Doris Lessing - Doris Lessing

They sat around, not joking now, but tense, even irritable, longing to go and see, but Bert said that criminals always tried to visit the scene of the crime and the police counted on that.

Jocelin actually went off to bed. Then so did Faye and Roberta. The others could not. At about nine Caroline strolled down, through busy streets, found the area roped off with red and yellow tapes "like a street fair," she said, and the police all over the place. There seemed to be quite a bit of damage. Windows blown in, for instance. They woke Jocelin to tell her this. She was upset; she had intended to fragment the bollard and a certain area of the pavement. She, too, went down to look, and came back gloomy. Her calculations had not been correct. She returned to her workroom, saying she wanted to be alone to think.

Alice remembered that this morning was when she had the car to dispose of the bales, or packages. She was bad-tempered, and even bitter: that she should have to deal with this, on such a morning, on a day when surely she should be allowed to be with the others, without problems!

They discussed it. Should they go out now, mid-morning, and find some place to dump the packages? Caroline said lazily that they shouldn't bother - everyone would be gone from the house quite soon anyway. Let the next lot of squatters deal with the problem.

Bert and Jasper said no. Alice, reluctantly, agreed.

The four got the packages down out of the attic, with difficulty, and much bumping. The noise brought Jocelin out. She said she wanted to see what was in there; after all, it might come in useful. The bands of plastic webbing were easily cut. The wrappings were of thick waxed paper. Under that, a heavy cardboard. Inside, thick wads of coarse oily wool-waste. Within this nest were parts of guns. The five conspirators were bent over the opened package, staring in. Their hearts thudded, and their eyes dazzled. They straightened themselves, slowly, to breathe more easily. Caroline's hand, which was resting on the package's edge, was shaking, and she quickly removed it. The five of them stood there upright around the half-buried gun parts, which gleamed dully in the inadequate light. Their breathing rasped and sighed, and they heard one another swallow, and Bert said, laughing, "You'd think we were scared shitless - and I believe I am. Suddenly, it's all for real...." They all laughed, except for Alice, who was standing with both hands loosely fisted, covering her half-open mouth. Her eyes stared tragically over her knuckles at Jocelin. Jocelin gave her an impatient look and said, "Come on, let's get moving," and started to push back the packaging.

"No!" shouted Jasper, coming to life. In a fury of energy he began removing parts of guns, and assembling them as he thought they should go, working on top of the other parts still half buried in the waste.

"No," said Jocelin, cold and quiet - much to Alice's relief; and she chimed in with, "No, Jasper, don't."

Bert was already trying to help Jasper, but he was slow and clumsy compared with him.

Although Jasper was so neatly and competently sliding the parts together, taking them apart, trying other ways to fit them, he was not achieving anything like a complete weapon.

"Are they machine guns?" asked Alice, almost weeping.

"Stop it," said Jocelin directly to Jasper. "If you did manage to assemble one, what would you do with it?"

"Oh, we'll find a use for it, all right," said Bert, all his white teeth gleaming, trying hard to be as skilful as Jasper, who had nearly got together a black, shining, sinister-looking thing that was like the weapons you see in children's space films.

"Now you've got fingerprints all over it," said Jocelin, with such contempt that first Bert and then Jasper let go the guns and fell back. "Stupid fool," said Jocelin, her cold eyes demolishing Jasper, showing exactly what she really did think of him. "You fool. What do you think you are going to do? Have them just lying around, I suppose, in case one of them came in handy for some little job or other?" She pushed the two men back with her elbows, and began work herself. First she swiftly and cleverly pulled apart the half-assembled weapons (showing them all that she knew exactly what she was doing, she was familiar with them) and then took up handfuls of the waste, with which she cleaned off the fingerprints, holding the parts carefully with fingers gloved in waste.

Caroline remarked, "Probably just rubbing the marks off like that won't be much good - not with the methods they use these days."

"Probably not," said Jocelin, "but it's too late to think of that now, isn't it? We've got to get rid of these things - just get rid of them."

"Why don't we bury them in the garden?" suggested Bert, sounding like a deprived small boy, and she said, "In this garden, I suppose you mean, what a brilliant idea!" And then, as she snuggled back the gun parts into their nest, she said, "If you have in mind any little jobs that actually have to be done, something concrete - that is, within a proper context, properly organised - then weapons are available. Surely you know that?"

Bert was looking at her with resentment, but also with admiration that relinquished to her the right to take command. His eyes burned with excitement, and he could not stop smiling: teeth, eyes, his red lips, flashed and shone.

Jasper was containing himself, eyes shielded by his lids, so as not to show how furious he was - which Alice knew him to be. She was seeing Jasper, Bert as she had not done before - soldiers, real soldiers, in a war. She was thinking, Why, they'd love it, particularly Jasper. He'd enjoy every minute of it.... This thought made her even more dismayed, and she took a few steps back from the scene, the knuckles of both hands again at her mouth.

Jocelin was taking in her condition very well, despite her pre- occupation with closing up the package. "Alice, have you never seen guns before?"

"No."

"You are overreacting."

"Yes, she is," said Jasper at once, coming to life in open fury at Alice. "Look at her, you'd think she'd seen a ghost." And here he became, suddenly, like a child in a playground trying to scare another. "Woooo-o-o," he wailed, flapping his hands at her, "Alice has seen a ghost...."

"Oh, for Christ's sake," shouted Jocelin, losing her temper. "We've got a serious job to do - remember? And I'm going back up to work. Take those cases out somewhere and dump them and forget about them. They're nothing but trouble." With which she went upstairs, in her slow, determined way, not looking back at them. She was - they knew - furious with herself for losing control.

They all watched her, silent, till she was out of sight, and the atmosphere eased.

"Come on, let's get going," said Bert.

Indecision. With Jocelin, the real boss of the scene, absent, for a moment no one could act. Then Alice came to life, saying, "I'll go and get the car." She ran off.

The car keys had been left downstairs with Felicity's neighbour, because - she said crossly, demonstrating Felicity's annoyance for her - Felicity had waited for Alice to arrive when she had said she would. Apologies and smiles. Alice drove the car back to number 43. The four of them got the packages out to the car. No wonder they were so heavy.

They stood around debating where to take the packages. The rubbish dump? No, not at that hour of the day. Down to the river? No, they would be observed. Better drive out to some leafy suburb like Wimbledon or Greenwich, and see what they could find. They were on their way through Chiswick, crawling through heavy traffic, when they saw, in a side street, big corrugated iron gates and the sign: "Warwick & Sons, Scrap Metal Merchants." They turned out of the traffic and round the block and past the gates. The place seemed deserted. Alice double-parked while Bert went in, coolly, 3*4 like a customer, and hung about for a bit. But no one came. He sprinted back, face flushed, eyes reddened, white teeth and red lips flashing in his black beard. Jasper caught the fever at once. Alice, admiring them both, backed the car between the great gates and stopped. It was a large yard. In this part of London, capacious plots of ground accommodated large houses and big gardens. But this place had some ramshackle brick-and-corrugated-iron sheds at the back with heavy locks on them, and otherwise everywhere were heaps of metal pipes, bits of cars, rusting iron bars, bent and torn corrugated iron. Brass and copper gleamed unexpectedly, and stacks of milky plastic roofing showed that these merchants dealt in more than metal. There were ancient beams piled near the gates, oak from the look of them (two of these would be just the thing for the roof of poor 43) and, all around these beams, an area where every kind of rubbish had found a place, including a lot of cardboard cartons, rapidly disintegrating, that had in them more metal, and plastic bottles, plastic cups. This was it. Jasper and Caroline were out of the car in a moment, and they and Bert wrestled the packages out of the car, and let them fall near the pile of beams. Alice's eyes seemed to be bursting; black waves beat through her. But she had to keep the car running. Through her fever she saw how Bert had already stood up, looking around, the job done; how Caroline had come back to the car, was getting in; while Jasper, deadly, swift, efficient, was rubbing soil into the smooth professional surfaces of the packages, and scarring them with a bit of iron he had snatched up from a heap, working in a fury of precise intention and achievement. That was Jasper! Alice thought, proud of him, her pride singing through her. No one who had not seen Jasper like this, at such a moment, could have any idea! Why, beside him Bert was a peasant, slowly coming to himself and seeing what Jasper was doing, and then joining in when Jasper had virtually finished the job. Those two packages did not look anything like the sleek brown monsters of a few minutes before, were already just like all the other rubbish lying around, would easily be overlooked.