The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [129]
To hear her mother’s words coming so complacently out of Caroline’s plump smiling face was so much of a blow to Alice, her two worlds becoming confused in this way, that she missed a good bit of what Caroline was saying. When she listened again she heard, “I think our Comrade Andrew was not up to his job. I think the West went to his head. The fleshpots, you know.”
“Then God help him,” said Alice, disgusted.
“Quite so. And Muriel was just too much for him, girl from the shires, Roedean and all that.”
“Roedean, is she?”
“Roedean and finishing school and gourmet-cooking school. Isn’t it amazing how the upper classes go for communism? Do you think Comrade Marx foresaw that in his crystal ball?”
“Who’s talking,” said Alice, knowing it was not right to talk about Marx like this.
“I? I’m not upper-class. Just boring old middle-class, like you.”
“I am one generation away from working-class. On my mother’s side.”
“Congratulations,” said Comrade Caroline, laughing.
“For all that,” said Alice, “I am sure Comrade Muriel will be very good.”
“Who said she wouldn’t? Born for it. I can see the headlines now: ‘Red Mole Caught Red-Handed in the …’ where, do you think?”
“BBC,” said Alice, unable to prevent herself.
“Right on. Or the Times. The Guardian, do you think?”
“No, the Times, wrong style for the Guardian. But probably by the time she’s been trained … She’s very clever, I am sure she is.”
“So am I, but Comrade Andrew didn’t fall for Comrade Muriel because of her espionage potential. They were hardly ever out of bed. Or, to be accurate, off the floor.”
Alice turned the switch. She said vaguely, “Oh well, I don’t care about all that. And so. Muriel’s gone. Andrew’s gone. You want to come here. That leaves …”
“And Jocelin wants to come here, too.”
“So there will only be Paul and Edward next door?”
“They are moving into a flat this week. They’ve found work. Rather, Andrew found them work. In a very strategic place. ’Nuff said.”
“So, soon there’ll be a different set of squatters next door.”
“Provided I’m not there. No hot water. Cold as Siberia. Not like this house.”
There was an empty room on the top floor, and another next to Roberta and Faye’s room.
“I don’t see why not,” said Alice.
“I can’t wait to come. Apart from anything else, the police dug up that pit in the garden, and all the rubbish we buried is blowing everywhere.”
For some reason this seemed to Alice the last straw she had been expecting. “Oh no,” she wailed. “Oh, God, no.”
“Oh yes. Back to square one. We said to them, when they had dug up everything, Aren’t you going to put all that rubbish back? ‘Piss off,’ they said. Charming, Old Bill is. Well, I’ll get my things.”
Alice went next door with her and stood at the gate looking in. Rubbish everywhere, and a brisk spring wind was blowing it about. The pit where she had seen—but what?—-was an ugly trench, with pale earth in untidy heaps.
But she could not leave Faye alone like this, and so she went back.
• • •
Faye did not come down until evening, wan and sad, and ready to weep. But she was in command of herself and willing to take part in the communal evening meal, with Caroline and Jocelin, Mary and Reggie, Philip and Alice.
It was all going on very nicely when, about nine, there was a violent knocking at the door.
“Oh no, not again,” said Caroline. Alice was already off