Doris Lessing - The Good Terrorist

‘We always try to keep this door locked and barred because of the police,’ said Bert, in a hurried, placating way, and Alice thought, Well, there’s no need to bother much with him , as she said, ‘It wasn’t locked this morning when we came. And the police don’t come at this time, do they?’ She said this because she had to say something; she knew her fit of rage outside the door was unfortunate.

The five were all staring at her, their faces shadowed by the dull light from the hurricane lamp, and she said, in her ordinary mild voice, ‘I’ve seen the Council, and it’s all right.’

‘What do you mean, it’s all right?’ demanded Bert, asserting himself.

Alice said, ‘Everyone’s here, I want to discuss it. Why not now?’

‘Anyone against?’ said Jasper jocularly, but he was shielding Alice, as she saw with gratitude. The seven filed into the sitting-room, which was still in full daylight.

Alice’s eyes were anxiously at work on the two unknown girls. As if unable or unwilling to give much time to this affair, they perched on the two arms of a shabby old chair. They were sharing a cigarette. One was a soft-faced fair girl, with her hair in a ponytail, and little curls and tendrils all around her face. The other was a bulky girl, no, a woman, with short black curls that had a gleam of silver in them. Her face was strong, her eyes direct, and she looked steadily at Alice, reserving judgment. She said, ‘This is Faye, I am Roberta.’

She was saying, too, that they were a couple, but Alice had seen this already.

‘Alice. Alice Mellings.’

‘Well, Comrade Alice, you don’t let the grass grow. I, for one, would have liked to discuss it all first.’

‘That’s right,’ said Faye, ‘that goes for me, too. I like to know what’s being said in my name.’ She spoke in a cockney voice, all pert and pretty, and Alice knew at once that she affected it, had adopted it, as so many others did. A pretty little cockney girl sat presenting herself, smiling, to everyone, and Alice was staring at her, trying to see what was really there.

This acute, judging inspection made Faye shift about and pout a little, and Roberta came in quickly with, ‘What are we being committed to, Comrade Alice?’

‘Oh I see,’ said Alice. ‘You’re lying low.’

Roberta let out an amused snort that acknowledged Alice’s acuity, and said, ‘You’re right. I want to keep a low profile for a bit.’

‘Me too,’ said Faye. ‘We are drawing Security over in Clapham, but better not ask how. Least said soonest mended,’ she ended, prettily, tossing her head.

‘And what you don’t know won’t hurt you,’ said Roberta.

‘Ask no questions and get told no lies,’ quipped Faye.

‘But truth is stranger than fiction,’ said Roberta.

‘You can say that again,’ said Faye.

This nice little act of theirs made everyone laugh appreciatively. As good as a music-hall turn: Faye the cockney lass and her feed. Roberta was not speaking cockney, but had a comfortable, accommodating homely voice with the sound of the North in it. Her own voice? No, it was a made-up one. Modelled on Coronation Street, probably.

‘That’s another reason we don’t want the police crashing in all the time,’ said Bert. ‘I am pleased Comrade Alice is trying to get this regularized. Go on with your report, Comrade Alice.’

Bert had also modified his voice. Alice could hear in it at moments the posh tones of some public school, but it was roughened with the intention of sounding working-class. Bad luck, he gave himself away.

Alice talked. (Her own voice dated from the days of her girls’ school in North London, basic BBC correct, flavourless. She had been tempted to reclaim her father’s Northern tones, but had judged this dishonest.) She did not say that she had rung her mother and her father, but said she could get fifty pounds at short notice. Then she summed up her visit to the Council, scrutinizing what she saw in her mind’s eye: the expressions on the face of Mary Williams, which told Alice the house would be theirs; and because of some personal problem or attitude of Mary’s. But all Alice said about this, the nub of the interview with Mary, was ‘She’s all right. She’s on our side. She’s a good person.’

‘You mean, you’ve got something to show the police?’ said Jim, and when Alice handed over the yellow envelope he took out what was in it and pored over it. He was one whose fate, Alice could see, had always been determined by means of papers, reports, official letters. Jim’s voice was genuine cockney, the real thing.

She asked suddenly, ‘Are you bound over?’

Jim’s look at her was startled, then defensive, then bitter. His soft, open boyish face closed up and he said, ‘What about it?’

‘Nothing,’ said Alice. Meanwhile a glance at Faye and Roberta had told her that both of them were bound over. Or worse. Yes, probably worse. Yes, certainly worse. On the run?

‘Didn’t know you were,’ said Bert. ‘I was until recently.’

‘So was I,’ claimed Jasper at once, not wanting to be left out. Jasper’s tones were almost those of his origins. He was the son of a solicitor in a Midlands town, who had gone bankrupt when Jasper was half-way through his schooling at a grammar school. He had finished his education on a scholarship. Jasper was very clever; but he had seen the scholarship as charity. He was full of hatred for his father, who had been stupid enough to go in for dubious investments. His middle-class voice, like Bert’s, had been roughened. With working-class comrades he could sound like them, and did, at emotional moments.

Pat remarked, ‘It’s getting dark,’ and she stood up, struck a match, and lit two candles that stood on the mantelpiece in rather fine brass candlesticks. But they were dull with grease. The daylight shrank back beyond the windows, and the seven were in a pool of soft yellow light that lay in the depths of a tall shadowed room.

Now Pat leaned her elbow on the mantelpiece, taking command of the scene. In the romantic light, with her dark military clothes, her black strong boots, she looked – as she must certainly know – like a guerrilla, or a female soldier in somebody’s army. Yet the light accentuated the delicate modelling of her face, her hands, and in fact she was more like the idealized picture of a soldier on a recruiting poster. An Israeli girl soldier, perhaps, a book in one hand, a rifle in the other.

‘Money,’ said Pat. ‘We have to talk about money.’ Her voice was standard middle-class, but Alice knew this was not how Pat had started off. She was working too hard at it.

‘That’s right,’ said Jim. ‘I agree.’

The only other person in this room, apart from Alice, with his own voice, unmodified, was Jim, the genuine cockney.

‘It’s going to cost more,’ said Bert, ‘but we will buy peace and quiet.’

‘It needn’t cost all that much more,’ said Alice. ‘For one thing, food will be half as much, or less. I know, I’ve done it.’

‘Right,’ said Pat. ‘So have I. Take-away and eating out costs the earth.’

‘Alice is good at feeding people cheap,’ said Jasper.

It was noticeable that while these five outlined their positions, they all, perhaps without knowing it, eyed Roberta and Faye. Or, more exactly, Faye, who sat there not looking at them, but anywhere: the ceiling, her feet, Roberta’s feet, the floor, while she puffed smoke from the cigarette held between her lips. Her hand, on her knee, trembled. She gave the impression of trembling slightly all over. Yet she smiled. It was not the best of smiles.

‘Just a minute, comrades,’ said she. ‘Suppose I like take-away? I like take-away, see? Suppose I like eating out, when the fancy takes me? How about that, then?’