The Good Terrorist

by Doris Lessing

  “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 bloody 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 toward 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?”

  “No, of course not!”

  He was—she saw—ready to laugh with her, but she could not.

  “What can I do?” she was demanding. “I don’t know what to do!”

  “I don’t think I believe that, Alice,” he said, really laughing now, but nicely.

  In a normal voice, she said, “Philip, we have to have a guarantor. You are the only one, don’t you see?”

  He held his own, this Petrouchka, this elf, with, “Alice, no. For one thing, that address on the letterhead is the place I was in before Felicity—it’s been pulled down, demolished. It isn’t even there.”

  Now they stared at each other with identical appalled expressions, as if the floorboards were giving way; for both had been possessed, at the same moment, by a vision of impermanence: houses, buildings, streets, whole areas of streets, blown away, going, gone, an illusion. They sighed together, and, on an impulse, embraced gently, comforting each other.

  “The thing is,” said Alice, “she doesn’t want to disconnect. She wants to help; she just needs an excuse, that’s all.… Wait—wait a minute, I think I’ve got it.…”

  “I thought you would,” he said, and she nodded and said excitedly, “Yes. It’s my brother. I’ll tell Electricity he will guarantee, but that he’s away on a business trip in … Bahrein, it doesn’t matter where. She’ll hold it over, I know she will.…”

  And, making the thumbs-up sign, she ran out, laughing and exultant.

  Too late to ring Mrs. Whitfield now, but she would tomorrow, and it would be all right.

  No need to tell Mary and Reggie anything about it. Of course, if Mary was any good, she would be prepared to guarantee the account; she was the only one among them in work. But she wouldn’t, Alice knew that.

  She needed sleep. She was shaky and trembling inside, where her anger lived.

  It was getting dark when Alice woke. She heard Bert’s laugh, a deep “ho ho ho” from the kitchen. That’s not his own laugh, Alice thought. I wonder what that would be like? “Tee hee hee,” more likely. No, he made that laugh up for himself. Reliable and comfortable. Manly. Voices and laughs, we make them up.… Roberta’s made-up voice, comfortable. And that was Pat’s quick light voice and her laugh. Her own laugh? Perhaps. So they were both back, and that meant that Jasper was, too. Alice was out of her sleeping bag and tugging on a sweater, a smile on her face that went with her feelings for Jasper: admiration and wistful love.

  But Jasper was not in the kitchen with the other two, who were glowing, happy, fulfilled, and eating fish and chips.

  “It’s all right, Alice,” said Pat, pulling out a chair for her. “They arrested him, but it’s not serious. He’ll be in court tomorrow morning at Enfield. Back here by lunchtime.”

  “Unless he’s bound over?” asked Bert.

  “He was bound over for two years in Leeds, but that ended last month.”

  “Last month?” said Pat. Her eyes met Bert’s, found no reflection there of what she was thinking—probably against her will, Alice believed—and, so as not to meet Alice’s, lowered themselves to the business of eating one golden crisp fatty chip after another. This was not the first time Alice had caught suggestions that Jasper liked being bound over—needed the edge it put on life. She said apologetically, “Well, he has had to be careful so long, watching every tiny little thing he does, I suppose.…” She was examining Bert, who, she knew, could tell her what she needed to know about the arrest. Jasper was arrested, but Bert not; that in itself …

  Pat pushed over some chips, and Alice primly ate one or two, thinking about cholesterol.

  “How many did they arrest?”

  “Seven. Three we didn’t know. But the others were John, Clarissa, and Charlie. And Jasper.”

  “None of the trade-union comrades?”

  “No.”

  A silence.

  Then Bert: “They have been fining people twenty-five pounds.”

  Alice said automatically, “Then probably Jasper will get fifty pounds.”

  “He thought twenty-five. I gave him twenty pounds so he’d have enough.”

  Alice, who had been about to get up, ready to leave, said quickly, “He doesn’t want me down there? Why not? What did he say?”

  Pat said, carefully, “He asked me to tell you not to come down.”

  “But I’ve always been there when he’s been arrested. Always. I’ve been in court every time.”

  “That’s what he said,” said Bert. “ ‘Tell Alice not to bother.’ ”

  Alice sat thinking so intently that the kitchen, Bert and Pat, even the house around her vanished. She was down at the scene of the pickets. The van loaded with newspapers appeared at the gates, its sinister shining look telling everyone to hate it; the pickets surged forward, shouting; and there was Jasper, as she had seen him so often, his pale face distorted with a look of abstracted and dedicated hate, his reddish crop of gleaming hair. He was always the first to be arrested, she thought proudly, he was so dedicated, so obviously—even to the police—self-sacrificing. Pure.

  But there was something that didn’t fit.

  She said, “Did you decide not to get arrested for any reason, Bert?”

  Because, if that had been so, one could have expected Jasper, too, to return home.

  Bert said, “Jasper found someone down there, someone who might be very useful to us.”

  At once the scene fell into shape in Alice’s mind. “Was he one of the three you didn’t know?”

  “That’s it,” said Bert. “That’s it exactly.” He yawned. He said, “I hate to have to ask, but could you let me have the twenty pounds? Jasper said I should ask you.”

  Alice counted out the money. She did not let her gaze rise from this task.

  Pat said nicely, “That little bundle won’t last long at this rate.”

  “No.”

  Alice was praying: Let Bert go. Let him go upstairs. I want to talk to Pat. She was thinking this so hard that she was not surprised when he stood up and said, “I’m going to drop around to Felicity and get myself a real bath.”

  “I’ll come in a minute,” said Pat.

  Bert went, and the two women sat on.

  Alice asked, “What is the name of that man next door?”

  “Lenin?” said Pat. Alice gratefully laughed with her, feeling privileged and special in this intimacy with Pat that admitted her into important conspiracy. Pat went on, “He says his name is Andrew.”

  “Where would you say he was from?”

  “Good question.”

  “Ever such an American accent,” said Alice.

  “The New World language.”

  “Yes.”

  They exchanged looks.

  Having said all they needed to on this subject, they left it, and Alice said after a pause, “I went round this afternoon. To ask them to do something about that mess.”

  “Good idea.”

  “What’s in all those packages?”
>
  “Leaflets. Books. So it is said.”

  “But with the police around all the time?”

  “The packages weren’t there the day before yesterday. And I bet they’ll be gone by tomorrow. Or are gone already.”

  “Did you actually see the leaflets?”

  “No, but I asked. That’s what he said—Andrew. Propaganda material.”

  Again a subject was left behind, by unspoken consent.

  Pat said, “I gather Bert thinks this comrade—the one Jasper was talking to at Melstead—may have some useful leads.”

  “You mean, for the IRA?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Did you hear anything of what they said?”

  “No. But Bert was there part of the time.”

  At this Alice could have asked, What does Bert think of him? But she did not care what Bert thought. Pat’s assessment, yes.

  “What did he look like? Perhaps I know him,” she asked. “He wasn’t one of the usual crowd?”

  “I’ve never seen him before, I am sure. Nothing special to report.”

  “Did … Comrade Andrew tell you to go down to the pickets? Did he say anything about Melstead to you? How many times have you been next door?”

  Pat smiled and replied, though she indicated by her manner that there was no reason why she should, “I have been next door twice. Bert and Jasper have been over much more often. As for Melstead, I get the impression that Comrade Andrew”—and she slightly emphasised the “Comrade,” as if Alice would do well to think about it—“that Comrade Andrew is not all that keen on cadres from outside joining the pickets.”

  Alice said hotly, “Yes, but it is our struggle, too. It is a struggle for all the progressive forces in the country. Melstead is a focal point for imperialist fascism, and it is not just the business of the Melstead trade unionists.”

  “You asked,” said Pat. And then, “In my view, Comrade Andrew has bigger fish to fry.” A thrill went through Alice, as when someone who has been talking for a lifetime about unicorns suddenly glimpses one. She looked with tentative excitement at Pat, who, it seemed, did not know what she had said. If she had not been implying that they, the comrades at number 43 Old Mill Road, had unwittingly come closer to great events, then what had she meant? But Pat was getting up. Terminating the discussion. Alice wanted her to stay. She could not believe that Pat was ready to go off now, at this thrilling moment when fabulous events seemed imminent. But Pat was stretching her arms about and yawning. Her smile was luxurious, and as her eyes did briefly meet Alice’s, she seemed actually to be tantalising and teasing. She’s so sensual, Alice thought indignantly.

  But she said, “I asked … Comrade Andrew if we can use a room in that house for meetings. I mean, meetings of the inner group.”

  “So did we. He said yes.”

  Pat smiled, lowered her arms, and then stood looking at Alice, without smiling, saying with her body that she had had enough of Alice and wanted to go. “Where are our new comrades?” She was on her way to the door.

  “They are upstairs.”

  “I doubt whether we shall see much of them. Still, they are all right.” She yawned, elaborately, and said, “Too much effort to go chasing out for a bath. Bert can put up with me as I am.”

  She went, and Alice sat still until she had heard her go up the stairs and close her door.

  Then Alice swiftly went out of the house. It was too early for what she was going to do. The street, though dark, had the feeling of the end of the day, with cars turning in to park, others leaving for the evening’s entertainments, a restlessness of lights. But the traffic was pounding up the main road with the intensity of daytime. She dawdled along to look into the garden of 45. It seemed to her that a start had been made on the rubbish; yes, it had, and some filled sacks stood by the hedge, the plastic gleaming blackly. She saw two figures bending over a patch towards the back; not far from the pit she and Pat and Jim had dug, though a big hedge stood between. Were they digging a pit, too? It was very dark back there. Lights from Joan Robbins’s top windows illuminated the higher levels of number 45, but did not reach the thicket of the overgrown garden. Alice loitered around for a while, and no one came in or out; she could not see Comrade Andrew through the downstairs windows, for the curtains were drawn.

  She went to the Underground, sat on the train planning what she was going to do, and walked up the big rich tree-lined road where Theresa and Anthony had their home. She stood on the pavement looking up at the windows of their kitchen on the third floor. She imagined that they were sitting there on opposite sides of the little table they used when they were alone. Delicious food. Her mouth was actually watering as she thought of Theresa’s cooking. If she rang the bell, she would hear Theresa’s voice: Darling Alice, is that you? Do come in. She would go up, join them in their long comfortable evening, their food. Her mother might even drop in. But at this thought rage grasped her and shook her with red-hot hands, so that her eyes went dark and she found herself walking fast up the road, and then along another, and another, walking as though she would explode if she stopped. She walked for a long time, while the feeling of the streets changed to night. She directed herself to her father’s street. She walked along it casually. The lights were on downstairs; every window spilled out light. Upstairs was a low glow from the room where the babies slept. Too early. She walked some more, around and back, past Theresa and Anthony, where kitchen windows were now dark, up to the top of the hill, down and around and into her father’s street. Now the lights were dark downstairs, but on in the bedroom. An hour or so ago, she had seen a stone of the right size and shape lying on the edge of a garden, and had put it into her pocket. She looked up and down the quiet street, where the lights made golden leafy spaces in the trees. A couple, arm in arm, came slowly up from the direction of the Underground. Old. An old couple. They were absorbed in the effort of walking, did not see Alice. Who went to the end of the street, nevertheless, and came back briskly on the impetus of her need, her decision. There was now not a soul in the street. As she reached her father’s house, she walked straight in at the gate, which she hardly bothered to open quietly, and flung the stone as hard as she could at the glass of the bedroom window. This movement, the single hard clear line of the throw, with her whole body behind it; and then the complete turn in the swing of the throw, and her bound out to the pavement—the speed and force of it, the skill, could never have been deduced from how Alice was, at any other time of the day or night, good girl Alice, her mother’s daughter.… She heard the shattering glass, a scream, her father’s shout. But she was gone; she had run down in the thick tree shadows to a side street, was down that and in the busy main street within sixty seconds after she had thrown the stone. She was breathing too hard, too noisily.… She stood looking into a window to slow her breath. She realised it was crammed full of television sets, and sedately moved to the next, to examine dresses, until she could walk into the supermarket without anyone’s remarking her breathing. There she stayed a good twenty minutes, choosing and rejecting. She took the loaded wire basket to the outlet, paid, filled her carrier bags, and went homewards by Underground. Since the stone had left her hand, she had scarcely thought about what might be happening in her father’s house.

  Now, seeing the sober blue gleam from the police station, she went in. At the reception desk, no one, but she could hear voices from a part of the room that was out of sight. She rang. No one came. She rang again, peremptorily. A young policewoman came out, took a good look at her, decided to be annoyed, and went back. Alice rang again. Now the young woman, as tidy and trim in her dark uniform as Alice in hers—jeans and bomber jacket—came slowly towards her, an annoyed, decided little face showing that words were being chosen to put Alice in her place.

  Alice said, “It might have been an emergency, how were you to know? As it happens, it isn’t. So you are lucky.”

  The policewoman’s face suddenly suffused with scarlet, she gasped, her eyes widened.
/>   Alice said, “I have come to report on an agreed squat—you know, short-term housing—surely you know …”

  “At this time of night?” the policewoman said smartly, in an attempt to regain mastery.

  “It can’t be much more than eleven?” said Alice. “I didn’t know you had a set time for dealing with housing.”

  The policewoman said, “Since you’re here, let’s do it. What do you want to report?”

  Alice spelled it out: “You people were around—a raid, three nights ago. You had not understood that it was an agreed tenancy—with the Council. I explained the situation. Now I’ve come to confirm it. It was agreed at the regular meeting of the Council, today.”

  “What’s the address.”

  “Number forty-three Old Mill Road.”

  A little flicker of something showed on the policewoman’s face. “Wait a minute,” she said and disappeared. Alice listened to voices, male and female.

  The policewoman came back, with a man; Alice recognised him as one of those from the other night. She was disappointed it was not the one who had kicked in the door.

  “Ah, good evening,” she addressed him kindly. “You remember, you were in forty-three Old Mill Road, the other night.”

  “Yes, I remember,” he said. Over his face quivered shades of the sniggers he had just been enjoying with his kind. “You were the people who had buried … who dug a pit.…”

  “Yes. We buried the faeces that the previous people had left upstairs. In buckets.”

  She studied the disgusted, prim, angry faces opposite her. Male and female. Two of a kind.

  She said, “I really cannot imagine why you should react like this. People have been burying their excrement in pits for thousands of years. They do now, over most of the world.…” As this did not seem adequately to reach them, “In this country, we have only generally had waterborne sewage for a hundred years or so. Much less in some areas.”

  “Yes, well, we have it now,” said the policewoman smartly.

  “That’s right,” said the policeman.