Caroline said, moving to the kettle and the coffee jar, as if she already lived there, "Alice, I've come to ask if it would be all right if I moved in."
Alice only shrugged; but held out her mug to Caroline, for a refill.
Caroline, after a quick inspection of Alice from those sharp eyes of hers, filled the two cups and sat down with hers, at the other end of the table.
"What's wrong?"
Alice told her.
"Only a short-term problem," pronounced Caroline, dismissing it.
Alice laughed. "Very well, then," she said, "so what's wrong next door?"
Caroline sat briskly stirring sugar into her cup, in itself a gesture that announced self-determination in these days when people confess to sugar as once they might have done to a drink problem. One, two, three large teaspoons went in, and Caroline took up the mug to drink, with a frank and greedy enjoyment.
Alice laughed again, differently. She had been right: she and Caroline were already at the start of that mysterious process known as "getting on."
"The police raided us again last night."
"Haven't you arranged with the Council yet?"
"We were always going to do it, but we didn't get around to it. Anyway, that wouldn't make any difference."
"So what were they looking for?"
"They were certainly looking for something. They took the place apart."
"But nothing there?"
"Nothing."
Caroline was waiting for the questions that Alice was framing in her mind.
"So somebody did inform?"
"We think not. Actually, I think they were looking for smack."
"But nobody uses it, do they?"
"Pot, of course. Not heroin. No, I think they thought forty-five was a cache. You know, a bale or two of best-quality heroin lurking beneath the floor."
Alice was thinking, intently. Her face was puckered up, like an anxious dog's.
"Hey, relax," said Caroline, "no harm done."
"How long were... things coming in and out, next door?"
"Not long. A few weeks. And usually only for a day or so. Sometimes an hour or two."
"Always for Comrade Andrew?"
"Well, he organised it all."
"How did Comrade Andrew get to next door in the first place?"
"He met Muriel somewhere. He really goes for Muriel."
"You're saying that he chose forty-five to live in because Muriel was there?"
"He hasn't been living there. He's in and out. I don't suppose he's ever been there longer than two or three days at a time."
"And Comrade Muriel goes for Andrew."
"Actually, I think it is she who turns the cheek."
"Oh well, I don't care about all that," said Alice, as usual saddened and disgusted. "Anyway, it all seems very hit and miss."
"Why? The proof's in the pudding. The police have actually been in three times while I've been here. They never found anything. Once half the rubbish sacks had just enough rubbish to cover what was really in them."
"Which was?"
"Oh," said Caroline airily, spooning up thick wet yellow sugar from the bottom of her mug, and licking it slowly with a fat pink tongue, "things, you know."
Alice was silent. She was taking in everything she could of this plump, healthy creature who sat there exuding physical enjoyment. She was trying to understand the secret of it. But, noted Alice, though she might look like a sleek seal, smiling away and talking - presumably - about explosives, her pupils remained tight and unrelenting. They gave her a shrewd, even cold, look, and Alice was relieved to see it. She felt Caroline could be relied on.
"Well, I suppose explosives," she remarked indifferently. "That's what I thought from the start, really."
"Well, that kind of thing. But I said to Comrade Andrew, I said, 'Have any of us actually been asked about what comes in and out? I don't seem to remember a vote being taken?'"
"You were there before he was?"
"Long before. I moved in a year ago. I was there alone for weeks. Then Muriel came. Then, suddenly, Andrew came. We never knew how Muriel had heard of it - Comrade Muriel is not, I would say, one of the world's natural squatters."
"No."
"But she took the place over. The next thing was Paul and Edward - now, I think that she asked them in because Andrew told her to. Then I asked some friends of mine, three girls, who were in a bad squat in Camberwell. But Muriel soon got rid of them."
"How?"
"Not so much" - said Caroline judiciously, smiling with the pleasure she was getting from talking and being understood - "not so much by what she did, but by what she is..." She waited for Alice to laugh. Alice laughed. Caroline went on, "They simply did not like the way Muriel assumed command, and then when Andrew moved in, they left."
Alice sat thinking. She knew, from how Caroline was eyeing her, that thinking was what she was supposed to be doing.
"Very well," said Alice at last. "So you don't like Comrade Andrew."
"Who is Comrade Andrew?" asked Caroline. "Who is he to give orders and say what is and what is not to happen?"
"We don't have to do what he says. It is up to us to say no or yes."
"But difficult to say no when a car simply arrives with five cases of pamphlets. Or something."
More coffee. More sugar. Alice could not prevent herself from thinking: But your teeth...
"And," pronounced Caroline, smiling, amenable, sociable, but her little brown eyes hard and controlled, "do you know something? I do not give a damn about the fucking bloody Soviet Union. Or about the fucking KGB. Or any of that."
"KGB" used like that did give Alice a bit of a shock; she had not actually said to herself, I am involved with the KGB. Besides, the words had a ruthless quality which was hard to associate with Comrade Andrew. She was silent, then said, "But it is a useful way to get trained. I mean, for some people."
"For some people. And if they want that kind of training."
"There is something about it all that doesn't fit," Alice said at last, with difficulty. It was hard to criticise Comrade Andrew. Aloud, at least; in her thoughts she could not prevent herself.
"Exactly. And do you know what it is? I have - strangely enough - been giving the matter my most earnest consideration."
Alice laughed, as she was expected to.
"Yes. In my experience, which is not vast, but enough, everything turns out to be some kind of a muddle. You are imagining amazing fantastic brilliant plots, organised down to the last fantastically efficient detail, but no, when you discover the truth about anything, let alone KGB plots, it is always some stupid silly mess."
Now Alice was really disturbed. It was because this was something her mother said. Had been saying recently - part of this new, upsetting phase she was in. Over and over again in the last four years, how many times had Alice not heard Dorothy Mellings exclaim, and with a relish in the scandal of it all that made Alice furious, "Just another bloody balls-up, that's all. They've blown it! They've fucked it up. Oh, don't waste your time sitting there trying to work it all out! It's just another little mess." Usually to Zoë Devlin. Who would try to reason with her - with Dorothy. In the way that she had recently been doing - reasoning with her mother, patiently, perseveringly, when she said this kind of thing. "Dorothy, everything can't be a muddle, it's just not on to slide out of it all like that! What's got into you, Dorothy? It's as if you can't be bothered to think anything out any more?" And Dorothy MeUings to Zoë Devlin: "Who's sliding out? I think you are. You are living in some kind of rose-pink dreamworld, you think everything goes along, all sensible and as the result of mature decisions! Well, it doesn't! It's just a great big bleeding mess."
To hear her mother's words coming so complacently out of Caroline's plump smiling face was so much of a blow to Alice, her two worlds becoming confused in this way, that she missed a good bit of what Caroline was saying. When she listened again she heard, "I think our Comrade Andrew was not up to his job. I think the West went to his head. The fleshpots, you know."