The Good Terrorist. Doris Lessing
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‘Here, Alan,’ shouted one of them towards a great shaking throbbing lorry that 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 her thirty pounds, 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, which 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; and poured buckets of cold water into the bath; 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 judgment 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.’ Four-square 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