The Sweetest Dream by Doris Lessing Page A

(probably
unconsciously, when young, until it is forced on them that this
is their character) use a certain passivity towards life, watching to
see what will arrive on their plate, or drop in their lap, or stare
them in the face–‘What’s wrong with you? Are you blind?’–and then, try not so much to grasp it as wait, allowing the thing
to develop, show itself. Then the task is to do your best with it,
do what you can.
    Would she have believed, aged nineteen, marrying Johnny
when there was no reason to expect anything ever but war and
bad times, that she would find herself a kind of house-mother–but ‘earth-mother’ was the current term. Where along the road
should she have said (if she had been determined to avert this
fate) ‘No, I won’t.’ She had fought against Julia’s house, but
probably it would have been better if she had succumbed much
earlier, saying yes, yes, to what was happening, and consciously
saying it, accepting what had arrived in front of her, as was now
her philosophy. Saying no is often like those people who divorce
one partner only to marry another exactly the same in looks and
character: we carry invisible templates as ineluctably ourselves as
fingerprints, but we don’t know about them until we look around
us and see them mirrored.
    â€˜We know what we are . . .’ (Oh, no, we don’t!) ‘. . . but not
what we may be.’
    Once she would have found it hard to believe that she could
live chaste, without a man in prospect . . . but she still cherished
fantasies about a man in her life who would not be a mad egotist,
like Johnny. But what man would want to take on a tribe of
youngsters all ‘disturbed’ for one reason or another. Here they
were, congratulated on living in Swinging London, promised
everything the advertisers of at least two continents could think
up, yet if ‘the kids’ did swing–and they did, they were off to
the big jazz concert on Saturday, tomorrow–then they were
screwed up, and two of them, her sons, because of her and Johnny.
And the war, of course.
    Frances took up her burden, heavily loaded carrier bags, paid
her bill, went home up the hill.
    A pearly post-Clean Air Act fog floated outside the windows
and bedewed the hair and eyelashes of ‘the kids’ who came into
the house laughing and embracing each other like survivors. Damp
duffel-coats loaded the banisters, and all the chairs around the
table except two on Frances’s left, were occupied. Colin had sat
down by Sophie, saw that he would be next to his brother in the
third empty chair, and quickly moved to the end where he stood
by Geoffrey, who sat opposite Frances, and now Colin claimed
the important chair by pushing Geoffrey out with a thrust of his
buttocks. A schoolboy moment, rough and raw, too young for
their almost adult status. Geoffrey then came to sit on Frances’s
right, without looking at Colin. Sophie suffered from any discord,
and she got up to go to Colin, bent to slide an arm around him,
and kissed his cheek. He did not permit himself to smile, but then
could not prevent a weak and loving smile at her which then
included everyone. They all laughed. Rose . . . James . . . Jill–these three seemed to be ensconced in the basement; Daniel was
next to Geoffrey, head boy and his deputy. Lucy was next to
Daniel, having come up from Dartington to spend the weekend
with him, here. Twelve places. They were all waiting, ravenously
eating bread, sniffing the smells that came from the stove. At last
Andrew came in, his arm around Sylvia. She was still inside the
baby shawl, but wore clean jeans, that were loose on her, and a
jersey of Andrew’s. Her pale wispy hair had been brushed up,
making her look even more infantile. But she was smiling, though
her lips trembled.
    Colin, who resented her being here at all, got up, smiling,
and made her a little bow.