said Pat, strolling to the window to stand by Alice, ‘have you heard that this happy little community is for the chop?’
She looked much older than Alice, was ten years younger. She offered Alice a cigarette, which was refused, and smoked hers needfully, greedily.
‘Yes, and I said, why not negotiate with the Council?’
‘I heard you. But they prefer their romantic squalor.’
‘Romantic,’ said Alice, disgusted.
‘It does go against the grain, negotiating with the Establishment,’ said Bert.
‘Do you mean that this commune is breaking up?’ said Jasper suddenly, sounding so like a small boy that Alice glanced quickly to see whether it had been noticed. It had: by Pat, who stood, holding her cigarette to her lips between two fingers and distancing them, then bringing them back, so that she could puff and exhale, puff and exhale. Looking at Jasper. Diagnosis.
Alice said quickly, her heart full of a familiar soft ache, on Jasper’s account, ‘It doesn’t go against my grain. I’ve done it often.’
‘Oh you have, have you?’ said Pat. ‘So have I. Where?’
‘In Birmingham. A group of seven of us went to the Council over a scheduled house. We paid gas and electricity and water, and we stayed there thirteen months.’
‘Good for you.’
‘And in Halifax, I was in a negotiated squat for six months. And when I was in digs in Manchester, that was when I was at the university, there was a house full of students, nearly twenty of us. It started off as a squat, the Council came to terms, and it ended up as a student house.’
During this the two men listened, proceedings suspended. Jaspar had again filled his mug. Bert indicated to Pat that the thermos was empty, and she shook her head, listening to Alice.
‘Why don’t we go to the Council?’ said Alice direct to Pat.
‘I would. But I’m leaving anyway.’ Alice saw Bert’s body stiffen, and he sat angry and silent.
Pat said to Bert, ‘I told you last night, I was leaving.’
Alice had understood that this was more than political. She saw that a personal relationship was breaking up because of some political thing! Every instinct repudiated this. She thought, involuntarily, What nonsense, letting politics upset a personal relationship! This was not really her belief: she would not have stood by it if challenged. But similar thoughts often did pass through her mind.
Pat said, to Bert’s half-averted face, ‘What the fuck did you expect? At an ordinary meeting like that – two of them from outside, we didn’t know anything about them. We don’t know anything about the couple who came last week. Jim was in the room and he isn’t even CCU. Suddenly putting forward that resolution.’
‘It wasn’t sudden.’
‘When we discussed it before we decided to make individual approaches. To discuss it with individuals, carefully.’
Her voice was full of contempt. She was looking at – presumably – her lover as though he was fit for the dustbin.
‘You’ve changed your mind, at any rate,’ said Bert, his red lips shining angrily from his thickets of beard. ‘You agreed that to support the IRA was the logical position for this stage.’
‘It is the only correct attitude, Ireland is the fulcrum of the imperialist attack,’ said Jasper.
‘I haven’t changed my mind,’ said Pat. ‘But if I am going to work with the IRA or anyone else, then I’m going to know who I am working with.’
‘You don’t know us,’ said Alice, with a pang of painful realization; she and Jasper were part of the reason for this couple’s break-up.
‘No hard feelings,’ said Pat. ‘Nothing personal. But yes. The first I heard of you was when Bert said he had met Jasper at the CND rally Saturday. And I gather Bert hadn’t even met you.’
‘No,’ said Alice.
‘Well, I’m sorry, but that’s not the way to do things.’
‘I see your point,’ said Alice.
A silence. The two young women stood at the window, in an aromatic cloud from Pat’s cigarette. The two men were in chairs, in the centre of the room. The rain-like pattering of the drum came from Jim beyond the hall.
Alice said, ‘How many people are left here now?’
Pat did not answer and at last Bert said, ‘With you two, seven.’ He added, ‘I don’t know about you, Pat.’
‘Yes, you do,’ said Pat, sharp and cold. But they were looking at each other now, and Alice thought: No, it won’t be easy for them to split up. She said, ‘Well, if it’s seven, then four of us are here now. Five if Pat…Where are the other two? I want to get an agreement that I go to the Council.’
‘The lavatories full of cement. The electricity cables torn out. Pipes probably rotten,’ said Bert on a fine rising derisive note.
‘It’s not difficult to put it right,’ said Alice. ‘We did it in Birmingham. The Council smashed the place to a ruin. They pulled the lavatories completely out there. All the pipes. Filled the bath with cement. Piled rubbish in all the rooms. We got it clean.’
‘Who is going to pay for it?’ That was Bert.
‘We are.’
‘Out of what?’
‘Oh, belt up,’ said Pat, ‘it costs us more in take-away and running around cadging baths and showers than it would to pay electricity and gas.’
‘It’s a point,’ said Bert.
‘And it would keep Old Bill off our backs,’ said Alice.
Silence. She knew that some people – and she suspected Bert, though not Pat, of this – would be sorry to hear it. They enjoyed encounters with the police.
Bert said unexpectedly, ‘Well, if we are going to build up our organization we aren’t going to need attention from Old Bill.’
‘Exactly,’ said Pat. ‘As I’ve been saying.’
Silence again. Alice saw it was up to her. She said, ‘One problem. In this borough they need someone to guarantee the electricity and gas. Who is in work?’
‘Three of the comrades who left last night were.’
‘Comrades!’ said Bert. ‘Opportunistic shits.’
‘They are very good honest communists,’ said Pat. ‘They happen not to want to work with the IRA.’
Bert began to heave with silent theatrical laughter, and Jasper joined him.
‘So we are all on Social Security,’ said Alice.
