“But they are such bloody law-lovers,” said Caroline. “They’ll probably think it’s their bloody duty to inform, when they connect one thing with another.”
There was a bad moment, during which they looked at one another, acknowledging the truth of it. But Bert dismissed it, laughing. “Connect what with
what?
We haven’t even decided.”
“This is as good a time as any to talk it over,” said Jocelin.
“We’ll have to call down Roberta and Faye, then,” said Jasper, uneasily. He involuntarily looked up at the ceiling, immediately beyond which Roberta and Faye, presumably reconciled, lay or sat. At any rate, silently.
“Perhaps it isn’t the right time,” said Bert. From his grimace Alice deduced that Faye was in one of her moods.
She said vaguely, “Perhaps we should do it without Faye.”
They all looked at her, ready to be censorious. All, however, were thinking, as she could see, that there was something in what she said.
It was Jocelin, who had been working with Faye for some hours that day, who remarked, “But she’s very clever. And she’s got some good ideas about where.”
“Where?” asked Bert, laughing again. “Tell us. She hasn’t patented her thoughts on the subject.”
Jocelin said seriously, “I agree with you that Faye is emotional. But I got the impression this morning that she’d be good in an emergency.”
“Who is going up to call them down?” said Jasper, facetiously.
They all looked at Alice.
Alice did not move, but stirred her tea.
“Well, what’s wrong with you, then?” demanded Jasper.
“I’m tired,” she said.
She got up, in a way that seemed both impulsive and mechanical. She seemed surprised she had got up and was going to the door. Jasper was after her and had her by the wrist. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going for a walk,” she said.
“But we’re discussing whether to have a regular meeting or not. A meeting to decide what venue we are going to use.”
Again, it was like the moment when he had knelt behind her as she lay in her sleeping bag. A long pause, and she came back to her chair, went on stirring her tea as if she had not left.
“I’m going to call Faye and Roberta,” said Jocelin, and she went upstairs decisively.
They could hear a little descant of voices, Faye shrill, Roberta full and positive, Jocelin coming in like a response. Jocelin had the last word. She came down, announced that it was all right. They waited for half an hour, being humorous about it.
Then they were all together. It went on for hours. They discussed the merits of railway stations, restaurants, public monuments. The Albert Memorial was favourite for a few minutes, and then Faye said no, she adored it; she wouldn’t harm a hair of its head. Hotels. Number 10. The Home Office. MI-5’s information computer. The War Office.
It went on. As when a group of people are choosing the name for something among many possibilities, the suggestions became wilder and more imaginative, became funnier; the whole thing turned into comedy. From time to time, one of them would say that they must be serious, but it seemed that seriousness was not on the agenda. They were all weak with laughter when they finally decided where. And were restored to seriousness by Faye’s imperious demand that it was she who should actually place the explosives. It was her turn, she said. Alice and Jocelin and Bert had had all the fun last time.
The decision was taken that “the real thing” would be conducted by Faye, Jasper, and Jocelin as mistress of explosives, the others assisting. The meeting broke up at about eight. They celebrating by going to the Indian restaurant. Then Faye and Roberta went to the pictures. Bert and Jasper and Caroline—Bert wanted Alice to come, too—went to visit the South London squat. Jocelin had some last finishing touches to make.
Alice said no, she was all right, she wanted to go for a walk. Yes, she did want to go walking; she didn’t understand why they made such a fuss. She liked walking by herself.
This was the first time some of them had heard about this proclivity of Alice’s, and jocular remarks ensued.
She set off, frowning, into the dark streets. She stopped after a hundred yards or so and stood looking into a garden where only the outlines of flowers, a shrub, were visible, all colour drained from them. She came to herself with a sigh and walked towards her mother’s flat. There she briskly rang the bell, almost at once rang it again, and said when she heard her mother’s voice, “It’s Alice.” A pause. “It’s
Alice,”
she said, peremptory, peevish.
Another pause. A long one. Then the door buzzed and Alice rushed up the bare ugly stairway. It seemed that she expected, when her mother opened the door, to enter the pleasant large room of the Mellingses’ old house, for she charged in as if into a big room and had to pull herself up short in front of her mother, who stood with her back to the armchair she had obviously just left. It was a quite decent little room, but Alice thought it paltry and ugly. The two armchairs, on either side of the little gas fire, which had in the old house had so much space around them, now were like too-large, shabby prisoners, made to face each other. They needed re-covering; Alice had not noticed it before.
She said in a scandalised, hostile voice, “What do you think you are doing, in this place?”
The room was chilly. Alice did not mind this, but Dorothy was wearing a thick jersey and woollen stockings, winter clothes. Alice knew that baggy yellow sweater and the full brown skirt. They were old. Her mother’s hair, quite white now, was in an untidy chignon. Her haggard, handsome face, unsmiling, confronted Alice in a frown that showed no signs of softening.
As always when Alice was actually with her mother, pleasant and kindly emotions took over from the angry ones she felt when she was away from her.
The suffering and aggressive face she had brought in with her was already gone, and she smiled. It was the timid, anxious-to-please smile of the good daughter. She looked to see whether she might sit down. The armchair her mother had been in had books stacked up beside it to the level of the arm. On the shelf above the gas fire was a bottle of whisky and a glass, a third full.
The armchair opposite her mother had had someone in it. Alice even looked sharply around to see if this person was hiding somewhere. The cushions of the chair were pressed in, with a look of long and intimate occupancy. There was an empty teacup on the floor by this chair. Alice suddenly imagined Zoë Devlin and her mother sitting opposite each other, and heard their strong, relishing laughter, which seemed to exclude everyone else. A sharp pain went through her, and her look at her mother was again all resentment.
“Why are you bundled up like this? Are you ill?”
A pause. Dorothy said carefully, still frowning, “As you know, I feel the cold. Unlike you.”
“Then why don’t you light the gas fire?”
A pause. “As you might have been able to work out for yourself, I have to be careful with money.”
She spoke in a wary, almost hushed voice, afraid of what a tone of voice, a wrong movement, might provoke. Rather like a nurse with an intractable patient.
“I don’t know what you mean,” cried Alice. “It can’t be so bad that you can’t afford to have the fire on if you are cold.”
Dorothy Mellings sighed. She turned away. Not to the two armchairs, which now seemed a promise of a long friendly talk that was owed to Alice, but to a small oblong table against the wall, where it seemed she ate her meals. There was a plate on it with one apple and one banana. Alice let out a furious exclamation, and rushed to the small refrigerator in the cooking recess that called itself a kitchen. In the refrigerator was a bottle of milk, some cheese, four eggs, half a loaf of white bread.
Alice whirled round on her mother, but before she could say anything, Dorothy said, “Alice, are you going to want tea or something? Are you hungry?”
“No, I am not hungry,” said Alice, sounding accusing.
Dorothy sat down on one of the chairs at the small table, indicating that Alice should sit opposite, but Alice could not bring herself to acknowledge the rights of that petty little table in her mother’s life, and she sat on the arm of the chair that had had her mother’s friend in it.
“Has Zoë Devlin been here?”
“No, she hasn’t. As you know, Alice, we aren’t getting on all that well at the moment.”
“Oh, don’t be so bloody ridiculous. You’ve known her forever.”
“As
you know
, we quarrelled.”
“Well, has Theresa been?”
“Not yet.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve quarrelled with Theresa?”
“There is no reason why I should tell you anything at all,” said Dorothy. She half got up—she did not need to do more—reached over for her glass of whisky, and took a firm ration of it, her mouth a bit twisted. Grant’s whisky. Oh yes, Dorothy might be poor, thought Alice bitterly, but she wasn’t going to drink anything but her brand of Scotch.
Alice was looking anxiously at that stern face, which seemed as if it had been set forever into a frown, the brows pulled together.
Alice felt she did not know her mother. Dorothy Mellings, in the good old days, the days that could fill Alice’s memory for hours at a time, had been a tall, striking woman with reddish-gold hair in a chignon, creamy, delicately freckled skin, greeny-blue eyes. Rather pre-Raphaelite, really, they had used to joke, all of them. But since Dorothy never lolled or languished or rolled her eyes about, the comparison did not go far. Now she was a tall, strong, elderly woman with all that untidy white hair. Her eyes were like squarish lumps of green stone. When she was with other people—Zoë Devlin, for instance—she was all vitality and laughter.
“Who’s been here visiting you, then?”
“Mrs. Wood from downstairs.”
Alice stood up, stared, sat down again. “Mrs. Wood! What do you mean, Mrs. Wood! Why, she’s …”
“Are you suggesting she isn’t good enough for me?”
“But …” Alice was literally unable to speak. All that splendour of hospitality, the big house, the people coming in and out, the meals, the … “Mrs. Wood,” she stammered.
“I didn’t know you knew her.”
“But you can’t …”
“You mean that she’s working-class? Surely, Alice, you can’t hold that against her? As for me, I’ve reverted to my proper level. And who is it that boasts all the time about her working-class grandfather?” Dorothy, for the first time this evening, was smiling, was really looking at Alice, those greenish eyes cold, angry. “Or is it that you think she’s not intelligent enough for me?”
“But you have nothing in common—she’s never read anything in her life, for a start, I bet.”
“A sudden reverence for literature?” she enquired. And took another mouthful of whisky. “I can tell you, I find the company of Mrs. Wood just as rewarding as … a good many people I might mention. She’s not all full of rubbish and pretensions.”
This, reminding Alice of that inexplicable movement of her mother towards savage criticism of things she had held dear all her life, filled her eyes with tears, and she thought: It’s all been too much for her; oh, how awful, poor thing. She cried out, “You should simply never have said you’d leave home. You should have said you wouldn’t go. Then you wouldn’t have had to come here.”
This sounded like an appeal, as if her mother might even now say, “Yes, it was all a mistake,” and go back to her own house.
Dorothy was looking surprised. Then the cautious look was back, with the frown.
“But, Alice, you know what happened.”
“What does it matter, what happened? What is going to happen now, that’s the point?”
“Well, I do rather despair of talking to you lot about … necessity. It’s no use. You’ve all had it so easy all your lives, you simply do not understand. If you want something, then you take it for granted you can have it.…” Alice let out a little protesting sound, meaning to say that as far as she was concerned, her mother had gone off the point entirely. But Dorothy went on, “I know it is no use. I have been thinking hard about you, Alice. And I have come to one simple conclusion. You’re all spoiled rotten. You’re rotten. And Zoë’s children are the same.”
This was said without emotion. Almost indifferently. All passion spent.
Alice let this go by her, as part of Dorothy’s new
persona
, or craziness. It was best ignored. Would go away, probably, like this nonsense over living here.
“I think you should tell Cedric that you won’t live here; he must give you more money.”
Dorothy sighed, shifted about on her hard little chair, seemed to want to droop away from sheer weariness, pulled herself together, sat up.
“Listen, Alice. And this is for the last time. I don’t know why you don’t seem able to take it in. It’s not very complicated.” She now leaned forward, eyes fixed on Alice’s pudgy, pathetic, protesting face, and spoke slowly, spelling it all out.
“When your father left me, he said I could stay in the house. I was to have the top floor converted into a self-contained flat. I would let the flat and it would pay expenses. Rates. Electricity. Gas.” Alice nodded at this, connecting with what was being said. Encouraged, Dorothy went on, “But instead I took in you and Jasper. You wrote asking if you could come home for a bit.”
“I don’t remember anything like that. You wrote to me and said why didn’t I come home for a bit?”
“Well. Very well, Alice. As you like. I’m not going to argue. There’s no point. However it happened, you did come home. I took you and Jasper in. I told your father some people needed a long time to grow up—I was talking about you, of course. I don’t care about Jasper.”
A chill of rejection afflicted Alice. She strengthened herself, as she had done so often, to take the burden of it, on Jasper’s behalf.
“Your father kept on saying, ‘Throw them out. They are old enough to fend for themselves. I don’t see why I should have to keep that pair of scroungers.’ But I couldn’t. I couldn’t, Alice.” This last was said in a different voice, the first “nice” voice Alice had heard from her mother that evening. It was low, hurt, an appeal.
Alice felt strengthened by it and said, “Well, of course, that big house and only you in it, and your cronies coming in and out.”