Doris Lessing - Doris Lessing

"It's all right," said Alice gently, infinitely pitying. "Don't worry. I'm sorry." And she went out, hearing how Faye's voice shrilled as the door shut, and how Roberta's voice consoled and gentled.

Alice returned to the second coat and her work of balancing on the trestles, and thought for the first time: I'm silly. They like it. Roberta, certainly Faye, like living in filth. She contemplated this idea for some time, steadily laying on a fresh film of white to strengthen the white already there, over her head, one knuckle just touching the ceiling to steady her. They like it. They need it. If they didn't like it, they would have done something about it long ago. It's easy to get things straight and clean, so if they didn't, they wanted it.

She allowed this thought plenty of time and scope. But Jim, no, he didn't like it: Look how pleased he was when I started clearing up. He didn't like all those horrible buckets up there, he just doesn't know how to... Jim, he hasn't got the expertise of the middle class (how often had she heard this at her mother's house); he is helpless, he doesn't know how things work. But Faye and Roberta - well, they aren't middle-class, to put it mildly, but surely they... yes, they would have picked up the know-how, the expertise, so if they didn't get things straight, it's because they didn't want to.

Imagine wanting to live in that room, that awful room, with walls like dung heaps, what has happened in there, what has been done in the room? Well, probably it wasn't Roberta. Faye: anything wrong, anything pitiful and awful, would have to be Faye, never Roberta. Probably when Faye had one of those turns of hers... all kinds of awful things happening, and then Roberta, coping: Darling Faye, it's all right; don't, Faye; please, Faye; relax, darling....

Alice finished the second coat at midday, washed the roller, put lids on the paint tins, took them to a room upstairs. While Philip slept, while Mary and Reggie slept, while Roberta and Faye slept (they had not come out of their room), she had painted a whole room. And done it well, no smears or skimped corners, and the papers were all bundled up ready for the dustbins, which would soon be full again.

Alice cooked herself eggs, drank tea, and washed herself in cold water, standing in the bath. Alice then, all clean and brushed, and in a nice blouse with the small pink flowers and the neat round collar, walked out of the house and went next door, to number 45, as though she had been planning to do this all day.

She was sure that Comrade Andrew would not still be in bed, whoever else was.

About two-thirds of the sacks of refuse had gone, and the pit she had seen was as if it had never been, under a litter of dead leaves where a couple of blackbirds foraged.

The door opened to show a young woman who was both tall and slender, and baggy and voluminous, for she wore battle dress in khaki and green, similar to an outfit that Alice had seen in an army-surplus shop not long ago.

"I am Alice," she said, as the girl said, "You are Alice," and then, "I am Muriel." Smiling nicely, Muriel stood aside for Alice to enter a hall where not a trace remained of the stacks of pamphlets, or whatever they were. Number 45 had no carpet on the floor; otherwise the two halls were the same. There was even a broom leaning in a corner.

"Can I see Comrade Andrew?" Alice said, and Muriel replied, disappointingly, "I think he is asleep." Seeing Alice's commenting face, Muriel said swiftly, "But he only got back at three this morning, and those Channel boats..." Then, having given this information to which Alice felt she was not entitled, Muriel said, with a look of irritated guilt because of Alice's critical face, that she would go and see. She went to the door of the room Alice had been in, and lifted her hand as if to knock. She scratched delicately, not to say intimately, with her forefinger. The cold and dreadful pain that she never told herself was jealousy went through Alice. She could have fainted with it. Certainly she was dizzy, and when her head cleared Muriel still stood there, complacently smiling, and scratching with that raised forefinger, like a bird's beak. Yes, she did look like a goose, or, better still, a gosling, lumpy and unformed; like a German Royal, with a smooth, tight bosomy droop in front, and a face with protruding nose and gobbly lips. Which face was now turning a pleased smile towards Alice. "I can hear him now, he's moving." Speaking as though Comrade Andrew's moving was in itself evidence of his superiority, which she was prepared generously to share with Alice. The door opened and Comrade Andrew stood there, blinking and red-eyed. He wore creased trousers and a white tee shirt that needed washing. Again Alice smelled spirits, and repressed disapproval: he must have been tired, coming in so late. He smiled at Muriel in a way Alice did not feel inclined to analyse, then saw Alice and nodded familiarly at her, indicating she should enter.

She went into the room, while the man shut the door, smiling at Muriel, to exclude her.

This room had been cleared of all but two of the great packages. A low folding bed stood against a wall, with a single red blanket on it. It was untidy, but, then, he had got straight out of the bed to answer the scratching. There was a pillow without a pillow slip, and the old-fashioned striped ticking looked greasy. This little scene of the bed was different from the impersonality of the rest of the room, and suggested a rank and even brutal masculinity.

Yawning, not hiding it, the man sat down on an ancient easy chair on one side of the dead fireplace. She sat opposite in another.

"I was in France," he said easily. "Just a quick trip."

She found herself looking covertly at the bed, which had so much the air of being from a foreign country. Or perhaps from some different moral climate, like a war, or a revolution. He saw her examining the bed. He was still waking himself up. Suddenly he rose, went to the bed, tugged up the red blanket to lie straight, hiding the ugly pillow. He sat down again.

He remarked, "I got rid of what you saw in that hole out there. It's gone to where it can be of use."

"Oh, good," said Alice indifferently. The point was, he might or might not have sent, or taken, "it"; but so what? She didn't want to know.

"You must be wondering what it was. Well, all I can say is, it is something of which a very small amount goes a very long way."

A fine contempt was rising in Alice, because of his clumsiness. She said sternly, "In my view, the less people know about such things, the better." Meaning, the less she knew.

His eyes narrowed and grew hard; then he stiffly smiled. "You're right, comrade. I suppose I am off guard. I am a man who needs his sleep. Seven hours in the twenty-four, or I function less than my best."

Alice nodded, but she was examining him critically. She was finding him unimpressive. A stocky, stubby man. His hair, cut short, was flattened here and there, like an animal's fur when it is out of sorts. A stale breath came from him, sour, which was not only because he might have drunk too much. He should be watching his weight.

"I am glad you dropped in, Comrade Alice. I have been wanting to talk things over with you." Here he got up and went to the desk, to look for cigarettes, and stood with his back to her, going through the business of putting one in his mouth and lighting it. This procedure, during which he seemed to be returning to himself, a quick, efficient, considered series of movements, subdued Alice's criticism. She thought: Well, for all that, he's the real thing; and she allowed herself to feel confidence in him.

Then began a remarkable conversation, which went on for some time; it was getting on for five when she left. She knew that he was finding out from her what he needed to know - testing her - and that he must know, surely, that she allowed this, understood that it was happening. It was a dreamy, thoughtful sort of state that she was in, passive yet alert, storing up all kinds of impressions and ideas that she would examine later.