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 left the roof, while they helped Alice allot furniture, flew out to buy curtain fittings for which Alice found 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 back 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 goodwill, 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’s 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 which 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 on a course today, you know, they send you on courses, I’m 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 sitting-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 – me and my boyfriend. Reggie. He’s an industrial chemist.’ This chemist bit was there to reassure her, thought Alice, with the beginning of scorn which, 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 acknowledgment 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 them all, 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, 43 Old Mill Road, and my God, what a set-up!…Then he could change his mind, just like that, particularly with 45 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
