Doris Lessing

"I doubt whether we shall see much of them. Still, they are all right." She yawned, elaborately, and said, "Too much effort to go chasing out for a bath. Bert can put up with me as I am."

She went, and Alice sat still until she had heard her go up the stairs and close her door.

Then Alice swiftly went out of the house. It was too early for what she was going to do. The street, though dark, had the feeling of the end of the day, with cars turning in to park, others leaving for the evening's entertainments, a restlessness of lights. But the traffic was pounding up the main road with the intensity of daytime. She dawdled along to look into the garden of 45. It seemed to her that a start had been made on the rubbish; yes, it had, and some filled sacks stood by the hedge, the plastic gleaming blackly. She saw two figures bending over a patch towards the back; not far from the pit she and Pat and Jim had dug, though a big hedge stood between. Were they digging a pit, too? It was very dark back there. Lights from Joan Robbins's top windows illuminated the higher levels of number 45, but did not reach the thicket of the overgrown garden. Alice loitered around for a while, and no one came in or out; she could not see Comrade Andrew through the downstairs windows, for the curtains were drawn.

She went to the Underground, sat on the train pla

Now, seeing the sober blue gleam from the police station, she went in. At the reception desk, no one, but she could hear voices from a part of the room that was out of sight. She rang. No one came. She rang again, peremptorily. A young policewoman came out, took a good look at her, decided to be a

^ Alice said, "It might have been an emergency, how were you to know? As it happens, it isn't. So you are lucky."

The policewoman's face suddenly suffused with scarlet, she gasped, her eyes widened.

Alice said, "I have come to report on an agreed squat - you know, short-term housing - surely you know..."

"At this time of night?" the policewoman said smartly, in an attempt to regain mastery.

"It can't be much more than eleven?" said Alice. "I didn't know you had a set time for dealing with housing."

The policewoman said, "Since you're here, let's do it. What do you want to report?"

Alice spelled it out: "You people were around - a raid, three nights ago. You had not understood that it was an agreed tenancy - with the Council. I explained the situation. Now I've come to confirm it. It was agreed at the regular meeting of the Council, today."

"What's the address."

"Number forty-three Old Mill Road."

A little flicker of something showed on the policewoman's face. "Wait a minute," she said and disappeared. Alice listened to voices, male and female.

The policewoman came back, with a man; Alice recognised him as one of those from the other night. She was disappointed it was not the one who had kicked in the door.

"Ah, good evening," she addressed him kindly. "You remember, you were in forty-three Old Mill Road, the other night."

"Yes, I remember," he said. Over his face quivered shades of the sniggers he had just been enjoying with his kind. "You were the people who had buried... who dug a pit...."

"Yes. We buried the faeces that the previous people had left upstairs. In buckets."

She studied the disgusted, prim, angry faces opposite her. Male and female. Two of a kind.

She said, "I really ca

"Yes, well, we have it now," said the policewoman smartly.

"That's right," said the policeman.

"It seems to me we did the responsible and the hygienic thing. Nature will take care of it soon enough."

"Well, don't do it again," said the policeman.

"We won't have any need to, will we?" said Alice sweetly. "What I came to say was, if you check with the Council, you will have confirmation: number forty-three is now an agreed squat. An agreed short-term tenancy."

The policewoman reached for a form. Her colleague went back to join his mates. Soon there was a burst of loud scandalised laughter. Then another. The policewoman, diligently filling in her form, tightened her lips; Alice could not make out whether in criticism or not.