The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [100]
“I’m going to my father’s,” she said again, slowly, still puzzling over that message from her buried self, which sang in her fingertips and up her arm.
She went slowly down the path to the gate, turned into the main road for the Underground, still dreamwalking, still caught in a web of intimations, reminders, promptings. She even put her seduced fingers to her nose and sniffed them, seeming even more puzzled and dismayed. She understood she was standing on the pavement with people walking past, the traffic rushing up and down—had been standing there, stock-still, for how long? She could not help glancing back at number 43, in case Jasper was spying on her. He was. She caught a glimpse of his paleness at the window of the bathroom on the first floor. But he at once disappeared.
Her energies came back at her in a rush, with the thought that now, having all that money, Jasper would be off somewhere, and if she wanted to catch him, she must hurry.
At C. Mellings, Printers and Stationers, she went straight through the shop and upstairs, and into her father’s room. He sat behind his big desk, and Jill the secretary sat at her table opposite him across the room. Alice stood in front of her father and said, “Why did you sack Jim? Why did you? That was a shitty bloody fascist thing to do. It was only because he was black, that’s all.”
Cedric Mellings, on seeing his daughter, had gone red, had gone pale. Now he sat forward, weight on his forearms, hands clenched.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“What? Because you sacked Jim, how dare you do it? It was unfair!” And Alice kicked the front of the desk, hard, several times.
“I gave Jim Mackenzie a job, because it has always been our policy to employ blacks, Indians, anyone. We have always operated a nonracial policy here. As you know very well. But I should have known better than to accept anyone recommended by you.”
His voice was now low and bitter, and he looked ill. “Just go away, Alice. Just get out, will you, I’ve had all I can take of you.”
“Will you listen,” she shrieked. “Jim didn’t take that money. I took it. How can you be so stupid?” This last she addressed to Jill. “I was in this office, wasn’t I? Are you blind or stupid or something?”
Jill stood up, and papers, biros, went flying. She stared, as pale as her employer, and dumb.
“Don’t speak to Jill like that,” said Cedric Mellings. “How dare you just come in here and … What do you mean, you took the money, how could you …” Here he put his head into his hands and groaned.
Jill made a sick sort of noise and went out to the lavatory.
Alice sat down in the chair opposite her father’s and waited for him to recover.
“You took that money?” he asked at last.
“Well, of course I took it. I was here, wasn’t I? Didn’t Jill tell you?”
“It didn’t cross my mind. And it didn’t hers. Why should it?”
Now he sat back, eyes closed, trying to pull himself together. His hands trembled, lying on the desk.
Seeing this, Alice felt a little spurt of triumph, then pity. She was glad of this opportunity to look at him unobserved.
She had always thought of her father as attractive, even handsome, though she knew not everyone did. Her mother, for instance, had been wont to call him “Sandman” in critical moods.
Cedric was a solid, tending-to-fat man, pale of skin, lightly freckled, with short fair hair that looked reddish in some lights. His eyes were blue. Alice was really rather proud of his story, his career.
Cedric Mellings was the youngest of several children. The family came from near Newcastle. There were Scottish connections. Cedric’s grandfather was a clergyman. His father was a journalist and far from rich. All the children