one day, her mother had dropped in to visit her great friend Zoë Devlin, and found her wearing a Guardian apron; the word ‘Guardian’ printed in various sizes of black print, on white. This had given Dorothy Mellings a shock; she had had a revelation because of this sight, she had said. That Zoë Devlin, of all people in the world, should be willing to put herself into uniform, to proclaim conformity!
It was the beginning of her mother’s period of pretty farfetched utterances – a period by no means over. The beginning, too, of a series of meetings, arranged between the two women for the purpose of re-examining what they thought. ‘We go along for decades,’ Alice had heard her mother say on the telephone, initiating the first discussion, ‘taking it for granted we agree about things, and we don’t. Like hell we do! We’re going to have to decide if you and I have anything in common, Zoë, how about it?’
Typical intellectual shit, Jasper had opined, meaning Dorothy to hear it.
Remembering Jasper, Alice understood she could not just turn up now, make coffee, and greet her mother with a smile.
She got on the train, and found another café, where no one would think her remarkable. It was nearly empty; its busy time would not start for another two hours, when shoppers, men and women, came in. Now Alice ate wholemeal buns and honey and was restored to grace, and with an eye on the clock on the wall, bided her time. Her mother would probably go out to the shops about nine-thirty, ten. She liked to get shopping over, for she hated it.
Alice had done the shopping, for four years. She loved it. When she returned to the great kitchen with cartons full of food brought back in the car, she would carefully put everything away. Her mother would probably be there (if Jasper wasn’t) and they would talk, getting on like anything! They always did! At home Alice was a good girl, a good daughter, as she had always enjoyed being. It was she who managed the kitchen…of course, her mother was pleased to have her do it. (There was an uneasy little thought tucked away somewhere here, but Alice chose to ignore it.) For the four years Alice and Jasper had been there, she had shopped and cooked. She had also cooked – sometimes commandeering the kitchen for two or three days at a time – the food she sold at the market. Jasper used to come in quickly, taking his opportunity when Dorothy was not around, and fill himself with whatever she was making that day – ‘her’ soup, for instance; cakes, good healthy bread. Or, if she were not cooking, might be at the market, he sneaked to the refrigerator and took anything there he fancied. Alice kept it well supplied with ham and salami and pickles for him. He cut himself great sandwiches and took them to his room and stayed there, not coming down for hours. Dorothy, at the beginning, had asked, uneasy, ‘What does Jasper do up there all day?’ ‘He studies,’ Alice always said, proud and forbidding. She knew that he did nothing at all, sometimes, all day. He might read the Socialist Worker and the Morning Star. Otherwise he listened to pop, through headphones, and sometimes danced to it quietly by himself, all over the room. He was very graceful, Alice knew; he hated to be seen, and this was a pity. He should have danced: done ballet, perhaps?
Then he would come down again, silently, to get more food. He would never willingly come into the kitchen if Dorothy were there. He never sat down to eat with them. When Alice remonstrated, said her mother did not like it, he had said she did not like him (which was true, as it turned out, though Dorothy certainly had not said so at the start). For his part he thought her a vulgar tart. This epithet, so far off any sort of mark, only stunned Alice’s responses, so she said feebly, ‘But Jasper, how can you say that?’ At which he made loud rude noises, with his lips.
Of course when Dorothy had guests, Jasper was not there. He really might just as well not have been in the house, except for that steady pilfering of food from the kitchen. Anyone would think that Dorothy grudged him the food! Alice had cried out often enough to him, and then when he was merely abusive, to herself.
Now sitting in this friendly, companionable café, where people coming in were likely to greet her; eating more buns, more honey (to fill in time now, not from hunger), Alice was thinking: Well, but she does hate Jasper, always did, people do. And she did grudge him his food, probably; if she hated him. Alice thought, at last, in something like a little panic: What must it have been like for her, never having her own kitchen, not even being able to come into it, for fear of running into Jasper? And then: I was simply doing everything, all the cooking. And she loves cooking…
At half-past nine Alice left the café, calling goodbye to Sarah, who had served there for years. Once a refugee from Austria, she was now an elderly woman with photographs of her grown-up grandchildren stuck on the wall behind the counter. Alice walked up, not too fast, to her mother’s house. She stood outside for some time, then thought that any watching neighbour would find this peculiar. She let herself in with the key she had not handed her mother when she had left yesterday for ever. Not a sound in the house. Alice stood in the hall, breathing in the house, home; the big, easy-fitting, accommodating house that smelled of friendship. She went into the kitchen and her heart turned over. On the floor were tea-chests full of dishes and plates, and, stacked all over the table, teacups and saucers and glasses, already tucked into newspaper. Oh, of course, now that she and Jasper had left, her mother would be giving the unnecessary china and stuff to jumble. Yes, that must be it. A small child, threatened, eyes wide and frantic, Alice stood looking at the tea-chests, then ran upstairs to her own room. It was as she had left it yesterday. She felt better. She went up a floor to the room Jasper had used. On the floor was a rug, Bokhara. Once it had been in the sitting-room, but it got frail, and found a safe place under a table in the room which, until Jasper commandeered it, was little used. It was beautiful. Alice tenderly rolled it up, and ran down with it to the kitchen. Now she hoped that she would not run into her mother. She looked around for paper and a biro, wrote, ‘I have taken the rug, Alice’ and stood this note among the wrapped glasses. Again she was endangered by the sight of the tea-chests. But she made herself forget them, and went out of the house. At the end of the street her mother was coming towards her under a canopy of bright green. She walked slowly, head down. She looked tired and old. Alice ran fast the other way, clutching the heavy rug, until out of sight of her mother, and then walked, increasingly slowly, to Chalk Farm. The carpet shop was only just open. A middle-aged woman sat at a desk, cup of coffee before her, and pushed down dark glasses to look over them at Alice.
‘You want to sell?’ she inquired. ‘Pretty!’ as Alice unrolled the rug on the floor, breathing hard. Together they stood looking, captivated and quietened by the pool of soft patterned colour on the floor. The woman bent, picked it up, and held it against the light. Alice moved round to stand by her and saw the light pricking through, and in one place glaring. Alice’s throat was tight at the back. She thought wildly: I’ll take it to the squat, it’s so beautiful…but waited as the rug was thrown down on the floor again, just anyhow, in folds, and the woman said, ‘It’s badly worn. It would have to be mended. I couldn’t give you more than thirty.’
‘Thirty?’ moaned Alice. She didn’t know what she had expected. She knew it was, or had been, valuable. ‘Thirty,’ she stammered, thinking it had not been worth taking it.
‘My advice is, keep it and enjoy it,’ said the woman, going back to her desk, letting the dark glasses fall back into place, and drinking coffee.
‘No, I need the money,’ said Alice.
She took the three notes and, lingering to look at the rug lying there abandoned by her, went out of the shop.
She bought food for Jasper and went back to the squat. The street had a morning look, no one out, people had gone to work and to school; inside the women would be cleaning or with the kids. But she did not expect anyone to be up yet in her house; in squats no one got up early.
But Pat was in the sitting-room by herself, drinking coffee from the vacuum flask. She indicated with a gesture that Alice should help herself, but Alice was still full of her good breakfasts, and shook her head.
