Doris Lessing - Doris Lessing

She said, "As a matter of fact, I had just decided to take off." Her voice sounded hard and sullen, like Roberta's.

But at this Roberta began a noisy weeping. She grabbed Alice's hand and held it hard, looking into Alice's eyes, with, "Oh, Alice, please, please, please, I can't leave Faye with no one, how can I?"

Roberta was trembling. Alice could feel her exhaustion coming into her, through her tightly grasping hand.

"And you have no idea how long you will be gone, or anything," said Alice.

Roberta let go Alice's hand, and sat staring over her hunched-up knees, the cigarette lolling on her lip, eyes empty. The last ditch.

"Oh, God," said Alice. "I suppose I've got to. But I'm not you, Roberta. I'm not going to baby Faye along, the way you do...."

Roberta suddenly went limp. She put her head on her knees, knocking the cigarette onto the sleeping bag. Alice tidily retrieved it, and sat watching Roberta crouched in a womb position, arms around her knees.

"Alice," she heard, "you don't know what this means to me. You can't..."

"Of course I do," said Alice. "Without you, Faye couldn't manage at all. She would be in a loony bin. You spend all your time making sure she doesn't fall into their hands."

Roberta straightened, sat up, tears spilling everywhere, said in appeal, "Alice..."

"But there's another side to it, too. She behaves worse with you than with anyone. You let her."

As Roberta protested, Alice went on reasonably, "Oh no, I'm not saying she isn't a nut - she is - but I've noticed before that sometimes someone like that behaves quite ordinarily with everybody, manages everything, you'd never think she was a nut, but there's just one person, with that person, she's out of control. It makes you wonder," said Alice.

Roberta was watching her closely. A new cigarette was being lit, but while this operation went on, Roberta's eyes did not leave Alice's face. Alice saw that the Roberta of number 43 was there again, and the poor Roberta of some dreadful past, once more buried and gone.

Roberta said, not at all annoyed, "Yes, I've thought that myself. It is strange, isn't it? Faye is normal with everyone else - well, nearly always...." Here she invited Alice, with a small rueful smile, to remember the incident when Faye ran shrieking downstairs to expel Monica. And other things. "She'll probably be all right with you."

"If she doesn't try to commit suicide."

A sharp look, repudiating. A quick shake of the head, which meant, Alice knew: I am not prepared even to think about that.

"Well, we have to think about it."

"Look, Alice, I must get dressed and go. I've got an hour to catch the train."

Roberta ran out, and came back, as Alice knew she would, with bottles of pills.

"If you make sure she takes these in the morning, and these before she goes to bed..."

Alice took the bottles with a look that said: You know very well I can't make her do anything.

Roberta said, "It's no good saying thank you, what's the good of thank you. But if I can help you some time..."

She went, and five minutes later Alice heard her go downstairs, running, and out of the house.

Faye would not wake till midday, or later.

Alice took her time with bathing and dressing, and was in the kitchen drinking coffee when Caroline came in.

She had been wanting to be friends with Caroline, but now she felt that this was bound to be some last straw.

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."