Doris Lessing - Doris Lessing

"She's right," said Jocelin. She, too, retched, and controlled herself. She went back into the room.

Alice had already got a pail, water, and newspapers. She stood for a moment looking at the three, Jasper, Caroline, Bert, who were all still in the doorway, staring at her.

She knelt down at the very edge of the hall, and began on her task of slowly washing the carpet, every inch of it. When she had finished she would get Bert and Jasper to carry it out to the rubbish bins.

"Why are you wasting time washing that for?" demanded Caroline. "Throw it out."

She had expected someone to say just that. She said coldly, "If we put it out like this into the garden it will stink, and there'll be complaints, and an excuse for the police to come back."

"Yeah. That's right," said Jasper.

She went on with her task. She was full of a cold fury. She could have killed, not only the policemen, but Jasper, Bert, and even the good-natured Caroline, whose shocked face peering out of the door seemed to say that one couldn't credit the stupidity and malice of the world.

"Don't go to bed," Alice ordered Jasper. "When I've done this, you and Bert can carry it out."

It took her an hour or so to do the carpet. They carried it, heavy with water and detergent, smelling now of chemicals, out to the dustbins.

"I suppose some night owl will be up and watching, as usual," said Alice, bitter and very tired, standing carefully in the very middle of the hall floor.

Faye said she was going to bed. Roberta took her up, then came back and got another pail and helped with washing down the woodwork and the walls. All the others went to bed.

As Roberta worked, she swore steadily in her other voice, the rough, clumsy, labouring voice of her upbringing, not the slow, easy, comfortable voice of the everyday Roberta they knew. She did not swear loudly, but only just audibly: a steady quiet stream of hatred against the police, the world, God; on her own behalf, on Faye's.

When they had finished, both women took baths. Then Roberta went out for the Sunday papers. But there was nothing in the Sundays, not a word.

Alice and Roberta slept for some hours. Faye, awake at mid- morning, was angry with Roberta for "getting herself involved." To pay her out, she went up to talk to Jocelin, at work on her bombs. First, as apprentice, she helped Jocelin; then, it turning out she had a real aptitude, she tried out a tricky little number on her own account. She came down for a cup of tea and brought her instruction manual with her. At the same moment, Reggie and Mary returned from work on their new flat. It was an awful mess, they said: but, having seen Alice at work, they knew what could be done with chaos. The way they said this told the others that they were determined to be "nice" for as long as they had to stay there. Then Mary picked up from the table The Use of Explosives in an Urban Environment and leafed through it, first casually, then slowly, taking her time. She handed it to Reggie with a look that was far from "nice." In the kitchen at that stage were Caroline, Jasper, Bert, and Faye, and suddenly they were all tense, determined not to look at one another, trying to appear indifferent. Reggie studied the manual, and then laid it on the table. He had not looked at the others, sat thinking. Next he and Mary had a long eye-consultation, and he said that they had decided to move into the new flat, ready or not, at once. Only a few moments before, Mary had been saying that they would be here until their flat at least had hot water.

The couple went upstairs, leaving half-finished cups of tea.

"That wasn't very clever, comrade," said Bert to Faye, showing a lot of his white teeth.

Faye tossed her head. She was breathing fast, smiling and frowning and biting her lips. "It doesn't matter," she stated. "Once they are rid of us, they'll never want to think of us again. We're just shit to them, that's all."

"All the same," said Bert, making an effort to be severe, as the occasion demanded, "that was stooo-pid!" He laughed, as at a joke. She laughed wildly, eyeing him with resentment. Then she scrambled up out of her chair and ran upstairs to Roberta. They could hear, over their heads, Robert's low maternal voice, Faye's angry raucousness; her complaints to Roberta were being made in her "other" voice, that of her upbringing; Roberta answered in her everyday voice.

The three sat on uneasily. Then Jasper said, laughing, "I don't see why Alice should sleep all day," and went up to wake her. Which he did by banging on the door of the room she slept in, where he had slept but now would not. No response. He stepped delicately in, saw the huddled bundle that was Alice turned to the wall, and, finding the dark of the room unlikable, sharply dragged back the curtains. Alice shot up in her bag, eyes screwed up because of the afternoon glare. She saw a black spiky menacing figure outlined against the light, and screamed.

"For fuck's sake," he said, disgusted with her.

"Oh, it's you." She lay down, as she had before, back to him.

He could not stand this. He knelt by her, at her back, and saw sandy eyelashes tremble on her freckled creamy skin.

"Alice," he said, quite politely, but firmly. "You do have to wake up. Something has happened."

She opened her eyes. Did not say, "What?" They remained in that position for quite a time, more than a minute. It was as if, for her, getting up on his order and coming downstairs was going to commit her more than she wanted, commit her again, when she had made a decision.

At her back knelt Jasper. She could feel his warmth on her shoulders, felt in that warmth the determination of his need for her.

She muttered, sounding indifferent, "All right, I'll be down in a moment."

He stayed a bit, hoping she would turn and smile. But she looked at the wall, waiting for him to go. He got up off his knees and went out, quietly shutting the door.

"Oh no," said Alice, breathless, to the wall. "Oh no, I can't." But she suddenly got up, dragged on her jeans and jersey, and went down.

Around the table now were Jasper and Bert, Caroline. Jocelin had been summoned from above.

Alice made herself tea, silent, taking her time. She sat down. She listened to what had happened. Then she said, confirming Faye, "It doesn't matter. They'll never want to think about us again, once they are gone. Anyway, there's no reason to connect anything that happens with us. Lots of people have these how-to-be-a-terrorist books." She did not put this into inverted commas, a joke, as it had been in this house till now. The joke had been worn into ordinariness.

"But they are such bloody law-lovers," said Caroline. "They'll probably think it's their bloody duty to inform, when they connect one thing with another."

There was a bad moment, during which they looked at one another, acknowledging the truth of it. But Bert dismissed it, laughing. "Connect what with what? We haven't even decided."

"This is as good a time as any to talk it over," said Jocelin.

"We'll have to call down Roberta and Faye, then," said Jasper, uneasily. He involuntarily looked up at the ceiling, immediately beyond which Roberta and Faye, presumably reconciled, lay or sat. At any rate, silently.

"Perhaps it isn't the right time," said Bert. From his grimace Alice deduced that Faye was in one of her moods.

She said vaguely, "Perhaps we should do it without Faye."

They all looked at her, ready to be censorious. All, however, were thinking, as she could see, that there was something in what she said.

It was Jocelin, who had been working with Faye for some hours that day, who remarked, "But she's very clever. And she's got some good ideas about where."

"Where?" asked Bert, laughing again. "Tell us. She hasn't patented her thoughts on the subject."