Even the Thatcher demonstration sounded effective, in retrospect. After all, quite a few had been arrested. Reggie and Mary had—of course!—a television in their room. They all went up, and crowded in, making jokes about the large bed, the tidy furniture, the carpets. They sat on the bed and watched the news. There was no mention of the fascist professor, but there was a brief scene of the demonstrators struggling with the police at the university. The three were disappointed that they did not appear on the screen. The newscaster said that at one point the police were afraid a bomb had been thrown. “It was an orange,” screamed Alice, and they all laughed and jeered, and went down for more talk in the kitchen, taking with them four bottles of wine from a case of it that Reggie and Mary had under the dressing table.
“They won’t mind,” said Faye, laughing, but in a way that said they all knew they would mind very much.
Philip came in, but he was tired and went to bed.
The five sat up drinking and talking till late.
The demonstrations sounded better and better as the night wore on. They drank to the comrades in the police cells. Alice was sad she was not there—as it happened she had not been arrested for some time; she was beginning to feel she was not pulling her weight in the Struggle. But it was just as well, for on Monday Jasper and Bert were told the visas had gone through and the trip was on. They went off that afternoon.
Alice said, as they left, “See you in ten days.”
She saw them glance at each other—yet again the ridiculous, insulting, perfectly obvious “secret” shared look that people used all the time. It came to her, stunningly, that they did not expect to be back in ten days.
She thought this all over carefully, slept on it, and then wrote to the address she had for Pat.
Bert and Jasper have gone off, she wrote. Why don’t you come down for a day or two? Or, if you can’t come, please write. Do you know anything about this trip? Did Bert say anything about not coming back in ten days?
This letter brought a card, “Ring me at nine o’clock Thursday or Friday. Much love, Pat.” This “Much love” hurt Alice, and she wept a little.
When she heard Pat’s bright, firm, likable voice, Alice pleaded, “Do come down, do, Pat.”
“But I am short of money.”
“I’ll pay for your ticket. Do come.”
Pat said she would, and Alice understood, from the rise in her own spirits, how little she felt at home with Faye and Roberta, how little she had in common with the respectable Reggie and Mary.
Pat came next day, and the two young women commandeered the sitting room and stayed there, gossiping, exchanging news. Pat had met people Alice knew, in the commune she now lived in. Alice had to tell about the anti-Thatcher demo. She also delicately mentioned the fascist professor, hoping for some kind of support from Pat in her own private thoughts. But on Pat’s face came the helpless resentful look Alice half expected, and Pat reached for a cigarette and began to smoke furiously.
“You don’t imagine it’s any accident,” she said, “that all this stuff about genetic differences is being peddled now!”
“Why?” asked Alice, timid but dogged. “You mean he’s being paid to do it? Who? The CIA?”
Pat tossed her head angrily, blew out bitter clouds, and said vaguely, “Well, why not?”
Alice decided to leave it; no point in going on. Instead she asked Pat why she, Alice, had this impression that Bert and Jasper were not planning to come home at once. Pat sighed, and looked with unmistakable pity at her friend.
“They will be home, Alice,” she said gently. “On the day appointed. But
they
think they won’t be, do you see?”
Alice saw. In fact she had seen the moment Jasper had first mentioned it. But then she had blocked it off, for it was all so painfully ridiculous.
“Look, it’s Ireland, all over again. They had it all worked out. They will say to the Intourist guide: ‘Comrades, we want to speak to someone in authority.’ ”
“Oh, God,” muttered Alice, ashamed. “Oh, no!”
“Oh, yes! Yes, yes! The Intourist guide will of course say at once, ‘Whom would you like to see, comrades? Comrade Andropov?’ ‘Oh no, not really,’ Jasper and Bert will say modestly. ‘Someone less important will do for us.’ ”
Pat was laughing, but not happily, since she was mocking Bert; and Alice was suffering for Jasper.
“At once some very important comrade will appear, and say, ‘Comrade Willis, Comrade Barnes? At your service!’ Jasper and Bert will explain that they have decided to train as spies, preferably in Czechoslovakia or in Lithuania, where all the best spy schools are. The Russian will say, ‘Of course, what a good idea! But it will take an hour or two to fix up. Just wait for my return, comrades.’ ”
Alice dubiously laughed, stopped laughing, and remarked, “Well, all right. But what about Comrade Andrew?”
“What about Comrade Andrew?”
“It’s pretty casual with him, don’t you think? I mean, he says to just anybody he fancies, how about a spot of training.”
“He’s not done too badly, who he’s chosen.”
“Bert?”
“Bert said no. But just imagine Bert actually under discipline somewhere. In some kind of structured situation. He has a lot of qualities, Bert has.”
“Me?” enquired Alice, dubiously. “Are you going to say I need a structured situation?”
“No! I am certainly not. What you need is …”
“Oh, all right, I know. To be free of Jasper.”
“Poor Alice,” said Pat gently.
“Then poor Pat!”
“That, too!”
Alice put her head down on the arm of her chair, all energy gone out of her, as happened at those times when she was seeing Jasper clearly.
The two women stayed where they were for a few minutes, silent. Alice did not move; Pat smoked restlessly.
Alice said, “There’s another thing, so many people knowing. What’s to stop people from informing?”
“You mean, the police?”
“Yes.”
“Well, who of us would?”
Alice allowed the faces of those in the know to pass before her. Sat straight up, eyes shut, looking at these mental portraits. Faye. Roberta. Bert. Jasper. Pat. Herself. Muriel. Caroline? Jocelin?
“I suppose not,” she said. But she remained where she was, upright, looking. Now it was at the scene of her with Andrew after she had seen the … whatever it was at the bottom of the pit in the garden at 45. Pat did not know about that. Only she, Alice, knew.… Only she, Alice, knew because she had not told, would never tell, anyone else. She was reliable, she was. Because this was true, and because she had confidence in her absolute discretion, she felt confidence in Comrade Andrew.
“Yes, I think I agree with you,” she said. She spoke modestly, with a little air of discretion, of judgement. Pat smiled, and with affection, because this was very much Alice; and she said, deliberately changing the subject and their mood, “And now we are going to have a good time. That’s what I’ve come for!”
Then Pat suggested all kinds of little treats that Alice would never have thought of for herself.
They went to tea at the Savoy, for a start. Pat treated Alice. Pat wore a very smart black wool dress embroidered with bright wools she had bought at a jumble sale, and looked more striking, more fashionable than any other woman in the great pillared, gilded, romantic Savoy. Alice wore a skirt, but otherwise was as usual. They ate a lot, and Pat was fussy about her tea. They came out like successful buccaneers.
Then they spent a morning in Harrods, buying with their eyes. Rather, Pat did: Alice did not care about luxury, but she enjoyed Pat’s enjoyment. Again Pat wore this best dress of hers, the dramatic black wool, which made her, with her vivid glossy colouring, seem exotic, un-English. Then, next day, with the rain easing off, they went to Regent’s Park and walked about among puddles and lilacs and flowering cherries.
Then Pat said she must go back home. She said “home,” Alice noted.
She said to Pat, “Will you come down again? Soon?”
Pat looked self-conscious, laughed, and said, “Alice, I don’t think we will be seeing each other again. Well, perhaps. And yet again, perhaps not …” She was making a joke of it, in her way, but her eyes sent messages of regret.
“Why?” demanded Alice. “But why, why, why?”
Pat sobered, and said, “Alice, I keep telling you, I am serious, unlike those two bloody lunatics of ours.”
And with this she kissed Alice, tears in her eyes, and went off, running, to the tube. Out—Alice could see—of her life.
Alice slept on this, too, but did not feel enlightened when she woke in the morning. Perhaps she did not want to be.
She seemed to have lost impetus, did not feel like doing anything. Joan Robbins was in her garden. Alice stood talking with her for a time. Among other things, she learned that the two houses had been empty for six years. “Well, not exactly empty,” said Joan Robbins, embarrassed; and went on to talk of the people who had been there before the Council had commandeered the homes, families with children, grandparents, many visitors. They had been keen gardeners; the two gardens had been wonderful.
Soon some kind of social worker arrived and brought the old lady down to sit in the garden. Alice talked to her, too. As always when she stepped out of her own life, into the world of ordinary people, she felt divided, confused. Thus had she felt all the time she lived with Jasper in her mother’s house; it was why she had not wanted to stay there, was always pressing Jasper to leave. Now, after weeks with her own kind, comrades of one sort or another, her belief that her kind of life was the only one (for her now, for everybody later) was strengthened. Joan Robbins seemed to her pathetic, fussing over her clematis with fungicides and sprays; the old woman was half demented, and driving Joan Robbins crazy with continual demands. Alice, thinking firmly, “Life simply oughtn’t to be like this!,” went back to number 43, and there on the doorstep was Caroline from next door. She had a packet for Alice. She handed it over, said no, she wouldn’t come in, and went off to the bus stop. Alice looked into the packet. It was money. Inside the hall she quickly counted it. Five hundred. With a note from Muriel, saying, “Comrade Andrew said this was for you.”
Alice slid the packet into her sleeping bag, and went to number 45. As she arrived, Muriel was coming out, with a suitcase. But at first Alice did not recognise her.
She saw then that Muriel was not happy to see her, that she had probably counted on going off before Alice got there.
Alice said, “I must talk to you.”
Muriel said, “I don’t think I have got anything to say.”
They went quickly into the room used by Comrade Andrew, which had become a bedroom, for there were four sleeping bags arranged along the wall.
Muriel stood in the centre of the room, waiting for Alice to get on with it. Her suitcase stood beside her.
Muriel was not wearing battle dress today, or anything like it, but a very well cut linen suit in blue. From Harrods. Alice had seen it there the day before yesterday.
Muriel had her hair in the Princess Diana sheepdog cut.
Alice knew that Muriel was an upper-class girl and this was why she disliked her so much. She, like all her kind, had this decisive putting-down manner, implicit in every word and glance. Alice, at her democratic progressive school, which was full of such girls, had decided in the first week that she loathed them and always would.
Another thought well to the forefront of her mind was that Comrade Andrew had had an affair with Muriel because of the attraction of such girls for working-class people who professed to despise them.
“Why did Comrade Andrew leave this money for me?”
“It is nothing to do with me. Nothing at all,” said Muriel, as cuttingly and definitively as Alice expected.
“He must have said something.”
The two young women were standing facing each other in the large room, full of light, and also of traffic noise from the main road.
“Damn this bloody traffic,” said Muriel, and went to the windows, one, two, three, shutting each with a slam.
She returned to stand opposite Alice, having in the interval (which was why she had gone to the windows) made up her mind what to say.
Alice forestalled her with, “What am I supposed to do in return?”
At this Comrade Muriel showed a nicely controlled irritation.
“That you would have to discuss with Comrade Andrew, wouldn’t you?”
“But he’s not here. When is he coming back?”
“I don’t know. If he doesn’t come, there will be someone else.” And, since Alice remained obstinately confronting her, she defined the situation as she saw it: “Alice, you are either with us or against us.”
“I’d be with you—with Comrade Andrew—without the money, wouldn’t I?”
“Or do you simply want to go on being one of the useful idiots?”
Alice did not react to this, remained in her stance of infinitely patient, dogged enquiry.
“Lenin,” said Muriel. “A useful idiot: vague and untutored enthusiasm for communism. For the Soviet Union. Fellow travellers. You know.”
Alice had in fact hardly read Lenin. She felt for him a kind of bowing down of her whole person, like a genuflexion, as to the Perfect Man. That such a giant can have lived! was her feeling, and it was enough. If it came to that, she had read not much more of Marx than the
Communist Manifesto
. She had always said of herself, “Well, I am not an intellectual!”—with a feeling of superiority.
Now she felt that the goose-girl was being irrelevant, as well as offensive.
“I do not believe that Comrade Lenin despised people who sincerely admired the achievements of the working class in the communist countries,” said Alice, every bit as decisively, as authoritatively, as Comrade Muriel. Who was silent, gazing at Alice with slightly protuberant, light-blue eyes.
She then remarked, “Comrade Andrew thinks highly of your potential.”
The flash of delight that went through Alice made her impervious to anything Muriel might be thinking. She said humbly, “I’m glad.”
“Well, that’s it, I think,” said Muriel, and picked up her case.
“You’re off to start your career of crime, then?” said Alice, and laughed heartily at what she’d said. Muriel politely smiled, but she was furious.