Doris Lessing - Doris Lessing

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.

"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?