The Good Terrorist (50 page)

In the kitchen, Jocelin said, “I forgot, there’s a message. Two, in fact. First, those Irishmen came back.” She sounded unworried, but Alice knew something very bad indeed had happened.

“The ones that brought that … 
matériel?”

“Right. They wanted to know whereabout on the rubbish tip the two cases were put.”

“What did you say?”

“I said I didn’t know.”

As far as Jocelin was concerned, it seemed, that was enough; she sat stirring sugar into her coffee, her mind probably on her handiwork, still ranged neatly side by side, on the trestle upstairs.

“And then?”

“ ‘Well, now, lady, that isn’t enough for us, is it? You can see that for yourself! We have our orders, and that’s a fact! The lady we saw last time we came, she must accompany us to the rubbish tip, and show us where the things were placed.’ ” This Jocelin delivered in an Irish accent, perfect, as far as Alice was concerned—so accurate that she was thinking: Irish? Is she? And if so, what does it mean? Does it matter? Here is another of us with a false voice!

Jocelin went on, “And I said to them, ‘Are you coming back, then?’ They said: ‘And indeed we shall. Tomorrow morning, and that’s a fact.’ ” In her ordinary voice, Jocelin said, and as if all this had nothing to do with her, “So I suppose they will.”

“Then I shan’t be here,” said Alice, sounding calm, yet feeling sick with panic. She had thought that their trip out to drop those packages had been the end of it all.

“And the other thing was, Felicity came in. She said they have found Philip’s sister, and the funeral is on Wednesday.”

“Then we can’t do what we planned on Wednesday.” They had decided that Wednesday was the best day for their feat of arms.

Jocelin said, sounding critical, “First things first.”

“But somebody must be at his funeral.”

“You go. You aren’t essential for the plan.”

“But I want to be there!”

Jocelin shrugged. She lifted her mug, stood up, said “Good night,” and went upstairs. Probably to perfect the four explosive devices.

Alice was going to bed when Mary and Reggie came in to say that they were moving out on Wednesday; they would hire a remover’s van.

Alice was ready to laugh at the remover’s van, but remembered that two rooms and part of the attic and most of their bedroom were piled with furniture, and simply said, “Right. Will you need help?”

“Won’t say no,” said Reggie, and off the two went upstairs. So it can’t be on Wednesday, said Alice to herself. She, too, went to bed. She woke early and left a note on the table saying that if the Irishmen turned up, they must be told that she, Alice, was away, and that no one knew where the packages were on the rubbish tip; they had probably been covered over long ago under new rubbish. She went out, thinking that presumably that Russian had told them to come. Well, she had sent him packing, hadn’t she? They would soon all get tired of coming; it was simply a question of sticking it out. She pushed her anxiety down and out of sight.

It was a pleasant morning, sunny, not cold. She walked around the streets, found it was only ten, sat for a long time in a little restaurant, eating a breakfast she did not really want. Eleven-thirty. She thought of dropping in to see her mother again, actually got to the door, and then, realising she would see that meagre little sitting room and her mother boxed into it, with the two shabby, once-splendid armchairs, lost heart and went off across London to visit a squat where lived a girl she had known in Birmingham. The girl had been at the CCU Congress. They talked about having
another one, perhaps next month. The house was perfect for a Congress. Alice thought, her heart cold, that in a month they would all be gone from that house: it had been taken for granted everyone would scatter. Who knew where they would all be?

She got back at five. Jasper and Bert and Caroline were in the kitchen, eating take-away. One glance was enough to tell Alice that she had been right: Bert and Caroline could now be considered a couple. But Alice decided not to care.

The Irishmen, she was told, had not been again.

Faye and Roberta had come in, and the six—Jasper, Bert, Caroline, with Jocelin—had decided that the job was to go ahead as planned, on Wednesday afternoon. In the morning they would help Mary and Reggie with loading the removal van. Alice could go to the funeral.

“But I don’t know if the funeral is morning or afternoon,” said Alice.

No one answered. It was not important. Alice thought it would be just like that if she left the squat: she would never be mentioned, would be forgotten, like Jim, like Pat. Like Philip. No, Jasper would be after her, she knew that; the others might forget her, but Jasper could not.

On Tuesday they all went down to the scene of the crime—their joke—and walked around and about the great hotel, part of the crowds. Of course, they took trouble to dress the part. Jocelin, it seemed, did possess more than her jeans and sweater. She wore a dress of pinkish linen that looked as if it had been bought in Knightsbridge. Caroline, similarly, acquired the protective colouring of a beige well-cut skirt and a yellow shirt. Roberta, out of principle, refused to change, but looked unremarkable in her dark-blue boiler suit. Faye had on a fluffy white blouse and jeans, and was noticeable not only because she was so pretty, but because she was aflame with secret triumph, which made her chatter and display herself. She was the essence of her cockney self, witty and outrageous, but while they laughed, they kept saying to her, “Calm
down, be quiet,” and so on, while Roberta was anxiously in attendance on her. Jasper, too, had a look of elation which made him, thought Alice, rather beautiful. He seemed serenely above the scene of thronging shoppers and tourists, superior to everything; was in a daze of imaginings about how—and so soon—they would prove themselves here, in this shameless, luxurious scene. After their successful reconnaissance, they all went in to have tea.

Then they took a taxi to Hammersmith, where they saw Diva, a film some of them had seen already more than once. They had supper together in their Indian restaurant near home, agreeing they must go to bed early. They told Reggie and Mary it was because of all the hard work they meant to do tomorrow hefting furniture—this, they could see, seemed reasonable to the couple, for whom the business of moving their furniture, reinstalling their furniture, arranging their furniture was the only thing worthy to occupy their minds. Though Mary did remark, almost absent-mindedly, that this house was on the agenda for next week, and there was a recommendation from Bob Hood that “matters should be expedited.” It was a shame, remarked Mary, that these lovely houses were not being used.

Alice became suddenly so angry that she was hardly able to bring out, “What a pity that the Council was prepared to leave them
empty
for six years.”

Mary could have flared up, as Alice had done. She went red, while the official and the human being fought inside her, and then she said, with a laugh that was both apologetic and offended, “Yes, I know, it was awful letting things slide for so long.”

“But it will be all right now,” said Alice, not at all mollified. “There will be some
people
living in them.”

Mary hesitated, then went out of the kitchen, followed by Reggie. Written all over him was, Thank God, I’ll be out of here tomorrow!

Philip’s funeral was at ten o’clock on Wednesday. At nine, leaving the others boisterously loading furniture into a van that seemed to fill the street, Alice went to Felicity’s, where she found two other people who had liked Philip when he lived there. The
four went to the crematorium, in Felicity’s car. Philip’s sister was there with her husband. They had come down, it seemed, from Aberdeen. Philip was Scottish, a fact that till this moment had not emerged.

The sister was a pale thin little thing, with a dogged look to her, like Philip: determined not to be blown away by the hostile winds of life. Her husband was a small, pale young man with weak blue eyes and a straggly moustache. They both had strong Scottish accents. This couple seemed anxious to avoid Philip’s four friends, or at least spoke as little as possible, then, politeness satisfied, went to sit by themselves in the “chapel.” It was a proper religious service. Neither Felicity nor Alice, nor the other two, a young man and a girl who had once helped Philip paint out a living room, knew whether Philip had been religious. Perhaps this was only bureaucracy taking its course. And the sister and her husband did not enlighten them. The coffin, large, brown, and shiny, which had to make anyone who had known Philip think of how his frail little body must be lying, like a dead moth, within it, stood full in their view, while a Church of England clergyman did his best to give life to these words that he intoned so often.

And that was that. Philip’s sister said a hurried good-bye. Her eyes were red. Her husband only nodded from a distance. The four drove back. The van stood again outside number 43, having made the journey once and returned. “We had no idea we had so much stuff,” called Mary gaily, standing in the back of the van, her arms loaded with a carton of china bought by Reggie in a house sale.

“Well, we did,” said Bert, loud and jolly and false, and the antagonism that was the truth of what they felt for each other—Mary and Reggie for them, they for Mary and Reggie—was on the surface, and they all knew it, and their hostile faces showed it. Briefly. The smiles and good will set in again.

“Whew,” said Bert, as the good-byes were being said. “I’m for a bath and a kip. That’s done me in.”

“I’m for a bath,” said Faye daintily, looking at Roberta, who would scrub her back and dry her afterwards.

“Well, good-bye, all you lot,” cried Reggie, cried Mary, jumping
into the front of the van with many smiles and waves, and they drove off, leaving behind the reassuring picture of the group waving to them from the garden.

Of course they had paid, before leaving, the exact amount they owed, down to the last greasy penny piece.

And then, almost hysterical with suppressed laughter, the others raced into the kitchen, for tea, for sandwiches. It was one o’clock. Just the right time. Precisely and accurately correct.

Everything was going so well. Had gone well, events slotting into place, luck almost ostentatiously on their side: that the Council should have decided to bury Philip this morning; that Mary and Reggie should have chosen today for moving—the comrades could not have wished for better. And then the car: at the other squat, someone had mentioned—she could not have known how fortuitously—that the man in the next house had gone on holiday with his family, and that the car, an Escort, had been standing outside the house for a week, with another week to go. “He’s asking for it,” she had remarked. Of course the car was locked, but to Jasper—it was one of his talents—this was no obstacle.

Late last night, after coming back from
Diva
and the Indian restaurant, Bert and Jasper and Jocelin had slipped out of 43, and had gone by Underground back to the other squat. Not inside it: they did not want to involve any more people in this enterprise. Of course, they took the chance that their friends might be coming back from somewhere and see them. But three of them were away; they had said they would be. To open the car, start it, and drive off had taken Jasper and Bert a minute. They drove around Pimlico and Victoria, but did not find anything they liked the look of. They needed a safe place where they could fit in the explosives. They were watching the level of petrol: less than half a tank, and they did not want to have to go into a petrol station. At last, farther away from “the scene of the crime” than they wanted, they found a street of semidetached houses, and one of them was being modernised and rebuilt; at any rate, there were “For Sale” notices, and builders’ equipment. In front of each house was a garden, crammed with shrubs, and a shallow drive, not much more
than a place to park. The three discussed this place while they drove around and about the streets. It wasn’t ideal, but they hadn’t seen anything better. The house that was the twin of the one they had in mind was presumably occupied, and although it was by then three in the morning, as usual there was this problem of insomniacs and night owls. Not to mention patrolling policemen. But it would soon be getting light.… Jocelin remarked that it was a pity they couldn’t wait until winter: a long dark night was just what they needed. They even suffered a low moment, thinking that the whole enterprise was misconceived, or at least being too hastily executed. Everything was so improvised! But it was precisely this quality that seemed to be aiding them—and which appealed to them, adding to their secret, rising excitement, making them want to laugh for no particular reason, and to make jokes, the sillier the better.

In the end this mood of theirs triumphed, and they drove back into the street, and turned into the little “drive” in front of the empty house. Jocelin needed about twenty minutes to insert the explosives into the car. Jasper ran to one end of the street, Bert to the other, to keep watch for the police. Jocelin was in fact concealed by shrubs from the street, if not from the higher windows of the occupied house. But its windows continued dark; she could not see anyone up there. She inserted the four devices, neatly, precisely, in their allotted places. She was listening for any signal from Bert and Jasper, but none came. She felt, as she worked, a good-natured contempt for these careless citizens, who could be so easily tricked, fooled.

At the end of twenty minutes, Jasper and Bert appeared again; she had not heard them come, though they were breathing heavily from running. In a moment the car was out of the shelter of the shrubs, and back at large in the streets. There wasn’t much traffic now. The sky was beginning to lighten. There didn’t seem to be a place to park the car anywhere. Cars filled every inch along the pavements’ edges, and again they had to drive about more than they wanted. The gauge showed well below the halfway mark. How were they to know whether it was accurate? Bert remarked that once
he had for months a car with a gauge that showed nearly full when it was almost empty. At last a space, again farther away than they had hoped. They parked, and stood for a few seconds looking at the unremarkable car that was, potentially, a bomb.