They had been communicating disapproval, anger behind that closed door. Now Jasper said, "Alice, you've gone crazy, do you know that? What do you think you are doing? What is all that junk?" She made herself stand up to him: "The water tank up there is rotten, it's rusting. Do you want God knows how many gallons of water cascading down all over us?"
"I don't care," said Jasper. "If it does we'll just move on, as we always do."
This cold cruel treachery reached her guts, made her eyes go dark. When she recovered, she was holding on to the edge of the table for balance. She looked at him, ignoring Bert, who was putting on the kettle, cutting bread. "You know you like a decent place, somewhere nice. Of course you do...."
"Oh, bullshit," he said, melodramatic because she was destroying the image he liked to present to Bert. "Well, I'm not having anything to do with it. And what is it costing? What have we spent this time?" His little blue bright eyes, hard and round, which seemed this morning to be protruding out of the shallow creamy lakes around them, were full of hate for her. She knew what she had to expect the moment they were alone.
She appealed to Bert: "Please help. Philip and I can't manage. I mean, look at Philip!"
Slowly, with no change of expression, Bert buttered bread, then sat down. Then, glancing up and seeing her face, unexpectedly got up, as quick and full of energy as he had just been lethargic (but it was the energy of anger) and came out with her into the hall, where Philip, frail as a leaf, was standing by the great dark-grey water tank. Without a word, Bert bent and lifted, leaving Alice and Philip to fit themselves in, and, with him banging and bumping because he was so angry, the white teeth now showing between red lips stretched in a grimace of effort, the tank was raced upstairs, with much damage to the banisters. On the top floor, Bert simply dumped the tank, and ran down again. She and Philip heard the kitchen door slam again, excluding both of them. She looked apologetically at Philip. He was not looking at her. The tank had to go at the end of the little landing. The existing tank was in the attic. There was no way this tank could get through the trap door into the attic. Mystery! How did the first builders think a new tank would get itself up there, when the original tank, presumably put in before the roof went on, reached its natural end? They could only have believed that tanks had eternal lives.
But the distance from where the tank now sat, blocking the way at the head of the stairs, and where it had to be was too great for them to shift it.
Alice saw Philip distressed, ashamed, vulnerable.
"You wait," she said. She marched down the stairs, and saw Jasper coming out of the sitting room, where, of course, he had been searching for her money. Standing on the bottom step, she said, not knowing she was going to, "I've had enough, Jasper. If you can't help with a little thing like this, when I do so much, then I'm quitting."
Just as though he had not been going to walk past into the kitchen, he wheeled, and pounded up the stairs in front of her. When she got there, he was moving the tank with Philip to where it had to go. Here was the other Jasper, quick, intelligent, resourceful. For Philip said that board, thick papers, something, should be put under the tank to raise it, because of some tricky protruding pipes, and Jasper, seeing the stacks of newspaper that had come down from the attic, swiftly gathered them up and built them, while he knelt there beside it, into an eighteen-inch-high platform. Alice could see that though he slid the papers into place so swiftly, he was dealing to one side, as in a card game, newspapers with headlines of interest: "The Jarrow Marchers..."
"Hitler Invades..."
"The Battle of El Alamein..."
If the Irish comrades could see him now! thought Alice, watch- ing this deft, swift, accomplished work; and then how he, with Philip and herself, lifted the great tank, as if it weighed nothing, onto the top of the papers....
He had not looked at her. She was half fainting with the power of her beating heart. Oh, it was a dangerous thing, to threaten Jasper. Suppose he left her? Oh no, he would not, she knew that absolutely. He could not.
He ran off down the stairs, without a smile or a look, and she was left again with Philip. Who was distressed. By the atmosphere he had been in, which, she knew, was pure poison.
She knew he was thinking: If I had not put so much of myself into this house, perhaps I'd leave. Besides, he was upset about Pat's going.
She left Philip to his work, thinking that this time she had given him the money for the materials but none for his labour. Almost, she went back up the stairs to give him what she had.... She took a few steps down... almost went back up, hesitated, then - luck being on her side - she did it. She gave him what was left of the already denuded packet - not quite two hundred pounds, it was true, and nothing like what it should be - and went down into the kitchen, whose door she boldly opened, not caring that it had been shut to bar her out.
Bert had gone.
Jasper was waiting for her.
"Where did you get that money?"
"It's not your money, so shut up," she said.
"You are making us all sick," he said. "We all think you've gone rotten. All you care about is your comfort."
"Too bad," said she, sitting down. In the bright mid-morning light he looked, standing there, rather commonplace and even ugly - so thought Alice, who a few moments before had been melting in a familiar ecstasy of admiration for him.
He was staring at her midriff. The jacket, hastily put on, was open. At the front, inside the thick cotton shirt, was the flat protuberance of the packet.
For a moment she feared he would simply step over, grab her wrist, pull out the money. He did not, but went to stand at the window, looking out.
He said, "You needn't think I'm just going to give up, that I'm just going to take their word for it!"
It took a moment for it to penetrate: he was talking about his rejection by the Irish comrades.
She said companionably, "No, of course not."
She believed, and with what a lightening and easing of her poor heart, that now could begin the real, the responsible, discussion she loved so much to have with Jasper. But the door opened and she looked up to see Jim. Who at first she thought was not Jim. The brown glossy skin was ashy and rough, and his eyes stared.
"What's wrong, what is wrong?" And she went to him.
He shook her off. "They gave me the sack."
"Oh no," she said at once, decisively. "Oh no, he couldn't have."
He stood, breathing in, breathing out in a big gasp, breathing in. A loud, painful sound. "They said I stole money."
"Oh no," said Alice. And then again, but differently, "Oh no."
Meanwhile Jasper stood taking all this in.
"What's the point?" demanded Jim, of the heavens, not of her, and it sounded histrionic, but was not; for the question had behind it his whole life. Then he did look properly at Alice, seeing her, and said, "Well, thanks, Alice, I know you tried. But there's no point." And he went stumbling out, crying.
She went after him. "Wait. You wait. I'm going right over there. I'll fix it, you'll see."
He shook his head, went into his room, shut the door.
Alice remained outside, thinking. Jasper appeared from the kitchen. He was grinning complicity, even congratulation. The whole truth of course he had not sussed out, for who could possibly imagine that luck of hers, which had caused the telephone to ring at precisely the right moment. But he had grasped, being so quick, the bones of it.
She said, "I'm going over to my father."
"You'd better not go over with that on you," he said, looking at her middle. He spoke nicely, like a comrade at a tricky moment. Without thinking, as though there were nothing else she could do, she slipped her hand in under her thick shirt. The package of notes had got caught in her jacket waistband and she stood fumbling. Her fingers were sliding over the satiny warmth of her skin, and in a sweet intimate flash of reminder, or of warning, her body (her secret breathing body, which she ignored for nearly all of her time, trying to forget it) came to life and spoke to her. Her fingers were tingling with the warm smoothness, and she stood there looking puzzled or undecided, the packet of notes loose in her hand. She looked as if she were trying to remember something. Jasper neatly took the packet from her, and it disappeared into the heart pocket of his bomber jacket.