The Good Terrorist (10 page)

Somebody—some comrade, at some time, in some squat or other—had said as a joke, “When in doubt, classify them as humanists.”

Pat’s steady, interested, thoughtful look was reminding Alice of something. Of someone. Yes, Zoë Devlin. Thus she would regard Alice when the subject of literature came up and Alice had had no alternative but to make a contribution.

Suddenly, Alice remembered something. Zoë Devlin. Yes.

A quarrel, or at least an argument between Dorothy Mellings and Zoë Devlin. Recently. Not long before Alice left.

Alice was concentrating so hard on what she remembered that she slowly sat down, hardly noticing what she did, and forgetting about Pat.

Her mother had wanted Zoë to read some book or other and Zoë said no, she thought its view of politics was reactionary.

“How do you know when you haven’t read it?” Dorothy had asked, laughing.

“There are lots of books like that, aren’t there,” Zoë had said. “Probably written by the CIA.”

“Zoë,” had said Dorothy Mellings, no longer laughing, “is that you? Is that Zoë Devlin speaking? My good friend the fearless, the open-minded, the incorruptible Zoë Devlin?”

“I hope it is,” said Zoë, laughing.

“I hope it is, too,” said Dorothy, not laughing. “Do we still have anything in common, do you think?”

“Oh, go on, Dorothy, let up, do. I don’t want to quarrel even if you do.”

“You are not prepared to quarrel about anything so unimportant as a book? As a view of life?”

Zoë had made a joke of it all. Had soon left. Had she been back to the house again? Of course, she must have, she had been in and out of that house for … since before Alice was born.

Zoë was one of Alice’s “aunties,” like Theresa.

Why had Alice not thought of going to her for money? Wait, there was something there, at the back of her mind—what? Yes, there had been this flaming row, terrible, between Dorothy and Zoë. Yes, recently, good Christ, not more than a week or so ago. Only one row? No, more. A lot.

Dorothy had said Zoë was soft-centred, like a cream chocolate.

They had screamed at each other
. Zoë had gone running out. She—Alice—had screamed at her mother, “You aren’t going to have any friends if you go on like this.”

Alice was feeling sick. Very. She was going to vomit if she wasn’t careful. She sat, very still, eyes squeezed tight, concentrating on not being sick.

She heard Pat’s voice. “Alice. Alice. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said, in a hurried, low voice, still concentrating, “it’s all right.” In a minute or two she opened her eyes and said, normally, and as though nothing at all had happened, “I am afraid of the police crashing in suddenly.” This was what she had come to say.

“The police? Why, what do you mean?”

“We’ve got to decide. We have to make a decision. Suppose they come crashing in.”

“We’ve survived it before.”

“No, I mean, those pails, all those pails. We daren’t empty them into the system. Not all at once. We daren’t. God knows what the pipes are like down there where we can’t see them. If we empty them one at a time, one a day let’s say, it’ll take forever. But if we dug a pit …”

“The neighbours,” said Pat at once.

“I’ll talk to the woman next door.”

“I can’t see Joan Robbins being mad with joy.”

“But it will be the end of it, won’t it? And they would all be pleased about that.”

“It would mean you, me, and Jim.”

“Yes, I know. I’ll go across to the Robbins woman. You ask Jim.”

A pause. Pat yawned, wriggled around in her chair, lifted her book, let it drop again, and then said, “I suppose so.”

In the next garden, which was wide, divided by a crunching gravel path, Joan Robbins worked on a border with a fork. Under a tree on the other side sat a very old woman, staring at the sky.

Joan Robbins stood up when Alice appeared, looking defensive and got at. But Alice did not give her time for grievance. She said, “Mrs. Robbins, can we keep the tools for a bit? We want to dig a pit. A big one. For rubbish.”

Joan Robbins, who had withstood the annoyances of this dreadful number 43 for so long, looked as if she would say no, say she had had enough of it all. Her pleasant face was irritable, and flushed.

But now the old woman under the tree sat up in the chair, leaned forward, staring. Her face was gaunt and purplish, with white woolly hair sticking out around it. She said in a thick, old, unsteady voice, “You dirty people.”

“No,” said Alice steadily. “No, we’re not. We’re cleaning it all up.”

“Nasty dirty people,” said the old woman, less certain of herself, having taken in Alice, such a nice girl, standing on the green lawn with daffodils behind her.

Alice said, “Your mother?”

“Sitting tenant. Upstairs flat,” said Mrs. Robbins, not moderating her voice, and Alice understood the situation in a flash. She went over to the old woman and said, “How do you do? I’m Alice Mellings. I’ve just moved into forty-three, and we’re fixing the place up, and getting the rubbish out.”

The old woman sank back, her eyes seeming to glaze with the effort of it all.

“Good-bye,” said Alice. “See you again soon,” and went back
to Mrs. Robbins, who asked sullenly, “What are you going to bury?,” indicating the ranks and ranks of filled shiny black sacks.

She knew!

Alice said, “It’ll get rid of all the smell all at once. We thought, get the pit dug this afternoon, and get rid of everything tonight … once and for all.”

“It’s terrible,” said Mrs. Robbins, tearful. “This is such a nice street.”

“By this time tomorrow the rubbish will be all gone. The smell will be gone.”

“And what about the other house. What about forty-five? In summer, the flies! It shouldn’t be allowed. The police got them out once but … they are back again.”

She could have said
you;
and Alice persisted, “If we start digging now …”

Joan Robbins said, “Well, I suppose if you dig deep enough …”

Alice flew back home. In the room where she had first seen him, Jim was tapping his drums. He at first did not smile, then did, because it was his nature, but said, “Yes, and the next thing, they’ll say Jim, you must leave,” he accused.

“No, they won’t,” said Alice, making another promise.

He got up, followed her; they found Pat in the hall. In the part of the garden away from the main road, concealed from it by the house, was a place under a tree that had once been a compost heap. There they began digging, while over the hedge Mrs. Robbins was steadily working at her border, not looking at them. But she was their barrier against the rest of the busybody street, which of course was looking through its windows at them, gossiping, even thinking it was time to ring the police again.

The earth was soft. They came on the skeleton of a large dog; two old pennies; a broken knife; a rusting garden fork, which would be quite useful when cleaned up; and then a bottle … another bottle. Soon they were hauling out bottles, bottles, bottles. Whisky and brandy and gin, bottles of all sizes, hundreds, and they were standing to waist level in an earthy sweet-smelling pit with bottles
rolling and standing around the rim for yards, years of hangovers, oblivion, for someone.

People were coming home from work, were standing and looking, were making comments. One man said unpleasantly: “Burying a corpse?”

“Old Bill’ll be around,” said Jim, bitter, experienced.

“Oh, God, these bottles,” swore Pat, and Alice said, “The bottle bank. If we had a car … Who has a car?”

“They have one next door.”

“Forty-five? Would they lend it?
We have to get rid of these bottles.”

“Oh, God,
Alice,”
said Pat, but she stood her spade against the house wall—beyond which was the sitting room where they knew Jasper and Bert were, talking—and went out into the side street and then the main street. She was back in a minute, in an old Toyota. They spread empty black plastic sacks on the seats, filled the car with bottles: to the roof at the back, the boot, the pit in front near the driver, leaving only that seat, into which Alice squatted, while Pat drove the car down to the big cement containers, where they worked for three-quarters of an hour, smashing in the bottles.

“That’s it for today,” said Pat, meaning it, as she parked the car outside 45, and they got out. Alice looked into its garden, appalled.

“You aren’t going to take that one on, too!” said Pat in another statement.

She went into their house, not looking, and up to the first floor, to the bathroom.

She did not comment on the new electric bulb, shedding a little light in the hall.

Alice thought: How many rooms in the house? Let’s see, an electric light bulb for each one? But that will be pounds and pounds, at least ten. I have to have money.…

It was dark outside. A damp, blowy night.

She went into the sitting room. Bert and Jasper were not there. She thought: Then I and Jim …

Jim was again with his drums. She went to him and said, “I
will carry down the pails. You stand by the pit and fill in the earth. Quickly. Before the whole street comes to complain.”

Jim hesitated, seemed about to protest, but came.

She had never had to do anything as loathsome, not in all her history of squats, communes, derelict houses. The room that had only the few pails in it was bad enough, but the big room, crammed with bubbling pails, made her want to be sick before she even opened the door. She worked steadily, carrying down two pails at a time, controlling her heaving stomach, in a miasma that did not seem to lessen but, rather, spread from the house and the garden to the street. She emptied in the buckets, while Jim quickly spaded earth in. His face was set in misery. From the garden opposite came shouts of “Pigs!” Alice went out into the little street and stood against the hedge, which was a tall one, and said through it to someone who stood there watching, a man, “We’re clearing it all up. There won’t be any smell after tonight.”

“You ought to be reported to the Council.”

“The Council knows,” said Alice. “They know all about it.” Her voice was serene, confident; she spoke as one householder to another. She walked back under the street lights into her own dark garden in a calm, almost careless way. And went back to the work of carrying down buckets.

By eleven the pit was filled and covered, and the smell was already going.

Alice and Jim stood together in the dark, surrounded by consoling shrubs. He pulled out a cigarette and lit it, and though she never smoked she took one from him, and they stood smoking together, drawing in the sweet clouds and puffing them out deliberately, trying to fill the garden air with it.

Jim said, with a scared laugh, “That was all my shit. Well, most. Some was Faye’s and Roberta’s.”

“Yes, I know. Well, never mind.”

“Have you thought, Alice—have you ever thought?—how much shit we all make in our lives? I mean, I’ve only been here eight months, well, more or less. I mean, if the shit we made in our lives was put in a drum, or let’s say a big tank, you’d need a tank like the Battersea power station for everyone.” He was laughing, but he
sounded frightened. “It all goes into the sewers, underneath here, but suppose the sewers just packed up?”

“They won’t,” said Alice, peering through the darkness at his dark face to find out what was really frightening him.

“Why shouldn’t they? I mean, they say our sewers are all old and rotten. Suppose they just explode? With sewer gas?” He laughed again.

She did not know what to say.

“I mean, we just go on living in this city,” he said, full of despair. “We just go on living.…”

Very far from his usual self was Jim now. Gone was that friendly sweet-cheeked face. It was bitter, and angry, and fearful.

She said, “Come in, Jim, let’s have a cup of tea and forget it, it’s done.”

“That’s just what I mean,” he said, sullen. “You say, Come and have a cup of tea. And that’s the end of it. But it isn’t the end of it, not on your life it isn’t.”

And he flung down the spade and went in to shut himself in his room.

Alice followed. For the third time that day she stood in the grimy bath, labouring with cold water to get herself clean.

Then she went upstairs. On the top floor all the windows were open, admitting a fresh smell. It was raining steadily. The sacks of refuse would have a lot of water in them, and the dustmen might be bad-tempered about it.

Midnight. Alice slumped down the stairs, yawning, holding the sense of the house in her mind, the pattern of the rooms, everything that needed to be done. Where was Jasper? She wanted Jasper. The need for Jasper overtook her sometimes, like this. Just to know he was there somewhere, or if not, soon would be. Her heart was pounding in distress, missing Jasper. But as she reached the bottom step, there was a pounding on the door as if a battering ram were at work.
The police
. Her mind raced: Jasper? If he was in the house, would he keep out of sight? Old Bill had only to take one look at Jasper and they were at him. He and she had joked often enough that if the police saw Jasper a hundred yards off and in the dark, they would close in on the kill: they felt something about him
they could not bear. And Roberta and Faye? Please God they were still at the picket. The police would have only to take one look at them, too, to be set off. Philip? The wrong sort of policeman would find that childish appeal irresistible. But Pat would be all right, and Bert.…
Jim, where was he?

As she thought this, Pat appeared at the sitting-room door, closing it behind her in a way that told Alice that the two men were in there; and Philip stood at the kitchen door, holding a large torch, switched on, and a pair of pliers.

Alice ran to the front door, and opened it quickly, so that the men who had been battering at it crashed in, almost on top of her.

“Come in,” she said equably, having sized up their condition in a glance. They had their hunting look, which she knew so well, but it wasn’t too bad, their blood wasn’t really up, except perhaps for that one, whose face she knew. Not as an individual but as a type. It was a neat, cold, tidy face, with a fluffy little moustache: a baby face with hard cold grey eyes. He enjoys it, she thought; and, seeing his quick look around, straining to go, as if on the end of a leash, she felt sharp little thrills down her thighs. She was careful that he did not catch her glance, but went forward to stand in front of a big broad man, who must weigh fifteen stone. A sergeant. She knew his type, too. Not too bad. She had to look right up to him, and he looked down at her, in judgement.