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Alice, taking refuge in her maid's room, was desperate with rage and fear. She did not get into the sluttish bed, but composed herself for sleep in the wicker chair, the only comfortable chair in the room. She had been left with scant clothing; it was too dark to read even the trash she would be likely to find. Unable to ignore the cold or prevent her shivering from making the chair creak so loudly that it woke her, she escaped into thought till fact and nightmare were indistinguishable from hallucination.
These experiences became so terrifying that she was sure a man was in the room. She struggled to retain some vestige of hold on fact. When she sought to cover herself with the bedclothes she had scorned, the comfort conspired to make her feel she was in the arms of a man. Then, angry at her resistance, he threatened to bash her. She struggled against the suffocation of the bedclothes which were rammed over her head. She bit at the loathsome terms of endearment which reproached her with being mean. She was convinced it was Tom until the threats became so violent that she knew it could not be anyone so benign as the lout who was docile and contrite when she had reproved him and threatened him with instant dismissal. Even the memory turned bad and became one in which he accused her furiously of going back on the message which she had sent him by Rosemary. She was overpowered, she could not resist the assault. ‘Aah … I can feel the love-light in your eyes. I know! I know!’ he said triumphantly. Too weak, she swooned away.
‘Get up, you slut!’ The order was uttered harshly. ‘I can't’, she managed to say. It was daylight. It was the man. ‘This your boyfriend?’ He did not wait for an answer but turned to some subordinates. ‘Take the two women to the truck’, he ordered, with no attempt
to disguise his contempt and indifference. ‘And these two’, indicating the men, ‘I've done with them. Block B – in the yard.’ Tom and Roland were hustled out.
For weeks Roland had been the ob