This, she knew, cut across the underlying premise of the conversation: that she was willingly acting as his aide in assessing possible recruits. For something or other. Not stated. Understood.
Did they plan—number 43—to take in more members of their squat or commune?
“Why not? There’s plenty of room.”
“I agree, the more the better.”
And so the talk went on, reaching back, for some rather tense minutes, to her childhood. Alice’s mother did not really interest Comrade Andrew, but Cedric Mellings, that was a different matter. How big was his business? How many employees? What were they like?
Alice’s brother: Alice decided not to say Humphrey worked in a top airline firm. “Oh, don’t waste your time on him,” she said.
More cups of coffee, and some rather satisfying talk about the state of Britain. Rotten as a bad apple, and ready for the bulldozers of history.
When Alice said she had to go, she was expecting Jasper, and stood up, Andrew did, too, and seemed to hesitate. Then he said quickly, for the first time sounding awkward, “You have been with Jasper a long time, haven’t you?”
“Fifteen years.” Knowing what was coming, recognising it from many such moments in the past, she turned to go. He was beside her, and she felt his arm lightly about her shoulders.
“Comrade Alice,” he said. “It’s not easy to understand … why you choose such a … relationship.”
The usual ration of affront, resentment, even anger was in her. But this was Comrade Andrew, and she had decided that what came from him was, had to be, different. She said, “You don’t understand. No, you don’t understand Jasper.”
His arm still lay there, so gently that she could not find it a pressure. He said, gently, “But, Alice, surely you could …” Do
better
was what he wanted to say.
She turned to face him, with a bright, steady smile.
“It’s all right,” she said, like a schoolgirl. “I love him, you see.”
Incredulity made his smile ironic, patient.
“Well, Comrade Alice …” He allowed it to trail away, in humour. “Come in any time,” he said.
“Why don’t you come in and see our palace?”
“Thanks, I will.”
And so she went home, her mind a dazzle of questions.
She had been going up to admire her newly painted room, but something took her to Jim’s door. She knocked, heard nothing, went in. Jim lay on the top of his sleeping bag, facing her, his eyes open.
“Are you all right, Jim?”
No reply. He looked so dreadful.… She went to him, knelt, put her hand on his. It was dry, very hot.
“Jim! What’s wrong?”
“Ah, hell, what’s the point?” came out of him in a choking sob, and he put his arm over his face.
Under the loose sleeve was a red wound that went from elbow to wrist. Wide. Nasty. It seemed filled with red jelly.
“Jim, what happened?”
“I got in a fight.” The words came out of a sobbing smother of frustration and rage. “No, leave it, it’ll heal, it’ll be all right, it is clean.”
He seemed to be fighting with himself as he lay there, banging his fist to his head, clenching up his legs, then shooting them out straight.
“But the police didn’t get you.”
“No. But they will know I was there by now. There’s someone who’ll make sure of that! What’s the use? There’s no way you can get
out
of trouble, you can’t get
out
, what’s the use of trying.”
“Did you try for a job?”
“Yes, what’s the use?” And he turned over and lay on his back, arms loose by his side.
She had known it. There was a certain struggling fury that went with being jobless, and persevering, and being turned down, that was different from simply being jobless.
“What were you trying for?”
“A printing firm in Southwark. But I don’t know all this new technology—I learned the old printing. I did a year’s course, I thought it would get me somewhere.”
“Printing! You didn’t say. But there must be hundreds of little firms all over the country who still use it for special jobs.”
“Then I must have applied to half of them in the last four years.”
“My father has a printing firm. A small one. They do all kinds of things. Pamphlets and brochures and catalogues.”
“He won’t be using the old way for long.”
“I’ll write to him. Why not? He’s supposed to be a fucking socialist.”
“What’s the use, I’m black.”
“Wait, I’m thinking.”
He was still tense and hot and miserable, but, she thought, better. Like a nun, or his sister, she sat holding his hand, smiling gently down at him.
“Yes,” she said at last. “I’ll write to my father. I’ll do that. Make him practise what he preaches. He’s had blacks before, anyway.”
She could see he was, in spite of himself, beginning to hope again.
“I’ll write it now,” she said.
In the backpack in which she seemed to keep half her life she burrowed and came up with a biro and writing pad.
Dear Dad,
This is Jim
“What’s your name, Jim?”
“Mackenzie.”
“I have a cousin who married a Mackenzie.”
“My grandfather was Mackenzie. Trinidad.”
“Then perhaps we are related.”
A small gust of laughter blew through him, and left him smiling. He sighed, relaxed, turned towards her, put his hand under his cheek. He would be asleep soon.
She wrote:
This is Jim Mackenzie. He can’t get a job. He is a printer. Why don’t you give him a job? You are supposed to be a fucking progressive? He has been out of work for four years. In the name of the Revolution.
Alice
.
She neatly folded the letter, put it in a nice blue envelope (choosing the blue in preference to cream, for some reason), and addressed it.
Jim’s lids were drowsing.
“Why don’t you take this round tomorrow. Your cut won’t show.”
She pulled back the sleeve gently. He did not resist her. It was a really bad cut, which would leave a thick scar. It needed stitching. Never mind.
“I like you, Alice,” he stated. “You are a really sincere person, you know what I mean?” He did not add “unlike the others.”
She could have wept, knowing that what he said was true, feeling confirmed and supported. She stayed near him till he slept, went out into the dark hall, switched on the light with pride and with the knowledge of what that little act meant, what it had cost, would cost: she pressed a tiny switch on the wall, and electrons obediently flowed through cables, because the woman in Electricity had so ordered it.
Money. Where from?
Standing there, surveying the hall, so pleasant now (though she knew that really she ought to get carpet foam and do over the carpet, which after all had been folded up in the dust of the skip), she saw that Philip had mended the little cupboard under the stairs that the policeman had kicked in.
At this moment, a knock, and with a premonition she went to open the door, a look of authority already on her face.
It was the policewoman she had seen in the police station. At the gate stood her partner, a young man Alice had not seen before.
“Good evening,” said Alice, “can I help you?”
She stood with the door open behind her, so that the order of the hall could be properly seen; she saw the policewoman taking it in. The young policeman was, as Alice was not surprised to see, trying to locate with his eyes the place in the garden where these crazies had buried …
“Does a James Mackenzie live here?”
“Yes, he does,” said Alice at once.
“Can I speak to him?”
“You could, but he’s not here.”
“When will he be back?”
“He might not be back tonight. He’s gone to visit friends in Highgate.”
“He wasn’t here this weekend, then?”
“He was here last night.”
“He was here all last night?”
Alice said, “Yes. Why?”
“He was here all through the evening?”
“Yes, he had supper here, and then we spent the evening playing cards.”
There had been the slightest tremor in Alice’s voice; she had been going to say, “We all spent the evening,” but remembered in time that “all” might not be prepared to stick their necks out for Jim, if “all” could be reached and warned in time.
“You and he were here?”
“And a friend of his. A white boy. William something-or-other.”
Alice knew that the little hitch in the smoothness had reached the policewoman, even if only subliminally. But it was all right, she thought; she could tell that from the indecision of the woman’s manner.
Alice yawned, put her hand over her mouth, said, “Sorry, we were up late …,” and yawned again, offering the right sort of smile to the policewoman. Who smiled briefly in return, as she again looked carefully into the reassuring hall.
“Thanks,” she said, and went off to the gate, where she and her companion resumed their sharp-eyed stroll around the guilty streets.
Alice glanced quietly into Jim’s room. He was asleep.
She then went into the kitchen and wrote a letter to her mother, which she would have ready for Monica Winters, who would certainly be turning up here in the next day or two.
While she was doing this, within a few minutes of one another came Jasper, then Pat and Bert, then Roberta and Faye. The six sat round the table in the kitchen, with an assortment of take-away, which they had brought in separately and would now consume together: pizzas, and fish and chips, and pies. Alice made coffee, set the mugs around, and sat at the head of the table. Her happiness because of this scene was so strong she closed her eyes so that it would not beam out in great mellow streams and betray her to the sternness of the others.
Bert wanted to know about Jack. Jasper reported. The glances exchanged by Faye and Roberta told Alice that trouble would ensue.
It did. Faye demanded, in her pert, pretty way that did nothing to hide her seriousness, why all these plans had been made without a meeting to get everyone’s approval? Pat said she agreed: Jasper had no right to take it on himself.…
This, Alice knew, was partly directed at Bert, who had been Jasper’s accomplice.
Jasper, and then Bert, said that no one was being committed to anything. All that was planned was a quick, exploratory trip to Ireland, to meet a representative of the IRA, and to offer cooperation with a group here.
“A group of what?” demanded Faye, showing her pretty little teeth.
“Yes,” said Pat, though with a little edge of humour that told Alice it would be all right, “are we still committing all the vast resources of the CCU, or only ourselves?”
Alice saw that Roberta would have laughed at this, had Faye’s mood permitted it.
Bert, because he wanted to reinstate himself with Pat, took command and, his white teeth showing in the thickets of his beard while he offered a steady, responsible, forceful smile, said, “I can appreciate the comrades’ reservations. But in the nature of things”—and here he twisted his red lips to signal and to share with them the perspectives of this operation—“certain approaches have to be tentative and even, apparently,
ad hoc
. After all, the meeting with Jack was fortuitous. It was chance, and became productive, thanks to Comrade Jasper. It was he who made the first approaches.…” Alice could see that it was not going to be easy for any of them to admit obligation to Jasper, even though he was being correctly impersonal, sitting somewhat to one side of the scene, waiting for their approval, the image of a responsible cadre.
But just then there was a sound in the hall, the door to outside shut, and Jasper, jumping up to look, reported it was Philip going down the street. The fact that he had not come into the kitchen meant he felt unwanted, and this brought Faye in with, “And there is no place we can talk in this house now. Alice has seen to that.”
Pat said quickly, “Well, we can go next door. But surely it is all right for a few minutes here.”
“And then Jim will come in. Why not?” demanded Faye sweetly. “ ‘Oh Jim,’ we can say, ‘we are just having a little chat about the IRA.’ ”
“Or Mary and Reggie,” said Roberta, allying herself with Faye out of love. Actually, as the others knew, she agreed with them, did not need the furious condemnation that Faye had to use as a fuel to keep going.
“Why don’t we just agree, quickly, now, to one or two basics,” said Pat. “There isn’t very much to discuss, is there?”
“No,” said Faye. “I’m serious about it, if no one else is.” And with petulant little movements of her lips and eyes, she challenged them; then reached for a cigarette, and lit it, and blew out thick smoke in irritation.
And, to support her, came sounds from the hall: Mary and Reggie, who, full of talk and laughter, opened the door of the kitchen and were silent. With no reason not to come in—since it was the spirit of the house that people should sit around the kitchen table talking—they seemed to sense a unity, to know they were not wanted. Smiling politely, they said, “Oh, we were just …” And, in spite of cries of invitation that they should stay—from Alice, from Pat—went off up the stairs.
“Brilliant,” said Faye.
“I agree,” said Pat. “That wasn’t good. Well, I suggest someone nips over next door to see if we can borrow a room—that is, if it is felt that we need actually to discuss anything more.”
“I need to discuss a good deal,” said Faye.
Jasper went, was gone it seemed only for a minute, came back to say that they would be welcome.
He returned next door at once. Then Alice went, and Bert and Pat. Then Faye and Roberta.
The goose-girl admitted them, indicating a room at the top of the stairs—the same as that which in their house was inhabited by Jasper and Alice. It had been a nursery, and had lambs, ducks, Mickey Mouses, humorous dinosaurs, coy robots, witches on broomsticks, and the other necessities of the middle-class child’s bedroom.
“Christ,” said Faye violently, “what utter bloody
shit,”
and she even held out her pretty hands, clawed to show slender nails painted bright red, as if she would scratch the pictures off the walls. She smiled, however, if you could call it a smile.