The Sweetest Dream by Doris Lessing(Little Dorrit)

Author:Doris Lessing(Little Dorrit) [Lessing, Doris]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: prose_contemporary
ISBN: 0060937556
Publisher: perfectbound
Published: 2001-12-14T16:00:00+00:00

A couple of weeks later Frances with Rupert, Julia and Wilhelm, Colin, were at a meeting called by the young doctors. There were about two hundred there. Sylvia opened the meeting, speaking well. Other doctors, and then more people followed. Members of the opposition had got wind of the meeting, and there were a group of thirty, who kept up a steady shouting, whistling, and shouts of Fascists! War mongers! CIA! Some were from the staff of The Defender. As our group left, some youths waiting at the exit caught hold of Wilhelm Stein and threw him against railings. Colin at once laid into them and put them to flight. Wilhelm was shaken, it was thought no more than that, but he had cracked ribs and he was taken to Julia's house and put to bed there.

‘And so, my dear, ' he said, in a voice that was wheezy, and old. ‘And so, Julia, I have achieved the impossible: I am living with you at last.' This was the first the others had heard Wilhelm wanted to move in.

He was put into the room that had been Andrew's and Julia proved a devoted if fussy nurse. Wilhelm hated it, having seen himself always as Julia's cavalier, her beau. And Colin too, that abrasive young man, surprised the others, and perhaps himself, by a charming attentiveness to the old man. He sat with him, and told him stories about 'my dangerous life on the Heath, and in the Hampstead pubs', in which Vicious figured as something not far off the Hound of the Baskervilles. Wilhelm laughed, and begged Colin to desist, because his ribs hurt. Doctor Lehman came, and told Frances and Julia and Colin that the old man was on his way out. ' These falls are not good at his age. ' He prescribed sedatives for Wilhelm and a variety of pills for Julia whom he was at last permitting to think of herself as old.

Frances and Rupert at The Defender demanded their right to put an opposing view to that of the unilateral disarmament people, and wrote an article, which earned dozens of letters nearly all furiously opposing, or abusive. The Defender offices seethed and Frances and Rupert found curt or angry notes on their desks, some anonymous. They realised this rage was too deep in some part of the collective unconscious to be reasoned with. It was not about protecting or not protecting the population: they had no idea what it was really about. It was very unpleasant at The Defender. They decided to leave, well before it suited either of them financially. They were simply in the wrong place. Always had been, Frances decided. And all those long well-reasoned articles on social issues? Anyone could have written them, Frances said. Rupert almost at once got another job on a newspaper described as fascist by a typical Defender addict, but as Tory, by the populace. ‘I suppose I must be a Tory,' said Rupert, 'if we are going to take these old labels seriously.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.