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 though Pat’s interest was real, it was not like Philip’s and like her own. Pat’s heart would never pound, or 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 that 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 let the roof go while they helped Alice allot furniture, flew out to buy curtain fittings for which Alice took 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 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 good will, 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 is 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 that 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 at a course today, you know, they send you on courses, I am 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 living 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—I and my boyfriend. Reggie. He’s an industrial chemist.” This chemist bit was there to reassure her, thought Alice, with the beginnings of scorn that, 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 acknowledgement 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 all of them, thought Alice, curiously examining her. If she said to Bob, tomorrow morning, sharing cups of coffee before the me
eting, “I dropped in last night at that house, you know, forty-three Old Mill Road, and my God, what a setup!,” then he could change his mind, just like that, particularly with the house next door 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 Alice 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 that 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 towards 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 that 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 t
he 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—something Alice was equipped by instinct to understand, 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.”