She raced back to the smooth green paint that was evenly lit by a street lamp ten yards away. The policeman and a woman sedately progressed away from them. Jasper waited where he was. She took out the red spray and, in letters a foot high, began “Greenham Common Women …”
She kept her attention half on what she did, half on Jasper, who suddenly raised his arms. Without looking round she sped toward him, hearing the heavy feet running behind her. Now she was spitting: Filthy beasts, fascists, pigs, pigs, pigs.… She had come up to Jasper, who caught her wrist in his bony grip, and they ran together up towards the Underground. But before they reached it, they turned into a side street and then, they hoped before the police reached that street, into another. They knew someone living in a house there. But their blood was racing, they were inspired, and she was not surprised that Jasper panted, “Let’s chance it.…” They tore down that street and into a main road that was crowded with people—fish-and-chip shops, take-aways, a disco, a supermarket, still open. Again, they could have gone into the supermarket, but they thought the police had had a good look at them, so they sprinted through the crowds, who took as little notice as they expected, and across the street just after the lights had changed, so that the traffic, beginning to move, hooted.
Down they went into the Underground. They had not looked to see whether the police had come into the main road in time to see. Again, Jasper’s eyes demanded they chance it; they walked smartly up out of the Underground on the other side, and saw two policemen—different ones—coming towards them. Cool and indifferent, Alice and Jasper walked past. Then down again into the Underground. They went two stops, to where Alice had seen a long low bridge along a main road over railway lines. By then it was ten, and raining a little. Here the police station was a good way off. On the other hand, cars were passing regularly. On the bridge was already written, in white letters that had run and streaked, “Women Are Angry.”
They stood arm in arm, backs to the traffic, as though looking over the railway lines, and Alice, holding the spray low down, wrote, “We Are All …,” which is as far as she could go without having to move. They moved on a few steps, again stood together, and wrote, “Angry. Angry About …” Another move. “Ireland. About Sexism. About …” They moved. Then they heard—their ears alert for the slightest changes in the grind of the traffic—a car slowing down just behind them. They both shot looks over their shoulders: not a police car. But two men sat side by side in the front seat, staring.
“… Trident”—Alice finished. And they walked on, slowly, very close, knowing the car crawled behind. The intoxication of it, the elation:
pleasure
. There was nothing like it!
Now, remembering, Alice craved and longed. Oh, she did so hope that Jasper would not be late, would not be tired, would want to go out. He had
promised.…
… They had walked, perhaps 150 yards. Luck! A one-way street! The car, of course, did not follow. At the end of that street, they went back to the bus stop and to Kilburn, where they had worked before.
“No to Cruise! No to Trident!”
No one had so much as noticed them there.
Let down, their elation leaking away, they had decided to give up, and taken a taxi back to Alice’s mother’s house, where Alice made them both coffee and scrambled eggs.
Now it was six-thirty.
Mary came in, sat briefly with Alice, said she and Reggie were going to the pictures. She had had a word about this girl, Monica; there was really nothing, nothing at all. She had done her best, Alice must understand.
“Never mind,” said Alice, “I’ve thought of something.”
Mary saw the scribbled-over envelope, smiled, and said, “Reggie and I are going to the Greenpeace demo tomorrow.”
“Good for you,” said Alice.
“But it’s shocking, it’s terrible, the despoliation of our countryside.…”
“I know,” said Alice. “I’ve been on some of their demos.”
“You have!” Mary was relieved, Alice could see, that they shared this; but Reggie “hallo”ed from the hall, and, with a smile, Mary went.
Where were Roberta and Faye? Probably at their women’s-commune place. Where Philip? He might have been thrown out by his girlfriend, but he was going round there still for meals and baths, so Bert had said. Jim? Now, that was a serious question, where was he? The smiling face, the jokey mellow voice—but what was going on, really?
Apart from having
his
home,
his
place taken over like this.
Worry, worry, Alice sat worrying.
In came Jasper, smiling, jaunty, stepping like a dancer, and at once he said, “Oh, lovely,” at the forsythia. There: people said this and that about him, but no one knew how sensitive he was, how kind. Now he bent and kissed her cheek; it was a thin papery kiss, but she understood that; understood when—rarely—she simply had to put her arms around him out of an exuberance of love, the instinctive shrinking, as though she held a wraith, something cold and wailing, a lost child. And he would try to stand up to it, the sudden blast of her love; she could feel a brave little determination to withstand it, and even an intention to return it. Which, of course, he could not—not the physical thing; she knew that what she felt as a warmth of affection was experienced by him as a demand for
that
.
He stood near her, beaming, positively dancing, with the excess of his pride and pleasure.
“So it was all right.”
“Thirty pounds.”
“A lot, surely?”
“They knew me,” he said with pride.
“How was the cell?”
“Oh, not bad. They fed us—not bad. But I was with Jack—though it’s an alias, you understand!”
“Yes, of course,” she beamed back. “What I don’t know …”
“… won’t hurt you.” He rubbed his hands, and began a light, smart quick-stepping about the kitchen: to the forsythia, which he touched delicately; to the window; and back to her. She put on the kettle, put coffee into a mug, and stood by the stove, so as to be standing, not sitting, while he moved so electrically and finely about.
“Bert doesn’t know, either. Where is he? Bert?”
“But he told you, he’s gone for the weekend with Pat.”
“Oh yes … for the weekend—how long?” He was now standing still, threatened, frowning.
“Sunday night.”
“Because we’re going for a trip,” he said. “He knew we were going, but not so soon. Jack says …”
“A fine Irish name,” said Alice.
He chuckled, enjoying her teasing him. “Well, there are Jacks in Ireland.” He went on, “And how did you know … But you always do, don’t you,” he said, with a flash of acid.
“But where else?” she wailed, humorously, as she always did when he was surprised by what to her was obvious. “You and Bert and Jack are going to Ireland, because Jack is IRA?”
“In touch. In contact. He can arrange a meeting.”
“Well, then!” said Alice, handing him a mug of black coffee, and sat down again.
He stood silent, stilled a moment. Then he said, “Alice, I’ve got to have some money.”
Alice thought: “Well, that’s that”—meaning, the end of this delightful friendliness. She strengthened herself for a fight.
She said, “I gave Bert the money he gave you for your fine.”
“I’ve got to have my fare to Dublin.”
“But you can’t have spent your dole money!”
He hesitated. He had? How? She could never understand what he did with it, where it went—he had not had time for … that other life of his, he had been with Bert, with Jack!
“I said I’d pay Jack’s fare—the fine cleaned him out.”
“Was he fined thirty pounds, too?”
“No, fifteen.”
“I have been spending and spending,” said Alice. “No one chips in—only a bit here and there.” She thought: At least Mary and Reggie will pull their weight, at least one can say that of their kind.… To the
exact
amount, no more, no less.
“You can’t have spent all that,” said Jasper. He looked as though she were deliberately punishing him. “I saw it. Hundreds.”
“What do you suppose all this is costing.”
Now—as she had expected—his hand closed around her wrist, tight and hurtful. He said, “While you play house and gardens, pouring money away on rubbish, the Cause has to suffer, do without.”
His little blue eyes in the shallow depressions of very white, glistening flesh stared into hers, unblinking, as his grasp tightened. But long ago she had gained immunity from this particular accusation. Without resisting, leaving her wrist limp in his circle of bone, she looked hard back at him and said, “I see no reason why you should pay Comrade Jack’s fare. Or expenses. If he hadn’t met you, what would he have done for the fare?”
“But he’s only going over for our sakes—so we can make contact.”
She forced herself to fight him: “You picked up three weeks’ money this week. You had a hundred and twenty pounds plus.
And
I paid your fine. You can’t have spent more than at the most twenty pounds on train fares and snacks.”
When she did this, let him know that she made this silent, skilled reckoning of what he spent, what he must be doing, he hated her totally, and showed it. He was white with his hatred. His thin pink lips, which normally she loved for their delicacy and sensitivity, were stretched in a colourless line, and between them showed sharp discoloured teeth. He looked like a rat, she thought steadily, knowing that her love for him was not by an atom diminished.
“Why don’t you go and get some more from your fucking bloody mother, from
her?
Or from your father?”
She had not told him exactly where she had got all the money that had been spent so freely around this house, but of course he had guessed.
She said steadily, “I shall. When I feel I can. But I can’t now.”
He let go her wrist and stood up.
Now he is going to punish me, he’s going to take his things into another room to sleep.
A long silence, while he fidgeted disconsolately about.
“Let’s go out for a meal,” he suggested, dolefully.
“Yes, let’s.” Her spirits swooped up again, although there had been no mention of spray-painting, and he had seen the scribbled slogans on the envelope on the table.
He said, nicely, “I am sorry about not going out painting tonight, Alice. But what’s the sense? I don’t want to draw attention to myself just before something important.”
“Quite right, of course,” she said. Thinking that in years of spray-painting, of darting about near the police and taunting them with their nearness, they had been caught only when they wanted to be. That was the truth of it.
Jasper wanted to talk about the two days down at Melstead, about the pickets, the excitement of it all, the arrest, the night in the cells—and about Jack. They went to an Indian restaurant, where he talked and talked, and she listened very carefully, matching what he said with her imaginings of it all. She paid for the meal. They went into a pub and he drank his usual white wine, and she, tomato juice.
Back at the house, she waited, tense, to see whether he would take his things up to another room, but he said nothing about it, only slid into his bag with a sigh that assuaged her; it was the sigh of a child finding a safe place.
He had not said anything more about money, but now he started again. That was why he had not taken his things out.
They argued, steadily, in the dark room, while the lights whirled over the ceiling. In the end she agreed to give him the money for “Jack’s” fare. She knew that for some reason it was important for Jasper to have it from her. Essential. There always had been these moments between them when she had to give way, against reason, against sense: he simply had to win. She knew that he had a hundred pounds, probably more. Perhaps even very much more. Once he had told her, in a mood of taunting cruelty that sometimes overtook him, that he had been saving up quietly all these years, enough money “to be rid of you forever.”
This did not make any sense that she could see when she
thought:
but she
felt
the power of it.
His mother—well, Alice wasn’t going to get involved even with the thought of all that dreary psychology, but no wonder he had problems with women.
In the morning, after their breakfast coffee, he stood silently and balefully near her until she gave him the fare to Dublin. Then he said that he was going to meet Jack and talk things over. If he was not back tonight, he would be tomorrow, and she must tell Bert that they were going to Ireland on Tuesday, early.
He left. She thought: Is he going on one of his
things
, then—cottaging, cruising …? She believed not. He wouldn’t risk it, not with his whole soul set on the trip to Ireland. Was “Jack,” then, like him? No, she was sure not. Talking about Jack, it was how he talked about Bert, how he talked about the men with whom he had this particular relationship: admiring, dependent, you could say passive … but who was it now who set the pace, making Bert go to Ireland, making Jack take them? No, not simple at all, this younger-brother thing.
She had the whole day. Alone, you could say.
Philip had climbed up into the attic—she must go up and help him, stand by him, or he would start feeling ill again. Jim—where was Jim, what was wrong? He had not been in since yesterday.
Faye and Roberta? She had heard them come in very late. Pat said they went to late-night movies, and then on to parties. Their other life—women. The close, sweet, bitchy—as far as Alice was concerned—cloying, claustrophobic world of women. Not for her! But they were welcome to it. Let a thousand flowers bloom, and all that.… Ten in the morning, and Mary and Reggie were still in bed. Mary had come down, made mugs of coffee, taken them up, and they lay, no doubt, side by side, in that amazing double bed, which had a proper headboard and little built-in side tables. Even the thought of that bed, the life that the bed implied, made Alice feel threatened. Stuck together for a lifetime in that bed, drinking cups of coffee, looking at people who were not like themselves in that cautious keep-off way.
Where was she going to get money. Where. She had to have it. Had to have money. Had to.
Sunday.
Good grief, it was only Sunday, six days after she and Jasper had left her mother’s—had left home. She had achieved all that, in such a short time. Full of energy, she went up to the attic and to Philip, in his white overalls, a brave manikin moving about under the rafters of the attic. There was a horrible smell of rot.
“Two of these beams ought to be replaced,” he said. “Dry rot. We’ll have the whole house down.”
Money. She had to have money.
Too early to ask Mary and Reggie. At some point a negotiation would take place. Already she could see their faces, the faces of the fucking bloody middle class, when the subject of money was on the agenda. God, how she hated them, the middle classes, penny-pinching, doling out their little bits, in their minds always the thought of saving and accumulating,
saving
—thought Alice, her mouth full of bile, as she stood gazing up at a beam a foot across that looked grey and flaky, with whitey-yellow fibres in it. The dry rot itself, which would lay its creeping arms over all the wood, if it were allowed, then creep down the walls, into the floor below, spread like a disease …
She thought: I’ve been living like this for years. How many? Is it twelve, now? No, fourteen—no, more … The work I’ve done for other people, getting things together, making things happen, sheltering the homeless, getting them fed—and as often as not paying for it. Suppose I had put aside a little, even a little, of that money, for myself, what would I have now? Even if it were only a few hundred pounds, five hundred, six, I wouldn’t be standing here sick with worry.…
“How much will it cost to replace those two beams?”
“The wood, about fifty—second-hand. Though I could probably find what I need on a skip if we could borrow the car again.
“As for the labour …” he said with a defiant little laugh.
“Don’t worry,” said Alice. She was thinking: And he’ll need help. He can’t possibly shoulder great beams into place, stand about propping up beams; he’ll need scaffolding or something. That means money.
She would go down and ask Mary and Reggie.
On the table a note, “We’ve gone to the Greenpeace demo. Love. Reggie and Mary.” His writing. “Love”! She sat at the table and counted what she had left. She had thirty-five pounds.
She went up again and worked on with Philip, clearing rubbish out of the attics. Where did it all come from, always rubbish and rubbish, sacks of it again, old clothes, rags most of them, and an old carpet, quite fit for use, more old clothes. Junk. Junk? At the bottom of an old black tin trunk, under cracking and broken shoes, were layers of fine soft material, dresses wrapped in black tissue paper. Evening dresses. She threw them down through the trap door and jumped after them to look. Well, look at that! Three really beautiful evening dresses, each individually wrapped in the black tissue paper. The early thirties. One was of black and orange and yellow lace, with gold thread in it. It had a plain smooth bodice to the hips, then flared out in a lot of little points, like petals. The metallic smell of the gold lace made her want to sneeze.
Alice stood back away from the trap door up into the attic so that she was out of Philip’s sight, and took off her sweat shirt. She slipped the bright dress on over her head. It would not go down past her hips, and stuck in a thick roll around her waist. There being no mirror in the house, she could not see what her arms and shoulders looked like, but she saw her sturdy freckled hands fidgeting at the roll of material, and felt that the dress was laying a claim on her, like an impostor demanding to be recognised. She stripped it off again angrily, and put back the sweat shirt, and with it a feeling of appropriateness and even virtue, as if she had been tempted briefly by the forbidden. She did not try on the apricot chiffon, with panels of silver beads back and front, some of them loosened, some vanished away as though a bead-eating insect had been at it. She held the sage-green lace with its swirling skirt up against her. It was tight above, with a pale-pink vee for modesty in the front, and the back cut down to the coccyx, with another little vee there. And afternoon dresses, the “New Look,” quite glossy and good. Who had put them up there, unable to throw them away? Who had forgotten about them and gone off, leaving all those trunks up there? She showed the dresses to Philip, who laughed at them, but when she said she would get something for them, quite a lot, shrugged, unwillingly respectful.
She put them in a suitcase and took the bus to Bell Street, to a shop where her mother, being hard up, had sold some dresses. She had got over a hundred pounds.
Saturday. The markets were crammed. The woman in the shop that sold antique clothes was already busy with a customer who was after a white crêpe-de-chine 1920s dress that had gold sequins in thick crusty-looking roses all round the hips. She paid ninety pounds for it. And it had a stain on the shoulder, which she said she would hide with a gold rose.
Alice went forward with her suitcase, saw the woman’s eyes narrow in greed as she took in what was there. Alice was determined to get every penny she could. She bargained closely over each garment, watching the woman’s eyes, which gave her away. They were clever, narrow eyes, used to poring over small stitches, a tiny rent, the set of a panel of embroidery. When Alice took out the apricot chiffon with the silver beads, she even sighed, and her tongue, which was large and pale, slid over her lips.