The Good Terrorist

‘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 came in, ‘Philip’s here.’ Out flew Alice, and saw him in the light of day for the first time. A slight, rather stooping boy – only he was a man – with his hollowed, pale cheeks, his wide blue eyes full of light, his long elegant white hands, his sheaves of glistening pale hair. He had his tools with him.

She said, ‘The electricity?’ and walked before him to the ravaged kitchen, knowing that here was something else she must confront and solve. He followed, shut the door after him and said, ‘Alice, if I finish the work here, can I move in?’

She now knew she had expected this. Yes, every time that arrangement, he and his girlfriend, had come up, there had been something not said.

He said, ‘I’ve been wanting to be independent. On my own.’ Knowing she was thinking of the others, their plans, he said, ‘I’m CCU. I don’t see why there should be any problem?’

But not IRA, thought Alice, but knew she would deal with all that later. ‘If it’s up to me, yes,’ she said. Would that be enough? He had taken her as the boss here – as who would not?

He now turned his attention to the ripped wires that were tugged right out of the plaster; the stove, that had been pulled out to lie on its side on the floor.

Bitterness was on his face; the same incredulous rage she felt. They stood together, feeling they could destroy with their bare hands those men who had done this.

Men like the dustmen, thought Alice steadily, making herself think it. Nice men. They did it. But when we have abolished fascist imperialism, there won’t be people like that.

At this thought appeared a mental picture of her mother who, when Alice said things of this kind, sighed, laughed, looked exhausted. Only last week she had said, in her new mode, bitter and brief and flat, ‘Against stupidity the gods themselves.’

‘What’s that?’ Alice had asked.

‘Against – stupidity – the gods – themselves – contend – in vain,’ her mother had said, isolating the words, presenting them to Alice, not as if she had expected anything from Alice, but reminding herself of the uselessness of it all.

The bitterness Alice felt against the Council, the workmen, the Establishment, now encompassed her mother, and she was assaulted by a black rage that made her giddy, and clenched her hands. Coming to herself she saw Philip looking at her, curious. Because of this state of hers which he was judging as more violent than the vandalizing workmen deserved?

She said, ‘I could kill them.’ She heard her voice, deadly. She was surprised at it. She felt her hands hurting, and unclenched them.

‘I could too,’ said Philip, but differently. He had set down grimy bags of tools, and was standing quietly there, waiting. He was looking at her with his by now familiar and hearttouching obstinacy.

The murderess in Alice took herself off, and Alice said, giving him the promise he had to have before he did any more work, ‘It’s only fair, if you do the work.’

He nodded, believing her, and then transferred that obstinacy of his to the attention he gave the mangled wall. ‘It’s not so bad,’ he said at last. ‘Looks as if they smashed the place up in a bit of a fit of temper, they didn’t do much of a job of it.’

‘What?’ she said, incredulous; for it seemed to her the kitchen or at least two walls of it, were sprouting and dangling cables and wires; and the creamy plaster lay like dough in mounds along the bottom of these walls, which were discoloured and scurfy.

‘Seen worse.’ Then, ‘I’ve got to have the floorboards up, can’t work with that down there.’

The fallen plaster had gone hard, and Alice had to smash it free. The kitchen was full of fine white dust. She worked at floor level, while Philip stood above her on the big table he had dragged to the wall. Then, the plaster and rubbish were in sacks, and she swept up with the handbrush and pan, which were all she had. She was irritable and weepy, for she knew that every inch of the ceiling, the walls, should be washed down, should be painted. And then the house, the whole house was like that, and the roof – what would they find when at last they got that horrible upper floor free of its smelly pails? Who was going to replace slates, how to pay for it all? She was brushing and brushing, and each sweep scuffed up more filth into the air, and she was thinking, I’ve got to get to the Electricity Board, how can I, looking like this.

She stood up, a wraith in the white-dust-filled air, and said, ‘Your friend, is she at home, would she give me a bath?’

Philip did not reply, he was examining a cable with a strong torch.

She said, furious, ‘There were public baths till last year, nice ones, not far, they were in Auction Street. Friends of mine used them – they are in a squat in Belsize Road. Then the Council closed them. They closed them.’ She felt tears hot on her chalky cheeks, and stood, spent, looking imploringly at Philip’s slight, almost girlish back.

He said, ‘We had a rare old row, when I left.’

She thought, She threw him out.

‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘I’ll manage. I’ll get cleaned up and I’m going to the Electricity Board. So be careful, in case they switch it on.’

‘You think you can get them to do that?’

‘I’ve managed it before, haven’t I?’ At the thought of this and other victories, her depression lifted and she was popping with energy again.