Doris Lessing - The Good Terrorist

After a while she made herself strong tea and sat drinking it, as if it were brandy. Silence above. Presumably Roberta had got Faye off to sleep?

Some time later Roberta came in, and sat down. Alice knew how she must look, from Roberta’s examination of her. She thought: What she really is, is just one of these big maternal lezzies, all sympathy and big boobs; she wants to seem butch and tough, but bad luck for her, she’s a mum.

She did not want to be bothered with what was going to come.

When Roberta said, ‘Look, Alice, I know how this must look, but…’ she cut in, ‘I don’t care. It’s all right.’

Roberta hesitated, then made herself go on, ‘Faye does sometimes get like this, but she is much better, and she hasn’t for a long time. Over a year.’

‘All right.’

‘And of course we can’t have children here.’

Alice did not say anything.

Roberta, needing some kind of response she was not getting, got up to fuss around with tea-bags and a mug, and said in a low, quick, vibrant voice, ‘If you knew about her childhood, if you knew what had happened to her…’

‘I don’t care about her fucking childhood,’ remarked Alice.

‘No, I’ve got to tell you, for her sake, for Faye’s…She was a battered baby, you see…’

‘I don’t care,’ Alice shouted suddenly. ‘ You don’t understand. I’ve had all the bloody unhappy childhoods I am going to listen to. People go on and on…As far as I am concerned, unhappy childhoods are the great con, the great alibi.’

Shocked, Roberta said, ‘A battered baby – and battered babies grow up to become adults.’ She was back in her place, sitting, leaning forward, her eyes on Alice’s, determined to make Alice respond.

‘I know one thing,’ Alice said. ‘Communes. Squats. If you don’t take care, that’s what they become – people sitting around discussing their shitty childhoods. Never again. We’re not here for that. Or is that what you want? A sort of permanent encounter group. Everything turns into that, if you let it.’

Roberta, convinced that Alice was not going to listen, sat silent. She noisily drank tea, and Alice felt herself wince.

There was something coarse and common about Roberta, Alice was thinking, too disturbed and riled up to censor her thoughts. She hadn’t washed yet, even though water was running in the taps. There was the sharp metallic tang of blood about her. Either she or Faye, or both, were menstruating.

Alice shut her eyes, retreated inside herself to a place she had discovered long years ago, she did not know when, but she had been a small child. Inside here, she was safe, and the world could crash and roar and scream as much as it liked. She heard herself say, and it was in her dreamy abstracted voice:

‘Well, I suppose Faye will die of it one of these days. She has tried to commit suicide, hasn’t she?’

Silence. She opened her eyes to see Roberta in tears.

‘Yes, but not since I…’

‘All those bracelets,’ murmured Alice. ‘Scars under bracelets.’

‘She’s got one tiny scar,’ pleaded Roberta. ‘On her left wrist.’

Alice had shut her eyes again, and was sipping tea, feeling that her nerves would soon begin to stand up to life again. She said, ‘One of these days I’ll tell you about my mother’s unhappy childhood. She had a mad mum, and a peculiar dad. Peculiar is the word. If I told you!’ She had not meant to mention her mother. ‘Oh never mind about her,’ she said. She began to laugh. It was a healthy, even jolly laugh, appreciative of the vagaries and richnesses of life. ‘On the other hand my father – now that was a different kettle of fish. When he was a child he was happy the whole day long, so he says, the happiest time in his life. But do we believe him? Well, I am inclined to, yes. He is so bloody thick and stupid and awful that he wouldn’t have noticed it if he was unhappy. They could have battered him as much as they liked, and he wouldn’t even have noticed.’

She opened her eyes. Roberta was examining her with a small shrewd smile. Against her will, Alice smiled in response.

‘Well,’ said Alice, ‘that’s that, as far as I am concerned. Have you got any brandy? Anything like that?’

‘How about a joint?’

‘No, doesn’t do anything for me. I don’t like it.’

Roberta went off and came back with a bottle of whisky. The two sat drinking in the kitchen, at either end of the big wooden table. When Philip came staggering in under the heavy panes of glass, ready to start work, he refused a drink saying he felt sick. He went upstairs back to his sleeping-bag. What he was really saying was that Alice should be working along with him, not sitting there wasting time.

Roberta, having drunk a lot, went up to Faye and there was silence overhead.

Alice decided to have a nap. In the hall was lying an envelope she thought was junk mail. She picked it up to throw it away, saw it was from the Electricity Board, felt herself go cold and sick; decided to give herself time to recover before opening it. She went to the kitchen. By hand. Mrs Whitfield had said she came past on her way to and from work. She had dropped this in herself, on her way home. That was kind of her…Alice briskly opened the letter, which said:

Dear Miss Mellings, I communicated with your father about guaranteeing payment of accounts for No. 43 Old Mill Road, in terms of our discussion. His reply was negative, I am sorry to say. Perhaps you would care to drop in and discuss this matter in the course of the next few days?

Yours sincerely,

D. Whitfield.

This pleasant, human little letter made Alice first feel supported, then rage took over. Luckily there was no one to see her, as she exploded inwardly, teeth grinding, eyes bulging, fists held as if knives were in them. She stormed around the kitchen, like a big fly shut in a room on a hot afternoon, banging herself against walls, corners of table and stove, not knowing what she did, and making grunting, whining, snarling noises – which, soon, she heard. She knew that she was making them and, frightened, sat down at the table, perfectly still, containing what she felt. Absolute quiet after such violence, for some minutes. Then she whirled into movement, out of the kitchen and up the stairs, to knock sharply on Philip’s door. Stirrings, movements, but no reply, and she called, ‘Philip, it’s me, Alice.’

She went in as he said, ‘Come in,’ and saw him scrambling up out of his sleeping-bag and into his overalls. ‘Oh sorry,’ she said, dismissing his unimportant embarrassment and starting in at once.

‘Philip, will you guarantee our electricity bill?’ As he stared, and did not understand: ‘You know, the bill for this house? My mother won’t, my father won’t, bloody bloody Theresa and blood bloody Anthony won’t…’

He was standing in front of her, the late-afternoon light strong and yellow behind him, a little dark figure in a stiff awkward posture. She could not see his face and went to the side of the room, so that he turned towards her, and she saw him confronting her, small, pale but obstinate. She knew she would fail, seeing that look, but said sharply, ‘You have a business, you have a letterhead, you could guarantee the account.’

‘Alice, how can I? I can’t pay that money, you know I can’t.’ Talking as though he would have to pay, thought Alice, enraged again. But had he heard her joke that the first payment would be the last?

She said, bossy, ‘Oh, Philip, don’t be silly. You wouldn’t have to, would you? It’s just to keep the electricity on.’

He said, trying to sound humorous, ‘Well, Alice, but perhaps I would have to?’