The Good Terrorist

by Doris Lessing

  Dorothy slowly got up and went to stand opposite Zoë, as if accepting a challenge to fight. But now the moment had come, both were very pale and serious, and—much worse than shouting, which anyway usually ended in laughter—spoke in low voices that were breathless because of the awfulness of what was happening.

  “Listen, Dorothy. I’ve got to say this and you’ve got to listen. Even if you start hating me for it. I mean, even more than you do already.”

  “Rubbish,” said Dorothy, impatient.

  “Well, it amounts to that, doesn’t it? If everything I do or think is stupid in your eyes?”

  “Do you want to talk about that? I mean, seriously? People with different political opinions being stupid? That is what I used to think, certainly.”

  “Dorothy, don’t sidetrack me. I want to say this. Do you realise what you are doing, Dorothy? Because Cedric has left you …”

  “Five years ago now.”

  “Let me say it. Cedric left you, and you have to leave this house. And it’s all so awful, you just have to burn your boats, scorched-earth policy—just destroy everything as you leave. Because it won’t hurt so much if you do.”

  Here Zoë stood waiting—expectant, it seemed, of Dorothy’s grateful acceptance of her diagnosis.

  “You can’t be serious!” said Dorothy, keeping her voice low, though it sounded bitterly scornful. “You’ve come here to say that?”

  “Yes, I have. It’s important. You’ve got so extraordinary.…”

  “Strange as it might seem, the idea had occurred to me. You know, that psychotherapy of yours has made you very dim-witted, Zoë. You come out with something absolutely obvious as if it’s some revelation.”

  Zoë stood vibrating with anger. But she was not going to let her voice rise, either. “If it’s so obvious, then why do you go on doing it?”

  “There might be different ways of looking at it? Can you conceive there might be different ways of looking at a thing? I doubt it, the way you are.… Can’t even meet someone who reads a different newspaper.… Listen. My life has to change. Right? Strange as it might seem, I had taken all that into account, what you said. But I am doing a stock-taking—do you understand? I am thinking—do you see? I’m thinking about my life. That means I am examining a lot of things.”

  Dorothy and Zoë stood opposite each other, standing straight, like soldiers told to stand at ease, or a couple about to start the steps of an intricate dance.

  “And all you can see about me,” said Zoë, “is that we’ve got nothing in common. Is that all? Twenty years of being friends.”

  “What have we got in common now? We’ve been cooking meals and talking about our bloody children and discussing cholesterol and the body beautiful, and going on demonstrations.”

  “I haven’t noticed you going on any recently.”

  “No, not since I understood that demos and all that are just for fun.”

  “For fun, are they?”

  “Yes, that’s right. People go on demos because they get a kick out of it. Like picnics.”

  “You can’t be serious, Dorothy.”

  “Of course I’m serious. No one bothers to ask any longer if it achieves anything, going on marches or demos. They talk about how they feel. That’s what they care about. It’s for kicks. It’s for fun.”

  “Dorothy, that’s simply perverse.”

  “Why is it perverse if it’s true? You’ve just got to use your eyes and look—people picketing, or marching or demonstrating, they are having a marvellous time. And if they are beaten up by the police, so much the better.”

  A silence. Zoë was staring at Dorothy, bewildered. She really could not believe Dorothy meant it. As for Alice, who was standing there transfixed with flowers in her hands, staring at the two, and praying inwardly, “Oh, don’t, don’t, please don’t, please, please stop,” her mother had gone over the edge into destructiveness, and there was no point in even listening to her. Better take no notice.

  “I’ll tell you something, Zoë. All you people, marching up and down and waving banners and singing pathetic little songs—‘All You Need Is Love’—you are just a joke. To the people who really run this world, you are a joke. They watch you at it and think: Good, that’s keeping them busy.”

  “I just don’t believe you mean it.”

  “I don’t know why not: I keep saying it.”

  “You want to smash things up, you want to break with all your friends.”

  “Well, I just can’t talk to you any more. When I say anything I really think, you start weeping and wailing.”

  “Well, I care about our friendship ending, if you don’t.”

  “I haven’t the energy for all these rows and little scenes,” said Dorothy.

  Then Zoë had run out of the room, muttering something furious—but not loudly; not once had the voices of the two women risen. And Dorothy, with a pale, listless, dreary look, had gone back to the telephone and sat down, ready to make another call. But had not dialled at once. She had sat, head on hand, looking at the wall.

  “Shall I make you a cup of tea?” Alice had brightly offered.

  “No, thank you, Alice dear.”

  But she had gone into the kitchen, made tea, taken her mother a cup, put it by her where she still sat, not moving, head in her hand.

  Alice thought (standing on the pavement’s edge, though she did not know she was, not yet): She needs someone to look after her, she really does! No food to speak of in the refrigerator, drinking away there by herself. It’s not on. No, better if she came to live with us, at number 43. She could have those two big rooms upstairs, when Reggie and Mary move out. Through Alice’s mind floated the thought, immediately censored: Then I would have someone to talk to.

  Alice saw herself and her mother at that table in the big kitchen, newspapers and books all over the place. Dorothy would talk about the books, and Alice would listen to news about that world she herself could not for some reason bring herself to enter.

  This idea died a swift natural death.

  Alice came to herself, on the pavement’s edge. It was chilly. Overhead a sky full of hazy stars. Opposite, a yellow street lamp.

  It was about midnight now. Jasper and Bert and Caroline would not be home tonight; she had known that when they went off. And Bert and Caroline would be humping and bumping away together; all those flashing eye exchanges and atmospheres hadn’t been for nothing. And Jasper would (if he could) be in the room next to them.…

  Alice put this last thought out of her mind and entered the house quietly, not wanting to see Faye and Roberta, or Reggie and Mary. But no one was at home, except for Jocelin, still at work. Alice knocked, polite, and went in on a gruff sound that presumably was a “Come in.” On the long table in front of Jocelin were four nasty little devices, identical, ranged side by side, and looking rather like outsize and complicated sardine tins. Everywhere on the trestle were parts of bombs, now dismantled, and some white kitchen bowls holding the household chemicals. Presumably waiting to be returned to their proper packets in the kitchen? Jocelin was sorting items into little piles. She nodded at Alice, not smiling. She looked like a factory worker bending over an assembly bench, but no factory worker would get away with those stray pieces of pale greasy-looking hair falling over her face, and the old stained jersey with the hole in the elbow.

  “I’m going to bury these,” said Jocelin. “We can get them when we need them next.” She allowed Alice a smile. “No policeman is going to come digging around in this garden for a bit.”

  “Are those four enough?” Alice asked, but only to show she marvelled at Jocelin for planning to accomplish so much with so little, and Jocelin nodded, looking at the four items with a satisfied proprietorial air.

  She went to the window and stood with her back to Alice, arms akimbo, and turned to say, “It is dark enough. Come on.”

  The collection of components were swept—carelessly, since they were not dangerous now—into a plastic bag, enclosed in another and then
another, and they crept out into the night, not making a sound.

  They stood for a minute over the place where the police had started to dig, both thinking that that would be the safest place, but could not face it. A lilac bush near Joan Robbins’s fence was still heavy with scent, though its blossoms, black in this light, had gone bruised and blotched. It had some soft soil around it. No lights were on anywhere. Dark houses stood all about, eyeless for once. Making no noise, using a trowel, Alice dug out a good-sized hole, Jocelin’ slid the bundle in, together they covered it over, and in a moment they were inside the house, feeling warm towards each other, successful accomplices.

  In the kitchen, Jocelin said, “I forgot, there’s a message. Two, in fact. First, those Irishmen came back.” She sounded unworried, but Alice knew something very bad indeed had happened.

  “The ones that brought that … matériel?”

  “Right. They wanted to know whereabout on the rubbish tip the two cases were put.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said I didn’t know.”

  As far as Jocelin was concerned, it seemed, that was enough; she sat stirring sugar into her coffee, her mind probably on her handiwork, still ranged neatly side by side, on the trestle upstairs.

  “And then?”

  “ ‘Well, now, lady, that isn’t enough for us, is it? You can see that for yourself! We have our orders, and that’s a fact! The lady we saw last time we came, she must accompany us to the rubbish tip, and show us where the things were placed.’ ” This Jocelin delivered in an Irish accent, perfect, as far as Alice was concerned—so accurate that she was thinking: Irish? Is she? And if so, what does it mean? Does it matter? Here is another of us with a false voice!

  Jocelin went on, “And I said to them, ‘Are you coming back, then?’ They said: ‘And indeed we shall. Tomorrow morning, and that’s a fact.’ ” In her ordinary voice, Jocelin said, and as if all this had nothing to do with her, “So I suppose they will.”

  “Then I shan’t be here,” said Alice, sounding calm, yet feeling sick with panic. She had thought that their trip out to drop those packages had been the end of it all.

  “And the other thing was, Felicity came in. She said they have found Philip’s sister, and the funeral is on Wednesday.”

  “Then we can’t do what we planned on Wednesday.” They had decided that Wednesday was the best day for their feat of arms.

  Jocelin said, sounding critical, “First things first.”

  “But somebody must be at his funeral.”

  “You go. You aren’t essential for the plan.”

  “But I want to be there!”

  Jocelin shrugged. She lifted her mug, stood up, said “Good night,” and went upstairs. Probably to perfect the four explosive devices.

  Alice was going to bed when Mary and Reggie came in to say that they were moving out on Wednesday; they would hire a remover’s van.

  Alice was ready to laugh at the remover’s van, but remembered that two rooms and part of the attic and most of their bedroom were piled with furniture, and simply said, “Right. Will you need help?”

  “Won’t say no,” said Reggie, and off the two went upstairs. So it can’t be on Wednesday, said Alice to herself. She, too, went to bed. She woke early and left a note on the table saying that if the Irishmen turned up, they must be told that she, Alice, was away, and that no one knew where the packages were on the rubbish tip; they had probably been covered over long ago under new rubbish. She went out, thinking that presumably that Russian had told them to come. Well, she had sent him packing, hadn’t she? They would soon all get tired of coming; it was simply a question of sticking it out. She pushed her anxiety down and out of sight.

  It was a pleasant morning, sunny, not cold. She walked around the streets, found it was only ten, sat for a long time in a little restaurant, eating a breakfast she did not really want. Eleven-thirty. She thought of dropping in to see her mother again, actually got to the door, and then, realising she would see that meagre little sitting room and her mother boxed into it, with the two shabby, once-splendid armchairs, lost heart and went off across London to visit a squat where lived a girl she had known in Birmingham. The girl had been at the CCU Congress. They talked about having another one, perhaps next month. The house was perfect for a Congress. Alice thought, her heart cold, that in a month they would all be gone from that house: it had been taken for granted everyone would scatter. Who knew where they would all be?

  She got back at five. Jasper and Bert and Caroline were in the kitchen, eating take-away. One glance was enough to tell Alice that she had been right: Bert and Caroline could now be considered a couple. But Alice decided not to care.

  The Irishmen, she was told, had not been again.

  Faye and Roberta had come in, and the six—Jasper, Bert, Caroline, with Jocelin—had decided that the job was to go ahead as planned, on Wednesday afternoon. In the morning they would help Mary and Reggie with loading the removal van. Alice could go to the funeral.

  “But I don’t know if the funeral is morning or afternoon,” said Alice.

  No one answered. It was not important. Alice thought it would be just like that if she left the squat: she would never be mentioned, would be forgotten, like Jim, like Pat. Like Philip. No, Jasper would be after her, she knew that; the others might forget her, but Jasper could not.

  On Tuesday they all went down to the scene of the crime—their joke—and walked around and about the great hotel, part of the crowds. Of course, they took trouble to dress the part. Jocelin, it seemed, did possess more than her jeans and sweater. She wore a dress of pinkish linen that looked as if it had been bought in Knightsbridge. Caroline, similarly, acquired the protective colouring of a beige well-cut skirt and a yellow shirt. Roberta, out of principle, refused to change, but looked unremarkable in her dark-blue boiler suit. Faye had on a fluffy white blouse and jeans, and was noticeable not only because she was so pretty, but because she was aflame with secret triumph, which made her chatter and display herself. She was the essence of her cockney self, witty and outrageous, but while they laughed, they kept saying to her, “Calm down, be quiet,” and so on, while Roberta was anxiously in attendance on her. Jasper, too, had a look of elation which made him, thought Alice, rather beautiful. He seemed serenely above the scene of thronging shoppers and tourists, superior to everything; was in a daze of imaginings about how—and so soon—they would prove themselves here, in this shameless, luxurious scene. After their successful reconnaissance, they all went in to have tea.

  Then they took a taxi to Hammersmith, where they saw Diva, a film some of them had seen already more than once. They had supper together in their Indian restaurant near home, agreeing they must go to bed early. They told Reggie and Mary it was because of all the hard work they meant to do tomorrow hefting furniture—this, they could see, seemed reasonable to the couple, for whom the business of moving their furniture, reinstalling their furniture, arranging their furniture was the only thing worthy to occupy their minds. Though Mary did remark, almost absent-mindedly, that this house was on the agenda for next week, and there was a recommendation from Bob Hood that “matters should be expedited.” It was a shame, remarked Mary, that these lovely houses were not being used.

  Alice became suddenly so angry that she was hardly able to bring out, “What a pity that the Council was prepared to leave them empty for six years.”

  Mary could have flared up, as Alice had done. She went red, while the official and the human being fought inside her, and then she said, with a laugh that was both apologetic and offended, “Yes, I know, it was awful letting things slide for so long.”

  “But it will be all right now,” said Alice, not at all mollified. “There will be some people living in them.”

  Mary hesitated, then went out of the kitchen, followed by Reggie. Written all over him was, Thank God, I’ll be out of here tomorrow!

  Philip’s funeral was at ten o’clock on Wednesday. At nine, leaving the others boi
sterously loading furniture into a van that seemed to fill the street, Alice went to Felicity’s, where she found two other people who had liked Philip when he lived there. The four went to the crematorium, in Felicity’s car. Philip’s sister was there with her husband. They had come down, it seemed, from Aberdeen. Philip was Scottish, a fact that till this moment had not emerged.

  The sister was a pale thin little thing, with a dogged look to her, like Philip: determined not to be blown away by the hostile winds of life. Her husband was a small, pale young man with weak blue eyes and a straggly moustache. They both had strong Scottish accents. This couple seemed anxious to avoid Philip’s four friends, or at least spoke as little as possible, then, politeness satisfied, went to sit by themselves in the “chapel.” It was a proper religious service. Neither Felicity nor Alice, nor the other two, a young man and a girl who had once helped Philip paint out a living room, knew whether Philip had been religious. Perhaps this was only bureaucracy taking its course. And the sister and her husband did not enlighten them. The coffin, large, brown, and shiny, which had to make anyone who had known Philip think of how his frail little body must be lying, like a dead moth, within it, stood full in their view, while a Church of England clergyman did his best to give life to these words that he intoned so often.

  And that was that. Philip’s sister said a hurried good-bye. Her eyes were red. Her husband only nodded from a distance. The four drove back. The van stood again outside number 43, having made the journey once and returned. “We had no idea we had so much stuff,” called Mary gaily, standing in the back of the van, her arms loaded with a carton of china bought by Reggie in a house sale.