“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 ten or fifteen pounds 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,” enquired 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 exclaimed, 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 am 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 number 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 number 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 number 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 cases. 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—and 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 cartons 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 now knew 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”—“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 hadn’t 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 number 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 door, and opened it.