The four went back to number 43, in a close, tender group, Jim as king, as victor, and, unwilling that the evening should be lost, they sat on around the kitchen table, sentinelled by the yellow forsythia, and could not bear to part.
Alice was already thinking: Yes, tonight you'd think we'll all be friends for life, we could never harm each other, but it could all change, just like that! Oh, she knew, she had seen it all. Her heart could have ached, could have dragged her down, but she did not let it, was keeping that lump of a heart on a short, cruel chain like a dangerous dog.
A postcard showing the Wicklow Mountains arrived from Jasper, with the message "Wish you were here!" She knew exactly the freakish mood he had been in, and her face assumed that smile the thought of Jasper so often evoked: modest, wistful, and admiring, as if his vagaries of genius would forever be beyond her. She kept the card to herself because she knew the others would not understand. Coming downstairs early, long before the others, she had seen it lying on the floor inside the door.
Jim went off for his first day at work in a mood of tender incredulity, still unable to stop smiling.
Pat, instead of joining Alice in their scrubbing and painting, went off to "a friend," came back saying that Bert had telephoned a message. All was well, and they would be back soon.
What are they doing for money? was Alice's thought, kept to herself. She also thought: When Bert comes back, Pat will not be here. She could read this from Pat's face. But she kept that to herself, too.
That evening a knock - furtive and hasty, telling Alice who it was - brought her out to find Monica on the path near the gate-not outside the door, for the girl had been afraid that Faye might open it.
But, seeing Alice, she approached swiftly, her hungry eyes on Alice's face.
Faye was in the kitchen with Roberta, so Alice shut the door quietly behind her and went with Monica out to the road, and along it to where they were hidden by the healthy bushes of Joan Robbins's garden.
"Did you hear of anything?" Monica asked, already sullen and hopeless, apparently seeing from Alice's face that there was no news. She looked puffy and pale. Her hair straggled greasily. From her came such a whiff of defeat that Alice had to force herself to stand up to it.
"There's nothing to hope for from the Council," said Alice, and, seeing a sneer or snarl of Well, of course not!, persisted, "but I've thought of something else." She asked Monica to stay where she was, sneaked back into the house as though she were guilty of something, came out again with the letter she had written to her mother. Monica had drifted halfway back to the main road, apparently expecting Alice not to reappear.
"Did you think I was not coming back?" she scolded. "Really, if you are going to expect the worst, then that is what you'll get."
A weak, conscious smile.
"Take this to this address. And take your baby with you."
"But it's so late. God knows it's hard enough to get him off to sleep in that place, and he's asleep now."
"Go tomorrow. It's my mother. She likes babies. She likes looking after people."
The doubt on Monica's face did not in any way diminish the total confidence Alice felt. Look what she had achieved with Jim! No, she was on a crest of ability and luck, and she could make no mistakes. She felt that her mother would be good to poor Monica. She said briskly, "It's all right, Monica. Well, it's worth trying, isn't it?"
Peering down dubiously at the envelope, Monica departed to the bus stop in the main road, and Alice went in to join the others around the table. She had prepared a large stew, or thick soup, her speciality, brought to perfection in years of communal living. How many people had joked that Alice could feed crowds out of it! Like the Bible's loaves and two fishes.
How many had come into this squat or that asking, "Any of your soup left, Alice?" and then sat breaking bread into it, handing back their plates for more. No dietary deficiencies in people who lived on her soup! And in times when there had been very little money, it had kept them going, Jasper and her, for months.
Alice slid back into her place, saying, to their querying, ready-for-any-emergency looks, "It's all right, it was nothing."
Roberta and Faye, Mary and Reggie, Philip and Jim, Pat and Alice sat around all evening, compelled into being a family by the magic of that soup, and the red wine that Reggie had contributed, and the good bread, healthy wholemeal, and the frivolous white that Faye insisted on.
This was another evening of pleasure, and Jim was full of tales about Alice's father and the others working with him, twelve or more, and how lucky Alice was to have such a father - while Alice smiled and kept a lock on her tongue.
Next morning Alice was alone in the house when there was a tumult of thudding knocks on the door, and a voice screamed, "Come out, you, come out of there, come out."
Alice went out to Monica, who was transformed by fury, ready to kill, as Alice could see. The child in the pushchair, poor ugly little thing, grizzled steadily.
"Why did you do that? Why did you send me there? What have I done to you?" And Monica began kicking out at Alice's legs, and beating about with her arms.
"What is the matter? What happened? Didn't she take you in?"
"There's no one there," screeched Monica. "Why did you send me there?"
"Well, she's only out shopping, isn't she? She'll be back."
Monica stopped screeching, her limbs stopped flailing, and she stared, appalled, at Alice. "It's an empty house," she said. "No one there. There's a 'For Sale' notice up."
"You went to the wrong house," said Alice, vaguely. She was, indeed, struck by something, a thought, or a memory: cases on a kitchen table, filled with crockery wrapped in newspaper. She stared at Monica, who stared at her.
"There's a mistake," said Alice, who was as pale as Monica, and as breathless by now. "Something's wrong."
"It's you who's wrong," said Monica, with a sudden ugly laugh. She still stared at Alice, as if unable to believe what she saw. "Why did you do this to me? What for? You get some kind of a kick out of it, I suppose. You're evil," she pronounced. "You are all evil and mad in this house." And, bursting into wails, she went running off, pushing and jolting the pushchair so that the child wailed, too. The two went noisily to the bus stop, leaving Alice on the doorstep, stunned, and staring without seeing at the letter she had written to her mother, thrust into her hand by Monica.
Dear Mum,
This is Monica. She is living with her baby in one of those ghastly hotels, you know. Well, if you don't you fucking well ought to know. Why don't you take her in? It's the least you can do. You've got three empty rooms now. Monica and her baby are living in one shitty room, with no place she can cook or anything.
Your daughter,
Alice.
p.s. And there is a husband, too.