Her elation was going, fast. She thought: But tomorrow Jasper and I are going out together, and then…it would be a whole evening of this fine racing thrilling excitement.
But poor Jasper, no, he would not feel like it, probably, if he had spent the night in the cells. What was Enfield Police Station like? She could not remember any reports of it.
From the main road she saw outside No. 43 gate a slight drooping figure. An odd posture, bent over – it was the girl of this afternoon, and she was going to throw something at the windows of the sitting-room. A stone! Alice thought: Throwing underhand, pathetic! – and this scorn refuelled her. Alive and sparkling, she arrived by the girl, who turned pathetically to face her, with an ‘Oh’.
‘Better drop that,’ advised Alice, and the girl did so.
In this light she had a washed-out look: colourless hair and face, even lips and eyes. Whose pupils were enormous, Alice could see.
‘Where’s your baby?’ hectored Alice.
‘My husband is there. He’s drunk,’ she said and wailed, then stopped herself. She was trembling.
Alice said, ‘Why don’t you go to the short-term housing people? You know, there are people who advise on squats.’
‘I did.’ She began weeping, a helpless, fast, hiccuping weeping, like a child who has already wept for hours.
‘Look,’ said Alice, feeling in herself the beginnings of an all too familiar weight and drag. ‘You have to do something for yourself, you know. It’s no good just waiting for people to do something for you. You must find a squat for yourself. Move in. Take it over. Then go to the Council…Stop it,’ she raged, as the girl sobbed on. ‘What’s the good of that?’
The girl subdued her weeping, and stood, head bent, before Alice, waiting for her verdict, or sentence.
Oh God, thought Alice. What’s the use? I know this one inside out! She’s just like Sarah, in Liverpool, and that poor soul Betty. An official has just to take one look, and know she’ll give in at once.
An official…why, there was an official here, in this house; there was Mary Williams. Alice stood marvelling at this thought: that only a couple of days ago Mary Williams had seemed to hold her own fate – Alice’s – in her hands; and now Alice had difficulty in even remembering her status. She felt for Mary, in fact, the fine contempt due to someone or to an institution that has given way too easily. But Mary could be appealed to on behalf of this – child. Alice again took in the collapsed look of her, the passivity, and thought: What is the use, she’s one of those who…
It was exasperation that was fuelling her now.
‘What is your name?’
The drooping head came up, the drowned eyes presented themselves, shocked, to Alice. ‘What do you think I’m going to do?’ demanded Alice. ‘Go to the police and tell them you were going to throw a stone through our window?’ And suddenly she began to laugh, while the girl watched her amazed; and took an involuntary step back from this lunatic. ‘I’ve just thought of something. I know someone in the Council who might perhaps – it is only a perhaps…’ The girl had come to life, was leaning forward, her trembling hand tight on Alice’s forearm.
‘My name is Monica,’ she breathed.
‘Monica isn’t enough,’ said Alice, stopping herself from simply walking away out of impatience. ‘I’ll have to know your full name, and your address, won’t I.’
The girl dropped her hand, and began a dreary groping in her skirts. From a pocket she produced a purse, into which she peered.
‘Oh never mind,’ said Alice. ‘Tell me, I’ll remember.’
The girl said she was Monica Winters, and the hotel – which Alice knew about, all right – was the such-and-such, and her number, 556. This figure brought an image with it of concentrated misery, hundreds of couples with small children, each family in one room, no proper amenities, the squalor of it all. All elation, excitement gone, Alice soberly stood there, appalled.
‘I’ll ask this person to write to you,’ said Alice. ‘Meanwhile, if I were you, I’d walk around and have a look at what empty houses you can see. Take a look at them. You know. Nip inside, have a look at the amenities – plumbing and…’ She trailed off dismally, knowing that Monica was not capable of flinging up a window in an empty house and climbing in to have a look, and that, very likely, her husband was the same.
‘See you,’ said Alice, and turned away from the girl and went in, feeling that the 556 – at least – young couples with their spotty, frustrated infants had been presented to her by Fate, as her responsibility.
‘Oh God,’ she was muttering, as she made herself tea in the empty kitchen. ‘Oh God, what shall I do?’ She could easily have wept as messily and uselessly as Monica. Jasper was not here!
She toiled up the stairs, and saw that a light showed on the landing above. She went up. Under the door of the room taken by Mary and Reggie a light showed. She forgot it was midnight and this was a respectable couple. She knocked. After stirrings and voices came, ‘Come in.’
Alice looked in at a scene of comfort. Furniture, pretty curtains, and a large double bed in which Mary and Reggie lay side by side, reading. They looked at her over their books with identical wary expressions that said, ‘Thus far and no further!’ A wave of incredulous laughter threatened Alice. She beat it down, while she thought, These two, we’ll see nothing of them, they’ll be off…
She said, ‘Mary, a girl has just turned up here, she’s desperate; she’s in Shaftwood Hotel, you know…’
‘Not in our borough,’ said Mary instantly.
‘No, but she…’
‘I know about Shaftwood,’ said Mary.
Reggie was examining his hand, back and front, apparently with interest. Alice knew that it was the situation he was examining; he was not used to this informality, to group-living, but he was giving it his consideration.
‘Don’t we all? But this girl…her name is Monica…she looks to me as if she’s suicidal, she could do anything.’
Mary said, after a pause, ‘Alice, I’ll see what there is, tomorrow, but you know that there are hundreds, thousands of them.’
‘Oh yes, I know,’ said Alice, and added, ‘Good-night,’ and went downstairs, thinking, I am being silly. It isn’t as if I don’t know the type. If you did find her a place, she’d muck it all up somehow. Remember Sarah? I had to find her a flat, move her in, go to the Electricity Board, and then her husband…Monica’s one of those who need a mother, someone who takes her on…An idea came into Alice’s head of such beautiful and apt simplicity that she began laughing quietly to herself.
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