“Well, we did,” said Bert, loud and jolly and false, and the antagonism that was the truth of what they felt for each other—Mary and Reggie for them, they for Mary and Reggie—was on the surface, and they all knew it, and their hostile faces showed it. Briefly. The smiles and good will set in again.
“Whew,” said Bert, as the good-byes were being said. “I’m for a bath and a kip. That’s done me in.”
“I’m for a bath,” said Faye daintily, looking at Roberta, who would scrub her back and dry her afterwards.
“Well, good-bye, all you lot,” cried Reggie, cried Mary, jumping into the front of the van with many smiles and waves, and they drove off, leaving behind the reassuring picture of the group waving to them from the garden.
Of course they had paid, before leaving, the exact amount they owed, down to the last greasy penny piece.
And then, almost hysterical with suppressed laughter, the others raced into the kitchen, for tea, for sandwiches. It was one o’clock. Just the right time. Precisely and accurately correct.
Everything was going so well. Had gone well, events slotting into place, luck almost ostentatiously on their side: that the Council should have decided to bury Philip this morning; that Mary and Reggie should have chosen today for moving—the comrades could not have wished for better. And then the car: at the other squat, someone had mentioned—she could not have known how fortuitously—that the man in the next house had gone on holiday with his family, and that the car, an Escort, had been standing outside the house for a week, with another week to go. “He’s asking for it,” she had remarked. Of course the car was locked, but to Jasper—it was one of his talents—this was no obstacle.
Late last night, after coming back from Diva and the Indian restaurant, Bert and Jasper and Jocelin had slipped out of 43, and had gone by Underground back to the other squat. Not inside it: they did not want to involve any more people in this enterprise. Of course, they took the chance that their friends might be coming back from somewhere and see them. But three of them were away; they had said they would be. To open the car, start it, and drive off had taken Jasper and Bert a minute. They drove around Pimlico and Victoria, but did not find anything they liked the look of. They needed a safe place where they could fit in the explosives. They were watching the level of petrol: less than half a tank, and they did not want to have to go into a petrol station. At last, farther away from “the scene of the crime” than they wanted, they found a street of semidetached houses, and one of them was being modernised and rebuilt; at any rate, there were “For Sale” notices, and builders’ equipment. In front of each house was a garden, crammed with shrubs, and a shallow drive, not much more than a place to park. The three discussed this place while they drove around and about the streets. It wasn’t ideal, but they hadn’t seen anything better. The house that was the twin of the one they had in mind was presumably occupied, and although it was by then three in the morning, as usual there was this problem of insomniacs and night owls. Not to mention patrolling policemen. But it would soon be getting light.… Jocelin remarked that it was a pity they couldn’t wait until winter: a long dark night was just what they needed. They even suffered a low moment, thinking that the whole enterprise was misconceived, or at least being too hastily executed. Everything was so improvised! But it was precisely this quality that seemed to be aiding them—and which appealed to them, adding to their secret, rising excitement, making them want to laugh for no particular reason, and to make jokes, the sillier the better.
In the end this mood of theirs triumphed, and they drove back into the street, and turned into the little “drive” in front of the empty house. Jocelin needed about twenty minutes to insert the explosives into the car. Jasper ran to one end of the street, Bert to the other, to keep watch for the police. Jocelin was in fact concealed by shrubs from the street, if not from the higher windows of the occupied house. But its windows continued dark; she could not see anyone up there. She inserted the four devices, neatly, precisely, in their allotted places. She was listening for any signal from Bert and Jasper, but none came. She felt, as she worked, a good-natured contempt for these careless citizens, who could be so easily tricked, fooled.
At the end of twenty minutes, Jasper and Bert appeared again; she had not heard them come, though they were breathing heavily from running. In a moment the car was out of the shelter of the shrubs, and back at large in the streets. There wasn’t much traffic now. The sky was beginning to lighten. There didn’t seem to be a place to park the car anywhere. Cars filled every inch along the pavements’ edges, and again they had to drive about more than they wanted. The gauge showed well below the halfway mark. How were they to know whether it was accurate? Bert remarked that once he had for months a car with a gauge that showed nearly full when it was almost empty. At last a space, again farther away than they had hoped. They parked, and stood for a few seconds looking at the unremarkable car that was, potentially, a bomb.
They had then gone into an all-night café and eaten a meal together, though prudence should have said no: they were a noisy, noticeable group. “To hell with it,” had said Jocelin, and “Fuck that,” had said Bert.
They had come home in full daylight, at about five. No, Mary and Reggie were not yet up, which was the one thing they had been afraid of; luck stayed with them, they could not do wrong!
All this Alice learned now, while they ate her soup and some good wholemeal toast, because she had not woken until eight, and by then Mary and Reggie were up, and in the kitchen.
She felt as if she were not really a participant in this great enterprise, not considered a partner. Yet she could not say this, or even suggest it, for there was nothing specific she could take hold of to complain about. But as the six sat around that table, telling the story of the past night, or early morning, she noticed they scarcely looked at her. They were giving one another attention exactly in accordance with the roles each played: Faye and Jasper, Jocelin and Bert. Then Roberta, who was nearly as much on the outside as she, Alice, was.
Alice heard that it was Jasper who was going to drive the car into position. This did frighten her. He was not a good driver, tending to panic in an emergency. She had been taking it for granted, for some reason, that she would drive the car. She was a good driver, modest and skilful. At the least she wanted to say, “No, not Jasper, he shouldn’t do it; why not Faye? why not Roberta?” Both of them were good drivers. But her situation on the periphery of events seemed to bar her from this.
Everything had been decided, it seemed, that morning, while Mary and Reggie were out of the house fetching their van and she was at the funeral.
Jasper would drive the car. Faye would be with him because—so it seemed to Alice—she had demanded it as her right. Jocelin would go down with them now, to where the car was parked in the side street, and set the devices to go off at a time that would be chosen then, when she did it. For they were not to know exactly how long it would take them to get there, nor yet the state of the traffic. A quarter to five, they thought.
It was now that Alice learned that the bombs would be timed to go off, not set off by some electronic control. She was appalled. Every previous discussion had been in terms of Jocelin’s being somewhere close by and—able to see the state of affairs in the street and on the pavement—choosing an exact moment.
Alice asked, almost timidly, certainly having to make herself break into an animated, jokey exchange between Faye and Jasper, “But if the bombs just go off, then we aren’t going to know who’s going to be around, are we?”
At once each assumed a severe, dedicated look. She could see that this thought was in their minds, behind all the exhilaration, but that it was being suppressed, kept in its place.
Bert said, showing a lot of his white teeth, “ ‘Morality has to be subdued to the needs of Revolution.’ V. I. Lenin.” Everybody laughed, and Alice saw from the way they were suddenly not allowing their eyes to meet that they were uncomfortable.
“Anyway
,” said Faye, “it serves them right.”
This was one of “her” remarks, which they all habitually covered over, ignored, or—like Roberta now—soothed away.
“Faye, dear,” she said. “That’s not very nice.”
Faye tittered and tossed her head. Her eyes were glittering, her cheeks flushed.
Alice said stubbornly, “I don’t think it’s right. It’s not what we decided.”
Jocelin said soberly, taking her seriously, “You weren’t here when it was discussed. The thing is, these electronic controls aren’t absolutely reliable. Not the things I’ve got, anyway. Of course, there are good ones, but don’t forget, I’ve just put this and that together.”
“Then why not set them to go off in the middle of the night, not when people are around?”
“We did think about that. But it’s a question of how to make the greatest impact. A few windows in the middle of the night—and so what? But this way, it’ll be front page in all the papers tomorrow, and on the news tonight.”
Jocelin, having said, or pronounced this, looked away from Alice; and none of them looked at her. She understood now that she felt excluded not only because she had not been here at the crucial discussion, but because the crucial discussion had taken place “behind her back”—as she felt it—so that she could not be there to say things they did not want to hear. They had known—felt, if not thought—that she would protest, say no, say it was wrong; then they would have been forced to listen, to think. And so, without anyone’s actually planning it, the five had discussed it when she was well out of the way.
And where was Caroline?
It turned out that Caroline, learning that the bombs would be set to go off at a certain time regardless of possible casualties, had said she would have nothing to do with it.
It was Jocelin who told Alice this, in a nonjudging voice, but cold with disapproval. Cold, Alice thought, because of the need to put a distance between her and what she had felt when Caroline had said that. Oh yes, Alice knew what had happened; she could reconstruct the moment, from what was on all their faces now. The plan had nearly been given up, because of Caroline’s decisiveness. Now, as they remembered that argument—which they were all doing—their faces had identical looks of cold uneasiness.
If only I had been there, thought Alice, I could have backed Caroline up; between us we could have swung things the other way.
Alice sneaked a look—she did not dare more—at Bert, who knew she was likely to be looking at him! This was a repetition of Pat! Pat had said Bert was an amateur, at that meeting when the decision was first made to “join the IRA,” when a lot of the inhabitants of this house had simply left. Since then she had sometimes, affectionately, called him an amateur. Probably Caroline too had called him “amateur.”
Alice thought: Pat, Jim, Philip, and now Caroline. She was my friend, she was my real friend.
Already they were talking again. At two o’clock Jocelin, Faye, and Jasper would go off to the Underground, to the car, which there was no reason to believe would not be exactly where it had been left this morning. To set the explosives to go off would take Jocelin five minutes, Faye aiding her with her quick, clever fingers. No one need take any notice of three people with the bonnet of the car briefly up, making minor adjustments to something, rearranging the contents of the boot, checking the set of a wheel.
Jocelin was saying that there was no need for the others to be at the scene at all. There was nothing for them to do. Redundant. Adding to the danger. She suggested that Bert and Roberta and Alice should stay here, and put the kettle on at five-thirty. And how about Alice making some of her soup; they would all be dead with hunger by then.
“No,” said Faye, smiling, all her sharp little teeth showing. “Absolutely no.” Charming and pettish, spoiled and whimsical, she swam her eyes at Roberta, then at them, and said, “I must have my Roberta. I must. I must!”
“Absolutely,” said Bert, hearty. “And I and Alice will be there, too. No argument! Vote taken! That’s it, then.”
Laughter, even from Alice, who felt again one of the family.
Two o’clock. Off went Jocelin and Faye and Jasper.
Jasper did not remember to give Alice a smile or a look. He was in animated talk that looked like a flirtation—with Faye. They were all laughing loudly as they went off.
Roberta sat in a huddle at the table, silent, morose. Now it could be seen how much she did not like this, had not wanted Faye in this danger.
With the three gone, the remaining three were edgy, quiet, far from elated. They had to wait.
It would take Faye, Jasper, Jocelin ten minutes to get to the Underground. Then probably half an hour, depending on how the trains were running, to reach the car. Say three-quarters of an hour; there were two changes. Ten minutes from the Underground to the car. Then it was hard to judge exactly how long it would take to drive the car to the scene of the crime. The rush hour would not have started. But there might be a lot of traffic; who could tell? That journey could take fifteen minutes or, with bad luck, take forty. Somewhere between half past three and four o’clock, Jasper and Faye—not Jocelin; she would have been dropped off along the route—would be looking for a parking place outside the great hotel. They might have to drive round and round it for some time. There was also the question of traffic wardens. If they appeared, while Jasper and Faye were still driving about looking, then they would go away for a few minutes and come back after the wardens had gone. If the wardens appeared after the car was parked, it didn’t matter; the worst that could happen—Faye had said—was that they would be too close when the car exploded.
The bombs would have been set to go off at a quarter to five, later only if the traffic looked particularly bad.
There would be no point in Alice, Bert, and Roberta’s leaving until three, they thought, but at half past two they could not bear to wait even one more moment. As they got up from the table, there was a knock on the front door. A civilised knock, not the police.
“I’ll go,” said Alice. “It’s probably Felicity with something she’s giving me from Philip.” In Felicity’s house had been left a little marquetry table made by Philip, and she had said she would bring it round, for Alice. This was partly, as Alice knew, a need to rid herself of everything that reminded herself of Philip and the complex emotions that he evoked, and partly a generous impulse: she said that she felt Philip would have liked Alice to have it.
At the door stood a man Alice did not know. Having expected only Felicity and a table and a brief emotional moment, being literally ill with apprehension and excitement, she was not prepared to ask him in, or to deal with him or with any situation he was bringing.
“Is Miss Mellings in?” he enquired, and she automatically made the usual assessments from his voice: middle-class, British, an official of some kind, probably.
“I am Alice Mellings,” she said, “but, excuse me, I am in a very great hurry.”
“If you will be kind enough to give me a moment,” he said.
Oh, Christ, she was thinking, oh, shit, we have to leave: for now that the decision had been taken to go, she felt that not one more second should be wasted. “Well, can’t you come back?”
“Yes, I can come back. I certainly will. But in the meantime, you could assist me with some information.”
Alice thought that this might have something to do with the Council’s decision to do up the two houses; he might be someone from the Council. She was not really thinking at all. A flash of recognition, or of warning, that this man’s manner, his style, his way of talking were not appropriate to the Council situation, but to another one altogether, went past her.
“What?” she said hurriedly. “What is it?”
“Have you any information about a man called Andrew Connors?”
She stared at him, a wild inappropriate laughter threatening her. She said, with a sudden derisiveness, like a jeer, “Don’t tell me that you are still another phony bloody American? No”—she
caught herself up—“of course not; English accent; well, what’s in an accent?”
Her visitor looked startled, not surprisingly, and took his time in answering. At last he said, with a certain quiet authority that was not unlike Gordon O’Leary’s, “I agree, Miss Mellings, that accents are not always what they seem. But about Andrew Connors—I need some information about him.”
In her normal condition Alice at this point would have said: “Indeed? And who are you”—that kind of thing—but as it was she itched with the need for him to be gone, so that she and the others could leave. She was in a fever, a rage, of impatience. She said, “Well, what sort of information? I don’t know anything much. Anyway, why don’t you ask Gordon O’Leary, he seems to know everything.”
A pause. If she had had her wits about her, she might not have liked the way this man suddenly focussed on her: narrowed eyes; a close, expert inspection.
“Well, perhaps I will,” he remarked.
“Yes, and he can tell you about it all. Look, I do have to go in, I am so sorry.…” She was about to go in, shutting the door on him, when “niceness,” the hospitable person in Alice who could never bear to disappoint, or seem unfriendly, caused her to add, disastrously, “And when you see him, just tell him from me that if any other little consignment of matériel or anything else turns up here, we are going to throw it straight back into the street and leave it there.” She said this quite brightly, even smiling, as if she had said, “When you see him, say hello from me.”
She had turned away, was about to go in.
“Just a minute, Miss Mellings.”
“Oh, God,” she cried, “oh, please, I have to go.”
“All right. So you have said. But there is something I have to discuss with you.”
“Then let’s discuss it, but not now. Anyway, I have already discussed it. I keep saying, we are not taking orders from Russians or anybody else. You don’t seem to understand that, comrade … You didn’t tell me your name.”
The Good Terrorist Page 40