“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 onto the plastic. 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 were 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 her cruel pursuer as she retreated to the door. There Faye actually gave her a hard shove, which made her step back onto 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 it 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 the bus, and sitting there with the child, who if it wasn’t screaming would be a lump of exhausted misery. Then getting off the bus, strapping the child into the chair again, and walking 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 teabags 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 drank tea noisily, 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 once more. 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
.
This pleasant, human little letter made Alice feel supported at first; then rage took over. Luckily, there was no one to see her as she exploded inwardly, teeth grinding, eyes bulging, fists held as if knives were in them. She stormed around the kitchen, like a big fly shut in a room on a hot afternoon, banging herself against walls, corners of table and stove, not knowing what she did, and making grunting, whining, snarling noises—which soon she heard. She knew that she was making them and, frightened, sat down at the table, perfectly still, containing what she felt. Absolute quiet after such violence, for some minutes. Then she whirled into movement, out of the kitchen and up the stairs, to knock sharply on Philip’s door. Stirrings, movements, but no reply, and she called, “Philip, it’s me, Alice.”
She went in as he said, “Come in,” and saw him scrambling up out of his sleeping bag and into his overalls. “Oh, sorry,” said she, dismissing his unimportant embarrassment and starting in at once.
“Philip, will you guarantee our electricity bill?” As he stared, and did not understand: “You know, the bill for this house? My mother won’t, my father won’t, bloody bloody Theresa and bloody bloody Anthony won’t.…”
He was standing in front of her, the late-afternoon light strong and yellow behind him, a little dark figure in a stiff awkward posture. She could not see his face and went to the side of the room, so that he turned toward her, and she saw him confronting her, small, pale, but obstinate. She knew she would fail, seeing that look, but said sharply, “You have a business, you have a letterhead, you could guarantee the account.”
“Alice, how can I? I can’t pay that money, you know I can’t.” Talking as though he would have to pay, thought Alice, enraged again. But had he heard her joke that the first payment would be the last?
She said, bossy, “Oh, Philip, don’t be silly. You wouldn’t have to, would you? It’s just to keep the electricity on.”
He said, trying to sound humorous, “Well, Alice, but perhaps I would have to?”
“No, of
course
not!”
He was—she saw—ready to laugh with her, but she could not.
“What can I do?” she was demanding. “I don’t know what to do!”
“I don’t think I believe that, Alice,” he said, really laughing now, but nicely.
In a normal voice, she said, “Philip, we have to have a guarantor. You are the only one, don’t you see?”
He held his own, this Petrouchka, this elf, with, “Alice, no. For one thing, that address on the letterhead is the place I was in before Felicity—it’s been pulled down, demolished. It isn’t even there.”
Now they stared at each other with identical appalled expressions, as if the floorboards were giving way; for both had been possessed, at the same moment, by a vision of impermanence: houses, buildings, streets, whole areas of streets, blown away, going, gone, an illusion. They sighed together, and, on an impulse, embraced gently, comforting each other.