What Alice said was, "There are many different formulations in the Women's Movement. I would say that Faye and Roberta represent an extreme."
Then there were Maty and Reggie; and, as she expected, Comrade Andrew refused to dismiss them as she wanted to. Precisely what she disliked most about them was what interested him: she knew that he wondered whether they could be persuaded to become sleeping partners in the revolution, a phrase that she used and he approved with a dry smile and a nod.
Alice didn't know. She doubted it. They were naturally con-servers. (Not that she had anything against Greenpeace. On the contrary.) They were, in short, bourgeois. In her view, Andrew should discuss it with them. She could not answer for them.
This, she knew, cut across the underlying premise of the conversation: that she was willingly acting as his aide in assessing possible recruits. For something or other. Not stated. Understood.
Did they plan - number 43 - to take in more members of their squat or commune?
"Why not? There's plenty of room."
"I agree, the more the better."
And so the talk went on, reaching back, for some rather tense minutes, to her childhood. Alice's mother did not really interest Comrade Andrew, but Cedric Mellings, that was a different matter. How big was his business? How many employees? What were they like?
Alice's brother: Alice decided not to say Humphrey worked in a top airline firm. "Oh, don't waste your time on him," she said.
More cups of coffee, and some rather satisfying talk about the state of Britain. Rotten as a bad apple, and ready for the bulldozers of history.
When Alice said she had to go, she was expecting Jasper, and stood up, Andrew did, too, and seemed to hesitate. Then he said quickly, for the first time sounding awkward, "You have been with Jasper a long time, haven't you?"
"Fifteen years." Knowing what was coming, recognising it from many such moments in the past, she turned to go. He was beside her, and she felt his arm lightly about her shoulders.
"Comrade Alice," he said. "It's not easy to understand... why you choose such a... relationship."
The usual ration of affront, resentment, even anger was in her. But this was Comrade Andrew, and she had decided that what came from him was, had to be, different. She said, "You don't understand. No, you don't understand Jasper."
His arm still lay there, so gently that she could not find it a pressure. He said, gently, "But, Alice, surely you could..." Do better was what he wanted to say.
She turned to face him, with a bright, steady smile.
"It's all right," she said, like a schoolgirl. "I love him, you see."
Incredulity made his smile ironic, patient.
"Well, Comrade Alice..." He allowed it to trail away, in humour. "Come in any time," he said.
"Why don't you come in and see our palace?"
"Thanks, I will."
And so she went home, her mind a dazzle of questions.
She had been going up to admire her newly painted room, but something took her to Jim's door. She knocked, heard nothing, went in. Jim lay on the top of his sleeping bag, facing her, his eyes open.
"Are you all right, Jim?"
No reply. He looked so dreadful.... She went to him, knelt, put her hand on his. It was dry, very hot.
"Jim! What's wrong?"
"Ah, hell, what's the point?" came out of him in a choking sob, and he put his arm over his face.
Under the loose sleeve was a red wound that went from elbow to wrist. Wide. Nasty. It seemed filled with red jelly.
"Jim, what happened?"
"I got in a fight." The words came out of a sobbing smother of frustration and rage. "No, leave it, it'll heal, it'll be all right, it is clean."
He seemed to be fighting with himself as he lay there, banging his fist to his head, clenching up his legs, then shooting them out straight.
"But the police didn't get you."
"No. But they will know I was there by now. There's someone who'll make sure of that! What's the use? There's no way you can get out of trouble, you can't get out, what's the use of trying."
"Did you try for a job?"
"Yes, what's the use?" And he turned over and lay on his back, arms loose by his side.
She had known it. There was a certain struggling fury that went with being jobless, and persevering, and being turned down, that was different from simply being jobless.
"What were you trying for?"
"A printing firm in Southwark. But I don't know all this new technology - I learned the old printing. I did a year's course, I thought it would get me somewhere."
"Printing! You didn't say. But there must be hundreds of little firms all over the country who still use it for special jobs."
"Then I must have applied to half of them in the last four years."
"My father has a printing firm. A small one. They do all kinds of things. Pamphlets and brochures and catalogues."
"He won't be using the old way for long."
"I'll write to him. Why not? He's supposed to be a fucking socialist."
"What's the use, I'm black."
"Wait, I'm thinking."
He was still tense and hot and miserable, but, she thought, better. Like a nun, or his sister, she sat holding his hand, smiling gently down at him.
"Yes," she said at last. "I'll write to my father. I'll do that. Make him practise what he preaches. He's had blacks before, anyway."
She could see he was, in spite of himself, beginning to hope again.
"I'll write it now," she said.
In the backpack in which she seemed to keep half her life she burrowed and came up with a biro and writing pad.
Dear Dad,
This is Jim
"What's your name, Jim?"
"Mackenzie."
"I have a cousin who married a Mackenzie."
"My grandfather was Mackenzie. Trinidad." j "Then perhaps we are related."
A small gust of laughter blew through him, and left him smiling. He sighed, relaxed, turned towards her, put his hand under his cheek. He would be asleep soon.
She wrote:
This is Jim Mackenzie. He can't get a job. He is a printer. Why don't you give him a job? You are supposed to be a fucking progressive? He has been out of work for four years. In the name of the Revolution.
Alice.
She neatly folded the letter, put it in a nice blue envelope (choosing the blue in preference to cream, for some reason), and addressed it.
Jim's lids were drowsing.
"Why don't you take this round tomorrow. Your cut won't show."
She pulled back the sleeve gently. He did not resist her. It was a really bad cut, which would leave a thick scar. It needed stitching. Never mind.
"I like you, Alice," he stated. "You are a really sincere person, you know what I mean?" He did not add "unlike the others."
She could have wept, knowing that what he said was true, feeling confirmed and supported. She stayed near him till he slept, went out into the dark hall, switched on the light with pride and with the knowledge of what that little act meant, what it had cost, would cost: she pressed a tiny switch on the wall, and electrons obediently flowed through cables, because the woman in Electricity had so ordered it.
Money. Where from?
Standing there, surveying the hall, so pleasant now (though she knew that really she ought to get carpet foam and do over the carpet, which after all had been folded up in the dust of the skip), she saw that Philip had mended the little cupboard under the stairs that the policeman had kicked in.