Doris Lessing - The Good Terrorist

Jim said, ‘But we could have done it before, we could have done it.’ Rueful, incredulous, delighted, he said, ‘I’ll bring down the pails, we can get rid of…’

‘Wait,’ screamed Alice. ‘No, one at a time, not all at once, we’ll block the whole system, after years , who knows how long? We did that once in Birmingham, put too much all at once in – there was a cracked pipe underneath somewhere, and we had to leave that squat next day. We had only just come.’ In command of them, and of herself, Alice stood on the bottom step of the stairs, exhausted, dirty, covered with grime and grey from the disintegrating concrete, even to her hair which was grey. They cheered her, meaning it, but there was mockery too. And there was a warning, which she did not hear, or care about.

‘Philip,’ she was saying, ‘Philip, we’ve got the water, now the electricity.’ And in silence, Philip looked gently, stubbornly at her, this frail boy – no, man, for he was twenty-five, so she had learned among all the other things about him she needed to know – and suddenly they were all silent, because they had been discussing, while she and Philip worked, how much this was going to cost and how much they would contribute.

Philip said, ‘If you had called in a plumber, do you know what you would have had to pay?’

‘A couple of hundred,’ supplied Pat, tentatively, who, without interfering in this delicate operation – Alice, and Philip and the house – had been more involved than the others, following the stages of the work as they were accomplished, and commenting, telling how thus she, too, had done in this place and that.

Alice took the fifty pounds from her pocket and gave them to Philip.

‘I’ll get my Social day after tomorrow,’ she said. He stood, turning over the notes, five of them, thinking, she knew, that this was a familiar position for him to be in. Then he looked up, smiled at her, and said briefly, ‘I’ll come in tomorrow morning. I need to do the electrics in daylight.’

And he left, accompanied not by his mate, Bert, who had brought him here, but by Alice, and she went with him to the gate, the rubbish malodorous around them.

He said, with his sweet, painful smile, that already tore her heart, ‘Well, at least it’s for comrades.’ And walked off along the street where the houses stood darker now, since people had gone to bed. It was after one.

She went into the deserted hall, and heard the lavatory flushing. Held her breath, standing there, thinking, The pipes… but they seemed to be all right. Jasper came out, and said to her, ‘I’m going to sleep.’

‘Where?’

This was a delicate moment. In her mother’s house, Jasper had had his own place, appropriating her brother’s room, in which he curled himself up, a hedgehog, guarding his right to be alone at nights. She, daughter of the house, had slept in the room she had had all her life. She did not mind, she said; she knew what she felt; but what she did mind, badly, was the thoughts of others, not about her, but about Jasper. But they were alone in the hall, could face this decision together. He was gazing at her with the quelling look she knew meant he felt threatened.

Pat came out to them, saying, ‘The room next to ours is empty. It probably needs a bit of a clean, the two who were in it weren’t…’

In the great dark hall, where the hurricane lamp made its uncertain pool, the three stood, and the women looked at Jasper, Alice knowing why, but Pat, not yet. Alice knew that Pat, quick and acute, would understand it all in a flash…and suddenly Pat remarked, ‘Well, at any rate, it’s the best empty room there is…’ She had taken it all in, in a moment, Alice knew, but it seemed Jasper did not, for he said heartily, ‘Right, Alice, let’s go.’

Pat said to them, as they silently went up, ‘Alice, don’t think we don’t think you aren’t a bloody marvel!’ And laughed. Alice, not giving a damn, went into the big empty room behind Jasper. His backpack had been undone, his sleeping-bag lay neatly against the right wall at the end, as far away as it could get. Alice said, ‘I’ll fetch my things,’ waited for him to repudiate her, but he stood, back turned, saying nothing. She ran down to the hall, hoping Pat would not be there, but she was, standing quietly by herself, as though she had expected Alice to come down, wanting to do what she then did, which was to advance, take Alice in her arms, and lay her smooth cherry cheek against Alice’s. Comfort. Comradely reassurance. And a compassion, too, Alice felt, wishing she could say out loud, ‘But I don’t mind , you don’t understand.’

‘Thanks,’ she said to Pat, brief and awkward; and Pat gave a grunt of laughter, and waved as she went back into the sitting-room where – of course – the comrades were discussing Alice, Jasper and this explosion of order into their lives.

Up in their room, it was dark. But some light came in from the sky and from the traffic. Alice spread her sleeping-bag on its thin foam rubber base, and was soon lying flat on her back, on her pallet, on the wall opposite to Jasper who lay curled as he always did, in fierce aloneness. He was not asleep, but soon he slept, as she could see from a loosening of his body, as if he had been washed up on a shore, and lay abandoned.

Too tired to sleep, she lay listening to how people were going to bed. Good-night, good-night, on the landing, and the corridor along from it. Roberta and Faye in one room, of course. Jim in another. And, in the room next to this one, Pat and Bert. Oh no, she did not want that, she did not want what she knew would happen. And it did, the grunting and whispering and shifting and moaning – right on the other side of the wall, close against her ear. It was too much. Love, that was; which everyone said she was a fool to do without; they were sorry for her. Theresa and Anthony, at it all night and every night, so said her mother, after years of marriage, grunting and panting, moaning and wanting. Alice lay as stiff as a rod, staring at the shadowed ceiling where lights from the cars in the road fled and chased, her ears assaulted, her mind appalled. She made herself think: Tomorrow, tomorrow we’ll get the electricity done… Money. She needed money. Where? She’d get it. She wasn’t going to cheat Philip…

Philip, given the sack six months ago from the building firm – the first to be sacked, and Alice knew why, because of his build: of course any employer would think, this weakling – had set himself up. He was now a decorator, hopefully, a builder. He had: two long ladders, a short ladder, a trestle (but needed, badly, another), paintbrushes, some tools; and could borrow from his friend, in Chalk Farm. He had got the job of decorating a house, in spite of his frail appearance; perhaps because of it; had been paid only half, was told he was not up to it. He knew he would not be paid the rest; it would mean going to law and he could not do that. He was on the dole. He thought he would get a job doing up a pub in Neasden. He said he thought he would get this job, but Alice knew he didn’t much believe it. He lived with Felicity (his girlfriend?) in her flat a couple of streets away. He had to be paid.

The noises through the wall, having died down, were starting off again. Alice dragged her pallet and bag over to the other wall as quietly as she could, afraid of alerting Jasper, who would feel her being there so close to him as an encroachment. And sure enough, just as she was settling down, he started up and she could see him glaring at her, teeth gritting. ‘You are in my space ,’ he said. ‘You know we don’t get into each other’s space. ’

She said, ‘I don’t like that wall.’ This situation having occurred before, repeatedly, she did not have to explain. Leaning up on his elbow, his face clenched with fury and disgust, he listened to what could be plainly heard even from his wall; then lay tense, breathing fast.