The Good Terrorist. Doris Lessing

eye on this for me, comrade.’ He nodded. She said, ‘If I get permission from the Council for us to live here, will you share expenses?’

      His hands fell from the drums. His friendly round face fell into lines of woe and he said, ‘They say I can’t stay here.’

      ‘Why not?’

      ‘Oh shit, man, I’m not into politics. I just want to live.’ Now he said, incredulously, ‘I was here first. Before any of you. This was my place. I found it. I said to everyone, Yes, come in, come in, man, this is Liberty Hall.’

      ‘That’s not fair,’ said Alice, at once.

      ‘I’ve been here eight months, eight months, Old Bill never knew, no one knew. I’ve been keeping my nose clean and minding my own business, and suddenly…’ He was weeping. Bright tears bounced off his black cheeks and splashed on the big drum. He wiped them off with the side of his palm.

      ‘Well,’ said Alice, ‘you just stay put and I’ll get it on the agenda.’

      She was thinking as she left the house: All those buckets of shit up there, I suppose Jim filled them, nearly all. She thought: If I don’t pee I’ll…She could not have brought herself to go up and use one of those buckets. She walked to the Underground, took a train to a station with proper lavatories, used them, washed her face and brushed her hair, then went on to her mother’s stop, where she stood in line for a telephone booth.

      Three hours after she left home screaming abuse at her mother, she dialled her number.

      Her mother’s voice. Flat. At the sound of it affection filled Alice, and she thought, I’ll ask if she wants me to do some shopping for her on the way.

      ‘Hello, Mum, this is Alice.’

      Silence.

      ‘It’s Alice.’

      A pause. ‘What do you want?’ The flat voice, toneless.

      Alice, all warm need to overcome obstacles on behalf of everyone, said, ‘Mum, I want to talk to you. You see, there’s this house. I could get the Council to let us stay on a controlled squat basis, you know, like Manchester? But we need someone to guarantee the electricity and gas.’

      She heard a mutter, inaudible, then, ‘I don’t believe it!’

      ‘Mum. Look, it’s only your signature we want. We would pay it.’

      A silence, a sigh, or a gasp, then the line went dead.

      Alice, now radiant with a clear hot anger, dialled again. She stood listening to the steady buzz-buzz, imagining the kitchen where it was ringing, the great warm kitchen, the tall windows, sparkling (she had cleaned them last week, with such pleasure), and the long table where, she was sure, her mother was sitting now, listening to the telephone ring. After about three minutes, her mother did lift the receiver and said, ‘Alice, I know it is no use my saying this. But I shall say it. Again. I have to leave here. Do you understand? Your father won’t pay the bills any longer. I can’t afford to live here. I’ll have trouble paying my own bills. Do you understand, Alice?’

      ‘But you have all those rich friends.’ Another silence. Alice then, in a full, maternal, kindly, lecturing voice, began, ‘Mum, why aren’t you like us? We share what we have. We help each other out when we’re in trouble. Don’t you see that your world is finished? The day of the rich selfish bourgeoisie is over. You are doomed…’

      ‘I don’t doubt it,’ said Alice’s mother, and Alice warmed into the purest affection again, for the familiar comforting note of irony was back in her mother’s voice, the awful deadness and emptiness gone. ‘But you have at some point to understand that your father is not prepared any longer to share his ill-gotten gains with Jasper and all his friends.’

      ‘Well, at least he is prepared to see they are ill-gotten,’ said Alice earnestly.

      A sigh. ‘Go away, Alice,’ said Alice’s mother. ‘Just go away. I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to hear from you. Try to understand that you can’t say the things to people you said to me this morning and then just turn up, as if nothing had happened, with a bright smile, for another hand-out.’

      The line went dead.

      Alice stood, in a dazzle of shock. Her head was full of dizzying shadow and light. Someone behind her in the queue said, ‘If you’ve finished…’, pushed in front of her, and began to dial.

      Alice drifted off on to the pavement and wandered aimlessly around the perimeter of that area, now fenced off with high, corrugated iron, where so recently there had been a market, full of people buying and selling. She had had a pitch there herself last summer, and first she sold cakes and biscuits and sweets, and then hot soup, and sandwiches. Proper food, all wholemeal flour and brown sugar, and vegetables grown without insecticides. She cooked all this in her mother’s kitchen. Then the Council closed the place down. To build another of their shitty great enormous buildings, their dead bloody white elephants that wouldn’t be wanted by anyone but the people who made a profit out of building them. Corruption. Corruption everywhere. Alice, weeping out loud, blubbering, went stumbling about outside the enormous iron fence, like a fence around a concentration camp, thinking that last summer…

      A whistle shrieked. Some factory or other…one o’clock. She hadn’t done anything yet…Standing on the long shallow steps that led to the Public Library, she wiped her face, and made her eyes look out instead of in. It was a nice day. The sun was shining. The sky was full of racing white clouds, and the blue seemed to dazzle and promise.

      She went back to the telephones in the Underground and rang her father’s office on the private number.

      He answered at once.

      ‘This is Alice.’

      ‘The answer is no.’

      ‘You don’t know what I was going to say.’

      ‘Say it.’

      ‘I want you to guarantee our expenses, electricity and gas, for a squat.’

      ‘No.’

      She hung up, the burning anger back. Its energy took her to the pavement, and walked her up the avenue to a large building which was set back a bit, with steps. She raced up them and pressed a bell, holding it down until a woman’s voice, not the one she expected, said, ‘¿Sí?’

      ‘Oh, fucking Christ, the maid,’ said Alice, aloud. And, ‘Where’s Theresa?’

      ‘She at work.’

      ‘Let me in. Let me come in.’

      Alice pushed open the door on the buzzer, almost fell into the hall, and thumped up four flights of heavily carpeted stairs to a door, where a short dumpy dark woman stood, looking out for her.

      ‘Just let me in,’ said Alice, fiercely pushing her aside, and the Spanish woman said nothing, but stood looking at her, trying to find the right words to say.

      Alice went into the sitting-room where she had so often been with her friend Theresa, her friend ever since she, Alice, had been born, kind and lovely Theresa. A large calm ordered room, with great windows, and beyond them gardens…She stood panting. I’ll tear down those pictures, she was thinking, I’ll sell them, I’ll take those little netsukes, what are they worth? I’ll smash the place up…

      She tore to the telephone, and rang the office. But Theresa was in conference.

      ‘Get her,’ she commanded. ‘Get her at once. It is an emergency. Tell her it’s Alice.’

      She had no doubt that Theresa would come, and she did.

      ‘What is it, Alice, what’s wrong, what is the matter?’

      ‘I want you to guarantee expenses. For a squat. No, no, you won’t have to pay anything, ever, just your signature.’

      ‘Alice, I’m in