The Good Terrorist

In the morning, after their breakfast coffee, he stood silently and balefully near her until she gave him the fare to Dublin. Then he said that he was going to meet Jack and talk things over. If he was not back tonight, he would be tomorrow, and she must tell Bert that they were going to Ireland on Tuesday, early.

He left. She thought: Is he going on one of his things, then - cottaging, cruising...? She believed not. He wouldn't risk it, not with his whole soul set on the trip to Ireland. Was "Jack," then, like him? No, she was sure not. Talking about Jack, it was how he talked about Bert, how he talked about the men with whom he had this particular relationship: admiring, dependent, you could say passive... but who was it now who set the pace, making Bert go to Ireland, making Jack take them? No, not simple at all, this younger-brother thing.

She had the whole day. Alone, you could say.

Philip had climbed up into the attic - she must go up and help him, stand by him, or he would start feeling ill again. Jim - where was Jim, what was wrong? He had not been in since yesterday.

Faye and Roberta? She had heard them come in very late. Pat said they went to late-night movies, and then on to parties. Their other life - women. The close, sweet, bitchy - as far as Alice was concerned - cloying, claustrophobic world of women. Not for her! But they were welcome to it. Let a thousand flowers bloom, and all that.... Ten in the morning, and Mary and Reggie were still in bed. Mary had come down, made mugs of coffee, taken them up, and they lay, no doubt, side by side, in that amazing double bed, which had a proper headboard and little built-in side tables. Even the thought of that bed, the life that the bed implied, made Alice feel threatened. Stuck together for a lifetime in that bed, drinking cups of coffee, looking at people who were not like themselves in that cautious keep-off way.

Where was she going to get money. Where. She had to have it. Had to have money. Had to.

Sunday.

Good grief, it was only Sunday, six days after she and Jasper had left her mother's - had left home. She had achieved all that, in such a short time. Full of energy, she went up to the attic and to Philip, in his white overalls, a brave manikin moving about under the rafters of the attic. There was a horrible smell of rot.

"Two of these beams ought to be replaced," he said. "Dry rot. We'll have the whole house down."

Money. She had to have money.

Too early to ask Mary and Reggie. At some point a negotiation would take place. Already she could see their faces, the faces of the fucking bloody middle class, when the subject of money was on the agenda. God, how she hated them, the middle classes, penny-pinching, doling out their little bits, in their minds always the thought of saving and accumulating, saving - thought Alice, her mouth full of bile, as she stood gazing up at a beam a foot across that looked grey and flaky, with whitey-yellow fibres in it. The dry rot itself, which would lay its creeping arms over all the wood, if it were allowed, then creep down the walls, into the floor below, spread like a disease...

She thought: I've been living like this for years. How many? Is it twelve, now? No, fourteen - no, more... The work I've done for other people, getting things together, making things happen, sheltering the homeless, getting them fed - and as often as not pay- ing for it. Suppose I had put aside a little, even a little, of that money, for myself, what would I have now? Even if it were only a few hundred pounds, five hundred, six, I wouldn't be standing here sick with worry....

"How much will it cost to replace those two beams?"

"The wood, about fifty - second-hand. Though I could probably find what I need on a skip if we could borrow the car again.

"As for the labour..." he said with a defiant little laugh.

"Don't worry," said Alice. She was thinking: And he'll need help. He can't possibly shoulder great beams into place, stand about propping up beams; he'll need scaffolding or something. That means money.

She would go down and ask Mary and Reggie.

On the table a note, "We've gone to the Greenpeace demo. Love. Reggie and Mary." His writing. "Love"! She sat at the table and counted what she had left. She had thirty-five pounds.

She went up again and worked on with Philip, clearing rubbish out of the attics. Where did it all come from, always rubbish and rubbish, sacks of it again, old clothes, rags most of them, and an old carpet, quite fit for use, more old clothes. Junk. Junk? At the bottom of an old black tin trunk, under cracking and broken shoes, were layers of fine soft material, dresses wrapped in black tissue paper. Evening dresses. She threw them down through the trap door and jumped after them to look. Well, look at that! Three really beautiful evening dresses, each individually wrapped in the black tissue paper. The early thirties. One was of black and orange and yellow lace, with gold thread in it. It had a plain smooth bodice to the hips, then flared out in a lot of little points, like petals. The metallic smell of the gold lace made her want to sneeze.

Alice stood back away from the trap door up into the attic so that she was out of Philip's sight, and took off her sweat shirt. She slipped the bright dress on over her head. It would not go down past her hips, and stuck in a thick roll around her waist. There being no mirror in the house, she could not see what her arms and shoulders looked like, but she saw her sturdy freckled hands fidgeting at the roll of material, and felt that the dress was laying a claim on her, like an impostor demanding to be recognised. She stripped it off again angrily, and put back the sweat shirt, and with it a feeling of appropriateness and even virtue, as if she had been tempted briefly by the forbidden. She did not try on the apricot chiffon, with panels of silver beads back and front, some of them loosened, some vanished away as though a bead-eating insect had been at it. She held the sage-green lace with its swirling skirt up against her. It was tight above, with a pale-pink vee for modesty in the front, and the back cut down to the coccyx, with another little vee there. And afternoon dresses, the "New Look," quite glossy and good. Who had put them up there, unable to throw them away? Who had forgotten about them and gone off, leaving all those trunks up there? She showed the dresses to Philip, who laughed at them, but when she said she would get something for them, quite a lot, shrugged, unwillingly respectful.

She put them in a suitcase and took the bus to Bell Street, to a shop where her mother, being hard up, had sold some dresses. She had got over a hundred pounds.

Saturday. The markets were crammed. The woman in the shop that sold antique clothes was already busy with a customer who was after a white crepe-de-chine 1920s dress that had gold sequins in thick crusty-looking roses all round the hips. She paid ninety pounds for it. And it had a stain on the shoulder, which she said she would hide with a gold rose.

Alice went forward with her suitcase, saw the woman's eyes narrow in greed as she took in what was there. Alice was determined to get every penny she could. She bargained closely over each garment, watching the woman's eyes, which gave her away. They were clever, narrow eyes, used to poring over small stitches, a tiny rent, the set of a panel of embroidery. When Alice took out the apricot chiffon with the silver beads, she even sighed, and her tongue, which was large and pale, slid over her lips.

For that Alice got sixty pounds, though the woman kept saying a skilled sempstress would have to replace the missing beads, and it would cost - Alice had no idea what it would cost. Alice smiled politely, nodded, and stood her ground.

She went home with £250, knowing that the woman would sell those clothes for four times as much. But she was satisfied.

She was not going to tell Jasper. This meant that loyalty forbade her to tell Philip - who wouldn't have believed her in any case. She told him she had got £150, gave him a hundred, and heard him sigh a little; such a different sigh from that sharp escape of breath of the woman in the shop. Like a child - like Jasper getting into his sleeping bag last night, coming home, to safety.

Well, that would keep things going, but not for long. Philip and she spent sixty pounds of it that afternoon on a second-hand gas boiler. And five pounds for its delivery. By the end of the week there would be hot water. Even heat, if those radiators that had not been stolen had not suffered by their neglect.

Not that Alice cared about warmth, not even after four years in her mother's warm house. She had become used to adapting to different temperatures. Before her mother's house she had gone through a winter in a squat that had no heating at all. She had simply worn a lot of clothes, and kept moving. Jasper had complained, had got chilblains, but even he had put up with it; yet that was one of the reasons he had been pleased to move in to live with her mother's warmth, after a cold winter.

She spent a long evening working with Philip, as his assistant, handing him tools, holding steady the beam of a powerful torch. She watched his deft slender hands bleached by the light, and knew that this one could have been, should be, some kind of fine and meticulous craftsman, should never have to be wrestling with pipes and floorboards that seemed heavier than he was. This, the waste of it, fuelled in her the indignation that kept her going, filled her mind with the thoughts that justified everything she did: one day, it would be impossible that fine people like Philip would be misused, kept down, insulted by circumstances; one day - and because of her, Alice, and her comrades - things would be different.

At midnight, she knew that Jasper would not be coming. Her heart began a small private wailing, which made her ashamed and which she suppressed. She cooked bacon and eggs for Philip, and when he had gone up to sleep, waited, not only for Jasper but for Jim, too. Trouble! She could feel it coming.

Mary and Reggie came in, smiling, and glowing with that special look of the successful demonstrator. Sitting with Alice, drinking coffee, they told her how hundreds had marched against the polluting of a certain stretch of shore. They left Alice with a little pile of pamphlets and leaflets, and, hearing that hot water would soon be among the amenities of this house, Reggie remarked that they must have a talk about finance. But tonight they were ready to drop, must sleep. They went up, very close. They were going to have sex, Alice knew. Well, she would stay down here a bit longer, then.

Mary and Reggie came back down, full of smiles, asking about the clothes, the junk that littered the landings of the top floor. Alice had forgotten she had meant to tidy up, said she would, tomorrow. More smiles, and again the two went upstairs.

And if I don't clear up? thought Alice. Of course they wouldn't! It didn't occur to them! I made the mess, and so I clear up. Oh yes, I know them, I know those two, I know the middle classes.... Fuck them all.

But as she sat on there, thinking of all that rubbish, which would have to be parcelled up, and carried down, and put in the garden, and then taken away by the dustmen, who would have to be paid, a new thought startled her mind. She had, on seeing those exquisite evening dresses, thrown them down through the hatch and scrambled after them. But she hadn't finished examining what was in the attics. There were other cases, trunks, roped bundles up there still. Why, there might be a lot more antique clothes, a lot more money.

She raced upstairs, forgetting all about Mary and Reggie in their room under part of the attic, and shot up the ladder, which was still in position, for Philip had not finished. She turned on his heavy-duty torch. In fact, most of the cases had been opened. But along the edge of the attic, under the low eaves, stood three old-fashioned trunks, of the kind people once took on cruises, "for use on the voyage." They were of some kind of fibre, painted glossy chestnut, now dimmed and dulled, with bands of wood to give them strength. She flung them open, one, two, three, her heart hammering. Inside the first, newspapers. Newspapers? She knelt by the trunk, flinging aside papers, reaching down and down, scrabbling in the corners. Yellow piles of papers, and that was all. Why? What for? What lunatic... The second had newspapers covering books. No special books, no treasures here, only the random collection of some family. Old, faded books. The Talisman, with its brown board cover eaten away. Little Gems from the Bible. Henty. She Loved, and Lost... The Treasure of the Sierra Madre... Crocheting Made Simple. A set of Dickens.

She might get a pound or two for that lot. But there was another case. She opened it prayerfully, saw it was empty except for half a dozen old jam jars rolling around.

A storm of rage shook her. She was on her feet, kicking the trunks, then flinging books, papers, jars, all around the attic, shouting abuse at the people who had left this garbage up here. "Filthy shits," she was yelling. "Fascist shits. I'll kill you, I'll pound... you... to pulp...."

The storm went on, and she heard her name being called from below: "Alice, Alice, what's wrong?"

"Bloody filthy accumulating middle-class creeps" - and papers, jars, boots, rags went hurtling through the trap around Mary and Reggie.

"What is wrong, can we help?"

She saw the two agitated, concerned faces, responsible citizens, turned upwards, side by side, illuminated by her jerking, wavering torch, and suddenly she laughed. She stood above them and staggered about, laughing.

"Oh, Alice," cried Mary, "Oh, Alice," squealed Reggie, and they sounded admonishing, petulant, reproachful, and Alice fell, rolled to the trap-door edge, caught its edges with her strong hands, swung herself down, to land on her feet by Mary, by Reggie, laughing and pointing at them, "If you could see yourselves, if you could just see..."

And she staggered and hooted among the sordid piles, and kicked shoes and clothes around. Broken glass scattered.

Mary and Reggie looked at each other, at her, and went hastily into their bedroom. The sound of that door closing, polite and restrained despite everything, made Alice laugh again. She collapsed on the floor, among all the rubbish, laughed herself out to silence, and looked up into the trap, to see the torchlight shining there. It showed the slanting beams of the roof, it showed the two rotten beams, which even down here and in this light looked cheesy.

She climbed up again and, refusing to look at the dangerous beams, began soberly to close the trunks, tidy up a little. Was she really going to clear everything out of here? For what? For whom?

She put out the light, leaving it exactly where it had been, for Philip. She left the attic, by the ladder this time, and then kicked all the junk into a great heap along the banisters. She was making a frightful noise, but what of it. Do them good, she was thinking. One day Mary and Reggie will say, Yes, we did try living in a commune, we gave it a fair trial, but we are afraid...

She was shaking with laughter again. She went downstairs, yelling, sobbing with mirth. If mirth it was: she heard these sad wails and thought, I'm laughing out of the wrong side of my mouth....

At three in the morning, she went forlornly to bed, promising herself to get at least one room painted tomorrow. This one, perhaps. She knew Jasper would be pleased, even if he did seem to jeer. With her mind on Jasper, what he was doing, with whom, she slept fitfully, rose many hours before anyone else was likely to, cleared the room of the little that was in it, fetched up Philip's trestles and the paints and rollers, rubbed over ceilings and walls with a duster tied around the head of a broom, swept off the floor the resulting films of dust. It was still only seven o'clock.

Sitting by herself in the kitchen with coffee, looking at the golden forsythia, she was aglow with health, energy, accomplishment. If Jasper had been here, she could not have done this, she would have had to adapt her pace to his.... Sometimes, very seldom, the thought came into her head: If I were alone, if I did not have Jasper to worry about... Rarely, and this was one of the times, she knew she was tied to him by what seemed like a tight cord of anxiety that vibrated to his needs, never hers; she knew how she was afflicted by him, how he weighed her down. Supposing she left him? (For he would never leave her!) If she found a place of her own, with other comrades, of course - why, she had moved so often, it was nothing, she could do it easily. Without Jasper. She sat quietly, her freckled girl's hand just encompassing the big brown mug, as though it had alighted there, her eyes held by the blessed, blissful forsythia that filled the whole kitchen with energy, with pleasure. Without Jasper. She began to make uneasy, restless little movements, and her breathing became faster, then slowed to a sigh. How could she live without Jasper? It was true, what people said: they were like brother and sister. But supposing... The thought of another man made her give an incredulous little shake of the head. Not that plenty hadn't come near, to ask, Why Jasper, why not me? Had said, But he doesn't give you anything.

But he did; he did! How could she leave him?

She got up slowly from the table, washed up the mug, and stood for some time absolutely still, staring. She thought: I keep forgetting that time is going on. She was over thirty. Well over thirty, in her mid-thirties... Thirty-six, actually. If she was going to have a child, ever... No, no; real responsible revolutionaries should not have children. (But they did!)

She flung the whole tangle of thought away from her and ran fast up the stairs, as though in the room some delight or pleasure awaited her, not the hard task of painting.

She worked steadily on, until she had finished the first coat. Ceilings and walls were all fresh white where dirt and dinginess had been. Some people would leave it at that, but not Alice: there would be a second coat. She strode through the newspapers all over the floor, some of them with dates from the thirties, even the war. "Second Front!" in big black print slid away under another sheet, and "Attlee Promises..." She was not interested in what Attlee or anyone else had promised. Again in the kitchen, she rested herself, and thought: I'll have finished our room by midday, I could do another. Well, I'd need help for the sitting room. The worst is the girls' room, Faye and Roberta's. I'll just have a quick look now....

She was sure they had not come in, but knocked to make sure.

Silence. She went in and, because her eyes were on ceilings and v. alls, did not realise at once that they were, after all, there, two low huddling mounds under blankets, shawls, and all kinds of bits and pieces of stuffs, mostly flowered. Roberta, disturbed but not knowing why, had stretched up arms to yawn, then sat up, womanly breasts lolling, and she stared with displeasure at Alice. Who said, "Sorry, I thought you were out."

"Well, we are not!" But the look of dislike, which Alice was afraid might be what Roberta did feel for her, was replaced with Roberta's more amiable look, and she sat up, feeling for cigarettes. From the tense look of the bundle that was Faye, Alice knew she was awake. She explained reasonably, "I am painting our room. I'll have finished in a couple of hours. I thought I could do yours today, if you like."

At this Faye sat up, flinging aside covers, in one movement, like a swimmer surfacing, and she glared at Alice as she had at poor Monica.

"No," she said, in a deadly, cold voice. "You will not paint this room, Alice. You will not. You will leave us alone."

"Faye," said Roberta quietly. "It's all right."

"No, it's not all right," shrilled Faye. "You paint your own fucking room, Alice. Just keep your shitty little hands off us, do you hear?"

Alice, well used to such situations, was standing her ground, was not hurt, or offended, or any of the things she knew Faye wanted her to be. She was thinking: Full marks to Roberta. Just imagine, having to cope with Faye all the time.

"It's all right, Faye," said Alice. "Well, of course, I won't if you don't want. But the room is pretty far gone, isn't it?" And she looked with interest at the walls, which, in the strong morning light - the sun was only just leaving one of them - seemed that they might start sprouting mushrooms.

They sat there side by side, Faye and Roberta, staring at Alice, so unlike Mary and Reggie that Alice was even amused - inside, of course, not letting it show. And her heart hurt for the girls. Mary and Reggie - those householders, as Alice contemptuously thought of them - sitting upright in their marriage bed, examining Alice, knew that nothing could ever really threaten them. But Roberta, for all her handsome, dark solidity, her motherliness, and Faye, like a flimsy chick or little bird huddling there behind Roberta's large shoulder, were vulnerable. They knew that anything, even Alice, could advance over them like bulldozers, crush them to bits.

"It's all right," said Alice gently, infinitely pitying. "Don't worry. I'm sorry." And she went out, hearing how Faye's voice shrilled as the door shut, and how Roberta's voice consoled and gentled.

Alice returned to the second coat and her work of balancing on the trestles, and thought for the first time: I'm silly. They like it. Roberta, certainly Faye, like living in filth. She contemplated this idea for some time, steadily laying on a fresh film of white to strengthen the white already there, over her head, one knuckle just touching the ceiling to steady her. They like it. They need it. If they didn't like it, they would have done something about it long ago. It's easy to get things straight and clean, so if they didn't, they wanted it.

She allowed this thought plenty of time and scope. But Jim, no, he didn't like it: Look how pleased he was when I started clearing up. He didn't like all those horrible buckets up there, he just doesn't know how to... Jim, he hasn't got the expertise of the middle class (how often had she heard this at her mother's house); he is helpless, he doesn't know how things work. But Faye and Roberta - well, they aren't middle-class, to put it mildly, but surely they... yes, they would have picked up the know-how, the expertise, so if they didn't get things straight, it's because they didn't want to.

Imagine wanting to live in that room, that awful room, with walls like dung heaps, what has happened in there, what has been done in the room? Well, probably it wasn't Roberta. Faye: anything wrong, anything pitiful and awful, would have to be Faye, never Roberta. Probably when Faye had one of those turns of hers... all kinds of awful things happening, and then Roberta, coping: Darling Faye, it's all right; don't, Faye; please, Faye; relax, darling....

Alice finished the second coat at midday, washed the roller, put lids on the paint tins, took them to a room upstairs. While Philip slept, while Mary and Reggie slept, while Roberta and Faye slept (they had not come out of their room), she had painted a whole room. And done it well, no smears or skimped corners, and the papers were all bundled up ready for the dustbins, which would soon be full again.

Alice cooked herself eggs, drank tea, and washed herself in cold water, standing in the bath. Alice then, all clean and brushed, and in a nice blouse with the small pink flowers and the neat round collar, walked out of the house and went next door, to number 45, as though she had been planning to do this all day.

She was sure that Comrade Andrew would not still be in bed, whoever else was.

About two-thirds of the sacks of refuse had gone, and the pit she had seen was as if it had never been, under a litter of dead leaves where a couple of blackbirds foraged.

The door opened to show a young woman who was both tall and slender, and baggy and voluminous, for she wore battle dress in khaki and green, similar to an outfit that Alice had seen in an army-surplus shop not long ago.

"I am Alice," she said, as the girl said, "You are Alice," and then, "I am Muriel." Smiling nicely, Muriel stood aside for Alice to enter a hall where not a trace remained of the stacks of pamphlets, or whatever they were. Number 45 had no carpet on the floor; otherwise the two halls were the same. There was even a broom leaning in a corner.

"Can I see Comrade Andrew?" Alice said, and Muriel replied, disappointingly, "I think he is asleep." Seeing Alice's commenting face, Muriel said swiftly, "But he only got back at three this morning, and those Channel boats..." Then, having given this information to which Alice felt she was not entitled, Muriel said, with a look of irritated guilt because of Alice's critical face, that she would go and see. She went to the door of the room Alice had been in, and lifted her hand as if to knock. She scratched delicately, not to say intimately, with her forefinger. The cold and dreadful pain that she never told herself was jealousy went through Alice. She could have fainted with it. Certainly she was dizzy, and when her head cleared Muriel still stood there, complacently smiling, and scratching with that raised forefinger, like a bird's beak. Yes, she did look like a goose, or, better still, a gosling, lumpy and unformed; like a German Royal, with a smooth, tight bosomy droop in front, and a face with protruding nose and gobbly lips. Which face was now turning a pleased smile towards Alice. "I can hear him now, he's moving." Speaking as though Comrade Andrew's moving was in itself evidence of his superiority, which she was prepared generously to share with Alice. The door opened and Comrade Andrew stood there, blinking and red-eyed. He wore creased trousers and a white tee shirt that needed washing. Again Alice smelled spirits, and repressed disapproval: he must have been tired, coming in so late. He smiled at Muriel in a way Alice did not feel inclined to analyse, then saw Alice and nodded familiarly at her, indicating she should enter.

She went into the room, while the man shut the door, smiling at Muriel, to exclude her.

This room had been cleared of all but two of the great packages. A low folding bed stood against a wall, with a single red blanket on it. It was untidy, but, then, he had got straight out of the bed to answer the scratching. There was a pillow without a pillow slip, and the old-fashioned striped ticking looked greasy. This little scene of the bed was different from the impersonality of the rest of the room, and suggested a rank and even brutal masculinity.

Yawning, not hiding it, the man sat down on an ancient easy chair on one side of the dead fireplace. She sat opposite in another.

"I was in France," he said easily. "Just a quick trip."

She found herself looking covertly at the bed, which had so much the air of being from a foreign country. Or perhaps from some different moral climate, like a war, or a revolution. He saw her examining the bed. He was still waking himself up. Suddenly he rose, went to the bed, tugged up the red blanket to lie straight, hiding the ugly pillow. He sat down again.

He remarked, "I got rid of what you saw in that hole out there. It's gone to where it can be of use."

"Oh, good," said Alice indifferently. The point was, he might or might not have sent, or taken, "it"; but so what? She didn't want to know.

"You must be wondering what it was. Well, all I can say is, it is something of which a very small amount goes a very long way."

A fine contempt was rising in Alice, because of his clumsiness. She said sternly, "In my view, the less people know about such things, the better." Meaning, the less she knew.

His eyes narrowed and grew hard; then he stiffly smiled. "You're right, comrade. I suppose I am off guard. I am a man who needs his sleep. Seven hours in the twenty-four, or I function less than my best."

Alice nodded, but she was examining him critically. She was finding him unimpressive. A stocky, stubby man. His hair, cut short, was flattened here and there, like an animal's fur when it is out of sorts. A stale breath came from him, sour, which was not only because he might have drunk too much. He should be watching his weight.

"I am glad you dropped in, Comrade Alice. I have been wanting to talk things over with you." Here he got up and went to the desk, to look for cigarettes, and stood with his back to her, going through the business of putting one in his mouth and lighting it. This procedure, during which he seemed to be returning to himself, a quick, efficient, considered series of movements, subdued Alice's criticism. She thought: Well, for all that, he's the real thing; and she allowed herself to feel confidence in him.

Then began a remarkable conversation, which went on for some time; it was getting on for five when she left. She knew that he was finding out from her what he needed to know - testing her - and that he must know, surely, that she allowed this, understood that it was happening. It was a dreamy, thoughtful sort of state that she was in, passive yet alert, storing up all kinds of impressions and ideas that she would examine later.

He wanted her to sever herself from "all that lot there; you are made of much better stuff than they are"; and to embark on a career of - respectability. She was to apply for a job in a certain firm with national importance. She would get the job because he, Andrew, would see that she did, through contacts that were already established there. He referred several times to "our network." Alice was to work in computers - he, Andrew, would arrange for her to have a quick course of training, which would be a sufficient basis on which an intelligent woman like her could build. Meanwhile, she would live in a flat, not a squat, lead an ordinary life, and wait.

Alice listened modestly to all this, her lids kept down.

She was thinking: And who is he? For whom would I be working? She had a good idea - but did it matter? The main point was, did she or did she not think that the whole ghastly superstructure should be brought down and got rid of, root and branch, once and for all? A clean sweep, that was what was needed. And Alice saw a landscape that had been flattened, was bare and bleak, with perhaps a little wan ash blowing over it. Yes. Get rid of the rotten superstructure to make way for better. For the new. Did it matter all that much who did the cleansing, the pulling down? Russia, Cuba, China, Uncle Tom Cobbley and all, they were welcome as far as she was concerned.

But she said, after a while, in a pause that was there for her to fill, "I can't, Andrew." And suddenly, arising from her depths, "A bourgeois life? You want me to live a middle-class life?" And she sat there laughing at him - sneering, in fact - all alive with the energy of scorn, of contempt.

He sat facing her, no longer tired now, or stale with sleep, watching her closely. He smiled gently.

"Comrade Alice, there is nothing wrong with a comfortable life - it depends on what the aim is. You wouldn't be living like that because of comfort, because of security" - he seemed to be making an effort to despise these words as much as she did - "but because of your aim. Our aim."

They stared at each other. Across a gulf. Not of ideology, but of temperament, of experience. She knew, from how he had said, "there is nothing wrong with a comfortable life," that he felt none of the revulsion she did. On the contrary, he would like such a life. She knew this about him; how? She did not know how she knew what she did about people. She just did. This man would blow up a city without five seconds' compunction - and she did not criticise him for that - but he would insist on good whisky, eat in good restaurants, like to travel first-class. He was working-class by origin, she thought; it had come hard to him. That was why. It was not for her to criticise him.

She said, definitely, "It's no good, Comrade Andrew. I couldn't do it. I don't mean the waiting - for orders - no matter how long it was."

"I believe you," he said, nodding.

"I wouldn't mind how dangerous. But I couldn't live like that. I would go mad."

He nodded, sat silent a little. Then, sounding for the first time humorous, even whimsical, "But, Comrade Alice, I have been getting daily, sometimes hourly, reports of your transformation of that pigsty there." The dislike he put into that word was every bit as strong as her parents' could ever have been. Leaning forward, he took her hand, smiling humorously, and turned it so that it lay, the back upwards, in his strong square hand. Alice's hand shrank a little, but she made it lie steady. She did not like being touched, not ever! Yet it was not so bad, his touch. The firmness of it - that made it possible. Along her knuckles, a crust of white paint.

He gently replaced her hand on her knee and said, "You'll have the place like a palace in no time."

"But you don't understand. We aren't going to live in that house as they do. We aren't going to consume, and spend, and go soft and lie awake worrying about our pensions. We're not like them. They're disgusting." Her voice was almost choked with loathing. Her face twisted with hatred.

There was a long silence, during which he decided to leave this unpromising subject. (But, thought Alice, he would not be abandoning it for long!) He offered her some coffee. There was an electric kettle, and mugs and sugar and milk on a tray on the floor. He quickly, efficiently, made coffee.

Then he began to talk about all the people in Number 43. His assessment of them, Alice noted, was the same as hers. That pleased and flattered her, confirmed her in her belief in herself. He spoke nicely about Jim, about Philip; but did not linger on questions. Bert he seemed to dismiss. Pat he wanted to know more about, where she had worked, her training. Alice said that she did not know, had not asked. "But, Comrade Alice," he reproved her in the gentlest way, "it is important. Very important."

"Why is it? I haven't had a job since I left university. I've done all right."

This caused a check or hitch in the flow of their talk; he was suppressing a need to expostulate. There's a lot bourgeois about him, she was thinking, but only mildly critical because of her now established respect for him.

Jasper - but he simply would not talk about Jasper. Because, she thought, of her link with him. She didn't have to ask, though: Comrade Andrew did not have much time for Jasper. Well, he'd see!

Roberta and Faye. He asked many questions about them, but what interested him was their lesbianism. Not out of prurience, or anything Alice could dislike: there was a total noncomprehension there. He simply had no idea of it. No experience, ever, Alice guessed. He wanted to know what the women's commune was like that Roberta and Faye frequented. What the connection was between lesbians and the revolutionary formulations of the political women. Alice offered pamphlets and books, which she would procure for him. He nodded, but pressed on: how did women like Faye and Roberta see the relations between men and women after the revolution? Alice suppressed an impulse to say: Liquidate all men. She was remembering long and hot arguments with Molly and Helen in Liverpool, during which she, Alice, had said that their attitude amounted to a contempt for men so total that in effect they suppressed all serious thought about them.

What Alice said was, "There are many different formulations in the Women's Movement. I would say that Faye and Roberta represent an extreme."

Then there were Maty and Reggie; and, as she expected, Comrade Andrew refused to dismiss them as she wanted to. Precisely what she disliked most about them was what interested him: she knew that he wondered whether they could be persuaded to become sleeping partners in the revolution, a phrase that she used and he approved with a dry smile and a nod.

Alice didn't know. She doubted it. They were naturally con-servers. (Not that she had anything against Greenpeace. On the contrary.) They were, in short, bourgeois. In her view, Andrew should discuss it with them. She could not answer for them.

This, she knew, cut across the underlying premise of the conversation: that she was willingly acting as his aide in assessing possible recruits. For something or other. Not stated. Understood.

Did they plan - number 43 - to take in more members of their squat or commune?

"Why not? There's plenty of room."

"I agree, the more the better."

And so the talk went on, reaching back, for some rather tense minutes, to her childhood. Alice's mother did not really interest Comrade Andrew, but Cedric Mellings, that was a different matter. How big was his business? How many employees? What were they like?

Alice's brother: Alice decided not to say Humphrey worked in a top airline firm. "Oh, don't waste your time on him," she said.

More cups of coffee, and some rather satisfying talk about the state of Britain. Rotten as a bad apple, and ready for the bulldozers of history.

When Alice said she had to go, she was expecting Jasper, and stood up, Andrew did, too, and seemed to hesitate. Then he said quickly, for the first time sounding awkward, "You have been with Jasper a long time, haven't you?"

"Fifteen years." Knowing what was coming, recognising it from many such moments in the past, she turned to go. He was beside her, and she felt his arm lightly about her shoulders.

"Comrade Alice," he said. "It's not easy to understand... why you choose such a... relationship."

The usual ration of affront, resentment, even anger was in her. But this was Comrade Andrew, and she had decided that what came from him was, had to be, different. She said, "You don't understand. No, you don't understand Jasper."

His arm still lay there, so gently that she could not find it a pressure. He said, gently, "But, Alice, surely you could..." Do better was what he wanted to say.

She turned to face him, with a bright, steady smile.

"It's all right," she said, like a schoolgirl. "I love him, you see."

Incredulity made his smile ironic, patient.

"Well, Comrade Alice..." He allowed it to trail away, in humour. "Come in any time," he said.

"Why don't you come in and see our palace?"

"Thanks, I will."

And so she went home, her mind a dazzle of questions.

She had been going up to admire her newly painted room, but something took her to Jim's door. She knocked, heard nothing, went in. Jim lay on the top of his sleeping bag, facing her, his eyes open.

"Are you all right, Jim?"

No reply. He looked so dreadful.... She went to him, knelt, put her hand on his. It was dry, very hot.

"Jim! What's wrong?"

"Ah, hell, what's the point?" came out of him in a choking sob, and he put his arm over his face.

Under the loose sleeve was a red wound that went from elbow to wrist. Wide. Nasty. It seemed filled with red jelly.

"Jim, what happened?"

"I got in a fight." The words came out of a sobbing smother of frustration and rage. "No, leave it, it'll heal, it'll be all right, it is clean."

He seemed to be fighting with himself as he lay there, banging his fist to his head, clenching up his legs, then shooting them out straight.

"But the police didn't get you."

"No. But they will know I was there by now. There's someone who'll make sure of that! What's the use? There's no way you can get out of trouble, you can't get out, what's the use of trying."

"Did you try for a job?"

"Yes, what's the use?" And he turned over and lay on his back, arms loose by his side.

She had known it. There was a certain struggling fury that went with being jobless, and persevering, and being turned down, that was different from simply being jobless.

"What were you trying for?"

"A printing firm in Southwark. But I don't know all this new technology - I learned the old printing. I did a year's course, I thought it would get me somewhere."

"Printing! You didn't say. But there must be hundreds of little firms all over the country who still use it for special jobs."

"Then I must have applied to half of them in the last four years."

"My father has a printing firm. A small one. They do all kinds of things. Pamphlets and brochures and catalogues."

"He won't be using the old way for long."

"I'll write to him. Why not? He's supposed to be a fucking socialist."

"What's the use, I'm black."

"Wait, I'm thinking."

He was still tense and hot and miserable, but, she thought, better. Like a nun, or his sister, she sat holding his hand, smiling gently down at him.

"Yes," she said at last. "I'll write to my father. I'll do that. Make him practise what he preaches. He's had blacks before, anyway."

She could see he was, in spite of himself, beginning to hope again.

"I'll write it now," she said.

In the backpack in which she seemed to keep half her life she burrowed and came up with a biro and writing pad.

"What's your name, Jim?"

"Mackenzie."

"I have a cousin who married a Mackenzie."

"My grandfather was Mackenzie. Trinidad." j "Then perhaps we are related."

A small gust of laughter blew through him, and left him smiling. He sighed, relaxed, turned towards her, put his hand under his cheek. He would be asleep soon.

She wrote:

She neatly folded the letter, put it in a nice blue envelope (choosing the blue in preference to cream, for some reason), and addressed it.

Jim's lids were drowsing.

"Why don't you take this round tomorrow. Your cut won't show."

She pulled back the sleeve gently. He did not resist her. It was a really bad cut, which would leave a thick scar. It needed stitching. Never mind.

"I like you, Alice," he stated. "You are a really sincere person, you know what I mean?" He did not add "unlike the others."

She could have wept, knowing that what he said was true, feeling confirmed and supported. She stayed near him till he slept, went out into the dark hall, switched on the light with pride and with the knowledge of what that little act meant, what it had cost, would cost: she pressed a tiny switch on the wall, and electrons obediently flowed through cables, because the woman in Electricity had so ordered it.

Money. Where from?

Standing there, surveying the hall, so pleasant now (though she knew that really she ought to get carpet foam and do over the carpet, which after all had been folded up in the dust of the skip), she saw that Philip had mended the little cupboard under the stairs that the policeman had kicked in.

At this moment, a knock, and with a premonition she went to open the door, a look of authority already on her face.

It was the policewoman she had seen in the police station. At the gate stood her partner, a young man Alice had not seen before.

"Good evening," said Alice, "can I help you?"

She stood with the door open behind her, so that the order of the hall could be properly seen; she saw the policewoman taking it in. The young policeman was, as Alice was not surprised to see, trying to locate with his eyes the place in the garden where these crazies had buried...

"Does a fames Mackenzie live here?"

"Yes, he does," said Alice at once.

"Can I speak to him?"

"You could, but he's not here."

"When will he be back?"

"He might not be back tonight. He's gone to visit friends in Highgate."

"He wasn't here this weekend, then?"

"He was here last night."

"He was here all last night?"

Alice said, "Yes. Why?"

"He was here all through the evening?"

"Yes, he had supper here, and then we spent the evening playing cards."

There had been the slightest tremor in Alice's voice; she had been going to say, "We all spent the evening," but remembered in time that "all" might not be prepared to stick their necks out for Jim, if "all" could be reached and warned in time.

"You and he were here?"

"And a friend of his. A white boy. William something-or-other."

Alice knew that the little hitch in the smoothness had reached the policewoman, even if only subliminally. But it was all right, she thought; she could tell that from the indecision of the woman's manner.

Alice yawned, put her hand over her mouth, said, "Sorry, we were up late...," and yawned again, offering the right sort of smile to the policewoman. Who smiled briefly in return, as she again looked carefully into the reassuring hall.

"Thanks," she said, and went off to the gate, where she and her companion resumed their sharp-eyed stroll around the guilty streets.

Alice glanced quietly into Jim's room. He was asleep.

She then went into the kitchen and wrote a letter to her mother, which she would have ready for Monica Winters, who would certainly be turning up here in the next day or two.

While she was doing this, within a few minutes of one another came Jasper, then Pat and Bert, then Roberta and Faye. The six sat round the table in the kitchen, with an assortment of take-away, which they had brought in separately and would now consume together: pizzas, and fish and chips, and pies. Alice made coffee, set the mugs around, and sat at the head of the table. Her happiness because of this scene was so strong she closed her eyes so that it would not beam out in great mellow streams and betray her to the sternness of the others.

Bert wanted to know about Jack. Jasper reported. The glances exchanged by Faye and Roberta told Alice that trouble would ensue.

It did. Faye demanded, in her pert, pretty way that did nothing to hide her seriousness, why all these plans had been made without a meeting to get everyone's approval? Pat said she agreed: Jasper had no right to take it on himself....

This, Alice knew, was partly directed at Bert, who had been Jasper's accomplice.

Jasper, and then Bert, said that no one was being committed to anything. All that was planned was a quick, exploratory trip to Ireland, to meet a representative of the IRA, and to offer cooperation with a group here.

"A group of what?" demanded Faye, showing her pretty little teeth.

"Yes," said Pat, though with a little edge of humour that told Alice it would be all right, "are we still committing all the vast resources of the CCU, or only ourselves?"

Alice saw that Roberta would have laughed at this, had Faye's mood permitted it.

Bert, because he wanted to reinstate himself with Pat, took command and, his white teeth showing in the thickets of his beard while he offered a steady, responsible, forceful smile, said, "I can appreciate the comrades' reservations. But in the nature of things" - and here he twisted his red lips to signal and to share with them the perspectives of this operation - "certain approaches have to be tentative and even, apparently, ad hoc. After all, the meeting with Jack was fortuitous. It was chance, and became productive, thanks to Comrade Jasper. It was he who made the first approaches...." Alice could see that it was not going to be easy for any of them to admit obligation to Jasper, even though he was being correctly impersonal, sitting somewhat to one side of the scene, waiting for their approval, the image of a responsible cadre.

But just then there was a sound in the hall, the door to outside shut, and Jasper, jumping up to look, reported it was Philip going down the street. The fact that he had not come into the kitchen meant he felt unwanted, and this brought Faye in with, "And there is no place we can talk in this house now. Alice has seen to that."

Pat said quickly, "Well, we can go next door. But surely it is all right for a few minutes here."

"And then Jim will come in. Why not?" demanded Faye sweetly. " 'Oh Jim,' we can say, 'we are just having a little chat about the IRA.' "

"Or Mary and Reggie," said Roberta, allying herself with Faye out of love. Actually, as the others knew, she agreed with them, did not need the furious condemnation that Faye had to use as a fuel to keep going.

"Why don't we just agree, quickly, now, to one or two basics," said Pat. "There isn't very much to discuss, is there?"

"No," said Faye. "I'm serious about it, if no one else is." And with petulant little movements of her lips and eyes, she challenged them; then reached for a cigarette, and lit it, and blew out thick smoke in irritation.

And, to support her, came sounds from the hall: Mary and Reggie, who, full of talk and laughter, opened the door of the kitchen and were silent. With no reason not to come in - since it was the spirit of the house that people should sit around the kitchen table talking - they seemed to sense a unity, to know they were not wanted. Smiling politely, they said, "Oh, we were just..." And, in spite of cries of invitation that they should stay - from Alice, from Pat - went off up the stairs.

"Brilliant," said Faye.

"I agree," said Pat. "That wasn't good. Well, I suggest someone nips over next door to see if we can borrow a room - that is, if it is felt that we need actually to discuss anything more."

"I need to discuss a good deal," said Faye.

Jasper went, was gone it seemed only for a minute, came back to say that they would be welcome.

He returned next door at once. Then Alice went, and Bert and Pat. Then Faye and Roberta.

The goose-girl admitted them, indicating a room at the top of the stairs - the same as that which in their house was inhabited by Jasper and Alice. It had been a nursery, and had lambs, ducks, Mickey Mouses, humorous dinosaurs, coy robots, witches on broomsticks, and the other necessities of the middle-class child's bedroom.

"Christ," said Faye violently, "what utter bloody shit," and she even held out her pretty hands, clawed to show slender nails painted bright red, as if she would scratch the pictures off the walls. She smiled, however, if you could call it a smile.

It turned out that, after all, there was nothing much more to be said.

What was evident was that they had all expected Comrade Andrew to join them, even Alice, who knew he disapproved. Of what, exactly, she wondered now? Of the IRA? No, of course not. Of working with the IRA? How could he? Then, it must be, of them, this group, approaching the Irish comrades in this way. Or this group. Period.

But not of her, Alice. He approved of her. Secretly warmed, supported by this thought, which she could share with no one at all, Alice sat reticent, watching the "meeting" develop, seeing on Jasper's and Bert's faces how they longed to hear steps, hear a knock, hear, "May I join you, comrades?"

But nothing.

It was reiterated that Bert and Jasper would make the trip purely as a reconnaissance. They could find out what kind of support the Irish comrades would accept. This being found somewhat lukewarm, somewhat unsatisfying and unsatisfactory, the formulation was amended and became: that Bert and Jasper were empowered by those present to offer support to the Irish revolutionaries, and ask to be given concrete tasks.

They did not linger. No one was comfortable in this former nursery, which had the ghosts of privileged children - of loved children? - so strongly in it.

Quickly they finished, and left, severally going back to number 43. Roberta and Faye went away to the pictures. They liked violent, even pornographic films, and there was one at the local cinema. The other four found Mary and Reggie in the kitchen, eating properly off plates. The mess of pizza fragments, uneaten chips, beer cans, papers had been swept into the litter bin.

Mary and Reggie said, "Do sit down and join us," but just as the six had repelled Mary and Reggie, so now did Mary and Reggie seem surrounded by an invisible current: Keep off. Well, thought Alice, they are probably still sulky about last night. I did go too far, I suppose. Well, let them.

With many smiles and good-nights, the four went upstairs, and another meeting took place in the newly painted room, where they sat on the floor and discussed the new problem posed by Faye and Roberta, who did not like Comrade Andrew's role in their affairs. That was why they had hoped he would drop in on the meeting next door. "Who was Comrade Andrew?" they had wanted to know. By the time the four had finished critically discussing the two women, they were a warm, close unit, comrades to the death. And yet Alice kept thinking that Pat, no matter how committed she sounded now, did not really stand by Bert. The attractive, lively girl, affectionate and easy with Bert after their weekend away together, presumably alone, did not convince Alice. Glossy cherry lips and shining cheeks would be pressed to Bert's sensual red lips, and then doubtless all those white teeth would clash and nip, all that bushy black hair of Bert's... But nevertheless, thought Alice, nevertheless... And Pat very much did not like Bert's going with Jasper to Ireland. She did not like Jasper. This wasn't a unit at all, only seemed like one, and Alice sat inwardly separated, thinking that Pat probably felt the same.

The smell of paint was very strong. Soon Jasper said he couldn't sleep in it and went upstairs. His tone was such that Alice did not dare to go with him. She went down into the sitting room for the night.