But they did get out of the house and to the train; and watched London give way to the country through the dirty train windows and grey shrouds of rain. Bert was silent, thinking his thoughts, which - Alice suspected - he would be sharing with Jasper were she not there. Jasper was being polite with her.
At the station they took a bus to the university. The great cold lunatic buildings looked at them through the downpour, and Alice felt murder fill her heart. She knew most of the new universities; had visited them, demonstrated outside them. When she saw one she felt she confronted the visible embodiment of evil, something that wished to crush and diminish her. The enemy. If I could put a bomb under that lot, she was thinking, if I could... Well, one of these days...
They were late. Outside the main entrance about sixty demonstrators huddled under plastic hoods and umbrellas, herded by eighty-odd policemen. At the sight of this, Jasper came to life, and ran forward, jeering, "Fascist pigs, pigs, pigs. Cowards! How many of you do you need for one demonstrator?" Alice ran to catch up with him, so as to be beside him, ready to calm him down. Bert came on slowly behind, walking, not running.
The official cars came sweeping up, and before Alice, Jasper, and Bert could reach the crowd, Mrs. Thatcher had got out, and was being led quickly in. Fruit and - as Alice had hoped - eggs sailed through the air, exploding with a dull squelch. Mrs. Thatcher had gone inside.
The demonstrators began a steady chant of "Nuclear missiles out. Out, out, out. Nuclear missiles out, out, out."
They kept it up bravely. Mrs. Thatcher would be inside for two hours, at least.
The policemen were bored and resentful, forced to stand there in the rain; they were only too ready to be provoked. A girl near Alice picked up a large orange from the ground and flung it at a policeman. His helmet was dislodged. Delighted, two policemen came to her. She dodged about in the crowd for a bit, then they caught her, and she went limp and was dragged to a van, her long brown hair trailing wetly. The two policemen came back to a chorus of boos and jeers. Alice could feel Jasper beside her, pulsating with frustrated excitement. He was longing for a real tussle. So was she. So were the police, who grinned challengingly at the demonstrators. Alice, remembering her role, said to Jasper, "Careful, that one over there, he's a brute, he's just waiting to get you." And, since Jasper seemed to be about to explode into action, "Remember, it's Saturday. We don't want to spend the weekend inside. And, anyway, there's your trip, don't forget."
Others, less burdened by circumstance, were throwing fruit and eggs at the police, and were promptly being taken to the vans.
"Fucking police state," shouted Jasper, almost out of control with excitement. He was dodging about in the crowd, as if he were being pursued.
The crowd took it up: "Police state, police state," they yelled.
Alice saw an eye signal pass among the policemen; she knew that they would all be arrested at the slightest provocation. She yearned for it, longed for the moment when she would feel the rough violence of the policemen's hands on her shoulders, would let herself go limp, would be dragged to the van.... But she said to Jasper, "Come on, run," and she grabbed him by the hand and they ran. Bert, standing rather by himself at the edge of the crowd, stepped back as the arrests started. He stood watching. But he, too, would be arrested in a moment. Alice, her blood on fire, her face distorted with excitement, rushed in, darted among the policemen, admiring her own skill in it, grabbed Bert, and said, "Come on." Bert, roused, said, "Oh yes. Yes, Alice, you're right." And followed her.
"Get them," shouted a policeman, as the three sprinted away.
Five or six policemen set off after them, but one slipped in a puddle, rolled over, and slid along in the mud, and when he tried to get up, he fell again. It seemed that he had hurt himself. The others crowded around him. Meanwhile, disappointed that the chase had been so short, the three found their way to the bus stop. It was pouring steadily, a cold hard rain.
Their spirits sank, now that the challenge of the police was taken off them. It had not been very satisfactory. They were all thinking that they had spent a lot of money for very little.
They went into a cafe. The men ate sausages and chips; Alice, a salubrious vegetable soup.
They debated about whether to go back to the university for Mrs. Thatcher's exit to the cars. Alice was for it, though she was afraid of the effect of that pink-and-white, assured, complacent Tory face on Jasper. If he were kept in for the weekend, the weekend ticket return would be invalid, and the fares back on Monday would be double.
But she did feel she hadn't had her money's worth.
They agreed they would go back, to show solidarity with the others - if any demonstrators still remained. But it began to rain even harder. A real tropical deluge, if such cold rain deserved the name "tropical."
They returned to the station and, dispirited, to London. There they went to the pictures, and then, finding Faye and Roberta in the kitchen, they all swapped notes. Clearly, they - Jasper and Alice and Bert - would have done much better to have gone to the anti-professor demo, which had been a great success. About a thousand people, Faye said - Alice automatically corrected this to "six hundred." Mostly women, but quite a lot of men. They had jostled the professor badly, had nearly brought him down, had got him really rattled. "Well, that ought to give him pause for thought, at least," said Roberta happily, thinking of how she had shrieked he was a scummy sexist and in the pay of the fascists.
Even the Thatcher demonstration sounded effective, in retrospect. After all, quite a few had been arrested. Reggie and Mary had - of course! - a television in their room. They all went up, and crowded in, making jokes about the large bed, the tidy furniture, the carpets. They sat on the bed and watched the news. There was no mention of the fascist professor, but there was a brief scene of the demonstrators struggling with the police at the university. The three were disappointed that they did not appear on the screen. The newscaster said that at one point the police were afraid a bomb had been thrown. "It was an orange," screamed Alice, and they all laughed and jeered, and went down for more talk in the kitchen, taking with them four bottles of wine from a case of it that Reggie and Mary had under the dressing table.
"They won't mind," said Faye, laughing, but in a way that said they all knew they would mind very much.
Philip came in, but he was tired and went to bed.
The five sat up drinking and talking till late.
The demonstrations sounded better and better as the night wore on. They drank to the comrades in the police cells. Alice was sad she was not there - as it happened she had not been arrested for some time; she was beginning to feel she was not pulling her weight in the Struggle. But it was just as well, for on Monday Jasper and Bert were told the visas had gone through and the trip was on. They went off that afternoon.
Alice said, as they left, "See you in ten days."
She saw them glance at each other - yet again the ridiculous, insulting, perfectly obvious "secret" shared look that people used all the time. It came to her, stunningly, that they did not expect to be back in ten days.
She thought this all over carefully, slept on it, and then wrote to the address she had for Pat.
Bert and Jasper have gone off, she wrote. Why don't you come down for a day or two? Or, if you can't come, please write. Do you know anything about this trip? Did Bert say anything about not coming back in ten days?
This letter brought a card, "Ring me at nine o'clock Thursday or Friday. Much love, Pat." This "Much love" hurt Alice, and she wept a little.
When she heard Pat's bright, firm, likable voice, Alice pleaded, "Do come down, do, Pat."