The Good Terrorist (4 page)

“What do you mean, it’s all right?” demanded Bert, asserting his rights.

Alice said, “Everyone’s here, I want to discuss it. Why not now?”

“Anyone against?” said Jasper jocularly, but he was shielding Alice, as she saw with gratitude. The seven filed into the sitting room, which was still in full daylight.

Alice’s eyes were anxiously at work on the two unknown girls. As if unable or unwilling to give much time to this affair, they perched on the two arms of a shabby old chair. They were sharing a cigarette. One was a soft-faced fair girl, with her hair in a ponytail, and little curls and tendrils all around her face. The other was a bulky girl, no, a woman, with short black curls that had a gleam of silver in them. Her face was strong, her eyes direct, and she looked steadily at Alice, reserving judgement. She said, “This is Faye. I am Roberta.”

She was saying, too, that they were a couple, but Alice had seen this already.

“Alice. Alice Mellings.”

“Well, Comrade Alice, you don’t let the grass grow. I, for one, would have liked to discuss it all first.”

“That’s right,” said Faye, “that goes for me, too. I like to know what’s being said in my name.” She spoke in a cockney voice, all pert and pretty, and Alice knew at once that she affected it, had adopted it, as so many others did. A pretty little cockney girl sat presenting herself, smiling, to everyone, and Alice was staring at her, trying to see what was really there.

This acute, judging inspection made Faye shift about and pout a little, and Roberta came in quickly with, “What are we being committed to, Comrade Alice?”

“Oh, I see,” said Alice. “You’re lying low.”

Roberta let out a short amused snort that acknowledged Alice’s acuity, and said, “You’re right. I want to keep a low profile for a bit.”

“Me, too,” said Faye. “We are drawing Security over in Clapham, but better not ask how. Least said, soonest mended,” she ended, prettily, tossing her head.

“And what you don’t know don’t hurt you,” said Roberta.

“Ask no questions and get told no lies,” quipped Faye.

“But truth is stranger than fiction,” said Roberta.

“You can say that again,” said Faye.

This nice little act of theirs made everyone laugh appreciatively. As good as a music-hall turn: Faye, the cockney lass, and her feed. Roberta was not speaking cockney, but had a comfortable, accommodating, homely voice with the sound of the North in it. Her own voice? No, it was a made-up one. Modelled on “Coronation Street,” probably.

“That’s another reason we don’t want the police crashing in all the time,” said Bert. “I am pleased Comrade Alice is trying to get this regularised. Go on with your report, Comrade Alice.”

Bert had also modified his voice. Alice could hear in it at moments the posh tones of some public school, but it was roughened with the intention of sounding working-class. Bad luck, he gave himself away.

Alice talked. (Her own voice dated from the days of her girls’ school in North London, basic BBC correct, flavourless. She had been tempted to reclaim her father’s Northern tones, but had judged this dishonest.) She did not say that she had rung her mother and her father, but said she could get fifty pounds at short notice. Then she summed up her visit to the Council, scrutinising what she saw in her mind’s eye: the expressions on the face of Mary Williams, which told Alice the house would be theirs, and because of some personal problem or attitude of Mary’s. But all Alice said about this, the nub of the interview with Mary, was, “She’s all right. She’s on our side. She’s a good person.”

“You mean, you’ve got something to show the police?” said Jim, and when Alice handed over the yellow envelope he took out what was in it and pored over it. He was one whose fate, Alice could see, had always been determined by means of papers, reports, official letters. Jim’s voice was genuine cockney, the real thing.

She asked suddenly, “Are you bound over?”

Jim’s look at her was startled, then defensive, then bitter. His soft, open boyish face closed up and he said, “What about it?”

“Nothing,” said Alice. Meanwhile, a glance at Faye and Roberta had told her that both of them were bound over. Or worse. Yes, probably worse. Yes, certainly worse. On the run?

“Didn’t know you were,” said Bert. “I was until recently.”

“So was I,” claimed Jasper at once, not wanting to be left out. Jasper’s tones were almost those of his origins. He was the son of a solicitor in a Midlands town, who had gone bankrupt when Jasper was halfway through his schooling at a grammar school. He had finished his education on a scholarship. Jasper was very clever; but he had seen the scholarship as charity. He was full of hatred for his father, who had been stupid enough to go in for dubious investments. His middle-class voice, like Bert’s, had been roughened. With working-class comrades he could sound like them, and did, at emotional moments.

Pat remarked, “It’s getting dark,” and she stood up, struck a match, and lit two candles that stood on the mantelpiece in rather fine brass candlesticks. But they were dull with grease. The daylight shrank back beyond the windows, and the seven were in a pool of soft yellow light that lay in the depths of a tall shadowed room.

Now Pat leaned her elbow on the mantelpiece, taking command of the scene. In the romantic light, with her dark military clothes, her black strong boots, she looked—as she must certainly know—like a guerilla, or a female soldier in somebody’s army. Yet the light accentuated the delicate modelling of her face, her hands, and in fact she was more like the idealised picture of a soldier on a recruiting poster. An Israeli girl soldier, perhaps, a book in one hand, a rifle in the other.

“Money,” said Pat. “We have to talk about money.” Her voice was standard middle-class, but Alice knew this was not how Pat had started off. She was working too hard at it.

“That’s right,” said Jim. “I agree.”

The only other person in this room, apart from Alice, with his own voice, unmodified, was Jim, the genuine cockney.

“It’s going to cost more,” said Bert, “but we will buy peace and quiet.”

“It needn’t cost all that much more,” said Alice. “For one thing, food will be half as much, or less. I know, I’ve done it.”

“Right,” said Pat. “So have I. Take-away and eating out costs the earth.”

“Alice is good at feeding people cheap,” said Jasper.

It was noticeable that while these five outlined their positions, they all, perhaps without knowing it, eyed Roberta and Faye. Or, more exactly, Faye, who sat there not looking at them, but at anywhere—the ceiling, her feet, Roberta’s feet, the floor—while she puffed smoke from the cigarette held between her lips. Her hand, on her knee, trembled. She gave the impression of trembling slightly all over. Yet she smiled. It was not the best of smiles.

“Just a minute, comrades,” said she. “Suppose I like takeaway? I like take-away, see? Suppose I like eating out, when the fancy takes me? How about that, then?”

She laughed and tossed her head, presenting—as if her life depended on it—this cheeky cockney as seen in a thousand films.

“They have a point, Faye,” said Roberta, sounding neutral, so as not to provoke her friend. She was keeping an eye on Faye, unable to prevent herself from giving her quick nervous glances.

“Oh, fuck it,” said Faye, really laying on the cockney bit, because, as they could see, she was afraid of her anger. “Yesterday, as far as I wuz concerned, everythink was going along just perfeck, and today, that’s it. I don’t like being organised, see what I mean?”

“And she did it her way,” said Bert, in cold upper-class, smiling, as if in joke. He did not like Faye, and apparently did not care if he showed it.

Pat quickly covered up with humour. “Well, if you don’t want to join in, then don’t, have it on us!” This was said without rancour. Pat even laughed, hoping Faye would; but Faye tossed her head, her face seemed to crumple up out of its prettiness, and her lips went white as she pressed them together. The cigarette in her hand trembled violently, ash scattered about.

“Wait a minute,” said Roberta. “Just hold your horses.” This was addressed, apparently, to the five who were all looking at Faye. Faye knew it was meant for her. She made herself smile.

“Was anything said about how we were to pay?” asked Roberta.

“No, but I know of various ways they can do it,” said Alice. “For instance, in Birmingham there was a flat sum assessed for the whole house, to cover rates. And we paid electricity and gas separately.”

“Electricity,” said Faye. “Who wants to pay electricity?”

“You don’t pay at all, or you just pay the first instalment,” said Jasper. “Alice is good at that.”

“We can all see what Alice is good at,” said Faye.

“Look,” said Pat, “why don’t we postpone this discussion till we know? If they make an assessment for rent and rates and put it on all our Social on an individual basis, then that would suit some and not others. It would suit me, for instance.”

“It wouldn’t suit me, see?” said Faye, sweet but violent.

“And it wouldn’t suit me,” said Roberta. “I don’t want to become an official resident of this house. Nor does Faye.”

“No, Faye certainly does not,” said Faye. “Yesterday I was free as a bird, coming and going. I didn’t
live
here, I came and went, and now suddenly …”

“All right,” said Bert, exasperated. “You don’t want to be counted in, all right.”

“Are you telling me to leave?” said Faye, with a shrill laugh, and her face again seemed to crumple up out of its self, suggesting some other Faye, a pale, awful, violent Faye, the unwilling prisoner of the pretty cockney.

Jim laughed sullenly and said, “I’ve been told to leave. Why not Faye and Roberta, if it comes to that?”

Faye turned the force of her pale awfulness on Jim, and Roberta came in quickly, with, “No one is leaving. No one.” She looked full at Jim. “But we have all to be clear about what we will or will not do. We have to be clear now. If a lump sum is assessed for this house, then we can discuss who is going to contribute what. If we are assessed individually, and our Social Security is adjusted individually, then no. No. No.” This was kept amiable, but only just.

“I’m not going to contribute,” said Faye. “Why should I? I like things the way they were.”

“How could you like them the way they were?” said Bert. “Putting up with them is one thing.”

And suddenly they all knew why it was Faye they had been eyeing so nervously, Faye who had dominated everything.

She sat straight up, straddling the chair arm, and glared, and trembled, and in a voice that in no way related to the pretty cockney, said, “You filthy bloody cuntish ’Itlers, you fascist scum, who are you telling what to do? Who are you ordering about?” This voice came out of Faye’s lower depths, some dreadful deprivation. It was raw, raucous, labouring, as though words themselves had been a hard accomplishment, and now could only be shovelled out, with difficulty, past God knew what obstacles of mind and tongue. What accent was that? Where from? They stared, they were all silenced by her. And Roberta, putting her arm swiftly around her friend’s shaking shoulders, said softly, “Faye, Faye darling, Faye,
Faye,”
until the girl suddenly shuddered and seemed to go limp, and collapsed into her arms.

A silence.

“What’s the problem?” asked Bert, who was refusing to see that he was the cause of this outburst from Faye’s other self. Or selves? “If Faye doesn’t want to contribute, that’s fine. They always set the assessment very low, for squats anyway. And there’ll be other people coming in, of course, to replace the comrades who left yesterday. We’ll have to be sure they understand what arrangement we make with the Council.”

Faye, half hidden in Roberta’s arms, seemed to heave and struggle, but went quiet.

Alice said, “If we don’t get this place cleared up, we’ll have to leave anyway. We can clear it up, easy enough, but to keep it clean, we need the Council. There’s been all the complaints. The woman next door said she complained.…”

“Joan Robbins,” said Faye. “That filthy fascist cow. I’ll kill her.” But it was in her cockney, not her other, true, voice, that she spoke. She sat up, freed herself from solicitous Roberta, and lit another cigarette. She did not look at the others.

“No, you won’t,” said Roberta, softly. She reasserted her rights to Faye by putting her arm around her. Faye submitted, with her pert little toss of the head and a smile.

“Well, it is disgusting,” said Alice.

“It was all right till you came,” said Jim. This was not a complaint or an accusation, more of a question. He was really saying: How is it so easy for you, and so impossible for me?

“Don’t worry,” said Alice, smiling at him. “When we’ve got the place cleaned up, we will be just like everyone else in the street, and after a bit no one will notice us. You’ll see.”

“If you want to waste your money,” said Faye.

“We do have to pay at least the first instalment of electricity and gas. If we can persuade them to supply us,” said Bert.

“Of course we can,” Alice said, and Pat said, “The meters are still here.”

“Yes, they forgot to take them away,” said Jim.

“And what are we going to pay with?” asked Faye. “We are all on Unemployment, aren’t we?”

There was a silence. Alice knew that, if they were living on very low rent, there would be plenty of money. If people had any sense of how to use it, that is. She and Jasper, living with her mother and paying nothing, had about eighty pounds a week between them, on Social Security. But none of it was saved, because Jasper spent all his, and most of hers, too, always coming to demand it. “For the party,” he said—or whatever Cause they were currently aligned with. But she knew that a lot of it went on what she described to herself, primly, as “his emotional life.”

She knew, too, that in communities like this there were payers and the other kind, and there was nothing to be done about it. She knew that Pat would pay; that Pat would make Bert pay—as long as she was here. The two girls would not part with a penny. As for Jim—well, let’s wait and see.

She said, “There’s something we can do now, and that is, get the lavatories unblocked.”