[The red notebook, like the black notebook, had been taken over by newspaper cuttings, for the years 1956 and 1957. These referred to events in Europe, the Soviet Union, China, the United States. Like the cuttings on Africa in the same period, they were about, for the most part, violence. Anna had underlined the word ‘freedom’ whenever it occurred, in red pencil. Where the cuttings ceased, she had added up the red lines, making a total of 679 references to the word freedom. The only entry in her own handwriting for this period was the following:]

Yesterday Jimmy came to see me. He has just come back from a visit to the Soviet Union with a teachers’ delegation. Told me this story. Harry Mathews, a teacher, dropped his job to fight in Spain. Was wounded, ten months in hospital with a fractured leg. During this time thought over Spain — communist dirty work, etc., read a lot, became suspicious of Stalin. Usual infight — CP, then expulsion, joined the Trotskyists. Quarrelled with them, left them. Unable to fight in the war, because of his crippled leg, he trained to teach backward children. ‘It goes without saying that for Harry there is no such thing as a stupid child, only unfortunate children.’ Harry lived through the war in a small spartan room near King’s Cross, performing more than one act of heroism, rescuing people from bombed and burning buildings, etc. ‘He was quite a legend in the area, but of course at the moment when people started looking for the limping hero who had saved the child or poor old woman Harry was nowhere to be found, because it goes without saying he would despise himself if he took credit for heroic deeds.’ At the end of the war Jimmy, back from Burma, went to see his old friend Harry, but they quarrelled. ‘I was a hundred per cent Party member and there was Harry, a dirty Trot, so there were high words and we parted for ever. But I was fond of the silly sod, so I used to make a point of finding out what happened to him.’ Harry had two lives. His outward life was all self-sacrifice and devotion. He not only worked in a school for backward children, and with great success; but he used to invite children of the area (a poor one) into his flat for classes every evening. He taught them literature, made them read, coached them for examinations. He was teaching, one way or another, for eighteen hours a day. ‘It goes without saying that he regards sleep as a waste of time, he trained himself to sleep four hours a night.’ He lived in this one room until the widow of an airforce pilot fell in love with him and transferred him to her flat, where he had two rooms. She had three children. He treated her with kindness, but if her life was now dedicated to him, his was to his children, in the school and off the street. That was his outer life. Meanwhile he learned Russian. Meanwhile he collected books, pamphlets, newspaper cuttings, about the Soviet Union. Meanwhile he built up for himself a picture of the real history of the Soviet Union, or rather of the Russian Communist Party, from 1900 onwards.