The Good Terrorist

She went into their house, not looking, and up to the first-floor bathroom.

She did not comment on the new electric bulb, shedding a little light in the hall.

Alice thought: How many rooms in the house? Let’s see, an electric lightbulb for each one? But that will be pounds and pounds, at least ten. I have to have money…

It was dark outside. A damp, blowy night.

She went into the sitting-room. Bert and Jasper were not there. She thought: Then Jim and I…

Jim was again with his drums. She went to him and said, ‘I will carry down the pails. You stand by the pit and fill in the earth. Quickly. Before the whole street comes to complain.’

Jim hesitated, seemed about to protest, but came.

She had never had to do anything as loathsome, not in all her history of squats, communes, derelict houses. The room that had only the few pails in it was bad enough, but the big room, crammed with bubbling pails, made her want to be sick before she even opened the door. She worked steadily, carrying down two pails at a time, controlling her heaving stomach, in a miasma that did not seem to lessen, but rather spread from the house and the garden to the street. She emptied in the buckets, while Jim quickly spaded earth in. His face was set in misery. From the garden opposite came shouts of ‘Pigs!’ Alice went on into the little street and stood against the hedge, which was a tall one, and said through it to someone who stood there watching, a man, ‘We’re clearing it all up. There won’t be any smell after tonight.’

‘You ought to be reported to the Council.’

‘The Council knows,’ said Alice. ‘They know all about it.’ Her voice was serene, confident; she spoke as one householder to another. She walked back under the streetlights into her own dark garden in a calm, almost careless way. And went back to the work of carrying down buckets.

By eleven the pit was filled and covered, and the smell was already going.

Alice and Jim stood together in the dark, surrounded by consoling shrubs. He pulled out a cigarette and lit it, and though she never smoked, she took one from him, and they stood smoking together, drawing in the sweet clouds and puffing them out deliberately, trying to fill the garden air with it.

Jim said, with a scared laugh, ‘That was all my shit. Well, most. Some was Faye’s and Roberta’s.’

‘Yes, I know. Well, never mind.’

‘Have you thought, Alice – have you ever thought? – how much shit we all make in our lives? I mean, if the shit we made in our lives was put in a drum, or let’s say a big tank, you’d need a tank like the Battersea power station for everyone.’ He was laughing, but he sounded frightened. ‘It all goes into the sewers, underneath here, but suppose the sewers just packed up?’

‘They won’t,’ said Alice, peering through the darkness at his dark face to find out what was really frightening him.

‘Why shouldn’t they? I mean, they say our sewers are all old and rotten. Suppose they just explode? With sewer-gas?’ He laughed again.

She did not know what to say.

‘I mean, we just go on living in this city,’ he said, full of despair. ‘We just go on living…’

Very far from his usual self was Jim now. Gone was that friendly sweet-cheeked face. It was bitter, and angry, and fearful.

She said, ‘Come in, Jim, let’s have a cup of tea and forget it, it’s done.’

‘That’s just what I mean,’ he said, sullen. ‘You say, come and have a cup of tea. And that’s the end of it. But it isn’t the end of it, not on your life it isn’t.’

And he flung down the spade and went in to shut himself in his room.

Alice followed. For the third time that day she stood in the grimy bath labouring with cold water to get herself clean.

Then she went upstairs. On the top floor all the windows were open, admitting a fresh smell. It was raining steadily. The sacks of refuse would have a lot of water in them, and the dustmen might be bad-tempered about it.

Midnight. Alice slumped down the stairs, yawning, holding the sense of the house in her mind, the pattern of the rooms, everything that needed to be done. Where was Jasper? She wanted Jasper. The need for Jasper overtook her sometimes, like this. Just to know he was there somewhere, or if not, soon would be. Her heart was pounding in distress, missing Jasper. But as she reached the bottom step, there was a pounding on the door as if there was a battering-ram at work. The police. Her mind raced: Jasper? If he was in the house, would he keep out of sight? Old Bill had only to take one look at Jasper and they were at him. He and she had joked often enough that if the police saw Jasper a hundred yards off and in the dark, they would close in on the kill; they felt something about him they could not bear. And Roberta and Faye? Please God they were still at the picket. The police would have only to take one look at them, too, to be set off. Philip? The wrong sort of policeman would find that childish appeal irresistible. But Pat would be all right, and Bert…Jim where was he?

As Alice thought this, Pat appeared at the sitting-room door, closing it behind her in a way that told Alice that the two men were in there; and Philip stood at the kitchen door, holding a large torch, switched on, and a pair of pliers.

Alice ran to the front door, and opened it quickly, so that the men who had been battering at it crashed in, almost on top of her.

‘Come in,’ she said equably, having sized up their condition in a glance. They had their hunting look, which she knew so well, but it wasn’t too bad, their blood wasn’t really up, except perhaps for that one, whose face she knew. Not as an individual but as a type. It was a neat, cold, tidy face, with a little moustache: a baby face with hard cold grey eyes. He enjoys it, she thought; and seeing his quick look around, straining to go, as if on the end of a leash, she felt sharp little thrills down her thighs. She was careful that he did not catch her glance, but went forward to stand in front of a big broad 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!