The Sweetest Dream by Doris Lessing Read Free Book Online Page A

discomfort, the baby’s
mouth popped off the nipple, and milky liquid ran down over
the breast to a sagging waist. Frances eased the nipple back, the
infant let out a choking cry and then fastened itself again on the
nipple with a little shaking movement of its head Julia had
observed in puppies ranged along the teats of a nursing bitch, her
little pet dachshund, from long ago. Frances put a piece of cloth
Julia could swear was a nappy over the resting breast.
    The women stared at each other, with dislike.
    Julia did not sit. There was a chair, but the seat was suspiciously
stained. She could sit on the bed, which was unmade, but did
not care to. She said, ‘Johnny wrote to ask me to find out how
you are.’
    The cool, light, almost drawling voice, modulated according
to some measure or scale known only to Julia, caused the young
woman to stare again, and then she laughed.
    â€˜I am as you see, Julia,’ said Frances.
    Julia was filling with panic. She thought this place horrible, a
lower depth of squalor. The house she and Philip had found
Johnny in at the time of the Spanish Civil War misadventure had
been a poor one, thin-walled, temporary in feel, but it had been
clean, and Mary the landlady was a decent sort of woman. In this
place Julia felt trapped in a nightmare. That shameless young
woman half-naked there, with her great oozing breasts, the baby’s
noisy sucking, a faint smell of sick, or of nappies . . . Julia felt that
Frances was forcing her, most brutally, to look directly at an
unclean unseemly fount of life that she had never had to
acknowledge. Her own baby had been presented to her as a well-washed
bundle after he had been fed by the nurse. Julia had refused to
breastfeed; too near the animal, she felt, but did not dare say.
Doctors and nurses had tactfully agreed that she was not able to
nurse . . . her health . . . Julia had often played with the little boy
who arrived in the drawing-room with toys, and she actually sat
on the floor with him, and enjoyed a play hour, measured by the
nanny to the minute. She remembered the smell of soap, and
baby powder. She remembered sniffing at Jolyon’s little head with
such pleasure . . .
    Frances was thinking, It’s unbelievable. She is unbelievable,
and derision was in danger of making her burst out in raucous
laughter.
    Julia stood there in the middle of the room, in her neat wool
crêpe grey suit, that had not a wrinkle, not a bulge. It was buttoned
up to her throat where a silk scarf provided a hint of mauve. Her
hands were in dove-grey kid gloves, and even though thoroughly
protected from the unwashed surfaces around her, were making
anxious little movements of rejection, and fussy disapproval. Her
shoes were like shiny blackbirds, with brass buckles that seemed
to Frances to be locks, as if making sure those feet couldn’t fly
off, or even to begin to try out a few prim dance steps. Her grey
hat was fenced with a little net veil that did not conceal her
horrified eyes, and it, too, was caught with a metal buckle. She
was a woman in a cage, and to Frances, under such pressures of
loneliness, poverty, anxiety, her appearance in that room, which
she loathed, and wished only to escape from, was like a deliberate
taunting, an insult.
    â€˜What am I to tell Jolyon?’
    â€˜Who?–oh, yes. But . . .’ And now Frances energetically sat
herself up, one hand cupping the baby’s head, the other holding
the cloth over her exposed breast. ‘Don’t tell me Johnny asked
you to come here?’
    â€˜Well, yes, he did.’
    Now the two women shared a moment: it was incredulity,
and their eyes actually did engage, in a query. When Julia had
read the letter which commanded her to visit his wife, she said
to Philip, ‘But I thought he hated us? If we weren’t good enough
to see him married, then why is he ordering me to visit Frances?’
    Philip replied, dry