But, with luck, her father would have left at three.
To reach her father's business, she had to go two stops further on the Underground than for her father's house, or her mother's - well, where her mother had been. She walked, deliberately not thinking too much, into the stationer's, where she was greeted, the boss's daughter. She walked through the shop, saying she wanted to see her father, then upstairs to the office floor. People were tidying their desks for the weekend. She said Hello, and How are you, and went into her father's office, where the secretary, Jill, sat in her father's chair, counting money from the till downstairs.
"Oh, he's gone then," said Alice, and sat down. Jill, counting, leafed through ten-pound notes, smiled, nodded, her mouth moving to indicate that she could not stop. Alice smiled and nodded, and got up to stand at the window, looking out. Indolent and privileged, daughter of the establishment, she leaned on the sill, watching the goings-on in the street, and listened to the sounds of paper sliding on paper.
Should she say her father had agreed she should have some money? If she did, Jill could not say no; and then, on Monday, her father, on being told, would not give her away, would not say: My daughter is a thief. She was about to say: He said I could have five hundred pounds. But then it happened, the incredible, miraculous luck that she now expected, since it happened so easily and often: in the next office the telephone rang. Jill counted on. The telephone rang and rang. "Oh, flick it," muttered Jill daintily, for she was the kind of good girl favoured by her father as secretary, and she ran next door to the telephone. Alice saw on the desk that there was a white canvas bag in which stacks of notes had already been put. She slid her hand in, took out a thick wad, then another, put them inside her jacket, and again leaned, her back to the room, at the window. Jill returned, saying that it was Mrs. Mellings, for her father, and it took Alice some moments to realise that this must be her mother, not the new Mrs. Mellings, who at this moment would be already on her way to the pleasures of a weekend in Kent.
She did not want to ask, Do you know her address?, thus betraying herself; but she asked, idly, "Where was she ringing from?" Jill again did not reply, since she was counting, but at last said, "From home. Well, I suppose so."
She was not noticing anything. Alice waited until Jill stood up, with three white canvas bags, notes and cheques and coins separately, and put them into the safe.
"Oh well, I'll be off," Alice said.
"I'll tell your father you were here," said Jill.
When Alice arrived home, she counted what she had. It was a thousand pounds. At once she thought: I could have taken two thousand, three - it would come to the same thing. In any case, when they know the money has gone, when they remember I was there, they'll know it was me. Why not be hung for a sheep as for a lamb?
Well, it would have to do.
Alice thought for some time about where to put it. She was not going to tell Jasper. At last she zipped open her sleeping bag, slid the two packets of notes into it, and thought that only the nastiest luck would bring anyone to touch it, to find what she had.
Friday night. Jasper and Bert had been gone for ten days. They had said they would come at the weekend.
Thinking Pat, where's Pat?, she went down to the kitchen, and found Pat, with her jacket on, a scarf, and her bright scarlet canvas holdall. She was scribbling a note, but stopped when she saw Alice, with a smile that was both severe and weak, telling Alice that Pat had not wanted to face the business of good-byes, and would now hurry through them.
"I'm off, Alice," she said, quickly, hardly allowing her eyes to meet Alice's.
"You're through with Bert?"
Tears rilled Pat's eyes. She turned away. "Some time I've got to break it. I've got to."
"Well, it's not for any outsider to say," remarked Alice. Her heart was sick with loss, surprising her. It seemed she had become fond of Pat.
"I've got to, Alice. Please understand. It's not Bert. I mean, I love him. But it's the politics."
"You mean, you don't agree with our line about the IRA?"
"No, no, not that. I don't have any confidence in Bert."
At least, she did not say, as well, "in Jasper."
She said, "Here is my address. I'm not fading out. I mean, I don't want to make any dramatic breaks, that kind of thing. I'll be working in my own way - the same sort of thing, but what I see as rather more... serious."
"Serious," said Alice.
"Yes," she insisted. "Serious, Alice. I don't see this tripping over to Ireland, on the word of somebody called Jack." She sounded disgusted and fed up, and the word "Jack" was blown away like fluff. "It's all so damned amateur. I don't go along with it."
"I thought you'd be off."
Pat swiftly turned away. It was because she was crying.
"We've been together a long time...." Her voice went thick and inarticulate.
"Never mind," said Alice dolefully.
"I do mind. And I mind about leaving you, Alice."
The two women embraced, weeping.
"I'll be back," said Pat. "You were talking about a CCU Congress. I'll be back for that. And for all I know, I won't be able to stand breaking with Bert. I did try once before."
She went out, running, to leave her emotion behind.
The two men came back on Sunday night. Alice knew at once they had failed. Jasper had a limp look, and Bert was morose even before he read the letter Pat had left for him.
She made supper for Jasper, who at once went up to his sleeping bag on the top floor. Bert said he was tired, but she followed him, and found him standing alone in the room he had shared with Pat. She went in and, though he was not thinking of Ireland, said, "I want to ask some questions. Jasper's sometimes funny when he has had a disappointment."
"So am I," said Bert, but softened and, standing where he was, hands dangling down, said, "We didn't get anywhere."
"Yes, but why?"
She was thinking that rejection brought out the best in Bert. Without his easy affability, the constant gleam of his white teeth amid red lips and dark beard, he seemed sober and responsible.
He shook his head, said, "How do I know? We were simply told no."
She was not going to leave until he told her everything, and at last he did go on, while she listened carefully, to make a picture for herself that she could trust.
"Jack," in Dublin, had been to bars and meeting places, had made enquiries, had met this man and then that, reporting back to Bert and Jasper that things were going on as they should. Then Bert and Jasper - but not Jack, a fact that had to give her food for thought - met a certain comrade in a certain private house in a suburb. There they had been questioned for a long time, in a way that - Alice could see, watching Bert's face as he recited the tale-had not just impressed but sobered the two. Frightened them, judged Alice, pleased this had been so, for she did feel that Jasper was sometimes a bit too casual about things.
Towards the end of this encounter, or interview, a second man had come in, and sat without saying a word, listening. Bert said with a short laugh and a shake of the head, "He was a bit of a character, that one. Wouldn't like to get across him."
At last, the man who had done all the talking said that while he, speaking for the IRA, was grateful for the support offered, they - Bert and Jasper - must realise that the IRA did not operate like an ordinary political organisation, and recruitment was done very carefully, and to specific requirements.