Doris Lessing

The girl dropped her hand and began a dreary groping in her skirts. From a pocket she produced a purse, into which she peered.

"Oh, never mind," said Alice. "Tell me, I'll remember."

The girl said she was Monica Winters, and the hotel - which Alice knew about, all right - was the such-and-such, and her number, 556. This figure brought with it an image of concentrated misery, hundreds of couples with small children, each family in one room, no proper amenities, the squalor of it all. All elation, excitement gone, Alice soberly stood there, appalled.

"I'll ask this person to write to you," said Alice. "Meanwhile, if I were you, I'd walk around and have a look at what empty houses you can see. Take a look at them. You know. Nip inside, have a look at the amenities - plumbing and..." She trailed off dismally, knowing that Monica was not capable of flinging up a window in an empty house and climbing in to have a look, and that, very likely, her husband was the same.

"See you," said Alice, and turned away from the girl and went in, feeling that the 556 - at least - young couples with their spotty, frustrated infants had been presented to her by Fate, as her responsibility.

"Oh, God," she was muttering, as she made herself tea in the empty kitchen. "Oh, God, what shall I do?" She could easily have wept as messily and uselessly as Monica. Jasper was not here!

She toiled up the stairs and saw that a light showed on the landing above. She went up. Under the door of the room taken by Mary and Reggie a light showed. She forgot it was midnight and this was a respectable couple. She knocked. After stirrings and voices came "Come in."

Alice looked in at a scene of comfort. Furniture, pretty curtains, and a large double bed in which Mary and Reggie lay side by side, reading. They looked at her over their books with identical wary expressions that said, "Thus far and no further!" A wave of incredulous laughter threatened Alice. She beat it down, while she thought, These two, we'll see nothing of them, they'll be off....

She said, "Mary, a girl has just turned up here, she's desperate; she's in Shaftwood Hotel, you know...."

"Not in our borough," said Mary instantly.

"No, but she's..."

"I know about Shaftwood," said Mary.

Reggie was examining his hand, back and front, apparently with interest. Alice knew that it was the situation he was examining; he was not used to this informality, to group living, but he was giving it his consideration.

"Don't we all? But this girl - her name is Monica - she looks to me as if she's suicidal, she could do anything."

Mary said, after a pause, "Alice, I'll see what there is tomorrow, but you know that there are hundreds, thousands of them."

"Oh yes, I know," said Alice, added, "Good night," and went downstairs thinking, I am being silly. It isn't as if I don't know the type. If you did find her a place, she'd muck it all up somehow. Remember Sarah? I had to find her a flat, move her in, go to the Electricity Board, and then her husband.... Monica's one of those who need a mother, someone who takes her on.... An idea came into Alice's head of such beauty and apt simplicity that she began laughing quietly to herself.

Now she was in their bedroom, Jasper's and hers. Alone. His sleeping bag was a dull blue tangle, and she straightened it. She thought: It has been lovely, sharing a room with Jasper. Then she thought: But he's only here because Bert is just through that wall there. She listened: silence. Pat and Bert were asleep. This thought, of why Jasper consented to let her sleep here, instead of going up to another room or asking her to go, made her mind swirl, as if it - her mind - were nauseated. She sat down on her sleeping bag, stripped off her sweater, her jeans, pulled on an old-fashioned night- dress in scarlet Viyella that had been her mother's. She felt comfortable and comforted in it.

Again she began to laugh: her mother liked looking after people!

She was inside the sleeping bag. Lights from the traffic fled across the ceiling. She thought with envy of Jasper in his cell. He would be with this mysterious new contact of his.... Well, she would hear about it all tomorrow. He would be here by lunchtime.

Alice slept late. When she went down to the kitchen, eight mugs on the draining board said that someone had washed up; she was the last. On the table a note addressed to her: "We're off for the weekend. Back Sunday night. Jasper knows." Pat had signed, "Pat and Bert."

Philip was working on the electrical wiring of the top floor with the easy-paced, contemplative ma

"Perhaps I'll have a chat with him," said Alice vaguely, and went downstairs to survey her territory before going to the telephone.

Mary, of course, was at work. Reggie? As she wondered, in he came with more cartons of gear. He looked exultant, as befits a man who has conquered territory, but abashed, too, because of all these evidences of concern for the material. He would have preferred, in short, not to have run into Alice. But now said that although he and Mary were already filling a second room with their bits of furniture and stuff, of course they would move it all out at once if that room were needed by anyone to live in.

"There's the attic," said Alice. "Or there will be. It has to be cleared out." She waited for him to offer to help clear it, but that did not occur to him. He went off at once to fetch another load.

Alice thought she would get the business of ringing Electricity over with. She resented having to run out to the telephone, in the middle of this useful busyness, wasting time over something that was just a routine.

But as soon as she heard Mrs. Whitfield's voice she knew she must pay out more of her time and attention to the situation than she thought. Mrs. Whitfield was, if not hostile, stiff with reproach. She said that in her opinion it would be desirable if Alice came in, as soon as possible. Alice said she would come now, it was only just down the road, in a bright chatty voice that insisted there was no real problem, nothing wrong. And put down the receiver gently, in a way that went with the voice. But she was being attacked by one of her rages. Her father! What had he said? It must have been pretty bad for Mrs. Whitfield to change like this.

She was too angry to run down at once to Electricity, had to calm herself by walking briskly around the streets, postponing thoughts about her father till later. But she would show him, he needn't think she wouldn't.

In the anteroom at Electricity she smiled and waved to Mrs. Whitfield: Here I am, a good girl! But Mrs. Whitfield looked away. Four people went in before Alice. What a waste of time.