Sweet Dreams

~ ~ ~

Howard and Felicity don’t go mad. They don’t let the new job make any great difference to their lives. They have to buy a house in town, of course, so that Howard can be near his work during the week. It’s two minutes’ walk across the Park from the sombre baronial building where he has his office; there’s no point in not living centrally now the children are away at school. But otherwise it’s quite modest. A little walled garden, with a few pollarded lime trees in it, and one or two urns and busts, and a solitary policeman tucked away in a little sentry-box inside the gateway. Inside the house the furniture and the pictures on the walls are all dark brown. Everything is old, and well-polished, and slightly worn. It’s not some brash statement of their own personalities, but a low murmur from many people over many years.

Howard and Felicity sit facing each other in the evenings across the empty fireplace (they have central heating, of course, and there’s no point in getting soot in the curtains unless they have guests). He wears a dark three-piece suit, but from a sense of natural modesty he has his suits considerably better cut than Freddie’s. Felicity wears a beige twin set, but keeps her slip modestly out of sight.

“It feels better, doesn’t it?” says Howard. “If one’s honest with oneself.”

“I’ve always preferred old things and quiet colours,” says Felicity. “In myself — underneath.”

Howard draws on his pipe. (He smokes a pipe now.)

“When one’s first married,” he says, “when one’s first down from the university, one keeps striking attitudes. One’s whole style of life is intended to make claims about oneself — to announce one’s group loyalties and relationship with the world. The rest of one’s life is a process of dropping the claims, one by one. And with each claim one drops, one feels better. More relaxed. More honest. More oneself. The less one makes of oneself, the more one is oneself. The less one is who one thinks one ought to be, the more one is who one is. I feel more myself now than ever.”

“Yur,” says Felicity. “Terrifically true.”

They all live in solid old houses near the Park now — the Chases, the Bernsteins, the Waylands, Charles Aught, the Goodys — their whole set. They all have dark brown pictures on their walls, and oatmeal skirts, and umber dogs. The only thing the rest of them lack is a policeman at the gate.

“We really do seem to have taken over,” says Prue at her dinner-parties, looking at them all.

“There has been a real revolution, when you think about it,” says Michael Wayland.

“A kind of quiet revolution, from within,” says Miriam Bernstein.

“The only sort that works,” says Charles Aught.

“Oh, there’s no doubt about it,” says Bill Goody. “There’s been a radical change in the whole structure of society during the last few years.”

So radical has the change been that Freddie and Caroline are sometimes at Prue’s dinner parties now. Which is agreeable. Although in some ways it’s even more agreeable when they’re not, because then Howard does his famous imitation of Freddie — Freddie being praised, Freddie being jealous, Freddie doing his best to unbend enough to be wrathful. Howard has got him beautifully.

“Dear Howard,” murmurs Prue, pressing his hand. She never forgets that it’s Howard to whom they all owe their place in the new order of things.

The only people who seem to have failed to benefit from the revolution are Phil and Rose. They are living in some slightly embarrassing suburb — the kind of suburb that has a dog track and an immigrant problem. Phil rather faded out after his terrible fiasco with the premiere of man. Months and months of advance publicity, and newspaper articles about the seriousness and dedication of everyone involved — then the curtains parted, and out onto the stage walked a rather tubby little figure with a balding forehead and thin hair flying in the wind, who leaned anxiously forward and waved his arms about as he talked. The audience began to trickle away as he told a series of long, rambling stories to which he forgot the punch lines, conducted a hesitant affair with somebody else’s wife, and announced half-baked plans for an ideal world. The reviews next morning were disastrous. “This self-important manikin simply will not do … a unique combination of vanity, greed, and incompetence … his capacity for deceiving himself about his own motives would seem to be boundless … underdeveloped arm and shoulder muscles … a chronic inability to formulate sublime thoughts … if the production models are not a vast improvement on this pitiful prototype, God help us all….”

“Poor old Phil,” Howard says to Felicity at quite frequent intervals. “I suppose he always was too clever by half. All the same, I can’t help feeling rather sorry for him. And for Rose. I suppose she married him with her eyes open. Still …”

“We must have them to dinner some time,” says Felicity.

“Who with, though? That’s the problem.”

They think hard, but as Freddie says, you can’t just plunge in unilaterally and put everything to rights.

“Poor Phil,” says Felicity.

“Poor Rose,” says Howard.