“He hasn’t been living there. He’s in and out. I don’t suppose he’s ever been there longer than two or three days at a time.”
“And Comrade Muriel goes for Andrew.”
“Actually, I think it is she who turns the cheek.”
“Oh well, I don’t care about all that,” said Alice, as usual saddened and disgusted. “Anyway, it all seems very hit and miss.”
“Why? The proof’s in the pudding. The police have actually been in three times while I’ve been here. They never found anything. Once half the rubbish sacks had just enough rubbish to cover what was really in them.”
“Which was?”
“Oh,” said Caroline airily, spooning up thick wet yellow sugar from the bottom of her mug, and licking it slowly with a fat pink tongue, “things, you know.”
Alice was silent. She was taking in everything she could of this plump, healthy creature who sat there exuding physical enjoyment. She was trying to understand the secret of it. But, noted Alice, though she might look like a sleek seal, smiling away and talking—presumably—about explosives, her pupils remained tight and unrelenting. They gave her a shrewd, even cold, look, and Alice was relieved to see it. She felt Caroline could be relied on.
“Well, I suppose explosives,” she remarked indifferently. “That’s what I thought from the start, really.”
“Well, that kind of thing. But I said to Comrade Andrew, I said, ‘Have any of us actually been asked about what comes in and out? I don’t seem to remember a vote being taken?’ ”
“You were there before he was?”
“Long before. I moved in a year ago. I was there alone for weeks. Then Muriel came. Then, suddenly, Andrew came. We never knew how Muriel had heard of it—Comrade Muriel is not, I would say, one of the world’s natural squatters.”
“No.”
“But she took the place over. The next thing was Paul and Edward—now, I think that she asked them in because Andrew told her to. Then I asked some friends of mine, three girls, who were in a bad squat in Camberwell. But Muriel soon got rid of them.”
“How?”
“Not so much”—said Caroline judiciously, smiling with the pleasure she was getting from talking and being understood—“not so much by what she did, but by what she
is
…” She waited for Alice to laugh. Alice laughed. Caroline went on, “They simply did not like the way Muriel assumed command, and then when Andrew moved in, they left.”
Alice sat thinking. She knew, from how Caroline was eyeing her, that thinking was what she was supposed to be doing.
“Very well,” said Alice at last. “So you don’t like Comrade Andrew.”
“Who
is
Comrade Andrew?” asked Caroline. “Who is he to give orders and say what is and what is not to happen?”
“We don’t have to do what he says. It is up to us to say no or yes.”
“But difficult to say no when a car simply arrives with five cases of pamphlets. Or something.”
More coffee. More sugar. Alice could not prevent herself from thinking: But your
teeth …
“And,” pronounced Caroline, smiling, amenable, sociable, but her little brown eyes hard and controlled, “do you know something? I do not give a damn about the fucking bloody Soviet Union. Or about the fucking KGB. Or any of that.”
“KGB” used like that did give Alice a bit of a shock; she had not actually said to herself, I am involved with the KGB. Besides, the words had a ruthless quality which was hard to associate with Comrade Andrew. She was silent, then said, “But it is a useful way to get trained. I mean, for some people.”
“For some people. And if they want that kind of training.”
“There is something about it all that doesn’t fit,” Alice said at last, with difficulty. It was hard to criticise Comrade Andrew. Aloud, at least; in her thoughts she could not prevent herself.
“Exactly. And do you know what it is? I have—strangely enough—been giving the matter my most earnest consideration.”
Alice laughed, as she was expected to.
“Yes. In my experience, which is not vast, but enough, everything turns out to be some kind of a muddle. You are imagining amazing fantastic brilliant plots, organised down to the last fantastically efficient detail, but no, when you discover the truth about anything, let alone KGB plots, it is always some stupid silly mess.”
Now Alice was really disturbed. It was because this was something her mother said. Had been saying recently—part of this new, upsetting phase she was in. Over and over again in the last four years, how many times had Alice not heard Dorothy Mellings exclaim, and with a relish in the scandal of it all that made Alice furious, “Just another bloody balls-up, that’s all. They’ve blown it! They’ve fucked it up. Oh, don’t waste your time sitting there trying to work it all out! It’s just another little
mess.”
Usually to Zoë Devlin. Who would try to reason with her—with Dorothy. In the way that she had recently been doing—reasoning with her mother, patiently, perseveringly, when she said this kind of thing. “Dorothy,
everything
can’t be a muddle, it’s just not
on
to slide out of it all like that! What’s got into you, Dorothy? It’s as if you can’t be bothered to think anything out any more?” And Dorothy Mellings to Zoë Devlin: “Who’s sliding out? I think you are. You are living in some kind of rose-pink dreamworld, you think everything goes along, all sensible and as the result of mature decisions! Well, it doesn’t! It’s just a great big bleeding
mess.”
To hear her mother’s words coming so complacently out of Caroline’s plump smiling face was so much of a blow to Alice, her two worlds becoming confused in this way, that she missed a good bit of what Caroline was saying. When she listened again she heard, “I think our Comrade Andrew was not up to his job. I think the West went to his head. The fleshpots, you know.”
“Then God help him,” said Alice, disgusted.
“Quite so. And Muriel was just too much for him, girl from the shires, Roedean and all that.”
“Roedean, is she?”
“Roedean and finishing school and gourmet-cooking school. Isn’t it amazing how the upper classes go for communism? Do you think Comrade Marx foresaw that in his crystal ball?”
“Who’s talking,” said Alice, knowing it was not right to talk about Marx like this.
“I? I’m not upper-class. Just boring old middle-class, like you.”
“I am one generation away from working-class. On my mother’s side.”
“Congratulations,” said Comrade Caroline, laughing.
“For all that,” said Alice, “I am sure Comrade Muriel will be very good.”
“Who said she wouldn’t? Born for it. I can see the headlines now: ‘Red Mole Caught Red-Handed in the …’ where, do you think?”
“BBC,” said Alice, unable to prevent herself.
“Right on. Or the
Times
. The
Guardian
, do you think?”
“No, the
Times
, wrong style for the
Guardian
. But probably by the time she’s been trained … She’s very clever, I am sure she is.”
“So am I, but Comrade Andrew didn’t fall for Comrade Muriel because of her espionage potential. They were hardly ever out of bed. Or, to be accurate, off the floor.”
Alice turned the switch. She said vaguely, “Oh well, I don’t care about all that. And so. Muriel’s gone. Andrew’s gone. You want to come here. That leaves …”
“And Jocelin wants to come here, too.”
“So there will only be Paul and Edward next door?”
“They are moving into a flat this week. They’ve found work. Rather, Andrew found them work. In a very strategic place. ’Nuff said.”
“So, soon there’ll be a different set of squatters next door.”
“Provided I’m not there. No hot water. Cold as Siberia. Not like this house.”
There was an empty room on the top floor, and another next to Roberta and Faye’s room.
“I don’t see why not,” said Alice.
“I can’t wait to come. Apart from anything else, the police dug up that pit in the garden, and all the rubbish we buried is blowing everywhere.”
For some reason this seemed to Alice the last straw she had been expecting. “Oh no,” she wailed. “Oh, God, no.”
“Oh yes. Back to square one. We said to them, when they had dug up everything, Aren’t you going to put all that rubbish back? ‘Piss off,’ they said. Charming, Old Bill is. Well, I’ll get my things.”
Alice went next door with her and stood at the gate looking in. Rubbish everywhere, and a brisk spring wind was blowing it about. The pit where she had seen—but what?—-was an ugly trench, with pale earth in untidy heaps.
But she could not leave Faye alone like this, and so she went back.
• • •
Faye did not come down until evening, wan and sad, and ready to weep. But she was in command of herself and willing to take part in the communal evening meal, with Caroline and Jocelin, Mary and Reggie, Philip and Alice.
It was all going on very nicely when, about nine, there was a violent knocking at the door.
“Oh no, not again,” said Caroline. Alice was already off and at the front door, opening it with a smile.
Two policemen, one of them the youth with the vicious face. They were in a bad mood, sent out to do something they didn’t want to do.
“We’ve been informed you have something buried in your garden,” said the ugly youth. “We are going to dig.”
“You know what’s there. We’ve told you,” said Alice. She was far from laughing. She knew that very little would make these two start breaking the place up.
“We know what you have told us,” said the other policeman, whom Alice had not seen before.
“I’ll get you our spade,” said Alice.
“We’ve got our own, thank you.”
Alice took them round to where the pit had been dug. The light from the kitchen fell out here.
“This is where the earth has been disturbed,” said the vicious youth to the other.
Alice retreated indoors swiftly. She said to the others, who were ready to explode into laughter, “Don’t, don’t, don’t laugh, or they’ll get us for it.” To Faye, who was tittering and swaying, on the verge of hysteria, “Faye, don’t.” Alice knew if that little psychopath outside was provoked by Faye at her worst, he could do anything. “We can laugh afterwards, not now.”
“She’s right,” said Caroline, and they sat, their faces wooden, containing an anguish of laughter.
Outside, in the streaming light from the window, the two men dug. Not for more than a couple of minutes. They straightened, stood on their spades, then disappeared.
Alice had been careful to leave the front door open, so that they would be visible sitting round their meal: the comfortable kitchen, the flowers, the food.
She went to the front door, looking polite and helpful.
The vicious one was ready to explode with temper.
“You people should be prosecuted,” he shouted, looking past Alice into the scene in the kitchen.
“We told you everything as we did it,” said Alice. “I came myself, to file a report.” She knew that phrase, “file a report,” was the right one.
He stood there literally grinding his teeth at Alice, ready to charge in and smash and destroy. But she was careful to keep her eyes away from him, and to look passive and even indifferent.
The other man was already in the police car.
In a minute they had gone. Alice fetched their own spade and swiftly filled in what they had taken out. Not too bad; Nature, as expected, was doing her job nicely.
She went back into the kitchen, and her appearance was the signal for a celebration of laughter and jeers. It seemed they could not stop laughing, particularly Caroline and Jocelin, for whom the whole story was new. Alice did not feel much like laughing. She knew that it was not the end; their visitors would be back.
She knew, too, looking at Faye, that she was unlikely to have much sleep that night. Indeed, it was past three when Faye went back upstairs. She accepted two Mogadons from Alice, and said good night prettily enough.
Very soon, however, she started weeping. Not the noisy angry weeping that she used when Roberta was there, but the heartbreaking helpless sobs of a child. Alice went in, and sat with her, holding her hand. Faye did not sleep until seven in the morning, and Alice slept sitting there beside her.
Several days passed. Faye was trying hard, and they all knew it, and supported her. When she heard people in the kitchen, she would come down and sit with them, chatting about everything quite amusingly, as she could, doing her little cockney act, but she tended to fall silent suddenly, staring; and then someone would gently try to rouse her and bring her back in with them again.
She offered to show Alice an economical vegetable stew, and it was very nice, and they all enjoyed it. Alice wondered how she could stand—if she was conscious of it—the way everyone was on tenterhooks for her to break out, break down. But she did not break down, or cry. She seemed to be quite normal, even ordinary; and Caroline and Jocelin even said they couldn’t see why people went on and on about Faye. She was very pleasant, she was very clever, and what a lot she knew about politics. It turned out that Faye had read a great deal, more than any of them, and was particularly well up on Althusser. She had written part of a thesis on Althusser at university, where, however, she had stayed only two terms before cracking up.
Faye did not go to bed until very late and, when she did, said to Alice that she would be all right by herself.
Alice got up in the night quite often, to listen outside Faye’s door. She thought that Faye hardly slept; often she wept, quietly, not wanting to disturb the others. Sometimes Alice could hear her moving about the room, lighting cigarettes, even singing a little to herself.
Roberta had written; they had the address of the hospital. Her mother was slowly dying; Roberta would come back as soon as she could.
A week had gone by. Jasper and Bert should be there. Then arrived a postcard written by Jasper, signed by them both, from Amsterdam, saying, “Wish you were here. Back soon.”
Caroline and Alice spent a lot of time together. Alice, drained and tired, needed Caroline’s natural vitality, her good spirits. Caroline admired Alice, could not stop talking about how Alice had transformed this house.