The Good Terrorist (46 page)

The car keys had been left downstairs with Felicity’s neighbour, because—she said crossly, demonstrating Felicity’s annoyance for her—Felicity had waited for Alice to arrive when she had said she would. Apologies and smiles. Alice drove the car back to number 43. The four of them got the packages out to the car. No wonder they were so heavy.

They stood around debating where to take the packages. The rubbish dump? No, not at that hour of the day. Down to the river? No, they would be observed. Better drive out to some leafy suburb like Wimbledon or Greenwich, and see what they could find. They were on their way through Chiswick, crawling through heavy traffic, when they saw, in a side street, big corrugated iron gates and the sign: “Warwick & Sons, Scrap Metal Merchants.” They turned out of the traffic and round the block and past the gates. The place seemed deserted. Alice double-parked while Bert went in, coolly,
like a customer, and hung about for a bit. But no one came. He sprinted back, face flushed, eyes reddened, white teeth and red lips flashing in his black beard. Jasper caught the fever at once. Alice, admiring them both, backed the car between the great gates and stopped. It was a large yard. In this part of London, capacious plots of ground accommodated large houses and big gardens. But this place had some ramshackle brick-and-corrugated-iron sheds at the back with heavy locks on them, and otherwise everywhere were heaps of metal pipes, bits of cars, rusting iron bars, bent and torn corrugated iron. Brass and copper gleamed unexpectedly, and stacks of milky plastic roofing showed that these merchants dealt in more than metal. There were ancient beams piled near the gates, oak from the look of them (two of these would be just the thing for the roof of poor 43) and, all around these beams, an area where every kind of rubbish had found a place, including a lot of cardboard cartons, rapidly disintegrating, that had in them more metal, and plastic bottles, plastic cups. This was it. Jasper and Caroline were out of the car in a moment, and they and Bert wrestled the packages out of the car, and let them fall near the pile of beams. Alice’s eyes seemed to be bursting; black waves beat through her. But she had to keep the car running. Through her fever she saw how Bert had already stood up, looking around, the job done; how Caroline had come back to the car, was getting in; while Jasper, deadly, swift, efficient, was rubbing soil into the smooth professional surfaces of the packages, and scarring them with a bit of iron he had snatched up from a heap, working in a fury of precise intention and achievement. That was Jasper! Alice thought, proud of him, her pride singing through her. No one who had not seen Jasper like this, at such a moment, could have any idea! Why, beside him Bert was a peasant, slowly coming to himself and seeing what Jasper was doing, and then joining in when Jasper had virtually finished the job. Those two packages did not look anything like the sleek brown monsters of a few minutes before, were already just like all the other rubbish lying around, would easily be overlooked.

Jasper and Bert flung themselves in and Alice drove off. As far as they knew, no one had seen them.

They drove back towards the centre of London, and into a pub at Shepherds’ Bush. It was about half past twelve. They positioned themselves where they could see the television, and sat drinking and eating. They were ravenous, all of them. There was nothing on the news, and the minute it was over, they left the pub and went home. They were all still hungry, and ready to drop with sleep. They bought a lot more take-away and ate it round the kitchen table with Faye, with Roberta, with Jocelin. There was a feeling of anticlimax. But they did not want to part; they needed one another, and to be together. They began drinking. Jasper and Bert, Alice and Caroline went off for a couple of hours’ sleep, at different times, but all felt, when alone in their rooms, a strong pull from the others to come back down. They drank steadily through the evening and then the night, not elated now but, rather, depressed. Not that they confessed it; though Faye was tearful, once or twice.

As soon as the Underground was open, Jasper sprinted off to get the newspapers. He came back with them all, from the
Times
to the
Sun
. The kitchen was suddenly flapping with sheets of newsprint, which were turning more and more wildly.

There was nothing there about their exploit! Not a word. They were furious. At last Faye found a little paragraph in the
Guardian
that said some hooligans had blown up the corner of a street in West Rowan Road, Bilstead.

“Hooligans,” said Jocelin, cold and deadly and punishing, her eyes glinting. And she did not say—and there was no need, for it was in all their minds—We’ll show them.

And so they went to bed. Saturday morning. Six o’clock.

They slept through the day, and woke with that pleasantly abstracted feeling that comes after going without sleep and then enjoying long, restoring sleep.

They discussed what was to be the scene of their next attempt. Various possibilities, but Jocelin said she needed more time to be sure of her means. Besides, Alice said, Philip would probably be buried on Monday or Tuesday; they should get that over first. She
knew, from the silence that followed, from how they did not look at her—at least, not at once—that it had occurred to no one to go to Philip’s funeral. She said in the polite, indifferent voice she used at her most hurt, most betrayed, “I am going, if no one else is.” Jasper knew that voice, and said that he would go with her. He was pleased and even bashful, like a boy, at the grateful look she gave him. Faye said she loathed funerals, had never been to one. When people were dead, they were dead, she said. Caroline pointed out she had scarcely known Philip. Jocelin agreed.

Somebody going out to buy cigarettes came back with the local
Advertiser
—the sheets given away on the streets or put through letter boxes or under doors. In it they found this piece:

“Oh, poor old thing,” quavered Alice. She did not look at Jocelin, for she knew the look would be reproachful.

“Silly old cow,” said Faye. “Pity we didn’t do her in properly. We’d have done ’er a favour, we would. These old crones, their life isn’t worth living. ’Alf dead with boredom, they are, years before they go.”

They decided to laugh, to placate her. Faye was in the grip of one of her violent, reminiscent moods—but provoked by what?
They never knew. She only sat and trembled a little defiantly, not looking at them, not looking even at Roberta, who was sitting rather hunched, her silvered poll lowered, eyes down, suffering for her.

“Well,” said Jocelin, “I think I know what to do. I’ll get it right this time.”

She sounded angry, even bitter. They were all bitter with frustration. A paragraph in the local
Advertiser!
They felt it was a snub of them, another in a long series of belittlings of what they really were, of their real capacities, that had begun—like Faye’s violences—so long ago they could not remember. They were murderous with the need to impose themselves, prove their power.

They went on drinking. Alice was sober, as usual, and apprehensive. It was Saturday, after all. And at eleven o’clock, as she had half expected, there was a loud knocking at the front door. She was up at once, sliding out of her seat, and at the kitchen door before the others had come to. She said to Jasper, “Keep out of sight, d’you hear? Don’t you come out,
don’t
 …” To Bert, “Keep Jasper here. Don’t let him come out.” To Jocelin, “Is there anything they can find?” Jocelin ran past her and up the stairs. “It’s that little fascist. I knew he’d come back. He’s come to pay us back. I knew he would.”

The knocking went on. She opened the door, saying crisply, using all her resources to be in command, to be Miss Mellings, “You’ll wake everyone in the street.”

It was he, the fair, vicious young man, with cold baby eyes, the fluffy moustache. He was grinning and sadistic. He held something behind him, and there was a disgusting smell.

Alice had some idea of what was coming, knew that nothing could be done to stop him. But the main thing was that Jasper should not come out, not in the mood he was in—there would be a fight, she knew it.

Behind the policeman stood another. Both had schoolboy sniggers on their faces; neither looked at Alice—a bad sign.

She said, “What do you want?”

“It’s what you want,” said the little pig, and at this he and his
colleague both guffawed, actually holding their hands to their mouths, like stage comedians.

“It’s what you fancy,” said the second policeman, in a strong Scottish accent.

“A little of what you fancy does you good,” said Alice’s enemy. Oh, how she loathed him, how she knew him, through and through! Oh, she knew what went on in police cells when he had someone helpless and at his mercy. But it mustn’t be Jasper.

To provoke him, to draw his fire, she allowed herself to say in a weak, quavering girlish voice, “Oh, please, please go away.…” It was enough. It was just right.

“This is what you like, isn’t it?” guffawed the little fascist, and flung, in a strong underarm action, a filled plastic bag into the hall.

“Shit to shit,” said the other.

The smell filled the hall, filled the house, as they ran away, laughing.

Of course, it was everywhere, had splashed all over the place.

The main thing was, Jasper had stayed inside.

Stepping delicately, she went to the kitchen door, said, “If I were you I’d stay exactly where you are.”

But they did not, appeared in a noisy, raging group, full of imprecations and threats. Jasper would go up to the police station now. He would kill that fascist. He would burn down the police station. He would blow the place up.

Faye was retching into the kitchen sink, aided by Roberta. Jocelin appeared on the landing, stood looking down, like a figure of Judgement or something, thought Alice, sick of them all. She knew who was going to clear up.

“Shut up,” she said. “You don’t understand. This is good, it isn’t bad. He was going to get his own back for being made to look a fool the other day. We are lucky he’s done this. He could have come in and smashed everything up, couldn’t he? We’ve all seen that done before!”

“She’s right,” said Jocelin. She, too, retched, and controlled herself. She went back into the room.

Alice had already got a pail, water, and newspapers. She stood
for a moment looking at the three, Jasper, Caroline, Bert, who were all still in the doorway, staring at her.

She knelt down at the very edge of the hall, and began on her task of slowly washing the carpet, every inch of it. When she had finished she would get Bert and Jasper to carry it out to the rubbish bins.

“Why are you wasting time washing that for?” demanded Caroline. “Throw it out.”

She had expected someone to say just that. She said coldly, “If we put it out like this into the garden it will stink, and there’ll be complaints, and an excuse for the police to come back.”

“Yeah. That’s right,” said Jasper.

She went on with her task. She was full of a cold fury. She could have killed, not only the policemen, but Jasper, Bert, and even the good-natured Caroline, whose shocked face peering out of the door seemed to say that one couldn’t credit the stupidity and malice of the world.

“Don’t go to bed,” Alice ordered Jasper. “When I’ve done this, you and Bert can carry it out.”

It took her an hour or so to do the carpet. They carried it, heavy with water and detergent, smelling now of chemicals, out to the dustbins.

“I suppose some night owl will be up and watching, as usual,” said Alice, bitter and very tired, standing carefully in the very middle of the hall floor.

Faye said she was going to bed. Roberta took her up, then came back and got another pail and helped with washing down the woodwork and the walls. All the others went to bed.

As Roberta worked, she swore steadily in her other voice, the rough, clumsy, labouring voice of her upbringing, not the slow, easy, comfortable voice of the everyday Roberta they knew. She did not swear loudly, but only just audibly: a steady quiet stream of hatred against the police, the world, God; on her own behalf, on Faye’s.

When they had finished, both women took baths. Then Roberta went out for the Sunday papers. But there was nothing in the Sundays, not a word.

Alice and Roberta slept for some hours. Faye, awake at midmorning,
was angry with Roberta for “getting herself involved.” To pay her out, she went up to talk to Jocelin, at work on her bombs. First, as apprentice, she helped Jocelin; then, it turning out she had a real aptitude, she tried out a tricky little number on her own account. She came down for a cup of tea and brought her instruction manual with her. At the same moment, Reggie and Mary returned from work on their new flat. It was an awful mess, they said: but, having seen Alice at work, they knew what could be done with chaos. The way they said this told the others that they were determined to be “nice” for as long as they had to stay there. Then Mary picked up from the table
The Use of Explosives in an Urban Environment
and leafed through it, first casually, then slowly, taking her time. She handed it to Reggie with a look that was far from “nice.” In the kitchen at that stage were Caroline, Jasper, Bert, and Faye, and suddenly they were all tense, determined not to look at one another, trying to appear indifferent. Reggie studied the manual, and then laid it on the table. He had not looked at the others, sat thinking. Next he and Mary had a long eye-consultation, and he said that they had decided to move into the new flat, ready or not, at once. Only a few moments before, Mary had been saying that they would be here until their flat at least had hot water.