The Good Terrorist. Doris Lessing
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house would be theirs; and because of some personal problem or attitude of Mary’s. But all Alice said about this, the nub of the interview with Mary, was ‘She’s all right. She’s on our side. She’s a good person.’
‘You mean, you’ve got something to show the police?’ said Jim, and when Alice handed over the yellow envelope he took out what was in it and pored over it. He was one whose fate, Alice could see, had always been determined by means of papers, reports, official letters. Jim’s voice was genuine cockney, the real thing.
She asked suddenly, ‘Are you bound over?’
Jim’s look at her was startled, then defensive, then bitter. His soft, open boyish face closed up and he said, ‘What about it?’
‘Nothing,’ said Alice. Meanwhile a glance at Faye and Roberta had told her that both of them were bound over. Or worse. Yes, probably worse. Yes, certainly worse. On the run?
‘Didn’t know you were,’ said Bert. ‘I was until recently.’
‘So was I,’ claimed Jasper at once, not wanting to be left out. Jasper’s tones were almost those of his origins. He was the son of a solicitor in a Midlands town, who had gone bankrupt when Jasper was half-way through his schooling at a grammar school. He had finished his education on a scholarship. Jasper was very clever; but he had seen the scholarship as charity. He was full of hatred for his father, who had been stupid enough to go in for dubious investments. His middle-class voice, like Bert’s, had been roughened. With working-class comrades he could sound like them, and did, at emotional moments.
Pat remarked, ‘It’s getting dark,’ and she stood up, struck a match, and lit two candles that stood on the mantelpiece in rather fine brass candlesticks. But they were dull with grease. The daylight shrank back beyond the windows, and the seven were in a pool of soft yellow light that lay in the depths of a tall shadowed room.
Now Pat leaned her elbow on the mantelpiece, taking command of the scene. In the romantic light, with her dark military clothes, her black strong boots, she looked – as she must certainly know – like a guerrilla, or a female soldier in somebody’s army. Yet the light accentuated the delicate modelling of her face, her hands, and in fact she was more like the idealized picture of a soldier on a recruiting poster. An Israeli girl soldier, perhaps, a book in one hand, a rifle in the other.
‘Money,’ said Pat. ‘We have to talk about money.’ Her voice was standard middle-class, but Alice knew this was not how Pat had started off. She was working too hard at it.
‘That’s right,’ said Jim. ‘I agree.’
The only other person in this room, apart from Alice, with his own voice, unmodified, was Jim, the genuine cockney.
‘It’s going to cost more,’ said Bert, ‘but we will buy peace and quiet.’
‘It needn’t cost all that much more,’ said Alice. ‘For one thing, food will be half as much, or less. I know, I’ve done it.’
‘Right,’ said Pat. ‘So have I. Take-away and eating out costs the earth.’
‘Alice is good at feeding people cheap,’ said Jasper.
It was noticeable that while these five outlined their positions, they all, perhaps without knowing it, eyed Roberta and Faye. Or, more exactly, Faye, who sat there not looking at them, but anywhere: the ceiling, her feet, Roberta’s feet, the floor, while she puffed smoke from the cigarette held between her lips. Her hand, on her knee, trembled. She gave the impression of trembling slightly all over. Yet she smiled. It was not the best of smiles.
‘Just a minute, comrades,’ said she. ‘Suppose I like take-away? I like take-away, see? Suppose I like eating out, when the fancy takes me? How about that, then?’
She laughed and tossed her head, presenting – as if her life depended on it – this cheeky cockney as seen in a thousand films.
‘They have a point, Faye,’ said Roberta, sounding neutral, so as not to provoke her friend. She was keeping an eye on Faye, unable to prevent herself giving her quick nervous glances.
‘Oh fuck it,’ said Faye, really laying on the cockney bit, because, as they could see, she was afraid of her own anger. ‘Yesterday, as far as hi wuz concerned, everythink was going along just perfeck, and today, that’s it. I don’t like being organized, see what I mean?’
‘And she did it her way,’ said Bert, in cold upper-class, smiling, as if in joke. He did not like Faye, and apparently did not care if he showed it.
Pat quickly covered up with humour. ‘Well, if you don’t want to join in, then don’t, have it on us!’ This was said without rancour. Pat even laughed, hoping Faye would; but Faye tossed her head, her face seemed to crumple up out of its prettiness, and her lips went white as she pressed them together. The cigarette in her hand trembled violently, ash scattered about.
‘Wait a minute,’ said Roberta. ‘Just hold your horses.’ This was addressed, apparently, to the five who were all looking at Faye. Faye knew it was meant for her. She made herself smile.
‘Was anything said about how we were to pay?’ asked Roberta.
‘No, but I know of various ways they can do it,’ said Alice. ‘For instance, in Birmingham there was a flat sum assessed for the whole house, to cover rates. And we paid electricity and gas separately.’
‘Electricity,’ said Faye. ‘Who wants to pay electricity?’
‘You don’t pay at all, or you just pay the first instalment,’ said Jasper. ‘Alice is good at that.’
‘We can all see what Alice is good at,’ said Faye.
‘Look,’ said Pat, ‘why don’t we postpone this discussion till we know? If they make an assessment for rent and rates and put it on all our Social on an individual basis, then that would suit some and not others. It would suit me, for instance.’
‘It wouldn’t suit me, see?’ said Faye, sweet but violent.
‘And it wouldn’t suit me,’ said Roberta. ‘I don’t want to become an official resident of this house. Nor does Faye.’
‘No, Faye certainly does not,’ said Faye. ‘Yesterday I was free as a bird, coming and going. I didn’t live here, I came and went, and now suddenly…’
‘All right,’ said Bert, exasperated. ‘You don’t want to be counted in, all right.’
‘Are you telling me to leave?’ said Faye, with a shrill laugh, and her face again seemed to crumple up out of its self, suggesting some other Faye, a pale, awful, violent Faye, the unwilling prisoner of the pretty cockney.
Jim laughed sullenly and said, ‘I’ve been told to leave. Why not Faye and Roberta if it comes to that.’
Faye turned the force of her pale awfulness on Jim, and Roberta came in quickly with, ‘No one is leaving. No one.’ She looked full at Jim. ‘But we have all to be clear about what we will or will not do. We have to be clear now. If a lump sum is assessed for this house, then we can discuss who is going to contribute what. If we are assessed individually, and our Social Security is adjusted individually, then no. No. No.’ This was kept amiable, but only just.
‘I’m not going to contribute,’ said Faye. ‘Why should I? I like things the way they were.’
‘How could you like them the way they were?’ said Bert. ‘Putting up with them, is one thing.’
And suddenly they all knew why it was Faye they had been eyeing so nervously, Faye who had dominated everything.
She sat straight up, straddling the chair-arm, and glared, and trembled, and in a voice that in no way related to the pretty cockney, said, ‘You filthy bloody cuntish ‘Itlers, you fascist scum, who are you telling what to do? Who are you ordering about?’ This voice came out of Faye’s lower depths, some dreadful deprivation. It was raw, raucous, labouring, as though words themselves had