The Sweetest Dream by Doris Lessing

Author:Doris Lessing [Lessing, Doris]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

This had a line beside it too, but it was the dark poems that had the double, triple heavy black lines beside them, and jagged exclamation marks too.

So the family felt they were betraying Julia, choosing the softer poems. And, too, they had to tell themselves that they had not known Julia, could never have guessed at those deep black lines beside

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.

What hours, O what black hours we have spent . . .

There ought to be some German poetry but Wilhelm was not there to advise.

Andrew read the poems. His voice was light, but strong enough for the occasion: there were few people there, apart from the family. Mrs Philby stood well away from them, in blackest black, from her hat, kept for funerals, to her boots, that shone, a reproach to them: she continued in her role which was to shame the sloppy ways of the family. None of them was in black, only her. Her face was vindictive with righteousness. She wept, though, at the end. ‘Mrs Lennox was my oldest friend,’ she told Frances, in severe reproach. ‘I shall not be coming to you again. I only came because of her.’

Halfway through the proceedings a gaunt figure, his white locks and loose clothes fluttering in a wind that blew through the gravestones, appeared and wandered uncertainly towards the funeral group. It was Johnny, sombre, unhappy, and looking much older than he should. He stood well apart from any of them, half turned away, as if ready to run off. The words of the service were an affront to him, it was evident. At the end his sons and Frances went towards him, to ask him back to the house, but he only nodded, and stalked off. At the limits of the graveyard he turned and gave them a salute with his open right hand, palm towards them, at shoulder level.

Sylvia was not at the funeral. The telephone lines to St Luke’s Mission were down, because of a bad storm.

• • •

Meanwhile Frances’s life with Rupert was not going as they had expected. She was virtually living in his place, though her books and papers were at Julia’s. It was not a big flat. The sitting-room, which was also where they ate, with a tiny kitchen through a hatch, was a third of the size of Julia’s. The big bedroom was adequate. The two small rooms were for the two children, Margaret and William, who came at weekends. When Meriel had gone off to live with a new man, Jaspar, there had been plans to buy something bigger. Frances liked the children well enough and believed they did not dislike her: they were polite and obedient. From their mother’s flat they went off to school, and with their mother and Jaspar went for holidays. Then one weekend they were strained, silent, and said that their mother wasn’t well. And no, Jaspar wasn’t there. The children did not look at each other, imparting this information but it was as if they exchanged looks full of dread.

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