The Good Terrorist (7 page)

Up in their room, it was dark. But some light came in from the sky and from the traffic. Alice spread her sleeping bag on its thin foam-rubber base, and was soon lying flat on her back, on her pallet, on the wall opposite to Jasper, who lay curled as he always did, in a fierce aloneness that made her ache for him. He was not asleep, but soon he slept, as she could see from a loosening of his body, as if he had been washed up on a shore and lay abandoned.

Too tired to sleep, she lay listening to how people were going to bed. Good night, good night, on the landing, and the corridor running from it. Roberta and Faye in one room, of course. Jim in another. And, in the room next to this one, Pat and Bert. Oh no, she did not want that, she did not want what she knew would happen. And it did, the grunting and whispering and shifting and moaning—right on the other side of the wall, close against her ear. It was too much. Love, that was; which everyone said she was a fool to do without; they were
sorry
for her. Theresa and Anthony, at it all night and every night, so said her mother, after years of marriage, grunting and panting, moaning and
wanting
. Alice lay as stiff as a rod, staring at the shadowed ceiling, where lights from the cars in the road fled and chased, her ears assaulted, her mind appalled. She made herself think: Tomorrow, tomorrow we’ll get the electricity done.…
Money
. She needed money.
Where?
She’d get it. She wasn’t going to cheat Philip.…

Philip, given the sack six months ago from the building firm—the first to be sacked, and Alice knew why, because of his build: of course any employer would think, This weakling—had set himself up. He was now a decorator and, he hoped, a builder. He had: two long ladders, a short ladder, a trestle (but needed, badly, another), paintbrushes, some tools; and could borrow from his friend, in
Chalk Farm. He had got the job of decorating a house, in spite of his frail appearance, perhaps because of it; had been paid only half, was told he was not up to it. He knew he would not be paid the rest; it would mean going to law and he could not do that. He was on the dole. He thought he would get a job doing up a pub in Neasden. He
said
he thought he would get this job, but Alice knew he didn’t much believe it. He lived with Felicity (his girlfriend?) in her flat a couple of streets away.
He had to be paid
.

The noises through the wall, having died down, were starting off again. Alice dragged her pallet to the other wall, afraid of alerting Jasper, who would feel her being there so close to him as an encroachment. And sure enough, just as she was settling down, he started up and she could see him glaring at her, teeth gritting. “You are in my
space,”
he said. “You know we don’t get into each other’s
space.”

She said, “I don’t like that wall.” This situation having occurred before, repeatedly, she did not have to explain. Leaning up on his elbow, his face clenched with fury and disgust, he listened to what could be plainly heard even from this wall; then lay tense, breathing fast.

She said, “I’m getting up early, to see if I can get hold of some money.”

He did not say anything. Soon, the house became still. He slept.

Alice dozed a little. In her mind she was already living the next day. She waited for the light, which came in gloomily through dirty windows and showed the filth of this room. Now she ached for tea, something to eat. She crept down into the hall, which still belonged to night and the hurricane lamp, and into the sitting room, hoping that the Thermos might be there. But she drank cold water from a jug, then used, with pride but caution, the lavatory, thinking of the pipes left uncared for over an unknown number of winters. Then she went to the Underground, stopping for breakfast at Fred’s Caff. There was room for eight or ten tables, set close. A cosy scene, not to say intimate. Mostly men. Two women were sitting together. At first they seemed middle-aged, because of their
stolidity and calm; then it could be seen they were youngish, but tired. Probably cleaners after an early-morning job in local offices. At the counter, Alice asked for tea and—apologetically—brown toast; was told by—very likely—Fred’s wife, for she had a proprietorial air, that they didn’t do brown toast. Alice went to look for a place, carrying tea, a plate of white toast that dripped butter, a rock cake. As a concession to health, she went back to get orange juice. It was clear to her that in this establishment it would be best to sit with the two women, and did so.

They were both eating toast, and drinking muddy coffee. They sat in the loose, emptied poses of women consciously relaxing, and on their faces were vague good-natured smiles which turned on Alice, like shields. They did not want to talk, only to sit.

The salt of the earth! Alice was dutifully saying to herself, watching this scene of workers fuelling themselves for a hard day’s work with plates of eggs, chips, sausages, fried bread, baked beans—the lot.
Cholesterol
, agonised Alice, and they all look so unhealthy! They had a pallid, greasy look like bacon fat, or undercooked chips. In the pocket of each, or on the tables, being read, were the
Sun
or the
Mirror
. Only lumpens, thought Alice, relieved that there was no obligation to admire them. Building or road workers, perhaps even self-employed; it wasn’t these men who would save Britain from herself! Alice settled down to enjoy her delicious butter-sodden toast, and soon felt better. Not really wanting the cold sour orange juice, she made herself drink it between cups of the bitter tea. The two women watched her, with the detached attention they would give to the interesting mores of a foreigner, taking in everything about her without seeming to do so. She had quite nice curly hair, they could be heard thinking; why didn’t she do something with it? It was dusty! What a pity about that heavy army jacket, more like a man’s, really! That was dusty, too! Look at her hands: she didn’t put herself out to keep her nails clean! Having condemned, and lost interest, they heaved themselves up and departed, with parting shouts at the woman behind the counter. “Ta, Liz.” “See you tomorrow, Betty.”

They came here every morning after three or four hours’ stint in the offices. These men came in on their way to work. They all
knew one another, Alice could see; it was like a club. She finished up quickly and left. Outside the newsagent’s on the corner, the two women she had been sitting with had been joined by a third. They all wore shapeless trousers, blouses, and cardigans and carried heavy shopping bags. Their work gear. They stood together gossiping, taking up as little room as they could, because the full tide of the morning rush to work filled the pavements.

It was still too early. It was only just after eight. Her mother would be taking her bath. If Alice went there now she could quietly let herself in and make the coffee, to give her mother a surprise when she came down in her dressing gown. Then they could sit at the big table in the kitchen and eat their muesli and drink their coffee. Dorothy would read her
Times
, and she, the
Guardian
. To that house every day were delivered the
Times
, the
Guardian
, the
Morning Star
, and the
Socialist Worker
, the last two for herself and Jasper. Jasper said he read the
Worker
because one should know what the opposition was doing; but Alice knew that he secretly had Trotskyist tendencies. Not that she minded about that; she believed that socialists of all persuasions should pull together for the common good. In her mother’s house, she read the
Guardian
. For years, that newspaper had been the only one to be seen. Then, one day, her mother dropped in to visit her great friend Zoë Devlin and found her wearing a
Guardian
apron; the word “Guardian” was printed in various sizes of black print, on white. This had given Dorothy Mellings a shock; she had a revelation because of this sight, she had said. That Zoë Devlin, of all people in the world, should be willing to put herself into uniform, to proclaim conformity!

It was the beginning of her mother’s period of pretty farfetched utterances—a period by no means over. The beginning, too, of a series of meetings arranged between the two women for the purpose of re-examining what they thought. “We go along for decades,” Alice had heard her mother say on the telephone, initiating the first discussion, “taking it for granted we agree about things, and we don’t. Like hell we do! We’re going to have to decide if you and I have anything in common, Zoë, how about it?”

Typical intellectual shit, Jasper had opined, meaning Dorothy to hear it.

Remembering Jasper, Alice understood she could not just turn up now, make coffee, and greet her mother with a smile.

She got on the train and found another café, where no one would think her remarkable. It was nearly empty; its busy time would not start for another two hours, when shoppers, men and women, came in. Now Alice ate wholemeal buns and honey and was restored to grace, and, with an eye on the clock on the wall, bided her time. Her mother would probably go out to the shops about nine-thirty, ten. She liked to get shopping over, for she hated it.

Alice had done the shopping for four years. She loved it. When she returned to the great kitchen with cartons full of food brought back in the car, she would carefully put everything away. Her mother would probably be there (if Jasper wasn’t) and they would talk, getting on like anything! They always did! At home Alice was a good girl, a good daughter, as she had always enjoyed being. It was she who managed the kitchen.… Of course, her mother was pleased to have her do it. (There was an uneasy little thought tucked away somewhere here, but Alice chose to ignore it.) For the four years Alice and Jasper had been there, she had shopped and cooked. She had also cooked—sometimes commandeering the kitchen for two or three days at a time—the food she sold at the market.

Jasper used to come in quickly, taking his opportunity when Dorothy was not around, and fill himself with whatever she was cooking that day—“her” soup, for instance; cakes, good healthy bread. Or, if she was not cooking, might be at the market, he sneaked to the refrigerator and took anything there he fancied. Alice kept it well supplied with ham and salami and pickles for him. He cut himself great sandwiches and took them up to his room and stayed there, not coming down for hours. Dorothy, at the beginning, had used to ask, uneasy, “What does Jasper do up there all day?” “He studies,” Alice always said, proud and forbidding. She knew that he did nothing at all, sometimes, all day. He might
read the
Socialist Worker
and the
Morning Star
. Otherwise he listened to pop, through headphones, and sometimes danced to it quietly by himself, all over the room. He was very graceful, Alice knew; he hated to be seen, and this was a pity. He should have danced: done ballet, perhaps?

Then he would come down again, silently, to get more food. He would never willingly come into the kitchen if Dorothy was there. He never sat down to eat with them. When Alice had remonstrated, said her mother did not like it, he had said she did not like
him
(which was true, as it turned out, though Dorothy certainly had not said so at the start). For his part, he thought her a vulgar tart. This epithet, so far off any sort of mark, only stunned Alice’s responses, so she said feebly, “But, Jasper, how can you say that?” At which he made loud rude noises, with his lips.

Of course, when Dorothy had guests, Jasper was not there. He really might just as well not have been in the house, except for that steady pilfering of food from the kitchen. Anyone would think that Dorothy grudged him the food! Alice had cried out often enough to him, and then, when he was merely abusive, to herself.

Now, sitting in this friendly, companionable café, where people coming in were likely to greet her; eating more buns, more honey (to fill in time now, not from hunger), Alice was thinking: Well, but she does hate Jasper, always did; people do. And she did grudge him his food, probably—if she hated him. Alice thought, at last, in something like a little panic: What must it have been like for her, never having her own kitchen, not even being able to come into it, for fear of running into Jasper? And then: I was simply doing everything, all the cooking. And she loves cooking.…

At half past nine, Alice left the café, calling good-bye to Sarah, who had served there for years. Once a refugee from Austria, she was now an elderly woman with photographs of her grown-up grandchildren stuck up on the wall behind the counter. Alice walked up, not too fast, to her mother’s house. She stood outside for some time, then thought that any watching neighbour would find this peculiar. She let herself in with the key she had not handed her mother when she had left yesterday forever. Not a sound in the house. Alice stood in the hall, breathing in the house,
home;
the
big, easy-fitting, accommodating house, which smelled of friendship. She went into the kitchen and her heart turned over. On the floor were tea chests full of dishes and plates, and, stacked all over the table, teacups and saucers and glasses, already tucked into newspaper. Oh, of course, now that she and Jasper had left, her mother would be giving the unnecessary china and stuff to jumble. Yes, that must be it. A small child, threatened, eyes wide and frantic, Alice stood looking at the tea chests, then ran upstairs to her own room. It was as she had left it yesterday. She felt better. She went up a floor to the room Jasper had used. On the floor was a rug, Bokhara. Once it had been in the sitting room, but it got frail and found a safe place under a table in this room, which, until Jasper commandeered it, was little used. The rug was beautiful. Alice tenderly rolled it up, and ran down with it to the kitchen. Now she hoped that she would not run into her mother. She looked around for paper and a biro, wrote, “I have taken the rug, Alice,” and stood this note among the wrapped glasses. Again she was endangered by the sight of the tea chests. But she made herself forget them, and went out of the house. At the end of the street her mother was coming towards her under a canopy of bright green. She walked slowly, head down. She looked tired and old. Alice ran fast the other way, clutching the heavy rug, until out of sight of her mother, and then walked, increasingly slowly, to Chalk Farm. The carpet shop was only just open. A middle-aged woman sat at a desk, cup of coffee before her, and pushed down dark glasses to look over them at Alice.