Thus showing what he felt about much of their politics, or at least their methods, Reggie did slightly chill the good humour, which was strong enough to let them tease the Greenpeace couple in a robust chorus of “ohhh”s and groans.
“That’s right,” said Mary, putting her hand into Reggie’s for support; “you aren’t going to change
her
ideas with a few boos. But facts will unlodge them.”
“I agree,” said Philip. It was an effort for him to do this—challenge the real power holders of the commune (as they were now calling it, not a squat). But he did it. He looked even frailer and smaller than he had before he started this new job. There was a peaky, sharp-edged look to him. His eyes were red. But there was a tough, angry little look, too; he was being given a bad time at his work, which, said the Greek, his employer, went too slowly.
Oh yes, all this love and harmony was precarious enough, Alice was thinking as she sat and smiled; just one little thing—puff!—and it would be gone. Meanwhile, she put both hands around her mug of coffee, feeling how its warmth stole through her, and thought: It is like a family, it
is
.
Faye was saying, her teeth showing as she bared them, in her characteristic cold excitement, “Boos! Screams! I’m going to
kill
him! What right has he got to come here with all the filthy poison of his about women. We have enough reactionaries of our own!”
Roberta said, “All creeping out of their little holes and showing their true colours. Are you coming with us, Jasper? Bert? Show solidarity with the women?”
A pause. It was to Milchester that Alice longed to go. To Mrs. Thatcher. But here was a lift to Liverpool, and that would cost nothing. Jasper knew she wanted Milchester. So did Bert. She had said she had no money. Which was true; only her Social Security. She was ready to go to Liverpool. She hated the Defence Secretary, and not only because of his policies—there was something about that sly, malevolent Tory face of his.…
As for the fascist American professor, she could not see what Roberta and Faye and all the others were on about. She had never been able to see why the word “genetic” should provoke such rage. She thought they were silly, and even frivolous. If that’s how things were, then—they were. One had to build around that.
Once, long ago, during her student days, she had said—earnestly, enquiringly (in a genuine attempt at harmony based on shared views)—that women had breasts “and all that kind of thing,” whereas men “were differently equipped,” and surely that must be genetic? And if so, then the glands and hormones must be different? Genetically? This had caused such a storm of resentment that the commune had taken days to recover. All this sex business, she thought, was like that! Anything to do with sex! It simply made people unbalanced. Not themselves. One simply had to learn to keep quiet and let them all get on with it! Provided they left her out of it.…
Twenty years ago, more, her mother, in her slapdash, friendly, loud, earth-motherish way, had informed Alice that she would shortly menstruate, but she was sure she knew all about that anyway. Of course Alice had known about it from school, but her mother’s saying it put it on her agenda, so to speak, made it all real. She was angry, not with Nature, but with her mother. Thereafter, her attitude towards “the curse”—her mother insisted on using this jolly word for it, saying it was accurate—was one of detached efficiency. She was not going to let anything so tedious get in the way of living.
When people probed her about her attitudes towards feminism, sexual politics, it was always this beginning (as she saw it) that she went back to in her mind. “Of course people
ought
to be equal,” she would say, starting already to sound slightly irritated. “That goes without saying.” In short, she was always finding herself in a false position.
Now she sat silent, cuddling her rapidly cooling coffee, smiling away, and waiting for the subject of the fascist professor to pass.
It did, and Bert remarked, “I’ve always liked Milchester.”
This seemed to various people thoroughly off the point. Was he drunk, perhaps? He certainly was drinking more than his share. Everyone was humouring him these days, because of Pat. Unconsciously, probably. His appearance, his condition claimed this from them. He was gaunt, morose, even absent-minded; it was as though other thoughts ran parallel to the ones he expressed.
He went on, “It’s always been a garrison town.”
Incredulous exclamations. Faye said, “God, you’re mad, you like that? War, soldiers?”
Bert said, “But it’s interesting. Why should towns go on being the same, century after century. Milchester was a garrison town under the Romans.”
A silence. Thrown off balance by this note so different from their usual one, they remembered that he had done History at university.
“Countries, for that matter,” said Bert. “Britain goes on being the same. Russia goes on being the same. Germany—”
“Any minute now we are going to have national characters, like genetic doom,” said Faye, furious.
Bert, recalled to himself by her tone, shrugged, and sat silent.
“We’ll go to Milchester,” said Jasper, and, catching Alice’s glance, smiled, then winked. Proudly: he was proud of being nice to her. This meant he would pay for her, the train fare. Weekend return.
Eleven pounds
. For the three of them, thirty-three pounds. With that they could buy … But that was silly; people had to have a break. Holidays. Comrade Andrew had said so.
She smiled intimately at Jasper, tears of gratitude imminent, but his eyes shifted away from the pressure of her emotion.
Faye said violently to Roberta, “It looks as if you and I will be on our own!”
“Hardly alone, darling. There’ll be a good turnout, I’m sure.”
Faye tittered, looking accusingly at her comrades, and then said, “Well, I’m for bed.” She went out without saying good night. Roberta smiled at them all, asking toleration for Faye, and went after her. They could hear how Faye said on the stairs that they were all fascists and sexists. They smiled at one another.
Then Reggie and Mary said they were to be picked up tomorrow at five, so as to get to Cumberland in time for the demo, and they wanted an early night.
Philip went, too; he was starting work at eight in the morning.
Jasper, Bert, and Alice sat on discussing tomorrow. Alice saw that Jasper did not want her to throw eggs or fruit at Mrs. Thatcher. He did not say so, but it was obvious. That meant he wanted her here with him, not in prison. This made her wildly happy and grateful. Affectionate impulses kept attacking her arms; they yearned to embrace him. Sisterly kisses inhabited her smiles. He felt this, and, though he was explaining plans to her, addressed himself to Bert. He was not going to let himself be arrested, because he and Bert were so soon off to the Soviet Union. The visas might come any day, but if not in time for this trip, then there was another with vacancies in a week.
Alice was disappointed that she must stay in an orderly part of the crowd, but never mind, another time.
Bert said he was going to bed. At once Jasper got up and said he was, too. Alice understood he did not want to be alone with her, though she knew he was happy enough to have her there when Bert was. She went up into the room she had shared with him, next to Bert’s. Bert was of course less noisy without Pat; but he was sleeping badly, as she could hear. And tonight, even with the door tight shut, she could hear that Faye was having one of her turns.
“Faye had one of her turns last night,” Roberta might say, having forgotten that the old-fashioned phrase—Victorian?—once used humorously by Faye (“I was ’aving one of me turns, me dear”)—was meant to be humorous, so that it had become ordinary speech. At the moments when Roberta used it, she acquired a workaday, bygone look, was like a servant or a lower-class person from a play on the box. Theatrical. When were Faye and Roberta themselves? Only when they had been beaten back, down, by some person or situation, into being the people who used those clumsy blurting labouring heavy voices, which made them seem as if they had been taken over by pitiful strangers who could not be expected to know Faye, know Roberta.
Alice slept badly. She woke to hear Reggie and Mary go downstairs; their cheerful voices were loud, as if they were alone in the house and it belonged to them. She heard Roberta and Faye go down, quiet, not talking. It was nine before Bert woke next door; he was lighting cigarettes one after another. She thought, Perhaps we’re not going to get to Queen Bitch Thatcher today. And descended to the empty kitchen, determined not to show disappointment. Then Bert did come. At once he went to wake Jasper, who, she could see, would easily call the whole thing off. It was raining steadily.
But they did get out of the house and to the train; and watched London give way to the country through the dirty train windows and grey shrouds of rain. Bert was silent, thinking his thoughts, which—Alice suspected—he would be sharing with Jasper were she not there. Jasper was being polite with her.
At the station they took a bus to the university. The great cold lunatic buildings looked at them through the downpour, and Alice felt murder fill her heart. She knew most of the new universities; had visited them, demonstrated outside them. When she saw one she felt she confronted the visible embodiment of evil, something that wished to crush and diminish her. The enemy. If I could put a bomb under that lot, she was thinking, if I could … Well, one of these days …
They were late. Outside the main entrance about sixty demonstrators huddled under plastic hoods and umbrellas, herded by eighty-odd policemen. At the sight of this, Jasper came to life, and ran forward, jeering, “Fascist pigs, pigs, pigs. Cowards! How many of you do you need for one demonstrator?” Alice ran to catch up with him, so as to be beside him, ready to calm him down. Bert came on slowly behind, walking, not running.
The official cars came sweeping up, and before Alice, Jasper, and Bert could reach the crowd, Mrs. Thatcher had got out, and was being led quickly in. Fruit and—as Alice had hoped—eggs sailed through the air, exploding with a dull squelch. Mrs. Thatcher had gone inside.
The demonstrators began a steady chant of “Nuclear missiles out. Out, out, out. Nuclear missiles out, out, out.”
They kept it up bravely. Mrs. Thatcher would be inside for two hours, at least.
The policemen were bored and resentful, forced to stand there in the rain; they were only too ready to be provoked. A girl near Alice picked up a large orange from the ground and flung it at a policeman. His helmet was dislodged. Delighted, two policemen came to her. She dodged about in the crowd for a bit, then they caught her, and she went limp and was dragged to a van, her long brown hair trailing wetly. The two policemen came back to a chorus of boos and jeers. Alice could feel Jasper beside her, pulsating with frustrated excitement. He was longing for a real tussle. So was she. So were the police, who grinned challengingly at the demonstrators. Alice, remembering her role, said to Jasper, “Careful, that one over there, he’s a brute, he’s just waiting to get you.” And, since Jasper seemed to be about to explode into action, “Remember, it’s Saturday. We don’t want to spend the weekend inside. And, anyway, there’s your trip, don’t forget.”
Others, less burdened by circumstance, were throwing fruit and eggs at the police, and were promptly being taken to the vans.
“Fucking police state,” shouted Jasper, almost out of control with excitement. He was dodging about in the crowd, as if he were being pursued.
The crowd took it up: “Police state, police state,” they yelled.
Alice saw an eye signal pass among the policemen; she knew that they would all be arrested at the slightest provocation. She yearned for it, longed for the moment when she would feel the rough violence of the policemen’s hands on her shoulders, would let herself go limp, would be dragged to the van.… But she said to Jasper, “Come on, run,” and she grabbed him by the hand and they ran. Bert, standing rather by himself at the edge of the crowd, stepped back as the arrests started. He stood watching. But he, too, would be arrested in a moment. Alice, her blood on fire, her face distorted with excitement, rushed in, darted among the policemen, admiring her own skill in it, grabbed Bert, and said, “Come on.” Bert, roused, said, “Oh yes. Yes, Alice, you’re right.” And followed her.
“Get them,” shouted a policeman, as the three sprinted away.
Five or six policemen set off after them, but one slipped in a puddle, rolled over, and slid along in the mud, and when he tried to get up, he fell again. It seemed that he had hurt himself. The others crowded around him. Meanwhile, disappointed that the chase had been so short, the three found their way to the bus stop. It was pouring steadily, a cold hard rain.
Their spirits sank, now that the challenge of the police was taken off them. It had not been very satisfactory. They were all thinking that they had spent a lot of money for very little.
They went into a café. The men ate sausages and chips; Alice, a salubrious vegetable soup.
They debated about whether to go back to the university for Mrs. Thatcher’s exit to the cars. Alice was for it, though she was afraid of the effect of that pink-and-white, assured, complacent Tory face on Jasper. If he were kept in for the weekend, the weekend ticket return would be invalid, and the fares back on Monday would be double.
But she did feel she hadn’t had her money’s worth.
They agreed they would go back, to show solidarity with the others—if any demonstrators still remained. But it began to rain even harder. A real tropical deluge, if such cold rain deserved the name “tropical.”
They returned to the station and, dispirited, to London. There they went to the pictures, and then, finding Faye and Roberta in the kitchen, they all swapped notes. Clearly, they—Jasper and Alice and Bert—would have done much better to have gone to the anti-professor demo, which had been a great success. About a thousand people, Faye said—Alice automatically corrected this to “six hundred.” Mostly women, but quite a lot of men. They had jostled the professor badly, had nearly brought him down, had got him really rattled. “Well, that ought to give him pause for thought, at least,” said Roberta happily, thinking of how she had shrieked he was a scummy sexist and in the pay of the fascists.