The Good Terrorist

by Doris Lessing

  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 preoccupation 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, 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.

  Jasper and Bert flung themselves in and Alice drove off. As far as they knew, no one had seen them.

  They drove back towards the centre of London, and into a pub at Shepherds’ Bush. It was about half past twelve. They positioned themselves where they could see the television, and sat drinking and eating. They were ravenous, all of them. There was nothing on the news, and the minute it was over, they left the pub and went home. They were all still hungry, and ready to drop with sleep. They bought a lot more take-away and ate it round the kitchen table with Faye, with Roberta, with Jocelin. There was a feeling of anticlimax. But they did not want to part; they needed one another, and to be together. They began drinking. Jasper and Bert, Alice and Caroline went off for a couple of hours’ sleep, at different times, but all felt, when alone in their rooms, a strong pull from the others to come back down. They drank steadily through the evening and then the night, not elated now but, rather, depressed. Not that they confessed it; though Faye was tearful, once or twice.

  As soon as the Underground was open, Jasper sprinted off to get the newspapers. He came back with them all, from the Times to the Sun. The kitchen was suddenly flapping with sheets of newsprint, which were turning more and more wildly.

  There was nothing there about their exploit! Not a word. They were furious. At last Faye found a little paragraph in the Guardian that said some hooligans had blown up the corner of a street in West Rowan Road, Bilstead.

  “Hooligans,” said Jocelin, cold and deadly and punishing, her eyes glinting. And she did not say—and there was no need, for it was in all their minds—We’ll show them.

  And so they went to bed. Saturday morning. Six o’clock.

  They slept through the day, and woke with that pleasantly abstracted feeling that comes after going without sleep and then enjoying long, restoring sleep.

  They discussed what was to be the scene of their next attempt. Various possibilities, but Jocelin said she needed more time to be sure of her means. Besides, Alice said, Philip would probably be buried on Monday or Tuesday; they should get that over first. She knew, from the silence that followed, from how they did not look at her—at least, not at once—that it had occurred to no one to go to Philip’s funeral. She said in the polite, indifferent voice she used at her most hurt, most betrayed, “I am going, if no one else is.” Jasper knew that voice, and said that he would go with her. He was pleased and even bashful, like a boy, at the grateful look she gave him. Faye said she loathed funerals, had never been to one. When people were dead, they were dead, she said. Caroline pointed out she had scarcely known Philip. Jocelin agreed.

  Somebody going out to buy cigarettes came back with the local Advertiser—the sheets given away on the streets or put through letter boxes or under doors. In it they found this piece:

  A bomb exploded at the corner of West Rowan Road early on Friday morning. A cement post was destroyed and another chipped. The blast damaged the brickwork of nearby houses, and blew the windows out of four of them. Mrs. Murray, a widow of 87, said she was sitting by her upstairs window and had seen three youths near the cement post. It was not yet light, and she could not see them properly. She thought they were having a bit of a lark. She went to lie on her bed, still dressed.

  “I sleep badly these days,” she said. She heard the explosion, and glass flying into her room. “Lucky I wasn’t still sitting at the window,” she confided to our reporter. Mrs. Murray sustained minor injuries from the glass and was treated for shock.

  “Oh, poor old thing,” quavered Alice. She did not look at Jocelin, for she knew the look would be reproachful.

  “Silly old cow,” said Faye. “Pity we didn’t do her in properly. We’d have done ’er a favour, we would. These old crones, their life isn’t worth living. ’Alf dead with boredom, they are, years before they go.”

  They decided to laugh, to placate her. Faye was in the grip of one of her violent, reminiscent moods—but provoked by what? They never knew. She only sat and trembled a little defiantly, not looking at them, not looking even at Roberta, who was sitting rather hunched, her silvered poll lowered, eyes down, suffering for her.

  “Well,” said Jocelin, “I think I know what to do. I’ll get it right this time.”

  She sounded angry, even bitter. They were all bitter with frustration. A paragraph in the local Advertiser! They felt it was a snub of them, another in a long series of belittlings of what they really were, of their real capacities, that had begun—like Faye’s violences—so long ago they could not remember. They were murderous with the need to impose themselves, prove their power.

  They went on drinking. Alice was sober, as usual, and apprehensive. It was Saturday, after all. And at eleven o’clock, as she had half expected, there was a loud knocking at the front door. She was up at once, sliding out of her seat, and at the kitchen door before the others had come to. She said to Jasper, “Keep out of sight, d’you hear? Don’t you come out, don’t …” To Bert, “Keep Jasper here. Don’t let him come out.” To Jocelin, “Is there anything they can find?” Jocelin ran past her and up the stairs. “It’s that little fascist. I knew he’d come back. He’s come to pay us back. I knew he would.”

  The knocking went on. She opened the door, saying crisply, using all her resources to be in command, to be Miss Mellings, “You’ll wake everyone in the street.”

  It was he, the fair, vicious young man, with cold baby eyes, the fluffy moustache. He was grinning and sadistic. He held something behind him, and there was a disgusting smell.

  Alice had some idea of what was coming, knew that nothing could be done to stop him. But the main thing was that Jasper should not come out, not in the mood he was in—there would be a fight, she knew it.

  Behind the policeman stood another. Both had schoolboy sniggers on their faces; neither looked at Alice—a bad sign.

  She said, “What do you want?”

  “It’s what you want,” said the little pig, and at this he and his colleague both guffawed, actually holding their hands to their mouths, like stage comedians.

  “It’s what you fancy,” said the second policeman, in a strong Scottish accent.

  “A little of what you fancy does you good,” said Alice’s enemy. Oh, how she loathed him, how she knew him, through and through! Oh, she knew what went on in police cells when he had someone helpless and at his mercy. But it mustn’t be Jasper.

  To provoke him, to draw his fire, she allowed herself to say in a weak, quavering girlish voice, “Oh, please, please go away.…” It was enough. It was just right.

  “This is what you like, isn’t it?” guffawed the little fascist, and flung, in a strong underarm action, a filled plastic bag into the hall.

  “Shit to shit,” said the other.

  The smell filled the hall, filled the house, as they ran away, laughing.

  Of course, it was everywhere, had splashed all over the place.

  The main thing was, Jasper had stayed inside.

  Stepping delicately, she went to the kitchen door, said, “If I were you I’d stay exactly where you are.”

  But they did not, appeared in a noisy, raging
group, full of imprecations and threats. Jasper would go up to the police station now. He would kill that fascist. He would burn down the police station. He would blow the place up.

  Faye was retching into the kitchen sink, aided by Roberta. Jocelin appeared on the landing, stood looking down, like a figure of Judgement or something, thought Alice, sick of them all. She knew who was going to clear up.

  “Shut up,” she said. “You don’t understand. This is good, it isn’t bad. He was going to get his own back for being made to look a fool the other day. We are lucky he’s done this. He could have come in and smashed everything up, couldn’t he? We’ve all seen that done before!”

  “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.”