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 the plunge into what she clearly felt was a descent into even worse indiscretion with, ‘I was in Militant Tendency for a bit, but I don’t like their methods. So I left.’
Alice sat silent with amazement. Mary, in Militant! Well, of course she wouldn’t like Militant’s methods. And she wouldn’t like the methods of Alice, Jasper, Pat, Roberta or Faye. Nor, for that matter, Jim’s. (So Alice suspected.) But that Mary had gone anywhere near Militant, that was the impossibility! She asked cautiously, ‘And Reggie?’
‘He was trying out Militant for the same reason I was. I was shocked by what I saw going on at work, jobs for pals, as I said…’ Again the brief, social smile, like a frozen apology. ‘We decided at once Militant was not for us. We joined Greenpeace.’
‘Well, of course,’ said Alice, hopefully, ‘but if you are Trotskyists…’ With a bit of luck Mary would say Yes, she counted herself with the Trots, and then of course this house would be impossible…But she heard, ‘We’re not anything at the moment, only Greenpeace. We thought of joining the Labour Party, but we need something more…’
‘Dynamic,’ said Alice, choosing a flatteringly forceful but not ideological word. ‘I think perhaps the CCU would suit you. Anyway, come and see the house.’ She got up, so did Mary – it was like the termination of an interview. Alice had decided that she really did like Mary. She would do. But what of Reggie? Thoughts of Reggie accompanied the two women as they went rapidly around the upper floors. Alice flung open doors on empty rooms, and heard how Mary sighed and longed, and was not at all surprised to hear her say, as they came down the stairs again, ‘Actually, Reggie is in the pub down the road.’
Alice laughed, a robust girl’s laugh, and Mary chimed in, after a pause, with a breathless little tinkle.
‘The thing is,’ said Alice, ‘we have to discuss it. All of us. A group decision, you know.’
‘If we come back in half an hour?’
‘Longer than that,’ said Alice, and added, because of Mary’s beseeching eyes, ‘I’ll do my best.’
She went into the kitchen, where they sat in a fug of comfort (created by her), and sat down, and she put the situation to them.
Because of all that food and chat and good nature and togetherness, there was an explosion of laughter. Literally, they fell about. But there was a theatrical quality to it that Alice did not much like.
Silence at last, and Pat said, ‘Alice, are you saying that if we don’t let them come here, we won’t get this house?’
Alice did not reply at once. At last she said, ‘She wouldn’t do anything spiteful on purpose, I am sure of that. But if she was coming here to live, she’d be careful about what she said. It’s human nature,’ said Alice, feebly, using a phrase which of course was simply beyond the pale.
‘What could she say that would make such a difference?’ Pat persisted.
‘If she said, they are a bunch of Reds, Bob Hood would soon find a reason to have us kicked out. She doesn’t care, because she’s one herself.’
‘That girl is a revolutionary?’ asked Bert, laughing.
‘She’s a Trotskyist. Of a sort. Or she was one.’