They went upstairs, but Reggie came down again almost at once to ask whether in fact Jasper and Bert knew anything about the stolen car?
"We are revolutionaries," said Bert, furious. "Not crooks."
Then, late, after twelve, Felicity came again to say the hospital had telephoned. Philip was dead. She was very upset, so Alice was told next day. She had had to be asked in, fed Alice's soup and Roberta's brandy.
None of this Alice knew till next day. Mid-morning. They were all in the kitchen, the sun coming in, the cat on the window sill.
She said, first, "He went under fast, didn't he?"-mentally seeing a small broken thing, like a bird or an insect, trying to clutch hold of a straw, a twig, and failing. The others did not understand, but Faye, with a cold smile, said, "Lucky Philip." Mary said that Philip had struck her as unstable.
Alice remarked that if the police had got this house in their minds as the place to come and have a bit of fun, then it wouldn't be worth living here. The others of course stared at her, curious: the indifference with which she said it, that was the thing.
Then Alice got up and went upstairs, put Philip's ladder in position, climbed into the attic, and stood under the great rotten beams, keeping the light of the torch on them. She was thinking - or trying to think, to make her mind, or her comprehension, accept it - that Philip had tackled everything else in the house, all the threats and dangers. But this threat, the main one, he had not dealt with, could not. Because - simply - of his size. Because there was nothing to him but a handful of frail bones and a skim of flesh. Alice could see in her mind's eye the sort of man who could have pulled down these two rotten beams, then put in others. A large bale of a man (she could see him), shouldering the beams into place. Effortlessly. Humbled but uncomprehending because of the arbitrariness, the frivolity, of life, she went downstairs again, and remarked that if those beams were not dealt with, the house would start falling in, from the top. She sat in the chair she had been in before going upstairs to the beams, at the side of the table. At head and foot, like mother and father, sat Mary and Reggie. They radiated disapproval. They knew they did, but not that they were full of panic as well.
"The beams are obviously going to have to be put right," said Mary.
Jasper and Bert, Faye and Roberta, who had been observing Alice put things right for weeks, all looked at her, waiting for her to say, perhaps, "It is all right, I have fixed everything." Jocelin and Caroline were uninvolved.
Alice remarked, "Oh, so you have found yourself a flat, then?"
Startled, even affronted, Mary said, "Yes, but how did you...?" And Reggie, "But we haven't told anybody yet; it's not final."
"And so," said Alice, "this house is back on the list, is it?"
"Not for demolition," said Mary. "It was agreed a mistake was made. Both this house and number forty-five will be converted. But, at any rate, nothing will happen immediately. The point is, there will be plenty of time for you to find somewhere else."
"Find another squat," said Reggie kindly.
Again the others looked at Alice, who had put so much into this house, and again seemed surprised that she was unconcerned.
She was examining Mary, examining Reggie, quite frankly, for she needed to know what happened. She could see the two, sitting up side by side in their marriage bed, discussing them all, with identical looks of scandalised criticism. Jim. Faye's suicide attempt. Now Philip. Alice saw that they must have felt trapped among lunatics. Well, never mind, these two good houses were saved, and a lot of people had found shelter for a time.
"Have you got a job?" asked Alice, sure that Reggie had.
Again, annoyance; because, of course, the middle classes did not like to be so transparent.
"As it happens, yes," said Reggie. "It's a new firm, in Guildford. Of course, it'll be a risk, the failure rate with new firms at the moment being what it is. But it's an interesting venture; it may succeed."
The fact that he didn't say what it was meant, Alice thought, that the "venture" was something they, the others, would criticise.
Chemicals; Reggie was a chemist. Well, she couldn't be bothered to be interested.
Reggie got up. Mary got up. Smiles all around. But relief was what they felt. Body language. Written all over them. They had felt, Mary and Reggie, that they should sit for a while with the others, because of Philip's death, and now that was enough, they could go back upstairs and get on with their own, sensible lives. They wouldn't lose hold of life and slip down and away, to be washed into some gutter.
Funny, thought Alice. Sitting around this table, let's say three weeks ago, all of us. You'd not have said that Philip was due to lose hold. Jim? Yes. And Faye...? Alice was careful not to look at Faye, feeling that a look at this moment would be like a doom or a sentence. To her, Alice, the room seemed full of ghosts, and her heart ached for poor little Philip, who had tried so hard, been so gallant. It wasn't fair.
Well, with Reggie and Mary off soon, there wouldn't be many left here. Jasper and Bert and herself. Caroline and Jocelin. Faye and Roberta. Seven.
Pat, gone. Jim, gone. Philip, gone. Comrade Andrew - disappeared somewhere. Even the goose-girl seemed to Alice, in this mood, like some good old friend, taken from her. Very well, let them take this house away. Why not? She wasn't going to care. She knew she had her look: she could feel Jasper's eyes on her. To avoid them, she got up and began preparations for another cauldron of soup.
"Comrade Alice," said Bert in his political voice, "we are all here. We had decided to have a meeting when Reggie and Mary crashed in."
"Oh, were you going to bother to call me?" asked Alice. But she came back to her seat, noting that Bert and Jasper had put themselves at the head and the foot of the table.
Mid-afternoon. Sunshine. Joan Robbins was cutting her hedge with old-fashioned shears. Clack, clack, clack, with irregular intervals that kept the ears straining. In the jug on the stool were some early roses. Yellow. The cat lay on the window sill outside the glass, looking in.
Bert began, "In view of our observations in Moscow and subsequent discussions, Jasper and I agree that we should formulate a new policy. Of course it will have to be discussed fully in its implications, but, just to indicate where our conclusions are pointing, we have a tentative formulation. That the comrades present see no reason to accept directives from Moscow."
"Or from any other extraneous source," added Jasper.
Bert leaned forward, and looked at them all challengingly.
"Right on," said Caroline. She was peeling an orange and licking the juice off her fingers. "I agree, absolutely."
"Me, too," said Jocelin at once.
"Well, yes," said Roberta, "but it certainly wasn't our idea, was it? I mean, Faye's and mine?"
"Bloody well right," said Faye. "Whose idea was it to get us all involved with shitty Comrade Andrew and his works? It was yours, Comrade Bert, and yours, Comrade Jasper." She was using her proper BBC voice, and this, as always, came as a shock after her usual coquettings with the language. She sounded cold and full of hate.
Bert and Jasper were disconcerted. The fury of their disappointment in Moscow had been soothed away by discussions on policy, on "formulations," and they had lost sight of recent history in theorising. Alice could see that they were really having to make an effort to remember.
Bert was not prepared to relinquish the pleasures of the "implications," and he said, "But it is essential to analyse the situation. Advisable, at any rate," he amended, lamely.