The Sweetest Dream by Doris Lessing Page A

doctor in my place.’
    â€˜I can’t. I can’t. I can’t go back to school.’
    â€˜Why can’t you? Andrew has told me that you were clever at
your lessons, before you became foolish. And now take this cup
and drink the rest by yourself.’
    The observers hardly breathed, at this moment of–surely?–crisis. Suppose Tilly–Sylvia refused the cup with its life-giving
soup, and put that thumb back in her mouth? Suppose she
shut her lips tight? Julia was holding the mug against the hand
that was not clutching the shawl around her. ‘Take it.’ The
hand trembled, but opened. Julia put the mug carefully into the
hand, and held the hand around the cup. The hand did lift, the
cup reached the lips and over it came the whisper, ‘But it’s so
hard.’
    â€˜I know it’s hard.’
    The trembling hand was holding the cup to her lips, while
Julia steadied it. The girl took a sip, swallowed. ‘I’m going to be
sick,’ she whispered.
    â€˜No, you are not. Stop it, Sylvia.’
    Again Frances and her son waited, holding their breaths. Sylvia
wasn’t sick, though she had to conquer retching, when Julia said,
‘Stop it.’
    Meanwhile, down the stairs from the ‘boys’ floor’ came Colin,
and behind him, Sophie. The two stopped. Colin was blushing
bright red, and Sophie was half laughing, half crying, and seemed
about to run back upstairs, but instead came to Frances, put her
arms around her, and said, ‘Dear, dear Frances,’ and ran off down
the stairs, laughing.
    â€˜It’s not what you think,’ said Colin.
    â€˜I’m not thinking anything,’ said Frances.
    Andrew merely smiled, keeping his counsel.
    Now Colin saw the little scene through the door, took it in,
and said, ‘Good for Grandma,’ and went off down the stairs in
big leaps.
    Julia who had taken no notice of her audience, got down
from the stool, and smoothed down her skirts. She took the mug
from the girl. ‘I’m going to come back in an hour and see how
you are,’ she said. ‘And then I’ll take you up to my bathroom,
and you can put on clean clothes. You’ll be better in no time,
you’ll see.’
    She picked up the cup of cold chocolate left last night by
Frances, and came out of the room and handed it to her. ‘I think
this is yours,’ she said. And then, to Andrew, ‘And you can stop
being foolish too.’ She left the door into the room open, and
went up the stairs, holding up her pink skirt, which rustled, with
one hand.
    â€˜So that’s all right,’ said Andrew to his mother. ‘Well done,
Sylvia,’ he called to the girl, who smiled, if weakly. He ran upstairs.
Frances heard one door shut, Julia’s and then another, Andrew’s.
In the room opposite a blotch of sunlight lay on a pillow, and
Sylvia, for there is no doubt that this was who she was now, held
her hand in it, turning it back and forth, examining it.
    At this moment there was a banging on the front door, the
bell rang repeatedly, and a woman’s voice was shouting. The girl
sitting in the sun on her bed let out a cry, and dived under the
bedclothes.
    As the door opened, the shout of ‘Let me in’ could be heard
through the house. A hoarse hysterical voice, ‘Let me in, let me in .’
    Andrew’s door opened with a bang, and he came leaping
down the stairs saying, ‘Leave this to me, oh, Christ , shut Tilly’s
door.’ Frances shut the door, as Julia called down, ‘What is it,
who is it?’ Andrew called up to her, but softly, ‘Her mother,
Tilly’s mother.’
    â€˜Then I am sorry to say that Sylvia will have a setback,’ said
Julia, and continued to stand there, on guard.
    Frances was still in her nightdress, and she went into her room,
and dragged on jeans and a jersey and ran down the stairs towards
voices in altercation.
    â€˜Where is she? I want