Doris Lessing - The Sweetest Dream

‘No, I most certainly would not,’ said Colin.

Then Colin forgot Sylvia's appeal in the business of moving his work down to the basement flat, Meriel having taken herself off. He had to get this new book done: after all, the money Julia had left was not so much that any of them could slack, take things easy.

Fred Cope summoned up from his newspaper's and other archives, articles about Zimlia and concluded that it was true, Zimlia was always being given the benefit of any doubt. One of the experts whose name was often on articles about Zimlia was Rose Trimble. Well, she had never been critical, so who else? The Monitor had a stringer in Senga, and he was invited to write an article, 'Zimlia's first decade'. The article that arrived was more critical than most, while reminding readers that Africa was not to be judged by European standards. Fred Cope sent a copy of this article to Colin. 'I hope this is more on the lines of what you suggest?’And then, a postscript. 'How would you fancy writing a piece about whether Proudhon's ' 'All property is theft' ' has been responsible for the corruption and collapse of modern society? I would be the first to admit that my thoughts on the subject have been prompted by the fact our house has been burgled three times in two years. '

The article in The Monitor was noticed by the editor of a newspaper for whom Rose Trimble had regularly written about Zimlia and Comrade President Matthew, and now she was invited to return to Zimlia and see if what she found there supported the critical article in The Monitor.

Rose was by now a name in the newspaper world. She had owed this to her timely praise for Zimlia but that had been only her start. Everything had gone right for her. She could easily have said, 'God be thanked who has matched me with His hour,' – if she had ever read a line of poetry or could use the word God without a smirk. Living in Julia's house she had felt inferior, but once out of it, it was they who seemed inferior. She was matched with the Eighties. Her qualities were what were needed now, in the time when getting on, getting rich, doing down your fellows, were officially applauded. She was ruthless, she was acquisitive, she was by instinct contemptuous of others. While she kept a connection with the comparatively serious newspaper for which she wrote her pieces on Zimlia, she had found her niche in World Scandals, where her task was to hunt out weaknesses, or rumours, and then hound some victim day and night until she could triumphantly come up with an expose. The higher this unfortunate was in public life the better. She camped on people's doorsteps, rummaged in rubbish bins, bribed relatives and friends to reveal or invent damaging facts: she was good at this scavenger's work, and she was feared. She was particularly famous for her ' portraits' , bringing journalism to new heights of vindictiveness, and found the work easy because she was genuinely incapable of seeing good in anyone: she knew that the truth about them had to be discreditable, and that it was in the unpleasant that the real essence of a person lies. This kind of jeering, derision, this ridicule, came from her deepest self, and matched a generation of similar people. It was as ifsomething ugly and cruel had been exposed in England, something that had been hidden before, but was now like a beggar pulling aside rags to show ulcers. What had been respected was now scorned; decency, a respect for others, was now ridiculous. The world was being presented to readers through a coarse screen that got rid of anything pleasant or likeable: the tone was set by Rose Trimble and her kind who could never believe that anyone did anything except for self-interest. Rose hated most of all people who read books, or who pretended to – it was only a pretence; loathed the arts, denigrated particularly the theatre – she boasted she had invented the word 'luvvies' for theatre people; and liked violent and cruel films. She met only people like herself, frequenting certain pubs and clubs, and they had no idea that they were a new phenomenon, something that earlier generations would have despised, and dismissed as the gutter press, fit only for the lowest depths of society. But the phrase now seemed to her something vaguely complimentary, a guarantee of bravery in the pursuit of truth. But how could she, or they, know? They scorned history because they had learned none. Only once in her life she had written with approval, admiration, it was about Comrade President Matthew Mungozi, and then, more recently, Comrade Gloria, whom she adored because of her ruthlessness. Only once had her pen not dripped poison. And she read the article by The Monitors stringer with fury, and, too, with something like the beginnings of fear.

Meeting a journalist who worked on The Monitor she heard that it was Colin Lennox who had prompted it. And who the hell was Colin to have an opinion about Africa?

She hated Colin. She had always seen novelists and poets as something like counterfeiters, making something out of nothing and getting away with it. She had been too early on the scene for his first novel, but she had rubbished his second and the Lennoxes, and his third had caused her paroxysms of rage. It was about two people, apparently unlike each other, who had for each other a tender and almost freakish love – that it continued at all seemed to both of them a jest of Fate. While involved with other partners, other adventures, they met like conspirators, to share this feeling they had, that they understood each other as no one else ever could. Reviewers on the whole liked it and said it was poetic and evocative. One said it was 'elliptical', a word that goaded Rose to extra frenzy: she had to look it up in the dictionary. She read the novel, or tried to: but really she could not read anything more difficult than a newspaper article. Of course it was about Sophie, that stuck-up bitch. Well, let them both watch out, that's all. Rose had a file on the Lennoxes, all kinds of bits and pieces, some stolen from them long ago, when she went sniffing about the house for what she could find. She planned to 'get them' one day. She would sit leafing through the file, a rather fat woman now, her face permanently set in a malicious smile which, when she knew she had found the word or phrase that could really hurt, became a jeering laugh.

On the plane to Senga she was next to a bulky man who took up too much room. She asked for a change of seat, but the plane was full. He shifted about in his seat in a way that she decided was aggressive and against her, and he gave her sideways looks full of male dishonesty. His arm was on the rest between them, no room for hers. She put her forearm beside his, to claim her rights, but he did not budge, and to keep her arm there meant she had to concentrate, or it would slide off. He did remove it when he demanded from the attendant who was offering drinks a whisky, threw it to the back of his throat at once, asked for another. Rose admired his authoritative handling of the attendant, whose smiles were false, Rose knew. She asked for a whisky and took it in a swallow, not to be outdone, and sat with the glass in her hand, waiting for a refill.

'Bloody skivers,' said this man, whom Rose knew was her enemy as a woman. 'They think they can get away with murder.'

Rose did not know what he was complaining of, and only said, in an all-purpose formula, 'They're all the same.'

'Right on. Nothing to choose between any of them.'

Now Rose saw two black men, who had been at the back of the plane, being waved forward by an attendant through to Club Class – or perhaps even First.

' Look at that! Throwing their weight around, as usual.'

Ideology demanded that Rose should protest, but she refrained: yes, this was one of the unregenerate whites, but there were nine hours ahead of close proximity.