Yes, I know. '
And yet you sit there, you always just listen, but you don't stop them. '
Frances said, as the old woman went out, ' Julia, we can't stop them.'
I shall stop Sylvia. I shall tell her she can go back home to her mother, if she wants to run around with those people. '
The door shut and Frances said aloud into the empty room, No, Julia, you will not do that, you are merely muttering to yourself like an old witch, to let off steam. '
On that same evening, when Julia's ' This was an honourable house'still sounded in Frances's ears, the doorbell rang, late, and Frances went down. On the doorstep were two girls, of about fifteen, and their hostile but demanding looks warned Frances of what she would hear which was, 'Let us in. Rose is expecting us. '
I wasn't expecting you. Who are you?'
' Rose says we can live here, said one, apparently about to push her way in past Frances.
'It isn't for Rose to say who can live here and who can't,' said Frances, quite amazed at herself for standing her ground. Then, as the girls stood hesitating, she said, 'If you want to see Rose then come tomorrow at a reasonable time. I think she'll be asleep by now.'
No, she isn't. And Frances looked down to the window of the basement flat, to see Rose energetically gesticulating to her friends. She heard, I told you she's an old cow. '
The girls went off, with what can you expect gestures to Rose. One said loudly over her shoulder, When we've won the Revolution you'll be laughing on the other side of your face.'
Frances went straight down to Rose, who stood waiting, quivering with rage. Her black hair, no longer tamed by the Evansky haircut, seemed to bristle, her face was red, and she actually seemed to be on the point of physically attacking Frances.
What the hell do you mean by telling people they can come and live here?'
'It's my flat, isn't it? I can do what I like in my own flat.'
'It's not your flat. We are allowing you to stay in it until you've finished school. But if there are other people who need it, they'll be using the second room. '
Im going to let that room, said Rose.
And now Frances was startled into silence, because of the impossibility ofwhat was happening, hardly an unfamiliar situation with Rose. Then she saw that Rose stood triumphant, because she had not been contradicted, and she said, We' re not charging you to live here. You live here absolutely free, so how can you imagine for a moment that you could let out a room?'
I have to, shouted Rose. I can't live on what my parents are giving me. It's just peanuts. They' re so mean. '
Why should you need more when you' re not paying anything at all for living here, and you eat with us, and your school's all paid for?'
But now Rose was on a roll of rage, out of control. 'Shits, all of you, that's all you are. And you don't care about my friends.
They have nowhere to go. They've been sleeping on a bench at King's Cross. I suppose that's what you want me to do.'
'If that's what you want, then off you go,' said Frances. 'I'm not stopping you. '
Rose shouted, 'Your precious Andrew knocks me up and then you throw me out like a dog. '
This did take Frances aback, but she reminded herself it was not true... and then she had to remember that Jill's abortion had been arranged without her knowing anything about it. This hesitation gave Rose the advantage, and she screamed, And look at Jill, you made her have an abortion when she didn't want one. '
'If that's what you want, then off you go,' said Frances. 'I'm not stopping you. '
Rose shouted, 'Your precious Andrew knocks me up and then you throw me out like a dog. '
This did take Frances aback, but she reminded herself it was not true... and then she had to remember that Jill's abortion had been arranged without her knowing anything about it. This hesitation gave Rose the advantage, and she screamed, And look at Jill, you made her have an abortion when she didn't want one. '
'I didn't know she was pregnant. I didn't know anything about it, said Frances, and understood she was arguing with Rose, which no sane person would do.
And I suppose you didn't know about me either? All this lovey-dovey be nice to Rose, but you're covering up for Andrew.'
Frances said, You are lying. I know when you are lying. And then was shocked again: Colin said she never knew anything that went on: suppose Rose had been pregnant? But, no, Andrew would have told her.
And I'm not going to go on living here when you' re so horrible to me. I know when I'm not wanted.'
The grotesqueness of this last statement actually made Frances laugh but it was also from relief at the thought that Rose might actually go. The degree of relief told her just how great a burden the presence of Rose was. ' Good, she said. Well, Rose, I agree with you. It is obviously better for you to leave, when you feel like that. '
And she went up the stairs, in a silence like the one they say lies at the heart of a storm. A glance showed Rose's face lifted up in what seemed to be a prayer but then she howled.
Frances shut the door on her, ran up to her room, and flung herself on her bed. Oh, my God, to get rid of Rose, just to get rid of Rose: but commonsense crept back with, But of course she won't go.
She heard Rose thundering past up the stairs, heard the hammering on Andrew's door. She was up there a good long time. Frances indeed, the whole house could hear the sobs, the cries, the threats.
Then, well past midnight, she crept back down past Frances's rooms, and there was silence.
A knock on the door: there was Andrew. He was white with exhaustion.
'May I sit down?' He sat. 'You have no idea how diverting it always is, ' he said, preserving his poise in spite of everything, ' to see you in this improbable setting. '
Frances saw herself in well-worn jeans, an old jersey, with bare feet, and then Julia's furniture which probably should be in a museum. She managed a smile and a shake of her head which meant, It's all too much.
' She says you are throwing her out. '
' If only we could. She says she is leaving. '
Im afraid no such luck. '
' She says you got her pregnant. '
'What?'
' So she claims. '
' Penetration did not take place, ' he said. We snogged more of a lark than anything. Perhaps for an hour. It is amazing how these left-wing summer schools seem to... He hummed, '... every little breeze seems to whisper, Please, sex, sex, sex. '
What are we going to do? Why don't we just throw her out, my God, why don't we?'
But if we do she'll be on the streets. She won't go home. '
I suppose so. '
' It's only a year. We'll have to stick it out. '
' Colin is very angry because she's here. '
I know. You forget we can all hear his complaints about life. And about Sylvia. Probably me as well. '
' Me, most of all. '
And now I'm going right down to tell her that if she ever again says I made her pregnant... wait, I suppose I got her an abortion too?'
'She didn't say so, but I expect she will.'
'God, what a little bitch.'
But how effective, being a bitch. No one can stand up to her. ' You just watch me. '
' So what are you going to do? Call the police? And by the way, where's Jill? She seems to have disappeared. '
'She and Jill quarrelled. I expect Rose just got rid of her.'
'So where is she? Does anyone know? I'm suppose to be in loco parentis.'
' Loco 's a good word in this context. ' He departed.
But Frances was learning that while she was seen by ' the kids' as a sort of benevolent freak of Nature, and they lucky enough to benefit, she was far from the only one in loco parentis. A letter had come from Spain after the summer, from an Englishwoman living in Seville, saying she had so much enjoyed Colin, Frances's charming son. (Colin, charming? Well, not in this house he wasn't.) ' A very nice crowd this summer. It's not always such plain sailing. Sometimes they have such problems! I do feel it is an extraordinary thing, the way they go off to other people's parents. My daughter makes excuses not to come home. She's got an alternative home in Hampshire with an ex-boyfriend. I suppose we must admit that that is what it amounts to. '
A letter from North Carolina. ' Hi there, Frances Lennox! I feel I know you so well. Your Geoffrey Bone was here for weeks, with others from various parts of the world, all to take part in the Struggle for Civic Rights. They come knocking at my door, waifs and strays of the world no, no, I don't mean Geoffrey, I've never known a cooler young man. But I collect them and so do you, and so does my sister Fran in California. My son Pete will be in Britain this coming summer and I am sure he'll drop in. ' From Scotland, From Ireland. From France... letters that went into a file of similar ones that had been coming for years, from the time when she hardly saw Andrew.
Thus did the house-mothers, the earth-mothers, who proliferated everywhere in the Sixties slowly become aware of each other's presence out there, and understand that they were part of a phenomenon: the geist was at it again. They networked, before the term had become part of the language. They were a network of nurturers. Of neurotic nurturers. As 'the kids' had explained, Frances was working out some guilt or other, rooted in her childhood. (Frances had said she wouldn't be at all surprised.) As for Sylvia, she had a different 'line'. (Origin of 'line' jargon of the Party.) Sylvia had learned from her groovy mystical mates that Frances was working on her karma, damaged in a previous life.
On one of Colin's visits home to shout at his mother, he brought with him Franklin Tichafa, from Zimlia, a British colony that, so Johnny said, was about to go the way ofKenya. All the newspapers were saying it too. Franklin was a round, smiling black boy. Colin told his mother that one could not use the word boy because of its bad connotations, but Frances said, ' He's not a young man, is he. If a sixteen-year-old can't be described as a boy, who can?' ' She does it on purpose, said Andrew. ' She does it to annoy. ' This was partly true. Johnny had long ago complained that Frances was sometimes deliberately politically obtuse, to embarrass him in front of the comrades, and indeed she had sometimes done it on purpose, and did now.
Everyone liked Franklin, who was named after Franklin Roosevelt, 'taking' literature at St Joseph's to please his parents, but planning to study economics and politics at university.