The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [137]
Alice explained what she was doing; the conventions of commune or squat life ensured that they would commend her for helping a fellow.
They said nothing about coming to help themselves.
Up the stairs they went together, a pair, a unit, welded by all their experiences, about which they had been prepared to say only that the tour wasn’t bad, the Soviet Union’s trouble was bureaucracy; if the comrades could sort that out, it might even be a pleasure to go there.
And after the Soviet Union? They had left the tour at Moscow, and gone to Holland. It hadn’t stopped raining.
Bert went to his sleeping bag on the other side of the wall from Alice. Jasper found his room upstairs occupied by Jocelin’s things. Great crashes and bangs from up there: Jasper was heaving out the furniture from the room next to Mary and Reggie’s, onto the landing. Alice knew this was happening, could hear from the noise that Jasper was in one of his rages, when he could shift cupboards and packing cases as if he were ten men. She slept, with her internal alarm set for two hours’ time.
And woke again, doleful, desperate; there was no way she could see out of helping Philip, yet she could not really help Philip. And she wanted to be with Jasper.
The Greek’s premises were done by midnight. Two coats on everything. Even on the plaster, though it was too soon. Everything, too quick, rushed. Done adequately. Done, as far as Alice was concerned, with no pleasure.
At midnight, the three again stood together under the glaring working lights, this time surrounded by primrose-yellow walls, which the Greek stared at, one after another, despising them.
Everything happened as Alice had known it must.
The work was not up to standard; Alice was only an amateur and Philip a crook. He, the Greek, would have to pay someone else to come in and finish the job. (Of course, all three knew that this was a lie; customers would see only a fresh and charming yellow—which would soon, however, begin to flake.) Philip could go to the police if he liked, but not another penny … And so he went on, shouting, putting on theatre, pointing rejecting forefingers at ceilings, at plaster, shrugging shoulders that despaired of the human race, rolling hot bitter little black eyes.
Alice came in with words, cold and hot. They fought. Philip, white as an egg, stutteringly intervened. The end of it was that Philip got two-thirds of what had been contracted.
At one in the morning, Alice and Philip shouldered ladders, trestles out of the shop, knowing that these would be confiscated if they were left. Alice stood guard while little Philip staggered the half mile up the road with a ladder three times his height, and came back with Bert and Jasper, who were helping him because they had to. Bert had been pulled out of his sleeping bag.
Philip’s gear was got safely into the downstairs room, Jim’s room, and Philip stayed there with it, in a state of angry despair.
Bert went back to bed. Smiling and gentle, like a bride, Alice said to Jasper that it would be nice if he would sit with her while she ate. She had scarcely eaten that day. He said, curtly, yes, there was something he wanted to discuss with her. But tomorrow would do. Off he went upstairs, to sleep.
Without eating, so did Alice; she felt as though she were being dragged over a waterfall, or into an abyss, but did not know why.
Awake early because she was hungry, she was in the kitchen eating when Philip came in. He was red-eyed and beside himself. Mad, Alice judged. Simply not himself.
He probably had not slept but had been awake with thoughts he had been marshalling, ready for presentation the moment he could get her alone.
He sat himself down, but so lightly that he could jump up again on the crest of any wave of the argument. His fists rested side by side before him.
He knew of another job, a shop just opening up. He could get it, but it would have to be within the next day or so. It was no use working by himself. He had to have a partner—Alice could see that for herself,