The Sweetest Dream Read Free Page A

schools, and they were not doing well.
    â€˜What do you expect?’ said Julia.
    â€˜I never expect anything,’ said Frances.
    Then things changed, dramatically. Frances was amazed to
hear that Comrade Johnny had agreed that Andrew should go to
a good school. Julia said Eton, because her husband had gone
there. Frances was waiting to hear that Johnny had refused Eton,
and then was told that Johnny had been there, and had managed
to conceal this damaging fact all these years. Julia did not mention
it because his Eton career had hardly covered him or them with
glory. He had gone for three years, but dropped out to go to the
Spanish Civil War.
    â€˜You mean to say you are happy for Andrew to go to that
school?’ Frances said to him, on the telephone.
    â€˜Well, you at least get a good education,’ said Johnny airily,
and she could hear the unspoken: Look what it did for me.
    So–Julia paying–Andrew took off from the poor rooms his
mother and brother were living in, for Eton, and spent his holidays
with schoolfriends, and became a polite stranger.
    Frances went to an end-of-term at Eton, in an outfit bought
to fit what she imagined would suit the occasion, and the first hat
she had ever worn. She did all right, she thought, and could see
Andrew was relieved when he saw her.
    Then people came to ask after Julia, Philip’s widow, and the
daughter-in-law of Philip’s father: an old man remembered him,
as a small boy. It seemed the Lennoxes went to Eton as a matter
of course. Johnny, or Jolyon, was enquired after. ‘Interesting . . .’
said a man who had been Johnny’s teacher. ‘An interesting choice
of career.’
    Thereafter Julia went to the formal occasions, where she was
made much of, and was surprised at it: visiting Eton in those brief
three years of Jolyon’s attendance there, she had seen herself as
Philip’s wife, and of not much account.
    Colin refused Eton, because of a deep, complicated loyalty to
his mother whom he had watched struggling all these years. This
did not mean he did not quarrel with her, fight her, argue, and
did so badly at school Frances was secretly convinced he was doing
it on purpose to hurt her. But he was cold and angry with his
father, when Johnny did blow in to say that he was so terribly
sorry, but he really did not have the money to give them. He
agreed to go to a progressive school, St Joseph’s, Julia paying for
everything.
    Johnny then came up with a suggestion that Frances at last
did not refuse. Julia would let her and the boys have the lower part
of her house. She did not need all that room, it was ridiculous . . .
    Frances thought of Andrew, returning to various squalid
addresses, or not returning, certainly never bringing friends home.
She thought of Colin who made no secret of how much he hated
how they were living. She said yes to Johnny, yes to Julia, and found
herself in the great house that was Julia’s and always would be.
    Only she knew what it cost her. She had kept her
independence all this time, paid for herself and the boys, and not accepted
money from Julia, nor from her parents who would have been
happy to help. Now here she was, and it was a final capitulation:
what to other people was ‘such a sensible arrangement’ was defeat.
She was no longer herself, she was an appendage of the Lennox
family.
    As far as Johnny was concerned, he had done as much as could
be expected of him. When his mother told him he should support
his sons, get a job that paid him a salary, he shouted at her that
she was a typical member of an exploiting class, thinking only of
money, while he was working for the future of the whole world.
They quarrelled, frequently and noisily. Listening, Colin would
go white, silent, and leave the house for hours or for days. Andrew
preserved his airy, amused smile, his poise. He was often at home
these days, and even brought friends.
    Meanwhile Johnny and Frances had