The Good Terrorist

She was saying, too, that they were a couple, but Alice had seen this already.

‘Alice. Alice Mellings.’

‘Well, Comrade Alice, you don’t let the grass grow. I, for one, would have liked to discuss it all first.’

‘That’s right,’ said Faye, ‘that goes for me, too. I like to know what’s being said in my name.’ She spoke in a cockney voice, all pert and pretty, and Alice knew at once that she affected it, had adopted it, as so many others did. A pretty little cockney girl sat presenting herself, smiling, to everyone, and Alice was staring at her, trying to see what was really there.

This acute, judging inspection made Faye shift about and pout a little, and Roberta came in quickly with, ‘What are we being committed to, Comrade Alice?’

‘Oh I see,’ said Alice. ‘You’re lying low.’

Roberta let out an amused snort that acknowledged Alice’s acuity, and said, ‘You’re right. I want to keep a low profile for a bit.’

‘Me too,’ said Faye. ‘We are drawing Security over in Clapham, but better not ask how. Least said soonest mended,’ she ended, prettily, tossing her head.

‘And what you don’t know won’t hurt you,’ said Roberta.

‘Ask no questions and get told no lies,’ quipped Faye.

‘But truth is stranger than fiction,’ said Roberta.

‘You can say that again,’ said Faye.

This nice little act of theirs made everyone laugh appreciatively. As good as a music-hall turn: Faye the cockney lass and her feed. Roberta was not speaking cockney, but had a comfortable, accommodating homely voice with the sound of the North in it. Her own voice? No, it was a made-up one. Modelled on Coronation Street, probably.

‘That’s another reason we don’t want the police crashing in all the time,’ said Bert. ‘I am pleased Comrade Alice is trying to get this regularized. Go on with your report, Comrade Alice.’

Bert had also modified his voice. Alice could hear in it at moments the posh tones of some public school, but it was roughened with the intention of sounding working-class. Bad luck, he gave himself away.

Alice talked. (Her own voice dated from the days of her girls’ school in North London, basic BBC correct, flavourless. She had been tempted to reclaim her father’s Northern tones, but had judged this dishonest.) She did not say that she had rung her mother and her father, but said she could get fifty pounds at short notice. Then she summed up her visit to the Council, scrutinizing what she saw in her mind’s eye: the expressions on the face of Mary Williams, which told Alice the house would be theirs; and because of some personal problem or attitude of Mary’s. But all Alice said about this, the nub of the interview with Mary, was ‘She’s all right. She’s on our side. She’s a good person.’

‘You mean, you’ve got something to show the police?’ said Jim, and when Alice handed over the yellow envelope he took out what was in it and pored over it. He was one whose fate, Alice could see, had always been determined by means of papers, reports, official letters. Jim’s voice was genuine cockney, the real thing.

She asked suddenly, ‘Are you bound over?’

Jim’s look at her was startled, then defensive, then bitter. His soft, open boyish face closed up and he said, ‘What about it?’

‘Nothing,’ said Alice. Meanwhile a glance at Faye and Roberta had told her that both of them were bound over. Or worse. Yes, probably worse. Yes, certainly worse. On the run?

‘Didn’t know you were,’ said Bert. ‘I was until recently.’

‘So was I,’ claimed Jasper at once, not wanting to be left out. Jasper’s tones were almost those of his origins. He was the son of a solicitor in a Midlands town, who had gone bankrupt when Jasper was half-way through his schooling at a grammar school. He had finished his education on a scholarship. Jasper was very clever; but he had seen the scholarship as charity. He was full of hatred for his father, who had been stupid enough to go in for dubious investments. His middle-class voice, like Bert’s, had been roughened. With working-class comrades he could sound like them, and did, at emotional moments.

Pat remarked, ‘It’s getting dark,’ and she stood up, struck a match, and lit two candles that stood on the mantelpiece in rather fine brass candlesticks. But they were dull with grease. The daylight shrank back beyond the windows, and the seven were in a pool of soft yellow light that lay in the depths of a tall shadowed room.

Now Pat leaned her elbow on the mantelpiece, taking command of the scene. In the romantic light, with her dark military clothes, her black strong boots, she looked – as she must certainly know – like a guerrilla, or a female soldier in somebody’s army. Yet the light accentuated the delicate modelling of her face, her hands, and in fact she was more like the idealized picture of a soldier on a recruiting poster. An Israeli girl soldier, perhaps, a book in one hand, a rifle in the other.

‘Money,’ said Pat. ‘We have to talk about money.’ Her voice was standard middle-class, but Alice knew this was not how Pat had started off. She was working too hard at it.

‘That’s right,’ said Jim. ‘I agree.’

The only other person in this room, apart from Alice, with his own voice, unmodified, was Jim, the genuine cockney.

‘It’s going to cost more,’ said Bert, ‘but we will buy peace and quiet.’

‘It needn’t cost all that much more,’ said Alice. ‘For one thing, food will be half as much, or less. I know, I’ve done it.’

‘Right,’ said Pat. ‘So have I. Take-away and eating out costs the earth.’

‘Alice is good at feeding people cheap,’ said Jasper.

It was noticeable that while these five outlined their positions, they all, perhaps without knowing it, eyed Roberta and Faye. Or, more exactly, Faye, who sat there not looking at them, but anywhere: the ceiling, her feet, Roberta’s feet, the floor, while she puffed smoke from the cigarette held between her lips. Her hand, on her knee, trembled. She gave the impression of trembling slightly all over. Yet she smiled. It was not the best of smiles.

‘Just a minute, comrades,’ said she. ‘Suppose I like take-away? I like take-away, see? Suppose I like eating out, when the fancy takes me? How about that, then?’

She laughed and tossed her head, presenting – as if her life depended on it – this cheeky cockney as seen in a thousand films.

‘They have a point, Faye,’ said Roberta, sounding neutral, so as not to provoke her friend. She was keeping an eye on Faye, unable to prevent herself giving her quick nervous glances.

‘Oh fuck it,’ said Faye, really laying on the cockney bit, because, as they could see, she was afraid of her own anger. ‘Yesterday, as far as hi wuz concerned, everythink was going along just perfeck, and today, that’s it. I don’t like being organized, see what I mean?’

‘And she did it her way,’ said Bert, in cold upper-class, smiling, as if in joke. He did not like Faye, and apparently did not care if he showed it.

Pat quickly covered up with humour. ‘Well, if you don’t want to join in, then don’t, have it on us!’ This was said without rancour. Pat even laughed, hoping Faye would; but Faye tossed her head, her face seemed to crumple up out of its prettiness, and her lips went white as she pressed them together. The cigarette in her hand trembled violently, ash scattered about.

‘Wait a minute,’ said Roberta. ‘Just hold your horses.’ This was addressed, apparently, to the five who were all looking at Faye. Faye knew it was meant for her. She made herself smile.

‘Was anything said about how we were to pay?’ asked Roberta.

‘No, but I know of various ways they can do it,’ said Alice. ‘For instance, in Birmingham there was a flat sum assessed for the whole house, to cover rates. And we paid electricity and gas separately.’

‘Electricity,’ said Faye. ‘Who wants to pay electricity?’

‘You don’t pay at all, or you just pay the first instalment,’ said Jasper. ‘Alice is good at that.’

‘We can all see what Alice is good at,’ said Faye.

‘Look,’ said Pat, ‘why don’t we postpone this discussion till we know? If they make an assessment for rent and rates and put it on all our Social on an individual basis, then that would suit some and not others. It would suit me, for instance.’

‘It wouldn’t suit me, see?’ said Faye, sweet but violent.

‘And it wouldn’t suit me,’ said Roberta. ‘I don’t want to become an official resident of this house. Nor does Faye.’

‘No, Faye certainly does not,’ said Faye. ‘Yesterday I was free as a bird, coming and going. I didn’t live here, I came and went, and now suddenly…’

‘All right,’ said Bert, exasperated. ‘You don’t want to be counted in, all right.’

‘Are you telling me to leave?’ said Faye, with a shrill laugh, and her face again seemed to crumple up out of its self, suggesting some other Faye, a pale, awful, violent Faye, the unwilling prisoner of the pretty cockney.

Jim laughed sullenly and said, ‘I’ve been told to leave. Why not Faye and Roberta if it comes to that.’

Faye turned the force of her pale awfulness on Jim, and Roberta came in quickly with, ‘No one is leaving. No one.’ She looked full at Jim. ‘But we have all to be clear about what we will or will not do. We have to be clear now. If a lump sum is assessed for this house, then we can discuss who is going to contribute what. If we are assessed individually, and our Social Security is adjusted individually, then no. No. No.’ This was kept amiable, but only just.

‘I’m not going to contribute,’ said Faye. ‘Why should I? I like things the way they were.’

‘How could you like them the way they were?’ said Bert. ‘Putting up with them, is one thing.’

And suddenly they all knew why it was Faye they had been eyeing so nervously, Faye who had dominated everything.

She sat straight up, straddling the chair-arm, and glared, and trembled, and in a voice that in no way related to the pretty cockney, said, ‘You filthy bloody cuntish ‘Itlers, you fascist scum, who are you telling what to do? Who are you ordering about?’ This voice came out of Faye’s lower depths, some dreadful deprivation. It was raw, raucous, labouring, as though words themselves had been a hard accomplishment, and now could only be shovelled out, with difficulty, past God knew what obstacles of mind and tongue. What accent was that? Where from? They stared, they were all silenced by her. And Roberta, putting her arm swiftly around her friend’s shaking shoulders, said softly, ‘Faye, Faye darling, Faye, Faye,’ until the girl suddenly shuddered and seemed to go limp, and collapsed into her arms.

A silence.

‘What’s the problem?’ asked Bert, who was refusing to see that he was the cause of this outburst from Faye’s other self. Or selves? ‘If Faye doesn’t want to contribute, that’s fine. They always set the assessment very low, for squats anyway. And there’ll be other people coming in, of course, to replace the comrades who left yesterday. We’ll have to be sure they understand the arrangement we make with the Council.’

Faye, half-hidden in Roberta’s arms, seemed to heave and struggle, but went quiet.

Alice said, ‘If we don’t get this place cleared up, we’d have to leave anyway. We can clear it up, easy enough, but to keep it clean, we need the Council. There’s been all the complaints. The woman next door said she complained…’

‘Joan Robbins,’ said Faye. ‘That filthy fascist cow. I’ll kill her.’ But it was in her cockney, not her other, true, voice, that she spoke. She sat up, freed herself from solicitous Roberta, and lit another cigarette. She did not look at the others.

‘No, you won’t,’ said Roberta, softly. She reasserted her rights to Faye by putting her arm around her. Faye submitted, with her pert little toss of the head and a smile.

‘Well, it is disgusting,’ said Alice.

‘It was all right till you came,’ said Jim. This was not a complaint or an accusation, more of a question. He was really saying: How is it so easy for you, and so impossible for me?

‘Don’t worry,’ said Alice, smiling at him. ‘When we’ve got the place cleaned up, we will be just like everyone else in the street and after a bit no one will notice us. You’ll see.’

‘If you want to waste your money,’ said Faye.

‘We do have to pay at least the first instalment of electricity and gas. If we can persuade them to supply us,’ said Bert.

‘Of course we can,’ said Alice, and Pat said, ‘The meters are still here.’

‘Yes, they forgot to take them away,’ said Jim.

‘And what are we going to pay with?’ asked Faye. ‘We are all on Unemployment, aren’t we?’

There was a silence. Alice knew that, paying a very low rent, there would be plenty of money. If people had any sense of how to use it, that is. She and Jasper, living with her mother and paying nothing, had about eighty pounds a week between them, on Social Security. But none of it was saved, because Jasper spent all his, and most of hers too, always coming to demand it. ‘For the Party,’ he said – or whatever Cause they were currently aligned with. But she knew that a lot of it went on what she described to herself, primly, as ‘his emotional life’.

She knew, too, that in communities like this, there were payers and the other kind, and there was nothing to be done about it. She knew that Pat would pay; that Pat would make Bert pay – as long as she was here. The two girls would not part with a penny. As for Jim – well, let’s wait and see.

She said, ‘There’s something we can do now, and that is, get the lavatories unblocked.’

Roberta laughed. Her laugh was orchestrated; meant to be noticed.

Faye said, ‘They are filled with concrete.’

‘So they were in one of the other houses I knew. It isn’t difficult. But we need tools.’

‘You mean tonight?’ asked Pat. She sounded interested, reluctantly admiring.

‘Why not? We’ve got to start,’ said Alice, fierce. In her voice sounded all the intensity of her need. They heard it, recognized it, gave way. ‘It’s not going to be nearly as difficult as you think now. I’ve looked at the lavatories. If the cisterns had been filled with concrete, it would be different, they’d have cracked, probably, but it isn’t difficult to get it out of the bowls.’

‘The workmen concreted over the tap from the main,’ said Bert.

‘Illegal,’ said Alice bitterly. ‘If the Water Board knew. Are there any tools?’

‘No,’ said Bert.

‘You said you have a friend near here? Has he got tools?’

‘She. Felicity. Her boyfriend has. Power tools. Everything. It’s his job.’

‘Then we could pay him. He could get the electricity right, too.’

‘With what do you pay ‘im,’ said Faye, singing it. ‘With what do we pay ‘im, dear Alice, with what?’

‘I’ll go and get the fifty pounds,’ said Alice. ‘You go and see your friend.’ She was at the door. ‘Tell him, plumbing and electricity. Plumbing first. If he’s got a big chisel and a heavy hammer we can start on this lavatory here in the hall. We really need a kango hammer. I’ll be back,’ she cried, and heard Jasper’s ‘Bring in something to eat, I’m starving.’

On the wings of accomplishment Alice flew to the Underground, and on the train she thought of the house, imagining it clean and ordered. She ran up the avenue to Theresa. Only when she heard Anthony’s voice did she remember Theresa would be late.

‘Alice,’ she said into the machine. ‘It’s Alice.’

‘Come in, Alice.’

Anthony’s full, measured, sexy voice reminded her of the enemies that she confronted, and she arrived outside their door wearing, as she knew, her look.

‘Well, Alice, come in,’ said Anthony, heartily but falsely, for it was Theresa who was her friend.

She went in, knowing she was unwelcome. Anthony had on a dressing-gown, and there was a book in his hand. An evening off was what he was looking forward to, she thought. Well, he can spare me ten minutes of it.

‘Sit down, do. A drink?’

‘No, Anthony, I never drink,’ she said, and went straight on, ‘Theresa said this morning I could have fifty pounds.’

‘She’s not here. She’s got one of her conferences.’

‘I thought, you could give it to me. I need it.’ This was fierce and deadly, an accusation, and the man looked carefully at the young woman, who stood there in the middle of his sitting-room, dressed in the clothes he thought of as military, swollen with tears and with hostility.

‘I haven’t got fifty pounds,’ he said.

A lie, Alice recognized, and she was staring at him with such hate that he murmured, ‘My dear Alice, do sit down, do. I’m going to have a drink if you won’t.’ He was trying to make it humorous, but she saw through it. She watched, standing, while the big dark bulky man turned from her, and poured himself whisky from a decanter. All her life, it seemed to her, she had had moments when she thought that he, and her friend, Theresa, were naked at nights in bed together, and she felt sick.

She knew from her mother that the sex life of these two was vivid, varied and tempestuous, in spite of Anthony’s heavy humorous urbanities, Theresa’s murmuring, smiling endearments. Dear Alice, darling Alice, but at night…She felt sick.

And she thought, as she had done when she was little, And they are so old! Watching the man’s broad back, grey thick silk, his smooth head, dark as oil, small for that body, she thought, they have been sexing all night and every night for all those years.

He turned to her in a swift movement, glass in his hand, having thought what he should do, and said, ‘I’ll ring Theresa. If she’s not actually in conference…’ And he went swift and deadly to the telephone.

Alice looked around the big expensive room. She thought: I’ll take one of those little netsukes, and run out, they’ll think it was the Spanish woman. But just then he came back and said, ‘They say they’ve called it a day. She’s on her way home. Well, I’ll get some supper on then. Theresa’s too tired to cook at conference times. Excuse me.’ Glad to be able to turn his back, she thought, and as he disappeared into the kitchen, the door opened. It was Theresa. For a moment Alice did not recognize her, thought it was some tired middle-aged woman, and then thought, But she looks so worn out.

Theresa stood heavily, her face in dragging lines, and she wore dark glasses, which left her eyes blinking and anxious when she took them off.

‘Oh Alice,’ she said, and walked fast to the chair near the drinks and collapsed. She fumbled as she poured herself a drink, and sat nursing the glass on her bosom, breathing slowly. Eyes shut. ‘Just a minute, Alice, just a minute, Alice dear,’ and as Anthony came in, moving his large bulk quickly to kiss her, she lifted her cheek to his lips, eyes shut, and said, ‘Thank God we closed early. Thank God, one more evening till eleven, and I’d be done for.’

He laid his hand on her shoulder, and pressed down. She smiled, with small pouting kissing movements, eyes tightclosed, and he went back to the kitchen, saying: ‘I’ve done some soup and a salad.’

‘Oh darling Anthony,’ said Theresa, ‘thank you – soup – it’s just what I need.’

What Alice felt then was a slicing cold pain – jealousy; but she did not know it was that, and she said, to be rid of the scene, rid of them, ‘You said I could have fifty pounds. Can I have it, Theresa?’

‘I expect so, darling,’ said Theresa vaguely. And in a moment she had sat up, had opened her smart bag, and was peering inside it. ‘Fifty,’ she said, ‘fifty, well, have I got it? Yes, just…’ And she fished out five ten-pound notes and handed them to Alice.

‘Thanks.’ Alice wanted to fly off with them, but felt graceless; she was full of affection for Theresa, who looked so tired and done, who had always been so good to her. ‘You are my favourite and my best, and my very best auntie,’ she said, with an awkward smile, as she had, when she was little, and they played this game.

Theresa’s eyes were open and she looked straight into Alice’s. ‘Alice,’ she said, ‘Alice, my dear…’ She sighed. Sat up. Stroked her deep-red skirt. Put up a white little hand to smooth her soft dark hair. Dyed, of course. ‘Your poor mother,’ said Theresa. ‘She rang me this morning. She was so upset, Alice.’

‘She was upset,’ said Alice at once. ‘She was.’

Theresa sighed. ‘Alice, why do you stick with him, with Jasper, why – no, wait, don’t run off. You’re so pretty and nice, my love – ‘ here she seemed to offer that kind face of hers to Alice, as if in a kiss. ‘You are such a good girl, Alice, why can’t you choose yourself someone – you should have a real relationship with someone,’ she ended awkwardly, because of Alice’s coldly contemptuous face.

‘I love Jasper,’ she said. ‘I love him. Why don’t you understand? I don’t care – about what you care about. Love isn’t just sex. That’s what you think, I know…’

But the years of affection, of love, dragged at her tongue, and she felt tears rushing down her face. ‘Oh Theresa,’ she cried, ‘thank you. Thank you. I’ll come in to see you soon. I’ll come. I must go, they are waiting…’ And she ran to the door, sobbing violently, and out of the door, letting it crash. Down the stairs she pounded, tears flying off her face, into the street, and there she remembered the notes in her hand, in danger of being blown away or snatched. She put them carefully into the pocket of her jacket, and walked fast and safely to the Underground.

Meanwhile, back in the beautiful flat, they were discussing Alice. Anthony kept up a humorous quizzical look, until Theresa responded with, ‘What is it, my love?’

‘Some girl,’ he said, the dislike he felt for Alice sounding in his voice.

‘Yes, yes, I know…’ she said irritably – her exhaustion was beginning to tell.

‘A girl – how old is she now?’

She shrugged, not wanting to be bothered with it, but interested, all the same. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘One keeps forgetting.’

‘Nearly forty?’ insisted Anthony.

‘Oh no, she can’t be!’

A pause, while the steam from the plate of soup he had brought her, and had set on the little table beside her, ascended between them. Through the steam, they looked at each other.

‘Thirty-five, no thirty-six,’ she said flatly at last.

‘Arrested development,’ said Anthony firmly, insisting on his right to dislike Alice.

‘Oh yes, I expect so, but darling Alice, well, she’s a sweet girl – a sweet thing, really.’

Chapter 3

In Alice’s little street the houses were full of lights and people, the kerbs crammed with cars of the returned from work; and her house loomed at the end, dark, powerful, silent, mysterious, defined by the lights and the din of the main road beyond. As she arrived at the gate, she saw three figures about to go into the dark entrance. Jasper, Bert. And the third? – Alice ran up, and Jasper and Bert turned sharply to face possible danger, saw her, and said to the boy they had with them, ‘Philip, it is all right, this is Alice. Comrade Alice, you know.’ They were in the hall, and Alice saw this was not a boy, but a slight, pale young man, with great blue eyes between sheaves of glistening pale hair that seemed to reflect all the dim light from the hurricane lamp. Her first reaction was, But he’s ill, he’s not strong enough! For she had understood this was her saviour, the restorer of the house.

Philip said, facing her, with a stubbornness she recognized as the result of effort, a push against odds, ‘But I’ve got to charge for it. I can’t do it for nothing.’

‘Fifty pounds,’ said Alice, and saw a slight involuntary movement towards her from Jasper, which told her that he would have it off her, if she wasn’t careful.

Philip said, in the same soft, stubborn voice, ‘I want to see the job first. I have to cost it.’

She knew that this one had often been cheated out of what was due to him. Looking as he did, a brave little orphan, he invited it! She said, maternally and proudly, ‘We’re not asking for favours. This is a job.’

‘For fifty pounds,’ said Bert, with jocular brutality, ‘you can just about expect to get a mousehole blocked up. These days.’ And she saw his red lips gleam in the black thickets of his face. Jasper sniggered.