The Good Terrorist

Round about four in the afternoon the kitchen was scrubbed, not a smear of dust or grit anywhere. The big table stood where it ought, with its heavy wooden chairs around it, and on it a glass jam jar with some jonquils out of the garden. Only the poor cooker lay on its side, a reminder of disorder. Alice thought that she would get on a train and go down to the others - she had a right to it, she was the veteran of a hundred battles - but sat down for a rest in the sitting room and fell asleep, and woke to find the others noisily crowding in, laughing and talking, elated and full of accomplishment.

Alice, a sleepy creature in the big chair, was humble, even apologetic, as she struggled up to greet them. She felt she had no right to it when food and drink were spread about the floor and she was invited to join.

Then she remembered. She pulled out her thick roll of notes and, laughing, gave £150 to Philip. "On account," she said.

A silence. They stared. Then they laughed, and began hugging her and one another. Even Jasper put his arm around her briefly as he laughed, and seemed to show her off to the others.

"Better not ask where," said Roberta, "but congratulations."

"Honestly gained, I hope," said Faye primly, and they started again, embracing and laughing, but this was as much, Alice knew, out of the exuberant excesses of emotion from the day's energetic confrontations with Authority as because they were pleased with her.

"All the same," said Faye, "we have to come to a group decision," and Roberta said, "Oh, balls, Faye, come off it. It's all right...."

The two women exchanged a look; and Alice knew: they had been discussing it down there, and had disagreed. Bert said briefly, as though it really didn't matter, and had not mattered: "Yes, as far as I am concerned it is all right." Jasper echoed, "Yes, I agree."

Pat said, "Of course it is all right."

Philip could not speak, for he would have wept; he was shining with relief, with happiness. And Jim: well, he was taking it, Alice could see, as a reprieve; she knew that nothing could ever seem, to Jim, more than a temporary good. But he was pleased enough. There was a warm, good feeling in the room. A family...

The good feeling lasted through the meal, and while Alice took them to the kitchen to show them its cleanliness.

"A wonder, she is," sang Faye. "Alice the Wonder, the wondrous Alice..." She was tipsy and exhilarated, and everyone enjoyed looking at her.

Without Alice's asking, Bert and Jasper lifted the cooker upright to stand in its place against the wall.

"I'll get it properly fixed tomorrow," said Philip, contentedly.

They went together up the stairs, reluctant to separate for the night, so much of a group did they feel.

Lying along the wall, in the dark, her feet a yard from Jasper's feet, Alice remarked dreamily, "What have you and Bert decided, then?"

A quick movement from Jasper, which she noted, thinking, I didn't know I was going to say that.

He was lying stiffly, found out; that was how he had experienced what she had said.

"Oh, I don't mind, Jasper," she said, impatient but conciliatory. "But you did discuss it, didn't you?"

After a pause, "Yes, we did."

"Well, it does affect us all."

A pause. Grudgingly, "We thought it mightn't be a bad thing, having other people here. But they have to be CCU. Jim will have to join."

"You mean, Philip and Jim will be a cover."

He said nothing. Silence means consent. She said, "Yes, and of course there'll be more people coming in, and..."

He said fussily, "You aren't to let just anyone come, we can't have just anybody."

"I didn't say, just anybody. But the others needn't ever know we are IRA."

"Precisely," said Jasper.

And then she remarked, in her dreamy voice and to her own surprise, "With the comrades in the other house, I wonder..." She stopped. Interested in what she had said. Respectful of it.

But he had shot up on his elbow and was staring at her in the half-dark, where headlamps from the road moved light across the ceiling, the walls, the floor, so they were both irregularly illumi- nated. He was silent. He did not ask, "How do you know about the other house?," or say, "How dare you spy on me?" - things that had been said often enough in the past, until he had learned that she could do this: know, without being told.

She was thinking fast, listening to what she had said. So, Bert and Jasper had been next door, had they? There are comrades there? Yes, that's it!

She said, "Did you just go there, on the off-chance, or - what happened?"

He replied stiffly, after a pause, "We were contacted. They sent a message."

"To you? To you and Bert?"

From his hesitation she knew that she had been included, but she did not intend to make an issue of it.

"A message came," he said, and lay down.

"And you and Bert and - the comrades there decided we should have more people in, as a cover."

Silence. But she knew he was not asleep. She let a few minutes go by, while she thought. Then she changed the subject, saying, "Quite soon people are going to have to start making a contribution. So far I've paid for everything."

"Where did you get that money?" he asked at once, reminded about it, as she had intended.

She had it ready for him; she leaned over in the dark and handed him some notes.

"How much?" he demanded.

"Fifty."

"How much did you get?"

"Ask no questions," she said, though she would have told him had he asked; but he only said, "That's right, squeeze the last blood out of them."

She said, "Tomorrow I've got to tackle the Council. Will you get my Social Security?"

"Right."

They were both waiting for the sounds of lovemaking from next door, but Bert and Pat must have dropped off. Jasper and Alice had been lying tense; now they relaxed and lay companionably silent, and Alice was thinking: We are together.... This is like a marriage: talking together before going to sleep. I hope he starts telling me what happened today.

She did not want to ask, but she knew that he knew she craved to hear it all. And soon he was kind; he began to talk. She loved him like this. He told her everything, right from the beginning: how the seven of them had been on the train, how they had bought sandwiches and coffee at the station, and had all crowded on the two seats facing each other and shared breakfast. Then how they went by taxi to the printworks. The taxi driver had been on their side: he had said "Good luck" as he drove off.

"That was nice," said Alice softly, smiling in the dark.

And so they talked, quietly, Jasper telling everything, for he was good at this, building up word pictures of an event, an occasion. He ought to be a journalist, thought Alice, he is so clever.

She could have talked all night, because of course she had slept a long time. But he fell asleep quite soon; and she was content to lie there, in the quiet, arranging her plans for the next day, which, she knew, would not be easy.

When she woke, Jasper was not there. She ran to the top of the house, and looked into the four rooms where she had left all the windows open. The two rooms where the horrible pails had been were already only rooms in which people would soon be living. But she had not come for that. On two of the ceilings were sodden brown patches, and, having located on the landing the trap door to the attic, she stood on a window sill to reach. She could, just, and felt the trap door lift under her fingers. No problem there!

Down she ran to the kitchen, where there were voices. What she saw made her eyes fill with tears. They were sitting round the table: Bert and Pat, these two close together; Jasper; Jim smiling and happy; and Philip, already working on the cooker, bending over behind it, a cup of coffee on its top. Bert had gone to his friend Philip's girlfriend, Felicity, the Thermos had been filled, he had bought croissants and butter and jam. It was a real meal. She slid into her place at the head of the table, opposite Bert, and said, "If this room had some curtains..." They all laughed.

"Before talking about curtains, you had better get things fixed with the Council," said Jasper, rather hectoring, but only because he was jealous of Pat, who said, "Oh, I'd back Alice. I'd back her in anything."

Coffee and croissants appeared before her, and Alice said, "Has anybody noticed the ceilings upstairs?"

"I have," said Pat.

Philip said, "I can't do everything at once." He sounded aggrieved, and Pat said, "Don't worry. It's not difficult to fix slates. I did it once in another squat."

"I'll do it with you when I've finished this," said Philip.

Pat said to Bert, "If someone could get the slipped-down tiles out of that guttering...?"

"No head for heights," said Bert comfortably.

"I can do that," said Alice. Then she said to Jasper, not Bert, "If you could borrow the car from next door, you could go looking in the skips for some furniture? I saw four skips in my father's street with all sorts of good stuff." She added fiercely, "Waste. All this waste." She knew her look was about to overcome her, as she said, "This house, all these rooms... people throwing things out everywhere, when there's nothing wrong with them." She sat fighting with herself, knowing that Pat was examining her, diagnostic. Pat said to Bert, "There you are, Bert, job for the day. You and Jasper." As he sat laughing from some old joke about his laziness, she said, irritated, "Oh, for shit's sake, Alice has done all the work."

"And found all the money," said Philip, from the cooker.

"Put like that," said Bert.

"Put like that," agreed Jasper, pleased, already restlessly moving about because of wanting to be off with Bert, looting and finding, street-combing....

Those two went off as Roberta and Faye came in, saw the remains of the croissants, and sat down to consume them.

Alice dragged Philip's heavy ladder to the front of the house, and went up it. Luckily the house was built squat, heavy on the earth, not tall and frightening. By the time she reached the top, Pat was already on the roof, sitting near the chimney with one arm round it: she had come up through the attic and a skylight. Around the chimney's base the roof looked eroded, pocked. A great many tiles had slipped and were now propped along the gutter. All that water pouring in, and going where? They had not properly examined the attics yet.

Alice was reaching out for the fallen tiles, and laying them on the roof in front of her. Pat seemed in no hurry to start; she was enjoying sitting there, looking at roofs and upper windows. And at neighbours, of course, watching them, two women at work on a roof. And where were the men? these people could positively be heard thinking - Joan Robbins, the old woman sitting there under her tree, the man staring grumpily out of a top window.

"Catch," called Alice, ready to throw, but Pat said, "Wait." She wriggled onto her stomach and squinted in through the roof.

"There's a nest on the rafter here," she said in a hushed voice, as though afraid of disturbing the birds.

"Oh no," said Alice, "oh, how awful!" She sounded suddenly hysterical, and Pat glanced at her, coldly, over her arm, which was stretched in under the roof. "Oh, for God's sake," said Alice, and began to cry.

"A bird," said Pat. "A bird, not a person." She pulled out handfuls of straw and stuff, and flung them out into the air, where they floated down. Then something crashed onto the tiles of the roof: an egg. The tiny embryo of a bird sprawled there. Moving.

Alice went on crying, little gusts of breathless sobs, her eyes fixed on the roof in front of her.

Another egg crashed on the roof.

Childlike frantic eyes implored Pat, who still was rooting about with her arm through the hole beneath her. But Pat was deliberately not looking at Alice snuffling and gulping below her.

A third egg flew in an arc and crashed splodgily in the garden.

"Now that's done," said Pat, and she looked at Alice. "Stop it!" Alice sniffed herself to silence and, at a nod from Pat, began to throw up the tiles. Pat caught them, carefully, one after another.

Roberta and Faye appeared below, and went off, waving to them.

"Have a good day," said Pat, brief, ironical, but with a smile saying that she, like Alice, did not expect anything else.

Soon Philip came up to join Pat, and Alice, having cleared all the gutters as far as she could reach, went down to move the heavy ladder along a few paces. She worked, in this way, all round the house, removing wads of sodden leaves, and fallen tiles. Above her, Philip and Pat replaced the tiles.

Alice felt low and betrayed. By somebody. The two minute half-born birds were lying there, their necks stretched out, filmy eyes closed, and no one looked at them. The parent birds fluttered about on the high branches nearby, complaining.

Alice tried to keep her mind on what had to be done next. The cleaning. The cleaning! Windows and floors and walls and ceilings, and then paint, so much paint, it would cost....

In mid-afternoon she went off to ring the Council, as if this were not an important thing, as if things were settled.

She heard that Mary Williams was not there and her heart went dark.

Bob Hood, an official disturbed in his important work, said curtly that the matter of 43 and 45 had been put off till tomorrow.

Said Alice, "It's all right, then, is it?"

"No, it certainly is not," said Bob Hood. "It has not been agreed that you or anyone else can occupy those premises."

Alice said in a voice as peremptory, as dismissive as his, "You ought to come and see this place. It is a disgrace that it could ever be considered as suitable for demolition. Somebody's head should roll for it. I am sure heads will roll. These are two perfectly sound houses, in good condition."

A pause. Huffily he said - but he was retreating - "And there have been more complaints. Things cannot be allowed to continue."

"But we have cleaned up forty-three - the one we took over. The police would confirm that it has been cleaned up."

Alice waited, confident. Oh, she knew this type, knew how their cowardly little minds worked, knew she had him. She could hear him breathing, could positively note how mental machineries clicked into place.

"Very well," he said. "I will come round. I've been meaning to take a look at those two properties."

"Can you give me some indication as to time?" said Alice.

"There's no need for that, we have keys."

"Yes, but we can't have people just wandering around, can we? I'd like you to give us some approximate time."

This was such cheek that she wondered at herself. Yet she knew it was not over the top, because of her manner: every bit as authoritative as his. She was not surprised when he said, "I'll come round now."

"Right," said Alice. "We'll expect you." And put down the receiver on him.

She raced back. She called up to Philip and Pat that the Council was coming, and on no account should they stop, because it would be a good thing for them to be seen at work up there. She ran indoors to check on sitting room, kitchen. She went upstairs to the rooms where they slept, and marvelled that Roberta and Faye's room was a veritable bower of femininity, with dressing table, cushions, duvet on the double sleeping bag, photographs - all of it grubby, but it would make a good impression. She whisked on a skirt. Her hair, her nails. She heard a knock before she expected it and tripped down the stairs with a cool smile already adjusted on her face to open the door correctly on, "Bob Hood? I am Alice Mellings."

"I hope those two on the roof know what they are doing?"

"I expect so. He is a builder. She is assisting him. As an amateur, but she has done it before."

She had silenced him. Oh, you nasty little man, she was thinking behind her good-girl's smile. You nasty little bureaucrat.

"Shall I show you downstairs first? Of course, this will give you no idea of what it was like only three days ago. For one thing, the Council workmen had filled in the lavatory bowls with concrete and ripped the electric cables out - they left them anyhow, a fire hazard."

He said, "I have no doubt they were fulfilling their instructions."

"You mean, they were instructed to leave the cables dangerous, and to concrete over the main water tap? I wonder if the Water Board knows about that?"

He was red, and furious. Not looking at him, she flung open one door after another downstairs, lingering over the kitchen. "The electrician had made it safe in here, but you were lucky the place didn't go up in flames. Mary Williams said you had been over this house. How was it you didn't notice the cables?"

Upstairs, she said, knowing that to this man anything incorrect, even so much as a mattress on a floor rather than on a bed, must forever be an affront, "Of course, you will have to take my word for it - the state of these rooms was unspeakably awful when we came, but we have only just started."

"Unspeakably awful now," he said huffily, looking in at the room she and Jasper slept in, the two sleeping bags like the shed skins of snakes loose against the wall.

"It's relative. I think you will be surprised when you see it in a month's time."

He said, quick to take his advantage, "I told you, don't expect anything."

"If this house is left empty again, it will be filled to the brim with vandals and derelicts inside a week, you know that. You're lucky to have us. It's being put back into order, with no expense to the taxpayer."

He did not reply to that. In silence they went through the rooms on the top floor, now sweet-smelling, the air blowing through them. He instinctively closed the windows one after another, performing the task with a fussy, virtuous, irritated little air. Like a fucking housewife, thought the smiling Alice.

They went downstairs. "Well," he said, "I have to agree with you - there's no reason why these houses should come down, that I can see. I'll have to look into it."

"Unless," said Alice, sweet and cold, "someone was going to make a profit out of it. Did you see the article in the Guardian? 'The Scandal of Council Housing'?"

"As it happens, I did. But it is not relevant to this case."

"I see."

They were at the door.

She was waiting. She deserved a capitulation; and it came. The official said, unsmiling but with his whole body expressing unwilling complicity, "I'll put the case for you tomorrow. But I am not promising. And it is not just this house, it's the one next door. I'm going there now."

Again Alice had forgotten next door.

Bob Hood gone, she ran up to a little window that overlooked next door, and watched, in a rage of frustration, how the well-brushed, well-dressed, clean young man stood looking at the piles of rubbish in that garden, saw that the expression on his face was like that on the dustmen's faces: an exasperated, incredulous disgust.

Unable to bear the beating of her heart, her churning stomach, she went down, slowly, suddenly out of energy, and collapsed in the sitting room as Pat came in, with Philip.

"Well?" demanded Pat; and Philip's face was stunned with need, with longing, his eyes a prayer.

"It's dicey," said Alice, and began to weep, to her own fury.

"Oh, God," she wept. "Oh, Christ. Oh, shit. Oh no."

Pat, close on the arm of the chair she was huddled in, put her arm around the dejected shoulders and said, "You're tired. Surprise! You are tired."

"It'll be all right," sobbed Alice. "I know it will be, it will, I feel it."

From the silence, she knew that above her head Philip and Pat shared glances that said she, Alice, had to be humoured, patted, caressed, given coffee from the flask, then brandy from a reserve bottle. But she knew that though Pat's interest was real, it was not like Philip's and like her own. Pat's heart would never pound, or her stomach churn.... For this reason, she did not accept Pat's encircling sisterliness, remained herself, alone, sad and isolated, drinking her coffee, her brandy. Philip was her charge, her responsibility: her family, so she felt, because he was as she was. She was pleased, though, to have Pat as an ally.

And at this point, Jasper and Bert arrived, with gleanings from London, that great lucky dip, and Alice flew into the hall, to welcome a load of stuff that had to be sorted out; and which switched her emotions back to another circuit. "Oh, the wicked waste of it all," she raged, seeing plastic bags full of curtains, which were there because someone had tired of them; a refrigerator, stools, tables, chairs - all of them serviceable, if some needed a few minutes' work to put right.

Bert and Jasper went out again; they were elated and enjoying it. A pair, a real pair, a team; united by this enterprise of theirs, furnishing this house. And they had the car for the whole day, and must make the most of it.

Philip and Pat let the roof go while they helped Alice allot furniture, flew out to buy curtain fittings for which Alice took the money from her hoard.

They ran around, and up and down, dragging furniture, hanging curtains, spreading on the hall floor a large carpet that needed only some cleaning to make it perfect.

Bert and Jasper came in the late afternoon, having scavenged around Mayfair and St. John's Wood, with another load, and said that was it, no more for today - and the householders sat in the kitchen drinking tea and eating bacon and eggs properly cooked on the stove, with the purr of the refrigerator for company.

And in the middle of this feast, which was such a delicate balancing of interests, the result of careful and calculated good will, there was a knock. It was, however, tentative, not a peremptory summons. They turned as one; from the kitchen they could see the front door, and it was opening. A young woman stood there, and as the others stared - Whose friend is she? - Alice's heart began to pound. She already knew it all, from the way this visitor was looking around the hall, which was carpeted, warm, properly if dimly lit, then up the solid stairs, and then in at them all. She was all hungry determination and purpose.

"The Council," reassured Alice. "It is Mary Williams. The colleague of that little fascist who was here today. But she's all right...." This last she knew was really the beginning of an argument that would be taking place later, perhaps even that night. Perhaps not an argument, not bitterness, but only a friendly discussion - oh, prayed Alice, let it be all right, and she slipped away from the others, saying, "It's all right, I'll just..."

She shut the door on the kitchen, and on a laugh that said she was bossy, but not impossibly so. Oh, please, please, please, she was inwardly entreating - Fate, perhaps - as she went smiling towards Mary. Who was smiling in entreaty at Alice.

As Alice had absolutely expected, Mary began, "I dropped in at the office - I was at a course today, you know, they send you on courses, I arrt doing Social Relationships - -and I saw Bob on his way out. He told me he had been here...." Alice was opening the door into the sitting room, which was looking like anybody's warm living room, if a trifle shabby, and she saw Mary's anxious face go soft, and heard her sigh.

They sat down. Now Mary was petitioner, Alice the judge. Alice helped with, "It is a nice house, isn't it? Mad, to pull it down."

Mary burst out, "Well, they are mad." (Alice noted that "they" with a familiar dry, even resigned, amusement.) "When I opted for Housing, it was because I thought, Well, I'll be housing people, I'll be helping the homeless, but if I had known... Well, I'm disillusioned now, and if you knew what goes on..."

"But I do."

"Well, then..."

Mary was blushing, eyes beseeching. "I am going to come to the point. Do you think I could come and live here? I need it. It's not just me. We want to get married - I and my boyfriend. Reggie. He's an industrial chemist." This chemist bit was there to reassure her, thought Alice, with the beginnings of scorn that, however, she had to push down and out of sight. "We were just saving up to buy a flat and he lost his job. His firm closed down. So we had to let that flat go. We could live with my mother or with his parents, but... if we lived here we could save some money...." She made herself bring it all out, hating her role as beggar; and the result of this effort was a bright determination, like a command.

But Alice was thinking, Oh, shit, no, it's worse than I thought. What will the others say?

She played for time with, "Do you want to see the house?"

"Oh, God," said Mary, bursting into tears. "Bob said there were rooms and rooms upstairs, all empty."

"He's not going to move in!" said Alice, not knowing she was going to, with such cold dislike for him that Mary stopped crying and stared.

"He's all right, really," she said. "It's just his manner."

"No," said Alice, "it's not just his manner."

"I suppose not...."

This acknowledgement of Bob's awfulness made Alice feel friendlier, and she said gently, "Have you ever lived in a squat? No, of course you haven't! Well, I have, in lots. You see, it's tricky; people have to fit in."

Mary's bright hungry eyes - just like the poor cat's, thought Alice - were eating up Alice's face with the need to be what Alice wanted. "No one has ever said I am difficult to get on with," she said, trying to sound humorous, and sighing.

"Most of the people here," said Alice, sounding prim, "are interested in politics."

"Who isn't? It is everyone's duty to be political, these days."

"We're socialists."

"Well, of course."

"Communist Centre Union," murmured Alice.

"Communist?"

Alice thought, If she goes to that meeting tomorrow and says, They are communists... She's quite capable of it, and with a bright democratic smile! She said, "It's not communist, like the Communist Party of Great Britain." Keeping her eyes firmly on Mary's face, for she knew that what Mary saw was reassuring - unless she, Alice was wearing her look, and she was pretty sure she was not - she said firmly, "The comrades in Russia have lost their way. They lost their way a long time ago."

"There's no argument about that," said Mary, with a hard brisk little contempt, dabbing her eyes with a tissue. She sat restored, a pleasant ordinary girl, all brown shining curls and fresh skin. Like an advertisement for medium-quality toilet soap. But tomorrow she could decide the fate of all of them, thought Alice, curiously examining her. If she said to Bob, tomorrow morning, sharing cups of coffee before the meeting, "I dropped in last night at that house, you know, forty-three Old Mill Road, and my God, what a setup!," then he could change his mind, just like that, particularly with the house next door in such a mess.

She asked, "Did Bob Hood say anything about next door?"

"He said there's nothing structurally wrong."

"Then why, why, why, why?" burst out Alice, unable to stop herself.

"The plan was to build two blocks of flats, where these houses are. No, not awful flats, quite decent really, but they wouldn't fit, not with these houses around here." She added bitterly, forgetting her status, "But some contractor will make a packet out of it." And then, going a step worse, "Jobs for pals." Shocked by herself, she shot an embarrassed glance at Alice, and added a social smile.

"We can't let them," said Alice.

"I agree. Well, it's what Bob says that counts, and he is furious, he is really. He is really going to fight. He says it's a crime these houses should come down." She hesitated, and took the plunge into what she clearly felt was a descent into even worse indiscretion with, "I was in Militant Tendency for a bit, but I don't like their methods. So I left."

Alice sat silent with amazement. Mary, in Militant! Well, of course she wouldn't like Militant's methods. And she wouldn't like the methods of Alice, Jasper, Pat, Roberta, or Faye. Nor, for that matter, Jim's (so Alice suspected). But that Mary had gone anywhere near Militant, that was the impossibility! She asked cautiously, "And Reggie?"

"He was trying out Militant for the same reason I was. I was shocked by what I saw going on at work, jobs for pals, as I said...." Again the brief, social smile, like a frozen apology. "We decided at once Militant was not for us. We joined Greenpeace."

"Well, of course," said Alice, hopefully, "but if you are Trot-skyists..." With a bit of luck Mary would say yes, she counted herself with the Trots, and then of course this house would be impossible.... But Alice heard, "We're not anything at the moment, only Greenpeace. We thought of joining the Labour Party, but we need something more..."

"Dynamic," said Alice, choosing a flatteringly forceful but not ideological word. "I think perhaps the CCU would suit you. Anyway, come and see the house." She got up, so did Mary - it was like the termination of an interview. Alice had decided that she really did like Mary. She would do. But what of Reggie? Thoughts of Reggie accompanied the two women as they went rapidly around the upper floors. Alice flung open doors on empty rooms, and heard how Mary sighed and longed, and was not at all surprised to hear her say, as they came down the stairs again, "Actually, Reggie is in the pub down the road."

Alice laughed, a robust girl's laugh, and Mary chimed in, after a pause, with a breathless little tinkle.

"The thing is," said Alice, "we have to discuss it. All of us. A group decision, you know."

"If we come back in half an hour?"

"Longer than that," said Alice, and added, because of Mary's beseeching eyes, "I'll do my best."

She went into the kitchen, where they sat in a fug of comfort (created by her), and sat down, and she put the situation to them.

Because of all that food and chat and good nature and togetherness, there was an explosion of laughter. Literally, they fell about. But there was a theatrical quality to it that Alice did not much like.

Silence at last, and Pat said, "Alice, are you saying that if we don't let them come here, we won't get this house?"

Alice did not reply at once. At last she said, "She wouldn't do anything spiteful on purpose, I am sure of that. But if she was coming here to live, she'd be careful about what she said. It's human nature," said Alice, feebly, using a phrase that of course was simply beyond the pale.

"What could she say that would make such a difference," Pat persisted.

"If she said, They are a bunch of reds, Bob Hood would soon find a reason to have us kicked out. She doesn't care, because she's one herself."

"That girl is a revolutionary?" asked Bert, laughing.

"She's a Trotskyist. Of a sort. Or she was one."

"Then how can they come and live here, Alice," said Bert, firm but kind.

"I don't think she's anything much, at the moment. Ideologically. And anyway," Alice persisted, courageously, knowing what this argument of hers had cost her in the past, earning her all kinds of accusations, "in a sense, aren't we? After all, we don't say that Trotsky never existed! We give him full credit for his achievements. We say that it was Lenin who was the real workers' leader, and then the comrades there took a wrong turning with Stalin. If saying that Trotsky was a good comrade and he took the wrong turning makes you a Trot, then I don't see why we aren't? Anyway, I don't seem to remember we actually defined our line on Trotsky. Not in the CCU, anyway."

"Oh, Alice," said Jasper, with the finality of superiority, "ideology is simply not your line."

"Well," said Pat, having exchanged efficient looks with Bert, "I for one don't think this is the moment to define our attitude towards Comrade Trotsky. There is something in what Alice says. That's not the point. My point is that this business of having a nice clean house and a roof over our heads is beginning to define us. It is what we do."

"It's taken four days," said Alice, "four days," and she was appealing for justice.

"Yes, but now it looks as if we are going to have two new people here just to keep the house."

Jim said, "Why don't we ask them to join the CCU. I'm going to join."

"Well, why not?" said Bert, after a considerable pause. Alice saw him and Jasper exchange a long thoughtful look. She knew they were thinking that perhaps they should go next door to ask someone - who? - for advice. Or instruction.

She said, "We must decide tonight. The meeting is tomorrow." And now she did have her look. Her voice told her so; and told the others, who turned to see how she sat swelling and suffering there.

Bert and Jasper still sat gazing at each other in an abstracted way. What they were doing, in fact, was playing back in their minds what had been said by someone next door, and wondering how to fit this situation into it.

Bert said, "I don't see why we shouldn't ask them to join. We keep saying we want to recruit. It sounds to me as if these two might be ripe. With a bit of political education..." And on these words he and Jasper got up, as one, and went out, Jasper remarking, "We'll be back in a minute."

Pat said, "And I'm off. I'm off to visit someone."

"But don't you want to meet Mary and Reggie?"

Pat shrugged, smiled, and left. Alice was reminded - as, she was sure, Pat had intended - that Pat did not really care, was going to leave anyway.

Remained Alice and Jim and Philip.

Soon in came Mary, with a man of whom Alice found herself thinking, at first glance, "Well, of course!" - meaning that he and Mary were a pair. Not in looks, for he was a tall, knobbly-looking man, with very white skin, small black eyes under strong black brows, and dense, very fine black hair. He would be bald early. Where he matched with Mary was in an air of measure, of common sense ordered by what was due. Due, that is, to their surroundings, their fellows, to society. Alice was looking, and she knew it, at respectability. It was not that she did not value this type of good sense; but it was not the kind of sense that would be appropriate here, in this household. It was with an infinite feeling of tolerance that she allowed that other people had need of these struts and supports. She was thinking, Good God, they were born to be two nice little bourgeois in a nice little house. They'll be worrying about their pensions next.

Seeing them together, she felt, simply, that a mistake was being made. They should not be here. Alone with Mary, she liked her. Seeing her with her mate, Reggie, Alice felt alienated, with the beginnings of a strong hostility.

"Sit down," she smiled. And she put the saucepan on the stove and switched on the electricity. A pity: a gas stove would be so much better. Well, they would find one on a skip, or even get a reconditioned one for ten pounds or so.

She turned to see Reggie examining Jim, and thought, With a bit of luck he's colour-prejudiced and won't want to be here. But no such luck: he seemed to like Jim. Or, if he didn't like blacks, his manner said nothing about that. Of course, thought Alice, this lot, the bloody middle classes, you'd find out nothing from their manner, politeness is all. But no, it was genuine, she was pretty sure of it; body language - something Alice was equipped by instinct to understand, long before there was a name for it - told her that Reggie was all right about colour, at least. She sat listening to them talk, everything easy, Reggie with Jim, Mary with Philip. She made mugs of coffee and set before them a plate of cake.

Chat. How she, Alice, had fixed things with Electricity, and would with the Gas Board. The Water Board, of course, would be told. Alice did not say that the Water Board would not catch up with them for months and that she had no intention of attracting their attention. These two were bill payers and keepers of accounts.

She said, to warn them, "I have lived in a lot of squats, and you'll have to accept it, some people don't pull their weight. They just don't."

At this Jim said, hurt, "Until you came there wasn't anything to pay, was there?" And she said, "No, I'm not talking about you, I'm talking about the situation. It's no good these two moving in and expecting everything to be regular."

Mary said, "But with so many people here, it will still be cheaper than anything else could possibly be, with no rent."

"Exactly," said Reggie. And came straight to his point, with, "Tell us about the CCU? You know, we've never heard of it. Mary and I were talking in the pub. It didn't ring a bell with either of us."

"Well, it's not a very big party, really," said Alice. "But it's growing. When we started it, we never meant it to be a mass party; we don't want it to be. These mass parties, they lose touch with the people."

"Well, that's true enough," said Reggie, but he said it carefully, as though he could have said other things; and Alice thought: He and Mary are going to exchange glances.... They didn't, but only with an effort so obvious she thought contemptuously: People are so amazing. They exchange glances as if no one can see them, and they don't know how they give themselves away.... Anyone can read what people are thinking.

Reggie: "The CCU - the Communist Centre Union?"

"Centre, because we wanted to show we were not left deviants or revisionists."

"Union - two parties joined, two groups?"

"No, a union of viewpoints, you see. No hairsplitting. We didn't want any of that."

"And you started the CCU?"

"I was one of them. And Jasper Willis. Have you heard of him?" As Reggie and Mary shook their heads, Alice thought, But you will. "Several of us. It was up in Birmingham. We have a branch there. And a comrade wrote last week to say he had started a branch in Liverpool. He has four new members. And there's the branch here in London."

Here Mary and Reggie were finally unable to prevent their eyes from meeting. Alice felt a flush of real contempt, like hatred. She said, "All political parties have to start, don't they? They start with only a few members. Well, we've only been going a year and we have thirty members here in London. Including the comrades in this house." She resisted the temptation to say: And of course there are some next door.

"And your policy?" asked Reggie, still in the same careful way that means a person is not going to allow a real discussion to start because his opinion has to be kept in reserve.

All right! thought Alice again, you just wait, you'll hear of the CCU. Anyway, you are going to join, because you want to live here. Opportunist! She was thinking at the same time, We'll educate you. Raw material is raw material. It's what you'll be like in a year that counts. If you haven't saved up enough to move out before then. Well, at least you two will be in no hurry to see this squat come to an end. She said, "We've got a policy statement. I'll give you one. But we are going to have a proper conference next month and thrash out all the details."

But they weren't listening, Alice could see. They were thinking about how soon they could move in.

They asked whether they could bring in some furniture, and offered pots and pans and an electric kettle.

"Gratefully accepted," said Alice, and so they chatted on until Jasper and Bert came back from next door, and Alice knew that there was no problem at all about these two staying. Not from that quarter, anyway, whatever it might turn out to be; though Roberta and Faye were another thing.

Reggie sat quietly, leaning back in the chair, summing up Jasper, summing up Bert. Alice knew that he warmed to Bert. Well, they were two of a kind. He did not much like Jasper. Oh, she knew that look when people first met Jasper. She remembered how she, too, when she had first seen Jasper all those years ago, had felt some instinctive warning, or shrinking. And look how mistaken she had been.

At eleven, Mary and Reggie went off; they were afraid to miss the last trains back to Muswell Hill and Fulham, where they respectively lived, so far apart.

Philip said he was tired and went to bed.

Jim went into his room, and they heard soft music from his record player, accompanied by his softer drums.

"What's happened to Faye and Roberta?" asked Alice, and Bert said, "There's a women's commune in Paddington, they go there a lot."

"Why don't they move in there?"

"They like it here," said Bert, with a grimace that said, Ask no questions and...

Bert went up to sleep. Jasper and Alice were alone in the kitchen.

"All right," said Jasper. "I'll tell you, give me a chance."

They went up to their room; Jasper had not said she must move out, or that he would; and Alice slid down into the sleeping bag the way a dog slinks, eyes averted, into a favourite place, hoping no one will notice.

They could hear Bert moving about next door. Jasper said, "Bert and Pat are going away for the weekend." His voice was painful to hear.

"Only for the weekend," Alice comforted him for the loss of Bert. As for her, her saddened heart told her how much she would miss Pat, even for the weekend. "Where are they going?"

"They didn't say, and I didn't ask."

They lay companionably by their wall, their feet not far from each other. They had not yet found curtains for this room, and the lights from the traffic still chased across the ceiling, and the whole house shook softly with the heavy lorries going north, giving Alice a comforting sense of familiarity, as if they had been living here for months, not days; she seemed to have lived all her life in houses that shook to heavy traffic.

"Would you like to come down to the picket tomorrow?"

"But I really have to be here," mourned Alice.

"Well, Saturday night we could go and paint up a few slogans."

She steadied her voice so that it would not betray her surge of delight, of gratitude. "That'd be nice, Jasper."

"Yes. Get some spray paint." He turned to the wall. She was not going to hear anything about next door tonight. But tomorrow, tomorrow night... she might. And on Saturday...