The Good Terrorist (8 page)

“You want to sell?” she enquired. “Pretty!” as Alice unrolled the rug on the floor, breathing hard. Together they stood looking, captivated and quietened by the pool of soft patterned colour on the floor. The woman bent, picked it up, and held it against the light. Alice moved round to stand by her and saw the light prickling through, and in one place glaring. Alice’s throat was tight at the back. She thought wildly: “I’ll take it to the squat, it’s so beautiful …” but waited as the rug was thrown down on the floor again, just anyhow, in folds, and the woman said, “It’s badly worn. It would have to be mended. I couldn’t give you more than thirty.”

“Thirty?” moaned Alice. She didn’t know what she had expected.
She knew it was, or had been, valuable.
“Thirty,”
she stammered, thinking it had not been worth taking it.

“My advice is, keep it and enjoy it,” said the woman, going back to her desk, letting the dark glasses fall back into place, and drinking coffee.

“No, I need the money,” said Alice.

She took the three notes and, lingering to look at the rug lying there abandoned by her, went out of the shop.

She bought food for Jasper and went back to the squat. The street had a morning look, no one out, people had gone to work and to school; inside the women would be cleaning or with the kids. She did not expect anyone to be up yet in her house; in squats no one got up early.

But Pat was in the sitting room by herself, drinking coffee from the vacuum flask. She indicated with a gesture that Alice should help herself, but Alice was still full of her good breakfasts, and shook her head. She said, “I’ve got a bit of money, but not enough.”

Pat said nothing. In this strong morning light she looked older, all loosened and used, not cherry-bright. Her hair had not been brushed yet, and she smelled of sex and sweat. Alice thought, Today we’ll tackle the bathrooms. There were two.

Pat had still not said anything, but now she lit a cigarette, and smoked it as though she planned to drown in smoke.

Alice had seen that Pat was one of those who needed time to come to in the mornings, and was not going to say anything. She sat quietly and surveyed the state of the room: The curtains were rags, and could not be expected to stand up to dry cleaning. Well, perhaps her mother … The carpet—it would do. A vacuum cleaner?

She knew Pat was looking at her but did not meet the look. She felt Pat an ally, did not want to challenge this feeling.

Pat said, coughing a little from the smoke, “Twenty-four hours. You’ve been here twenty-four hours!” And laughed. Not unfriendly. But reserving judgement. Fair enough, thought Alice. In politics one had to.…

There was a sudden arrival of sound in the street, and the rubbish van stood outside. With an exclamation Alice ran out, and
straight up to two men who were shouldering up rubbish bins from the next garden: “Please, please, please …” They stood there, side by side, looking down at her, big men, strong for this job, confronted by this girl who was both stubbornly not to be moved, and frantic. She stammered, “What will you take to clear this garden …? Yes, I know.…” Their faces put on identical expressions of disgusted derision as they looked from the sordid mess to her, back to the mess, at her, and then steadily at the mess, assessing it.

“You should call in the Council,” said one, at last.

“You
are
the Council,” said Alice. “No, please, please … look, we’ve come to an arrangement. An agreed arrangement. We will pay the expenses. You know, an agreed squat.”

“Here, Alan,” shouted one of them towards the great shaking, throbbing lorry, which stood there ready to chew up any amount of plastic cartons, tins, papers—the rubbish that crammed the garden of her house to the level of the windows.

Out of the lorry came another large man in blue dungarees and wearing thick leather gloves. Alan, arbiter of her fate, yet another one, like Philip, like Mary Williams.

She said, “What will you take to clear it?” This was both calmly confident, as befitted her mother’s daughter, and desperate; and they stared, taking their time, at that plump childlike formless face, the round anxious blue eyes, the well-washed but tidy jeans, the thick jacket, and the nice little collared blouse with flowers on it. And all, everything, impregnated with a greyish dust, which had been brushed and shaken and beaten off, but remained, obstinately, as a dimming of the colour.

They shrugged, as one. Three pairs of eyes conferred.

“Twenty quid,” said Alan, the driver.

“Twenty pounds?” wailed Alice. “Twenty!”

A pause. They looked, as one, uncomfortable. A pause. “You get that lot into plastic bags, love, and we’ll pick it up tomorrow. Fifteen.”

She smiled. Then laughed. Then sobbed. “Oh, thanks, thanks,” she snuffled.

“Be around tomorrow, love,” said Alan, all fatherly, and the three moved off as one to the opposite house and its rubbish bins.

Alice checked for the safety of the money in her pocket, and went back into the house. Pat was where she had been, in a smoke trance. Jim had come down and was eating the food she had brought for Jasper. She said, “If we get the stuff into bags, they’ll take it tomorrow.”

“Money,” said Pat.

“Money money money money,” said Jim, stuffing in bananas.

“I’ve got the money. If I get the plastic bags …” She stood before them, all appeal.

“I’m on,” said Jim.

“Right,” said Pat, “but what about the house next door? We can clear this place up as much as you like, but that place is worse than this.” As Alice stared and stared, her pink mouth slack and doleful, “Don’t tell me you didn’t notice? The house next door?”

Alice flew out, and looked first into the garden where the woman neighbour had spoken to her. Suburban order. But there was a tall hedge at the other side of this house, and beyond it … She ran into the main road, and along it a short way, and saw, as she had not done before because she had made her little excursions by another route, a house identical to the one she was reclaiming, with broken windows, slipped slates, a look of desertion, and a rubbish-filled garden. It stank.

She came thoughtfully and bitterly back to the sitting room, and asked, “Is it empty?”

Pat said, “The police cleared it three months ago, but it is full again now.”

“That’s not our problem,” said Alice, suspecting it might turn out to be. “I’m going to get the plastic bags.”

Enough cost her ten pounds.

Pat looked at the great heap of shining black on the steps and said, “A pretty penny,” but did not offer. She said, “Are we going to do it with our hands?”

Alice, without a moment’s hesitation, ran into the next garden, rang the bell, conferred with Joan Robbins, and came back with a spade, a shovel, a fork.

“How do you do it!” said Pat with tired irony, but picked up the fork and a sack and began work.

They laboured. Much worse than it looked, for the lower layers were pressed down and rotting and loathsome. Black glistening sack after sack received its horrible load and was stood next to another, until the garden was crammed with black sacks, their mouths showing decomposing refuse. The thin cat watched from the hedge, its eyes on Alice. Unable to bear it, she soon went in, filled a saucer with milk, another with scraps of cheese, bread, and cold chips, and brought them out to the cat, which crept on raggedy paws to the food and ate.

Pat stood resting, looking at Alice. Who was looking at the cat. Jim leaned on a shovel and said, “I had a little cat. It got run over.”

Pat waited for more, but there was no more to come. She shrugged and said, “It’s a cat’s life.” And went on working.

But Jim’s eyes had tears in them, and Alice said, “I’m sorry, Jim.”

“I wouldn’t have another little cat,” he said. “Not after that one,” and went furiously back to work.

Soon both gardens, back and front, were cleared. Pallid grass was ready to take a new lease on life. A rose, long submerged, had thin whitish shoots.

“It was a nice garden,” said Jim, pleased.

“I smell,” said Alice bitterly. “What are we going to do? And I haven’t even thought about hot water yet. If Philip comes, tell him I won’t be a minute.”

She flew inside; she stood buckets of cold water in the bathroom; she did what she could, inadequately. Hot water, she was thinking, hot water, that’s next.
Money
.

Philip did not come.

Bert and Jasper descended together in responsible conversation about some political perspective. They told Alice and Pat they were going to get some breakfast, noticed the cleared garden and the ranks of sacks, said “Nice work,” and departed to Fred’s Caff.

Pat would have shared a laugh with Alice, but Alice was not going to meet her eyes. She would never betray Jasper, not to anyone!

But Pat persisted, “I left one squat because I did all the work. Not just men, either—six of us, three women, and I did it all.”

At this, Alice faced Pat seriously, pausing in her labour of cleaning a window, and said, “It’s always like that. There’s always one or two who do the work.” She waited for Pat to comment, disagree, take it up on principle.

“You don’t mind,” stated Pat.

She was looking neat and tight and right again, having washed and brushed up. Alice was thinking: Yes, all pretty and nice, her eyes done up, her lips red, and then he can just … She felt bitter.

She said, “That’s how it always is.”

“What a revolutionary,” said Pat, in her way that was friendly but with a sting in it that referred, so it seemed, to some permanent and deeply internal judgement of hers, a way of looking at life that was ingrained.

“But I am a revolutionary,” said Alice, seriously.

Pat said nothing, but drew in smoke to the very pit of her poor lungs, and held her mouth in a red pout to let out a stream of grey that floated in tendrils to the grimy ceiling. Her eyes followed the spiralling smoke. She said at last, “Yes, I think you are. But the others aren’t so sure.”

“You mean Roberta and Faye? Oh well, they are just—desperadoes!” said Alice.

“What?”
and Pat laughed.

“You know.” Foursquare in front of Pat, Alice challenged her to take a stand on what she, Alice, knew Pat to be, not a desperado, but a serious person, like herself, Alice. Pat did not flinch away from this confrontation. It was a moment, they knew, of importance.

A silence, and more smoke bathed lungs and was expelled, slowly, sybaritically, both women watching the luxuriant curls.

“All the same,” said Pat, “they are prepared for anything. They take it on—you know. The worst, if they have to.”

“Well?” said Alice, calm and confident. “So would I. I’m ready, too.”

“Yes, I believe you are,” said Pat.

Jim came in. “Philip’s here.” Out flew Alice, and saw him in
the light of day for the first time. A slight, rather stooping boy—only he was a man—with his hollowed, pale cheeks, his wide blue eyes full of light, his long elegant white hands, his sheaves of glistening pale hair. He had his tools with him.

She said, “The electricity?,” and walked before him to the ravaged kitchen, knowing that here was something else she must confront and solve. He followed, shut the door after him, and said, “Alice, if I finish the work here, can I move in?”

She now knew she had expected this. Yes, every time that arrangement, he and his girlfriend, had come up, there had been something not said.

He explained, “I’ve been wanting to be independent. On my own.” Knowing she was thinking of the others, their plans, he said, “I’m CCU. I don’t see why there should be any problem?”

But not IRA, thought Alice, but knew she would deal with all that later. “If it’s up to me, yes,” she said. Would that be enough? He had taken her as the boss here—as who would not?

He now turned his attention to the ripped wires that were tugged right out of the plaster; the gas stove, which had been pulled out to lie on its side on the floor.

Bitterness was on his face; the same incredulous rage she felt. They stood together, feeling they could destroy with their bare hands those men who had done this.

Men like the dustmen, thought Alice steadily, making herself think it. Nice men. They did it. But when we have abolished fascist imperialism, there won’t be people like that.

At this thought appeared a mental picture of her mother, who, when Alice said things of this kind, sighed, laughed, looked exhausted. Only last week she had said, in her new mode, bitter and brief and flat, “Against stupidity the gods themselves.”

“What’s that?” Alice had asked.

“Against—stupidity—the gods—themselves—contend—in vain,” her mother had said, isolating the words, presenting them to Alice, not as if she had expected anything from Alice, but reminding herself of the uselessness of it all.

The bitterness Alice felt against the Council, the workmen,
the Establishment now encompassed her mother, and she was assaulted by a black rage that made her giddy, and clenched her hands. Coming to herself, she saw Philip looking at her, curious. Because of this state of hers which he was judging as more violent than the vandalising workmen deserved?

She said, “I could kill them.” She heard her voice, deadly. She was surprised by it. She felt her hands hurting, and unclenched them.

“I could, too,” said Philip, but differently. He had set down grimy bags of tools, and was standing quietly there, waiting. He was looking at her with his by now familiar and heart-touching obstinacy. The murderess in Alice took herself off, and Alice said, giving him the promise he had to have before he did any more work, “It’s only fair, if you do the work.”

He nodded, believing her, and then transferred that obstinacy of his to the attention he gave the mangled wall. “It’s not so bad,” he said at last. “Looks as if they smashed the place up in a bit of a fit of temper: they didn’t do much of a job of it.”

“
What
?” she said, incredulous; for it seemed to her the kitchen, or at least two walls of it, was sprouting and dangling cables and wires; and the creamy plaster lay like dough in mounds along the bottom of these walls, which were discoloured and scurfy.

“Seen worse.” Then, “I’ve got to have the floorboards up; can’t work with that down there.”