Free With No Crying by Celia Fremlin

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; asimple 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, whatelse 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,