The Good Terrorist

She got back at five. Jasper and Bert and Caroline were in the kitchen, eating take-away. One glance was enough to tell Alice that she had been right: Bert and Caroline could now be considered a couple. But Alice decided not to care.

The Irishmen, she was told, had not been again.

Faye and Roberta had come in, and the six - Jasper, Bert, Caroline, with Jocelin - had decided that the job was to go ahead as planned, on Wednesday afternoon. In the morning they would help Mary and Reggie with loading the removal van. Alice could go to the funeral.

"But I don't know if the funeral is morning or afternoon," said Alice.

No one answered. It was not important. Alice thought it would be just like that if she left the squat: she would never be mentioned, would be forgotten, like Jim, like Pat. Like Philip. No, Jasper would be after her, she knew that; the others might forget her, but Jasper could not.

On Tuesday they all went down to the scene of the crime - their joke - and walked around and about the great hotel, part of the crowds. Of course, they took trouble to dress the part. Jocelin, it seemed, did possess more than her jeans and sweater. She wore a dress of pinkish linen that looked as if it had been bought in Knightsbridge. Caroline, similarly, acquired the protective colouring of a beige well-cut skirt and a yellow shirt. Roberta, out of principle, refused to change, but looked unremarkable in her dark-blue boiler suit. Faye had on a fluffy white blouse and jeans, and was noticeable not only because she was so pretty, but because she was aflame with secret triumph, which made her chatter and display herself. She was the essence of her cockney self, witty and outrageous, but while they laughed, they kept saying to her, "Calm down, be quiet," and so on, while Roberta was anxiously in attendance on her. Jasper, too, had a look of elation which made him, thought Alice, rather beautiful. He seemed serenely above the scene of thronging shoppers and tourists, superior to everything; was in a daze of imaginings about how - and so soon - they would prove themselves here, in this shameless, luxurious scene. After their successful reconnaissance, they all went in to have tea.

Then they took a taxi to Hammersmith, where they saw Diva, a film some of them had seen already more than once. They had supper together in their Indian restaurant near home, agreeing they must go to bed early. They told Reggie and Mary it was because of all the hard work they meant to do tomorrow hefting furniture - this, they could see, seemed reasonable to the couple, for whom the business of moving their furniture, reinstalling their furniture, arranging their furniture was the only thing worthy to occupy their minds. Though Mary did remark, almost absent-mindedly, that this house was on the agenda for next week, and there was a recommendation from Bob Hood that "matters should be expedited." It was a shame, remarked Mary, that these lovely houses were not being used.

Alice became suddenly so angry that she was hardly able to bring out, "What a pity that the Council was prepared to leave them empty for six years."

Mary could have flared up, as Alice had done. She went red, while the official and the human being fought inside her, and then she said, with a laugh that was both apologetic and offended, "Yes, I know, it was awful letting things slide for so long."

"But it will be all right now," said Alice, not at all mollified. "There will be some people living in them."

Mary hesitated, then went out of the kitchen, followed by Reggie. Written all over him was, Thank God, I'll be out of here tomorrow!

Philip's funeral was at ten o'clock on Wednesday. At nine, leaving the others boisterously loading furniture into a van that seemed to fill the street, Alice went to Felicity's, where she found two other people who had liked Philip when he lived there. The four went to the crematorium, in Felicity's car. Philip's sister was there with her husband. They had come down, it seemed, from Aberdeen. Philip was Scottish, a fact that till this moment had not emerged.

The sister was a pale thin little thing, with a dogged look to her, like Philip: determined not to be blown away by the hostile winds of life. Her husband was a small, pale young man with weak blue eyes and a straggly moustache. They both had strong Scottish accents. This couple seemed anxious to avoid Philip's four friends, or at least spoke as little as possible, then, politeness satisfied, went to sit by themselves in the "chapel." It was a proper religious service. Neither Felicity nor Alice, nor the other two, a young man and a girl who had once helped Philip paint out a living room, knew whether Philip had been religious. Perhaps this was only bureaucracy taking its course. And the sister and her husband did not enlighten them. The coffin, large, brown, and shiny, which had to make anyone who had known Philip think of how his frail little body must be lying, like a dead moth, within it, stood full in their view, while a Church of England clergyman did his best to give life to these words that he intoned so often.

And that was that. Philip's sister said a hurried good-bye. Her eyes were red. Her husband only nodded from a distance. The four drove back. The van stood again outside number 43, having made the journey once and returned. "We had no idea we had so much stuff," called Mary gaily, standing in the back of the van, her arms loaded with a carton of china bought by Reggie in a house sale.

"Well, we did," said Bert, loud and jolly and false, and the antagonism that was the truth of what they felt for each other-Mary and Reggie for them, they for Mary and Reggie - was on the surface, and they all knew it, and their hostile faces showed it. Briefly. The smiles and good will set in again.

"Whew," said Bert, as the good-byes were being said. "I'm for a bath and a kip. That's done me in."

"I'm for a bath," said Faye daintily, looking at Roberta, who would scrub her back and dry her afterwards.

"Well, good-bye, all you lot," cried Reggie, cried Mary, jump- ing into the front of the van with many smiles and waves, and they drove off, leaving behind the reassuring picture of the group waving to them from the garden.

Of course they had paid, before leaving, the exact amount they owed, down to the last greasy penny piece.

And then, almost hysterical with suppressed laughter, the others raced into the kitchen, for tea, for sandwiches. It was one o'clock. Just the right time. Precisely and accurately correct.

Everything was going so well. Had gone well, events slotting into place, luck almost ostentatiously on their side: that the Council should have decided to bury Philip this morning; that Mary and Reggie should have chosen today for moving - the comrades could not have wished for better. And then the car: at the other squat, someone had mentioned - she could not have known how fortuitously - that the man in the next house had gone on holiday with his family, and that the car, an Escort, had been standing outside the house for a week, with another week to go. "He's asking for it," she had remarked. Of course the car was locked, but to Jasper - it was one of his talents - this was no obstacle.

Late last night, after coming back from Diva and the Indian restaurant, Bert and Jasper and Jocelin had slipped out of 43, and had gone by Underground back to the other squat. Not inside it: they did not want to involve any more people in this enterprise. Of course, they took the chance that their friends might be coming back from somewhere and see them. But three of them were away; they had said they would be. To open the car, start it, and drive off had taken Jasper and Bert a minute. They drove around Pimlico and Victoria, but did not find anything they liked the look of. They needed a safe place where they could fit in the explosives. They were watching the level of petrol: less than half a tank, and they did not want to have to go into a petrol station. At last, farther away from "the scene of the crime" than they wanted, they found a street of semidetached houses, and one of them was being modernised and rebuilt; at any rate, there were "For Sale" notices, and builders' equipment. In front of each house was a garden, crammed with shrubs, and a shallow drive, not much more than a place to park. The three discussed this place while they drove around and about the streets. It wasn't ideal, but they hadn't seen anything better. The house that was the twin of the one they had in mind was presumably occupied, and although it was by then three in the morning, as usual there was this problem of insomniacs and night owls. Not to mention patrolling policemen. But it would soon be getting light.... Jocelin remarked that it was a pity they couldn't wait until winter: a long dark night was just what they needed. They even suffered a low moment, thinking that the whole enterprise was misconceived, or at least being too hastily executed. Everything was so improvised! But it was precisely this quality that seemed to be aiding them - and which appealed to them, adding to their secret, rising excitement, making them want to laugh for no particular reason, and to make jokes, the sillier the better.

In the end this mood of theirs triumphed, and they drove back into the street, and turned into the little "drive" in front of the empty house. Jocelin needed about twenty minutes to insert the explosives into the car. Jasper ran to one end of the street, Bert to the other, to keep watch for the police. Jocelin was in fact concealed by shrubs from the street, if not from the higher windows of the occupied house. But its windows continued dark; she could not see anyone up there. She inserted the four devices, neatly, precisely, in their allotted places. She was listening for any signal from Bert and Jasper, but none came. She felt, as she worked, a good-natured contempt for these careless citizens, who could be so easily tricked, fooled.

At the end of twenty minutes, Jasper and Bert appeared again; she had not heard them come, though they were breathing heavily from running. In a moment the car was out of the shelter of the shrubs, and back at large in the streets. There wasn't much traffic now. The sky was beginning to lighten. There didn't seem to be a place to park the car anywhere. Cars filled every inch along the pavements' edges, and again they had to drive about more than they wanted. The gauge showed well below the halfway mark. How were they to know whether it was accurate? Bert remarked that once he had for months a car with a gauge that showed nearly full when it was almost empty. At last a space, again farther away than they had hoped. They parked, and stood for a few seconds looking at the unremarkable car that was, potentially, a bomb.

They had then gone into an all-night cafe and eaten a meal together, though prudence should have said no: they were a noisy, noticeable group. "To hell with it," had said Jocelin, and "Fuck that," had said Bert.

They had come home in full daylight, at about five. No, Mary and Reggie were not yet up, which was the one thing they had been afraid of; luck stayed with them, they could not do wrong!

All this Alice learned now, while they ate her soup and some good wholemeal toast, because she had not woken until eight, and by then Mary and Reggie were up, and in the kitchen.

She felt as if she were not really a participant in this great enterprise, not considered a partner. Yet she could not say this, or even suggest it, for there was nothing specific she could take hold of to complain about. But as the six sat around that table, telling the story of the past night, or early morning, she noticed they scarcely looked at her. They were giving one another attention exactly in accordance with the roles each played: Faye and Jasper, Jocelin and Bert. Then Roberta, who was nearly as much on the outside as she, Alice, was.

Alice heard that it was Jasper who was going to drive the car into position. This did frighten her. He was not a good driver, tending to panic in an emergency. She had been taking it for granted, for some reason, that she would drive the car. She was a good driver, modest and skilful. At the least she wanted to say, "No, not Jasper, he shouldn't do it; why not Faye? why not Roberta?" Both of them were good drivers. But her situation on the periphery of events seemed to bar her from this.

Everything had been decided, it seemed, that morning, while Mary and Reggie were out of the house fetching their van and she was at the funeral.

Jasper would drive the car. Faye would be with him because - so it seemed to Alice - she had demanded it as her right. Jocelin would go down with them now, to where the car was parked in the side street, and set the devices to go off at a time that would be chosen then, when she did it. For they were not to know exactly how long it would take them to get there, nor yet the state of the traffic. A quarter to five, they thought.

It was now that Alice learned that the bombs would be timed to go off, not set off by some electronic control. She was appalled. Every previous discussion had been in terms of Jocelin's being somewhere close by and - able to see the state of affairs in the street and on the pavement - choosing an exact moment.

Alice asked, almost timidly, certainly having to make herself break into an animated, jokey exchange between Faye and Jasper, "But if the bombs just go off, then we aren't going to know who's going to be around, are we?"

At once each assumed a severe, dedicated look. She could see that this thought was in their minds, behind all the exhilaration, but that it was being suppressed, kept in its place.

Bert said, showing a lot of his white teeth, " 'Morality has to be subdued to the needs of Revolution.' V. I. Lenin." Everybody laughed, and Alice saw from the way they were suddenly not allowing their eyes to meet that they were uncomfortable.

"Anyway," said Faye, "it serves them right."

This was one of "her" remarks, which they all habitually covered over, ignored, or - like Roberta now - soothed away.

"Faye, dear," she said. "That's not very nice."

Faye tittered and tossed her head. Her eyes were glittering, her cheeks flushed.

Alice said stubbornly, "I don't think it's right. It's not what we decided."

Jocelin said soberly, taking her seriously, "You weren't here when it was discussed. The thing is, these electronic controls aren't absolutely reliable. Not the things I've got, anyway. Of course, there are good ones, but don't forget, I've just put this and that together."

"Then why not set them to go off in the middle of the night, not when people are around?"

"We did think about that. But it's a question of how to make the greatest impact. A few windows in the middle of the night - and so what? But this way, it'll be front page in all the papers tomorrow, and on the news tonight."

Jocelin, having said, or pronounced this, looked away from Alice; and none of them looked at her. She understood now that she felt excluded not only because she had not been here at the crucial discussion, but because the crucial discussion had taken place "behind her back" - as she felt it - so that she could not be there to say things they did not want to hear. They had known-felt, if not thought - that she would protest, say no, say it was wrong; then they would have been forced to listen, to think. And so, without anyone's actually planning it, the five had discussed it when she was well out of the way.

And where was Caroline?

It turned out that Caroline, learning that the bombs would be set to go off at a certain time regardless of possible casualties, had said she would have nothing to do with it.

It was Jocelin who told Alice this, in a nonjudging voice, but cold with disapproval. Cold, Alice thought, because of the need to put a distance between her and what she had felt when Caroline had said that. Oh yes, Alice knew what had happened; she could reconstruct the moment, from what was on all their faces now. The plan had nearly been given up, because of Caroline's decisiveness. Now, as they remembered that argument - which they were all doing - their faces had identical looks of cold uneasiness.

If only I had been there, thought Alice, I could have backed Caroline up; between us we could have swung things the other way.

Alice sneaked a look - she did not dare more - at Bert, who knew she was likely to be looking at him! This was a repetition of Pat! Pat had said Bert was an amateur, at that meeting when the decision was first made to "join the IRA," when a lot of the inhabitants of this house had simply left. Since then she had sometimes, affectionately, called him an amateur. Probably Caroline too had called him "amateur."

Alice thought: Pat, Jim, Philip, and now Caroline. She was my friend, she was my real friend.

Already they were talking again. At two o'clock Jocelin, Faye, and Jasper would go off to the Underground, to the car, which there was no reason to believe would not be exactly where it had been left this morning. To set the explosives to go off would take Jocelin five minutes, Faye aiding her with her quick, clever fingers. No one need take any notice of three people with the bonnet of the car briefly up, making minor adjustments to something, rearranging the contents of the boot, checking the set of a wheel.

Jocelin was saying that there was no need for the others to be at the scene at all. There was nothing for them to do. Redundant. Adding to the danger. She suggested that Bert and Roberta and Alice should stay here, and put the kettle on at five-thirty. And how about Alice making some of her soup; they would all be dead with hunger by then.

"No," said Faye, smiling, all her sharp little teeth showing. "Absolutely no." Charming and pettish, spoiled and whimsical, she swam her eyes at Roberta, then at them, and said, "I must have my Roberta. I must. I must!"

"Absolutely," said Bert, hearty. "And I and Alice will be there, too. No argument! Vote taken! That's it, then."

Laughter, even from Alice, who felt again one of the family.

Two o'clock. Off went Jocelin and Faye and Jasper.

Jasper did not remember to give Alice a smile or a look. He was in animated talk that looked like a flirtation - with Faye. They were all laughing loudly as they went off.

Roberta sat in a huddle at the table, silent, morose. Now it could be seen how much she did not like this, had not wanted Faye in this danger.

With the three gone, the remaining three were edgy, quiet, far from elated. They had to wait.

It would take Faye, Jasper, Jocelin ten minutes to get to the Underground. Then probably half an hour, depending on how the trains were running, to reach the car. Say three-quarters of an hour; there were two changes. Ten minutes from the Underground to the car. Then it was hard to judge exactly how long it would take to drive the car to the scene of the crime. The rush hour would not have started. But there might be a lot of traffic; who could tell? That journey could take fifteen minutes or, with bad luck, take forty. Somewhere between half past three and four o'clock, Jasper and Faye - not Jocelin; she would have been dropped off along the route - would be looking for a parking place outside the great hotel. They might have to drive round and round it for some time. There was also the question of traffic wardens. If they appeared, while Jasper and Faye were still driving about looking, then they would go away for a few minutes and come back after the wardens had gone. If the wardens appeared after the car was parked, it didn't matter; the worst that could happen - Faye had said - was that they would be too close when the car exploded.

The bombs would have been set to go off at a quarter to five, later only if the traffic looked particularly bad.

There would be no point in Alice, Bert, and Roberta's leaving until three, they thought, but at half past two they could not bear to wait even one more moment. As they got up from the table, there was a knock on the front door. A civilised knock, not the police.

"I'll go," said Alice. "It's probably Felicity with something she's giving me from Philip." In Felicity's house had been left a little marquetry table made by Philip, and she had said she would bring it round, for Alice. This was partly, as Alice knew, a need to rid herself of everything that reminded herself of Philip and the complex emotions that he evoked, and partly a generous impulse: she said that she felt Philip would have liked Alice to have it.

At the door stood a man Alice did not know. Having expected only Felicity and a table and a brief emotional moment, being literally ill with apprehension and excitement, she was not prepared to ask him in, or to deal with him or with any situation he was bringing.

"Is Miss Meltings in?" he enquired, and she automatically made the usual assessments from his voice: middle-class, British, an official of some kind, probably.

"I am Alice Mellings," she said, "but, excuse me, I am in a very great hurry."

"If you will be kind enough to give me a moment," he said.

Oh, Christ, she was thinking, oh, shit, we have to leave: for now that the decision had been taken to go, she felt that not one more second should be wasted. "Well, can't you come back?"

"Yes, I can come back. I certainly will. But in the meantime, you could assist me with some information."

Alice thought that this might have something to do with the Council's decision to do up the two houses; he might be someone from the Council. She was not really thinking at all. A flash of recognition, or of warning, that this man's manner, his style, his way of talking were not appropriate to the Council situation, but to another one altogether, went past her.

"What?" she said hurriedly. "What is it?"

"Have you any information about a man called Andrew Connors?"

She stared at him, a wild inappropriate laughter threatening her. She said, with a sudden derisiveness, like a jeer, "Don't tell me that you are still another phony bloody American? No" - she caught herself up - "of course not; English accent; well, what's in an accent?"

Her visitor looked startled, not surprisingly, and took his time in answering. At last he said, with a certain quiet authority that was not unlike Gordon O'Leary's, "I agree, Miss Mellings, that accents are not always what they seem. But about Andrew Connors - I need some information about him."

In her normal condition Alice at this point would have said: "Indeed? And who are you" - that kind of thing - but as it was she itched with the need for him to be gone, so that she and the others could leave. She was in a fever, a rage, of impatience. She said, "Well, what sort of information? I don't know anything much. Anyway, why don't you ask Gordon O'Leary, he seems to know everything."

A pause. If she had had her wits about her, she might not have liked the way this man suddenly focussed on her: narrowed eyes; a close, expert inspection.

"Well, perhaps I will," he remarked.

"Yes, and he can tell you about it all. Look, I do have to go in, I am so sorry...." She was about to go in, shutting the door on him, when "niceness," the hospitable person in Alice who could never bear to disappoint, or seem unfriendly, caused her to add, disastrously, "And when you see him, just tell him from me that if any other little consignment of materiel or anything else turns up here, we are going to throw it straight back into the street and leave it there." She said this quite brightly, even smiling, as if she had said, "When you see him, say hello from me."

She had turned away, was about to go in.

"Just a minute, Miss Mellings."

"Oh, God," she cried, "oh, please, I have to go."

"All right. So you have said. But there is something I have to discuss with you."

"Then let's discuss it, but not now. Anyway, I have already discussed it. I keep saying, we are not taking orders from Russians or anybody else. You don't seem to understand that, comrade... You didn't tell me your name."

"My name is Peter Cecil," he said.

"Peter Cecil?" she said, and might have laughed again. "Well, your accent is really perfect. Bloody marvellous. Congratulations." She did give a little laugh here, girlish and merry, and though she did not really take him in, because of her pounding heart, her general overstimulation, she looked at him enough to see that he really did seem the essence of an Englishman, to match his name.

"Thank you," he said, pleasantly. "Perhaps you would care to have lunch?"

"Yes. But I was going to say, you don't seem able to take it in, but we are British, you understand? British communists." She hesitated and added, since the situation seemed to demand elucidation: "Freeborn British communists."

"Ah," he said. "Well, where can we meet? Tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow? Well, why not? Tomorrow's all right. Do you know the Taj Mahal? That restaurant in the High Street?"

"Very good. Tomorrow. At one. Thank you for your time, Miss Mellings."

"Not at all," said she, forgetting him entirely, as she ran in to the others, who were saying: "For God's sake, Alice, come on, will you. We've got to go. Get a move on."

It was twenty to three. At the station they waited ten minutes for a train, much longer than they expected. At Baker Street they sat in the train, the doors open, with people drifting in, taking their time, for another seven. They joked they could not remember waiting for so long before. At Green Park they waited again. They were frantic with suspense; felt like bombs themselves, which could go off. Coming out of the Underground at three-thirty, Bert burst into a run, and the other two ran after him, to slow him down. "Stop it," said Roberta, irritable. "We have to be unnoticed, remember."

No one looking at Roberta was likely not to notice her.

She was very pale, was sweating, her face was tragic with seriousness.

They walked rapidly round the hotel, past the people on the pavements. The three did not look at one another or, very much, at the possible victims. Alice was thinking: But people might be killed.... Oh no, that couldn't happen! Inside her chest, however, a pressure was building up, painful, like a cry - but she could not let it be heard. Like the howl of a beast in despair, but she could not reach it, to comfort it.

What were the others thinking? Roberta - well, that was easy, she thought only of Faye. Bert? He seemed not much different from his genial self; but surely he must be wondering, like Alice, Will this girl be killed? This old woman? Perhaps this one, or that one?

There was no sign of Jasper and Faye. Having circumambulated the hotel twice, Roberta said, "There's no point in this. And we shouldn't be together." Without even looking at them, she walked off by herself and stood on the opposite pavement, from which she could see the side of the hotel in front of her, and on her left the street along which Faye and Jasper could reasonably be expected to drive.

Bert went off, without looking at Alice, to stand on the pavement opposite the front of the hotel. Alice, then, logically, could have gone to stand on the side where Roberta was not, but decided that the front was best, and stood near Bert.

It was a quarter to four.

No sign of the car.

A bus very slowly went by. Jocelin sat downstairs near the window, looking at them. She mouthed at them, "A - quarter - to - five." Then she briefly held up her left hand with its five fingers spread, lowered it, held it up again, this time with four fingers showing, bent down the forefinger, quickly again mouthed, "A - quarter - to - five," and then stared ahead of her.

"I think," said Bert facetiously, "that it will be a quarter to five."

Four o'clock.

The great hotel, with its look of sedate luxury, brooded massively there with people teeming about it. Alice thought, Well, perhaps something has gone wrong and they won't come. It'll be all right.

"Shall we tell Roberta it'll be a quarter to five?" she asked Bert. He said, "No, we can't draw attention to ourselves." Then he changed his mind and ran across the street, in and out of the traffic. Roberta was standing on the very edge of the pavement, absolutely still. Alice watched Bert go up to her, say something, then take her by the arm, apparently urging her to stand in a less noticeable place. Roberta shook off his hand on her arm, and stayed exactly where she was. Bert stood beside her for a minute, then slowly came back, this time waiting for the lights to change.

Alice could see his face clearly. She had not seen him like this, not ever. Would not, perhaps, have recognised him. He had about him a look of isolation, separateness; as if nothing could bridge the distance between him and the people who streamed with him across the road, as if he were cursed or cast out. He had a leaden, sickly colour, like a corpse.

The howl, or cry, in Alice's chest forced itself out of her mouth in a yelp, and she found she was dashing off away from Bert and into the hotel. She was looking for a telephone. Two booths, back to back; and one was empty. She thought: Oh my God, if the right directory isn't here! But it was, and she found the Samaritans' number and dialled it, while the little whimpering yelping cries came out of her, uncontrollably, as though the animal lodged inside her were being beaten.

The friendly, nonjudging Samaritan voice.

Alice said, "Oh, quick, quick, there's a bomb, it's going to go off, come quickly, it's going to be in a car."

"Where is this car?" enquired the Samaritan, in no way discomposed. When Alice did not at once answer, "You must tell us. We can't get someone there until you tell us."

Alice was thinking: But the car isn't even there yet. How do I know it will get there at all? Then she thought of those people, all those poor people, and she said despondently, "Well, perhaps it will be too late, anyway."

"But where? The address, do tell us the address?"

Alice could not bring herself to give the address. "It's in Knightsbridge," she said. She was going to ring off, and added, as an afterthought, "It's the IRA. Freedom for Ireland! For a united Ireland and peace to all mankind!" She rang off.

Alice started to run back, then walked. She went straight up to Bert, so that he could turn that face towards her, and she could see that it was normal. But when he did look at her she saw a dead, awful face; and then he winked at her, slowly, and the wink dislodged that other vision of him as a corpse, and he became his ordinary self, a bit pale and tense, but that was all.

It's not too late to stop, she was thinking. It's all a mistake. We should plan it all more carefully. Perhaps Faye and Jasper have decided to call it off. They have disconnected the bombs. That is why they are late.

Four-fifteen.

In all that time there had been only three spaces available for parking.

And then Alice saw that Bert was standing facing away from her, very still, staring, Presumably it was the car. A white Escort went past Bert and then Alice, with Jasper and Faye in front, Faye driving. They looked exalted, but scared. The rear mudguard on the side nearest the pavement was bashed in. That was why they were late. She went up to Bert, and he agreed with her diagnosis.

There was no parking place anywhere. The car, confined by traffic, turned right, slowly, and crawled round down the side street, where cars were almost stationary, vanished for a while round the back, came into view again, and, rather faster, drove up past Roberta, who, unable to stop herself, raised her arms as Faye went past, but dropped them slowly, presumably when the couple in the car took no notice of her. That they could have that much sense comforted Alice. The white Escort went past Bert and Alice again. It was four-twenty-five. No traffic wardens; that was something.

They had not discussed what should be done in the event of there being no parking places. Presumably as the time ran out the two would find somewhere to park and just run?

This time Faye did not turn to drive up the side street by the hotel, but went on for another block and then turned. Inexplicably. While the car was out of sight, two cars drove away in that side street next to the hotel, leaving quite a long empty space. Would Faye see this when she came back into position again, at the far end of the hotel?

When Faye did reappear, it was after half past.

By then Alice was sick with tension, with misery. She knew that she was sniffling and snuffling, but she couldn't help it.

Faye was driving again past Roberta, who this time did not move, only stood. Despair. People were noticing her.

As the car passed Bert he signalled, pointing to the empty space. Faye and Jasper looked like two blocks of wax with eyes fixed in them. At first they did not look at Bert; then Jasper glanced at him, and tugged at Faye's arm.

Just in time, Faye turned to drive into the side street.

As she did, a car slid into the empty space from the other direction, but leaving quite enough room for Faye to park. Cars were already behind her. In order for her to park, she had to hold up the traffic, looking for a way through, to get to the other side of the street. The car, others hooting at it, waited, then forced its way across the flow of traffic, to a chorus of hoots and shouts. Faye inserted the car in the space on the diagonal and, it seemed, was ready to leave it, for her door opened, but it shut again, and she drove the Escort violently up on the pavement. A long pause, then the car reversed hastily, so that it was better parked, but not much.

The other cars were still hooting.

Roberta, seeing from Bert's and Alice's rigid, attentive poses and how they stared that Faye was parking, came hastening across to join them. Oblivious of any previous decisions not to stand together so as not to make themselves conspicuous, the three stood in a tight group, staring at the delinquent car. Now, however, it could be said that they were people censorious of a bit of very bad parking.

"For God's sake," Roberta was saying, in a harsh, sick, loud voice, "for God's sake, move. Get out."

Jasper got out of the car, opening the door against the flow of the traffic, and stood inside the half-opened door, bending down to look into the car and at Faye.

"For God's sake," prayed Roberta.

Then Jasper straightened, shut the door, and came away down the side of the car, meaning to go round it, onto the pavement, and to open the door for Faye. At least, that was how it seemed to the three who watched. For there was no reason at all, if the door was not jammed in some way, for Faye's not opening it, and just as quickly as she could. Time was running out. There were five minutes to go. But time had run out, for then came the explosion, and it seemed that the windows of all the world were crashing in, while the car flew apart.

"Faye, Faye," Roberta was sobbing, as she ran across the street, not looking to see whether there were cars or not; and "Jasper," whimpered Alice, running after her.

All down the side of the hotel, it was a scene of disaster; bodies on the pavement, some lying still, some struggling to sit or rise; bits of metal, of shattered glass, handbags, masonry, blood.

When Alice got to the scene, Jasper was not there. Then she saw him running away down the other side of the street, hands to his head. Blood was all over him.

Idiot, she was thinking. Don't run away, much better wait here, there are a lot of people hurt; you'd just be one of the hurt people.

Roberta was standing among the bodies, staring at the wreck of the car, which seemed to have sunk into itself; a low tangle of metal.

Roberta, moaning, turned away from the car, and, bending, began to peer into the faces of the wounded and - as Alice had just realised - the dead on the pavement.

Suddenly, Roberta cried out, and was sitting on the pavement, cradling a bloody mess that, Alice reasoned, could only be Faye. Yes, she could see an arm, white, pretty, whole, with a tangle of coloured bangles on the wrist.

Alice stepped up to Roberta and said, "Stop it. There's nothing you can do, you know. We have to get out."

Roberta, her eyes not seeing Alice, or anything, stared at Alice, then down at the red bundle. She was sobbing, in a dry, breathless, frantic way.

"Roberta," said Alice again, reasonably, and even managed a companionable, persuasive smile. "Please get up."

And at this moment, into this scene of disorder, of destruction, which had remained more or less the same for the last five minutes since the explosion, erupted Society, erupted Law and Order, in the shape of a wailing of ambulance sirens, and the police, who suddenly were everywhere, hundreds of them, it seemed. The ambulances, parked nose to tail up the street, began their sober, careful job of collecting casualties and corpses from the pavement. But the police were in a state of panic, out of control, rushing about, shouting orders, hustling the onlookers, who of course had arrived by now, and who were generally adding to the confusion.

To the ambulance man who bent over Roberta, Alice said, "She's not hurt, I don't think. But she" - tor some reason Alice could not bring herself to use Faye's name of this mess of blood and flesh - "she was right in the way of the explosion."

"And where were you?" asked the ambulance man, gently assisting poor Roberta to her feet.

"I was over there, on that pavement," said Alice truthfully. "No, I'm not hurt."

By now two of them were crouching beside Faye, and Roberta and Alice stood upright, Alice holding Roberta.

"She's dead," Alice said reasonably to Roberta.

"Yes, I know," said Roberta in a normal voice.

At this point a policeman charged up and ordered, "What are you doing here, are you hurt? Then move along."

Alice put her arm round Roberta and walked her away. She did not want the policeman to come to his senses and start questioning Roberta, who, on casual inspection, did not look abnormal, though she was soaked with blood from the waist down.

She had not thought what she would do with Roberta, blood-soaked and in a state, away from the crowds and the police; but they were stopped by another policeman, this time in control of himself, who said that Roberta looked as if she needed attention.

"She's in shock," said Alice.

"Then get her into the ambulance," said the policeman, turning away to join with others in pushing away onlookers.

There was nothing for it. Alice went with Roberta in the ambulance, together with ten others, all of them shocked or slightly hurt. The badly wounded were being loaded into other ambulances.

Theirs was one of the first away. Alice and Roberta were silent, listening to people who wept, who complained, or who excitedly told their stories; how they were peacefully going along the street, or in or out of the hotel, and then...

Cut faces and arms, possible fractures, bruises. One woman had had her clothes torn off her by the blast and was wrapped in a blanket. Another had been flung right through the window that at that moment had been in the process of shattering. She was covered with small deep cuts and seemed the worst off.

They were in the hospital in a few minutes.

Roberta was examined and pronounced unharmed.

Alice explained to a sympathetic policeman that Roberta and she had been going into the hotel when it happened. They got into a taxi and were driven home. The taxi man said it was a shocking thing; probably those Arabs again; they had no sense of the sacred-ness of life, not like the Westerners; if he had his way he would stop the Arabs from coming here.

Roberta and Alice said nothing.

It was seven when they reached home. In the kitchen was Bert, attending to Jasper, who had a great many cuts on his face and his head, but was otherwise all right. Bert said he should get the cuts stitched up; some of them were deep. Jasper said no. And Jasper was right. He should have stayed, instead of running away, Jocelin argued, and then he could have told some story and got himself stitched up with the others in hospital. Now, he must on no account go near a hospital, or even a doctor. But one of the women in the squat in South London had been a nurse; it would be all right to go down there.

"I don't think it would be all right," said Jasper. "The fewer people involved, the better."

Alice thought this was sensible, and tried to examine the cuts. He shook her off. They didn't seem too bad to her; perhaps they wouldn't leave scars. Well, there was always plastic surgery.

The five of them finally sat round the table.

Jasper told them, in a businesslike, formal way, how, as he had turned the car out of the street where it had been left, he had misjudged a distance and scraped the front mudguard of a parked car. He would have driven off, but now there was a car immediately blocking his way, and a man who had seen the incident from a first-floor window came running out to say that Jasper need not think he was just going to escape and get away with it. Jasper had said that no such thought had been in his mind. The man said he was lying. They had had quite a little shouting match before they reached the point of exchanging insurance companies: Jasper, of course, had had to say he would supply the address of his later. Then it turned out that the dented mudguard was pressing on the back wheel, and they had to get out of the car and use a heavy spanner to hit the mudguard until it was free of the wheel. The man from the house was standing over them, as if they were criminals who had to be watched. To reach the dent in the mudguard, Jasper had to lie full-length in the road, and hit it from below, and at an angle. It was awkward and took time, and they were holding up the traffic.

When they at last got into the stream of traffic again, they were so late they thought of calling the whole thing off. Faye could easily disconnect the bombs, but the trouble was that this time the work would be in full view of all the people in the cars and the passers-by on the pavement. Besides, said Faye, do or die; she was game. A pity to have gone to all this trouble and give up.

When Faye had turned, the second time, not immediately up past the hotel but on the next turning, it was because they had not seen any parking places, had decided to stop the car anywhere they could find a place so that, regardless of who was watching, Faye could wrench the connections off the bombs. They then had only twelve minutes to go. But there were no parking places anywhere along that street.

"No," Faye had said gallantly, "there's nothing for it," and had tried to drive faster, but was hemmed in by traffic.

And when Jasper had got out but Faye had not, was it that Faye's door had jammed? Had he been going to help her with the door?

This was Roberta, and she sounded accusing.

Jasper hesitated. Alice knew it was because he was trying to think how not to say something. When he looked like this, very pale but luminous, with a candid, suffering, helpless look, it meant he was going to lie. Or wanted to. He began to stutter, checked himself, and said simply, "When Faye drove into the empty space, she went too fast up onto the pavement, and then braked. She did not have on her seat belt. We did not have our seat belts on, you see."

"Of course not," said Roberta, severely.

"But she was jerked forward, and the driving wheel got the pit of her stomach. She didn't have any breath, you see?" he said gently to Roberta. Alice was thinking, There, he's kind, Jasper's kind, he didn't want to tell Roberta any of this....

Roberta was staring at Jasper, her mouth was open, and she was breathing badly. She was thinking, they all knew, that her Faye had been killed because of some silly little thing, something ridiculous; for the rest of her life Roberta would be thinking, incredulous, that Faye died because she drove too fast and too hard up onto a pavement.

"I could see she couldn't move," said Jasper. "I got the car into reverse - I stretched my feet over, and did it. Then I said she must get out quickly. But she did not move. I think she was too sick to move. I got out to drag her out of the car from the driving side. And then the bomb went off."

"Five minutes too early," said Roberta, this time accusing Jocelin. Who, like Jasper, had sat quiet, hesitating. There was something she did not want to say.

Roberta asked quickly, "Who set the timing? Faye?"

"Yes."

Roberta shook her head, as if saying No, no, no - to all of it - but then sat heavily silent, saying yes to tea, yes to sugar in it, yes to a biscuit. But she did not eat, or drink.

Roberta, they all knew, would at some point come out of this passive state.

Jasper was beginning to hurt, very badly. Bert ran upstairs, fetched painkillers for Jasper, sedatives for Roberta, and a radio.

They listened to the news.

"Well, what about that," said Jocelin. "What a fucking nerve."

"Absolutely," said Alice, not connecting her telephone call with this development. Then, after a few minutes, listening to the indignation, the frustration of the others, she did connect it, and she realised that she could never tell them what she had done. Never. She never would be trusted again.

Suppose Bert remembered that she had been gone off that pavement near to him for what must have been a good five minutes?

It seemed he did not.

At about ten o'clock Caroline came back. She was distant, even cold. She said she wouldn't sit down; she was tired and wanted to sleep.

She had heard the news, she said, when it seemed that Jasper was about to start the story.

She made herself coffee, drank it standing, not looking at them.

"Where's Faye?" she asked, and they realised there was no possible way she could know.

Roberta said, "Faye's dead," and began to cry. At first it was quiet, helpless weeping, and then she began to wail and moan.

"Well, that was due," said Bert, briskly.

"Was she in the car, then?" asked Caroline, but she didn't want to sound interested.

Roberta began to howl, a sound like that which Alice seemed to carry about with her, in her chest; a raw, dismal sound.

They checked that the windows were shut. They gave Roberta yet another sedative pill, and Jocelin and Alice assisted her upstairs. She was heavy, almost inert. They had to push her, support her, even order her to move her legs. Alice ran into the room first to make sure the windows were tight shut. Too late, when Roberta was already lying in the cosy heap of flowered stuffs and cushions that she had shared with Faye, did they remember that another room would have been better. They left her there, hoping that sleep would soon silence that awful weeping.

When the two women returned to the kitchen, they joined Bert and Jasper at the table. Caroline sat on the window sill, keeping her distance from them. They were silent, trying not to be affected by that terrible noise just over their heads. Roberta was howling now, and didn't sound human. They could have believed it was an animal up there: a wounded animal, or a dying one.

They were all pale, and tense. Bert's forehead had beads of sweat on it. On Jasper's face was a cold little smile. Caroline seemed ill. Jocelin was the least disturbed of them.

Bert kept sending appealing looks at Caroline, who would not look at him. Suddenly he pulled out of his top pocket, where it had been buttoned in over his heart, a piece of much-folded paper that had words scribbled on it. They all knew what the words were, for Bert had made sure they had the benefit of them, more than once. Now, having looked at each of them, one after another, carefully, to claim their attention - but Caroline still would not respond - he read, "The law should not abolish terror; to promise that would be self-delusion or deception; it should be substantiated and legalised in principle, clearly, without evasion or embellishment. The para- graph on terror should be formulated as widely as possible, since only revolutionary consciousness of justice and revolutionary conscience can determine the conditions of its application in practice." A silence. They were not looking at him. "Lenin," said Bert. "Lenin," he insisted, with confidence.

Alice had been watching him as he read, interested to see if that vision of him she had had outside the hotel would reappear - the leaden-faced corpselike Bert; but, on the contrary, the reading strengthened him, and he smiled as he read, his white teeth showing between healthy red lips.

Jocelin said, "Thanks," as a matter of form, but she was listening to Roberta. She lit a cigarette, and her hands were shaking. Seeing that they noticed this, she muttered, "Reaction, that's all."

Jasper continued to smile. He might have been listening to distant music. Alice knew he was controlling the need to be sick. She thought he looked like a wounded soldier, with his bloodstained bandages.

Then Caroline got off the window sill and said, "What has Russia's Criminal Code got to do with us? Or Lenin, for that matter," she added, daring them. "All amateur rubbish, if you ask me," she said, angrily, and to Alice, "There was a message for you. A man came this afternoon. An American. He said he would be back to see you tomorrow. About four. Gordon O'Leary."

She did not look at Bert, but went out, without saying good-bye.

"Gordon O'Leary again," remarked Jocelin, as if it didn't matter very much.

"Bloody cheek," said Alice mechanically, thinking she was in for a busy day, lunch with Peter Cecil, and then Gordon O'Leary in the afternoon.

No one else said anything.

Then Bert said, "I'm off, too. No point in hanging around."

"Me, too," said Jasper.

"You're leaving?" said Alice, incredulously, to Jasper.

"But we said we were going, the moment it was done," said Jasper, not looking at her.

She thought, Surely he can't be planning to go off with Bert?

Why, the moment Bert gets another woman, he'll be a spare part again.

She said nothing, and this made Jasper uneasy. Truculent, he asked her, "Well, how about you? Coming?"

"I don't think I'm going to leave," she said, vaguely.

"But you'll have to. Mary said this house was on the agenda again."

"Oh, they are always saying that," said Alice.

"Don't be so bloody stupid," said Jasper. "If not this month, then next, or the month after."

"Well, in the meantime, I'll stay. And someone has to stay with Roberta."

This being unarguable, Jasper was silent for a little, and then, overcome again by Alice's intransigence, he said, amazed, scandalised at her, "But, Alice, we agreed to scatter. It was a unanimous decision." And he even grasped her wrist in the old bony urgent grip, and bent to stare into her face.

That grip told her that she would not be without him for long. She smiled tranquilly up at that face, with its blue eyes in the creamy shallow lakes where the tiny blond freckles were, and said, "Let me know where you are, and we'll keep in touch. Anyway, does anyone know where Roberta's relatives are? She does have some, doesn't she?"

They knew only the hospital where Roberta's mother was dying.

"She won't stay here," said Jocelin, and Alice knew she was right.

Bert went up to get his canvas sack with clothes in it, and some books. Jasper fetched his belongings. He had even less than Bert.

Alice sat listlessly at the table, thinking of this house, this home she had made, deserted, empty, and the Council builders coming in.

Jocelin said she would leave in the morning. Said she thought the bag full of explosive components would be safe enough until they were needed. Laughed. Went upstairs.

Bert and Jasper lingered about the kitchen, at this last moment not wanting to leave. Not wanting to leave her, or the comfort she had made for them all? She did not choose to think about that. She remarked that she thought Roberta was quietening down.

And certainly the howling from overhead was less. It stopped. The house was silent.

Jasper bent quickly, and darted a kiss onto Alice's cheek, as in a game of "last touch."

"See you," he said, and went out, not looking to see if Bert was following. It wasn't easy for him to leave her, thought Alice gratefully.

Alice was alone in the kitchen.

She listened to the news again. Well, they certainly were getting enough coverage; they had made their mark, all right.

Five dead. Another one, a girl of fifteen, seemed likely to die. Over twenty injured.

The midnight news devoted more than five minutes to the story.

Alice slept, sitting at the table, head on her arms.

She woke at about six, to see Roberta, shaky, sick, and awful, making herself tea.

Roberta said she would pack her things and be off. She would go to see her mother. She should have gone before, of course, but Faye... Her voice shook, she bit her lips, controlled herself, and drank her tea. She went upstairs to pack, came down with various addresses where Alice could reach her, pencilled neatly on a slip of paper. At least Roberta was not floating out of her life forever.

Roberta, unlike the others, owned a lot of things. She would abandon the actual furniture, but keep curtains, hangings, coverlets, pillows, mirrors, blankets. These were made into two great bundles, and she took them away in a taxi to the station.

Alice listened to the 8:00 a.m. news.

The IRA (in Ireland) said they had had nothing to do with yesterday's bombing, and they would kneecap those who committed such acts in their name. They did not - said the IRA (in Ireland) - go in for murdering innocent people.

Well, thought Alice, fancy that. And actually giggled. At the ludicrousness of it.

Well, it didn't matter what the IRA said; it was not for them to decide what comrades in this country did.

Alice sat wondering if it was worthwhile making a trip over to Ireland so as to explain to the Irish comrades the English comrades' point of view?

This speculation was stopped by Jocelin's coming down, with a backpack and a suitcase. She, too, drank tea, and heard that Roberta had departed without commenting, or even asking whether Roberta had asked her to keep in touch. She did not mention Bert and Jasper. About Caroline, Jocelin said that she was a good comrade but did not understand that sacrifices had to be made. She said this standing - she had not sat down - holding a mug of tea between both her hands, staring over it with red-rimmed eyes. Alice thought that she might very well have been crying.

Jocelin departed, and Alice was alone in the house.

She listened to the news again, and thought she would go out and get the newspapers. No, she would buy them when she went out to have lunch with Peter Cecil. Peter Cecil! The poor Russians, they didn't have enough sense not to choose such an obvious name. It was almost like a joke, as if they were sending themselves up. (Here, deep inside Alice, there stirred a little uneasiness, a doubt, but she could not pin it down to anything, so suppressed it.)

It was too early to leave for the restaurant.

She sat on quietly there by herself in the silent house. In the betrayed house... She allowed her mind to move from room to room in it, praising her achievements, as if someone else had accomplished all that, but the work had not been properly acknowledged, and so she was doing it as something due to justice. The house might have been a wounded animal whose many hurts she had one by one cleaned and bandaged, and now it was well, and whole, and she was stroking it, pleased with it and herself.... Not quite whole, however; but she wasn't going to think about what went on in the rafters. Poor house, she thought, full of tenderness, I hope someone is going to love it one day and look after it. When I leave here... It was silly to stay here, Jasper was right, but she would not leave yet, she would stay on a little longer: she felt that she could pull the walls of this house, her house, around her like a blanket, where she could snuggle, where she could feel safe.

She really did feel very peculiar, not herself at all! Well, that was only natural. She needed to go for a good long walk, or perhaps drop over for a little chat with Joan Robbins? No, there'd only be a lot of silly talk about the IRA and the bombing. Ordinary people simply didn't understand, and it was no good expecting them to.... Here the tenderness that had been washing around the place, inside and outside her, not knowing where it belonged, fastened itself on these ordinary people, and Alice sat with tears in her eyes, thinking, "Poor things, poor things, they simply don't understand!" - as if she had her arms around all the poor silly ordinary people in the world.

Now she began to think, but very carefully, about her parents. First, her father: no, he was too awful to waste time on, she wasn't ever going to think about him again. Her mother... What would Dorothy say if she knew her daughter had been at the bombing? Not that Alice believed that she - Alice - had any real reason to feel bad; she hadn't really been part of it. Alice sighed, a long shuddery breath, like a small child. This was something she could never, ever tell Dorothy, and knowing this made her feel severed from her mother as she had not done before: she might have said a final good-bye to her, instead of just having had one of their silly quarrels!

Oh no, it was all too much, it was too difficult.... Here Alice got abruptly to her feet: it looked as if she was about to walk right out of the kitchen, and after that the house; but, having stood in a stiff, arrested pose for a minute or so, she sat down again, because she had remembered Peter Cecil. (Peter Cecil, ha ha!) She couldn't go now, because there was this lunch. But perhaps I'll tell him all about it, she thought, he's a professional, I can talk about the bombing without all the rights and wrongs of everything coming into it, just as a job that was done, but was bungled a bit.... Funny, she had not thought until this moment that they had messed it up. And had they? After all, if publicity was the aim, then they had certainly achieved that! And Faye? But comrades knew their lives were at risk, the moment they undertook this sort of thing, decided to become terrorists.... She could not remember a point where she had said, "I am a terrorist, I don't mind being killed." (Here she was again impelled to get up from her chair, in a trapped panic movement, but again sat down.) I was all the time waiting for something to start - she thought; and on her face came a small, scared, incredulous smile at the inappropriateness of it. Had she not believed that the bombing was serious, then? No, not really; she had gone along with it, while feeling it was not right - and behind that was the thought that serious work (whatever that might turn out to be) would come later. Well, what would they think about the bombing? (Meaning, the Russians.) There was no need to ask what Andrew would say. Or Gordon. She could imagine, only too vividly, their condemning faces.

And Peter Cecil? For some reason, he was different. Of course, I wouldn't give away any names, she thought: I'd just talk very carefully, tell him the story. I'd say I was told by someone in the know, and I wanted to have his opinion.

Here various little warnings that her nerves had registered and were holding banked there till she could attend to them nearly surfaced, but retreated again. Meanwhile, she was thinking that Peter Cecil had a nice face. Yes. (She was looking at him in her mind's eye, as he had stood there yesterday outside the door, she in a frenzy of impatience to be off.) A kind face. Not like those Russians, not at all like them, he was quite different.... And here the warnings came back, in a rush, screaming for attention, and she could no longer shut them out.

Of course Peter Cecil was not like those Russians, because he wasn't a Russian. He was... he was MI-6 or MI-5 or XYZ or one of those bloody things, it didn't matter. The point was, he was English, English.

At this thought, at the word, a soft sweet relief began to run through Alice, so strongly she had to recognise it and be embarrassed by it. And what of it! English or not, he was the enemy, he was - worse than the Russians - he was upper-class (Cecil, I ask you!), he was reactionary, he was a fascist. Well, not exactly a fascist, really, that was exaggerating. But English. One of us. She sat thinking about his Englishness, and what that meant, what she felt about it - that talking to him would be a very different thing from talking to those Russians, who simply got everything wrong, and that was because they didn't know what we were really like: English. And what was the matter with feeling like this? Had they (the comrades) not decided to have no dealings with Russians, IRA Uncle Tom Cobbley and all, only with us?

As she imagined herself talking to Peter Cecil, she knew that many things would not have to be said at all, as they don't between people from the same country, no matter how divided about certain things. (Like politics!)

But what did he want to know? Alice could not remember what had been said yesterday. Her memory was a blank except that he had asked about Andrew. (Andrew Connors? Well, why not, perhaps he really was Connors.) But what had she said? Had anything been said? No, she was sure not, everything had been so rushed, she had been in a fever, she had only wanted to get off as fast as she could. The matériel? No, was it likely she would mention that? Of course she hadn't!

She sat on, cold, tense, frightened, trying to remember, while at the same time, the thought, He is English, was coming to her rescue. She was struggling to make her memory come to heel, to give up what it should, while she thought, He is English, he will understand.

Oh yes, Alice did know that she forgot things, but not how badly, or how often. When her mind started to dazzle and to puzzle, frantically trying to lay hold of something stable, then she always at once allowed herself - as she did now - to slide back into her childhood, where she dwelt pleasurably on some scene or other that she had smoothed and polished and painted over and over again with fresh colour until it was like walking into a story that began, "Once upon a time there was a little girl called Alice, with her mother, Dorothy. One morning Alice was in the kitchen with Dorothy, who was making her favourite pudding, apple with cinnamon and brown sugar and sour cream, and little Alice said, 'Mummy, I am a good girl, aren't I?' "

But today her mind would not stay in this dream, or story; it insisted on coming back into the present, away from her mother, who was finally repudiating Alice because of the bombing.

Alice sat quietly on, while time passed, carrying her towards lunch and Peter Cecil. She was very anxious, and the pit of her stomach hurt, and her heart thudded painfully.

There was no need to tell Peter Cecil anything about it. Why should she? Perhaps she would say a little about Andrew. It would not harm Andrew: she did not even know where he was. "Andrew Connors?" she would say. "Yes, he said he was an American. He sometimes visited the house next door; he was in love with a girl who lived there then, I've forgotten her name. And that's all I know, really."

They would have a nice lunch. Perhaps he would even turn out to be a friend, like Andrew. After all, she counted Andrew as a friend, though she did not now think as well of him as she had. There were always decent people, even among reactionaries. She remembered some comrade or other, saying somewhere or other - in Birmingham, was it? in the Manchester squat? - that it was primitive Marxism to think that as individuals every member of a ruling class was bad. She would just have to watch her tongue; it would be all right. Just have to be careful - and trust to inspiration. It was silly sitting here worrying about what to say; she always did know, when the time came, how to handle things.

And that went for Gordon O'Leary, too.... But as she thought about him, Alice felt the anxiety in her stomach becoming a sharp, almost unbearable pain. Oh, shit, she had just understood she must be careful not to mention Gordon to Peter Cecil, or to let Peter Cecil come anywhere near this house after lunch. Never mind, she was sure she could manage that. She would first handle Peter Cecil, and then Gordon O'Leary. But - she suddenly thought - why should she meet Gordon at all? After lunch, she could simply go off for a walk somewhere, and not come back to this house till later. No, that would only be postponing the problem. She would come back in good time from the restaurant, saying good-bye to Peter Cecil there, and pin a note on the door saying... No, there couldn't be a note: the neighbours would see it and come to investi- gate. Much better let everyone think that things were going on normally for as long as possible; and that was why it was a good thing they would at least see her going in and out.

When she got back from the restaurant she would lock the doors and windows - there was only one window that didn't lock, and she would nail it down, now, before she went off - and she would go right up to the top of the house and into the attic, and put a weight on the trap door so that no one could come up into it. Even if Gordon O'Leary got into the house somehow - and he would hardly want to be seen breaking into a house in full daylight - he would not know you could get up into the attic; why should he?

This detailed planning and arranging was making her feel better. It was what she was good at: she felt in command of everything again, and her painful stomach was easing, and she was breathing more quietly.

She was actually looking forward to the meal with Peter Cecil!

Smiling gently, a mug of very strong sweet tea in her hand, looking this morning like a nine-year-old girl who has had, perhaps, a bad dream, the poor baby sat waiting for it to be time to go out and meet the professionals.

The End