scattered like chaff: a race war which will subject the whole of Europe to devastation by fifteen or twenty million, and which is not raging already because even the strongest of the great military states shrinks before the absolute incalculability of its final result. And failing that, the class war as interpreted by Engels, a war of which nothing is certain but the absolute uncertainty of its outcome.”’
‘Do come to bed,’ said Bernard.
‘Marx and Engels, messengers of God,’ murmured Ellen. ‘I believe. Help thou my unbelief,’ and she got back into bed. Bernard and she had discovered a whole new range of fashionable sexual positions. Their minds raged free: they talked, they shared. Nothing was shameful.
She watched a vase move of its own accord along the bedroom shelf and fall off and break.
‘Subsidence,’ said Bernard. ‘It’s been a hot summer. The ground beneath the house has shifted.’
‘More like poltergeist activity,’ said Ellen. ‘Perhaps the ghost of my mother came with the bed.’
‘I am sure Marx did not recognize the existence of ghosts,’ said Bernard, ‘but please don’t go looking for the reference; not now!’
Ellen waited for something to happen, something to change, but nothing happened, nothing changed. A little struggling lilac tree in the back yard died, because, Belinda said, too many men had pissed on it, out the window, not bothering to wait for the lavatory to be free. ‘Men talk,’ said Brenda, ‘and it’s all piss and wind and ends in death.’ Ellen would lie in bed at night watching the objects on the mantelpiece in the glow from the street light, hoping they would move again: that something from another world would intervene, give her a clue as to the nature of her existence. The curtains were too thin and let the light through. But books, papers, cigarettes and matches—they both smoked now—stayed where they were. Nothing moved. She read some more books, wrote some more essays, passed some exams. Drank more coffee, poured more wine, sidestepped Jed’s hand, sometimes didn’t. Nothing changed.
A stray, dingy orange kitten came yowling up to the back door one night. ‘Don’t feed it,’ said Bernard, ‘or it will never go home,’ but she did, and the next night there it was again. She opened the back door; it rubbed up against her leg. She let it in, fed it well, took it to the vet: the animal plumped up and out: it lost its dinginess, it all but glowed orange in the dark. It lived with them. They called it Windscale, after the power station. Windscale slept on the bed, moving over reluctantly as warm comfortable pockets changed shape and form while Bernard and Ellen made love.
Ken said—he came for Sunday lunch now, often with his stepdaughter but without his wife, who felt awkward in Ellen’s presence—that it reminded him of a kitten he’d given Wendy on the day she gave birth to Apricot. Perhaps it was a descendant of that same animal. Why not? Ellen was pleased to think it might be so. It gave her a sense of history. But still she wasn’t happy. She didn’t understand it.
‘I believe,’ said Bernard, in and out of the classrooms, cafés, kitchens, street corners, pubs, while Ellen nodded and agreed, ‘I believe. That the aim and purpose is to bring about the fall of the bourgeoisie and the rule of the proletariat, to abolish the old society based on class differences and to found a new society without classes and without private property. There is no such thing, mind you, as private property for nine tenths of the population: its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence for those nine tenths. I believe that the revolution cannot just come and go but must be permanent, and it is our duty to further it. I believe!’
‘Holy Mary Mother of God,’ said Ellen, sitting upright in bed in the middle of the night. ‘I know what the matter is. I’m bored. This can’t go on!’
Valerie receives a letter from Eleanor Darcy
Jack, the Holiday Inn bellboy, came up to Room 301 with a letter for Valerie. She put aside her manuscript, opened it, and read. It took some courage to do so. Missives from the outside world had begun to make her uneasy. She, who usually looked forward to the telephone ringing, had become nervous even of that. Safety lay in words on the page. Outside, all was danger and sudden, nasty surprises.