With No Crying (7 page)

T
HE GIRLS HAD
indeed seemed thrilled. Now, nearly three weeks later, making her reluctant way through the harsh August
sunshine
towards the easy-going, slapdash establishment which had become her home, Miranda recalled that first night, the night of her arrival, with poignant clarity, as if looking back on an age of lost innocence. Every detail of that generous, open-hearted welcome from the household of total strangers was branded on her soul for ever. It was past midnight when Tim (for that, she learned, was the name of her rescuer) ushered her through the warped and peeling outside door, and although some of the inhabitants had clearly been roused from their beds by his
unceremonious
introduction of her into their midst, there was no sign of resentment on any of the sleepy young faces, only eager curiosity and unstinted sympathy and goodwill.

“Preggers! Well, what do you know?” exclaimed the fair,
blue-eyed
one with freckles, whose name was Alison; while Iris—a few years older than the rest, maybe turned thirty—pushed the swathes of heavy black hair from her eyes, and looked Miranda up and down consideringly before capping Alison’s admiring comment:

“Twins, is it?” she drawled, with a humorous lift of the
eyebrows
, “or triplets?”—and everybody laughed, and was at ease—even Merve, the pink-faced youth who had so far been keeping just a little aloof—not unsympathetic, but just a bit embarrassed, being only nineteen years old and having come straight from a sheltered life with his parents in Sheffield to the even more (in some ways) sheltered life of the Squat here in London. Share and share alike was the motto here, those who happened to have jobs at any particular time supporting those who happened not to; a
simple and equitable system to which Merve had always adhered, and to which, ever since he’d left school, he’d been trying to
convert
his bank manager father, though with singularly little success: which was why, in the end, he’d been driven to leave home.

“She can have Christine’s bed, can’t she?” someone was saying; and after a brief little interchange about whether the missing Christine might even yet (by now it was past one) put in an appearance, it was decided unanimously to chance it.

And so Christine’s bed it was—unmade, devoid of
pillowcases
, and strewn with miscellaneous items of Christine’s
underwear
; but willing hands soon straightened it, and willing feet kicked the remarkable assemblage of Christine’s sandals and odd boots back under the bed where they belonged. Someone brought a hot water-bottle, another proferred a hot drink, while the little sallow one called Belinda produced from somewhere a
voluminous
, comfortably shabby dressing-gown. Miranda fell asleep that night feeling cherished and content, as well as mysteriously and profoundly pregnant all over again.

It was Alison who brought her breakfast in the morning—a huge mug of nearly-black coffee and a soup plate of cereal
swimming
in Long Life milk; and while Miranda worked through this repast, Alison sat on the end of the bed in a torn Chinese kimono, and proceeded to “fill her in” about the Squat and its inhabitants.

She, Alison, had been living here for nearly a year now, and described the experience as “mind-blowing” (using the term in its complimentary sense, presumably, since she was smiling
reminiscently
as she spoke). Like Miranda, she’d arrived unheralded, and well after midnight (apparently this was the accepted mode of taking up residence in this household), and like Miranda, too, she’d been on the run from parental oppression. Here, though, the resemblance ceased; for in Alison’s case the pressures had concerned not the ending of a pregnancy, but the continuing of a secretarial course; the main issue being further exacerbated by a number of subsidiary impositions concerning the tidying of her bedroom, the borrowing of the family car, and being expected to get up even on Sundays.

After this, it was Miranda’s turn; and naturally—well, what
else could she do?—she retailed to Alison the same story as she’d concocted for Tim’s benefit last night, and with similarly
gratifying
results in terms of sympathy and outraged partisanship.

“But that’s
awful
!
Your own parents—to do a thing like that! It’s just monstrous! Gosh, though, you’re brave,” she added. “I’m sure I’d never have had the nerve to stick it out like that, without any support from
anybody
!
I think it’s terrific, I really do. I bet Tim was impressed, wasn’t he? It’s just his kind of thing, the heroic-last-stand bit, boys on burning decks, and all that … he’s quite a romantic, you know, under all that breezy cynicism. That’s how it all got loused-up between him and Iris; the dragon-slaying streak in him brings out the Women’s Lib in her like bringing a person out in spots. Though actually, when it came to the point…”

The sound of hurrying footsteps in the passage outside brought Alison’s confidences to an abrupt halt. Her round freckled face swivelled anxiously towards the door, and not until the footsteps had passed on, and the outside door had slammed, did she once more relax.

“I don’t know if I should be telling you all this really,” she resumed, in a lower voice. “Iris is funny, sometimes, about her private affairs—which it’s absolutely no good being in this place, let me warn you. Still, if you’re going to live here, you’re going to need all the gen. you can get, especially about Iris, because she’s sort of the boss-lady—insofar as we go in for that sort of thing, which of course we don’t, but you know how it is…”

“So anyway, the point is, this was her flat originally—Iris’s—and when the Council started to requisition houses all along the street—they wanted to pull them down, you see, and put up high rise blocks, or something, I don’t know exactly, it was before my time—anyway, there were a whole lot of protest marches and things—you know, Environment and all that. And that’s where Tim came in. He was into the campaign in a big way, a lot of the medical students were, and the nurses, too, because it was going to affect the hospital’s catchment area, or something. He was on the committee which advised Iris to sit tight; and it was his idea that she should bring the Squatters in. There’s nothing much the
Council can do then, you see,—I’m not sure why, but Tim had it all worked out. He moved in himself straight away, he was the first Squatter, so’s he could help Iris stand up to the Council … and actually, in the end, they were quite nice about it, they let everybody stay, and they turned the water back on and
everything
. We pay them rent now—well, most of us do—and it’s all sort of legal, in some complicated sort of way.

“Naturally, Iris was pretty grateful—well, she would be, wouldn’t she?—and by the time I got here they seemed well and thoroughly paired off together, she and Tim. There was even talk of them getting married at one point—Iris thought she was pregnant, or something—but luckily nothing came of it. Well, I mean, it would have been ridiculous, wouldn’t it, with Tim not even qualified yet, and Iris years older than he is? I don’t know how she could ever have thought it
would
come to anything. Anyway, by that time it was all breaking up in any case, because it was around then that Tim…”

“Don’t believe a word of it! It’s all lies!” Catching his name as he passed along the passage, Tim had paused to peer inquisitively round the partially-open door. Now he began to edge his way in. “If I were you, Miranda,” he advised, “I’d begin as you’ll assuredly have to go on, and don’t believe
anything
that any of them tells you. They don’t
mean
to tell lies—well, not exactly—but the trouble with this place is that it suffers from a sort of Collective Unconscious from which everyone—”

Alison sighed.

“He’s always like this when anyone new arrives,” she explained to Miranda. “I’ve only to open my mouth and say one single word to them, and he’ll…”

“It’s not the single words, my dear, it’s the battalions,” Tim retorted. “I’ve been counting the decibels through the wall, and wondering when I should come to Miranda’s rescue. Recollect, Allie dear, that she’s not accustomed to your dulcet tones like we are, you’ll be giving her labour pains!”

*

What fun it was here! What easy, happy relationships they all seemed to have with one another! And how ready and willing they
seemed to draw her, too, into the charmed circle of teasing and repartee. It was like being captured by the gravitation of the sun, and drawn into orbit around that mighty source of light and life.

“Alison’s been telling me about the Squat, and how it started,” Miranda told him eagerly. “It’s been awfully interesting.”

“Didn’t I tell you?—If she’s managed to make this dump sound interesting, then she
must
be lying.” He moved further into the room. “How are you, love? Feeling all right this morning? I just wanted to make sure you’re O.K. before I go off.”

How kind he was! How kind they all were! In the warm, smudged sunlight that filtered through the grimy little window, he looked, she thought, even handsomer than he had last night.

“I’m fine. Just fine,” Miranda assured him truthfully; and was aware of his eyes resting thoughtfully on her as she lay reclining against her somewhat off-white pillows, her knees crooked up to support the plate of half-eaten cereal.

Had he noticed anything? Was this flat stomach of hers, devoid of its daytime padding, somehow visible to him even beneath this mound of bedclothes?

Impossible!—but all the same, she found herself clutching
uneasily
at the concealing blankets, bunching them up yet higher against her body. She could not meet his eyes; her heart was thudding wildly; and now—horror of horrors!—she could feel the beginnings of a blush creeping slowly up her neck and towards her cheeks.

But he seemed to suspect nothing. Although his scrutiny was a searching one, it soon became clear that it was simply concern for her welfare, and not any doubts as to her bona fides, which had prompted it. Once reassured, he continued chatting to her, easily and pleasantly, for a few more minutes; and at the end, glancing at his watch, remarked apologetically that he “must be getting home”.

“Home?” Miranda was surprised. “But I thought you lived here?”

“I do. That is, I don’t.” He gave a short laugh. “I live in at the hospital, actually, except that I’m never in—not in my room, that is—and you certainly can’t call it living! So—well, I suppose
yes,
I
do
still live here. Sort of. You could say so… For the time being…”

Here, he dropped his voice, and glanced sharply at the
half-open
door, as if he had caught some slight but significant sound out there in the passage.

Only for a moment, though; he recovered himself almost immediately, and when he turned again to Miranda, his voice was relaxed and friendly as ever, though still with that note of concern.

“You’re sure you’ll be all right, then?” he asked, for the second time. “I don’t really like leaving you on your own like this, so near your time. When, actually,
are
you expecting it, as a matter of interest?—The actual date?”

The actual date. Oh dear! A direct and specific question like this was more than she’d bargained for. The whole thing, really was becoming more than she’d bargained for. Last night, she’d come among them as a stranger among strangers: anonymous, free of identity, untrammelled by past or future: and already this morning they were strangers no more. Already they were her friends, her flatmates, with a right to be concerned about her, to involve themselves in her problems. This principle of Share and Share Alike didn’t apply just to money and groceries, but to everything. This non-existent baby of hers already belonged to all of them

And now, here was Alison, as well as Tim, leaning forward eagerly, eyes fixed on her face, all agog for her answer. She’d got to tell them
something.
And fast.

The actual date … the actual date. Oh, not for ages yet, she’d have liked to reply nonchalantly; but how could she, when they all seemed so sure, from her appearance, that the birth was
imminent
? “Twins is it, or triplets?—” Iris had asked, with raised eyebrows, implying that Miranda was already over-large, even if she was presumed to be at full term. And Tim, too, just glancing at her by the darkened roadside, through the glass of the car window, had at once jumped to the conclusion that she might be on her way to the hospital. In the face of all these expectations—and knowledgeable ones, too—how could she dare put the date more than a very few days ahead?

“August the 11th,” she blurted out, “another five days yet.”

Five days. With her own lips, she realised, she had pronounced her sentence of exile from this friendly, infinitely supportive place. After August the 11th, she must be gone.

“August the 11th,” Tim was repeating thoughtfully. “Well—I suppose that gives us a bit of a margin … though of course you can never tell. A few days this way or that. Still…”

Taking an old envelope from his pocket, he proceeded to scribble down for her the various telephone numbers by which she would be able to get him at various hours of the day.
Outpatients
from 9.30 to 11. Anatomy Room from 11 to 12.30. Junior Refectory 12.45 to 1.30—and so on through the day.

“Be sure and ring me if anything seems to be starting, won’t you, love?” he urged her. “Though I’m afraid you’ll have to go out to the phone box: a telephone is one of the rich variety of things we haven’t got. It’s not far, though. If you turn left as you go out of the front door, and up the hill past the church, you’ll—No, wait! I’ve a better idea. Don’t try to call me yourself, get Merve to do it. If he’s still in bed, then drag him out, or empty a jug of cold water over him, or something. I don’t see why he shouldn’t do something to earn his keep now and again, the great slob!”

Harsh words, but spoken in the friendliest manner possible; it was clear that Merve too, was part of the charmed circle,
shortcomings
and all. Here, in this benign and all-accepting place, people’s failings were not merely tolerated, but woven into the very structure of the shared life, one more thread in the bright pattern.