The Good Terrorist. Doris Lessing
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man, who must weigh fifteen stone. A sergeant. She knew his type too. Not too bad. She had to look right up to him, and he looked down at her, in judgment.
‘We told you lot to clear out,’ said this man, with the edge on his voice that the dustmen had, a hard contempt, but he was making a gesture to a couple of the men who were about to pull Pat aside and go into the sitting-room. They desisted.
Alice held out the yellow paper, and said, ‘We are an agreed squat.’
‘Not yet you aren’t,’ said the sergeant, taking in the main point at once.
‘No, but it’s only two days. I’ve done this before, you see,’ she said reasonably. ‘It’s all right if you pay the bills and keep the place clean.’
‘Clean,’ said the sergeant, bending down over her, hands on hips like a stage sergeant, Mr Plod the Policeman. ‘It’s disgusting.’
‘You saw that rubbish outside,’ said Alice. ‘The Council are taking that tomorrow. I organized it with them.’
‘You did, did you? Then why were we having phone calls about you digging some pit in the garden and filling it with muck?’
‘Muck is the word,’ said Alice. ‘The Council workmen filled the lavatories with cement, so there were buckets upstairs. We had to get rid of them. We dug a pit.’
A pause. The big man still stood there, leaning a little forward, allowing his broad face to express measured incredulity.
‘You dug a pit,’ he said.
‘Yes, we did.’
‘In the middle of London. You dig a pit.’
‘That’s right,’ said Alice, polite.
‘And having dug a pit, you fill it with – ‘ He hesitated.
‘Shit,’ said Alice, calm.
The five other policemen laughed, sniggered, drew in their breaths, according to their natures, but the young brute on whom Alice had been keeping half an eye suddenly kicked out at the door of the cupboard under the stairs, smashing it.
Philip let out an exclamation, and he was by him in a flash. ‘You said something?’ he said, looming over Philip, standing there in his little white overalls. A kick would smash him to pieces.
‘Never mind,’ said the sergeant authoritatively. He wanted to pursue the main crime. The vicious one fell back a step and stood with clenched hands, his eyes at work now on Pat, who stood relaxed, watching Alice. Alice, seeing his look, knew that if Pat were to meet that one in a demo, she could expect the worst. Again the little cold thrill of sensation.
‘You – stand – there – and tell – me – that you dig a pit in a garden, and just make a cesspit, without a by-your-leave, without any authority!’
‘But what else could we do,’ said Alice in clear reasonable tones. ‘We couldn’t put dozens of buckets of shit into the sewage system all at once. Not in a house that’s been empty. You’d really have cause to complain then, wouldn’t you?’
A pause. ‘You can’t do that kind of thing,’ said the sergeant, after a pause. In retreat. Please God, thought Alice, Pat or Philip won’t say: But we’ve done it!
‘It was a very large pit,’ she said. ‘We came by chance on some lush’s bottle-bin. It was a good five feet deep. We’d show you, but it’s raining. If you come round tomorrow we could show you then?’
A silence. It hung in the balance. Please, please, God, thought Alice, nothing will happen, the two girls won’t walk in; that really would finish it, or Jasper doesn’t suddenly take it into his head…For Jasper, in a certain mood, might easily come out and enjoy provoking a confrontation.
But the thing held. The five policemen who had been scattered around the space of the hall came in closer to their leader, like a posse, and Alice said, ‘Excuse me, but could I have that?’ For the sergeant still held the yellow paper. He read it through again, solemnly, and then gave it back.
‘I’ll have to report that pit to the Water Board,’ he said.
‘There were no pipes where we dug,’ said Alice, ‘not one.’
‘Only a skeleton,’ said Pat, negligently. As one the six men turned, glaring. ‘A dog,’ said Pat. ‘It was a dog’s grave.’
The men relaxed. But they kept their eyes on Pat. She had got a rise out of them, but so smoothly. In the dim light from the single bulb, she lounged there, a dark handsome girl, politely smiling.
‘We’ll be back,’ said the sergeant, and hitched his head at the door. They all went out, the killer last, with a cold frustrated look at little Philip, at Pat, but not much at the ordinary, unchallenging Alice.
The door shut. No one moved. They all stood staring at that door; they could come crashing back again. A trap? But the seconds went past. They heard a car start up. Alice shook her head at Philip, who seemed about to break into some effusion of feeling. And the door did open. It was the sergeant.
‘I’ve been taking a look at those sacks,’ he said. ‘You said they were being taken tomorrow?’ But his eyes were at work all around the hall, lingering with a slight frown on the smashed-in cupboard door under the stairs.
‘Tomorrow,’ said Alice. Then, in a disappointed voice, ‘Not very nice, was it, smashing in that little door, for nothing.’
‘Put in a complaint,’ he said, briefly, almost good-naturedly, and disappeared.
‘Fascist shits,’ said Pat, like an explosion, and did not move. They remained where they were. They might have been playing ‘statues’.
They let a couple of minutes go past, then, as one, came to life as Jim emerged from the shadows of his room, grinning, and the four went into the sitting-room where Jasper and Bert lounged, drinking beer. Alice knew from how they looked at her that Jasper had been telling Bert, again, how good she was at this – reflecting credit on himself; and that Pat had been impressed, and Jim was incredulous at the apparent ease of it all. She knew that this was a moment when she could get her own way about anything, and in her mind, at the head of her long agenda of difficulties to be overcome, stood the item: Philip and Jim.
She accepted a bottle of beer from Bert, who gave her, with it, the thumbs-up sign, and soon they were all sitting in a close group, in the centre of the tall room. Candlelit, there had not been time to put a bulb in. But Philip had sat down a little apart, and tentatively.
‘First,’ said Pat, ‘to Alice!’
They drank to her, and she sat silent, smiling, afraid she would cry.
Now she thought, I’ll bring up Philip. I’ll bring up Jim. We’ll get it settled.
But in the hall, suddenly, were voices, laughter, and in a moment the two girls came in, lit with the exaltation that comes from a day’s satisfactory picketing and demonstrating and marching.
Roberta, laughing, came over to the carrier of bottles, put one to her mouth, and drank standing, swallowing the beer down, then handed the bottle to Faye, who did the same.
‘What a day,’ said Roberta, and she let herself slide on to the arm of a chair, while Faye sat on the other. A couple apart, they surveyed the rest, as adventurers do stay-at-homes, and began their tale, Roberta leading, Faye filling in.
It was a question of the two or three hundred pickets – numbers had varied, as people came and went – preventing vans with newspapers from getting through the gates to distribute them. The police had been there to see the vans safely through.
‘Two hundred police,’ said Roberta, scornfully. ‘Two hundred fucking police!’
‘More police than pickets,’ said Faye, laughing, and Roberta watched her, fondly. Faye, animated and alive, was really very pretty. Her look of listlessness, even depression, had gone. She seemed