The Good Terrorist (35 page)

Faye said violently to Roberta, “It looks as if you and I will be on our own!”

“Hardly alone, darling. There’ll be a good turnout, I’m sure.”

Faye tittered, looking accusingly at her comrades, and then said, “Well, I’m for bed.” She went out without saying good night. Roberta smiled at them all, asking toleration for Faye, and went after her. They could hear how Faye said on the stairs that they were all fascists and sexists. They smiled at one another.

Then Reggie and Mary said they were to be picked up tomorrow at five, so as to get to Cumberland in time for the demo, and they wanted an early night.

Philip went, too; he was starting work at eight in the morning.

Jasper, Bert, and Alice sat on discussing tomorrow. Alice saw that Jasper did not want her to throw eggs or fruit at Mrs. Thatcher. He did not say so, but it was obvious. That meant he wanted her here with him, not in prison. This made her wildly happy and grateful. Affectionate impulses kept attacking her arms; they yearned to embrace him. Sisterly kisses inhabited her smiles. He felt this, and, though he was explaining plans to her, addressed himself to Bert. He was not going to let himself be arrested, because he and Bert were so soon off to the Soviet Union. The visas might come any day, but if not in time for this trip, then there was another with vacancies in a week.

Alice was disappointed that she must stay in an orderly part of the crowd, but never mind, another time.

Bert said he was going to bed. At once Jasper got up and said he was, too. Alice understood he did not want to be alone with her, though she knew he was happy enough to have her there when Bert was. She went up into the room she had shared with him, next to Bert’s. Bert was of course less noisy without Pat; but he was sleeping badly, as she could hear. And tonight, even with the door tight shut, she could hear that Faye was having one of her turns.

“Faye had one of her turns last night,” Roberta might say, having forgotten that the old-fashioned phrase—Victorian?—once used humorously by Faye (“I was ’aving one of me turns, me dear”)—was meant to be humorous, so that it had become ordinary speech. At the moments when Roberta used it, she acquired a workaday, bygone look, was like a servant or a lower-class person from a play on the box. Theatrical. When were Faye and Roberta themselves? Only when they had been beaten back, down, by some person or situation, into being the people who used those clumsy blurting labouring heavy voices, which made them seem as if they had been taken over by pitiful strangers who could not be expected to know Faye, know Roberta.

Alice slept badly. She woke to hear Reggie and Mary go downstairs; their cheerful voices were loud, as if they were alone in the
house and it belonged to them. She heard Roberta and Faye go down, quiet, not talking. It was nine before Bert woke next door; he was lighting cigarettes one after another. She thought, Perhaps we’re not going to get to Queen Bitch Thatcher today. And descended to the empty kitchen, determined not to show disappointment. Then Bert did come. At once he went to wake Jasper, who, she could see, would easily call the whole thing off. It was raining steadily.

But they did get out of the house and to the train; and watched London give way to the country through the dirty train windows and grey shrouds of rain. Bert was silent, thinking his thoughts, which—Alice suspected—he would be sharing with Jasper were she not there. Jasper was being polite with her.

At the station they took a bus to the university. The great cold lunatic buildings looked at them through the downpour, and Alice felt murder fill her heart. She knew most of the new universities; had visited them, demonstrated outside them. When she saw one she felt she confronted the visible embodiment of evil, something that wished to crush and diminish her. The enemy. If I could put a bomb under that lot, she was thinking, if I could … Well, one of these days …

They were late. Outside the main entrance about sixty demonstrators huddled under plastic hoods and umbrellas, herded by eighty-odd policemen. At the sight of this, Jasper came to life, and ran forward, jeering, “Fascist pigs, pigs, pigs. Cowards! How many of you do you need for one demonstrator?” Alice ran to catch up with him, so as to be beside him, ready to calm him down. Bert came on slowly behind, walking, not running.

The official cars came sweeping up, and before Alice, Jasper, and Bert could reach the crowd, Mrs. Thatcher had got out, and was being led quickly in. Fruit and—as Alice had hoped—eggs sailed through the air, exploding with a dull squelch. Mrs. Thatcher had gone inside.

The demonstrators began a steady chant of “Nuclear missiles out. Out, out, out. Nuclear missiles out, out, out.”

They kept it up bravely. Mrs. Thatcher would be inside for two hours, at least.

The policemen were bored and resentful, forced to stand there in the rain; they were only too ready to be provoked. A girl near Alice picked up a large orange from the ground and flung it at a policeman. His helmet was dislodged. Delighted, two policemen came to her. She dodged about in the crowd for a bit, then they caught her, and she went limp and was dragged to a van, her long brown hair trailing wetly. The two policemen came back to a chorus of boos and jeers. Alice could feel Jasper beside her, pulsating with frustrated excitement. He was longing for a real tussle. So was she. So were the police, who grinned challengingly at the demonstrators. Alice, remembering her role, said to Jasper, “Careful, that one over there, he’s a brute, he’s just waiting to get you.” And, since Jasper seemed to be about to explode into action, “Remember, it’s Saturday. We don’t want to spend the weekend inside. And, anyway, there’s your trip, don’t forget.”

Others, less burdened by circumstance, were throwing fruit and eggs at the police, and were promptly being taken to the vans.

“Fucking police state,” shouted Jasper, almost out of control with excitement. He was dodging about in the crowd, as if he were being pursued.

The crowd took it up: “Police state, police state,” they yelled.

Alice saw an eye signal pass among the policemen; she knew that they would all be arrested at the slightest provocation. She yearned for it, longed for the moment when she would feel the rough violence of the policemen’s hands on her shoulders, would let herself go limp, would be dragged to the van.… But she said to Jasper, “Come on, run,” and she grabbed him by the hand and they ran. Bert, standing rather by himself at the edge of the crowd, stepped back as the arrests started. He stood watching. But he, too, would be arrested in a moment. Alice, her blood on fire, her face distorted with excitement, rushed in, darted among the policemen, admiring her own skill in it, grabbed Bert, and said, “Come on.” Bert, roused, said, “Oh yes. Yes, Alice, you’re right.” And followed her.

“Get them,” shouted a policeman, as the three sprinted away.

Five or six policemen set off after them, but one slipped in a puddle, rolled over, and slid along in the mud, and when he tried to
get up, he fell again. It seemed that he had hurt himself. The others crowded around him. Meanwhile, disappointed that the chase had been so short, the three found their way to the bus stop. It was pouring steadily, a cold hard rain.

Their spirits sank, now that the challenge of the police was taken off them. It had not been very satisfactory. They were all thinking that they had spent a lot of money for very little.

They went into a café. The men ate sausages and chips; Alice, a salubrious vegetable soup.

They debated about whether to go back to the university for Mrs. Thatcher’s exit to the cars. Alice was for it, though she was afraid of the effect of that pink-and-white, assured, complacent Tory face on Jasper. If he were kept in for the weekend, the weekend ticket return would be invalid, and the fares back on Monday would be double.

But she did feel she hadn’t had her money’s worth.

They agreed they would go back, to show solidarity with the others—if any demonstrators still remained. But it began to rain even harder. A real tropical deluge, if such cold rain deserved the name “tropical.”

They returned to the station and, dispirited, to London. There they went to the pictures, and then, finding Faye and Roberta in the kitchen, they all swapped notes. Clearly, they—Jasper and Alice and Bert—would have done much better to have gone to the anti-professor demo, which had been a great success. About a thousand people, Faye said—Alice automatically corrected this to “six hundred.” Mostly women, but quite a lot of men. They had jostled the professor badly, had nearly brought him down, had got him really rattled. “Well, that ought to give him pause for thought, at least,” said Roberta happily, thinking of how she had shrieked he was a scummy sexist and in the pay of the fascists.

Even the Thatcher demonstration sounded effective, in retrospect. After all, quite a few had been arrested. Reggie and Mary had—of course!—a television in their room. They all went up, and crowded in, making jokes about the large bed, the tidy furniture, the carpets. They sat on the bed and watched the news. There was no mention of the fascist professor, but there was a brief scene
of the demonstrators struggling with the police at the university. The three were disappointed that they did not appear on the screen. The newscaster said that at one point the police were afraid a bomb had been thrown. “It was an orange,” screamed Alice, and they all laughed and jeered, and went down for more talk in the kitchen, taking with them four bottles of wine from a case of it that Reggie and Mary had under the dressing table.

“They won’t mind,” said Faye, laughing, but in a way that said they all knew they would mind very much.

Philip came in, but he was tired and went to bed.

The five sat up drinking and talking till late.

The demonstrations sounded better and better as the night wore on. They drank to the comrades in the police cells. Alice was sad she was not there—as it happened she had not been arrested for some time; she was beginning to feel she was not pulling her weight in the Struggle. But it was just as well, for on Monday Jasper and Bert were told the visas had gone through and the trip was on. They went off that afternoon.

Alice said, as they left, “See you in ten days.”

She saw them glance at each other—yet again the ridiculous, insulting, perfectly obvious “secret” shared look that people used all the time. It came to her, stunningly, that they did not expect to be back in ten days.

She thought this all over carefully, slept on it, and then wrote to the address she had for Pat.

Bert and Jasper have gone off, she wrote. Why don’t you come down for a day or two? Or, if you can’t come, please write. Do you know anything about this trip? Did Bert say anything about not coming back in ten days?

This letter brought a card, “Ring me at nine o’clock Thursday or Friday. Much love, Pat.” This “Much love” hurt Alice, and she wept a little.

When she heard Pat’s bright, firm, likable voice, Alice pleaded, “Do come down, do, Pat.”

“But I am short of money.”

“I’ll pay for your ticket. Do come.”

Pat said she would, and Alice understood, from the rise in her
own spirits, how little she felt at home with Faye and Roberta, how little she had in common with the respectable Reggie and Mary.

Pat came next day, and the two young women commandeered the sitting room and stayed there, gossiping, exchanging news. Pat had met people Alice knew, in the commune she now lived in. Alice had to tell about the anti-Thatcher demo. She also delicately mentioned the fascist professor, hoping for some kind of support from Pat in her own private thoughts. But on Pat’s face came the helpless resentful look Alice half expected, and Pat reached for a cigarette and began to smoke furiously.

“You don’t imagine it’s any accident,” she said, “that all this stuff about genetic differences is being peddled now!”

“Why?” asked Alice, timid but dogged. “You mean he’s being paid to do it? Who? The CIA?”

Pat tossed her head angrily, blew out bitter clouds, and said vaguely, “Well, why not?”

Alice decided to leave it; no point in going on. Instead she asked Pat why she, Alice, had this impression that Bert and Jasper were not planning to come home at once. Pat sighed, and looked with unmistakable pity at her friend.

“They will be home, Alice,” she said gently. “On the day appointed. But
they
think they won’t be, do you see?”

Alice saw. In fact she had seen the moment Jasper had first mentioned it. But then she had blocked it off, for it was all so painfully ridiculous.

“Look, it’s Ireland, all over again. They had it all worked out. They will say to the Intourist guide: ‘Comrades, we want to speak to someone in authority.’ ”

“Oh, God,” muttered Alice, ashamed. “Oh, no!”

“Oh, yes! Yes, yes! The Intourist guide will of course say at once, ‘Whom would you like to see, comrades? Comrade Andropov?’ ‘Oh no, not really,’ Jasper and Bert will say modestly. ‘Someone less important will do for us.’ ”

Pat was laughing, but not happily, since she was mocking Bert; and Alice was suffering for Jasper.

“At once some very important comrade will appear, and say,
‘Comrade Willis, Comrade Barnes? At your service!’ Jasper and Bert will explain that they have decided to train as spies, preferably in Czechoslovakia or in Lithuania, where all the best spy schools are. The Russian will say, ‘Of course, what a good idea! But it will take an hour or two to fix up. Just wait for my return, comrades.’ ”

Alice dubiously laughed, stopped laughing, and remarked, “Well, all right. But what about Comrade Andrew?”

“What about Comrade Andrew?”

“It’s pretty casual with him, don’t you think? I mean, he says to just anybody he fancies, how about a spot of training.”

“He’s not done too badly, who he’s chosen.”

“Bert?”

“Bert said no. But just imagine Bert actually under discipline somewhere. In some kind of structured situation. He has a lot of qualities, Bert has.”

“Me?” enquired Alice, dubiously. “Are you going to say I need a structured situation?”

“No! I am certainly not. What you need is …”