The Good Terrorist

by Doris Lessing

  Sitting by herself in the kitchen with coffee, looking at the golden forsythia, she was aglow with health, energy, accomplishment. If Jasper had been here, she could not have done this, she would have had to adapt her pace to his.… Sometimes, very seldom, the thought came into her head: If I were alone, if I did not have Jasper to worry about … Rarely, and this was one of the times, she knew she was tied to him by what seemed like a tight cord of anxiety that vibrated to his needs, never hers; she knew how she was afflicted by him, how he weighed her down. Supposing she left him? (For he would never leave her!) If she found a place of her own, with other comrades, of course—why, she had moved so often, it was nothing, she could do it easily. Without Jasper. She sat quietly, her freckled girl’s hand just encompassing the big brown mug, as though it had alighted there, her eyes held by the blessed, blissful forsythia that filled the whole kitchen with energy, with pleasure. Without Jasper. She began to make uneasy, restless little movements, and her breathing became faster, then slowed to a sigh. How could she live without Jasper? It was true, what people said: they were like brother and sister. But supposing … The thought of another man made her give an incredulous little shake of the head. Not that plenty hadn’t come near, to ask, Why Jasper, why not me? Had said, But he doesn’t give you anything.

  But he did; he did! How could she leave him?

  She got up slowly from the table, washed up the mug, and stood for some time absolutely still, staring. She thought: I keep forgetting that time is going on. She was over thirty. Well over thirty, in her mid-thirties … Thirty-six, actually. If she was going to have a child, ever … No, no; real responsible revolutionaries should not have children. (But they did!)

  She flung the whole tangle of thought away from her and ran fast up the stairs, as though in the room some delight or pleasure awaited her, not the hard task of painting.

  She worked steadily on, until she had finished the first coat. Ceilings and walls were all fresh white where dirt and dinginess had been. Some people would leave it at that, but not Alice: there would be a second coat. She strode through the newspapers all over the floor, some of them with dates from the thirties, even the war. “Second Front!” in big black print slid away under another sheet, and “Attlee Promises …” She was not interested in what Attlee or anyone else had promised. Again in the kitchen, she rested herself, and thought: I’ll have finished our room by midday, I could do another. Well, I’d need help for the sitting room. The worst is the girls’ room, Faye and Roberta’s. I’ll just have a quick look now.…

  She was sure they had not come in, but knocked to make sure. Silence. She went in and, because her eyes were on ceilings and walls, did not realise at once that they were, after all, there, two low huddling mounds under blankets, shawls, and all kinds of bits and pieces of stuffs, mostly flowered. Roberta, disturbed but not knowing why, had stretched up arms to yawn, then sat up, womanly breasts lolling, and she stared with displeasure at Alice. Who said, “Sorry, I thought you were out.”

  “Well, we are not!” But the look of dislike, which Alice was afraid might be what Roberta did feel for her, was replaced with Roberta’s more amiable look, and she sat up, feeling for cigarettes. From the tense look of the bundle that was Faye, Alice knew she was awake. She explained reasonably, “I am painting our room. I’ll have finished in a couple of hours. I thought I could do yours today, if you like.”

  At this Faye sat up, flinging aside covers, in one movement, like a swimmer surfacing, and she glared at Alice as she had at poor Monica.

  “No,” she said, in a deadly, cold voice. “You will not paint this room, Alice. You will not. You will leave us alone.”

  “Faye,” said Roberta quietly. “It’s all right.”

  “No, it’s not all right,” shrilled Faye. “You paint your own fucking room, Alice. Just keep your shitty little hands off us, do you hear?”

  Alice, well used to such situations, was standing her ground, was not hurt, or offended, or any of the things she knew Faye wanted her to be. She was thinking: Full marks to Roberta. Just imagine, having to cope with Faye all the time.

  “It’s all right, Faye,” said Alice. “Well, of course, I won’t if you don’t want. But the room is pretty far gone, isn’t it?” And she looked with interest at the walls, which, in the strong morning light—the sun was only just leaving one of them—seemed that they might start sprouting mushrooms.

  They sat there side by side, Faye and Roberta, staring at Alice, so unlike Mary and Reggie that Alice was even amused—inside, of course, not letting it show. And her heart hurt for the girls. Mary and Reggie—those householders, as Alice contemptuously thought of them—sitting upright in their marriage bed, examining Alice, knew that nothing could ever really threaten them. But Roberta, for all her handsome, dark solidity, her motherliness, and Faye, like a flimsy chick or little bird huddling there behind Roberta’s large shoulder, were vulnerable. They knew that anything, even Alice, could advance over them like bulldozers, crush them to bits.

  “It’s all right,” said Alice gently, infinitely pitying. “Don’t worry. I’m sorry.” And she went out, hearing how Faye’s voice shrilled as the door shut, and how Roberta’s voice consoled and gentled.

  Alice returned to the second coat and her work of balancing on the trestles, and thought for the first time: I’m silly. They like it. Roberta, certainly Faye, like living in filth. She contemplated this idea for some time, steadily laying on a fresh film of white to strengthen the white already there, over her head, one knuckle just touching the ceiling to steady her. They like it. They need it. If they didn’t like it, they would have done something about it long ago. It’s easy to get things straight and clean, so if they didn’t, they wanted it.

  She allowed this thought plenty of time and scope. But Jim, no, he didn’t like it: Look how pleased he was when I started clearing up. He didn’t like all those horrible buckets up there, he just doesn’t know how to … Jim, he hasn’t got the expertise of the middle class (how often had she heard this at her mother’s house); he is helpless, he doesn’t know how things work. But Faye and Roberta—well, they aren’t middle-class, to put it mildly, but surely they … yes, they would have picked up the know-how, the expertise, so if they didn’t get things straight, it’s because they didn’t want to.

  Imagine wanting to live in that room, that awful room, with walls like dung heaps, what has happened in there, what has been done in the room? Well, probably it wasn’t Roberta. Faye: anything wrong, anything pitiful and awful, would have to be Faye, never Roberta. Probably when Faye had one of those turns of hers … all kinds of awful things happening, and then Roberta, coping: Darling Faye, it’s all right; don’t, Faye; please, Faye; relax, darling.…

  Alice finished the second coat at midday, washed the roller, put lids on the paint tins, took them to a room upstairs. While Philip slept, while Mary and Reggie slept, while Roberta and Faye slept (they had not come out of their room), she had painted a whole room. And done it well, no smears or skimped corners, and the papers were all bundled up ready for the dustbins, which would soon be full again.

  Alice cooked herself eggs, drank tea, and washed herself in cold water, standing in the bath. Alice then, all clean and brushed, and in a nice blouse with the small pink flowers and the neat round collar, walked out of the house and went next door, to number 45, as though she had been planning to do this all day.

  She was sure that Comrade Andrew would not still be in bed, whoever else was.

  About two-thirds of the sacks of refuse had gone, and the pit she had seen was as if it had never been, under a litter of dead leaves where a couple of blackbirds foraged.

  The door opened to show a young woman who was both tall and slender, and baggy and voluminous, for she wore battle dress in khaki and green, similar to an outfit that Alice had seen in an army-surplus shop not long ago.

  “I am Alice,” she said, as the girl said, “You are Alice,” and then, “I am Muriel.” Smiling nicely, Muriel st
ood aside for Alice to enter a hall where not a trace remained of the stacks of pamphlets, or whatever they were. Number 45 had no carpet on the floor; otherwise the two halls were the same. There was even a broom leaning in a corner.

  “Can I see Comrade Andrew?” Alice said, and Muriel replied, disappointingly, “I think he is asleep.” Seeing Alice’s commenting face, Muriel said swiftly, “But he only got back at three this morning, and those Channel boats …” Then, having given this information to which Alice felt she was not entitled, Muriel said, with a look of irritated guilt because of Alice’s critical face, that she would go and see. She went to the door of the room Alice had been in, and lifted her hand as if to knock. She scratched delicately, not to say intimately, with her forefinger. The cold and dreadful pain that she never told herself was jealousy went through Alice. She could have fainted with it. Certainly she was dizzy, and when her head cleared Muriel still stood there, complacently smiling, and scratching with that raised forefinger, like a bird’s beak. Yes, she did look like a goose, or, better still, a gosling, lumpy and unformed; like a German Royal, with a smooth, tight bosomy droop in front, and a face with protruding nose and gobbly lips. Which face was now turning a pleased smile towards Alice. “I can hear him now, he’s moving.” Speaking as though Comrade Andrew’s moving was in itself evidence of his superiority, which she was prepared generously to share with Alice. The door opened and Comrade Andrew stood there, blinking and red-eyed. He wore creased trousers and a white tee shirt that needed washing. Again Alice smelled spirits, and repressed disapproval: he must have been tired, coming in so late. He smiled at Muriel in a way Alice did not feel inclined to analyse, then saw Alice and nodded familiarly at her, indicating she should enter.

  She went into the room, while the man shut the door, smiling at Muriel, to exclude her.

  This room had been cleared of all but two of the great packages. A low folding bed stood against a wall, with a single red blanket on it. It was untidy, but, then, he had got straight out of the bed to answer the scratching. There was a pillow without a pillow slip, and the old-fashioned striped ticking looked greasy. This little scene of the bed was different from the impersonality of the rest of the room, and suggested a rank and even brutal masculinity.

  Yawning, not hiding it, the man sat down on an ancient easy chair on one side of the dead fireplace. She sat opposite in another.

  “I was in France,” he said easily. “Just a quick trip.”

  She found herself looking covertly at the bed, which had so much the air of being from a foreign country. Or perhaps from some different moral climate, like a war, or a revolution. He saw her examining the bed. He was still waking himself up. Suddenly he rose, went to the bed, tugged up the red blanket to lie straight, hiding the ugly pillow. He sat down again.

  He remarked, “I got rid of what you saw in that hole out there. It’s gone to where it can be of use.”

  “Oh, good,” said Alice indifferently. The point was, he might or might not have sent, or taken, “it”; but so what? She didn’t want to know.

  “You must be wondering what it was. Well, all I can say is, it is something of which a very small amount goes a very long way.”

  A fine contempt was rising in Alice, because of his clumsiness. She said sternly, “In my view, the less people know about such things, the better.” Meaning, the less she knew.

  His eyes narrowed and grew hard; then he stiffly smiled. “You’re right, comrade. I suppose I am off guard. I am a man who needs his sleep. Seven hours in the twenty-four, or I function less than my best.”

  Alice nodded, but she was examining him critically. She was finding him unimpressive. A stocky, stubby man. His hair, cut short, was flattened here and there, like an animal’s fur when it is out of sorts. A stale breath came from him, sour, which was not only because he might have drunk too much. He should be watching his weight.

  “I am glad you dropped in, Comrade Alice. I have been wanting to talk things over with you.” Here he got up and went to the desk, to look for cigarettes, and stood with his back to her, going through the business of putting one in his mouth and lighting it. This procedure, during which he seemed to be returning to himself, a quick, efficient, considered series of movements, subdued Alice’s criticism. She thought: Well, for all that, he’s the real thing; and she allowed herself to feel confidence in him.

  Then began a remarkable conversation, which went on for some time; it was getting on for five when she left. She knew that he was finding out from her what he needed to know—testing her—and that he must know, surely, that she allowed this, understood that it was happening. It was a dreamy, thoughtful sort of state that she was in, passive yet alert, storing up all kinds of impressions and ideas that she would examine later.

  He wanted her to sever herself from “all that lot there; you are made of much better stuff than they are”; and to embark on a career of—respectability. She was to apply for a job in a certain firm with national importance. She would get the job because he, Andrew, would see that she did, through contacts that were already established there. He referred several times to “our network.” Alice was to work in computers—he, Andrew, would arrange for her to have a quick course of training, which would be a sufficient basis on which an intelligent woman like her could build. Meanwhile, she would live in a flat, not a squat, lead an ordinary life, and wait.

  Alice listened modestly to all this, her lids kept down.

  She was thinking: And who is he? For whom would I be working? She had a good idea—but did it matter? The main point was, did she or did she not think that the whole ghastly superstructure should be brought down and got rid of, root and branch, once and for all? A clean sweep, that was what was needed. And Alice saw a landscape that had been flattened, was bare and bleak, with perhaps a little wan ash blowing over it. Yes. Get rid of the rotten superstructure to make way for better. For the new. Did it matter all that much who did the cleansing, the pulling down? Russia, Cuba, China, Uncle Tom Cobbley and all, they were welcome as far as she was concerned.

  But she said, after a while, in a pause that was there for her to fill, “I can’t, Andrew.” And suddenly, arising from her depths, “A bourgeois life? You want me to live a middle-class life?” And she sat there laughing at him—sneering, in fact—all alive with the energy of scorn, of contempt.

  He sat facing her, no longer tired now, or stale with sleep, watching her closely. He smiled gently.

  “Comrade Alice, there is nothing wrong with a comfortable life—it depends on what the aim is. You wouldn’t be living like that because of comfort, because of security”—he seemed to be making an effort to despise these words as much as she did—“but because of your aim. Our aim.”

  They stared at each other. Across a gulf. Not of ideology, but of temperament, of experience. She knew, from how he had said, “there is nothing wrong with a comfortable life,” that he felt none of the revulsion she did. On the contrary, he would like such a life. She knew this about him; how? She did not know how she knew what she did about people. She just did. This man would blow up a city without five seconds’ compunction—and she did not criticise him for that—but he would insist on good whisky, eat in good restaurants, like to travel first-class. He was working-class by origin, she thought; it had come hard to him. That was why. It was not for her to criticise him.

  She said, definitely, “It’s no good, Comrade Andrew. I couldn’t do it. I don’t mean the waiting—for orders—no matter how long it was.”

  “I believe you,” he said, nodding.

  “I wouldn’t mind how dangerous. But I couldn’t live like that. I would go mad.”

  He nodded, sat silent a little. Then, sounding for the first time humorous, even whimsical, “But, Comrade Alice, I have been getting daily, sometimes hourly, reports of your transformation of that pigsty there.” The dislike he put into that word was every bit as strong as her parents’ could ever have been. Leaning forward, he took her hand, smiling humorously, and
turned it so that it lay, the back upwards, in his strong square hand. Alice’s hand shrank a little, but she made it lie steady. She did not like being touched, not ever! Yet it was not so bad, his touch. The firmness of it—that made it possible. Along her knuckles, a crust of white paint.

  He gently replaced her hand on her knee and said, “You’ll have the place like a palace in no time.”

  “But you don’t understand. We aren’t going to live in that house as they do. We aren’t going to consume, and spend, and go soft and lie awake worrying about our pensions. We’re not like them. They’re disgusting.” Her voice was almost choked with loathing. Her face twisted with hatred.

  There was a long silence, during which he decided to leave this unpromising subject. (But, thought Alice, he would not be abandoning it for long!) He offered her some coffee. There was an electric kettle, and mugs and sugar and milk on a tray on the floor. He quickly, efficiently, made coffee.

  Then he began to talk about all the people in Number 43. His assessment of them, Alice noted, was the same as hers. That pleased and flattered her, confirmed her in her belief in herself. He spoke nicely about Jim, about Philip; but did not linger on questions. Bert he seemed to dismiss. Pat he wanted to know more about, where she had worked, her training. Alice said that she did not know, had not asked. “But, Comrade Alice,” he reproved her in the gentlest way, “it is important. Very important.”

  “Why is it? I haven’t had a job since I left university. I’ve done all right.”

  This caused a check or hitch in the flow of their talk; he was suppressing a need to expostulate. There’s a lot bourgeois about him, she was thinking, but only mildly critical because of her now established respect for him.