Tom Milner

Tom Milner is Frazer’s old friend, a resourceful worker, and a recurring link between fugitives and the ordinary networks that help them survive. His importance lies less in ideological leadership than in practical acts: arranging meals, transport, shelter, and the storage of weapons. Later, he helps Jenny and Pauline find a place to live and supplies firearms for a women’s training group, while his own changing jobs and relationship with Sandy keep him connected to a life beyond the underground.

Identity and Early Connections

When Frazer lived in the area, Tom was among his old friends. He also knew a woman from the wider social circle Frazer remembers: she had appeared at large parties, often listening to guitar playing, and had once had a brief intimate encounter with Frazer. The encounter meant so little to him that he needed time to recognize her when she called. This recollection places Tom within a loose social world of parties and acquaintances rather than introducing him as a close confidant of everyone around Frazer.

Tom’s later connection to Frazer is more substantial. When he arrives with lunch and a new jug of wine, he greets Frazer as an old friend, but appears nervous; Frazer, by contrast, feels unusually good. Tom’s concern becomes explicit when the others look at Frazer with dread and he asks whether Frazer is going to get them out. The exchange establishes Tom as someone caught between affection for his friend and alarm at the danger surrounding the fugitives. Even the mundane detail of the burgers he brought becomes a point of confusion: Frazer wonders whether they were supposed to have particular toppings. Their conversation makes care practical and imperfect, expressed through food and urgent questions rather than grand declarations.

Helping the Fugitives

Tom takes part in the arrangements Frazer proposes for moving the endangered group. Over the following days, the fugitives are driven away one at a time: Pauline first, then Yvonne, and finally Juan. Carol rents a remote old farm about an hour’s drive from Manhattan as a new safe house. Tom is assigned a different but still consequential task: storing the fugitives’ many guns with Frazer’s old friends until they can retrieve them. He seems to regard this as an improvement over having to store the fugitives themselves. The weapons are subsequently presumed to be scattered across the San Francisco Bay Area, making Tom a participant in a dispersed system of concealment even after the people have been moved.

This assistance gives Tom a particular place in the novel’s network of loyalty. He is not shown directing the fugitives’ politics or their strategy; instead, he takes on the logistical work that makes their escape possible. The distinction matters. Cars must be shuttled, a safe house found, and weapons kept out of immediate reach. Tom’s usefulness is grounded in cooperation with Frazer and in his willingness to accept a risky responsibility, even when the work of hiding armed fugitives is evidently frightening.

Work, Friendship, and Changing Circumstances

Tom’s working life changes repeatedly. By the later period, he no longer paints houses full time. He has tried several jobs suited to his desire for freedom and, to a lesser extent, creativity, and is working as a band’s tour manager. He still sometimes joins large painting jobs, however. The crew changes over the years, gaining and losing members, but retains a core that includes Mike Sorsa and the old truck Jenny had lettered with the name Mike and Bros. Housepainting. The former “brothers” in the crew were Mike, Tom, and William. For Jenny, hearing that the battered truck still crosses the Bay Bridge, its orange lettering intact, brings a complicated pleasure: the work and friendships of the past have altered, but have not entirely vanished.

Tom’s relationships also shift. At one point he is with Lorraine, described as a very new girlfriend, when he and William wait for Jenny. When she arrives, the group sees that she has succeeded, and the bag she had carried is gone. Jenny and William move directly toward each other and kiss; Tom is among those present as the tense reunion briefly gives way to laughter and teasing. His presence makes him part of the friends’ shared emotional life, not merely a useful contact called upon for errands.

By May, Tom is dating Sandy. After a breakup, she moves in with Jenny and Pauline, spending nights awake and days asleep, leaving her belongings scattered and sometimes gathering them angrily back onto her suitcase. She also locks herself in the bathroom for long stretches to cry. Her distress shapes the account of Tom’s visit to the city: Sandy tells Jenny that Frazer had come looking for her and Pauline, and that he had asked Sandy not to reveal the visit lest the women leave town. Later, Tom confirms that Frazer had been there, but explains that he did not think Jenny and Pauline needed to be upset merely to satisfy him. He suspected Frazer was short of money and wanted to revive a book project with Pauline. The changed account reduces the ominous impression Sandy’s unhappiness had created without erasing Tom’s choice to keep the visit from the women at first.

Shelter and the Firearms Training

Tom’s relationship with Sandy eventually resumes. When he comes to collect her things, the reconciliation is joyful, and Frazer is mentioned again in a less alarming context. In June Tom leaves band management for work with a car customizer. Though he initially dismisses the customizing culture, he quickly takes to it. He buys a sporty brown Gremlin advertised at work, spending almost a month’s salary even after his employee discount, and has its windows tinted. His new enthusiasm is another small measure of his adaptability: he moves from one kind of work and interest to another rather than settling into a single identity.

A few days after Jenny and Pauline arrive in the area, Tom rents an apartment for them. He gives the landlord a cover story, presenting them as his sister and her girlfriend, who are moving from the East Coast. After a suitable interval they move in, with Pauline wearing a large floppy hat and sunglasses; Tom accounts for her appearance by saying she is highly sensitive to sunlight. The arrangement depends on the ordinary credibility of a friend helping relatives, turning Tom’s social standing into protection for two women in hiding.

Almost a month later, Tom arrives early on a Saturday carrying a long duffel bag stenciled with the faded name Milner. He explains that it came from his father’s army days and sets it down in the kitchen. The delivery leads into an organized process of learning about firearms. The women begin with terminology, ballistics, types of guns, and the purposes each is suited to before moving on to practical handling. Jenny takes part with Sandy, Sandy’s younger sister Joanne, and Joanne’s housemate Lena, including dismantling and cleaning a 12-gauge shotgun. Tom’s delivery therefore supports more than concealment: it enables a group of women to acquire knowledge together, in a setting where asking questions and learning without embarrassment become significant in their own right.

Narrative Role

Tom’s recurring role is that of a capable friend whose help crosses the boundary between domestic life and political danger. He brings lunch to a frightening situation, helps arrange a place for fugitives to live, and supplies weapons that become the basis for collective instruction. At the same time, the narrative gives him a life not reducible to those acts: painting, touring with a band, customizing cars, and reconciling with Sandy. The old truck and the inherited duffel bag mark opposite forms of continuity. One carries the visible traces of a shared working past; the other brings a concealed, consequential resource into the women’s new home. Through Tom, practical loyalty remains material and specific, even as the people he helps move between friendship, secrecy, and danger.