Not until four in the morning did the exhausted comrades crawl into sleeping bags all over the two houses, and no one got up until midday, when it was time for some, at least, to leave for towns in the North. No one got up, that is, except Alice, who was clearing up.
Alice was busy serving soup and sandwiches and tea and coffee all afternoon and evening. A few revellers stayed over Sunday night and left early on Monday.
Pat left then, too. She was weeping. So was Bert.
Alice said irritably, "Oh, for shit's sake, why don't you just give in to it," and then felt she had to apologise. But she did not kiss Pat when she left; said, "Oh, God, I'm so fed up with everything!" and burst into tears. She left the washing up for others to do and went to bed, not caring whether Jasper was near or not.
But he was there when she woke, squatting lightly beside her, a cup of coffee in his hand. He was beaming, like a boy conscious of behaving well.
"Oh, what is it, Jasper?"
"Clever Alice," he said gently. "It was wonderful, what you did."
But she lay straight in her sleeping bag, arms by her side, feet stretched out. She was not thinking of Jasper, or of the Congress, or of the weekend's fun and games. There was an empty place in her, a pit, a grave; she had been dreaming, she knew, of the house, now boarded up, with the "For Sale" notice outside. And she knew that she must be glistening all over with pale, unshed tears.
"Alice," said Jasper, "I want to tell you something."
"I'm listening," she said, severe and remote, and saw him hesitate, wince. He felt snubbed. She should have cared, but could not.
"Bert and I - we are going to the Soviet Union."
Having taken this in, she said, "The Irish comrades won't have you, but the Soviet comrades will?" This was not derisive in the least - only a statement of the position - but she earned a look of hatred. He was on his feet, hovering above her, a furious angel, ready to throw revengeful bolts.
"Look, I don't want any negative and destructive attitudes from you, Alice."
Pause. She neither moved nor spoke.
Indecisive, he squatted down again, ready to win her.
"How are you going so quickly? You can't go just like that to the Soviet Union."
"On Saturday night one of the comrades from Manchester said that he knew of a tourist group going to Moscow, this week. There are some empty places, because some people fell out, with flu. But we can get visas through the tour organiser. We have sent in our passports, and we'll get them by the time we leave."
"Good."
A pause.
"Alice," he began tentatively, and stopped. He had been going to ask her for money, but now felt its uselessness.
She said, "You have taken every fucking penny off me already. I've spent last week's dole money on the party. It's no good trying to get any out of me." Seeing his face beginning to gather into an avid, cruel look, she said, indifferently, "And it is impossible for me to get money out of Dorothy, or out of my father."
He remained there, lightly squatting, one hand on the floorboards, studying her face. Then, as lightly, he got up and went to the door. As he left she said, "If Pat comes back before you two leave, Bert won't go with you." He slammed the door; she did not turn her head to watch him go, but remained still, like a stone or a corpse, no life in her, looking at the window, now framed by the beautiful brocade curtains, green and gold, that had hung in the sitting room of her mother's house.
She slept. In the late afternoon she woke in an empty house, bathed, put on a skirt that had been her mother's, of soft wool that had great pink roses on a soft brown background, and a pink sweater Pat had given her.
She walked straight out of the house and over to 45, where she went in without knocking: the weekend had made the two houses one. Out of the kitchen - a dreary hole, not nice and bright and decorated with flowers, like 43's - came goose-Muriel, who offered strictly rationed postparty smiles.
"If Andrew is here, I want to see him."
To prevent any more coy scratchings at the door, Alice went to it with Muriel, and knocked.
"Come in," she heard, and Alice went in, shutting the door on Muriel.
Comrade Andrew lay, stretched out like a soldier, as Alice had just been doing, on his low bed, but with his arms crossed on his chest.
He swung his legs over and down, sat, made a place for Alice to sit by him.
She did so, at a proper distance. "I have to know some things," she announced.
"Very well."
But she sat on there, in a droop, listless, and did not continue.
He studied her for a while, openly, not hiding it, then lay down again, but farther over on the narrow bed, near the wall. He pulled her by her arm; and, without resisting, she lay down next to him, stretched out. There were a good six inches between them. He did not touch her.
"Did you know Bert and Jasper are going to Moscow?"
"Yes."
A pause. She was thinking. As she always did: a slow, careful working out of the possibilities latent in everything.
"But you didn't suggest it."
"No, I certainly did not."
"No."
The silence prolonged itself. He even wondered whether she had dropped off to sleep - she had seemed so pale and exhausted. He studied her, turning his head a little, then took her right wrist gently with his left hand. She tensed up, then relaxed: this was very different from the killing grip Jasper used.
"Alice, you should really get free of this riffraff."
"Riffraff!" she expostulated, with as much energy as she had left. "These are people."
He said deliberately, "Riffraff."
She drew in her breath; but let it out quietly.
"What did Muriel tell you, then?"
"What do you suppose she told me? You aren't stupid, Alice."
She could feel herself swelling and oozing. Tears ran down her cheeks, she supposed.
"And what about the party," she almost sobbed. "You weren't there."
He remained silent.
Then, gently, he put his arm under her neck, and his left hand on her left upper arm, on the side away from him. He seemed, at the same time, to be lightly supporting her and holding her so as to make sure she would not slide away from him.
"Alice, you must separate yourself from them."
"From Jasper, you mean."
"From Jasper, Bert, and the rest. They are just playing little games."
"They don't think so."
"No, but you do, I believe."
A silence again. She had now at last almost relaxed in his hold, and he reached over with his right hand to lay it on her waist under her breasts. But she wouldn't, couldn't have this, and irritably shook him off.
"They are playing, Alice, like little children with explosives. They are very dangerous people. Dangerous to themselves and to others."
"And you aren't dangerous."
"No."
She gave a little laugh, derisive but admiring.
"No, Alice. If you do things properly and carefully, then only the people get hurt who should get hurt."
She thought about this for a long time, and he did not interrupt her. She said, "Who do you take orders from?"
"I take orders. And I give them."
She thought.
"You were trained in the Soviet Union?"
"Yes."
"You are Russian," she stated.
"Half Russian: I had an Irish father. And, no, I am not going to bore you with my interesting history."
Now a long time went by, about ten minutes. She could easily have been asleep, for she breathed slowly and deeply, but her eyes were open.
He turned slightly towards her, and she instantly clenched up and moved away from him, though still inside his arm.
"You are a very pure, good woman," said Comrade Andrew softly. "I like that in you."
This, it seemed, she could have contemplated for even longer than his previous remarks. What he could see on her face was an abstracted, bemused look due to exhaustion, but there was a de-mureness, too, which almost incited him to further efforts. Almost: something stopped him, perhaps the fact that the demureness was masking a surprisingly violent reaction to the word "pure." Was she, Alice, pure? Was that what she had been all this time without knowing it? Well, perhaps she would have to think about it; if pure was what she was, then she would have to live with it! It was the word! You couldn't use the word "pure" like that in Britain now, it simply wasn't on, it was just silly. If he didn't know that, then... How were they trained, people like Andrew? Perhaps it didn't matter that he was so alien, so different; after all, Britain was full of foreigners. Had it mattered here, in 43 and 45? Well, that depended on what he wanted to achieve. Carrying on like Lenin hadn't upset anyone (except Faye and Roberta), but then, she, Alice, knew only part of the picture. What else was he up to?