Too tired to sleep, she lay listening to how people were going to bed. Good-night, good-night, on the landing, and the corridor along from it. Roberta and Faye in one room, of course. Jim in another. And, in the room next to this one, Pat and Bert. Oh no, she did not want that, she did not want what she knew would happen. And it did, the grunting and whispering and shifting and moaning – right on the other side of the wall, close against her ear. It was too much. Love, that was; which everyone said she was a fool to do without; they were sorry for her. Theresa and Anthony, at it all night and every night, so said her mother, after years of marriage, grunting and panting, moaning and wanting. Alice lay as stiff as a rod, staring at the shadowed ceiling where lights from the cars in the road fled and chased, her ears assaulted, her mind appalled. She made herself think: Tomorrow, tomorrow we’ll get the electricity done…Money. She needed money. Where? She’d get it. She wasn’t going to cheat Philip…
Philip, given the sack six months ago from the building firm – the first to be sacked, and Alice knew why, because of his build: of course any employer would think, this weakling – had set himself up. He was now a decorator, hopefully, a builder. He had: two long ladders, a short ladder, a trestle (but needed, badly, another), paintbrushes, some tools; and could borrow from his friend, in Chalk Farm. He had got the job of decorating a house, in spite of his frail appearance; perhaps because of it; had been paid only half, was told he was not up to it. He knew he would not be paid the rest; it would mean going to law and he could not do that. He was on the dole. He thought he would get a job doing up a pub in Neasden. He said he thought he would get this job, but Alice knew he didn’t much believe it. He lived with Felicity (his girlfriend?) in her flat a couple of streets away. He had to be paid.
The noises through the wall, having died down, were starting off again. Alice dragged her pallet and bag over to the other wall as quietly as she could, afraid of alerting Jasper, who would feel her being there so close to him as an encroachment. And sure enough, just as she was settling down, he started up and she could see him glaring at her, teeth gritting. ‘You are in my space,’ he said. ‘You know we don’t get into each other’s space.’
She said, ‘I don’t like that wall.’ This situation having occurred before, repeatedly, she did not have to explain. Leaning up on his elbow, his face clenched with fury and disgust, he listened to what could be plainly heard even from his wall; then lay tense, breathing fast.
She said, ‘I’m getting up early, to see if I can get hold of some money.’
He did not say anything. Soon, the house became still. He slept.
Alice dozed a little. In her mind she was already living the next day. She waited for the light, which came in gloomily through dirty windows and showed the filth of this room. Now she ached for tea, something to eat. She crept down into the hall which still belonged to night and the hurricane lamp; then into the sitting-room, hoping that the thermos might be there. But she drank cold water from a jug, then used, with pride but caution, the lavatory, thinking of the pipes left uncared for over an unknown number of winters. Then she went to the Underground, stopping for breakfast at Fred’s Caff. There was room for eight or ten tables, set close. A cosy scene, not to say intimate. Mostly men. Two women were sitting together. At first they seemed middle-aged, because of their stolidity and calm; then it could be seen they were youngish, but tired. Probably cleaners after an early-morning job in local offices. At the counter Alice asked for tea and – apologetically – brown toast, was told by – very likely – Fred’s wife, for she had a proprietorial air, that they didn’t do brown toast. Alice went to look for a place carrying tea, a plate of white toast that dripped butter, a rock cake. As a concession to health, she went back to get orange juice. It was clear to her that in this establishment it would be best to sit with the two women, and did so.
They were both eating toast, and drinking muddy coffee. They sat in the loose, emptied poses of women consciously relaxing, and on their faces were vague good-natured smiles which turned on Alice, like shields. They did not want to talk, only to sit.
The salt of the earth! Alice was dutifully saying to herself, watching this scene of workers fuelling themselves for a hard day’s work with plates of eggs, chips, sausages, fried bread, baked beans – the lot. Cholesterol, agonized Alice, and they all look so unhealthy! They had a pallid greasy look like bacon fat, or undercooked chips. In the pocket of each, or on the tables, being read, was the Sun or the Mirror. Only lumpens, thought Alice, relieved there was no obligation to admire them. Building or road workers, perhaps even self-employed; it wasn’t these men who would save Britain from itself! Alice settled down to enjoy her delicious buttersodden toast, and soon felt better. Not really wanting the cold sour orange juice, she made herself drink it between cups of the bitter tea. The two women watched her, with the detached attention they would give to the interesting mores of a foreigner, taking in everything about her without seeming to do so. She had quite nice curly hair, they could be heard thinking; why didn’t she do something with it? It was dusty! What a pity about that heavy army jacket, more like a man’s, really! That was dusty too! Look at her hands, she didn’t put herself out to keep her nails clean! Having condemned, and lost interest, they heaved themselves up and departed, with parting shouts at the woman behind the counter. ‘Ta, Liz.’ ‘See you tomorrow, Betty.’
They came here every morning after three or four hours’ stint in the offices. These men came in on their way to work. They all knew each other, Alice could see; it was like a club. She finished up quickly and left. Outside the newsagent’s on the corner, the two women she had been sitting with had been joined by a third. They wore all shapeless trousers, blouses, cardigans and carried heavy shopping bags. Their work gear. They stood together gossiping, taking up as little room as they could, because the full tide of the morning rush to work filled the pavements.
It was still too early. It was only just after eight. Her mother would be taking her bath. If Alice went there now she could quietly let herself in, and make the coffee, to give her mother a surprise when she came down in her dressing-gown. Then they could sit at the big table in the kitchen and eat their muesli and drink their coffee. Dorothy would read her Times, and she, the Guardian. To that house every day were delivered The Times, the Guardian, the Morning Star and on Saturday the Socialist Worker, the last two for herself and Jasper. Jasper said he read the Worker because one should know what the opposition was doing; but Alice knew that he secretly had Trotskyist tendencies. Not that she minded about that; she believed that socialists of all persuasions should pull together for the common good. In her mother’s house, she read the Guardian. For years, that newspaper had been the only one to be seen. Then, 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