The two of them seemed to have acquired a fairly dramatic new style, thought Alice, examining them dispassionately.
She enquired, really interested, "And how are you going to class Faye? Serious or not?"
Their faces seemed to cloud; yes, they knew about the suicide attempt, but had not really been bothered about it.
"Well," said Bert, doubtfully, "I suppose she'll be fit enough to join in, won't she?"
Alice laughed. It was a laugh that surprised herself, sounding so natural and even merry. She was finding these two funny, because they were so stupid.
She said indifferently, "If you want a meeting convened, then why don't you convene it." She got up and attended to the cauldron of soup, adding some more split peas, salt, then water. Jasper's and Bert's appetites had not diminished, she noted.
When she turned, they were sitting disconsolate, opposite to but not looking at each other. Or at her. They were reflecting, she could see, that her anger with them had justification, that they had been foolish not to take it into account. And, too, that they felt her rejection as another in a succession of rejections.
Her heart almost melted. She said to Jasper, "I am sorry. You go off like that, all kinds of lies. Then you just turn up.... I'm sorry."
She went towards the door, and Jasper was beside her. She felt his frantic grip on her wrist; it was all he knew to bring her back to him. She shook off his hand quite easily, and said, "I'm sorry, Jasper." And went out.
From outside the door, she relented a little and said, "Let me know when you have convened the meeting."
She was on her way up, thinking that she would sleep, and then perhaps ring her old commune in Halifax. A few days there and she would be herself again.
But there was a knock, loud and urgent, at the front door, and she went to it, ready for the police, but it was a woman she did not know, who said quickly, "I am Felicity, you know, from round the corner. Philip's friend. They telephoned from hospital. Philip was in an accident. They want some of his things taken up."
She was already turning away on a smile, duty done, but Alice said, "Aren't you going up?" Meaning, Isn't this your responsibility?
"Yes, I'll be up to see him," said Felicity, vaguely enough. "But not now. His things are here, aren't they?"
She had been an extension of number 43 all this time, but no one would think so from her manner. She was a small, brisk, authoritative woman, every bit as competent as Alice in holding her own. She was saying that she did not intend Philip to be her responsibility.
Alice thought of Philip that morning, raging and pitiful. She said, "Oh, very well. Is he bad?"
"He's not dead. He could have been. He was lucky. Broken bones." She smiled and hastened off.
Alice went upstairs to Philip's room. On nicely painted shelves were his clothes, tidily arranged. She found three pairs of clean pyjamas, green, blue, and brown, stacked on top of one another; a dressing gown on a hanger behind the door; toothbrush and a flannel spread to dry on the window sill; soap, electric razor. She set off, only saying through the kitchen door to Jasper and Bert that she was going to the hospital, not mentioning Philip. She did not want to hear either of them dismiss this accident as they had Faye's wrist cutting. It was appalling, and she knew it. This meant some kind of an end for Philip. Of course he had got himself run over, or whatever had happened, because he needed to underline his situation. Make himself helpless: make his helplessness visible.
But in the hospital Alice found it was worse than Felicity had said. Broken shoulder. Broken kneecap. Fractured left wrist. Bruises. But he also had a fractured skull. He was being taken down to the operating theatre again in a few minutes. They suspected internal damage. Meanwhile, he was unconscious. Because Alice said that as far as she knew Philip didn't have a family, or if so, she couldn't supply an address, the ward sister had put her down on the form as "next of kin." Telephone number? But Alice, determined that Felicity should not slide out altogether, said Felicity must be rung in emergencies. Anyway, number 43 had no telephone.
She then stood in a doorway, not knowing what to expect, because she had not visualised anything, and saw in the middle of a room a high slanting contraption like a machine with pulleys and levers and wheels and tubes, and on this, half sitting up but collapsed and limp, was Philip, all bandages and wrappings. His face was really all that was visible: dead white, blue veins fluttering on waxen lids, white lips that seemed to have some sort of dried pink dye at the corners. More than ever he seemed like a small elf, an inhuman creature, and Alice, standing there helpless, with the ward sister just behind her, could not move. She was thinking that this is what happened to marginal people, people clinging on but only just. They made one slip; something apparently quite slight happened, like the Greek, but it was part of some downward curve in a life, and that was that - they lost their hold and fell. Philip had lost his hold.
Alice turned such a shocked face on the ward sister that she said, "Are you all right?" Deliberately perfunctory, because she did not want to cope with Alice. "Go and get yourself a cup of tea downstairs," said the sister. "Sit down a bit."
Her look indicated that she was prepared to be concerned about Alice if she produced symptoms that warranted it, but Alice said, "It's all right." She watched the sister go to stand by Philip, looking down carefully at him for about a minute. For some reason this long close look told Alice everything. She turned and ran away down the corridors and stood waiting for the lift, and then went down in the lift, but she did not know she was doing these things. She was whimpering steadily, her eyes fixed in front of her - on Philip's dying face.
And now came the thought: Philip was a long way down on that curve before he asked if he could live with us. What we thought we saw was somebody at the beginning of a curve up, with a new business, everything in front of him, but it wasn't like that at all. Probably it wasn't even the Greek who did him in, made him lose hold - it was when Felicity threw him out. (Alice knew now that this was what had happened, from Felicity's manner.) Perhaps long before that? Suddenly Alice knew. All of it was perfectly clear, like a graph. It was not a question of Philip's having "lost hold." He had never grasped hold. Something had not happened that should have happened: a teacher, or someone, should have said: This one, Philip Fowler, he must be a craftsman, do something small, and delicate and intricate; we must get him trained for that. Look how perfectly he does things! He can't fold a shirt or arrange some chips and a piece of fish on a plate without making a picture of it.
It had not happened. And Philip began to work for a building firm, like everyone who hasn't a training. A painter in a building firm, losing one job after another until he said: I'll start my own business.
The relentlessness of it. The fucking shitty awfulness of it...
She did not afterwards remember how she got back from the hospital. In the kitchen Roberta took one look at her and produced her remedy: brandy was poured into Alice, and Roberta put her arm around her, helped the sodden heavy girl upstairs, got her into her sleeping bag, drew curtains.
Alice slept through the two events of that evening.
The first was that the vicious policeman from the station came in with a policewoman, on some business to do with a stolen car. Jasper and Bert were there, and things didn't go well, would certainly have ended in violence and arrests, only luckily Mary and Reggie appeared, and dealt with the police in their own language, on their own terms. But Mary and Reggie were afterwards cold, were disapproving, saying that there was really no need for trouble with the police if people knew how to handle them. "And, of course, if they behave themselves," was implicit.