The Good Terrorist

by Doris Lessing

  Philip said, in the same soft, stubborn voice, “I want to see the job first. I have to cost it.”

  She knew that this one had often been cheated out of what was due to him. Looking as he did, a brave little orphan, he invited it! She said, maternally and proudly, “We’re not asking for favours. This is a job.”

  “For fifty pounds,” said Bert, with jocular brutality, “you can just about expect to get a mousehole blocked up. These days.” And she saw his red lips gleam in the black thickets of his face. Jasper sniggered.

  This line-up of the two men against her—for it was momentarily that—pleased her. She had even been thinking as she raced home that if Bert turned out to be one of the men that Jasper attached himself to, as had happened before, like a younger brother, showing a hungry need that made her heart ache for him, then he wouldn’t be off on his adventures. These always dismayed her, not out of jealousy—she insisted fiercely to herself, and sometimes to others—but because she was afraid that one day there might be a bad end to them.

  Once or twice, men encountered by Jasper during these excursions into a world that he might tell her about, his grip tightening around her wrist as he bent to stare into her face looking for signs of weakness, had arrived at this squat or that, to be met by her friendly, sisterly helpfulness.

  “Jasper? He’ll be back this evening. Do you want to wait for him?” But they went off again.

  But when there was a man around, like Bert, to whom he could attach himself, then he did not go off cruising—a word she herself used casually. “Were you cruising last night, Jasper? Do be careful; you know it’s bad enough with Old Bill on our backs for political reasons.” This was the hold she had over him, the checks she could use. He would reply in a proud, comradely voice, “You are quite right, Alice. But I know my way around.” And he might give her one of his sudden, real smiles, rare enough, which acknowledged they were allies in a desperate war.

  Now she smiled briefly at Jasper and Bert, and turned her attention to Philip. “The most important thing,” she said, “is the lavatories. I’ll show you.”

  She took him to the downstairs lavatory, holding the lamp high as they stood in the doorway. Since the day the Council workmen had poured concrete into the lavatory bowl, the little room had been deserted. It was dusty, but normal.

  “Bastards,” she burst out, tears in her voice.

  He stood there, undecided; and she saw it was up to her.

  “We need a kango hammer,” she said. “Have you got one?” She realised he hardly knew what it was. “You know, like the workmen use to break up concrete on the roads, but smaller.”

  He said, “I think I know someone who’d have one.”

  “Tonight,” she said. “Can you get it tonight?”

  This was the moment, she knew, when he might simply go off, desert her, feeling—as she was doing—the weight of that vandalised house; but she knew, too, that as soon as he got started … She said quickly, “I’ve done this before. I know. It’s not as bad as it looks.” And as he stood there, his resentful, reluctant pose telling her that he again felt put upon, she pressed, “I’ll see you won’t lose by it. I know you are afraid of that. I promise.” They were close together in the doorway of the tiny room. He stared at her from the few inches’ distance of their sudden intimacy, saw this peremptory but reassuring face as that of a bossy but kindly elder sister, and suddenly smiled, a sweet candid smile, and said, “I’ve got to go home, ring up my friend, see if he’s at home, see if he’s got a—a kango, borrow Felicity’s car.…” He was teasing her with the enormity of it all.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes. Please.”

  He nodded, and in a moment had slipped out the front door and was gone. When she went into the sitting room, where Jasper and Bert were, waiting—as they showed by how they sat, passive and trusting—for her to accomplish miracles, she said with confidence, “He’s gone to get some tools. He’ll be back.”

  She knew he would; and within the hour he was, with a bag of tools, the kango, battery, lights, everything.

  The concrete in the bowl, years old, was shrinking from the sides and was soon broken up. Then, scratched and discoloured, the lavatory stood usable. Usable if the water still ran. But a lump of concrete entombed the main water tap. Gently, tenderly, Philip cracked off this shell with his jumping, jittering, noisy drill, and the tap appeared, glistening with newness. Philip and Alice, laughing and triumphant, stood close together over the newly born tap.

  “I’ll see that all the taps are off, but leave one on,” she said softly; for she wanted to make sure of it all before announcing victory to those two who waited, talking politics, in the sitting room. She ran over the house checking taps, came running down. “After four years, if there’s not an airlock …” She appealed to Philip. He turned the main tap. Immediately a juddering and thudding began in the pipes, and she said, “Good. They’re alive.” And he went off to check the tanks while she stood in the hall, thankful tears running down her cheeks.

  In a couple of hours, the water was restored, the three lavatories cleared, and in the hall was a group of disbelieving and jubilant communards who, returning from various parts of London, had been told what was going on and, on the whole, disbelieved. Out of—Alice hoped—shame.

  Jim said, “But we could have done it before, we could have done it.” Rueful, incredulous, joyful, 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, which already tore her heart, “Well, at least it’s for comrades.” And walked off along the street, where the houses stood darker now that 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 nig
hts. 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 a fierce aloneness that made her ache for him. 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 running 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 and, he hoped, 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 to the other wall, 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 this wall; then lay tense, breathing fast.

  She said, “I’m getting up early, to see if I can get hold of some money.”

  He did not say anything. Soon, the house became still. He slept.

  Alice dozed a little. In her mind she was already living the next day. She waited for the light, which came in gloomily through dirty windows and showed the filth of this room. Now she ached for tea, something to eat. She crept down into the hall, which still belonged to night and the hurricane lamp, and into the sitting room, hoping that the Thermos might be there. But she drank cold water from a jug, then used, with pride but caution, the lavatory, thinking of the pipes left uncared for over an unknown number of winters. Then she went to the Underground, stopping for breakfast at Fred’s Caff. There was room for eight or ten tables, set close. A cosy scene, not to say intimate. Mostly men. Two women were sitting together. At first they seemed middle-aged, because of their stolidity and calm; then it could be seen they were youngish, but tired. Probably cleaners after an early-morning job in local offices. At the counter, Alice asked for tea and—apologetically—brown toast; was told by—very likely—Fred’s wife, for she had a proprietorial air, that they didn’t do brown toast. Alice went to look for a place, carrying tea, a plate of white toast that dripped butter, a rock cake. As a concession to health, she went back to get orange juice. It was clear to her that in this establishment it would be best to sit with the two women, and did so.

  They were both eating toast, and drinking muddy coffee. They sat in the loose, emptied poses of women consciously relaxing, and on their faces were vague good-natured smiles which turned on Alice, like shields. They did not want to talk, only to sit.

  The salt of the earth! Alice was dutifully saying to herself, watching this scene of workers fuelling themselves for a hard day’s work with plates of eggs, chips, sausages, fried bread, baked beans—the lot. Cholesterol, agonised Alice, and they all look so unhealthy! They had a pallid, greasy look like bacon fat, or undercooked chips. In the pocket of each, or on the tables, being read, were the Sun or the Mirror. Only lumpens, thought Alice, relieved that there was no obligation to admire them. Building or road workers, perhaps even self-employed; it wasn’t these men who would save Britain from herself! Alice settled down to enjoy her delicious butter-sodden toast, and soon felt better. Not really wanting the cold sour orange juice, she made herself drink it between cups of the bitter tea. The two women watched her, with the detached attention they would give to the interesting mores of a foreigner, taking in everything about her without seeming to do so. She had quite nice curly hair, they could be heard thinking; why didn’t she do something with it? It was dusty! What a pity about that heavy army jacket, more like a man’s, really! That was dusty, too! Look at her hands: she didn’t put herself out to keep her nails clean! Having condemned, and lost interest, they heaved themselves up and departed, with parting shouts at the woman behind the counter. “Ta, Liz.” “See you tomorrow, Betty.”

  They came here every morning after three or four hours’ stint in the offices. These men came in on their way to work. They all knew one another, Alice could see; it was like a club. She finished up quickly and left. Outside the newsagent’s on the corner, the two women she had been sitting with had been joined by a third.
They all wore shapeless trousers, blouses, and cardigans and carried heavy shopping bags. Their work gear. They stood together gossiping, taking up as little room as they could, because the full tide of the morning rush to work filled the pavements.

  It was still too early. It was only just after eight. Her mother would be taking her bath. If Alice went there now she could quietly let herself in and make the coffee, to give her mother a surprise when she came down in her dressing gown. Then they could sit at the big table in the kitchen and eat their muesli and drink their coffee. Dorothy would read her Times, and she, the Guardian. To that house every day were delivered the Times, the Guardian, the Morning Star, and the Socialist Worker, the last two for herself and Jasper. Jasper said he read the Worker because one should know what the opposition was doing; but Alice knew that he secretly had Trotskyist tendencies. Not that she minded about that; she believed that socialists of all persuasions should pull together for the common good. In her mother’s house, she read the Guardian. For years, that newspaper had been the only one to be seen. Then, one day, her mother dropped in to visit her great friend Zoë Devlin and found her wearing a Guardian apron; the word “Guardian” was printed in various sizes of black print, on white. This had given Dorothy Mellings a shock; she had a revelation because of this sight, she had said. That Zoë Devlin, of all people in the world, should be willing to put herself into uniform, to proclaim conformity!

  It was the beginning of her mother’s period of pretty farfetched utterances—a period by no means over. The beginning, too, of a series of meetings arranged between the two women for the purpose of re-examining what they thought. “We go along for decades,” Alice had heard her mother say on the telephone, initiating the first discussion, “taking it for granted we agree about things, and we don’t. Like hell we do! We’re going to have to decide if you and I have anything in common, Zoë, how about it?”