The Good Terrorist

‘They are upstairs.’

‘I doubt whether we shall see much of them. Still, they are all right.’ She yawned, elaborately, and said, ‘Too much effort to go chasing out for a bath. Bert can put up with me as I am.’

She went, and Alice sat still until she had heard her go up the stairs, and the closing of her door.

Then she swiftly went out of the house. It was too early for what she was going to do. The street, though dark, had the feeling of the end of the day, with cars turning in to park, others leaving for the evening entertainments, a rest-lessness of lights. But the traffic was pounding up the main road with the intensity of daytime. She dawdled along to look into the garden of 45. It seemed to her that a start had been made on the rubbish; yes, it had, and some filled sacks stood by the hedge, the plastic gleaming blackly. She saw two figures bending over a patch towards the back; not far from the pit she and Pat and Jim had dug, though a big hedge stood between. Were they digging a pit too? It was very dark back there. Lights from Joan Robbins’s top windows illuminated the higher levels of No. 45, but did not reach the thickets of the overgrown garden. Alice loitered around for a while, and no one came in or out, and she could not see Comrade Andrew through the downstairs windows, for the curtains were drawn.

She went to the Underground, sat on the train planning what she was going to do, and walked up the big rich treelined road where Theresa and Anthony had their home. She stood on the pavement looking up at the windows of their kitchen on the third floor. She imagined that they were sitting there on opposite sides of the little table they used when they were alone. Delicious food. Her mouth was actually watering as she thought of Theresa’s cooking. If she rang the bell, she would hear Theresa’s voice: Darling Alice, is that you? Do come in. She would go up, join them in their long comfortable evening, their food. Her mother might even drop in. But at this thought rage grasped her and shook her with red-hot hands, so that her eyes went dark and she found herself walking fast up the road, and then along another, and another, walking as though she would explode if she stopped. She walked for a long time, while the feeling of the streets changed to night. She directed herself to her father’s street. She walked along it casually. The lights were on downstairs, every window spilled out light. Upstairs was a low glow from the room where the babies slept. Too early. She walked some more, around and back, past Theresa and Anthony, where kitchen windows were now dark, up to the top of the hill, down and around and into her father’s street. Now the lights were dark downstairs, but on in the bedroom. An hour or so ago, she had seen a stone of the right size and shape lying on the edge of a garden, and had put it into her pocket. She looked up and down the quiet street, where the lights made golden leafy spaces in the trees. A couple, arm-in-arm, came slowly up from the direction of the Underground. Old. An old couple. They were absorbed in the effort of walking, did not see Alice. Who went to the end of the street, nevertheless, and came back briskly on the impetus of her need, her decision. There was now not a soul in the street. As she reached her father’s house she walked straight in at the gate, which she hardly bothered to open quietly, and flung the stone as hard as she could at the glass of the bedroom window. This movement, the single hard clear line of the throw, with her whole body behind it; and then the complete turn in the swing of the throw, and her bound out to the pavement – the speed and force of it, the skill, could never have been deduced from how Alice was, at any other time of the day or night, good-girl Alice, her mother’s daughter…She heard the shattering glass, a scream, her father’s shout. But she was gone, she had run down in the thick tree shadows to a side street, was down that and in the busy main street within sixty seconds after she had thrown the stone.

She was breathing too hard, too noisily…she stood looking into a window to slow her breath. She realized it was crammed full of television sets, and sedately moved to the next, to examine dresses, until she could walk into the supermarket without anyone remarking on her breathing. There she stayed a good twenty minutes, choosing and rejecting. She took the loaded wire basket to the outlet, paid, filled her carrier-bags, and went homewards by Underground. Since the stone had left her hand she had scarcely thought about what might be happening in her father’s house.

Now, seeing the sober blue gleam from the police station she went in. At the Reception Desk, no one, but she could hear voices from a part of the room that was out of sight. She rang. No one came. She rang again, peremptorily. A young policewoman came out, took a good look at her, decided to be annoyed, and went back. Alice rang again. Now the young woman, as tidy and trim in her dark uniform as Alice in hers – jeans and bomber jacket – came slowly towards her, an annoyed, decided little face showing that words were being chosen to put Alice in her place.

Alice said, ‘It might have been an emergency, how were you to know? As it happens, it isn’t. So you are lucky.’

The policewoman’s face suddenly suffused with scarlet, she gasped, her eyes widened.

Alice said, ‘I have come to report on an agreed squat – you know, short-term housing – surely you know…’

‘At this time of night?’ the policewoman said smartly, in an attempt to regain mastery.

It can’t be much more than eleven,’ said Alice. ‘I didn’t know you had a set time for dealing with housing.’

The policewoman said, ‘Since you’re here, let’s do it. What do you want to report?’

Alice spelled it out. ‘You people were around – a raid, three nights ago. You had not understood that it was an agreed tenancy – with the Council. I explained the situation. Now I’ve come to confirm it. It was agreed at the regular meeting of the Council, today.’

‘What’s the address?’

‘No. 43 Old Mill Road.’

A little flicker of something showed on the policewoman’s face. ‘Wait a minute,’ she said and disappeared. Alice listened to voices, male and female.

The policewoman came back, with a man; Alice recognized him as one of those from the other night. She was disappointed it was not the one who had kicked in the door.

‘Ah, good evening,’ she addressed him kindly. ‘You remember, you were in 43 Old Mill Road, the other night.’

‘Yes, I remember,’ he said. Over his face quivered shades of the sniggers he had just been enjoying with his mates. ‘You were the people who had buried – who dug a pit…’

‘Yes. We buried the faeces that the previous people had left upstairs. In buckets.’

She studied the disgusted, prim, angry faces opposite her. Male and female. Two of a kind.

She said, ‘I really cannot imagine why you should react like this. People have been burying their excrement in pits for thousands of years. They do now, over most of the world…’ As this did not seem adequately to reach them, ‘In this country, we have only generally had waterborne sewage for a hundred years or so. Much less in some areas.’

‘Yes, well, we have it now,’ said the policewoman smartly.

‘That’s right,’ said the policeman.

‘It seems to me we did the responsible and the hygienic thing. Nature will take care of it soon enough.’

‘Well, don’t do it again,’ said the policeman.

‘We won’t have any need to, will we?’ said Alice sweetly. ‘What I came to say was, if you check with the Council, you will have confirmation: No. 43 is now an agreed squat. An agreed short-term tenancy.’

The policewoman reached for a form. Her colleague went back to join his mates. Soon there was a burst of loud scandalized laughter. Then another. The policewoman, diligently filling in her form, tightened her lips, Alice could not make out whether in criticism or not.

‘Small things amuse small minds,’ said Alice.

The policewoman shot her a look which said that it was not for her to say so, even if she, herself, had been thinking it.

Alice smiled at her, woman to woman. ‘And so,’ she said, ‘that’s it. No. 43 is now legal, and in order. Any more raids and you’ll be stepping well over the line.’

‘That’s for us to say, I think,’ said the policewoman, with a tight little smile.

‘No,’ said Alice. ‘As it happens, no. I think not. There will certainly be no further complaints from the neighbours.’

‘Well, we’ll have to hope not,’ and the policewoman retreated to join her own in the back room.

Alice, satisfied, went out, and home, directing herself to pass 45. No one in the garden now. But in the deep shade in the angle of the two hedges she could just make out that a pit had been dug. She could not resist. For the second time that night she slid silently in at a garden gate. 45 looked deserted; all the windows were dark. The pit was about four feet deep. There was a strong sweet earthy smell from the slopes of soil around its edges. The bottom looked very flat – water? She bent to make sure. A case, or carton, something like that, had been placed at the bottom. She swiftly straightened, looked around. Consciously enjoying her condition, the sense of danger, of threat, she thought: They will be watching from those curtains or upstairs – I would be, in their position. What a risky thing to do, though; she turned to examine the strategy of the operation. No, perhaps it was all right. Whereas the digging of their own pit on the other side of the hedge could have been observed by the occupants of three houses and by anyone about in Joan Robbins’s house, here, two sides were tall hedge, the third the house. Between here and the gate were shrubs and bushes. Joan Robbins’s upper windows were dark. Over the road, set back in its own garden, a house; and certainly anyone could see what they liked from the upstairs windows. Which were still dark; the people had not yet gone upstairs to bed. She had seen what she needed to see. She would have liked to stay, the sweet earthy smells and the impetus of risk firing her blood, but she moved, swift as a shadow, to the front door and knocked, gently. It was opened at once. By Andrew.

‘I knew you must be watching,’ she said. ‘But I’ve come to say that I told the police station 43 is an agreed squat. So they will be quite prepared to accept it when you say you are.’

Her pulses were beating, her heart racing, every cell dancing and alert. She was smiling, she knew; oh, this was the opposite of ‘her look’, when she felt like this, as if she’d drunk an extra-fine distilled essence of danger, and could have stepped out among the stars or run thirty miles.

She saw the short, powerful figure come out of the dark of the hall, to where she could examine his face in the light from the streetlamps. It was serious, set in purpose, and the sight of it gave her an agreeable feeling of submission to higher powers.

‘I’ve buried something – an emergency,’ he said. ‘It will be gone in a day or two. You understand.’

‘Perfectly,’ smiled Alice.

He hesitated. Came out further. She felt powerful hands on her upper arms. Did she smell spirits? Vodka? Whisky.

‘I am asking you to keep it to yourself.’

She nodded. ‘Of course.’

‘I mean, no one else.’ She nodded, thinking that if only one person was to know in 43, nevertheless in this house surely several must?

He said, ‘I am going to trust you completely, Alice.’ He allowed her his brief tight smile. ‘Because I have to. No one in this house knows but myself. They have all gone out. I took the opportunity to – make use of a very convenient cache. A temporary cache. I was going to fill in another layer of earth, and then put in some rubbish.’

Alice stood smiling, disappointed in him, if not in her own state; she was still floating. She thought that what he had said was likely to be either partially or totally untrue, but it was not her concern. He still gripped her by her upper arms which, however, were on the point of rejecting this persistent, warning masculine pressure. He seemed to sense this, for his hands dropped.

‘I have to say that I have a different opinion of you than of some of the others from your house. I trust you.’

Alice did not say anything. She simply nodded.

He went indoors, nodding at her, but did not smile.

She was going to have to think it out. Better, sleep on it.

Her elation was going, fast. She thought: But tomorrow Jasper and I are going out together, and then…it would be a whole evening of this fine racing thrilling excitement.

But poor Jasper, no, he would not feel like it, probably, if he had spent the night in the cells. What was Enfield Police Station like? She could not remember any reports of it.

From the main road she saw outside No. 43 gate a slight drooping figure. An odd posture, bent over – it was the girl of this afternoon, and she was going to throw something at the windows of the sitting-room. A stone! Alice thought: Throwing underhand, pathetic! – and this scorn refuelled her. Alive and sparkling, she arrived by the girl, who turned pathetically to face her, with an ‘Oh’.

‘Better drop that,’ advised Alice, and the girl did so.

In this light she had a washed-out look: colourless hair and face, even lips and eyes. Whose pupils were enormous, Alice could see.

‘Where’s your baby?’ hectored Alice.

‘My husband is there. He’s drunk,’ she said and wailed, then stopped herself. She was trembling.

Alice said, ‘Why don’t you go to the short-term housing people? You know, there are people who advise on squats.’

‘I did.’ She began weeping, a helpless, fast, hiccuping weeping, like a child who has already wept for hours.

‘Look,’ said Alice, feeling in herself the beginnings of an all too familiar weight and drag. ‘You have to do something for yourself, you know. It’s no good just waiting for people to do something for you. You must find a squat for yourself. Move in. Take it over. Then go to the Council…Stop it,’ she raged, as the girl sobbed on. ‘What’s the good of that?’

The girl subdued her weeping, and stood, head bent, before Alice, waiting for her verdict, or sentence.

Oh God, thought Alice. What’s the use? I know this one inside out! She’s just like Sarah, in Liverpool, and that poor soul Betty. An official has just to take one look, and know she’ll give in at once.

An official…why, there was an official here, in this house; there was Mary Williams. Alice stood marvelling at this thought: that only a couple of days ago Mary Williams had seemed to hold her own fate – Alice’s – in her hands; and now Alice had difficulty in even remembering her status. She felt for Mary, in fact, the fine contempt due to someone or to an institution that has given way too easily. But Mary could be appealed to on behalf of this – child. Alice again took in the collapsed look of her, the passivity, and thought: What is the use, she’s one of those who…

It was exasperation that was fuelling her now.

‘What is your name?’

The drooping head came up, the drowned eyes presented themselves, shocked, to Alice. ‘What do you think I’m going to do?’ demanded Alice. ‘Go to the police and tell them you were going to throw a stone through our window?’ And suddenly she began to laugh, while the girl watched her amazed; and took an involuntary step back from this lunatic. ‘I’ve just thought of something. I know someone in the Council who might perhaps – it is only a perhaps…’ The girl had come to life, was leaning forward, her trembling hand tight on Alice’s forearm.

‘My name is Monica,’ she breathed.

‘Monica isn’t enough,’ said Alice, stopping herself from simply walking away out of impatience. ‘I’ll have to know your full name, and your address, won’t I.’

The girl dropped her hand, and began a dreary groping in her skirts. From a pocket she produced a purse, into which she peered.

‘Oh never mind,’ said Alice. ‘Tell me, I’ll remember.’

The girl said she was Monica Winters, and the hotel – which Alice knew about, all right – was the such-and-such, and her number, 556. This figure brought an image with it of concentrated misery, hundreds of couples with small children, each family in one room, no proper amenities, the squalor of it all. All elation, excitement gone, Alice soberly stood there, appalled.

‘I’ll ask this person to write to you,’ said Alice. ‘Meanwhile, if I were you, I’d walk around and have a look at what empty houses you can see. Take a look at them. You know. Nip inside, have a look at the amenities – plumbing and…’ She trailed off dismally, knowing that Monica was not capable of flinging up a window in an empty house and climbing in to have a look, and that, very likely, her husband was the same.

‘See you,’ said Alice, and turned away from the girl and went in, feeling that the 556 – at least – young couples with their spotty, frustrated infants had been presented to her by Fate, as her responsibility.

‘Oh God,’ she was muttering, as she made herself tea in the empty kitchen. ‘Oh God, what shall I do?’ She could easily have wept as messily and uselessly as Monica. Jasper was not here!

She toiled up the stairs, and saw that a light showed on the landing above. She went up. Under the door of the room taken by Mary and Reggie a light showed. She forgot it was midnight and this was a respectable couple. She knocked. After stirrings and voices came, ‘Come in.’

Alice looked in at a scene of comfort. Furniture, pretty curtains, and a large double bed in which Mary and Reggie lay side by side, reading. They looked at her over their books with identical wary expressions that said, ‘Thus far and no further!’ A wave of incredulous laughter threatened Alice. She beat it down, while she thought, These two, we’ll see nothing of them, they’ll be off…

She said, ‘Mary, a girl has just turned up here, she’s desperate; she’s in Shaftwood Hotel, you know…’

‘Not in our borough,’ said Mary instantly.

‘No, but she…’

‘I know about Shaftwood,’ said Mary.

Reggie was examining his hand, back and front, apparently with interest. Alice knew that it was the situation he was examining; he was not used to this informality, to group-living, but he was giving it his consideration.

‘Don’t we all? But this girl…her name is Monica…she looks to me as if she’s suicidal, she could do anything.’

Mary said, after a pause, ‘Alice, I’ll see what there is, tomorrow, but you know that there are hundreds, thousands of them.’

‘Oh yes, I know,’ said Alice, and added, ‘Good-night,’ and went downstairs, thinking, I am being silly. It isn’t as if I don’t know the type. If you did find her a place, she’d muck it all up somehow. Remember Sarah? I had to find her a flat, move her in, go to the Electricity Board, and then her husband…Monica’s one of those who need a mother, someone who takes her on…An idea came into Alice’s head of such beautiful and apt simplicity that she began laughing quietly to herself.

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