The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [128]
“Which was?”
“Oh,” said Caroline airily, spooning up thick wet yellow sugar from the bottom of her mug, and licking it slowly with a fat pink tongue, “things, you know.”
Alice was silent. She was taking in everything she could of this plump, healthy creature who sat there exuding physical enjoyment. She was trying to understand the secret of it. But, noted Alice, though she might look like a sleek seal, smiling away and talking—presumably—about explosives, her pupils remained tight and unrelenting. They gave her a shrewd, even cold, look, and Alice was relieved to see it. She felt Caroline could be relied on.
“Well, I suppose explosives,” she remarked indifferently. “That’s what I thought from the start, really.”
“Well, that kind of thing. But I said to Comrade Andrew, I said, ‘Have any of us actually been asked about what comes in and out? I don’t seem to remember a vote being taken?’ ”
“You were there before he was?”
“Long before. I moved in a year ago. I was there alone for weeks. Then Muriel came. Then, suddenly, Andrew came. We never knew how Muriel had heard of it—Comrade Muriel is not, I would say, one of the world’s natural squatters.”
“No.”
“But she took the place over. The next thing was Paul and Edward—now, I think that she asked them in because Andrew told her to. Then I asked some friends of mine, three girls, who were in a bad squat in Camberwell. But Muriel soon got rid of them.”
“How?”
“Not so much”—said Caroline judiciously, smiling with the pleasure she was getting from talking and being understood—“not so much by what she did, but by what she is …” She waited for Alice to laugh. Alice laughed. Caroline went on, “They simply did not like the way Muriel assumed command, and then when Andrew moved in, they left.”
Alice sat thinking. She knew, from how Caroline was eyeing her, that thinking was what she was supposed to be doing.
“Very well,” said Alice at last. “So you don’t like Comrade Andrew.”
“Who is Comrade Andrew?” asked Caroline. “Who is he to give orders and say what is and what is not to happen?”
“We don’t have to do what he says. It is up to us to say no or yes.”
“But difficult to say no when a car simply arrives with five cases of pamphlets. Or something.”
More coffee. More sugar. Alice could not prevent herself from thinking: But your teeth …
“And,” pronounced Caroline, smiling, amenable, sociable, but her little brown eyes hard and controlled, “do you know something? I do not give a damn about the fucking bloody Soviet Union. Or about the fucking KGB. Or any of that.”
“KGB” used like that did give Alice a bit of a shock; she had not actually said to herself, I am involved with the KGB. Besides, the words had a ruthless quality which was hard to associate with Comrade Andrew. She was silent, then said, “But it is a useful way to get trained. I mean, for some people.”
“For some people. And if they want that kind of training.”
“There is something about it all that doesn’t fit,” Alice said at last, with difficulty. It was hard to criticise Comrade Andrew. Aloud, at least; in her thoughts she could not prevent herself.
“Exactly. And do you know what it is? I have—strangely enough—been giving the matter my most earnest consideration.”
Alice laughed, as she was expected to.
“Yes. In my experience, which is not vast, but enough, everything turns out to be some kind of a muddle. You are imagining amazing fantastic brilliant plots, organised down to the last fantastically efficient detail, but no, when you discover the truth about anything, let alone KGB plots, it is always some stupid silly mess.”
Now Alice was really disturbed. It was because this was something her mother said. Had been saying recently—part of this new, upsetting phase she was in. Over and over again in the last four years, how many times had Alice not heard Dorothy Mellings exclaim, and with a relish in the scandal of it all that made Alice furious, “Just another bloody balls-up, that’s all. They’ve blown it! They’ve fucked it up. Oh, don’t waste your