Doris Lessing

And so he raved on, half weeping, and Alice knew that if she had got up and put her arms about him he would have collapsed into her embrace like a little heap of matchsticks, with, "Alice, I'm sorry, I don't mean it, please come and be my partner."

But she did not, only sat there, thinking that the windows were open, and if Joan Robbins was in the garden she could hear everything.

Philip's fury died into silence, and misery. He sat staring, not at her, at anywhere but her. Then he ran out of the room, and out of the house.

Alice sat waiting for Jasper to wake. It seemed to her a good part of her life had been spent doing this. She thought again: But I'll leave, I'll just go. I must. No, it wouldn't be forever, but I need time by myself.

She found she was on her feet, opening the refrigerator, searching cupboards. She would make one of her soups. But because she had been working with Philip, there was very little in the house. She went down to the shops, bought food, took time over the preparations, sat at the table while her soup evolved. The cat arrived on the window sill, miaowed through the glass; Alice welcomed it in, offered it scraps. But no, the cat was not hungry; probably Joan Robbins or somebody had fed it. The beast wanted company. It would not sit on Alice's lap, but lay on the window sill, and stretched out. The cat looked at Alice with its vagabond's eyes, and let out a little sound, a grunt or miaow of greeting. Alice burst into tears in a passion of gratitude.

The morning went past. When Jasper woke, she would explain it to him: a short break, that was what she needed.

At midday Bert and Jasper came down together, joking about being woken by the smell of Alice's soup. Their mood of rage, or rebellion, or whatever it had been, seemed to have vanished with their exhaustion.

Chatty, companionable, they offered Alice little anecdotes from their trip and praised her soup. She sat listless, watching them. Her mood soon became obvious to them, and they even exchanged "Mummy-is-cross" glances at one point, earning from her a sarcastic smile.

They abandoned attempts at placating her, and Bert said, "We've decided it is time we had a full discussion on policy, Comrade Alice. No, only the real revolutionaries, not the rubbish." He bared all his lovely white teeth and sneered. Alice let it pass. Jasper, too, leaned towards her, smiling, and said, "We thought tonight. Or tomorrow night at the latest. But the point is, where? Mary and Reggie mustn't know. Or Philip!" He, too, sneered.

The two of them seemed to have acquired a fairly dramatic new style, thought Alice, examining them dispassionately.

She enquired, really interested, "And how are you going to class Faye? Serious or not?"

Their faces seemed to cloud; yes, they knew about the suicide attempt, but had not really been bothered about it.

"Well," said Bert, doubtfully, "I suppose she'll be fit enough to join in, won't she?"

Alice laughed. It was a laugh that surprised herself, sounding so natural and even merry. She was finding these two fu

She said indifferently, "If you want a meeting convened, then why don't you convene it." She got up and attended to the cauldron of soup, adding some more split peas, salt, then water. Jasper's and Bert's appetites had not diminished, she noted.

When she turned, they were sitting disconsolate, opposite to but not looking at each other. Or at her. They were reflecting, she could see, that her anger with them had justification, that they had been foolish not to take it into account. And, too, that they felt her rejection as another in a succession of rejections.

Her heart almost melted. She said to Jasper, "I am sorry. You go off like that, all kinds of lies. Then you just turn up.... I'm sorry."

She went towards the door, and Jasper was beside her. She felt his frantic grip on her wrist; it was all he knew to bring her back to him. She shook off his hand quite easily, and said, "I'm sorry, Jasper." And went out.

From outside the door, she relented a little and said, "Let me know when you have convened the meeting."

She was on her way up, thinking that she would sleep, and then perhaps ring her old commune in Halifax. A few days there and she would be herself again.

But there was a knock, loud and urgent, at the front door, and she went to it, ready for the police, but it was a woman she did not know, who said quickly, "I am Felicity, you know, from round the corner. Philip's friend. They telephoned from hospital. Philip was in an accident. They want some of his things taken up."

She was already turning away on a smile, duty done, but Alice said, "Aren't you going up?" Meaning, Isn't this your responsibility?

"Yes, I'll be up to see him," said Felicity, vaguely enough. "But not now. His things are here, aren't they?"

She had been an extension of number 43 all this time, but no one would think so from her ma

Alice thought of Philip that morning, raging and pitiful. She said, "Oh, very well. Is he bad?"

"He's not dead. He could have been. He was lucky. Broken bones." She smiled and hastened off.

Alice went upstairs to Philip's room. On nicely painted shelves were his clothes, tidily arranged. She found three pairs of clean pyjamas, green, blue, and brown, stacked on top of one another; a dressing gown on a hanger behind the door; toothbrush and a fla

But in the hospital Alice found it was worse than Felicity had said. Broken shoulder. Broken kneecap. Fractured left wrist. Bruises. But he also had a fractured skull. He was being taken down to the operating theatre again in a few minutes. They suspected internal damage. Meanwhile, he was unconscious. Because Alice said that as far as she knew Philip didn't have a family, or if so, she couldn't supply an address, the ward sister had put her down on the form as "next of kin." Telephone number? But Alice, determined that Felicity should not slide out altogether, said Felicity must be rung in emergencies. Anyway, number 43 had no telephone.

She then stood in a doorway, not knowing what to expect, because she had not visualised anything, and saw in the middle of a room a high slanting contraption like a machine with pulleys and levers and wheels and tubes, and on this, half sitting up but collapsed and limp, was Philip, all bandages and wrappings. His face was really all that was visible: dead white, blue veins fluttering on waxen lids, white lips that seemed to have some sort of dried pink dye at the corners. More than ever he seemed like a small elf, an inhuman creature, and Alice, standing there helpless, with the ward sister just behind her, could not move. She was thinking that this is what happened to marginal people, people clinging on but only just. They made one slip; something apparently quite slight happened, like the Greek, but it was part of some downward curve in a life, and that was that - they lost their hold and fell. Philip had lost his hold.

Alice turned such a shocked face on the ward sister that she said, "Are you all right?" Deliberately perfunctory, because she did not want to cope with Alice. "Go and get yourself a cup of tea downstairs," said the sister. "Sit down a bit."