Doris Lessing

Jasper and Bert came back, ready for hot baths and food. They had gone down to Nottingham to join the pickets in a miners' strike. It had rained and was cold. Roberta and Faye were starving, they said when they returned. Faye had colour in her cheeks again; she had rejoined the living, and was amusingly and enliveningly her cockney self. Roberta, so happy that her love was better, showed a side of herself they had not seen. She sang, very well, in a full, controlled contralto, first some workers' songs, then a whole range of songs from the Portuguese, from Spanish, from Russian. It turned out that she had been trained to sing, but she had found her niche with the revolution.

There was enough wine, and everyone got tight. Mary and Reggie did not appear.

They were all going up to bed, at about two in the morning, when there was a low, hurried knock at the front door.

"My God, the police," shrieked Alice and rushed to confront them. But it was not the police. Two young men shouldering large packages stood there, smiling, bent sideways from the weight.

"What's that? You can't bring those here," said Alice, knowing what was happening, all her pleasure in the evening gone, feeling chilled and apprehensive.

"Come on, now," said one, Irish as they make them. "We were told to leave these here."

"It's a mistake," said Alice.

But he had slid the package onto the hall floor and gone off, while his fellow, gri

"You have to take them back," said Alice. "Do you understand?" They had both gone down the path, and she could see them standing by a small shabby van. They were conferring, turning to check the house number with a piece of paper. Alice arrived beside them and said, "You haven't understood. This stuff shouldn't be left here! You must take it away again."

"Ah, well now, but that's easily said," said the one who had spoken before. He sounded injured. More, afraid. He even glanced around into the shadowy gardens, and then out into the main road, where the traffic was thi

Alice said that this was the wrong house, and the house they wanted, number 45, was no longer safe to leave anything at.

They said that they had been told number 43.

"You have got to take them away."

"And we will not!"

She imagined that she heard a window going up behind her and turned to stare up into the darkened top of the house opposite Joan Robbins, and while she did this the two men took the opportunity to nip into the van. She had to stand aside quickly to avoid being run over.

"Oh no," she wailed into the dark, watching the little van dart off to the corner and turn out of sight. "No, it simply isn't on. It's not fair."

She stood there, helpless, feeling that things had gone out of control. Then thought that she should go in, in case any nosy neighbour was awake and interested. Slowly she went indoors. The two cartons, as smooth and bland as two brown pebbles, stood there in the hall with nothing on them to a

On the stairs stood Jasper and Bert, staring, disconsolate. Also, rather drunk. Above them, Jocelin. Roberta and Faye had gone off into their room. Caroline was still clearing up in the kitchen.

"We can't have these here," appealed Alice, to the men, but it was Jocelin who leaped down past them, and said only, "Up into the attic." As the two women laboured up past the men on the stairs, they came to and helped. First one very heavy carton and then the other were stowed in a far corner of the attic.

Jocelin said she would find out what was there in the morning. Perhaps even tonight: she didn't feel sleepy.

"Don't blow us all up," said Jasper, and she did not reply. She did not think much of Jasper, and showed it. She seemed to like Bert, however. Bert, for his part, was attracted by Caroline, who either had not noticed this or had decided to ignore it.

Alice went back into the kitchen, tidied up this and that, listening for sounds of some or all of them coming back to talk it over. For she had understood that something bad had happened. It was not just another little harassment, like a visit from the police! When she realised that no one was coming, which meant they had not seen what by now they should, she sat down at the head of the table and lapsed into a numbed condition. Numbed feelings, not thought, for her mind was active.

No one had said anything to them about number 43's becoming a collection point. Comrade Muriel would certainly have mentioned it, had she known. Caroline and Jocelin had not expected it. Comrade Andrew had not even approached the subject. (Here the thought of the money, the five hundred pounds, presented itself, and Alice contemplated it, as it were, without prejudice.) Number 43 couldn't have people just dumping stuff here, and others whisking it off again, any time of the day or night! It simply wasn't on! But who could Alice contact to a

And there was another thing. (But this was certainly not a new thought.) Here they were, committed to "doing something real at last," all ready for it - you could say that number 43 was now quivering on the edge, like people in a little boat on the verge of a waterfall (here Alice painfully shook her head, like a dog clearing its ears of water) - yet they did not really have much confidence in one another. (Alice was replaying, as it were, the look on Jocelin's face as she saw that Jasper and Bert lolled on the stairs, while she, Jocelin, ran down to help carry the big packages.) No, Jocelin did not admire Jasper! What did she think of Faye? Well, it was not hard to imagine. Almost certainly, though, she must approve of Roberta? Caroline? You could hardly imagine a greater contrast between the indolent, sensual woman and the cold, functional Jocelin. And herself, Alice? Did she despise her, too?

It occurred to her that she was using Jocelin as a touchstone, a judgement point. As though Jocelin were the key to everything? Well, it was she who was at work on the bombs, or whatever.

Alice went up to the top of the house, saw that light showed beneath the door of Jocelin's workroom, knocked, heard a low "Come in."

Jocelin looked up from where she sat behind her trestle, her hands intricately engaged with a length of copper wire. Close by her stood packages of various household chemicals, looking reassuring in their bright packaging.

Jocelin went on looking at Alice, waiting for her to explain herself. She was formidable and frightening, Alice thought. Yet what could be more ordinary than Jocelin? A stranger would see a rather slatternly blonde, strands of pale hair falling over her face, smears of some sort of white powder on her old grey sweater. But it was her concentration, her focussing of herself behind what she did...

Alice said feebly, "Hello," and Jocelin did not respond, but went on working, pouring white grains from an old saucepan into a copper pipe.

"I didn't like what happened down there," said Alice, sounding ineffective even to herself, and Jocelin nodded and said, "No, neither did I. But I don't see that we can do anything but go on. We must get the job done quickly, and then scatter."

There was nowhere in the room to sit, only the trestle and behind it the stool on which Jocelin sat. Windows showed a greying sky. The birds would start soon. Alice stood in front of Jocelin like a schoolgirl in front of a teacher, and said, "Have you thought yet what we should do?"