Читать книгу The Good Terrorist - Doris Lessing - Страница 5

The house was set back from the noisy main road in what seemed to be a rubbish tip. A large house. Solid. Black tiles stood at angles along the gutter, and into a gap near the base of a fat chimney a bird flew, trailing a piece of grass several times its length.

‘I should think, 1910,’ said Alice, ‘look how thick the walls are.’ This could be seen through the broken window just above them on the first floor. She got no response, but nevertheless shrugged off her backpack, letting it tumble on to a living rug of young nettles that was trying to digest rusting tins and plastic cups. She took a step back to get a better view of the roof. This brought Jasper into vision. His face, as she had expected it would be, was critical and meant to be noticed. For her part she did not have to be told that she was wearing her look, described by him as silly. ‘Stop it,’ he ordered. His hand shot out, and her wrist was encircled by hard bone. It hurt. She faced him, undefiant but confident, and said, ‘I wonder if they will accept us?’ And, as she had known he would, he said, ‘It is a question of whether we will accept them.’

She had withstood the test on her, that bony pain, and he let her wrist go and went on to the door. It was a front door, solid and sure of itself, in a little side street full of suburban gardens and similar comfortable houses. They did not have slates missing and broken windows.

“Why, why, why?’ asked Alice angrily, addressing the question, probably, to the universe itself, her heart full of pain because of the capacious, beautiful and unloved house. She dragged her backpack by its strap after her and joined him.

‘Profit, of course,’ he said, and pressed the bell, which did not ring. He gave the door a sharp push and they went into a large shadowy hall where stairs went strongly up, turned at a wide landing, and rose out of sight. The scene was illuminated by a hurricane lamp that stood on the floor in a corner. From a side room came the sound of soft drumming. Jasper pushed open this door too. The windows were covered by blankets, leaving not a chink of light. A black youth looked up from his family of drums, his cheeks and teeth shining in candlelight. ‘Hi,’ he said, all his fingers and both feet at work, so that it seemed he was dancing as he sat, or was perhaps on some kind of exercise machine.

This smiling jolly black boy who looked like an advertisement for an attractive holiday in the Caribbean struck Alice’s organ of credibility falsely, and she tucked away a little memo to herself not to forget a first impression of anxiety or even sorrow, which was the real message her nerves were getting from him. She found herself actually on the verge of saying, ‘It’s all right, it’s OK, don’t worry!’ But meanwhile Jasper was demanding, ‘Where’s Bert?’

The black youth shrugged, nonchalantly, still smiling, and did not for one moment stop his energetic attack on his instruments. Jasper’s tight grip on her upper arm took her out of the room into the hall, where Alice said, ‘This place smells.’

‘Well,’ said Jasper, in the clumsily placating way she knew was meant as love, ‘I suppose you’ll put a stop to that.’

At once, feeling her advantage, she said, ‘Don’t forget you’ve been living soft for four years. You’re not going to find it easy after that.’

‘Don’t call me soft,’ he said, and kicked her on the ankle. Not hard, but enough.

This time she went ahead of him and opened a door she felt must be to the kitchen. Light fell on desolation. Worse, danger: she was looking at electric cables ripped out of the wall and dangling, raw-ended. The cooker was pulled out and lying on the floor. The broken windows had admitted rain water which lay in puddles everywhere. There was a dead bird on the floor. It stank. Alice began to cry. It was from pure rage. ‘The bastards,’ she cursed. ‘The filthy stinking fascist bastards.’

They already knew that the Council, to prevent squatters, had sent in the workmen to make the place uninhabitable. ‘They didn’t even make those wires safe. They didn’t even…’ Suddenly alive with energy, she whirled about opening doors. Two lavatories on this floor, the bowls filled with cement.

She cursed steadily, the tears streaming. ‘The filthy shitty swine, the shitty fucking fascist swine…’ She was full of the energy of hate. Incredulous with it, for she had never been able to believe, in some corner of her, that anybody, particularly not a member of the working class, could obey an order to destroy a house. In that corner of her brain that was perpetually incredulous began the monologue that Jasper never heard for he would not have authorized it: But they are people, people did this. To stop other people from living. I don’t believe it. Who can they be? What can they be like? I’ve never met anyone who could. Why, it must be people like Len and Bob and Bill, friends. They did it. They came in and filled the lavatory bowls with cement and ripped out all the cables and blocked up the gas.

Jasper stood and watched her. He was pleased. This fury of energy had banished her look, which he hated, when she seemed, all of her, to be swollen and glistening, as if not merely her face but her whole body filled with tears which oozed from every pore.

Without referring to him she ran up the stairs and he followed slowly, listening to how she banged on doors, and then, hearing nothing, flung them open. On the first-floor landing they stood looking into order, not chaos. Here every room had sleeping-bags, one or two, or three. Candles or hurricane lamps. Even chairs with little tables beside them. Books. Newspapers. But no one was in.

The smell on this floor was strong. It came from upstairs. More slowly they went up generously wide stairs, and confronted a stench which made Jasper briefly retch. Alice’s face was stern and proud. She flung open a door on to a scene of plastic buckets, topped with shit. But this room had been deemed sufficiently filled, and the one next to it had been started. Ten or so red, yellow and orange buckets stood in a group, waiting.

There were other rooms on this floor, but none was used. None could be used, the smell was so strong.

They went down the stairs, silent, watching their feet, for there was rubbish everywhere, and the light came dimly through dirty windows.

‘We are not here,’ said he, anticipating her, ‘to make ourselves comfortable. We aren’t here for that.’

She said, ‘I don’t understand anyone choosing to live like this. Not when it’s so easy.’

Now she sounded listless, flat, all the incandescence of fury gone.

He was about to start a speech about her bourgeois inclinations, as she could see; but the front door opened, and against the sunlight was outlined a military-looking figure.

‘Bert!’ he shouted, and jumped down the stairs three at a time. ‘Bert. It’s Jasper…’

Alice thought maternally, hearing that glad voice ring out, it’s because of his shitty father; but it was part of her private stream, since of course Jasper did not allow her the right to such ideas.

‘Jasper,’ acknowledged Bert, and then peered through the gloom up at her.

‘Alice – I told you,’ said Jasper.

‘Comrade Alice,’ said Bert. His voice was curt, stern and pure, insisting on standards, and Jasper’s voice fell into step. ‘We have just come,’ he said. ‘There was no one to report to.’

‘We spoke to him, in there,’ remarked Alice, arriving beside them, indicating the room from where came the soft drumming.

‘Oh, Jim,’ dismissed Bert. He strode to a door they had not opened, kicked it open, since it had lost it knob, and went in without looking to see if they followed.

This room was as near to normal as any they had seen. With the door shut, you could believe this was a sitting-room in an ordinary house, although everything – chairs, a sofa, the carpet – was dingy. The smell was almost shut out, but to Alice it seemed that an invisible film of stench clung to everything, and she would feel it slippery on her fingers if she touched.

Bert stood upright, slightly bent forward, arms at ease, looking at her. But he did not see her, she knew that. He was a dark thin young man, probably twenty-eight or thirty. His face was full of black shining hairs, and his dark eyes and a red mouth and white teeth gleamed from among them. He wore new stiff dark-blue jeans and a close-fitting dark-blue jacket, buttoned up and tidy. Jasper wore light-blue linen trousers and a striped T-shirt like a sailor’s; but Alice knew he would soon be in clothes like Bert’s, which were in fact his normal gear. He had had a brief escapade into frivolity due to some influence or other.

Alice knew that the two men would now talk, without concerning themselves with her, and set herself to guard her interests, while she looked out of the bow-window into the garden, where rubbish of all kinds reached to the sills. Sparrows were at work on the piles, scratching and digging. A blackbird sat on a milk carton and looked straight at her. Beyond the birds, she saw a thin cat crouched under a hydrangea in young green leaf and slim coronets of pink and blue that would be flowers. The cat was watching her too, with bright starved eyes.

Bert reached into a cupboard and took out a thermos flask the size of a bucket; and three mugs.

‘Oh, you do have electricity then?’ she asked.

‘No. A comrade in the next street fills it for me every morning,’ he said.

Alice, watching the scene with half her attention, saw how Jasper eyed the flask, and the pouring of the coffee. She knew he was hungry. Because of the row with her mother, and then slamming out of the house, he had not breakfasted. And he had not had time to drink the coffee she had taken up to him. She thought, ‘But that’s Bert’s supply for the day,’ and indicated she wanted only half a cup. Which she was given, exactly as specified.

Jasper drank down his cup at once, and sat looking at the thermos, wanting more. Bert did not notice.

‘The situation has changed,’ Bert began, as if this were a continuation of some meeting. ‘My analysis was incorrect, as it happened. I underestimated the political maturity of the cadres. When I put the question to the vote, half decided against, and they left here at once.’

Jasper said, ‘Then they would have proved unreliable. Good riddance.’

‘Precisely.’

‘What was the question?’ inquired Alice. She used her ‘meeting voice’, for she had learned that this was necessary to hold her own. To her, it sounded false and cold, and she was always embarrassed by it; because of the effort it needed, she sounded indifferent, even absentminded. Yet her eyes were steadily and even severely observing the scene in front of her: Bert, looking at her, or rather, at what she had said; Jasper, looking at the thermos. Suddenly he was unable to stop himself, and he reached for the jug. Bert said, ‘Sorry,’ and pushed it towards him.

‘You know what the question was,’ said Jasper, sour. ‘I told you. We are going to join the IRA.’

‘You mean,’ said Alice, ‘you voted on whether to join the IRA?’ She sounded breathless: Bert took it as fear, and he said, with loud, cold contempt, ‘Shit-scared. They ran like little rabbits.’

Alice persisted, ‘How was it put to the vote?’

Bert said, after a pause, ‘That this group should make approaches to the IRA leadership, offering our services as an England-based entity.’

Alice digested this, looking strained because of the effort it cost her to believe it, and said, ‘But Jasper told me that this house was Communist Centre Union?’

‘Correct. This is a CCU squat.’

‘But has the leadership of the CCU decided to offer the services of the whole CCU to the IRA? I don’t understand,’ she said fiercely, not at all in her ‘political’ voice, and Bert said, curt and offhand because, as she could see, he was uncomfortable, ‘No.’

‘Then how can a branch of the CCU offer it services?’

Here she observed that Jasper was seeking to engage Bert’s eyes in ‘Take no notice of her’ looks, and she forestalled him. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

Bert admitted, ‘You are correct, in a way. The point was discussed. It was agreed that while approaches could not be made as a group of the CCU, it would be permissible for a group of CCU members to make the approach, as associated individuals.’

‘But…’ Alice lost interest. They are at it again, she was thinking. Fudging it. She returned her attention to the rubbish pile a yard beyond the dirty glass. The blackbird had gone. The poor cat was sniffing around the edges of the heap, where flies were crawling.

She said, ‘What do you do for food here?’

‘Take-away.’

‘This rubbish is a health hazard. There must be rats.’

‘That’s what the police said.’

‘Have they been?’

‘They were here last night.’

‘Oh, I see, that’s why the others left.’

‘No,’ said Bert. ‘They left because they got the shits. About the IRA.’

‘What did the police say?’

‘They gave us four days to leave.’

‘Why don’t we go to the Council?’ said Alice, in an irritated wail; and as Jasper said, ‘Oh, there she goes again,’ the door opened and a young woman came in. She had short shiny black hair that had been expertly cut, black quick eyes, red lips, a clear white skin. She was glossy and hard, like a fresh cherry. She looked carefully at Bert, at Jasper, and at Alice, and Alice knew she was being seen.

‘I’m Pat,’ she said. ‘Bert told me about you two.’ And then, ‘You are brother and sister?’

At once Jasper snapped, ‘No, we are not!’

But Alice liked it when people made the mistake, and she said, ‘People often take us as brother and sister.’

Pat again examined them. Jasper fidgeted under the look, and turned away, hands in his jacket pockets, as if trying to seem indifferent to an attack.

They were both fair, with reddish gleams in hair that wanted to go into little curls and wisps. Jasper’s was cut very short; Alice’s was short and chunky and serviceable. She cut it herself. They both had pinkish freckled skin. Jasper’s little blue eyes were in round white shallows, and this gave him an angelic, candid air. He was very thin, and wore skin-tight clothes. Alice was stocky, and she had a pudgy, formless look to her. Sometimes a girl of twelve, even thirteen, before she is lit by pubescence, is as she will be in middle age. A group of women are standing on a platform in the Underground. Middle-aged women, with carrier bags, gossiping. Very short women, surely? No, they are girls, of twelve or so. Forty years of being women will boil through them, and leave them as they are now, heavy and cautious, and anxious to please. Alice could seem like a fattish clumsy girl or, sometimes, about fifty, but never looked her age, which was thirty-six. Now it was a girl who returned Pat’s look with friendly curiosity from small blue-grey eyes set under sandy lashes.

‘Well,’ said Pat, strolling to the window to stand by Alice, ‘have you heard that this happy little community is for the chop?’

She looked much older than Alice, was ten years younger. She offered Alice a cigarette, which was refused, and smoked hers needfully, greedily.

‘Yes, and I said, why not negotiate with the Council?’

‘I heard you. But they prefer their romantic squalor.’

‘Romantic,’ said Alice, disgusted.

‘It does go against the grain, negotiating with the Establishment,’ said Bert.

‘Do you mean that this commune is breaking up?’ said Jasper suddenly, sounding so like a small boy that Alice glanced quickly to see whether it had been noticed. It had: by Pat, who stood, holding her cigarette to her lips between two fingers and distancing them, then bringing them back, so that she could puff and exhale, puff and exhale. Looking at Jasper. Diagnosis.

Alice said quickly, her heart full of a familiar soft ache, on Jasper’s account, ‘It doesn’t go against my grain. I’ve done it often.’

‘Oh you have, have you?’ said Pat. ‘So have I. Where?’

‘In Birmingham. A group of seven of us went to the Council over a scheduled house. We paid gas and electricity and water, and we stayed there thirteen months.’

‘Good for you.’

‘And in Halifax, I was in a negotiated squat for six months. And when I was in digs in Manchester, that was when I was at the university, there was a house full of students, nearly twenty of us. It started off as a squat, the Council came to terms, and it ended up as a student house.’

During this the two men listened, proceedings suspended. Jaspar had again filled his mug. Bert indicated to Pat that the thermos was empty, and she shook her head, listening to Alice.

‘Why don’t we go to the Council?’ said Alice direct to Pat.

‘I would. But I’m leaving anyway.’ Alice saw Bert’s body stiffen, and he sat angry and silent.

Pat said to Bert, ‘I told you last night, I was leaving.’

Alice had understood that this was more than political. She saw that a personal relationship was breaking up because of some political thing! Every instinct repudiated this. She thought, involuntarily, What nonsense, letting politics upset a personal relationship! This was not really her belief: she would not have stood by it if challenged. But similar thoughts often did pass through her mind.

Pat said, to Bert’s half-averted face, ‘What the fuck did you expect? At an ordinary meeting like that – two of them from outside, we didn’t know anything about them. We don’t know anything about the couple who came last week. Jim was in the room and he isn’t even CCU. Suddenly putting forward that resolution.’

‘It wasn’t sudden.’

‘When we discussed it before we decided to make individual approaches. To discuss it with individuals, carefully.’

Her voice was full of contempt. She was looking at – presumably – her lover as though he was fit for the dustbin.

‘You’ve changed your mind, at any rate,’ said Bert, his red lips shining angrily from his thickets of beard. ‘You agreed that to support the IRA was the logical position for this stage.’

‘It is the only correct attitude, Ireland is the fulcrum of the imperialist attack,’ said Jasper.

‘I haven’t changed my mind,’ said Pat. ‘But if I am going to work with the IRA or anyone else, then I’m going to know who I am working with.’

‘You don’t know us,’ said Alice, with a pang of painful realization; she and Jasper were part of the reason for this couple’s break-up.

‘No hard feelings,’ said Pat. ‘Nothing personal. But yes. The first I heard of you was when Bert said he had met Jasper at the CND rally Saturday. And I gather Bert hadn’t even met you.’

‘No,’ said Alice.

‘Well, I’m sorry, but that’s not the way to do things.’

‘I see your point,’ said Alice.

A silence. The two young women stood at the window, in an aromatic cloud from Pat’s cigarette. The two men were in chairs, in the centre of the room. The rain-like pattering of the drum came from Jim beyond the hall.

Alice said, ‘How many people are left here now?’

Pat did not answer and at last Bert said, ‘With you two, seven.’ He added, ‘I don’t know about you, Pat.’

‘Yes, you do,’ said Pat, sharp and cold. But they were looking at each other now, and Alice thought: No, it won’t be easy for them to split up. She said, ‘Well, if it’s seven, then four of us are here now. Five if Pat…Where are the other two? I want to get an agreement that I go to the Council.’

‘The lavatories full of cement. The electricity cables torn out. Pipes probably rotten,’ said Bert on a fine rising derisive note.

‘It’s not difficult to put it right,’ said Alice. ‘We did it in Birmingham. The Council smashed the place to a ruin. They pulled the lavatories completely out there. All the pipes. Filled the bath with cement. Piled rubbish in all the rooms. We got it clean.’

‘Who is going to pay for it?’ That was Bert.

‘We are.’

‘Out of what?’

‘Oh, belt up,’ said Pat, ‘it costs us more in take-away and running around cadging baths and showers than it would to pay electricity and gas.’

‘It’s a point,’ said Bert.

‘And it would keep Old Bill off our backs,’ said Alice.

Silence. She knew that some people – and she suspected Bert, though not Pat, of this – would be sorry to hear it. They enjoyed encounters with the police.

Bert said unexpectedly, ‘Well, if we are going to build up our organization we aren’t going to need attention from Old Bill.’

‘Exactly,’ said Pat. ‘As I’ve been saying.’

Silence again. Alice saw it was up to her. She said, ‘One problem. In this borough they need someone to guarantee the electricity and gas. Who is in work?’

‘Three of the comrades who left last night were.’

‘Comrades!’ said Bert. ‘Opportunistic shits.’

‘They are very good honest communists,’ said Pat. ‘They happen not to want to work with the IRA.’

Bert began to heave with silent theatrical laughter, and Jasper joined him.

‘So we are all on Social Security,’ said Alice.

‘So no point in going to the Council,’ said Bert.

Alice hesitated and said painfully, ‘I could ask my mother…’

At this Jasper exploded in raucous laughter and jeers, his face scarlet. ‘Her mother, bourgeois pigs…’

‘Shut up,’ said Alice. ‘We were living with my mother for four years,’ she explained in a fine breathless, balanced voice, which seemed to her unkindly cold and hostile. ‘Four years. Bourgeois or not.’

‘Take the rich middle class for what you can get,’ said Jasper. ‘Get everything out of them you can. That’s my line.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Alice. ‘I agree. But she did keep us for four years.’ Then, capitulating, ‘Well, why shouldn’t she? She is my mother.’ This last was said in a trembling painful little voice.

‘Right,’ said Pat, examining her curiously. ‘Well, no point in asking mine. Haven’t seen her for years.’

‘Well then,’ said Bert, suddenly getting up from the chair and standing in front of Pat, a challenge, his black eyes full on her. ‘So you’re not leaving after all?’

‘We’ve got to discuss it, Bert,’ she said, hurriedly, and walked over to him, and looked up into his face. He put his arm around her and they went out.

Alice surveyed the room. Skilfully. A family sitting-room, it had been. Comfortable. The paint was not too bad, the chairs and a sofa probably stood where they had then. There was a fireplace, not even plastered over.

‘Are you going to ask your mother? I mean, to be a guarantor?’ Jasper sounded forlorn. ‘And who’s going to pay for getting it all straight?’

‘I’ll ask the others if they’ll contribute.’

‘And if they won’t?’ he said, knowingly, sharing expertise with her, a friendly moment.

‘Some won’t, we know that,’ she said, ‘but we’ll manage. We always do, don’t we?’

But this was too direct an appeal to intimacy. At once he backed away into criticism. ‘And who’s going to do all the work?’

As he had been saying now for fourteen, fifteen years.

In the house in Manchester she shared with four other students she had been housemother, doing the cooking and shopping, housekeeping. She loved it. She got an adequate degree, but did not even try for a job. She was still in the house when the next batch of students arrived, and she stayed to look after them. That was how Jasper found her, coming in one evening for supper. He was not a student, had graduated poorly, had failed to find a job after half-hearted efforts. He stayed on in the house, not formally living there, but as Alice’s ‘guest’. After all, it was only because of Alice’s efforts that the place had become a student house: it had been a squat. And Jasper did not leave. She knew he had become dependent on her. But then and since he had complained she was nothing but a servant, wasting her life on other people. As they moved from squat to squat, commune to commune, this pattern remained: she looked after him and he complained that other people exploited her.

At her mother’s he had said the same. ‘She’s just exploiting you,’ he said. ‘Cooking and shopping. Why do you do it?’

‘We’ve got four days,’ said Alice. ‘I’m going to get moving.’ She did not look at him, but walked steadily past him, and into the hall. She carried her backpack into the room where Jim was drumming and said, ‘Keep an eye on this for me, comrade.’ He nodded. She said, ‘If I get permission from the Council for us to live here, will you share expenses?’

His hands fell from the drums. His friendly round face fell into lines of woe and he said, ‘They say I can’t stay here.’

‘Why not?’

‘Oh shit, man, I’m not into politics. I just want to live.’ Now he said, incredulously, ‘I was here first. Before any of you. This was my place. I found it. I said to everyone, Yes, come in, come in, man, this is Liberty Hall.’

‘That’s not fair,’ said Alice, at once.

‘I’ve been here eight months, eight months, Old Bill never knew, no one knew. I’ve been keeping my nose clean and minding my own business, and suddenly…’ He was weeping. Bright tears bounced off his black cheeks and splashed on the big drum. He wiped them off with the side of his palm.

‘Well,’ said Alice, ‘you just stay put and I’ll get it on the agenda.’

She was thinking as she left the house: All those buckets of shit up there, I suppose Jim filled them, nearly all. She thought: If I don’t pee I’ll…She could not have brought herself to go up and use one of those buckets. She walked to the Underground, took a train to a station with proper lavatories, used them, washed her face and brushed her hair, then went on to her mother’s stop, where she stood in line for a telephone booth.

Three hours after she left home screaming abuse at her mother, she dialled her number.

Her mother’s voice. Flat. At the sound of it affection filled Alice, and she thought, I’ll ask if she wants me to do some shopping for her on the way.

‘Hello, Mum, this is Alice.’

Silence.

‘It’s Alice.’

A pause. ‘What do you want?’ The flat voice, toneless.

Alice, all warm need to overcome obstacles on behalf of everyone, said, ‘Mum, I want to talk to you. You see, there’s this house. I could get the Council to let us stay on a controlled squat basis, you know, like Manchester? But we need someone to guarantee the electricity and gas.’

She heard a mutter, inaudible, then, ‘I don’t believe it!’

‘Mum. Look, it’s only your signature we want. We would pay it.’

A silence, a sigh, or a gasp, then the line went dead.

Alice, now radiant with a clear hot anger, dialled again. She stood listening to the steady buzz-buzz, imagining the kitchen where it was ringing, the great warm kitchen, the tall windows, sparkling (she had cleaned them last week, with such pleasure), and the long table where, she was sure, her mother was sitting now, listening to the telephone ring. After about three minutes, her mother did lift the receiver and said, ‘Alice, I know it is no use my saying this. But I shall say it. Again. I have to leave here. Do you understand? Your father won’t pay the bills any longer. I can’t afford to live here. I’ll have trouble paying my own bills. Do you understand, Alice?’

‘But you have all those rich friends.’ Another silence. Alice then, in a full, maternal, kindly, lecturing voice, began, ‘Mum, why aren’t you like us? We share what we have. We help each other out when we’re in trouble. Don’t you see that your world is finished? The day of the rich selfish bourgeoisie is over. You are doomed…’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ said Alice’s mother, and Alice warmed into the purest affection again, for the familiar comforting note of irony was back in her mother’s voice, the awful deadness and emptiness gone. ‘But you have at some point to understand that your father is not prepared any longer to share his ill-gotten gains with Jasper and all his friends.’

‘Well, at least he is prepared to see they are ill-gotten,’ said Alice earnestly.

A sigh. ‘Go away, Alice,’ said Alice’s mother. ‘Just go away. I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to hear from you. Try to understand that you can’t say the things to people you said to me this morning and then just turn up, as if nothing had happened, with a bright smile, for another hand-out.’

The line went dead.

Alice stood, in a dazzle of shock. Her head was full of dizzying shadow and light. Someone behind her in the queue said, ‘If you’ve finished…’, pushed in front of her, and began to dial.

Alice drifted off on to the pavement and wandered aimlessly around the perimeter of that area, now fenced off with high, corrugated iron, where so recently there had been a market, full of people buying and selling. She had had a pitch there herself last summer, and first she sold cakes and biscuits and sweets, and then hot soup, and sandwiches. Proper food, all wholemeal flour and brown sugar, and vegetables grown without insecticides. She cooked all this in her mother’s kitchen. Then the Council closed the place down. To build another of their shitty great enormous buildings, their dead bloody white elephants that wouldn’t be wanted by anyone but the people who made a profit out of building them. Corruption. Corruption everywhere. Alice, weeping out loud, blubbering, went stumbling about outside the enormous iron fence, like a fence around a concentration camp, thinking that last summer…

A whistle shrieked. Some factory or other…one o’clock. She hadn’t done anything yet…Standing on the long shallow steps that led to the Public Library, she wiped her face, and made her eyes look out instead of in. It was a nice day. The sun was shining. The sky was full of racing white clouds, and the blue seemed to dazzle and promise.

She went back to the telephones in the Underground and rang her father’s office on the private number.

He answered at once.

‘This is Alice.’

‘The answer is no.’

‘You don’t know what I was going to say.’

‘Say it.’

‘I want you to guarantee our expenses, electricity and gas, for a squat.’

‘No.’

She hung up, the burning anger back. Its energy took her to the pavement, and walked her up the avenue to a large building which was set back a bit, with steps. She raced up them and pressed a bell, holding it down until a woman’s voice, not the one she expected, said, ‘¿Sí?’

‘Oh, fucking Christ, the maid,’ said Alice, aloud. And, ‘Where’s Theresa?’

‘She at work.’

‘Let me in. Let me come in.’

Alice pushed open the door on the buzzer, almost fell into the hall, and thumped up four flights of heavily carpeted stairs to a door, where a short dumpy dark woman stood, looking out for her.

‘Just let me in,’ said Alice, fiercely pushing her aside, and the Spanish woman said nothing, but stood looking at her, trying to find the right words to say.

Alice went into the sitting-room where she had so often been with her friend Theresa, her friend ever since she, Alice, had been born, kind and lovely Theresa. A large calm ordered room, with great windows, and beyond them gardens…She stood panting. I’ll tear down those pictures, she was thinking, I’ll sell them, I’ll take those little netsukes, what are they worth? I’ll smash the place up…

She tore to the telephone, and rang the office. But Theresa was in conference.

‘Get her,’ she commanded. ‘Get her at once. It is an emergency. Tell her it’s Alice.’

She had no doubt that Theresa would come, and she did.

‘What is it, Alice, what’s wrong, what is the matter?’

‘I want you to guarantee expenses. For a squat. No, no, you won’t have to pay anything, ever, just your signature.’

‘Alice, I’m in the middle of a conference.’

‘I don’t care about your shitty conference. I want you to guarantee our electricity and gas.’

‘You and Jasper?’

‘Yes. And others.’

‘I’m sorry, my dear. No.’

‘What’s the matter with Jasper? Why are you like this? Why? He’s just as good as you are.’

Theresa said, calm and humorous, as always, ‘No, Alice, he is not as good as I am. Far from it. Anyway, that’s it. No, but I’ll give you fifty pounds if you come round.’

‘I am around. I am in your flat. But I don’t want your shitty fifty pounds.’

‘Well, then, I’m sorry, my dear.’

‘You spend fifty pounds on a dress. On a meal.’

‘You shared the meal, didn’t you? This is silly. I’m sorry, I’m busy. All the buyers are here from everywhere.’

‘It’s not silly. When have you seen me spend fifty pounds on a meal? If my mother wants to spend fifty pounds on food for all her shitty rich friends, and I cook it, that doesn’t mean…’

‘Listen, Alice, if you want to come round and have a talk tonight, you are welcome. But it will have to be late, because I will be working until eleven, at least.’

‘You…you…are a lot of rich shits,’ said Alice, suddenly listless.

She put down the receiver, and was about to leave when she remembered, and went to the bathroom, where she emptied herself, again carefully washed her face, and brushed her hair. She was hungry. She went to the kitchen and cut herself a lavish sandwich. Lisa followed her and stood at the door to watch, her hands folded around the handle of a feather duster, as if in prayer. A dark patient tired face. She supported her family in Valencia, so said Theresa. She stood watching Alice eating her salami and her pâté on thick bread. Then watched while Alice peered into every corner of the refrigerator, and brought out some leftover spiced rice, which she ate with a spoon, standing up.

Then she said, ‘Ciao,’ and heard as she left, ‘Buenos días, señorita.’ There was something in that voice, a criticism, that again lit the anger, and she ran down all the stairs again and out on to the pavement.

It was after two.

Her thoughts whirled about. Jasper, why did they hate him so? It was because they were afraid of him. Afraid of his truth…She realized that she had walked herself to a bus-stop, and the bus would take her to the Council. She got on, suddenly cold, concentrated, and careful.

She was rehearsing in her mind her previous successful negotiations. A great deal would depend, she knew, on whom she saw…luck…Well, she had been lucky before. And besides, what she was suggesting was reasonable, in the best interests of everybody, the ratepayers, the public.

In the great room filled with desks and people and telephones, she sat opposite a girl, younger than she, and knew at once that she was lucky. On Mary Williams’s left breast was a ‘Save the Whales!’ button, and the sprightly shape of the animal made Alice feel soft and protective. Mary Williams was a good person, like herself, like Jasper, like all their friends. She cared.

Alice gave the address of her house confidently, stated her case and waited until the official turned to press a button or two, and the information arrived, to be set on the desk between them.

‘Scheduled for demolition,’ said Mary Williams, and sat smiling, nothing more to be said.

This Alice had not expected. She could not speak. It was grief that filled her, transmuting, but slowly, to rage. The face that Mary Williams saw swelled and shone, and caused her to say uncomfortably, even stammering, ‘Why, why, what is the matter?’

‘It can’t be demolished, it can’t,’ stated Alice, in a toneless empty voice. Then, rage exploding, ‘It’s a marvellous house, perfect! How can you demolish it? It’s a bloody scandal.’

‘Yes, I know that sometimes…’ said Mary Williams swiftly. She sighed. Her glance at Alice was a plea not to make a scene. Alice saw it, saw that scenes not infrequently occurred at this desk.

She said, ‘There must be a mistake. Surely they aren’t entitled to destroy a house like this…Have you seen it? It’s a good house. A good place…’

‘I think they mean to put up flats.’

‘Naturally! What else?’

The two young women laughed, their eyes meeting.

‘Wait,’ said Mary Williams, and went off to confer, in her hand the sheet containing the vital statistics of the house. She stood by the desk of a man at the end of the room, and came back to say, ‘There have been a lot of complaints about the state of the houses. The police, for one.’

‘Yes, it’s a disgusting mess,’ agreed Alice. ‘But it’ll be cleared up in no time.’

Here Mary nodded, Proceed! and sat doodling, while Alice talked.

And talked. About the house. Its size, its solidity, its situation. Said that, apart from a few slates, it was structurally sound. Said it needed very little to make it liveable. She talked about the Birmingham squat and the agreed tenancy there; about Manchester, where a slum scheduled for demolition had been reprieved, and became an officially recognized student residence.

‘I’m not saying it couldn’t happen,’ said Mary.

She sat thinking, her biro at work on a structure of cells, like a honeycomb. Yes, Alice knew, Mary was all right, she was on their side. Although Mary was not her style, with her dark little skirt and crisp little blouse, with her bra outlining the modest breast where the whale cavorted, tail in the sky, black on blue sea. All the same, Mary’s soft masses of dark hair that went into curls on her forehead, and her plump white hands, made Alice feel warm and secure. She knew that if Mary had anything to with it, things would go well.

‘Wait a minute,’ Mary said; and again went to confer with her colleague. This man now gave Alice a long inspection, and Alice sat confidently, to be looked at. She knew how she seemed: the pretty daughter of her mother, short curly fair hair nicely brushed, pink and white face lightly freckled, open blue-grey gaze. A middle-class girl with her assurance, her knowledge of the ropes, sat properly in the chair, and if she wore a heavy blue military jacket, under it was a flowered pink and white blouse.

Mary Williams came back and said, ‘The houses are coming up for a decision on Wednesday.’

‘The police gave us four days to clear out.’

‘Well, I don’t see what we can do.’

‘All we need is a statement, in writing, that the case is being considered, to show the police, that’s all.’

Mary Williams did not say anything. From her posture, and her eyes – that did not look at Alice – it was suddenly clear that she was after all, very young, and probably afraid for her job.

There was some sort of conflict there, Alice could see: this was more than just an official who sometimes did not like the work she had to do. Something personal was boiling away in Mary Williams, giving her a stubborn, angry little look. And this again brought her to her feet and took her for the third time to the official whose job it was to say yes and no.

‘You do realize,’ said Mary Williams, talking for her colleague, ‘that this letter would say only that the house is on the agenda for Wednesday?’

Alice said, inspired, ‘Why don’t you come and see it? You and –?’

‘Bob Hood. He’s all right. But he’s the one who…’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Alice. ‘But why don’t you both come and see the house?’

‘The houses, yes – I think Bob did see them, but it was some time ago – yes, perhaps we should.’

Mary was writing the words which would – Alice was sure – save the house. For as long as it was needed by Alice and the others. Save it permanently, why not? The piece of paper was slid into an envelope bearing the name of the Council, and Alice took it.

‘Have you got a telephone in the house?’

‘It was ripped out.’ It was on the tip of Alice’s tongue to describe the state of the house: cement in the lavatories, loose electric cables, the lot; but instinct said no. Although she knew that this girl, Mary, would be as furious, as sick, as anyone could be, that such deliberate damage could be done to a place, the damage had been done by officialdom, and Mary was an official. Nothing should be done to arouse that implacable beast, the bureaucrat.

‘When should I ring you?’ she asked.

‘Thursday.’

That was the day the police said they would be thrown out.

‘Will you be here on Thursday?’

‘If not, Bob over there will take the call.’

But Alice knew that with Bob things would not go so well.

‘It’s routine,’ said Mary Williams. ‘Either they will pull the houses down at once, or they will postpone it. They have already postponed several times.’ Here she offered Alice the smile of their complicity, and added, ‘Good luck.’

‘Thanks. See you.’

Alice left. It was only five o’clock. In one day she had done it. In eight hours.