took this lucky opportunity, when Johnny made his way out, to waylay Comrade Johnny the star and say to him, like an equal, 'Your mother was here.' 'I saw her,' he said, not looking at her: he always ignored her. 'She was drunk,' she dared, but he pushed past, not saying anything.

Sylvia had not forgotten her promise. She had made an appointment for Julia with a certain Doctor Lehman. Wilhelm knew him and that he was a specialist in the problems of the old. ' Our problems, dear Julia.'

'Geriatrics,’ said Julia.

‘What's in a word? You can make an appointment for me too.'

Julia sat in front of Doctor Lehman, a quite likeable man, she thought, if so young – in fact he was middle-aged. German, like her? With that name? Then, Jewish? A refugee from her kind? It was remarkable how often she found herself thinking these thoughts.

He had an impeccable English voice and accent: evidently doctors did not have to talk cockney.

She knew he had taken in a great many facts about her from watching her walk to the chair, and that he would have heard more from Sylvia, and that since he had analysed her urine, taken her blood pressure, and checked her heart, he knew more about her than she knew herself.

He said, smiling, ' Mrs Lennox, you have been sent to me because of problems to do with old age.'

' So it seems,’ she said, and knew he had not missed the resentment. He smiled a little.

'You are seventy-five years old.' ' That is so. '

' That isn't very old, not these days. '

She succumbed with, 'Doctor, I sometimes feel I am a hundred.'

'You allow yourself to think you are.'

This was not what she had expected, and, reassured, she smiled at this man who was not going to oppress her with her age.

' There is nothing wrong with you, physically. Congratulations. I wish I were in as good a shape. But there you are, everyone knows doctors don't follow their own advice. '

Now she allowed herself to laugh, and nodded, as if to say, Very well, now get on with it.

‘I see this quite often, Mrs Lennox. Somebody who has been talked into feeling old when it is too early for them. '

‘Wilhelm?’ wondered Julia. ‘Did he...’

' Or has talked themselves into feeling old. '

‘Have I done that? Well... perhaps I have. '

‘I am going to say something that may seem shocking. '

‘No, doctor, I don't shock easily. '

' Good. You can decide to become old. You are at a crossroads, Mrs Lennox. You can decide to get old and then you'll die. But you can decide not to get old. Not yet. '

She sat thinking, and then she nodded.

‘I believe you have had a shock of some kind. A death? but it doesn't matter what. You seem to me to be showing signs of grief.'

‘You are a very clever young man. '

'Thank you, but I am not so young. I am fifty-five.'

‘You could be my son. '

‘Yes, I could. Mrs Lennox, I want you to get up from that chair, and walk away from – the situation you are now in. You can decide to do it. You are not an old woman. You don't need a doctor. I am going to prescribe you vitamins and minerals. '

' Vitamins!'

'Why not? I take them. And come back in five years time and we'll discuss whether it is time for you to be old. '

Hazy golden clouds were throwing down brilliants that scattered around and on the taxi, exploding into smaller crystals, or sliding down the windows, and their shadows made dots and splodges which imitated the theme of Julia's little spotted veil that was held on the crown of her head with a serious jet clasp. The April sky of sunshine and showers was a cheat, for in fact it was September. Julia was dressed as she always was. Wilhelm had said to her, 'My dear, liebling, my dearest Julia, I am going to buy you a new dress.' Protesting and grumbling, but pleased, she was taken around the best shops, where he enlisted the aid of superior, but then charmed, young women, and Julia ended up with a claret-coloured velvet suit indistinguishable from those she had been wearing for decades. Upright inside it she was supported by thoughts of the tiny silk stitches on collar and cuffs and the perfectly fitting pink silk lining which she felt as a defence against barbarians. On the seat beside her Frances was doubled low in the task of changing her stockings and sensible shoes for high-heeled ones and black sheers. Otherwise, her working clothes -Julia had picked Frances up from the newspaper – were clearly expected to be adequate. Andrew had said there would be a little celebration, but they mustn't dress up. What could he mean? Celebrate what?

They were making the inevitably slow progress towards Andrew, side by side, in companionable and wary silence. Frances was thinking that all the years of living in Julia's house had led to occasions when they sat together in a cab so few she could list them. And Julia was thinking that there was no intimacy between them, and yet the young woman – come on, Julia, she was certainly not that! – was able to strip off stockings, exposing solid white legs, without a moment's embarrassment. It was likely no one had seen Julia's naked legs except her husband and doctors since she became adult. Had Wilhelm? No one knew.

They had gone so far as to agree that the celebration was probably because Andrew had been offered a job in one of the great international organisations that inhale and exhale money and order the world's affairs. When he had gained his second degree in law – he had done very well – he had left his grandmother's house for the second time for a flat shared with other young people, but he did not expect to be there for long.

By the time they had reached Gordon Square the light had gone. Large raindrops fell from a dark sky and splashed invisibly about them. It was a good house, no one need be ashamed of it: Julia had wondered if the reason Andrew had not invited them before was because he was ashamed of his address and if so, why had he left home at all? It did not enter her mind that he found her and Frances a crushing weight of authority or at least of accomplishment. 'What me? – you're joking!' parents say, as this situation repeats itself through the generations. 'Me? A threat? This small so easily crushed thing that I am, always just clinging on to the edges of life. ' Andrew had had to leave home, for survival, but things had been better during his return to it, to obtain the second degree, because he discovered he no longer feared his strict disapproving grandmother or the thoughts aroused in him by his mother's unsatisfactory life.