The Good Terrorist

by Doris Lessing

  “No,” Faye had said gallantly, “there’s nothing for it,” and had tried to drive faster, but was hemmed in by traffic.

  And when Jasper had got out but Faye had not, was it that Faye’s door had jammed? Had he been going to help her with the door?

  This was Roberta, and she sounded accusing.

  Jasper hesitated. Alice knew it was because he was trying to think how not to say something. When he looked like this, very pale but luminous, with a candid, suffering, helpless look, it meant he was going to lie. Or wanted to. He began to stutter, checked himself, and said simply, “When Faye drove into the empty space, she went too fast up onto the pavement, and then braked. She did not have on her seat belt. We did not have our seat belts on, you see.”

  “Of course not,” said Roberta, severely.

  “But she was jerked forward, and the driving wheel got the pit of her stomach. She didn’t have any breath, you see?” he said gently to Roberta. Alice was thinking, There, he’s kind, Jasper’s kind, he didn’t want to tell Roberta any of this.…

  Roberta was staring at Jasper, her mouth was open, and she was breathing badly. She was thinking, they all knew, that her Faye had been killed because of some silly little thing, something ridiculous; for the rest of her life Roberta would be thinking, incredulous, that Faye died because she drove too fast and too hard up onto a pavement.

  “I could see she couldn’t move,” said Jasper. “I got the car into reverse—I stretched my feet over, and did it. Then I said she must get out quickly. But she did not move. I think she was too sick to move. I got out to drag her out of the car from the driving side. And then the bomb went off.”

  “Five minutes too early,” said Roberta, this time accusing Jocelin. Who, like Jasper, had sat quiet, hesitating. There was something she did not want to say.

  Roberta asked quickly, “Who set the timing? Faye?”

  “Yes.”

  Roberta shook her head, as if saying No, no, no—to all of it—but then sat heavily silent, saying yes to tea, yes to sugar in it, yes to a biscuit. But she did not eat, or drink.

  Roberta, they all knew, would at some point come out of this passive state.

  Jasper was beginning to hurt, very badly. Bert ran upstairs, fetched painkillers for Jasper, sedatives for Roberta, and a radio.

  They listened to the news.

  “Five people have been killed, and twenty-three injured, some seriously, this afternoon, when a car exploded outside the Kubla Khan hotel, breaking all the windows down that side and damaging several parked cars. This monstrous and callous crime illustrated yet again the total lack of ordinary feeling by the IRA, who had claimed responsibility for the crime.”

  “Well, what about that,” said Jocelin. “What a fucking nerve.”

  “Absolutely,” said Alice, not connecting her telephone call with this development. Then, after a few minutes, listening to the indignation, the frustration of the others, she did connect it, and she realised that she could never tell them what she had done. Never. She never would be trusted again.

  Suppose Bert remembered that she had been gone off that pavement near to him for what must have been a good five minutes?

  It seemed he did not.

  At about ten o’clock Caroline came back. She was distant, even cold. She said she wouldn’t sit down; she was tired and wanted to sleep.

  She had heard the news, she said, when it seemed that Jasper was about to start the story.

  She made herself coffee, drank it standing, not looking at them.

  “Where’s Faye?” she asked, and they realised there was no possible way she could know.

  Roberta said, “Faye’s dead,” and began to cry. At first it was quiet, helpless weeping, and then she began to wail and moan.

  “Well, that was due,” said Bert, briskly.

  “Was she in the car, then?” asked Caroline, but she didn’t want to sound interested.

  Roberta began to howl, a sound like that which Alice seemed to carry about with her, in her chest; a raw, dismal sound.

  They checked that the windows were shut. They gave Roberta yet another sedative pill, and Jocelin and Alice assisted her upstairs. She was heavy, almost inert. They had to push her, support her, even order her to move her legs. Alice ran into the room first to make sure the windows were tight shut. Too late, when Roberta was already lying in the cosy heap of flowered stuffs and cushions that she had shared with Faye, did they remember that another room would have been better. They left her there, hoping that sleep would soon silence that awful weeping.

  When the two women returned to the kitchen, they joined Bert and Jasper at the table. Caroline sat on the window sill, keeping her distance from them. They were silent, trying not to be affected by that terrible noise just over their heads. Roberta was howling now, and didn’t sound human. They could have believed it was an animal up there: a wounded animal, or a dying one.

  They were all pale, and tense. Bert’s forehead had beads of sweat on it. On Jasper’s face was a cold little smile. Caroline seemed ill. Jocelin was the least disturbed of them.

  Bert kept sending appealing looks at Caroline, who would not look at him. Suddenly he pulled out of his top pocket, where it had been buttoned in over his heart, a piece of much-folded paper that had words scribbled on it. They all knew what the words were, for Bert had made sure they had the benefit of them, more than once. Now, having looked at each of them, one after another, carefully, to claim their attention—but Caroline still would not respond—he read, “The law should not abolish terror; to promise that would be self-delusion or deception; it should be substantiated and legalised in principle, clearly, without evasion or embellishment. The paragraph on terror should be formulated as widely as possible, since only revolutionary consciousness of justice and revolutionary conscience can determine the conditions of its application in practice.” A silence. They were not looking at him. “Lenin,” said Bert. “Lenin,” he insisted, with confidence.

  Alice had been watching him as he read, interested to see if that vision of him she had had outside the hotel would reappear—the leaden-faced corpselike Bert; but, on the contrary, the reading strengthened him, and he smiled as he read, his white teeth showing between healthy red lips.

  Jocelin said, “Thanks,” as a matter of form, but she was listening to Roberta. She lit a cigarette, and her hands were shaking. Seeing that they noticed this, she muttered, “Reaction, that’s all.”

  Jasper continued to smile. He might have been listening to distant music. Alice knew he was controlling the need to be sick. She thought he looked like a wounded soldier, with his bloodstained bandages.

  Then Caroline got off the window sill and said, “What has Russia’s Criminal Code got to do with us? Or Lenin, for that matter,” she added, daring them. “All amateur rubbish, if you ask me,” she said, angrily, and to Alice, “There was a message for you. A man came this afternoon. An American. He said he would be back to see you tomorrow. About four. Gordon O’Leary.”

  She did not look at Bert, but went out, without saying good-bye.

  “Gordon O’Leary again,” remarked Jocelin, as if it didn’t matter very much.

  “Bloody cheek,” said Alice mechanically, thinking she was in for a busy day, lunch with Peter Cecil, and then Gordon O’Leary in the afternoon.

  No one else said anything.

  Then Bert said, “I’m off, too. No point in hanging around.”

  “Me, too,” said Jasper.

  “You’re leaving?” said Alice, incredulously, to Jasper.

  “But we said we were going, the moment it was done,” said Jasper, not looking at her.

  She thought, Surely he can’t be planning to go off with Bert? Why, the moment Bert gets another woman, he’ll be a spare part again.

  She said nothing, and this made Jasper uneasy. Truculent, he asked her, “Well, how about you? Coming?”

  “I don’t think I’m going to leave,” she said, vaguely.

  “But you’ll h
ave to. Mary said this house was on the agenda again.”

  “Oh, they are always saying that,” said Alice.

  “Don’t be so bloody stupid,” said Jasper. “If not this month, then next, or the month after.”

  “Well, in the meantime, I’ll stay. And someone has to stay with Roberta.”

  This being unarguable, Jasper was silent for a little, and then, overcome again by Alice’s intransigence, he said, amazed, scandalised at her, “But, Alice, we agreed to scatter. It was a unanimous decision.” And he even grasped her wrist in the old bony urgent grip, and bent to stare into her face.

  That grip told her that she would not be without him for long. She smiled tranquilly up at that face, with its blue eyes in the creamy shallow lakes where the tiny blond freckles were, and said, “Let me know where you are, and we’ll keep in touch. Anyway, does anyone know where Roberta’s relatives are? She does have some, doesn’t she?”

  They knew only the hospital where Roberta’s mother was dying.

  “She won’t stay here,” said Jocelin, and Alice knew she was right.

  Bert went up to get his canvas sack with clothes in it, and some books. Jasper fetched his belongings. He had even less than Bert.

  Alice sat listlessly at the table, thinking of this house, this home she had made, deserted, empty, and the Council builders coming in.

  Jocelin said she would leave in the morning. Said she thought the bag full of explosive components would be safe enough until they were needed. Laughed. Went upstairs.

  Bert and Jasper lingered about the kitchen, at this last moment not wanting to leave. Not wanting to leave her, or the comfort she had made for them all? She did not choose to think about that. She remarked that she thought Roberta was quietening down.

  And certainly the howling from overhead was less. It stopped. The house was silent.

  Jasper bent quickly, and darted a kiss onto Alice’s cheek, as in a game of “last touch.” “See you,” he said, and went out, not looking to see if Bert was following. It wasn’t easy for him to leave her, thought Alice gratefully.

  Alice was alone in the kitchen.

  She listened to the news again. Well, they certainly were getting enough coverage; they had made their mark, all right.

  Five dead. Another one, a girl of fifteen, seemed likely to die. Over twenty injured.

  The midnight news devoted more than five minutes to the story.

  Alice slept, sitting at the table, head on her arms.

  She woke at about six, to see Roberta, shaky, sick, and awful, making herself tea.

  Roberta said she would pack her things and be off. She would go to see her mother. She should have gone before, of course, but Faye … Her voice shook, she bit her lips, controlled herself, and drank her tea. She went upstairs to pack, came down with various addresses where Alice could reach her, pencilled neatly on a slip of paper. At least Roberta was not floating out of her life forever.

  Roberta, unlike the others, owned a lot of things. She would abandon the actual furniture, but keep curtains, hangings, coverlets, pillows, mirrors, blankets. These were made into two great bundles, and she took them away in a taxi to the station.

  Alice listened to the 8:00 a.m. news.

  The IRA (in Ireland) said they had had nothing to do with yesterday’s bombing, and they would kneecap those who committed such acts in their name. They did not—said the IRA (in Ireland)—go in for murdering innocent people.

  Well, thought Alice, fancy that. And actually giggled. At the ludicrousness of it.

  Well, it didn’t matter what the IRA said; it was not for them to decide what comrades in this country did.

  Alice sat wondering if it was worthwhile making a trip over to Ireland so as to explain to the Irish comrades the English comrades’ point of view?

  This speculation was stopped by Jocelin’s coming down, with a backpack and a suitcase. She, too, drank tea, and heard that Roberta had departed without commenting, or even asking whether Roberta had asked her to keep in touch. She did not mention Bert and Jasper. About Caroline, Jocelin said that she was a good comrade but did not understand that sacrifices had to be made. She said this standing—she had not sat down—holding a mug of tea between both her hands, staring over it with red-rimmed eyes. Alice thought that she might very well have been crying.

  Jocelin departed, and Alice was alone in the house.

  She listened to the news again, and thought she would go out and get the newspapers. No, she would buy them when she went out to have lunch with Peter Cecil. Peter Cecil! The poor Russians, they didn’t have enough sense not to choose such an obvious name. It was almost like a joke, as if they were sending themselves up. (Here, deep inside Alice, there stirred a little uneasiness, a doubt, but she could not pin it down to anything, so suppressed it.)

  It was too early to leave for the restaurant.

  She sat on quietly there by herself in the silent house. In the betrayed house … She allowed her mind to move from room to room in it, praising her achievements, as if someone else had accomplished all that, but the work had not been properly acknowledged, and so she was doing it as something due to justice. The house might have been a wounded animal whose many hurts she had one by one cleaned and bandaged, and now it was well, and whole, and she was stroking it, pleased with it and herself.… Not quite whole, however; but she wasn’t going to think about what went on in the rafters. Poor house, she thought, full of tenderness, I hope someone is going to love it one day and look after it. When I leave here … It was silly to stay here, Jasper was right, but she would not leave yet, she would stay on a little longer: she felt that she could pull the walls of this house, her house, around her like a blanket, where she could snuggle, where she could feel safe.

  She really did feel very peculiar, not herself at all! Well, that was only natural. She needed to go for a good long walk, or perhaps drop over for a little chat with Joan Robbins? No, there’d only be a lot of silly talk about the IRA and the bombing. Ordinary people simply didn’t understand, and it was no good expecting them to.… Here the tenderness that had been washing around the place, inside and outside her, not knowing where it belonged, fastened itself on these ordinary people, and Alice sat with tears in her eyes, thinking, “Poor things, poor things, they simply don’t understand!”—as if she had her arms around all the poor silly ordinary people in the world.

  Now she began to think, but very carefully, about her parents. First, her father: no, he was too awful to waste time on, she wasn’t ever going to think about him again. Her mother … What would Dorothy say if she knew her daughter had been at the bombing? Not that Alice believed that she—Alice—had any real reason to feel bad; she hadn’t really been part of it. Alice sighed, a long shuddery breath, like a small child. This was something she could never, ever tell Dorothy, and knowing this made her feel severed from her mother as she had not done before: she might have said a final good-bye to her, instead of just having had one of their silly quarrels!

  Oh no, it was all too much, it was too difficult.… Here Alice got abruptly to her feet: it looked as if she was about to walk right out of the kitchen, and after that the house; but, having stood in a stiff, arrested pose for a minute or so, she sat down again, because she had remembered Peter Cecil. (Peter Cecil, ha ha!) She couldn’t go now, because there was this lunch. But perhaps I’ll tell him all about it, she thought, he’s a professional, I can talk about the bombing without all the rights and wrongs of everything coming into it, just as a job that was done, but was bungled a bit.… Funny, she had not thought until this moment that they had messed it up. And had they? After all, if publicity was the aim, then they had certainly achieved that! And Faye? But comrades knew their lives were at risk, the moment they undertook this sort of thing, decided to become terrorists.… She could not remember a point where she had said, “I am a terrorist, I don’t mind being killed.” (Here she was again impelled to get up from her chair, in a trapped panic movement, but again sat down.) I was
all the time waiting for something to start—she thought; and on her face came a small, scared, incredulous smile at the inappropriateness of it. Had she not believed that the bombing was serious, then? No, not really; she had gone along with it, while feeling it was not right—and behind that was the thought that serious work (whatever that might turn out to be) would come later. Well, what would they think about the bombing? (Meaning, the Russians.) There was no need to ask what Andrew would say. Or Gordon. She could imagine, only too vividly, their condemning faces.

  And Peter Cecil? For some reason, he was different. Of course, I wouldn’t give away any names, she thought: I’d just talk very carefully, tell him the story. I’d say I was told by someone in the know, and I wanted to have his opinion.

  Here various little warnings that her nerves had registered and were holding banked there till she could attend to them nearly surfaced, but retreated again. Meanwhile, she was thinking that Peter Cecil had a nice face. Yes. (She was looking at him in her mind’s eye, as he had stood there yesterday outside the door, she in a frenzy of impatience to be off.) A kind face. Not like those Russians, not at all like them, he was quite different.… And here the warnings came back, in a rush, screaming for attention, and she could no longer shut them out.

  Of course Peter Cecil was not like those Russians, because he wasn’t a Russian. He was … he was MI-6 or MI-5 or XYZ or one of those bloody things, it didn’t matter. The point was, he was English, English.

  At this thought, at the word, a soft sweet relief began to run through Alice, so strongly she had to recognise it and be embarrassed by it. And what of it! English or not, he was the enemy, he was—worse than the Russians—he was upper-class (Cecil, I ask you!), he was reactionary, he was a fascist. Well, not exactly a fascist, really, that was exaggerating. But English. One of us. She sat thinking about his Englishness, and what that meant, what she felt about it—that talking to him would be a very different thing from talking to those Russians, who simply got everything wrong, and that was because they didn’t know what we were really like: English. And what was the matter with feeling like this? Had they (the comrades) not decided to have no dealings with Russians, IRA Uncle Tom Cobbley and all, only with us?