Or they all sat around the table, Rupert and Frances, Colin and William, Clever and Zebedee, and quite often Sophie too, at the evening meal that might go on and on, and the child came running in, evading bedtime. She wanted to be near them, but not to be picked up, held, or sat on a knee. She was deep inside her game, or play, talking softly to herself confidentially, in voices they learned to recognise. ' Celia's here, yes she is, this is Celia, and there is my Frances and there is my Clever...’ The tiny child, in her scrap of a coloured dress, chattering there, but to herself, perhaps using a bit of cloth, or a flower, or a toy to stand in for some person or character or imagined playmate – she was so perfectly beautiful that she silenced them, they sat watching, charmed, awed...’And there's my William...'she reached out to touch him, to be sure of him, but she was not looking at him, perhaps at the flower or toy, 'and my Zebedee...' Colin got up, the big clumsy man, so coarse and heavy beside her, and stood looking down. 'And there – my Colin, yes, it's my daddy...' Colin, tears running, bent down to her in something like an obeisance ofhis whole being, holding out his hands with a groan, 'Oh Frances, oh Sophie, did you ever see anything so...’
But the little girl did not want to be gathered in and held, she spun around on herself, singing for herself and to herself, 'Yes, my Colin, yes, my Sophie, yes, and there's my poor little Johnny...’
About the Author
Doris Lessing was born of British parents in Persia in 1919 and moved with her family to Southern Rhodesia when she was five years old. She went to England in 1949 and has lived there ever since. She is the author of more than thirty books-novels, stories, reportage, poems, and plays. Doris Lessing lives in London.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.
THE SWEETEST DREAM. Copyright © 2002 by Doris Lessing. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of PerfectBound™.
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First published in the United Kingdom in 2001
by Flamingo, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.