Oh yes, all this love and harmony was precarious enough, Alice was thinking as she sat and smiled; just one little thing - puff! - and it would be gone. Meanwhile, she put both hands around her mug of coffee, feeling how its warmth stole through her, and thought: It is like a family, it is.
Faye was saying, her teeth showing as she bared them, in her characteristic cold excitement, "Boos! Screams! I'm going to kill him! What right has he got to come here with all the filthy poison of his about women. We have enough reactionaries of our own!"
Roberta said, "All creeping out of their little holes and showing their true colours. Are you coming with us, Jasper? Bert? Show solidarity with the women?"
A pause. It was to Milchester that Alice longed to go. To Mrs. Thatcher. But here was a lift to Liverpool, and that would cost nothing. Jasper knew she wanted Milchester. So did Bert. She had said she had no money. Which was true; only her Social Security. She was ready to go to Liverpool. She hated the Defence Secretary, and not only because of his policies - there was something about that sly, malevolent Tory face of his....
As for the fascist American professor, she could not see what Roberta and Faye and all the others were on about. She had never been able to see why the word "genetic" should provoke such rage.
She thought they were silly, and even frivolous. If that's how things were, then - they were. One had to build around that.
Once, long ago, during her student days, she had said - earnestly, enquiringly (in a genuine attempt at harmony based on shared views) - that women had breasts "and all that kind of thing," whereas men "were differently equipped," and surely that must be genetic? And if so, then the glands and hormones must be different? Genetically? This had caused such a storm of resentment that the commune had taken days to recover. All this sex business, she thought, was like that! Anything to do with sex! It simply made people unbalanced. Not themselves. One simply had to learn to keep quiet and let them all get on with it! Provided they left her out of it....
Twenty years ago, more, her mother, in her slapdash, friendly, loud, earth-motherish way, had informed Alice that she would shortly menstruate, but she was sure she knew all about that anyway. Of course Alice had known about it from school, but her mother's saying it put it on her agenda, so to speak, made it all real. She was angry, not with Nature, but with her mother. Thereafter, her attitude towards "the curse" - her mother insisted on using this jolly word for it, saying it was accurate - was one of detached efficiency. She was not going to let anything so tedious get in the way of living.
When people probed her about her attitudes towards feminism, sexual politics, it was always this beginning (as she saw it) that she went back to in her mind. "Of course people ought to be equal," she would say, starting already to sound slightly irritated. "That goes without saying." In short, she was always finding herself in a false position.
Now she sat silent, cuddling her rapidly cooling coffee, smiling away, and waiting for the subject of the fascist professor to pass.
It did, and Bert remarked, "I've always liked Milchester."
This seemed to various people thoroughly off the point. Was he drunk, perhaps? He certainly was drinking more than his share. Everyone was humouring him these days, because of Pat. Unconsciously, probably. His appearance, his condition claimed this from them. He was gaunt, morose, even absent-minded; it was as though other thoughts ran parallel to the ones he expressed.
He went on, "It's always been a garrison town."
Incredulous exclamations. Faye said, "God, you're mad, you like that? War, soldiers?"
Bert said, "But it's interesting. Why should towns go on being the same, century after century. Milchester was a garrison town under the Romans."
A silence. Thrown off balance by this note so different from their usual one, they remembered that he had done History at university.
"Countries, for that matter," said Bert. "Britain goes on being the same. Russia goes on being the same. Germany - "
"Any minute now we are going to have national characters, like genetic doom," said Faye, furious.
Bert, recalled to himself by her tone, shrugged, and sat silent.
"We'll go to Milchester," said Jasper, and, catching Alice's glance, smiled, then winked. Proudly: he was proud of being nice to her. This meant he would pay for her, the train fare. Weekend return. Eleven pounds. For the three of them, thirty-three pounds. With that they could buy... But that was silly; people had to have a break. Holidays. Comrade Andrew had said so.
She smiled intimately at Jasper, tears of gratitude imminent, but his eyes shifted away from the pressure of her emotion.
Faye said violently to Roberta, "It looks as if you and I will be on our own!"
"Hardly alone, darling. There'll be a good turnout, I'm sure."
Faye tittered, looking accusingly at her comrades, and then said, "Well, I'm for bed." She went out without saying good night. Roberta smiled at them all, asking toleration for Faye, and went after her. They could hear how Faye said on the stairs that they were all fascists and sexists. They smiled at one another.
Then Reggie and Mary said they were to be picked up tomorrow at five, so as to get to Cumberland in time for the demo, and they wanted an early night.
Philip went, too; he was starting work at eight in the morning.
Jasper, Bert, and Alice sat on discussing tomorrow. Alice saw that Jasper did not want her to throw eggs or fruit at Mrs. Thatcher. He did not say so, but it was obvious. That meant he wanted her here with him, not in prison. This made her wildly happy and grateful. Affectionate impulses kept attacking her arms; they yearned to embrace him. Sisterly kisses inhabited her smiles. He felt this, and, though he was explaining plans to her, addressed himself to Bert. He was not going to let himself be arrested, because he and Bert were so soon off to the Soviet Union. The visas might come any day, but if not in time for this trip, then there was another with vacancies in a week.
Alice was disappointed that she must stay in an orderly part of the crowd, but never mind, another time.
Bert said he was going to bed. At once Jasper got up and said he was, too. Alice understood he did not want to be alone with her, though she knew he was happy enough to have her there when Bert was. She went up into the room she had shared with him, next to Bert's. Bert was of course less noisy without Pat; but he was sleeping badly, as she could hear. And tonight, even with the door tight shut, she could hear that Faye was having one of her turns.
"Faye had one of her turns last night," Roberta might say, having forgotten that the old-fashioned phrase - Victorian? - once used humorously by Faye ("I was 'aving one of me turns, me dear") - was meant to be humorous, so that it had become ordinary speech. At the moments when Roberta used it, she acquired a workaday, bygone look, was like a servant or a lower-class person from a play on the box. Theatrical. When were Faye and Roberta themselves? Only when they had been beaten back, down, by some person or situation, into being the people who used those clumsy blurting labouring heavy voices, which made them seem as if they had been taken over by pitiful strangers who could not be expected to know Faye, know Roberta.
Alice slept badly. She woke to hear Reggie and Mary go downstairs; their cheerful voices were loud, as if they were alone in the house and it belonged to them. She heard Roberta and Faye go down, quiet, not talking. It was nine before Bert woke next door; he was lighting cigarettes one after another. She thought, Perhaps we're not going to get to Queen Bitch Thatcher today. And descended to the empty kitchen, determined not to show disappointment. Then Bert did come. At once he went to wake Jasper, who, she could see, would easily call the whole thing off. It was raining steadily.