The Sweetest Dream by Doris Lessing

stupid, and he was too old for school. Rose– not her
responsibility–had ‘dropped out’. So had James. Sylvia hadn’t been to
school in months. Geoffrey did well, always had, and it looked
as if he would be the only one who would actually sit the exams.
Daniel would because Geoffrey did, but he wasn’t clever, like his
idol. Jill was more often here than at school. Lucy, from
Dartington, would sit exams and do brilliantly, that was evident.
    Frances herself, obedient girl, had gone to school, was
punctual, sat exams, and would have gone to university if the war and
Johnny had not intervened. She could not understand what the
problem was. She had not much enjoyed school, but had seen
the process as something that had to be undergone. She would
have to earn her living, that was the point. These youngsters never
seemed to think about that.
    Now she wrote down the letter she would like to send, but
of course would not.
    Dear Mrs Jackson, I haven’t the faintest idea what to advise. We
seem to have bred a generation that expects food simply to fall into their
mouths without their working for it. With sincere regrets, Aunt Vera.
    Julia was getting up. She gathered up her bag, her gloves, a
newspaper, and as she came past Frances, nodded. Frances, too
late, got up to push a chair towards her, but Julia was already
gone. If she had handled it properly, Julia would have sat down–there had been a little moment of hesitation. And then at last
she might have become friends with her mother-in-law.
    Frances sat on, ordered more coffee, then soup. Andrew had
said that if one was lucky with one’s timing and ordered goulash
soup, you got the thick part at the bottom of the pot, like stew,
very good. Her goulash when it came was evidently from the
middle of the pot.
    She did not know what to write for her third piece. The
second had been on marijuana, and it was easy. The article had
been cool and informative, that was all, and many letters came in
response.
    What an attractive crowd this was, the Cosmo crowd, these
people from all over Europe, and of course, by now, the kind of
British attracted by them. Many of them Jews. Not all.
    Julia had remarked, in front of ‘the kids’ when one of them
asked if she had been a refugee, ‘I am in the unfortunate situation
of being a German who is not a Jew.’
    Shock and outrage. Julia’s fascist status had been confirmed:
though they all used the word fascist as easily as they said fuck,
or shit, not necessarily meaning much more than this was
somebody they disapproved of.
    Sophie had wailed that Julia gave her the creeps, all Germans
did.
    Of Sophie, Julia had remarked, ‘She has the Jewish young
girl’s beauty, but she’ll end up an old hag, just like the rest of us.’
    If Sylvia–Tilly was coming down to supper then the food had
to be right for her. She could not be given a dish different from
the others, and yet she did not eat anything but potato. Very well,
Frances would cook a big shepherd’s pie, and the girls who were
slimming could leave the mash and eat the rest. There would
be vegetables. Rose would not eat vegetables, but would salad.
Geoffrey never ate fish or vegetables: she had been worrying
about Geoffrey’s diet for years, and he was not even her child.
What did his parents think, when he hardly ever went home, was
always coming to them–rather, to Colin? She asked him and he
said that they were quite pleased he had somewhere to go. It
seemed they both worked hard. Quakers. Religious. A dull
household, it seemed. She had become fond of Geoffrey but was
damned if she was going to spend time worrying about Rose.
Careful, Frances: if there was one thing she had learned, it was
not to say what one will accept or refuse from Fate, which had
its own ideas.
    But perhaps one’s fate is just one’s temperament, invisibly
attracting people and events. There are people who