The Good Terrorist

An official…why, there was an official here, in this house; there was Mary Williams. Alice stood marvelling at this thought: that only a couple of days ago Mary Williams had seemed to hold her own fate – Alice’s – in her hands; and now Alice had difficulty in even remembering her status. She felt for Mary, in fact, the fine contempt due to someone or to an institution that has given way too easily. But Mary could be appealed to on behalf of this – child. Alice again took in the collapsed look of her, the passivity, and thought: What is the use, she’s one of those who…

It was exasperation that was fuelling her now.

‘What is your name?’

The drooping head came up, the drowned eyes presented themselves, shocked, to Alice. ‘What do you think I’m going to do?’ demanded Alice. ‘Go to the police and tell them you were going to throw a stone through our window?’ And suddenly she began to laugh, while the girl watched her amazed; and took an involuntary step back from this lunatic. ‘I’ve just thought of something. I know someone in the Council who might perhaps – it is only a perhaps…’ The girl had come to life, was leaning forward, her trembling hand tight on Alice’s forearm.

‘My name is Monica,’ she breathed.

‘Monica isn’t enough,’ said Alice, stopping herself from simply walking away out of impatience. ‘I’ll have to know your full name, and your address, won’t I.’

The girl dropped her hand, and began a dreary groping in her skirts. From a pocket she produced a purse, into which she peered.

‘Oh never mind,’ said Alice. ‘Tell me, I’ll remember.’

The girl said she was Monica Winters, and the hotel – which Alice knew about, all right – was the such-and-such, and her number, 556. This figure brought an image with it of concentrated misery, hundreds of couples with small children, each family in one room, no proper amenities, the squalor of it all. All elation, excitement gone, Alice soberly stood there, appalled.

‘I’ll ask this person to write to you,’ said Alice. ‘Meanwhile, if I were you, I’d walk around and have a look at what empty houses you can see. Take a look at them. You know. Nip inside, have a look at the amenities – plumbing and…’ She trailed off dismally, knowing that Monica was not capable of flinging up a window in an empty house and climbing in to have a look, and that, very likely, her husband was the same.

‘See you,’ said Alice, and turned away from the girl and went in, feeling that the 556 – at least – young couples with their spotty, frustrated infants had been presented to her by Fate, as her responsibility.

‘Oh God,’ she was muttering, as she made herself tea in the empty kitchen. ‘Oh God, what shall I do?’ She could easily have wept as messily and uselessly as Monica. Jasper was not here!

She toiled up the stairs, and saw that a light showed on the landing above. She went up. Under the door of the room taken by Mary and Reggie a light showed. She forgot it was midnight and this was a respectable couple. She knocked. After stirrings and voices came, ‘Come in.’

Alice looked in at a scene of comfort. Furniture, pretty curtains, and a large double bed in which Mary and Reggie lay side by side, reading. They looked at her over their books with identical wary expressions that said, ‘Thus far and no further!’ A wave of incredulous laughter threatened Alice. She beat it down, while she thought, These two, we’ll see nothing of them, they’ll be off…

She said, ‘Mary, a girl has just turned up here, she’s desperate; she’s in Shaftwood Hotel, you know…’

‘Not in our borough,’ said Mary instantly.

‘No, but she…’

‘I know about Shaftwood,’ said Mary.

Reggie was examining his hand, back and front, apparently with interest. Alice knew that it was the situation he was examining; he was not used to this informality, to group-living, but he was giving it his consideration.

‘Don’t we all? But this girl…her name is Monica…she looks to me as if she’s suicidal, she could do anything.’

Mary said, after a pause, ‘Alice, I’ll see what there is, tomorrow, but you know that there are hundreds, thousands of them.’

‘Oh yes, I know,’ said Alice, and added, ‘Good-night,’ and went downstairs, thinking, I am being silly. It isn’t as if I don’t know the type. If you did find her a place, she’d muck it all up somehow. Remember Sarah? I had to find her a flat, move her in, go to the Electricity Board, and then her husband…Monica’s one of those who need a mother, someone who takes her on…An idea came into Alice’s head of such beautiful and apt simplicity that she began laughing quietly to herself.