All these things that must be done. Alice knew that she would do none of them, until she heard from Mary. She would sit here, by herself, doing nothing. Funny, she was described as unemployed, she had never had a job, and she was always busy. To sit quietly, just thinking, a treat, that. To be by oneself – nice. Guilt threatened to invade with this thought: it was disloyalty to her friends. She didn’t want to be like her mother who was selfish. She used to nag and bitch to have an afternoon to herself: the children had to lump it. Privacy. That lot made such a thing about privacy; 99 per cent of the world’s population wouldn’t know the word. If they had ever heard it. No, it was better like this, healthy, a group of comrades. Sharing. But at this, worry started to nibble and nag, and she was thinking: That’s why I am so upset this morning. It’s Mary, it’s Reggie. They are simply not like us. They will never really let go and meld with us, they’ll stay a couple. They’ll have private viewpoints about the rest of us. Well then, that was true of Roberta and Faye, a couple; they made it clear they had their own attitudes and opinions. They did not like what was happening now, with the house. And Bert and Pat? No, they did not have a little opinion of their own set against the others; but Pat was only here at all because she actually enjoyed being screwed (the right word for it!). Jim? Philip? She and Jasper? When you got down to it, she and Jasper were the only genuine revolutionaries here. Appalled by this thought, she nevertheless examined it. What about Bert? Jasper approved of him. Jasper’s attachments to men who were like elder brothers had nothing to do with their politics but with their natures; they had always been the same type, easy-going. Kind. That was it. Bert was a good person. But was he a revolutionary? It’s unfair to say that Faye and Roberta are not real revolutionaries just because I don’t like them, thought Alice…where were these thoughts getting her? What was the point? The group, her family, lay in its parts, diminished, criticized out of existence. Alice sat alone, even thinking, Well, if we don’t get the house, we’ll go down to the squat in Brixton.
A sound upstairs, immediately above. Faye and Roberta: they had not gone with the others. Alice listened to how they got themselves awake and up: stirrings, and the slithering sound the sleeping-bags made on the bare boards; a laugh, a real giggle. Silence. Then footsteps and they were coming into the kitchen.
Alice got up to put the saucepan on the heat, and sat down. The two smelled ripe; sweaty and female. They were not going to wash in cold water, not these two!
The two women, smiling at Alice, sat together with their backs to the stove, where they could look out of the window and see the morning’s sun.
Knowing that she was going to have to, Alice made herself tell about last night, about Mary and Reggie. She did not soften it at all. The other two sat side by side, waiting for their coffee, not looking at each other, for which Alice was grateful. She saw appear on their faces the irony that she heard in her own voice.
‘So the CCU has two recruits?’ said Roberta, and burst out laughing.
‘They are good people,’ said Alice reprovingly. But she laughed too.
Faye did not laugh, but little white teeth held a pink lower lip, her shining brown brows frowned, and the whole of her person announced her disapproval. Roberta stopped laughing.
Hey, thought Alice, I’ve seen this before: you’d think it was Roberta who was the strong one; she comes on so butch-motherly, she’s like a hen with one chick, but no, it’s Faye who’s the one, never mind about all her pretty bitchy little ways. And she looked carefully and with respect at Faye, who was about to pronounce. And Roberta waited too.
‘Listen, Alice, now you listen, you listen carefully, for I am about to say my piece…’ And Alice could see it was hard for her to assert herself, that this was why she had so many little tricks and turns, little poutings and hesitations and small wary glances and little smiles at Roberta and at herself, but underneath she was iron, she was formidable. ‘Once and for all, I do not care about all this domestic bliss, all the house and garden stuff…’ Here she waited, politely, while first Roberta and then Alice – seeing that Roberta did – laughed. ‘Well, for me it is all pretty classy stuff,’ said Faye, ‘this house would have seemed a palace to me once. I’ve lived in at least a thousand squats, dens, holes, corners, rooms, hovels and residences, and this is the best yet. And I don’t care.’ Here she pettishly, humorously, wagged a finger at Alice. Roberta had her eyes on her love’s face, exactly like an elder sister; is she going to go too far? Too far, Alice knew, with all this presentation, the manner, the means that enabled Faye to say her piece. Roberta did not want Alice to think that this girl was frivolous or silly.
Well, she certainly did not.
‘Any minute now we are going to have hot running water and double glazing, I wouldn’t be surprised. For me this is all a lot of shit, do you hear? Shit!’
Alice got up, poured boiling water into the three mugs that already had coffee powder in them, set the mugs on the table, put the milk bottle and the sugar near Faye. She did this as something of a demonstration and saw that as Faye stretched out her hand for the coffee, which she was going to drink black and bitter, she knew it, and even appreciated it, judging from her quick shrewd little smile. But she was going on, with determination. She had also lost her cockney self, and the voice that went with it.
It was in all-purpose BBC English that she went on, ‘I don’t care about that, Alice. Don’t you see? If you want to wait on me, then do. If you don’t, don’t. I don’t care, either way.’
Roberta said quickly, protectively, ‘Faye has had a terrible life, such an awful shitty terrible life…’ And her voice broke and she turned her face away.
‘Yes, I did,’ said Faye, ‘but don’t make a thing of it. I don’t.’ Roberta shook her head, unable to speak, and put her hand, tentatively, ready to be rejected, on Faye’s arm. Faye said, ‘If you are going to tell Alice about my ghastly childhood then tell her but not when I am here.’
She drank gulps of the bitter coffee, grimaced, reached for a biscuit, took a neat sharp bite out of it, and crunched it up, as if it were a dose of medicine. Another gulp of caffeine. Roberta had her face averted. Alice knew that she was infinitely sorrowful about something; if not Faye’s past, then Faye’s present: her hand, ignored by Faye, had dropped from Faye’s arm, and crept back into her own lap, where it lay trembling and pitiful, and her lowered head with its crop of black silvered curls made Alice think of a humbly loving dog’s. Roberta was radiating love and longing. At this moment, at least, Faye did not need Roberta, but Roberta was dying of need for Faye.
Faye probably has times when she wants to be free of Roberta, finds it all too much – yes, that’s it. Well, I bet Roberta never wants to be free of Faye! Oh God, all this personal stuff, getting in the way of everything all the time. Well, at least Jasper and I have got it all sorted out.
Faye was going on. Christ, listen to her, she could get a job with the BBC, thought Alice. I wonder when she learned to do it so well. And what for?
‘I’ve met people like you before, Alice. In the course of my long career. You cannot let things be. You’re always keeping things up and making things work. If there’s a bit of dust in a corner you panic.’ Here Roberta let out a gruff laugh, and Alice primly smiled – she was thinking of all those pails. ‘Oh laugh. Laugh away.’ It seemed she could have ended there, for she hesitated, and the pretty cockney almost reclaimed her, with a pert flirtatious smile. But Faye shook her off, and sat upright in a cold fierce solitude, self-sufficient, so that Roberta’s again solicitous and seeking hand fell away. ‘I care about just one thing, Alice. And you listen to me, Roberta, you keep forgetting about me, what I am, what I really am like. I want to put an end to this shitty fucking filthy lying cruel hypocritical system. Do you understand? Well, do you, Roberta?’
She was not at all pretty, nor appealing, then, but pale and angry, and her mouth was tight and her eyes hard, and this – how she looked – took sentimentality away from what she said next. ‘I want to put an end to it all so that children don’t have a bad time, the way I did.’
Roberta sat there isolated,