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obstacles of mind and tongue. What accent was that? Where from? They stared, they were all silenced by her. And Roberta, putting her arm swiftly around her friend’sshaking shoulders, said softly, “Faye, Faye darling, Faye,
Faye,”
until the girl suddenly shuddered and seemed to go limp, and collapsed into her arms.
    A silence.
    “What’s the problem?” asked Bert, who was refusing to see that he was the cause of this outburst from Faye’s other self. Or selves? “If Faye doesn’t want to contribute, that’s fine. They always set the assessment very low, for squats anyway. And there’ll be other people coming in, of course, to replace the comrades who left yesterday. We’ll have to be sure they understand what arrangement we make with the Council.”
    Faye, half hidden in Roberta’s arms, seemed to heave and struggle, but went quiet.
    Alice said, “If we don’t get this place cleared up, we’ll have to leave anyway. We can clear it up, easy enough, but to keep it clean, we need the Council. There’s been all the complaints. The woman next door said she complained.…”
    “Joan Robbins,” said Faye. “That filthy fascist cow. I’ll kill her.” But it was in her cockney, not her other, true, voice, that she spoke. She sat up, freed herself from solicitous Roberta, and lit another cigarette. She did not look at the others.
    “No, you won’t,” said Roberta, softly. She reasserted her rights to Faye by putting her arm around her. Faye submitted, with her pert little toss of the head and a smile.
    “Well, it is disgusting,” said Alice.
    “It was all right till you came,” said Jim. This was not a complaint or an accusation, more of a question. He was really saying: How is it so easy for you, and so impossible for me?
    “Don’t worry,” said Alice, smiling at him. “When we’ve got the place cleaned up, we will be just like everyone else in the street, and after a bit no one will notice us. You’ll see.”
    “If you want to waste your money,” said Faye.
    “We do have to pay at least the first instalment of electricity and gas. If we can persuade them to supply us,” said Bert.
    “Of course we can,” Alice said, and Pat said, “The meters are still here.”
    “Yes, they forgot to take them away,” said Jim.
    “And what are we going to pay with?” asked Faye. “We are all on Unemployment, aren’t we?”
    There was a silence. Alice knew that, if they were living on very low rent, there would be plenty of money. If people had any sense of how to use it, that is. She and Jasper, living with her mother and paying nothing, had about eighty pounds a week between them, on Social Security. But none of it was saved, because Jasper spent all his, and most of hers, too, always coming to demand it. “For the party,” he said—or whatever Cause they were currently aligned with. But she knew that a lot of it went on what she described to herself, primly, as “his emotional life.”
    She knew, too, that in communities like this there were payers and the other kind, and there was nothing to be done about it. She knew that Pat would pay; that Pat would make Bert pay—as long as she was here. The two girls would not part with a penny. As for Jim—well, let’s wait and see.
    She said, “There’s something we can do now, and that is, get the lavatories unblocked.”
    Roberta laughed. Her laugh was orchestrated, meant to be noticed.
    Faye said, “They are filled with concrete.”
    “So they were in one of the other houses I knew. It isn’t difficult. But we need tools.”
    “You mean tonight?” asked Pat. She sounded interested, reluctantly admiring.
    “Why not? We’ve got to start,” said Alice, fierce. In her voice sounded all the intensity of her need. They heard it, recognised it, gave way. “It’s not going to be nearly as difficult as you think now. I’ve looked at the lavatories. If the cisterns had been filled with concrete, it would be different—they’d have cracked,