The Good Terrorist

Faye was going on. Christ, listen to her, she could get a job with the BBC, thought Alice. I wonder when she learned to do it so well. And what for?

‘I’ve met people like you before, Alice. In the course of my long career. You cannot let things be. You’re always keeping things up and making things work. If there’s a bit of dust in a corner you panic.’ Here Roberta let out a gruff laugh, and Alice primly smiled – she was thinking of all those pails. ‘Oh laugh. Laugh away.’ It seemed she could have ended there, for she hesitated, and the pretty cockney almost reclaimed her, with a pert flirtatious smile. But Faye shook her off, and sat upright in a cold fierce solitude, self-sufficient, so that Roberta’s again solicitous and seeking hand fell away. ‘I care about just one thing, Alice. And you listen to me, Roberta, you keep forgetting about me, what I am, what I really am like. I want to put an end to this shitty fucking filthy lying cruel hypocritical system. Do you understand? Well, do you, Roberta?’

She was not at all pretty, nor appealing, then, but pale and angry, and her mouth was tight and her eyes hard, and this – how she looked – took sentimentality away from what she said next. ‘I want to put an end to it all so that children don’t have a bad time, the way I did.’

Roberta sat there isolated, repudiated, unable to speak.

Alice said, ‘But Faye, do you think I’m not a revolutionary? I agree with every word you say.’

‘I don’t know anything about you, Comrade Alice. Except that you are a wonder with the housekeeping. And with the police. I like that. But just before you came, we took a decision, a joint decision. We decided we were going to work with the IRA. Have you forgotten?’

Alice was silent. She was thinking, But Jasper and Bert have been discussing things next door, surely? She said, carefully, ‘I understood that a comrade at 45 had indicated that…’

‘What comrade?’ demanded Roberta, coming to life again. ‘We know nothing about that.’

‘Oh,’ said Alice. ‘I thought…’

‘It’s just amateurish rubbish,’ said Faye. ‘Suddenly some unknown authority next door says this and that.’

‘I didn’t realize,’ said Alice. She had nothing to say. She was thinking: Was it Bert who led Jasper into…? Was it Jasper who…? I don’t remember Jasper doing anything like this before…

After some time, while no one said anything, but sat separate, thinking their own thoughts, Alice said, ‘Well, I agree. It is time we all got together and discussed it. Properly.’

‘Including the two new comrades?’ inquired Faye bitter.

‘No, no, just us. Just you and Roberta and Bert and Jasper and Pat and me.’

‘Not Philip and not Jim,’ said Roberta.

‘Then the six of us might go to a café or somewhere for a discussion,’ said Alice.

‘Quite so,’ said Faye. ‘We can’t have a meeting here, too many extraneous elements. Exactly.’

‘Well, perhaps we could borrow a room in 45,’ said Alice.

‘We could go and have a lovely picnic in the park, why not?’ said Faye, fiercely.

‘Why not?’ said Roberta, laughing. It could be seen that she was coming back into the ascendant, sat strong and confident, and sent glances towards Faye which would soon be returned.

Another silence, companionable, no hard feelings.

Alice said, ‘I have to ask this, it has to be raised. Are you two prepared to contribute anything to expenses?’

Faye, as expected, laughed. Roberta said quickly, reprovingly of Faye – which told Alice everything about the arguments that had gone on about this very subject – ‘We are going to pay for food and suchlike. You tell us how it works out.’

‘Very cheaply, with so many of us.’

‘Yes,’ said Faye. ‘That’s fair. But you can leave me out of all the gracious living. I’m not interested. Roberta can do what she likes.’ And she got up, smiled nicely at them both, and went out. Roberta made an instinctive movement to go after her but stayed put. She said, ‘I’ll make a contribution, Alice. I’m not like Faye – I’m not indifferent to my surroundings. You know, she really is,’ she said urgently, smiling, pressing on Alice Faye’s difference, her uniqueness, her preciousness.

‘Yes, I know.’

Roberta gave Alice two ten-pound notes, which she took, with no expression on her face, knowing that that would be it, and thanked Roberta, who fidgeted about, and then, unable to bear it, got up and went after Faye.

It was not yet ten. Mary had said, ring at one. Persuaded by the odours left on the air of the kitchen by Faye, by Roberta, she went up to the bathroom and forced herself into a cold bath where she crouched, unable actually to lower her buttocks into it, scrubbing and lathering. In a glow she dressed in clean clothes, bundled what she had taken off with Jasper’s clothes that needed a wash – determined by sniffing at them; and was on her way out to the launderette when she saw the old woman sitting under the tree in the next garden, all sharp jutting limbs, like a heap of sticks inside a jumble of cardigan and skirt. She urgently gesticulated at Alice, who went out into the street and in again at the neat white gate, smiling. She hoped that neighbours were watching.

‘She’s gone out and left me,’ said the old woman, struggling to sit up from her collapsed position. ‘They don’t care, none of them care.’ While she went on in a hoarse angry voice about the crimes of Joan Robbins, Alice deftly pulled up the old dear, thinking that she weighed no more than her bundle of laundry, and tidied her into a suitable position for taking the air.

Alice listened, smiling, until she had had enough; then she bent down, to shout into possibly dear ears, ‘But she’s very nice to bring you out here to sit in the garden, she doesn’t have to do that, does she?’ Then, as the ancient face seemed to struggle and erupt into expostulation, she said, ‘Never mind, I’ll bring you a nice cup of coffee.’

‘Tea, tea,’ urged the crone.

‘You’ll have to have coffee. We’re short of a teapot. Now you just sit there and wait.’

Alice went back, made sweet coffee, and brought it to the old woman. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Mrs Jackson, Jackson, that’s what I am called.’

‘My name is Alice and I live at 43.’

‘You sent away all those dirty people, good for you,’ said Mrs Jackson, who was already slipping down in her chair again, like a drunken old doll, the mug sliding sideways in her hand.

‘I’ll see you in a few minutes,’ said Alice, and ran off.

The launderette used up three-quarters of an hour. She collected her mug from Mrs Jackson, and then stood listening to Joan Robbins, who came out of her kitchen to tell Alice that she should not believe the old lady, who was wandering; there was not one reason in the world why she, Joan Robbins, should do a thing for her let alone help her down the stairs to the garden and up again and make her cups of coffee and…the complaints went on, while Mrs Jackson gesticulated to both of them that her tale was the right one. This little scene was being witnessed by several people in gardens and from windows and Alice let them have the full benefit of it.

With a wave she went back into her own house.

It was eleven, and a frail apparition wavered on the stairs: Philip, who said, ‘Alice, I don’t feel too good, I don’t feel…’

He arrived precariously beside her, and his face, that of a doleful but embarrassed angel, was presented to her for diagnosis and judgment, in perfect confidence of justice. Which she gave him: ‘I am not surprised, all that work on the roof. Well, forget it today, I’d take it easy.’

‘I would have gone with the others, but…’

‘Go into the sitting-room. Relax. I’ll bring you some coffee.’

She knew this sickness needed only affection, and when Philip was settled in a big chair, she took him coffee and sat with him, thinking: I have nothing better to do.

She had known that at some time she would have to listen to a tale of wrongs: this was the time. Philip had been promised jobs and not given them; had been turned off work without warning; had not been paid for work he had done; and this was told her in the hot aggrieved voice of one who had suffered inexplicable and indeed malevolent bad luck, whereas the reason for it all – that he was as fragile as a puppet – was not mentioned; could never, Alice was sure, be mentioned. ‘And do you know, Alice, he said to me, yes, you be here next Monday and I’ll have a job for you – do you know what that job was? He wanted me to load great cases of paint and stuff on to vans! I’m a builder and decorator, Alice! Well, I did it, I did it for four days and my back went out. I was in hospital for two weeks, and then in physio for a month. When I went to him and said he owed me for the four days he said I was the one in the wrong and…’ Alice listened and smiled, and her heart hurt for him. It seemed to her that a great deal had been asked of her heart that morning, one poor victim after another. Well, never mind, one day life would not be like this; it was capitalism that was so hard and hurtful and did not care about the pain of its victims.

At half-past twelve, when she was just thinking that she could go to the telephone booth, she heard someone coming in, and flew to intercept the police, the Council – who, this time?

It was Reggie who, smiling, was depositing cases in the hall. He said that Mary had slipped out from the meeting to telephone him the good news. And she would be over with another load in the lunch hour. The relief of it made Alice dizzy, then she wept. Standing against the wall by the door into the sitting-room, she had both hands up to her mouth as if in an extreme of grief, and her tight-shut eyes poured tears.

‘Why, Alice,’ said Reggie, coming to peer into her tragic face, and she had to repel friendly pats, pushes, and an arm around her shoulders.

‘Reaction,’ she muttered, diving off to the lavatory to be sick. When she came out, Philip and Reggie stood side by side, staring at her, ready to smile, and hoping she would allow them to.

And, at last, she smiled, then laughed, and could not stop.

Philip looked after her; and Reggie, embarrassed, sat by.

And she was embarrassed: What’s wrong with me, I must be sick too?

But Philip was no longer sick. He went off to measure up the broken windows for new glass, and Reggie climbed the stairs to look over the rooms. Alice stayed in the kitchen.

There Mary came to her with a carton of saucepans, crockery and an electric kettle. She sat herself down at the other end of the table. She was flushed and elated. Alice had heard her laughing with Reggie in the same way Faye and Roberta laughed; and sometimes, Bert and Pat. Two against the world. Intimacy.

Alice asked at once, ‘What are the conditions?’

‘It’s only for a year.’

Alice smiled and, on Mary’s look, explained, ‘It’s a lifetime.’

‘But of course they could extend. If they don’t decide to knock it down after all.’

‘They won’t knock it down,’ said Alice confidently.

‘Oh, don’t be so sure.’ Now Mary was being huffy on behalf of her other self, the Council.

Alice shrugged. She waited, eyes on Mary who, however, really did not seem to know why. At last Alice said, ‘But what has been decided about paying?’

‘Oh,’ said Mary, airily, ‘peanuts. They haven’t fixed the exact sum, but it’s nothing really. A nominal amount.’

‘Yes,’ said Alice, patient. ‘But how? A lump sum for the whole house?’

‘Oh no,’ said Mary, as though this were some unimaginably extortionate suggestion – such is the power of an official decision on the official mind – ‘Oh no. Benefit will be adjusted individually for everyone in the house. No one’s in work here, you said?’

‘That isn’t the point, Mary,’ said Alice, hoping that Mary would get the point. But she didn’t. Of course not; what in her experience could have prepared her for it?

‘Well, I suppose it would be easier if it was a lump sum, and people chipped in. Particularly as it is so small. Enough to cover the rates, not more than £10 or £15 a week. But that is not how it is done with us.’ Again spoke the official, in the decisive manner of one who knows that what is done must be the best possible way of doing it.

‘Are you sure,’ inquired Alice carefully, after a pause, ‘that there really is no possibility of changing the decision?’

‘Absolutely none,’ said Mary. What she was in fact saying was: ‘This is such a petty matter that there is no point in wasting a minute over it.’

And so unimportant was it to Mary, that she began to stroll around the kitchen, examining it, with a happy little smile, as if unwrapping a present.

Meanwhile Alice sat adjusting. Faye and Roberta would not agree, would leave at once. Jim, too. Jasper wouldn’t like it – he would demand that both he and Alice should leave. Well, all right, then they would all go. Why not? She had done it often enough! There was that empty house down in Stockwell…Jasper and she had been talking for months of squatting there. It would suit Faye and Roberta, because their women’s commune was somewhere down there. God only knew what other places, refuges, hideouts, they used. Alice had the impression there were several.

A pity about this house. And as Alice thought of leaving, sorrow crammed her throat, and she closed her eyes, suffering.

She said, sounding cold and final, because of the stiffness of her throat, ‘Well, that’s it. I’m sorry, but that’s it.’

‘What do you mean?’ Mary had whirled round, and stood, a tragedienne, hand at her throat. ‘I don’t know what you mean?’ she demanded, sounding fussy and hectoring.

‘Well, it doesn’t matter to you, does it? You and Reggie can stay here by yourselves. You can easily get friends in, I am sure.’

Mary collapsed into a chair. From being the happiest girl in the world, she had become a poor small creature, pale and fragile, a suppliant. ‘I don’t understand! What difference does it make? And of course Reggie and I wouldn’t stay here by ourselves.’

‘Why not?’

Mary coloured up, and stammered, ‘Well, of course…it goes without saying…they can’t know I am living here. Bob Hood and the others can’t know I’m in a squat.’

‘Oh well, that’s it then,’ said Alice, vague because she was already thinking of the problems of moving again.

‘I don’t understand,’ Mary was demanding. ‘Tell me, what is the problem.’

Alice sighed and said perfunctorily that there were reasons why some of them did not want their presence signposted.

‘Why,’ demanded Mary, ‘are they criminals?’ She had gone bright pink, and she sounded indignant.

Alice could see that this moment had been reached before, with Militant. Methods!

Alice said, sounding sarcastic because of the effort she was making to be patient, ‘Politics, Mary. Politics, don’t you see?’ She thought that with Jim, it was probably something criminal, but let it pass. Probably something criminal with Faye and Roberta, for that matter. ‘Don’t you see? People collect their Social Security in one borough, but live somewhere else. Sometimes in several other places.’

‘Oh. Oh, I see.’

Mary sat contemplating this perspective: skilled and dangerous revolutionaries on the run, in concealment. But seemed unable to take it in. She said, huffily, ‘Well, I suppose the decision could be adjusted. I must say, I think it is just as well the Council don’t know about this!’

‘Oh, you mean you can get the decision changed?’ Alice, reprieved, the house restored to her, sat smiling, her eyes full of tears. ‘Oh, good, that’s all right then.’

Mary stared at Alice. Alice, bashful, because of the depth of her emotion, smiled at Mary. This was the moment when Mary, from her repugnance for anything that did not measure up against that invisible yardstick of what was right, suitable and proper that she shared with Reggie, could have got up, stammered a few stiff, resentful apologies, and left. To tell Bob Hood that the Council had made a mistake, those people in No. 43…

But she smiled, and said, ‘I’ll have a word with Bob. I expect it will be all right. So everyone will chip in? I’ll get them to send the bills monthly, not quarterly. It will be easier to keep up with the payments.’ She chattered on for a bit, to restore herself and the authority of the Council, and then remarked that something would have to be done about No. 45. There were complaints all the time.

‘I’ll go next door and see them,’ said Alice.

Again the official reacted with, ‘It’s not your affair, is it? Why should you?’ Seeing that Alice shrugged, apparently indifferent, Mary said quickly, ‘Yes, perhaps you should…’

She went upstairs, with a look as irritated as Alice’s. Both women were thinking that it would not be easy, this combination of people, in the house.

Soon Mary went off with Reggie. He would drop her back at work, and they both would return later with another load. They were bringing in some furniture too, if no one minded. A bed, for instance.

Alice sat on, alone. Then Philip came to be given the money for the glass, and went off to buy it.

Alice was looking at herself during the last four days, and thinking: Have I been a bit crazy? After all, it is only a house…and what have I done? These two, Reggie and Mary – revolutionaries? They were with Militant? Crazy!

Slowly she recovered. Energy came seeping back. She thought of the others, on the battlefront down at Melstead. They were at work for the Cause; and she must be too! Soon she slipped out of the house, careful not to see whether the old lady was waving at her, and went into the main road, walked along the hedge that separated first their house from the road, and then No. 45. She turned into the little street that was the twin of theirs, and then stood where yesterday she had seen Bob Hood stand, looking in that refuse-filled garden.

She walked firmly up the path, prepared to be examined by whoever was there and was interested. She knocked. She waited a goodish time for the door to open. She caught a glimpse of the hall, the twin of theirs, but it was stacked with cartons and boxes. There was a single electric bulb. So they did have electricity.

In front of her was a man who impressed her at once as being foreign. It was not anything specific in his looks; it was just something about him. He was a Russian, she knew. This gave her a little frisson of satisfaction. It was power, the idea of it, that was exciting her. The man himself was in no way out of the ordinary, being broad – not fat, though he could easily be; not tall – in fact not much taller than herself. He had a broad blunt sort of face, and little shrewd grey eyes. He wore grey twill trousers that looked expensive and new; and a grey bush shirt that was buttoned and neat.

He could have been a soldier.

‘I am Alice Mellings. From next door.’

He nodded, unsmiling, and said, ‘Of course. Come in.’ He led the way through the stacks of boxes into the room that in their house was the sitting-room. Here it had the look of an office or a study. A table was set in the bay window; his chair had its back to the window, and that was because, Alice knew, he wanted to know who came in and out of the door; he did not want his back to it.

He sat down in this chair, and nodded to another, opposite it. Alice sat.

She was thinking, impressed: This one, he’s the real thing.

He was waiting for her to say something.

The one thing she knew now she could not say was: Have you been telling Jasper and Bert what to do? – which was what she wanted to know.

She said, ‘We have just got permission from the Council, we are short-term housing, you know.’ He nodded. ‘Well, we thought you should do the same. It makes life much easier, you see. And it means the police leave you alone.’

He seemed to relax, sat back, pushed a packet of cigarettes towards her, lit one himself as she shook her head, sat holding a lungful of smoke which he expelled in a single swift breath and said, ‘It’s up to the others. I don’t live here.’

Was that all he was going to say? It seemed so. Well, he had in fact said everything necessary. Alice, confused, hurried on, ‘There’s the rubbish. You’ll have to pay the dustmen…’ she faltered.

He had his eyes intent on her. She knew that he was seeing everything. It was a detached, cold scrutiny. Not hostile, not unfriendly, surely? She cried, ‘We’ve been given a year. That means, once the place is straight, we can give all our attention to – ‘ she censored ‘the revolution’, but said, ‘politics.’

He seemed not to have heard. To be waiting for more? For her to go? Floundering on, she said, ‘Of course not everyone in our squat…for instance, Roberta and Faye don’t think that…but why should you know about them. I’ll explain…’

He cut in, ‘I know about Roberta and Faye. Tell me, what are those two new ones like?’

She said, giving Reggie and Mary the credit due, ‘They were once members of Militant, but they didn’t like their methods.’ Here she dared to offer him a smile, hoping he would return it, but he said, ‘She works for the Council? On what sort of level?’

‘She doesn’t take decisions.’

He nodded. ‘And what about him? A chemist, I believe?’

‘Industrial chemist. He lost his job.’

‘Where?’

‘I didn’t ask.’ She added, ‘I’ll let you know.’

He nodded. Sat smoking. Sat straight to the table, both forearms on it, in front of him a sheet of paper on which his eyes seemed to make notes. He was like Lenin!

She thought: His voice. American. Yes, but something funny for an American voice. No, it was not the voice, the accent but something else, in him.

He didn’t say anything. The question, the anxiety, that were building up in her surfaced. ‘Jasper and Bert have gone down to Melstead. They went early.’

He nodded. Reached for a neatly-folded newspaper, and opened it in front of him, turning the pages. ‘Have you seen today’s Times?’

‘I don’t read the capitalist press.’

‘I think perhaps that is a pity,’ he commented after a pause. And pushed across the paper, indicating a paragraph.

Asked whether they welcomed these reinforcements to the picket line, Crabit, the strikers’ representative, said he wished the Trotskyists and the rent-a-picket crowd would keep away. They weren’t wanted. The workers could deal with things themselves.

Alice felt she could easily start crying again.

She said, ‘But this is a capitalist newspaper. They’re just trying to split the democratic forces, they want to disunite us.’ She was going to add: Can’t you see that? but could not bring it out.

He took back the paper and laid it where it had been. Now he was not looking at her.

‘Comrade Alice,’ he said, ‘there are more efficient ways of doing things, you know.’

He stood up. ‘I’ve got work to do.’ She was dismissed. He came out from behind the table and walked with her to the door and back through the hall to the front door.

‘Thank you for coming to see me,’ he said.

She stammered, ‘Would there be a room in this house we could use for a – discussion? You see, some of us are not sure about – some of the others.’

He said, ‘I’ll ask.’ He had not reacted as she had feared he would. Bringing it out had sounded so feeble…

He nodded, and at last, gave her a smile. She went off in a daze. She was telling herself, But he’s the real thing, he is.

He had not told her his name.

She walked along the short stretch of main road slowly, because in front of her, in the middle of the pavement, was a girl with a small child in a pushchair. The child looked like a fat plastic parcel with a pale podgy spotty face coming out of the top. He was whining on a high persistent note that set Alice’s teeth on edge. The girl looked tired and desperate. She had lank unwashed-looking pale hair. Alice could see from the set angry shoulders that she wanted to hit the child. Alice was waiting to walk faster when she could turn off into her own road, but the girl turned, still in the middle of the pavement. There she stopped, looking at the houses and, in particular, at No. 43. Alice went past her and in at her gate. She heard the girl say, ‘Do you live here? In this house?’