The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [126]
Alice slept at last, when Faye became silent, and would have slept on through the morning, but Roberta knocked on her door, then called through it that there was something important she had to say.
Alice sat up at once, ready for bad news.
Roberta looked awful, naturally enough. Her eyes were red, her face dragged with exhaustion. More, she had been broken down, or back, into the other Roberta. There was a sluttish look about her, like a slum woman from a 1930s film, particularly when she put a cigarette into her mouth and let it hang on her lip as she talked, crouching beside Alice’s sleeping bag. She was in a soiled dressing gown.
“Alice, I’ve had bad news. My mother is in hospital in Bradford. I’ve got to go. Do you see? I’ve got to.”
Alice saw that Roberta was still reasoning with Faye in her mind, and asked, “What’s wrong with her?”
Roberta said, sullen, “Cancer. She’s been ill for a long time. Should have gone before.”
Her voice, too, was regressing: North Country intonations strengthened there. Did she come from some awful slum in a Northern industrial town?
Alice was already seeing it all. She was going to be asked to “keep an eye” on Faye, who could not be left in the women’s commune; without Roberta they would not have Faye even in the day. She, Alice, for an unspecified period of days, would have to …
She said, “As a matter of fact, I had just decided to take off.” Her voice sounded hard and sullen, like Roberta’s.
But at this Roberta began a noisy weeping. She grabbed Alice’s hand and held it hard, looking into Alice’s eyes, with, “Oh, Alice, please, please, please, I can’t leave Faye with no one, how can I?”
Roberta was trembling. Alice could feel her exhaustion coming into her, through her tightly grasping hand.
“And you have no idea how long you will be gone, or anything,” said Alice.
Roberta let go Alice’s hand, and sat staring over her hunched-up knees, the cigarette lolling on her lip, eyes empty. The last ditch.
“Oh, God,” said Alice. “I suppose I’ve got to. But I’m not you, Roberta. I’m not going to baby Faye along, the way you do.…”
Roberta suddenly went limp. She put her head on her knees, knocking the cigarette onto the sleeping bag. Alice tidily retrieved it, and sat watching Roberta crouched in a womb position, arms around her knees.
“Alice,” she heard, “you don’t know what this means to me. You can’t …”
“Of course I do,” said Alice. “Without you, Faye couldn’t manage at all. She would be in a loony bin. You spend all your time making sure she doesn’t fall into their hands.”
Roberta straightened, sat up, tears spilling everywhere, said in appeal, “Alice …”
“But there’s another side to it, too. She behaves worse with you than with anyone. You let her.”
As Roberta protested, Alice went on reasonably, “Oh no, I’m not saying she isn’t a nut—she is—but I’ve noticed before that sometimes someone like that behaves quite ordinarily with everybody, manages everything, you’d never think she was a nut, but there’s just one person, with that person, she’s out of control. It makes you wonder,” said Alice.
Roberta was watching her closely. A new cigarette was being lit, but while this operation went on, Roberta’s eyes did not leave Alice’s face. Alice saw that the Roberta of number 43 was there again, and the poor Roberta of some dreadful past, once more