The Good Terrorist (25 page)

It turned out that, after all, there was nothing much more to be said.

What was evident was that they had all expected Comrade Andrew to join them, even Alice, who knew he disapproved. Of what, exactly, she wondered now? Of the IRA? No, of course not. Of working with the IRA? How could he? Then, it must be, of
them
, this group, approaching the Irish comrades in this way. Or this group. Period.

But not of her, Alice. He approved of her. Secretly warmed, supported by this thought, which she could share with no one at all, Alice sat reticent, watching the “meeting” develop, seeing on Jasper’s and Bert’s faces how they longed to hear steps, hear a knock, hear, “May I join you, comrades?”

But nothing.

It was reiterated that Bert and Jasper would make the trip purely as a reconnaissance. They could find out what kind of support the Irish comrades would accept. This being found somewhat lukewarm, somewhat unsatisfying and unsatisfactory, the formulation was amended and became: that Bert and Jasper were empowered by those present to offer support to the Irish revolutionaries, and ask to be given concrete tasks.

They did not linger. No one was comfortable in this former nursery, which had the ghosts of privileged children—of loved children?—so strongly in it.

Quickly they finished, and left, severally going back to number 43. Roberta and Faye went away to the pictures. They liked violent, even pornographic films, and there was one at the local cinema. The other four found Mary and Reggie in the kitchen, eating properly off plates. The mess of pizza fragments, uneaten chips, beer cans, papers had been swept into the litter bin.

Mary and Reggie said, “Do sit down and join us,” but just as the six had repelled Mary and Reggie, so now did Mary and Reggie seem surrounded by an invisible current: Keep off. Well, thought Alice, they are probably still sulky about last night. I did go too far, I suppose. Well, let them.

With many smiles and good-nights, the four went upstairs, and another meeting took place in the newly painted room, where they sat on the floor and discussed the new problem posed by Faye and Roberta, who did not like Comrade Andrew’s role in their affairs. That was why they had hoped he would drop in on the meeting next door. “Who
was
Comrade Andrew?” they had wanted to know. By the time the four had finished critically discussing the two women, they were a warm, close unit, comrades to the death. And yet Alice kept thinking that Pat, no matter how committed she sounded now, did not really stand by Bert. The attractive, lively girl, affectionate and easy with Bert after their weekend away together, presumably alone, did not convince Alice. Glossy cherry lips and shining cheeks would be pressed to Bert’s sensual red lips, and then doubtless all those white teeth would clash and nip, all that bushy black hair of Bert’s … But nevertheless, thought Alice, nevertheless … And Pat very much did not like Bert’s going with Jasper to Ireland. She did not like Jasper. This wasn’t a unit at all, only seemed like one, and Alice sat inwardly separated, thinking that Pat probably felt the same.

The smell of paint was very strong. Soon Jasper said he couldn’t sleep in it and went upstairs. His tone was such that Alice did not dare to go with him. She went down into the sitting room for the night.

She slept badly, often waking to listen so that she would not miss his going in the morning. She heard the two men come down the stairs and go into the kitchen. She followed them; felt herself already excluded, not wanted. It was only six, a fresh sunny chilly late-spring morning.

It seemed to Alice that Jasper hardly saw her as he went off. He waved to her from the gate, where she stood like any housewife seeing off her man.

She went back to her sleeping bag, with the feeling that a lot of time had to be got through before Jasper came home to her.

But the days went by pleasantly. Pat was infinitely available to Alice, helping with painting and cleaning; between them the two women accomplished miracles, dingy caves being transformed one after another to fresh and lively rooms. Pat was funny and sweet, agreeable, entertaining. Alice opened and expanded in this normality, this ease, and thought again how much of her time was spent with a tightened heart and grim expectation of another put-down from Jasper. Yet, while she enjoyed it all, liked Pat, felt she had never been so happy, she was thinking, Yes, but this is how people behave when they have decided to go away: in a sense she has already left.

Philip, affectionately supported by the two women, got the hot-water system working. They all had celebratory baths. Even Faye did, when encouraged by Roberta. Philip went back onto the roof and finished the tiling. He replaced floors and fallen plaster, mended the machineries of lavatory cisterns, and, borrowing the car from next door, got new piping to replace old. He found a thrown-away central-heating panel or two, and there was real heating. He located two great beams of good timber lying on a waste lot half a mile away, but could not lift them; they would have to wait for Bert and Jasper to help him.

Between Alice and Mary and Reggie took place the accounting session that would bring in a regular contribution to the household. Mary, who of course knew exactly what would have to be paid, had already worked out her and Reggie’s shares. It was very little. Electricity, gas? With ten in the house, what could that come to? An assessment was made. Water? The Water Board had not yet caught up with them. It seemed this was as far as the couple had thought; as though that would be it. Alice said dryly that this and this and this had been brought in.

“Yes, but from the skips,” said Mary sharply, betraying that she had not omitted to notice what was being brought in.

This was taking place at the kitchen table. Reggie and Mary opposite each other, so amiable and self-assured; Alice sitting at the head of that table, waiting for what would come her way. She knew already. She could see in Mary’s eyes a gleam that meant she was calculating, not what she might owe to Alice, but what she was accumulating, of course at the moment only in imagination, for the purchase of their flat, or house.

Alice said, “We’ve paid for the gas boiler, for a lot of cable, for tools, for wood, for glass.”

She did not expect very much. Rightly. Glances flew back and forth between Reggie and Mary, and a sum of twenty pounds was offered and accepted.

No mention was made of Philip’s work. Alice could positively hear the thought: But of course he wouldn’t do it if he weren’t going to live here.

Smiling, even demure, Alice accepted the tea that Mary offered to prepare—out of guilt, of course—and looked at the other two and thought: God, how I hate you people. How I hate your mean, scrimping, grabbing, greedy guts. Because she knew she swelled and paled, in the grip of her look, she smiled even more and then invited them to start talking about their plans for their future home, which they did at once, and ceased to notice her.

Jim took the letter to Cedric Mellings, and came back limp and weepy with happiness. He could start tomorrow. By chance someone was leaving. By chance, Jim would suit Cedric Mellings very well. Jim could look forward, too, to training in the new technical mysteries.

Alice said sharply, “Guilty conscience. That lot—it’s all guilt with them.”

Jim said, “He’s very nice, Alice. He was very nice to me.” They were in the kitchen. Jim, seated, or perched, on his chair, could not settle, but got up and stumbled about, laughing helplessly, or sat and laid his head on the table and laughed, sounding as if he wept, then, in an excess of happiness and gratitude, banged his two fists on either side of his head, which banging turned into a little sharp jubilant rhythm. Next he sat up and flung wide his arms in the same movement, his eyes rolling, his black face smiling wide, white teeth showing.

Alice, with a thousand terrible things to say about her father, kept them back, because she loved Jim, loved his helplessness, his vulnerability, and her own part in alleviating these wounds; because she knew this man, or boy—he was twenty-two—was really sweet, had a sweet gentle warmth in him; and she knew that a spell of happiness, of success, would transform him. She could imagine how he would be, earning money, taking command of his life. She could see him clearly: Jim as he was now, but filled out with confidence and new skills. Therefore, she said not one more word about her shitty father, but only listened, sharing in what she knew was a moment in his life he could never forget.

Then she took him out to supper to celebrate, Philip and Pat joining in, and the evening became one of those when the participants have to pause, to say to themselves: Yes, this
is
me, it really
is
me.… Happiness sat with them at the table in the Seashell Fish-and-Chips; they could not stop smiling, or Jim from laughing and sighing. When he said, “I can’t believe this is me, man,” they looked at one another, unable to bear that they could not express what they felt for him, but they could laugh, and—it was Pat who sat next to him—stroke or pat him, or embrace him. The other people in the restaurant, who might at other times have had stringent thoughts about race, or about white women publicly embracing black men (or at least not with such total lack of self-consciousness), were, it could be seen from faces that also showed tendencies to laugh without reason, subdued to the demand of the occasion, which was for a total and uncritical abandon to happiness.

The four went back to number 43, in a close, tender group, Jim as king, as victor, and, unwilling that the evening should be lost, they sat on around the kitchen table, sentinelled by the yellow forsythia, and could not bear to part.

Alice was already thinking: Yes, tonight you’d think we’ll all be friends for life, we could never harm each other, but it could all change, just like that! Oh,
she
knew, she had seen it all. Her heart could have ached, could have dragged her down, but she did not let it, was keeping that lump of a heart on a short, cruel chain like a dangerous dog.

A postcard showing the Wicklow Mountains arrived from Jasper, with the message “Wish you were here!” She knew exactly the freakish mood he had been in, and her face assumed that smile the thought of Jasper so often evoked: modest, wistful, and admiring, as if his vagaries of genius would forever be beyond her. She kept the card to herself because she knew the others would not understand. Coming downstairs early, long before the others, she had seen it lying on the floor inside the door.

Jim went off for his first day at work in a mood of tender incredulity, still unable to stop smiling.

Pat, instead of joining Alice in their scrubbing and painting, went off to “a friend,” came back saying that Bert had telephoned a message. All was well, and they would be back soon.

What are they doing for money? was Alice’s thought, kept to herself. She also thought: When Bert comes back, Pat will not be here. She could read this from Pat’s face. But she kept that to herself, too.

That evening a knock—furtive and hasty, telling Alice who it was—brought her out to find Monica on the path near the gate-not outside the door, for the girl had been afraid that Faye might open it.

But, seeing Alice, she approached swiftly, her hungry eyes on Alice’s face.

Faye was in the kitchen with Roberta, so Alice shut the door quietly behind her and went with Monica out to the road, and along it to where they were hidden by the healthy bushes of Joan Robbins’s garden.

“Did you hear of anything?” Monica asked, already sullen and hopeless, apparently seeing from Alice’s face that there was no news. She looked puffy and pale. Her hair straggled greasily. From her came such a whiff of defeat that Alice had to force herself to stand up to it.

“There’s nothing to hope for from the Council,” said Alice, and, seeing a sneer or snarl of
Well, of course not!
, persisted, “but I’ve thought of something else.” She asked Monica to stay where she was, sneaked back into the house as though she were guilty of something, came out again with the letter she had written to her mother. Monica had drifted halfway back to the main road, apparently expecting Alice not to reappear.

“Did you think I was not coming back?” she scolded. “Really, if you are going to expect the worst, then that is what you’ll get.”

A weak, conscious smile.

“Take this to this address. And take your baby with you.”

“But it’s so late. God knows it’s hard enough to get him off to sleep in that place, and he’s asleep now.”

“Go tomorrow. It’s my mother. She likes babies. She likes looking after people.”

The doubt on Monica’s face did not in any way diminish the total confidence Alice felt. Look what she had achieved with Jim! No, she was on a crest of ability and luck, and she could make no mistakes. She felt that her mother would be good to poor Monica. She said briskly, “It’s all right, Monica. Well, it’s worth trying, isn’t it?”

Peering down dubiously at the envelope, Monica departed to the bus stop in the main road, and Alice went in to join the others around the table. She had prepared a large stew, or thick soup, her speciality, brought to perfection in years of communal living. How many people had joked that Alice could feed crowds out of it! Like the Bible’s loaves and two fishes.

How many had come into this squat or that asking, “Any of your soup left, Alice?” and then sat breaking bread into it, handing back their plates for more. No dietary deficiencies in people who lived on her soup! And in times when there had been very little money, it had kept them going, Jasper and her, for months.

Alice slid back into her place, saying, to their querying, ready-for-any-emergency looks, “It’s all right, it was nothing.”

Roberta and Faye, Mary and Reggie, Philip and Jim, Pat and Alice sat around all evening, compelled into being a family by the magic of that soup, and the red wine that Reggie had contributed, and the good bread, healthy wholemeal, and the frivolous white that Faye insisted on.

This was another evening of pleasure, and Jim was full of tales about Alice’s father and the others working with him, twelve or more, and how lucky Alice was to have such a father—while Alice smiled and kept a lock on her tongue.