Alice went back into the kitchen, tidied up this and that, listening for sounds of some or all of them coming back to talk it over. For she had understood that something bad had happened. It was not just another little harassment, like a visit from the police! When she realised that no one was coming, which meant they had not seen what by now they should, she sat down at the head of the table and lapsed into a numbed condition. Numbed feelings, not thought, for her mind was active.
No one had said anything to them about number 43’s becoming a collection point. Comrade Muriel would certainly have mentioned it, had she known. Caroline and Jocelin had not expected it. Comrade Andrew had not even approached the subject. (Here the thought of the money, the five hundred pounds, presented itself, and Alice contemplated it, as it were, without prejudice.) Number 43 couldn’t have people just dumping stuff here, and others whisking it off again, any time of the day or night! It simply wasn’t on! But who could Alice contact to announce this? It occurred to her that she had no means of reaching Pat, or Muriel; let alone Comrade Andrew. The unreality of it, that these people had been so vivid, so
there
, in this house and in the next house, for weeks—comrades, you could say intimates—and then not to be there, and so absolutely gone, lost, rubbed out that she could not even send them a postcard … This thought deepened her numbness, like a blank area slowly spreading through her.
And there was another thing. (But this was certainly not a new thought.) Here they were, committed to “doing something real at last,” all ready for it—you could say that number 43 was now quivering on the edge, like people in a little boat on the verge of a waterfall (here Alice painfully shook her head, like a dog clearing its ears of water)—yet they did not really have much confidence in one another. (Alice was replaying, as it were, the look on Jocelin’s face as she saw that Jasper and Bert lolled on the stairs, while she, Jocelin, ran down to help carry the big packages.) No, Jocelin did not admire Jasper! What did she think of Faye? Well, it was not hard to imagine. Almost certainly, though, she must approve of Roberta? Caroline? You could hardly imagine a greater contrast between the indolent, sensual woman and the cold, functional Jocelin. And herself, Alice? Did she despise her, too?
It occurred to her that she was using Jocelin as a touchstone, a judgement point. As though Jocelin were the key to everything? Well, it was she who was at work on the bombs, or whatever.
Alice went up to the top of the house, saw that light showed beneath the door of Jocelin’s workroom, knocked, heard a low “Come in.”
Jocelin looked up from where she sat behind her trestle, her hands intricately engaged with a length of copper wire. Close by her stood packages of various household chemicals, looking reassuring in their bright packaging.
Jocelin went on looking at Alice, waiting for her to explain herself. She was formidable and frightening, Alice thought. Yet what could be more ordinary than Jocelin? A stranger would see a rather slatternly blonde, strands of pale hair falling over her face, smears of some sort of white powder on her old grey sweater. But it was her concentration, her focussing of herself behind what she did …
Alice said feebly, “Hello,” and Jocelin did not respond, but went on working, pouring white grains from an old saucepan into a copper pipe.
“I didn’t like what happened down there,” said Alice, sounding ineffective even to herself, and Jocelin nodded and said, “No, neither did I. But I don’t see that we can do anything but go on. We must get the job done quickly, and then scatter.”
There was nowhere in the room to sit, only the trestle and behind it the stool on which Jocelin sat. Windows showed a greying sky. The birds would start soon. Alice stood in front of Jocelin like a schoolgirl in front of a teacher, and said, “Have you thought yet what we should do?”
“Yes, of course. What we blow up depends on our means, doesn’t it. I’ve got a pretty good idea of what the capacity of these things is. But we have to discuss it.”
“Have you … I mean … you’ve …”
“No, I haven’t done this before. But it’s a question of using your common sense,” said Jocelin briskly. She set aside one copper tube, which was about ten inches long and presumably had reached some stage of readiness, and took up another. She nodded sideways at the “recipe book,” which lay open. This production shared the same qualities as the devices made according to its recipes. It was not printed, but photographed, which gave it a technical, ugly look. It was on bad paper. It had a yellowish plastic cover, like a cheap cookery book. Everything on that trestle looked cheap, makeshift, sharp-edged, and for some reason unfinished. Everything, that is, except the clever packets of chemicals, which seemed glossy with the amount of thought and expertise that had gone into them.
“And it wouldn’t be a bad idea if we had a practice run,” said Jocelin, smiling. It was, as might be expected, a cold, off-putting smile.
“Right on,” said Alice. “Of course.”
“We could choose something that deserves to be blown up.”
Alice came to life with, “Yes. Something absolutely shitty … something revolting, yes.”
Jocelin looked at her curiously, because of this sudden animation. “Have you anything in mind? I want something defined, if you know what I mean. Something definite, not too big; and solid. So that I can check quantities.”
Alice was reviewing in her mind’s eye things she would enjoy seeing blown up. She had to discard the high corrugated iron fences around the former market where everyone had had such a good time; which, all through the week, and particularly on Saturdays and Sundays, had been like a festival. A fence was not “defined.” It went on and on.
“Not a telephone box,” said Jocelin. “It says here exactly how much one needs to do one of those in.”
“A car?”
“Yes, we might have to use a car, because of the difficulty of access. Of being seen. But I know what a car would need. Something else.”
Alice smiled. “I know what.” A passion of loathing had taken her over, so that she felt quite shaky with it. “Oh God, yes,” she breathed. “I’ll show you. It’s not far.”
“Right.” Jocelin left her post and was beside Alice as they went silently down the stairs. The hall was not dark, but grey. Daylight. There would soon be people in the streets, the early workers.
They had only to walk half a mile, to an area of small streets that had been built before the invention of the motorcar. Now lorries trundled there all day, crunching backwards around corners, passing one another with inches to spare. The pavements, built so that two people could pass each other, were narrow, and in two of these little streets, at right angles to each other, the pavement had been widened on one side, thus further narrowing the streets by about a yard. This piece of official brilliance was dazzling enough, but in addition, to make it all totally incomprehensible to the ordinary mind, having gained this extra yard or so of pavement for the comfort and satisfaction of the citizens, the Council had then stuck all along the reclaimed edge of pavement cement stanchions or bollards of a peculiarly ugly grey-brown, about a yard tall, and round, like teeth. These hideous and pointless and obstructive objects, twenty or so around each corner at either end of the afflicted street, which Alice passed whenever she went to the Underground, provoked in her the all-too-familiar helpless rage, useless, violent, and unappeasable. She would stand there, examining this scene as she had done when seeing how the Council workmen had filled in lavatories with cement, smashed pipes, vandalised whole houses, saying to herself, People did this. First, in some office, they thought it up, and then they made a plan, and then they instructed workmen to do this, and then workmen did it. It was all incomprehensible. It was frightening, like some kind of invincible stupidity made evident and visible. Like modern university buildings.
Side by side on the pavement, which was, because of the cement teeth, as narrow as it had been before the widening, Alice and Jocelin looked at the scene. A reversing or too narrowly turning lorry had knocked one of the teeth sideways. Their bases were stained with dog urine and shit. Under the low grey dawn sky, the still-sleeping houses held the people who would be insulted by these pavements, these cement teeth, every time they came out of doors. The houses seemed tender and innocent, the sky pure and sad. Then began the dawn chorus.
Alice was weeping with rage.
Jocelin sighed, and said, “Right. I see what you mean. But this isn’t an easy location. There must be people around most times of the day and night.”
“There are none now.”
“But there are always night owls looking out of windows, or women up with their babies.”
Alice was comforted by this evidence of the ordinary in Jocelin, but said, “But that is true of everywhere, all the time, isn’t it?”
Jocelin did not answer. She was looking at the knocked-askew tooth. Without guiltily glancing around, or looking along the rows of windows, she went quickly to this stanchion and tried to lift it. It moved a little. Alice joined her, and together, with difficulty, they raised it to the perpendicular and let it go again.
Swiftly, Jocelin examined the gap at the base of this tooth, where there were some thin metal wires, and said, “This will do. I’ll put the charge under it. Then make it stand upright. All I want to know is how much I need to use of something. Tomorrow. We’ll do it tomorrow. About an hour earlier than this.”
It was getting on for five.
They had been standing there for a good ten minutes, but not a soul had appeared. Yet they were surrounded by windows and, possibly, eyes. A familiar feeling of recklessness, excitement, was stealing through Alice. Her awful lethargy had gone. The dim, grey numb feeling like a poison—gone!
And as they turned the corner to their street, she broke into a run, and sprinted, from sheer excess energy, up to their gate, and vaulted over it, and then up the path, to be brought to a halt by the door, which after all had to be opened. With a key.
Jocelin, arriving calmly, said, “One has to be very together for this job. Calm. Not excitable.” Alice muttered something apologetic.
They went up to bed.
Alice did not sleep much; she was thrilling with excitement, with anticipation. Coming downstairs in a sleeping house, she made herself walk sedately, because of what Jocelin had said.
She sat in the kitchen and thought, Well, here I am again, waiting for people to wake up. She drank tea, ate wholemeal toast and honey, then remembered the packages in the attic. At once her whole self seemed afflicted with confusion, with division. What was needed was a car … but there was no car at 45…. How to get hold of a car? Checking that it wasn’t too late—about eight, time to get her before she went to work—Alice walked as fast as she could to Felicity’s place.
Felicity was just coming out of the gate, and when she saw Alice, wary annoyance possessed her. But Alice gave her no time to develop this. She went straight up and said, “Philip’s affairs are more or less sorted out. But they are looking for his sister. If they don’t find her in a couple of days, they’ll fix the funeral for Monday or Tuesday anyway.” Felicity, as expected and as she ought, looked embarrassed, if impatient, and said, “Thanks, it’s good of you to take it on.”
“I had no alternative,” Alice reminded her crisply.
The two women stood facing each other, but Felicity looked as though she were in a game of trying to dodge past someone without being touched. Alice said, “Can I borrow your car for a few hours?”
At this Felicity sighed and said, “But I’m using it this morning.” Felicity was a social worker.
“I need it,” said Alice simply.
Felicity thought, and said, “You could have it tomorrow morning until lunchtime.” She could not have said more clearly: And that is all you are getting from me as
quid pro quo!
Alice answered this with, “Fine. We’ll consider accounts settled, then.” Hearing it put into words made Felicity blush, but she said, “I’m in a hurry. Same time tomorrow?” And almost ran to her car, a Datsun, which stood parked with all the other conforming, obedient cars along the pavement’s edge.
That’s done, thought Alice, and put all thoughts of the dangerous packages out of her head. Tomorrow she would take them to the municipal rubbish tip, and that would be that. And if any more turned up, they would be got rid of.
Outside her front door stood a man, in a neat grey suit and a tie, so much the official that she thought, Oh no, not the Council again, and put on her competent, I-am-coping-with-everything face.
But it was in an American accent that he said, or stated, “Alice Mellings?”
“That’s right”—and she knew that this forthcoming encounter was one she would need all her wits for. Her excited blood told her so.
“Can I come in?”
Without speaking, she opened the door, and went in front of him to the kitchen, and indicated that he should sit in the chair at the end of the table. She put on the kettle and sat at the head.
He looked younger than herself. But he was the type to look young. He had a smooth face, attentive and polite, like an old-fashioned student. He had rather nice brown eyes, at the moment devoted to her every movement, eyes that examined her as closely as she did him. He had well-cared-for hands. But his most remarkable feature was his featurelessness. There was nothing, but nothing, to fasten on to in him. A clerk; someone essentially indoor, weathered at the worst by a draught or too-cold air from a left-open window. He might have taken an exam in how to be ordinary! Yet there was something excessive in it.… Of course, she, Alice, was only likely to meet nonconformists—or, as her mother in her old-fashioned way put it, bohemians; and, of course, in England in these days, particularly London, no one gave a fuck, but all the same …
It was he who broke the silence with, “Comrade Mellings, I was informed early this morning that you were reluctant to accept a consignment of
matériel.”
Alice stared. The use of the word
matériel
now, in this context, was not thrilling her at all. In this situation (one she wanted to shake off and be rid of), the word
matériel
was too portentous; it was a word that insisted on being taken seriously.