Читать книгу The Good Terrorist - Doris Lessing - Страница 9

Round about four in the afternoon the kitchen was scrubbed, not a smear of dust or grit anywhere. The big table stood where it ought, with its heavy wooden chairs around it, and on it a glass jamjar with some jonquils out of the garden. Only the poor cooker lay on its side, a reminder of disorder. Alice thought that she would get on a train and go down to the others: she had a right to it, she was the veteran of a hundred battles; but sat down for a rest in the sitting-room and fell asleep, and woke to find the others noisily crowding in, laughing and talking, elated and full of accomplishment.

Alice, a sleepy creature in the big chair, was humble, even apologetic, as she struggled up to greet them. She felt she had no right to it when food and drink were spread about the floor and she was invited to join.

Then she remembered. She pulled out her thick roll of notes and, laughing, gave a hundred and fifty pounds to Philip. ‘On account,’ she said.

A silence. They stared. Then they laughed, and began hugging her and each other. Even Jasper put his arm round her briefly as he laughed, and seemed to show her off to the others.

‘Better not ask where,’ said Roberta, ‘but congratulations.’

‘Honestly gained, I hope,’ said Faye primly, and they started again, embracing and laughing, but this was as much, Alice knew, out of the exuberant excesses of emotion from the day’s energetic confrontations with Authority as because they were pleased for her.

‘All the same,’ said Faye, ‘we have to come to a group decision,’ and Roberta said, ‘Oh, balls, Faye, come off it. It’s all right…’

The two women exchanged a look; and Alice knew: they had been discussing it down there, and had disagreed. Bert said briefly, as though it really didn’t matter, and had not mattered: ‘Yes, as far as I’m concerned it is all right.’ Jasper echoed, ‘Yes, I agree.’

Pat said, ‘If course it is all right.’

Philip could not speak, for he would have wept; he was shining with relief, with happiness. And Jim: well, he was taking it, Alice could see, as a reprieve; she knew that nothing could ever seem, to Jim, more than a temporary good. But he was pleased enough. There was a warm good feeling in the room. A family…

The good feeling lasted through the meal, and while Alice took them to the kitchen to show them its cleanliness.

‘A wonder, she is,’ sang Faye. ‘Alice the Wonder, the wondrous Alice…’ She was tipsy and exhilarated, and everyone enjoyed looking at her.

Without Alice asking, Bert and Jasper lifted the cooker upright and stood it in its place against the wall.

‘I’ll get it properly fixed tomorrow,’ said Philip, contentedly.

They went together up the stairs, reluctant to separate for the night, so much of a group did they feel.

Lying along the wall, in the dark, Alice’s feet a yard from Jasper’s feet, she remarked dreamily, ‘What have you and Bert decided, then?’

A quick movement from Jasper, which she noted, thinking, I didn’t know I was going to say that.

He was lying stiffly, found out; that was how he had experienced what she had said.

‘Oh I don’t mind, Jasper,’ she said, impatient but conciliatory. ‘But you did discuss it, didn’t you?’

After a pause, ‘Yes, we did.’

‘Well, it does affect us all.’

A pause, Grudgingly. ‘We thought it mightn’t be a bad thing, having other people here. But they have to be CCU. Jim will have to join.’

‘You mean, Philip and Jim will be a cover.’

He said nothing. Silence means consent. She said, ‘Yes, and of course there’ll be more people coming in, and…’

He said fussily, ‘You aren’t to let just anyone come, we can’t have just anybody.’

‘I didn’t say, just anybody. But the others needn’t ever know we are IRA.’

‘Precisely,’ said Jasper.

And then she remarked, in her dreamy voice and to her own surprise, ‘With the comrades in 45, I wonder…’ She stopped. Interested in what she had said. Respectful of it.

But he had shot up on his elbow and was staring at her in the half-dark, where headlamps from the road moved light across the ceiling, the walls, the floor, so they were both irregularly illuminated. He was silent. He did not ask: How do you know about the other house? or say, How dare you spy on me? – things that had been said often enough in the past; until he had learned that she could do this: know, without being told.

She was thinking fast, listening to what she had said. So, Bert and Jasper had been next door to 45, had they? There are comrades there? Yes, that’s it!

She said, ‘Did you just go there, on the off-chance, or – what happened?’

He replied stiffly, after a pause, ‘We were contacted. They sent a message.’

‘To you? To you and Bert?’

From his hesitation she knew that she had been included, but she did not intend to make an issue of it.

‘A message came,’ he said, and lay down.

‘And you and Bert and – the comrades there, decided we should have more people in, as a cover.’

Silence. But she knew he was not asleep. She let a few minutes go by, while she thought. Then she changed the subject, saying, ‘Quite soon people are going to have to start making a contribution. So far I’ve paid for everything.’

‘Where did you get that money?’ he asked at once, reminded about it, as she had intended.

She had it ready for him; she leaned over in the dark and handed him some notes.

‘How much?’ he demanded.

‘Fifty.’

‘How much did you get?’

‘Ask no questions,’ she said, but would have told him had he asked, but he only said, ‘That’s right, squeeze the last blood out of them.’

She said, ‘Tomorrow I’ve got to tackle the Council. Will you get my Social Security?’

‘Right.’

They were both waiting for the sounds of love-making from next door, but Bert and Pat must have dropped off. Jasper and Alice had been lying tense, but now they relaxed and lay companionably silent, and Alice was thinking: We are together…This is like a marriage; talking together before going to sleep. I hope he starts telling me what happened today.

She did not want to ask, but she knew that he knew she craved to hear it all. And soon he was kind; he began to talk. She loved him like this. He told her everything, right from the beginning; how the seven of them had been on the train, they had bought sandwiches and coffee at the station, and had all crowded on the two seats facing each other and shared breakfast. Then how they went by taxi to the printworks. The taxi-driver had been on their side, he had said, ‘Good luck’ as he drove off.

‘That was nice,’ said Alice softly, smiling in the dark.

And so they talked, quietly, Jasper telling everything, for he was good at this, building up word-pictures of an event, an occasion. He ought to be a journalist, thought Alice, he is so clever.

She could have talked all night, because of course she had slept a long time. But he fell asleep quite soon; and she was content to lie there, in the quiet, arranging her plans for the next day which, she knew, would not be easy.

When she woke Jasper was not there. She ran to the top of the house, and looked into the four rooms where she had left all the windows open. The two rooms where the horrible pails had been were already only rooms in which people would soon be living. But she had not come for that. On two of the ceilings were sodden brown patches, and having located on the landing the trapdoor to the attic, she stood on a windowsill to reach. She could, just, and felt the trapdoor lift under her fingers. No problem there!

Down she ran to the kitchen, where there were voices. What she saw made her eyes fill with tears. They were sitting round the table, Bert and Pat, these two close together; Jasper; Jim smiling and happy, and Philip, already working on the cooker, bending over behind it, a cup of coffee on its top. Bert had gone to his friend Philip’s girlfriend, Felicity, the thermos had been filled, he had bought croissants and butter and jam. It was a real meal. She slid into her place at the head of the table opposite Bert and said, ‘If this room had some curtains…’ They all laughed.

‘Before talking about curtains, you had better get things fixed with the Council,’ said Jasper, rather hectoring, but only because he was jealous of Pat, who said, ‘Oh, I’d back Alice. I’d back her in anything.’

Coffee and croissants appeared before her, and Alice said, ‘Has anybody noticed the ceilings upstairs?’

‘I have,’ said Pat.

Philip said, ‘I can’t do everything at once.’ He sounded aggrieved and Pat said, ‘Don’t worry. It’s not difficult to fix slates. I did it once in another squat.’

‘I’ll do it with you when I’ve finished this,’ said Philip.

Pat said to Bert, ‘If someone could get the slipped-down tiles out of that guttering?’

‘No head for heights,’ said Bert comfortably.

‘I can do that,’ said Alice. Then she said to Jasper, not Bert, ‘If you could borrow the car from 45 you could go looking in the skips for some furniture? I saw four skips in my father’s street with all sorts of good stuff.’ She added fiercely, ‘Waste. All this waste.’ She knew her look was about to overcome her, as she said, ‘This house, all these rooms…people throwing things out everywhere, when there’s nothing wrong with them.’ She sat fighting with herself, knowing that Pat was examining her, diagnostic. Pat said to Bert, ‘There you are, Bert, job for the day. You and Jasper.’ As he sat laughing from some old joke about his laziness, she said, irritated, ‘Oh, for shit’s sake, Alice has done all the work.’

‘And found all the money,’ said Philip, from the cooker.

‘Put like that,’ said Bert.

‘Put like that,’ agreed Jasper, pleased, already restlessly moving about because of wanting to be off with Bert, looting and finding, street-combing…

Those two went off as Roberta and Faye came in, saw the remains of the croissants and sat down to consume them.

Alice dragged Philip’s heavy ladder to the front of the house, and went up it. Luckily the house was built squat, heavy on the earth, not tall and frightening. By the time she reached the top, Pat was already on the roof, sitting near the chimney with one arm round it. She had come up through the attic and the sky-light. Around the chimney’s base the roof looked eroded, pocked. A great many tiles had slipped and were now propped along the gutter. All that water pouring in, and going where? They had not properly examined the attics yet.

Alice was reaching out for the fallen tiles, and laying them on the roof in front of her. Pat seemed in no hurry to start; she was enjoying sitting there, looking at roofs and upper windows. And at neighbours, of course, watching them, two women at work on a roof. And where were the men? these people could positively be heard thinking – Joan Robbins, the old woman sitting there under her tree, the man staring grumpily out of a top window.

‘Catch,’ called Alice, ready to throw, but Pat said, ‘Wait.’ She wriggled on to her stomach and squinted in through the roof.

‘There’s a nest on the rafter here,’ she said in a hushed voice, as though afraid of disturbing the birds.

‘Oh no,’ said Alice, ‘oh how awful!’ She sounded suddenly hysterical, and Pat glanced at her, coldly, over her arm which was stretched in under the roof. ‘Oh for God’s sake,’ said Alice, and began to cry.

‘A bird,’ said Pat. ‘A bird, not a person.’ She pulled out handfuls of straw and stuff, and flung them out into the air, where they floated down. Then something crashed on to the tiles of the roof: an egg. The tiny embryo of a bird sprawled there. Moving.

Alice went on crying, little gusts of breathless sobs, her eyes fixed on the roof in front of her.

Another egg crashed on the roof.

Childlike frantic eyes implored Pat, who still was rooting about with her arm through the hole beneath her. But Pat was deliberately not looking at Alice snuffling and gulping below her.

A third egg flew in an arc and crashed splodgily in the garden.

‘Now, that’s done,’ said Pat, and she looked at Alice. ‘Stop it!’ Alice sniffed herself to silence, and at a nod from Pat, began to throw up the tiles. Pat caught them, carefully, one after the other.

Roberta and Faye appeared below, and went off, waving to them.

‘Have a good day,’ said Pat, brief, ironical, but with a smile saying that she, like Alice, did not expect anything else.

Soon Philip came up to join Pat, and Alice, having cleared all the gutters as far as she could reach, went down to move the heavy ladder along a few paces. She worked, in this way, all round the house, removing wads of sodden leaves, and fallen tiles. Above her, Philip and Pat replaced the tiles.

Alice felt low and betrayed. By somebody. The two minute half-born birds were lying there, their necks stretched out, filmy eyes closed, and no one looked at them. The parent birds fluttered about on the high branches near by, complaining.

Alice tried to keep her mind on what next had to be done. The cleaning. The cleaning! Windows and floors and walls and ceilings, and then paint, so much paint, it would cost…

In mid-afternoon she went off to ring the Council, as if this were not an important thing, as if things were settled.

She heard that Mary Williams was not there and her heart went dark.

Bob Hood, an official disturbed in his important work, said curtly that the matter of 43 and 45 had been put off until tomorrow.

Said Alice, ‘It’s all right, then, is it?’

‘No, it certainly is not,’ said Bob Hood. ‘It has not been agreed that you or anyone else can occupy those premises.’

Alice said in a voice as peremptory, as dismissive as his, ‘You ought to come and see this place. It is a disgrace that it could ever be considered as suitable for demolition. Somebody’s head should roll for it. I am sure heads will roll. These are two perfectly sound houses, in good condition.’

A pause. Huffily he said – but he was retreating, ‘And there have been more complaints. Things cannot be allowed to continue.’

‘But we have cleaned up 43 – the one we took over. The police would confirm that it has been cleaned up.’

Alice waited, confident. Oh, she knew this type, knew how their cowardly little minds worked, knew she had him. She could hear him breathing, could positively note how mental machineries clicked into place.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I will come round. I’ve been meaning to take a look at those two properties.’

‘Can you give me some indication as to time?’ said Alice.

‘There’s no need for that, we have keys.’

‘Yes, but we can’t have people just wandering around, can we? I’d like you to give us some approximate time.’

This was such cheek, that she wondered at herself. Yet she knew it was not over the top, because of her manner: every bit as authoritative as his. She was not surprised when he said, ‘I’ll come round now.’

‘Right,’ said Alice. ‘We’ll expect you.’ And put down the receiver on him.

She raced back. She called up to Philip and Pat that the Council was coming, and on no account should they stop because it would be a good thing for them to be seen at work up there. She ran indoors to check on sitting-room, kitchen. She went upstairs to the rooms where they slept, and marvelled that Roberta’s and Faye’s room was a veritable bower of femininity, with dressing-table, cushions, duvet on the double sleeping-bag, photographs – a bit grubby, but it would make a good impression. She whisked on a skirt. Her hair, her nails. She heard a knock before she expected it and tripped down the stairs with a cool smile already adjusted on her face to open the door correctly on, ‘Bob Hood? I am Alice Mellings.’

‘I hope those two on the roof know what they are doing?’

‘I expect so. He is a builder. She is assisting him. As an amateur, but she has done it before.’

She had silenced him. Oh you nasty little man, she was thinking behind her good girl’s smile. You nasty little bureaucrat.

‘Shall I show you downstairs first? Of course this will give you no idea of what it was like only three days ago. For one thing, the Council workmen had filled in the lavatory bowls with concrete and ripped the electric cables out – they left them anyhow, a fire hazard.’

He said, ‘I have no doubt they were fulfilling their instructions.’

‘You mean, they were instructed to leave the cables dangerous, and to concrete over the main water tap? I wonder if the Water Board knows about that?’

He was red, and furious. Not looking at him, she flung open one door after another downstairs, lingering over the kitchen. ‘The electrician has made it safe in here, but you were lucky the place didn’t go up in flames. Mary Williams said you had been over this house. How was it you didn’t notice the cables?’

Upstairs, she said, knowing that to this man anything incorrect, even so much as a mattress on a floor rather than on a bed, must for ever be an affront, ‘Of course you will have to take my word for it – the state of these rooms was unspeakably awful when we came, but we have only just started.’

‘Unspeakably awful now,’ he said huffily, looking in at the room she and Jasper slept in, the two sleeping-bags like the shed skins of snakes loose against the wall.

‘It’s relative. I think you will be surprised when you see it in a month’s time.’

He said, quick to take his advantage, ‘I told you, don’t expect anything.’

‘If this house is left empty again, it will be filled to the brim with vandals and derelicts inside a week, you know that. You’re lucky to have us. It’s being put back into order, with no expense to the ratepayer.’

He did not reply to that. In silence they went through the rooms on the top floor, now sweet-smelling, the air blowing through them. He instinctively closed the windows one after another, performing the task with a fussy, virtuous, irritated little air. Like a fucking housewife, thought the smiling Alice.

They went downstairs. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I have to agree with you – there’s no reason why these houses should come down, that I can see. I’ll have to look into it.’

‘Unless,’ said Alice, sweet and cold, ‘someone was going to make a profit out of it. Did you see the article in the Guardian? The Scandal of Council Housing?’

‘As it happens, I did. But it is not relevant to this case.’

‘I see.’

They were at the door.

She was waiting. She deserved a capitulation; and it came. The official said, unsmiling but with his whole body expressing unwilling complicity. ‘I’ll put the case for you tomorrow. But I am not promising. And it is not just this house, it’s No. 45. I’m going there now.’

Again Alice had forgotten next door.

Bob Hood gone, she ran up to a little window that overlooked next door, and watched, in a rage of frustration, how the well-brushed, well-dressed clean young man stood looking at the piles of rubbish in that garden, saw that the expression on his face was like that on the dustmen’s faces: an exasperated, incredulous disgust.

Unable to bear the beating of her heart, her churning stomach, she went down, slowly, suddenly out of energy, and collapsed in the sitting-room as Pat came in, with Philip.

‘Well?’ demanded Pat; and Philip’s face was stunned with need, with longing, his eyes a prayer.

‘It’s dicey,’ said Alice, and began to weep, to her own fury.

‘Oh God,’ she wept. ‘Oh Christ. Oh shit. Oh no.’

Pat, close on the arm of the chair she was huddled in, put her arm around the dejected shoulders and said, ‘You’re tired. Surprise! – you are tired.’

‘It’ll be all right,’ sobbed Alice. ‘I know it will be, it will, I feel it.’

From the silence, she knew that above her head Philip and Pat shared glances that said she, Alice, had to be humoured, patted, caressed, given coffee from the flask, then brandy from a reserve bottle. But she knew that while Pat’s interest was real, it was not like Philip’s and like her own. Pat’s heart would never beat, nor her stomach churn…For this reason, she did not accept Pat’s encircling sisterliness, remained herself, alone, sad and isolated, drinking her coffee, her brandy. Philip was her charge, her responsibility: her family, so she felt, because he was as she was. She was pleased, though, to have Pat as an ally.

And at this point, Jasper and Bert arrived with gleanings from London, that great lucky dip, and Alice flew into the hall, to welcome a load of stuff, which had to be sorted out; and which switched her emotions back to another circuit. ‘Oh the wicked waste of it all,’ she raged, seeing plastic bags full of curtains, which were there because someone had tired of them; a refrigerator, stools, tables, chairs – all of them serviceable, if some needed a few minutes’ work to put right.

Bert and Jasper went out again; they were elated and enjoying it. A pair, a real pair, a team; united by this enterprise of theirs, furnishing this house. And they had the car for the whole day, and must make the most of it.

Philip and Pat left the roof, while they helped Alice allot furniture, flew out to buy curtain fittings for which Alice found the money from her hoard.

They ran around, and up and down, dragging furniture, hanging curtains, spreading on the hall floor a large carpet that needed only some cleaning to make it perfect.

Bert and Jasper came back in the late afternoon, having scavenged around Mayfair and St John’s Wood, with another load, and said that was it, no more for today – and the householders sat in the kitchen drinking tea and eating bacon and eggs properly cooked on the stove, with the purr of the refrigerator for company.

And in the middle of this feast, which was such a delicate balancing of interests, the result of careful and calculated goodwill, there was a knock. It was, however, tentative, not a peremptory summons. They turned as one; from the kitchen they could see the front door, and it was opening. A young woman stood there and, as the others stared: whose friend is she? Alice’s heart began to pound. She already knew it all, from the way this visitor was looking around the hall, which was carpeted, warm, properly if dimly lit, then up the solid stairs, and then in at them all. She was all hungry determination and purpose.

‘The Council,’ reassured Alice. ‘It’s Mary Williams. The colleague of that little fascist who was here today. But she’s all right…’ This last she knew was really the beginning of an argument that would be taking place later, perhaps even that night. Perhaps not an argument, not bitterness, but only a friendly discussion – oh, prayed Alice, let it be all right, and she slipped away from the others, saying, ‘It’s all right, I’ll just…’

She shut the door on the kitchen, and on a laugh which said she was bossy, but not impossibly so. Oh please, please, please, she was inwardly entreating – Fate, perhaps – as she went smiling towards Mary. Who was smiling in entreaty at Alice.

As Alice had absolutely expected, Mary began, ‘I dropped in at the office – I was on a course today, you know, they send you on courses, I’m doing Social Relationships – and I saw Bob on his way out. He told me he had been here…’ Alice was opening the door into the sitting-room, which was looking like anybody’s warm sitting-room, if a trifle shabby, and she saw Mary’s anxious face go soft, and heard her sigh.

They sat down. Now Mary was petitioner, Alice the judge. Alice helped with, ‘It is a nice house, isn’t it? Mad, to pull it down.’

Mary burst out, ‘Well, they are mad.’ (Alice noted that they with a familiar dry, even resigned, amusement.) ‘When I opted for Housing, it was because I thought, Well, I’ll be housing people, I’ll be helping the homeless, but if I had known…well, I’m disillusioned now, and if you knew what goes on…’

‘But I do.’

‘Well, then…’

Mary was blushing, eyes beseeching. ‘I am going to come to the point. Do you think I could come and live here? I need it. It’s not just me. We want to get married – me and my boyfriend. Reggie. He’s an industrial chemist.’ This chemist bit was there to reassure her, thought Alice, with the beginning of scorn which, however, she had to push down and out of sight. ‘We were just saving up to buy a flat and he lost his job. His firm closed down. So we had to let that flat go. We could live with my mother or with his parents, but…if we lived here we could save some money…’ She made herself bring it all out, hating her role as beggar; and the result of this effort was a bright determination, like a command.

But Alice was thinking, Oh, shit no, it’s worse than I thought. What will the others say?

She played for time with, ‘Do you want to see the house?’

‘Oh God,’ said Mary, bursting into tears. ‘Bob said there were rooms and rooms upstairs, all empty.’

‘He’s not going to move in!’ said Alice, not knowing she was going to, with such cold dislike for him that Mary stopped crying and stared.

‘He’s all right, really,’ she said. ‘It’s just his manner.’

‘No,’ said Alice, ‘it’s not just his manner.’

‘I suppose not…’

This acknowledgment of Bob’s awfulness made Alice feel friendlier, and she said gently, ‘Have you ever lived in a squat? No, of course you haven’t! Well, I have, in lots. You see, it’s tricky, people have to fit in.’

Mary’s bright hungry eyes – just like the poor cat’s, thought Alice – were eating up Alice’s face with the need to be what Alice wanted. ‘No one has ever said I am difficult to get on with,’ she said, trying to sound humorous, and sighing.

‘Most of the people here’, said Alice, sounding prim, ‘are interested in politics.’

‘Who isn’t? It is everyone’s duty to be political, these days.’

‘We’re socialists.’

‘Well, of course.’

‘Communist Centre Union,’ murmured Alice.

‘Communist?’

Alice thought, If she goes to that meeting tomorrow and says, They are communists…she’s quite capable of it, and with a bright democratic smile! She said, ‘It’s not communist, like the Communist Party of Great Britain.’ Keeping her eyes firmly on Mary’s face, for she knew that what Mary saw was reassuring – unless she, Alice, was wearing her look and she was pretty sure she was not – she said firmly, ‘The comrades in Russia have lost their way. They lost their way a long time ago.’

‘There’s no argument about that,’ said Mary, with a hard brisk little contempt, dabbing her eyes with a tissue. She sat restored, a pleasant ordinary girl, all brown shining curls and fresh skin. Like an advertisement for medium-quality toilet soap. But tomorrow she could decide the fate of them all, thought Alice, curiously examining her. If she said to Bob, tomorrow morning, sharing cups of coffee before the meeting, I dropped in last night at that house, you know, 43 Old Mill Road, and my God, what a set-up!…Then he could change his mind, just like that, particularly with 45 in such a mess.

She asked, ‘Did Bob Hood say anything about next door?’

‘He said there’s nothing structurally wrong.’

‘Then why, why, why, why?’ burst out Alice, unable to stop herself.

‘The plan was to build two blocks of flats, where these houses are. No, not awful flats, quite decent really, but they wouldn’t fit, not with these houses around here.’ She added bitterly, forgetting her status, ‘But some contractor will make a packet out of it.’ And then, going a step worse, ‘Jobs for pals.’ Shocked by herself, she shot an embarrassed glance at Alice, and added a social smile.

‘We can’t let them,’ said Alice.

‘I agree. Well, it’s what Bob says that counts, and he is furious, he is really. He is really going to fight. He says it’s a crime these houses should come down.’ She hesitated, and took the plunge into what she clearly felt was a descent into even worse indiscretion with, ‘I was in Militant Tendency for a bit, but I don’t like their methods. So I left.’

Alice sat silent with amazement. Mary, in Militant! Well, of course she wouldn’t like Militant’s methods. And she wouldn’t like the methods of Alice, Jasper, Pat, Roberta or Faye. Nor, for that matter, Jim’s. (So Alice suspected.) But that Mary had gone anywhere near Militant, that was the impossibility! She asked cautiously, ‘And Reggie?’

‘He was trying out Militant for the same reason I was. I was shocked by what I saw going on at work, jobs for pals, as I said…’ Again the brief, social smile, like a frozen apology. ‘We decided at once Militant was not for us. We joined Greenpeace.’

‘Well, of course,’ said Alice, hopefully, ‘but if you are Trotskyists…’ With a bit of luck Mary would say Yes, she counted herself with the Trots, and then of course this house would be impossible…But she heard, ‘We’re not anything at the moment, only Greenpeace. We thought of joining the Labour Party, but we need something more…’

‘Dynamic,’ said Alice, choosing a flatteringly forceful but not ideological word. ‘I think perhaps the CCU would suit you. Anyway, come and see the house.’ She got up, so did Mary – it was like the termination of an interview. Alice had decided that she really did like Mary. She would do. But what of Reggie? Thoughts of Reggie accompanied the two women as they went rapidly around the upper floors. Alice flung open doors on empty rooms, and heard how Mary sighed and longed, and was not at all surprised to hear her say, as they came down the stairs again, ‘Actually, Reggie is in the pub down the road.’

Alice laughed, a robust girl’s laugh, and Mary chimed in, after a pause, with a breathless little tinkle.

‘The thing is,’ said Alice, ‘we have to discuss it. All of us. A group decision, you know.’

‘If we come back in half an hour?’

‘Longer than that,’ said Alice, and added, because of Mary’s beseeching eyes, ‘I’ll do my best.’

She went into the kitchen, where they sat in a fug of comfort (created by her), and sat down, and she put the situation to them.

Because of all that food and chat and good nature and togetherness, there was an explosion of laughter. Literally, they fell about. But there was a theatrical quality to it that Alice did not much like.

Silence at last, and Pat said, ‘Alice, are you saying that if we don’t let them come here, we won’t get this house?’

Alice did not reply at once. At last she said, ‘She wouldn’t do anything spiteful on purpose, I am sure of that. But if she was coming here to live, she’d be careful about what she said. It’s human nature,’ said Alice, feebly, using a phrase which of course was simply beyond the pale.

‘What could she say that would make such a difference?’ Pat persisted.

‘If she said, they are a bunch of Reds, Bob Hood would soon find a reason to have us kicked out. She doesn’t care, because she’s one herself.’

‘That girl is a revolutionary?’ asked Bert, laughing.

‘She’s a Trotskyist. Of a sort. Or she was one.’

‘Then how can they come and live here, Alice?’ said Bert, firm but kind.

‘I don’t think she’s anything much, at the moment. Ideologically. And anyway,’ Alice persisted, courageously, knowing what this argument of hers had cost her in the past, earning her all kinds of accusations, ‘in a sense, aren’t we? After all, we don’t say that Trotsky never existed! We give him full credit for his achievements. We say that it was Lenin who was the real workers’ Leader, and then the comrades there took a wrong turning with Stalin. If saying that Trotsky was a good comrade and he took the wrong turning makes you a Trot, then I don’t see why we aren’t? Anyway, I don’t seem to remember we actually defined our line on Trotsky. Not in the CCU, anyway.’

‘Oh Alice,’ said Jasper, with the finality of superiority, ‘ideology is simply not your line.’

‘Well,’ said Pat, having exchanged efficient looks with Bert, ‘I for one don’t think this is the moment to define our attitude to Comrade Trotsky. There is something in what Alice says. That’s not the point. My point is that this business of having a nice clean house and a roof over our heads is beginning to define us. It is what we do.’

‘It’s taken four days,’ said Alice, ‘four days,’ and she was appealing for justice.

‘Yes, but now it looks as if we are going to have two new people here just to keep the house.’

Jim said, ‘Why don’t we ask them to join the CCU? I’m going to join.’

‘Well, why not?’ said Bert, after a considerable pause. Alice saw him and Jasper exchange a long thoughtful look. She knew they were thinking that perhaps they should go next door to ask someone, who? for advice. Or instruction.

She said, ‘We must decide tonight. The meeting is tomorrow.’ And now she did have her look. Her voice told her so; and told the others, who turned to see how she sat swelling and suffering there.

Bert and Jasper still sat gazing at each other in an abstracted way. What they were doing, in fact, was playing back in their minds what had been said by someone next door, and wondering how to fit this situation into it.

Bert said, ‘I don’t see why we shouldn’t ask them to join. We keep saying we want to recruit. It sounds to me as if these two might be ripe. With a bit of political education…’ And on these words he and Jasper got up, as one, and went out, Jasper remarking, ‘We’ll be back in a minute.’

Pat said, ‘And I’m off. I’m off to visit someone.’

‘But don’t you want to meet Mary and Reggie?’

Pat shrugged, smiled and left. Alice was reminded – as, she was sure, Pat had intended – that Pat did not really care, was going to leave anyway.

Remained Alice and Jim and Philip.

Soon in came Mary, with a man of whom Alice found herself thinking, at first glance, Well, of course! – meaning that he and Mary were a pair. Not in looks, for he was a tall, knobbly-looking man, with very white skin, small black eyes under strong black brows, and dense, very fine black hair. He would be bald early. Where he matched with Mary was in an air of measure, of common sense ordered by what was due. Due, that is, to their surroundings, their fellows, to society. Alice was looking, and she knew it, at respectability. It was not that she did not value this type of good sense; but it was not the kind of sense that would be appropriate here, in this household. It was with an infinite feeling of tolerance she allowed that other people had need of these struts and supports. She was thinking, Good God, they were born to be two nice little bourgeois in a nice little house. They’ll be worrying about their pensions next.

Seeing them together, she felt, simply, that a mistake was being made. They should not be here. Alone with Mary, she liked her. Seeing her with her mate Reggie, Alice felt alienated, with the beginnings of a strong hostility.

‘Sit down,’ she smiled. And she put the saucepan on the stove and switched on the electricity. A pity, a gas stove would be so much better. Well, they would find one on a skip, or even get a reconditioned one for ten pounds or so.

She turned to see Reggie examining Jim, and thought, With a bit of luck he’s colour-prejudiced, and won’t want to be here. But no such luck, he seemed to like Jim. Or, if he didn’t like blacks, his manner said nothing about that. Of course, thought Alice, this lot, the bloody middle classes, you’d find out nothing from their manner, politeness is all. But no, it was genuine, she was pretty sure of it; body-language – a skill Alice had been equipped with by instinct, long before there was a name for it – told her that Reggie was all right about colour, at least. She sat listening to them talk, everything easy, Reggie with Jim, Mary with Philip. She made mugs of coffee and set before them a plate of cake.

Chat. How she, Alice, had fixed things with Electricity, and would with the Gas Board. The Water Board of course would be told. Alice did not say that the Water Board would not catch up with them for months and that she had no intention of attracting their attention. These two were bill-payers and keepers of accounts.

She said, to warn them, ‘I have lived in a lot of squats, and you’ll have to accept it, some people don’t pull their weight. They just don’t.’

At this Jim said, hurt, ‘Until you came there wasn’t anything to pay, was there?’ and she said, ‘No, I’m not talking about you, I’m talking about the situation. It’s no good these two moving in and expecting everything to be regular.’

Mary said, ‘But with so many people here, it will still be cheaper than anything else could possibly be, with no rent.’

‘Exactly,’ said Reggie. And came straight to his point, with, ‘Tell us about the CCU? You know, we’ve never heard of it. Mary and I were talking in the pub. It didn’t ring a bell with either of us.’

‘Well, it’s not a very big party, really,’ said Alice. ‘But it’s growing. When we started it, we never meant it to be a mass party, we don’t want it to be. These mass parties, they lose touch with the people.’

‘Well, that’s true enough,’ said Reggie, but he said it carefully, as though he could have said other things; and Alice thought: He and Mary are going to exchange glances…They didn’t, but only with an effort so obvious she thought contemptuously: People are so amazing. They exchange glances as if no one can see them, and they don’t know how they give themselves away…anyone can read what people are thinking.

Reggie: ‘The CCU – the Communist Centre Union?’

‘Centre, because we wanted to show we were not left deviants or revisionists.’

‘Union – two parties joined, two groups?’

‘No, a union of viewpoints, you see. No hair-splitting. We didn’t want any of that.’

‘And you started the CCU?’

‘I was one of them. And Jasper Willis. Have you heard of him?’ As Reggie and Mary shook their heads, Alice thought, But you will. ‘Several of us. It was up in Birmingham. We have a branch there. And a comrade wrote last week to say he had started a branch in Liverpool. He has four new members. And there’s the branch here, in London.’

Here Mary and Reggie were finally unable to prevent their eyes from meeting. Alice felt a flush of real contempt, like hatred. She said, ‘All political parties have to start, don’t they? They start with only a few members. Well, we’ve only been going a year and we have thirty members here in London. Including the comrades in this house.’ She resisted the temptation to say: And of course there are some next door.

‘And your policy?’ asked Reggie, still in the same careful way that means a person is not going to allow a real discussion to start because his opinion has to be kept in reserve.

All right! thought Alice again, you just wait, you’ll hear of the CCU. Anyway, you are going to join because you want to live here. Opportunist! She was thinking at the same time, we’ll educate you. Raw material is raw material. It’s what you’ll be like in a year that counts. If you haven’t saved up enough to move out before then. Well, at least you two will be in no hurry to see this squat come to an end. She said, ‘We’ve got a policy statement. I’ll give you one. But we are going to have a proper Conference next month and thrash out all the details.’

But they weren’t listening, Alice could see. They were thinking about how soon they could move in.

They asked whether they could bring in some furniture, and offered pots and pans and an electric kettle.

‘Gratefully accepted,’ said Alice, and so they chatted on until Jasper and Bert came back from next door, and Alice knew that there was no problem at all about these two staying. Not from that quarter, anyway, whatever it might turn out to be; though Roberta and Faye were another thing.

Reggie sat quietly, leaning back in the chair, summing up Jasper, summing up Bert. Alice knew that he warmed to Bert. Well, they were two of a kind. He did not much like Jasper. Oh, she knew that look when people first met Jasper. She remembered how she too, when she had first seen Jasper all those years ago, had felt some instinctive warning, or shrinking. And look how mistaken she had been.

At eleven Mary and Reggie went off; they were afraid to miss the last trains back to Highgate, and Fulham, where they respectively lived, so far apart.

Philip said he was tired and went to bed.

Jim went into his room and they heard soft music from his record-player accompanied by his softer drums.

‘What’s happened to Faye and Roberta?’ asked Alice, and Bert said, ‘There’s a women’s commune in Paddington, they go there a lot.’

‘Why don’t they move in there?’

‘They like it here,’ said Bert, with a grimace that said, Ask no questions and…

Bert went up to sleep. Jasper and Alice were alone in the kitchen.

‘All right,’ said Jasper. ‘I’ll tell you, give me a chance.’

They went up to their room; Jasper had not said she must move out, or that he would; and Alice slid down into the sleeping-bag the way a dog slinks, eyes averted, into a favourite place, hoping no one will notice.

They could hear Bert moving about next door. Jasper said, ‘Bert and Pat are going away for the weekend.’ His voice was painful to hear.

‘Only for the weekend,’ Alice comforted him for the loss of Bert. As for her, her saddened heart told her how much she would miss Pat, even for the weekend. ‘Where are they going?’

‘They didn’t say, and I didn’t ask.’

They lay companionably along their wall, their feet not far from each other. They had not yet found curtains for this room, and the lights from the traffic still chased across the ceiling, and the whole house shook softly with the heavy lorries going north, giving Alice a comforting sense of familiarity, as if they had been living here for months, not days; she seemed to have lived all her life in houses that shook to heavy traffic.

‘Would you like to come down to the picket tomorrow?’

‘But I really have to be here,’ mourned Alice.

‘Well, Saturday night we could go and paint up a few slogans.’

She steadied her voice so that it would not betray her surge of delight, of gratitude. ‘That’d be nice, Jasper.’

‘Yes. Get some spray paint.’ He turned to the wall. She was not going to hear anything about next door tonight. But tomorrow, tomorrow night…she might. And on Saturday…

She woke when Jasper did, at seven, but lay still, watching him from nearly-closed eyes. His wiry body was full of the energy of expectation. Everything from his gingery hair (which she thought of privately as cinnamon-coloured) to his small deft feet, which she adored, because they were so white and slender, was alive. He seemed to dance his way into his clothes, and his pale face was innocent and sweet, when he stood momentarily at the window, to see what the weather was like for the day’s picketing. There was an exalted dreamy look to him, as he went past the apparently sleeping Alice to the door. He did not look at her.

She relaxed, lay on her back, and listened. He knocked next door, and she heard Bert’s reluctant response, and Pat’s prompt, ‘Right, we’re awake.’ Then the knock on Roberta’s and Faye’s door. Philip? Oh, not Philip, she needed him here! But there was no other knock, and then she began worrying: I hope Philip won’t feel left out, despised? A knock on the door of the room immediately below this one; the big room that was Jim’s, though it was really a living-room, and should perhaps be used as such…No, that was not fair. A startled shout from Jim; but she could not decide whether he was pleased to be roused, or not.

The sounds of the house coming to life. She could go down if she wanted, could sit with the cheerful group and send them on their way with smiles, but her mouth was dry and her eyes pricked. For some reason – a dream perhaps? – she wanted to weep, go back to sleep. To give up. She distrusted what she felt; for it had been with her since she could remember: being excluded, left out. Unwanted. And that was silly, because all she had to do was to say she was going too. But how could she, when their fate, the fate of them all, would be decided that morning at the Council, and it was by no means certain the house was theirs. When Mary had gone off saying, ‘I’ll do my best,’ it meant no more than that. Alice brought Bob Hood to life in her mind’s eye, and, staring at the correct, judicious young man, willed him to do what she wanted. ‘Put our case,’ she said to him. ‘Make them let us have it. It’s our house.’ She kept this up for some minutes, while listening to how the others moved about the kitchen. Almost at once, though, they were out of the house. They were going to breakfast in a café. That was silly, raged Alice: wasting all that money! Eating at home was what they would have to learn to do. She would mention it, have it out with them.

Oh, she did feel low and sad.

For some reason she thought of her brother Humphrey, and the familiar incredulous rage took hold of her. How could he be content to play their game? A nice safe little job – aircraft controller, who would have thought anyone would choose to spend his life like that! And her mother had said he had written to announce a child. The first, he had said. Suddenly Alice thought: That means I am an aunt. It had not occurred to her before. Her rage vanished, and she thought, Well, perhaps I’ll go and see the baby. She lay smiling there for some time, in a silent house, though the din from the traffic encompassed it. Then, consciously pulling herself together, with a set look on her face, she rolled out of the sleeping-bag, pulled on her jeans, and went downstairs. On the kitchen table were five unwashed coffee-cups – they had taken time for coffee, so that meant they hadn’t gone to the café; they would have a picnic on the train again; no, don’t think about that. She washed up the cups, thinking, I’ve got to organize something for hot water – it used to come off the gas, but of course the Council workmen stole the boiler. We can’t afford a new one. A second-hand one? Philip will know where and how…today he will fix the windows, if I get the glass. He said he needed another morning for the slates. Seven windows – what is that going to cost, for glass!

She took out the money that was left: less than a hundred pounds. And with everything to be bought, to be paid for…Jasper said he would get her Social Security, but of course, she couldn’t complain, he worked really hard yesterday, getting all that good stuff from the skips. At this moment she saw, on the windowsill, an envelope with ‘Alice’ scribbled on it, and under that ‘Have a nice day!’ And under that ‘Love, Jasper’. Her money was in it. She quickly checked: he had been known to keep half, saying: We must make sacrifices for the sake of the future. But there were four ten-pound notes there.

She sat at the table, soft with love and gratitude. He did love her. He did. And he did these wonderful, sweet things.

She sat relaxed, at the head of the great wooden table. If they wanted to sell it, they could get fifty for it, more. The kitchen was a long room, not very wide. The table stood near a window that had a broad sill. From the table she could see the tree, the place where she and Jim had buried the shit, now a healthy stretch of dark earth, and the fence beyond which was Joan Robbins’s house. It was a tall wood fence, and shrubs showed above it, in bud. A yellow splodge of forsythia. Birds. The cat sneaked up the fence, and opened its mouth in a soundless miaow, looking at her. She opened the window that sparkled in the sun, and the cat came in to the sill, drank some milk and ate scraps, and sat for a while, its experienced eyes on Alice. Then it began licking itself.

It was in poor condition, and should be taken to the vet.

All these things that must be done. Alice knew that she would do none of them, until she heard from Mary. She would sit here, by herself, doing nothing. Funny, she was described as unemployed, she had never had a job, and she was always busy. To sit quietly, just thinking, a treat, that. To be by oneself – nice. Guilt threatened to invade with this thought: it was disloyalty to her friends. She didn’t want to be like her mother who was selfish. She used to nag and bitch to have an afternoon to herself: the children had to lump it. Privacy. That lot made such a thing about privacy; 99 per cent of the world’s population wouldn’t know the word. If they had ever heard it. No, it was better like this, healthy, a group of comrades. Sharing. But at this, worry started to nibble and nag, and she was thinking: That’s why I am so upset this morning. It’s Mary, it’s Reggie. They are simply not like us. They will never really let go and meld with us, they’ll stay a couple. They’ll have private viewpoints about the rest of us. Well then, that was true of Roberta and Faye, a couple; they made it clear they had their own attitudes and opinions. They did not like what was happening now, with the house. And Bert and Pat? No, they did not have a little opinion of their own set against the others; but Pat was only here at all because she actually enjoyed being screwed (the right word for it!). Jim? Philip? She and Jasper? When you got down to it, she and Jasper were the only genuine revolutionaries here. Appalled by this thought, she nevertheless examined it. What about Bert? Jasper approved of him. Jasper’s attachments to men who were like elder brothers had nothing to do with their politics but with their natures; they had always been the same type, easy-going. Kind. That was it. Bert was a good person. But was he a revolutionary? It’s unfair to say that Faye and Roberta are not real revolutionaries just because I don’t like them, thought Alice…where were these thoughts getting her? What was the point? The group, her family, lay in its parts, diminished, criticized out of existence. Alice sat alone, even thinking, Well, if we don’t get the house, we’ll go down to the squat in Brixton.

A sound upstairs, immediately above. Faye and Roberta: they had not gone with the others. Alice listened to how they got themselves awake and up: stirrings, and the slithering sound the sleeping-bags made on the bare boards; a laugh, a real giggle. Silence. Then footsteps and they were coming into the kitchen.

Alice got up to put the saucepan on the heat, and sat down. The two smelled ripe; sweaty and female. They were not going to wash in cold water, not these two!

The two women, smiling at Alice, sat together with their backs to the stove, where they could look out of the window and see the morning’s sun.

Knowing that she was going to have to, Alice made herself tell about last night, about Mary and Reggie. She did not soften it at all. The other two sat side by side, waiting for their coffee, not looking at each other, for which Alice was grateful. She saw appear on their faces the irony that she heard in her own voice.

‘So the CCU has two recruits?’ said Roberta, and burst out laughing.

‘They are good people,’ said Alice reprovingly. But she laughed too.

Faye did not laugh, but little white teeth held a pink lower lip, her shining brown brows frowned, and the whole of her person announced her disapproval. Roberta stopped laughing.

Hey, thought Alice, I’ve seen this before: you’d think it was Roberta who was the strong one; she comes on so butch-motherly, she’s like a hen with one chick, but no, it’s Faye who’s the one, never mind about all her pretty bitchy little ways. And she looked carefully and with respect at Faye, who was about to pronounce. And Roberta waited too.

‘Listen, Alice, now you listen, you listen carefully, for I am about to say my piece…’ And Alice could see it was hard for her to assert herself, that this was why she had so many little tricks and turns, little poutings and hesitations and small wary glances and little smiles at Roberta and at herself, but underneath she was iron, she was formidable. ‘Once and for all, I do not care about all this domestic bliss, all the house and garden stuff…’ Here she waited, politely, while first Roberta and then Alice – seeing that Roberta did – laughed. ‘Well, for me it is all pretty classy stuff,’ said Faye, ‘this house would have seemed a palace to me once. I’ve lived in at least a thousand squats, dens, holes, corners, rooms, hovels and residences, and this is the best yet. And I don’t care.’ Here she pettishly, humorously, wagged a finger at Alice. Roberta had her eyes on her love’s face, exactly like an elder sister; is she going to go too far? Too far, Alice knew, with all this presentation, the manner, the means that enabled Faye to say her piece. Roberta did not want Alice to think that this girl was frivolous or silly.

Well, she certainly did not.

‘Any minute now we are going to have hot running water and double glazing, I wouldn’t be surprised. For me this is all a lot of shit, do you hear? Shit!’

Alice got up, poured boiling water into the three mugs that already had coffee powder in them, set the mugs on the table, put the milk bottle and the sugar near Faye. She did this as something of a demonstration and saw that as Faye stretched out her hand for the coffee, which she was going to drink black and bitter, she knew it, and even appreciated it, judging from her quick shrewd little smile. But she was going on, with determination. She had also lost her cockney self, and the voice that went with it.

It was in all-purpose BBC English that she went on, ‘I don’t care about that, Alice. Don’t you see? If you want to wait on me, then do. If you don’t, don’t. I don’t care, either way.’

Roberta said quickly, protectively, ‘Faye has had a terrible life, such an awful shitty terrible life…’ And her voice broke and she turned her face away.

‘Yes, I did,’ said Faye, ‘but don’t make a thing of it. I don’t.’ Roberta shook her head, unable to speak, and put her hand, tentatively, ready to be rejected, on Faye’s arm. Faye said, ‘If you are going to tell Alice about my ghastly childhood then tell her but not when I am here.’

She drank gulps of the bitter coffee, grimaced, reached for a biscuit, took a neat sharp bite out of it, and crunched it up, as if it were a dose of medicine. Another gulp of caffeine. Roberta had her face averted. Alice knew that she was infinitely sorrowful about something; if not Faye’s past, then Faye’s present: her hand, ignored by Faye, had dropped from Faye’s arm, and crept back into her own lap, where it lay trembling and pitiful, and her lowered head with its crop of black silvered curls made Alice think of a humbly loving dog’s. Roberta was radiating love and longing. At this moment, at least, Faye did not need Roberta, but Roberta was dying of need for Faye.

Faye probably has times when she wants to be free of Roberta, finds it all too much – yes, that’s it. Well, I bet Roberta never wants to be free of Faye! Oh God, all this personal stuff, getting in the way of everything all the time. Well, at least Jasper and I have got it all sorted out.

Faye was going on. Christ, listen to her, she could get a job with the BBC, thought Alice. I wonder when she learned to do it so well. And what for?

‘I’ve met people like you before, Alice. In the course of my long career. You cannot let things be. You’re always keeping things up and making things work. If there’s a bit of dust in a corner you panic.’ Here Roberta let out a gruff laugh, and Alice primly smiled – she was thinking of all those pails. ‘Oh laugh. Laugh away.’ It seemed she could have ended there, for she hesitated, and the pretty cockney almost reclaimed her, with a pert flirtatious smile. But Faye shook her off, and sat upright in a cold fierce solitude, self-sufficient, so that Roberta’s again solicitous and seeking hand fell away. ‘I care about just one thing, Alice. And you listen to me, Roberta, you keep forgetting about me, what I am, what I really am like. I want to put an end to this shitty fucking filthy lying cruel hypocritical system. Do you understand? Well, do you, Roberta?’

She was not at all pretty, nor appealing, then, but pale and angry, and her mouth was tight and her eyes hard, and this – how she looked – took sentimentality away from what she said next. ‘I want to put an end to it all so that children don’t have a bad time, the way I did.’

Roberta sat there isolated, repudiated, unable to speak.

Alice said, ‘But Faye, do you think I’m not a revolutionary? I agree with every word you say.’

‘I don’t know anything about you, Comrade Alice. Except that you are a wonder with the housekeeping. And with the police. I like that. But just before you came, we took a decision, a joint decision. We decided we were going to work with the IRA. Have you forgotten?’

Alice was silent. She was thinking, But Jasper and Bert have been discussing things next door, surely? She said, carefully, ‘I understood that a comrade at 45 had indicated that…’

‘What comrade?’ demanded Roberta, coming to life again. ‘We know nothing about that.’

‘Oh,’ said Alice. ‘I thought…’

‘It’s just amateurish rubbish,’ said Faye. ‘Suddenly some unknown authority next door says this and that.’

‘I didn’t realize,’ said Alice. She had nothing to say. She was thinking: Was it Bert who led Jasper into…? Was it Jasper who…? I don’t remember Jasper doing anything like this before…

After some time, while no one said anything, but sat separate, thinking their own thoughts, Alice said, ‘Well, I agree. It is time we all got together and discussed it. Properly.’

‘Including the two new comrades?’ inquired Faye bitter.

‘No, no, just us. Just you and Roberta and Bert and Jasper and Pat and me.’

‘Not Philip and not Jim,’ said Roberta.

‘Then the six of us might go to a café or somewhere for a discussion,’ said Alice.

‘Quite so,’ said Faye. ‘We can’t have a meeting here, too many extraneous elements. Exactly.’

‘Well, perhaps we could borrow a room in 45,’ said Alice.

‘We could go and have a lovely picnic in the park, why not?’ said Faye, fiercely.

‘Why not?’ said Roberta, laughing. It could be seen that she was coming back into the ascendant, sat strong and confident, and sent glances towards Faye which would soon be returned.

Another silence, companionable, no hard feelings.

Alice said, ‘I have to ask this, it has to be raised. Are you two prepared to contribute anything to expenses?’

Faye, as expected, laughed. Roberta said quickly, reprovingly of Faye – which told Alice everything about the arguments that had gone on about this very subject – ‘We are going to pay for food and suchlike. You tell us how it works out.’

‘Very cheaply, with so many of us.’

‘Yes,’ said Faye. ‘That’s fair. But you can leave me out of all the gracious living. I’m not interested. Roberta can do what she likes.’ And she got up, smiled nicely at them both, and went out. Roberta made an instinctive movement to go after her but stayed put. She said, ‘I’ll make a contribution, Alice. I’m not like Faye – I’m not indifferent to my surroundings. You know, she really is,’ she said urgently, smiling, pressing on Alice Faye’s difference, her uniqueness, her preciousness.

‘Yes, I know.’

Roberta gave Alice two ten-pound notes, which she took, with no expression on her face, knowing that that would be it, and thanked Roberta, who fidgeted about, and then, unable to bear it, got up and went after Faye.

It was not yet ten. Mary had said, ring at one. Persuaded by the odours left on the air of the kitchen by Faye, by Roberta, she went up to the bathroom and forced herself into a cold bath where she crouched, unable actually to lower her buttocks into it, scrubbing and lathering. In a glow she dressed in clean clothes, bundled what she had taken off with Jasper’s clothes that needed a wash – determined by sniffing at them; and was on her way out to the launderette when she saw the old woman sitting under the tree in the next garden, all sharp jutting limbs, like a heap of sticks inside a jumble of cardigan and skirt. She urgently gesticulated at Alice, who went out into the street and in again at the neat white gate, smiling. She hoped that neighbours were watching.

‘She’s gone out and left me,’ said the old woman, struggling to sit up from her collapsed position. ‘They don’t care, none of them care.’ While she went on in a hoarse angry voice about the crimes of Joan Robbins, Alice deftly pulled up the old dear, thinking that she weighed no more than her bundle of laundry, and tidied her into a suitable position for taking the air.

Alice listened, smiling, until she had had enough; then she bent down, to shout into possibly dear ears, ‘But she’s very nice to bring you out here to sit in the garden, she doesn’t have to do that, does she?’ Then, as the ancient face seemed to struggle and erupt into expostulation, she said, ‘Never mind, I’ll bring you a nice cup of coffee.’

‘Tea, tea,’ urged the crone.

‘You’ll have to have coffee. We’re short of a teapot. Now you just sit there and wait.’

Alice went back, made sweet coffee, and brought it to the old woman. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Mrs Jackson, Jackson, that’s what I am called.’

‘My name is Alice and I live at 43.’

‘You sent away all those dirty people, good for you,’ said Mrs Jackson, who was already slipping down in her chair again, like a drunken old doll, the mug sliding sideways in her hand.

‘I’ll see you in a few minutes,’ said Alice, and ran off.

The launderette used up three-quarters of an hour. She collected her mug from Mrs Jackson, and then stood listening to Joan Robbins, who came out of her kitchen to tell Alice that she should not believe the old lady, who was wandering; there was not one reason in the world why she, Joan Robbins, should do a thing for her let alone help her down the stairs to the garden and up again and make her cups of coffee and…the complaints went on, while Mrs Jackson gesticulated to both of them that her tale was the right one. This little scene was being witnessed by several people in gardens and from windows and Alice let them have the full benefit of it.

With a wave she went back into her own house.

It was eleven, and a frail apparition wavered on the stairs: Philip, who said, ‘Alice, I don’t feel too good, I don’t feel…’

He arrived precariously beside her, and his face, that of a doleful but embarrassed angel, was presented to her for diagnosis and judgment, in perfect confidence of justice. Which she gave him: ‘I am not surprised, all that work on the roof. Well, forget it today, I’d take it easy.’

‘I would have gone with the others, but…’

‘Go into the sitting-room. Relax. I’ll bring you some coffee.’

She knew this sickness needed only affection, and when Philip was settled in a big chair, she took him coffee and sat with him, thinking: I have nothing better to do.

She had known that at some time she would have to listen to a tale of wrongs: this was the time. Philip had been promised jobs and not given them; had been turned off work without warning; had not been paid for work he had done; and this was told her in the hot aggrieved voice of one who had suffered inexplicable and indeed malevolent bad luck, whereas the reason for it all – that he was as fragile as a puppet – was not mentioned; could never, Alice was sure, be mentioned. ‘And do you know, Alice, he said to me, yes, you be here next Monday and I’ll have a job for you – do you know what that job was? He wanted me to load great cases of paint and stuff on to vans! I’m a builder and decorator, Alice! Well, I did it, I did it for four days and my back went out. I was in hospital for two weeks, and then in physio for a month. When I went to him and said he owed me for the four days he said I was the one in the wrong and…’ Alice listened and smiled, and her heart hurt for him. It seemed to her that a great deal had been asked of her heart that morning, one poor victim after another. Well, never mind, one day life would not be like this; it was capitalism that was so hard and hurtful and did not care about the pain of its victims.

At half-past twelve, when she was just thinking that she could go to the telephone booth, she heard someone coming in, and flew to intercept the police, the Council – who, this time?

It was Reggie who, smiling, was depositing cases in the hall. He said that Mary had slipped out from the meeting to telephone him the good news. And she would be over with another load in the lunch hour. The relief of it made Alice dizzy, then she wept. Standing against the wall by the door into the sitting-room, she had both hands up to her mouth as if in an extreme of grief, and her tight-shut eyes poured tears.

‘Why, Alice,’ said Reggie, coming to peer into her tragic face, and she had to repel friendly pats, pushes, and an arm around her shoulders.

‘Reaction,’ she muttered, diving off to the lavatory to be sick. When she came out, Philip and Reggie stood side by side, staring at her, ready to smile, and hoping she would allow them to.

And, at last, she smiled, then laughed, and could not stop.

Philip looked after her; and Reggie, embarrassed, sat by.

And she was embarrassed: What’s wrong with me, I must be sick too?

But Philip was no longer sick. He went off to measure up the broken windows for new glass, and Reggie climbed the stairs to look over the rooms. Alice stayed in the kitchen.

There Mary came to her with a carton of saucepans, crockery and an electric kettle. She sat herself down at the other end of the table. She was flushed and elated. Alice had heard her laughing with Reggie in the same way Faye and Roberta laughed; and sometimes, Bert and Pat. Two against the world. Intimacy.

Alice asked at once, ‘What are the conditions?’

‘It’s only for a year.’

Alice smiled and, on Mary’s look, explained, ‘It’s a lifetime.’

‘But of course they could extend. If they don’t decide to knock it down after all.’

‘They won’t knock it down,’ said Alice confidently.

‘Oh, don’t be so sure.’ Now Mary was being huffy on behalf of her other self, the Council.

Alice shrugged. She waited, eyes on Mary who, however, really did not seem to know why. At last Alice said, ‘But what has been decided about paying?’

‘Oh,’ said Mary, airily, ‘peanuts. They haven’t fixed the exact sum, but it’s nothing really. A nominal amount.’

‘Yes,’ said Alice, patient. ‘But how? A lump sum for the whole house?’

‘Oh no,’ said Mary, as though this were some unimaginably extortionate suggestion – such is the power of an official decision on the official mind – ‘Oh no. Benefit will be adjusted individually for everyone in the house. No one’s in work here, you said?’

‘That isn’t the point, Mary,’ said Alice, hoping that Mary would get the point. But she didn’t. Of course not; what in her experience could have prepared her for it?

‘Well, I suppose it would be easier if it was a lump sum, and people chipped in. Particularly as it is so small. Enough to cover the rates, not more than £10 or £15 a week. But that is not how it is done with us.’ Again spoke the official, in the decisive manner of one who knows that what is done must be the best possible way of doing it.

‘Are you sure,’ inquired Alice carefully, after a pause, ‘that there really is no possibility of changing the decision?’

‘Absolutely none,’ said Mary. What she was in fact saying was: ‘This is such a petty matter that there is no point in wasting a minute over it.’

And so unimportant was it to Mary, that she began to stroll around the kitchen, examining it, with a happy little smile, as if unwrapping a present.

Meanwhile Alice sat adjusting. Faye and Roberta would not agree, would leave at once. Jim, too. Jasper wouldn’t like it – he would demand that both he and Alice should leave. Well, all right, then they would all go. Why not? She had done it often enough! There was that empty house down in Stockwell…Jasper and she had been talking for months of squatting there. It would suit Faye and Roberta, because their women’s commune was somewhere down there. God only knew what other places, refuges, hideouts, they used. Alice had the impression there were several.

A pity about this house. And as Alice thought of leaving, sorrow crammed her throat, and she closed her eyes, suffering.

She said, sounding cold and final, because of the stiffness of her throat, ‘Well, that’s it. I’m sorry, but that’s it.’

‘What do you mean?’ Mary had whirled round, and stood, a tragedienne, hand at her throat. ‘I don’t know what you mean?’ she demanded, sounding fussy and hectoring.

‘Well, it doesn’t matter to you, does it? You and Reggie can stay here by yourselves. You can easily get friends in, I am sure.’

Mary collapsed into a chair. From being the happiest girl in the world, she had become a poor small creature, pale and fragile, a suppliant. ‘I don’t understand! What difference does it make? And of course Reggie and I wouldn’t stay here by ourselves.’

‘Why not?’

Mary coloured up, and stammered, ‘Well, of course…it goes without saying…they can’t know I am living here. Bob Hood and the others can’t know I’m in a squat.’

‘Oh well, that’s it then,’ said Alice, vague because she was already thinking of the problems of moving again.

‘I don’t understand,’ Mary was demanding. ‘Tell me, what is the problem.’

Alice sighed and said perfunctorily that there were reasons why some of them did not want their presence signposted.

‘Why,’ demanded Mary, ‘are they criminals?’ She had gone bright pink, and she sounded indignant.

Alice could see that this moment had been reached before, with Militant. Methods!

Alice said, sounding sarcastic because of the effort she was making to be patient, ‘Politics, Mary. Politics, don’t you see?’ She thought that with Jim, it was probably something criminal, but let it pass. Probably something criminal with Faye and Roberta, for that matter. ‘Don’t you see? People collect their Social Security in one borough, but live somewhere else. Sometimes in several other places.’

‘Oh. Oh, I see.’

Mary sat contemplating this perspective: skilled and dangerous revolutionaries on the run, in concealment. But seemed unable to take it in. She said, huffily, ‘Well, I suppose the decision could be adjusted. I must say, I think it is just as well the Council don’t know about this!’

‘Oh, you mean you can get the decision changed?’ Alice, reprieved, the house restored to her, sat smiling, her eyes full of tears. ‘Oh, good, that’s all right then.’

Mary stared at Alice. Alice, bashful, because of the depth of her emotion, smiled at Mary. This was the moment when Mary, from her repugnance for anything that did not measure up against that invisible yardstick of what was right, suitable and proper that she shared with Reggie, could have got up, stammered a few stiff, resentful apologies, and left. To tell Bob Hood that the Council had made a mistake, those people in No. 43…

But she smiled, and said, ‘I’ll have a word with Bob. I expect it will be all right. So everyone will chip in? I’ll get them to send the bills monthly, not quarterly. It will be easier to keep up with the payments.’ She chattered on for a bit, to restore herself and the authority of the Council, and then remarked that something would have to be done about No. 45. There were complaints all the time.

‘I’ll go next door and see them,’ said Alice.

Again the official reacted with, ‘It’s not your affair, is it? Why should you?’ Seeing that Alice shrugged, apparently indifferent, Mary said quickly, ‘Yes, perhaps you should…’

She went upstairs, with a look as irritated as Alice’s. Both women were thinking that it would not be easy, this combination of people, in the house.

Soon Mary went off with Reggie. He would drop her back at work, and they both would return later with another load. They were bringing in some furniture too, if no one minded. A bed, for instance.

Alice sat on, alone. Then Philip came to be given the money for the glass, and went off to buy it.

Alice was looking at herself during the last four days, and thinking: Have I been a bit crazy? After all, it is only a house…and what have I done? These two, Reggie and Mary – revolutionaries? They were with Militant? Crazy!

Slowly she recovered. Energy came seeping back. She thought of the others, on the battlefront down at Melstead. They were at work for the Cause; and she must be too! Soon she slipped out of the house, careful not to see whether the old lady was waving at her, and went into the main road, walked along the hedge that separated first their house from the road, and then No. 45. She turned into the little street that was the twin of theirs, and then stood where yesterday she had seen Bob Hood stand, looking in that refuse-filled garden.

She walked firmly up the path, prepared to be examined by whoever was there and was interested. She knocked. She waited a goodish time for the door to open. She caught a glimpse of the hall, the twin of theirs, but it was stacked with cartons and boxes. There was a single electric bulb. So they did have electricity.

In front of her was a man who impressed her at once as being foreign. It was not anything specific in his looks; it was just something about him. He was a Russian, she knew. This gave her a little frisson of satisfaction. It was power, the idea of it, that was exciting her. The man himself was in no way out of the ordinary, being broad – not fat, though he could easily be; not tall – in fact not much taller than herself. He had a broad blunt sort of face, and little shrewd grey eyes. He wore grey twill trousers that looked expensive and new; and a grey bush shirt that was buttoned and neat.

He could have been a soldier.

‘I am Alice Mellings. From next door.’

He nodded, unsmiling, and said, ‘Of course. Come in.’ He led the way through the stacks of boxes into the room that in their house was the sitting-room. Here it had the look of an office or a study. A table was set in the bay window; his chair had its back to the window, and that was because, Alice knew, he wanted to know who came in and out of the door; he did not want his back to it.

He sat down in this chair, and nodded to another, opposite it. Alice sat.

She was thinking, impressed: This one, he’s the real thing.

He was waiting for her to say something.

The one thing she knew now she could not say was: Have you been telling Jasper and Bert what to do? – which was what she wanted to know.

She said, ‘We have just got permission from the Council, we are short-term housing, you know.’ He nodded. ‘Well, we thought you should do the same. It makes life much easier, you see. And it means the police leave you alone.’

He seemed to relax, sat back, pushed a packet of cigarettes towards her, lit one himself as she shook her head, sat holding a lungful of smoke which he expelled in a single swift breath and said, ‘It’s up to the others. I don’t live here.’

Was that all he was going to say? It seemed so. Well, he had in fact said everything necessary. Alice, confused, hurried on, ‘There’s the rubbish. You’ll have to pay the dustmen…’ she faltered.

He had his eyes intent on her. She knew that he was seeing everything. It was a detached, cold scrutiny. Not hostile, not unfriendly, surely? She cried, ‘We’ve been given a year. That means, once the place is straight, we can give all our attention to – ‘ she censored ‘the revolution’, but said, ‘politics.’

He seemed not to have heard. To be waiting for more? For her to go? Floundering on, she said, ‘Of course not everyone in our squat…for instance, Roberta and Faye don’t think that…but why should you know about them. I’ll explain…’

He cut in, ‘I know about Roberta and Faye. Tell me, what are those two new ones like?’

She said, giving Reggie and Mary the credit due, ‘They were once members of Militant, but they didn’t like their methods.’ Here she dared to offer him a smile, hoping he would return it, but he said, ‘She works for the Council? On what sort of level?’

‘She doesn’t take decisions.’

He nodded. ‘And what about him? A chemist, I believe?’

‘Industrial chemist. He lost his job.’

‘Where?’

‘I didn’t ask.’ She added, ‘I’ll let you know.’

He nodded. Sat smoking. Sat straight to the table, both forearms on it, in front of him a sheet of paper on which his eyes seemed to make notes. He was like Lenin!

She thought: His voice. American. Yes, but something funny for an American voice. No, it was not the voice, the accent but something else, in him.

He didn’t say anything. The question, the anxiety, that were building up in her surfaced. ‘Jasper and Bert have gone down to Melstead. They went early.’

He nodded. Reached for a neatly-folded newspaper, and opened it in front of him, turning the pages. ‘Have you seen today’s Times?’

‘I don’t read the capitalist press.’

‘I think perhaps that is a pity,’ he commented after a pause. And pushed across the paper, indicating a paragraph.

Asked whether they welcomed these reinforcements to the picket line, Crabit, the strikers’ representative, said he wished the Trotskyists and the rent-a-picket crowd would keep away. They weren’t wanted. The workers could deal with things themselves.

Alice felt she could easily start crying again.

She said, ‘But this is a capitalist newspaper. They’re just trying to split the democratic forces, they want to disunite us.’ She was going to add: Can’t you see that? but could not bring it out.

He took back the paper and laid it where it had been. Now he was not looking at her.

‘Comrade Alice,’ he said, ‘there are more efficient ways of doing things, you know.’

He stood up. ‘I’ve got work to do.’ She was dismissed. He came out from behind the table and walked with her to the door and back through the hall to the front door.

‘Thank you for coming to see me,’ he said.

She stammered, ‘Would there be a room in this house we could use for a – discussion? You see, some of us are not sure about – some of the others.’

He said, ‘I’ll ask.’ He had not reacted as she had feared he would. Bringing it out had sounded so feeble…

He nodded, and at last, gave her a smile. She went off in a daze. She was telling herself, But he’s the real thing, he is.

He had not told her his name.

She walked along the short stretch of main road slowly, because in front of her, in the middle of the pavement, was a girl with a small child in a pushchair. The child looked like a fat plastic parcel with a pale podgy spotty face coming out of the top. He was whining on a high persistent note that set Alice’s teeth on edge. The girl looked tired and desperate. She had lank unwashed-looking pale hair. Alice could see from the set angry shoulders that she wanted to hit the child. Alice was waiting to walk faster when she could turn off into her own road, but the girl turned, still in the middle of the pavement. There she stopped, looking at the houses and, in particular, at No. 43. Alice went past her and in at her gate. She heard the girl say, ‘Do you live here? In this house?’

‘Yes, I do,’ said Alice, without turning, in a curt voice. She knew what was coming. She walked on up the path. She heard the wheels of the pushchair crunch after her.

‘Excuse me,’ she heard, and knew from the stubborn little voice that she could not get out of it. She turned sharply, blocking the way to the front door. Now she faced the girl squarely, with a No written all over her. This was not the first time, of course, that she had been in this position. She was feeling: It is unfair that I have to deal with this.

She was a poor thing, this girl. Probably about twenty. Already worn down with everything, and the only energy in her the irritation she was containing because of her grizzling child.

‘I heard this house is short-term housing now,’ she said, and she kept her eyes on Alice’s face. They were large grey rather beautiful eyes, and Alice did not want the pressure of them. She turned to the front door, and opened it.

‘Where did you hear that?’

The girl did not answer this. She said, ‘I’m going mad. I’ve got to have a place. I’ve got to find somewhere. I’ve got to.’

Alice went into the hall, ready to shut the door, but found that the girl’s foot stopped her. Alice was surprised, for she had not expected such enterprise. But her own determination was made stronger by her feeling that if the girl had that much spirit, then she wasn’t in such a bad way after all.

The door stood open. The child was now weeping noisily and wholeheartedly inside his transparent shroud, his wide-open blue eyes splashing tears on to the plastics. The girl confronted Alice, who could see she was trembling with anger.

‘I’ve got as much right here as you have,’ she said. ‘If there’s room I’m coming here. And you have got room, haven’t you? Look at the size of this place, just look at it!’ She stared around the large hall with its glowing carpet that gave an air of discreet luxury to the place, and to the various doors that opened off it to rooms, rooms, a treasury of rooms. And then she gazed at the wide stairs that went up to another floor. More doors, more space. Alice, in an agony, looked with her.

‘I’m in one of those hotels, do you know about them? Well, why don’t you, everyone ought to. The Council shoved us there, my husband and me and Bobby. One room. We’ve been there seven months.’ Alice could hear in her tone, which was incredulous, at the awfulness of it, what those seven months had been like. ‘It’s owned by some filthy foreigners. Disgusting, why should they have a hotel and tell us what to do? We are not allowed to cook. Can you imagine, with a baby? One room. The floor is so filthy I can’t put him to crawl.’ This information was handed out to Alice in a flat, trembling voice, and the child steadily and noisily wept.

‘You can’t come here,’ said Alice. ‘It’s not suitable. For one thing there’s no heating. There isn’t even hot water.’

‘Hot water,’ said the girl, shaking with rage. ‘Hot water! We haven’t had hot water for three days, and the heating’s been off. You ring up the Council and complain, and they say they are looking into it. I want some space. Some room. I can heat water in a pan to wash him. You’ve got a stove, haven’t you? I can’t even give him proper food. Only rubbish out of packets.’

Alice did not answer. She was thinking, Well, why not? What right have I got to say no? And, as she thought this, she heard a sound from upstairs, and turned to see Faye, standing on the landing, looking down. There was something about her that held Alice’s attention; some deadliness of purpose, or of mood. The pretty, wispy, frail creature, Faye, had again disappeared; in her place was a white-faced, malevolent woman, with punishing cold eyes, who came in a swift rush down the stairs as though she would charge straight into the girl, who stood her ground at first and then, in amazement, took a step back with Faye right up against her, leaning forward, hissing, ‘Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out.’

The girl stammered, ‘Who are you, what…’ While Faye pushed her, by the force of her presence, her hate, step by step back towards the door. The child was screaming now.

‘How dare you,’ Faye was saying. ‘How dare you crash in here, no one said you could. I know what you’re like. Once you are in, you’d take everything you could get, you’re like that.’

This insanity kept Alice silent, and had the girl staring open-eyed and open-mouthed at this cruel pursuer, as she retreated to the door. There Faye actually gave her a hard shove, which made her step back on to the pushchair, and nearly knock it over.

Faye crashed the door shut. Then, opening it, she crashed it shut again. It seemed she would continue this process, but Roberta had arrived on the scene. Even she did not dare touch Faye at that moment, but she was talking steadily in a low, urgent, persuasive voice:

‘Faye, Faye darling, darling Faye, do stop it, no, you must stop it. Are you listening to me? Stop it, Faye…’

Faye heard her, as could be seen from the way she held the door open, hesitating before slamming it again. Beyond could be seen the girl, retreating slowly down the path, with her shrieking child. She glanced round in time to see Faye taken into Roberta’s arms and held there, a prisoner. Now Faye was shouting in a hoarse, breathless voice, ‘Let me go.’ The girl stopped, mouth falling open, and her eyes frantic. Oh no, those eyes seemed to say, as she turned and ran clumsily away from this horrible house.

Alice shut the door, and the sounds of the child’s screams ceased.

Roberta was crooning, ‘Faye, Faye, there darling, don’t, my love, it’s all right.’ And Faye was sobbing, just like a child, with great gasps for breath, collapsed against Roberta.

Roberta gently led Faye upstairs, step by step, crooning all the way, ‘There, don’t, please don’t, Faye, it’s all right.’

The door of their room shut on them, and the hall was empty. Alice stood there, stunned, for a while; then went into the kitchen and sat down, trembling.

In her mind she was with the girl on the pavement. She was feeling, not guilt, but an identification with her. She imagined herself going with the heavy awkward child to the bus-stop, waiting and waiting for the bus to come, her face stony and telling the other people in the queue that she did not care what they thought of her screaming child. Then getting the difficult chair on to the bus, and sitting there with the child, who if not screaming would be a lump of exhausted misery. Then off the bus, strapping the child into the chair again, and then the walk to the hotel. Yes, Alice did know about these hotels, did know what went on.

After a while she made herself strong tea and sat drinking it, as if it were brandy. Silence above. Presumably Roberta had got Faye off to sleep?

Some time later Roberta came in, and sat down. Alice knew how she must look, from Roberta’s examination of her. She thought: What she really is, is just one of these big maternal lezzies, all sympathy and big boobs; she wants to seem butch and tough, but bad luck for her, she’s a mum.

She did not want to be bothered with what was going to come.

When Roberta said, ‘Look, Alice, I know how this must look, but…’ she cut in, ‘I don’t care. It’s all right.’

Roberta hesitated, then made herself go on, ‘Faye does sometimes get like this, but she is much better, and she hasn’t for a long time. Over a year.’

‘All right.’

‘And of course we can’t have children here.’

Alice did not say anything.

Roberta, needing some kind of response she was not getting, got up to fuss around with tea-bags and a mug, and said in a low, quick, vibrant voice, ‘If you knew about her childhood, if you knew what had happened to her…’

‘I don’t care about her fucking childhood,’ remarked Alice.

‘No, I’ve got to tell you, for her sake, for Faye’s…She was a battered baby, you see…’

‘I don’t care,’ Alice shouted suddenly. ‘ You don’t understand. I’ve had all the bloody unhappy childhoods I am going to listen to. People go on and on…As far as I am concerned, unhappy childhoods are the great con, the great alibi.’

Shocked, Roberta said, ‘A battered baby – and battered babies grow up to become adults.’ She was back in her place, sitting, leaning forward, her eyes on Alice’s, determined to make Alice respond.

‘I know one thing,’ Alice said. ‘Communes. Squats. If you don’t take care, that’s what they become – people sitting around discussing their shitty childhoods. Never again. We’re not here for that. Or is that what you want? A sort of permanent encounter group. Everything turns into that, if you let it.’

Roberta, convinced that Alice was not going to listen, sat silent. She noisily drank tea, and Alice felt herself wince.

There was something coarse and common about Roberta, Alice was thinking, too disturbed and riled up to censor her thoughts. She hadn’t washed yet, even though water was running in the taps. There was the sharp metallic tang of blood about her. Either she or Faye, or both, were menstruating.

Alice shut her eyes, retreated inside herself to a place she had discovered long years ago, she did not know when, but she had been a small child. Inside here, she was safe, and the world could crash and roar and scream as much as it liked. She heard herself say, and it was in her dreamy abstracted voice:

‘Well, I suppose Faye will die of it one of these days. She has tried to commit suicide, hasn’t she?’

Silence. She opened her eyes to see Roberta in tears.

‘Yes, but not since I…’

‘All those bracelets,’ murmured Alice. ‘Scars under bracelets.’

‘She’s got one tiny scar,’ pleaded Roberta. ‘On her left wrist.’

Alice had shut her eyes again, and was sipping tea, feeling that her nerves would soon begin to stand up to life again. She said, ‘One of these days I’ll tell you about my mother’s unhappy childhood. She had a mad mum, and a peculiar dad. Peculiar is the word. If I told you!’ She had not meant to mention her mother. ‘Oh never mind about her,’ she said. She began to laugh. It was a healthy, even jolly laugh, appreciative of the vagaries and richnesses of life. ‘On the other hand my father – now that was a different kettle of fish. When he was a child he was happy the whole day long, so he says, the happiest time in his life. But do we believe him? Well, I am inclined to, yes. He is so bloody thick and stupid and awful that he wouldn’t have noticed it if he was unhappy. They could have battered him as much as they liked, and he wouldn’t even have noticed.’

She opened her eyes. Roberta was examining her with a small shrewd smile. Against her will, Alice smiled in response.

‘Well,’ said Alice, ‘that’s that, as far as I am concerned. Have you got any brandy? Anything like that?’

‘How about a joint?’

‘No, doesn’t do anything for me. I don’t like it.’

Roberta went off and came back with a bottle of whisky. The two sat drinking in the kitchen, at either end of the big wooden table. When Philip came staggering in under the heavy panes of glass, ready to start work, he refused a drink saying he felt sick. He went upstairs back to his sleeping-bag. What he was really saying was that Alice should be working along with him, not sitting there wasting time.

Roberta, having drunk a lot, went up to Faye and there was silence overhead.

Alice decided to have a nap. In the hall was lying an envelope she thought was junk mail. She picked it up to throw it away, saw it was from the Electricity Board, felt herself go cold and sick; decided to give herself time to recover before opening it. She went to the kitchen. By hand. Mrs Whitfield had said she came past on her way to and from work. She had dropped this in herself, on her way home. That was kind of her…Alice briskly opened the letter, which said:

Dear Miss Mellings, I communicated with your father about guaranteeing payment of accounts for No. 43 Old Mill Road, in terms of our discussion. His reply was negative, I am sorry to say. Perhaps you would care to drop in and discuss this matter in the course of the next few days?

Yours sincerely,

D. Whitfield.