"Why?" said Jocelin. And "Why?" asked Faye.
A silence.
Alice said diplomatically, "There are certain things I'd like to know before we drop the subject."
Faye sighed. Exaggeratedly. She was making an effort to sit here with them at all. She was very pale. There seemed to be life only in her bright hair, which made its pretty ringlets and curls around her emptied face.
"I'd like to know how next door, how number forty-five, got involved with the bloody Russians," said Faye.
"Good question," said Caroline, making little piles of orange peel with her solid white fingers, which had rings gleaming on them.
"Does anybody know?" Alice persisted.
"Jocelin knows," said Caroline.
Jocelin shrugged, as if irritated by the whole thing.
They all looked at Jocelin. She was not easy to look at. This was not because of her appearance, which was unremarkable. She was a blonde, whose ordinariness was pointed by pretty Faye, so delicate and fine, always presenting herself this way and that. Jocelin did not care whether she was admired, or even seen. Cold green eyes observed everything, and she was angry all the time, as if a generalised anger had taken her over at some point and she had come to believe that this was how one experienced the world. Not easy to withstand that hostility; and people tended to look not at her face, but at her hands, which were fine, with long clever fingers, or at her clothes, hoping to find something of interest there. But she wore, always, jeans and a jersey.
"This is what happened," said Jocelin. "As far as I know. There was a house over in Neasden, which worked very well as an exchange point, for some weeks. No one expects to use a place for longer than weeks. But suddenly the police were on to it. There was an informer. Or something."
She lit a cigarette, and Alice could see this was to give her time to work out exactly how much she wanted to say.
Alice prompted, "Exchange what, exactly?"
"What was going through next door - at forty-five. Propaganda material mostly. But also materiel."
This businesslike word caused, as Alice could see, agreeable frissons in Bert and Jasper, who both, not knowing they did, leaned forward intently to stare at Jocelin. And then, realising what they were doing, looked away, uncomfortable.
"It was a question of finding somewhere, quickly. Very quickly. Someone said that forty-five was empty. All that was needed was a place for two days. So it was thought."
"Who needed it?" said Bert, clumsily.
"Obviously, Comrade Andrew," said Caroline, crisp and disapproving.
"Yes," said Jocelin. "He had been organising propaganda material. Mostly for the IRA. Printed in Holland, mostly. And... other things. Some of it tricky stuff. Very." Here she smiled coldly at them, but with closed lips, and they all smiled uneasily and averted their eyes.
"But the house wasn't empty," said Caroline. "I was only away for a few days. I came back and found two rooms stacked with stuff. And then Comrade Muriel appeared, then Comrade Andrew." Caroline laughed, genuinely, and, relieved, they all laughed. Not, however, Jocelin, who turned her green eyes on them, one after another, waiting to go on.
"It seems it was not easy to find another suitable house," said Jocelin. "Nothing really safe. Meanwhile, they went on with forty-five. They had all kinds of makeshifts. Once there were four dustbins full of pamphlets covered with rubbish in the garden. They had plastic rubbish sacks with materiel more than once. But it couldn't go on like that. Next, most of the comrades left all at once from this house, and Comrade Alice moved in." She smiled, but her eyes were like lumps of green stone. "Comrade Alice's combination of remarkable talents were a godsend. It seems that Comrade Muriel and Comrade Andrew were about to follow your example into getting forty-five an agreed tenancy with the Council. But they had second thoughts: that it would risk all kinds of visits from the Council, and the stuff kept arriving, any odd time of the day or night, and being taken off again, too. No, they decided that it was enough that such perfect respectability existed next door. And there was a Council official, too. Mary Williams moved in. And then there was even a CCU Congress." She laughed, making it clear what she thought of the CCU. And of them?
"But how did you get involved in all this," demanded Faye. "You didn't like Comrade Andrew any more than we did."
"I didn't say I didn't like him," said Jocelin. "Like - who cares about all that? I was not involved with Comrade Andrew, or any of his doings. I decided to move in here because I was told by Muriel that you wanted to work with the IRA."
And now she looked at them again, slowly, one after another, taking her time about it. She said softly, "That is my interest. But about Moscow, the KGB and all that, I'm not interested - but that's all history, isn't it, now that Andrew has gone. Wherever he has gone. And I wouldn't like to be in his shoes."
"No," said Caroline. "No."
Alice felt hurt for Comrade Andrew. It seemed something was softly whimpering away in there, in her chest. That was the end of Comrade Andrew, then? They didn't care what happened to him! Or if they never saw him again!
Jasper was saying, "Why? What? I don't know what you mean?"
And Bert, "What did he do?"
Nobody answered. They couldn't be bothered. Comrade Andrew was not worth the effort. Gone. Disappeared.
Jasper said hotly - it came bursting out - "Bert and I went to Ireland. We saw the comrades. They weren't all that interested."
"So I heard," said Jocelin calmly. "Yes, I heard about that. But what of it? Who are the IRA to tell us what to do in our own country?"
This struck them all with the force of some obvious and ineluctable truth that inexplicably had not been seen by them till this moment. Of course! Who were the IRA, to tell them what to do?
Bert laughed softly, and his white teeth showed. Jasper laughed - and Alice suffered on hearing it, for she could measure by it how hurt he had been, how put down, by the refusal in Moscow to take him seriously, after the refusal in Ireland. Jasper's laugh was scornful and proud, and confidence was rushing back into him, and he looked about at them all, justified.
"Right on," said Faye. "At last. As far as I am concerned, you've all just seen the light. We have to decide what to do, and we will carry it out. We don't have to ask permission of foreigners." She was still using her cold, correct voice.
"Absolutely," said Roberta.
"Then that's that," said Alice. "All we have to do now is to make a plan."
At this point, a knock on the front door. Alice went, and came back in with Felicity. It was a question, since Alice was Philip's "next of kin," of her going to the hospital for the formalities.
Felicity did not want to sit down; did not want, as they all saw, to be forced into taking on Philip's affairs.
Alice said angrily, "Why me, Felicity? Why not you?"
"Look," said Felicity. "Philip came to stay in my place because he was stuck. Desperate. As far as I was concerned, he was just someone without a place to live."
"But he must have a family, or someone?"
"He has a sister, somewhere."
"But where?"
"How do I know? He never said."
The two women faced each other, as if in a bitter quarrel. Seeing how they must look, they became apologetic.
Felicity said, "When I said Philip could stay, I thought it was for the weekend, a week. He was with me for over a year."
Alice saw that it was she who was going to have to do it, and she said, bitterly, "Oh, very well." Now she had got her way, Felicity became "nice," and refused a cup of tea with many hurried apologies, and fussed her way out of the house.
"Poor Alice," said Roberta. "I'll come with you." Alice began to cry. They all looked at her in amazement.