The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [147]
Jocelin said she would find out what was there in the morning. Perhaps even tonight: she didn’t feel sleepy.
“Don’t blow us all up,” said Jasper, and she did not reply. She did not think much of Jasper, and showed it. She seemed to like Bert, however. Bert, for his part, was attracted by Caroline, who either had not noticed this or had decided to ignore it.
Alice went back into the kitchen, tidied up this and that, listening for sounds of some or all of them coming back to talk it over. For she had understood that something bad had happened. It was not just another little harassment, like a visit from the police! When she realised that no one was coming, which meant they had not seen what by now they should, she sat down at the head of the table and lapsed into a numbed condition. Numbed feelings, not thought, for her mind was active.
No one had said anything to them about number 43’s becoming a collection point. Comrade Muriel would certainly have mentioned it, had she known. Caroline and Jocelin had not expected it. Comrade Andrew had not even approached the subject. (Here the thought of the money, the five hundred pounds, presented itself, and Alice contemplated it, as it were, without prejudice.) Number 43 couldn’t have people just dumping stuff here, and others whisking it off again, any time of the day or night! It simply wasn’t on! But who could Alice contact to announce this? It occurred to her that she had no means of reaching Pat, or Muriel; let alone Comrade Andrew. The unreality of it, that these people had been so vivid, so there, in this house and in the next house, for weeks—comrades, you could say intimates—and then not to be there, and so absolutely gone, lost, rubbed out that she could not even send them a postcard … This thought deepened her numbness, like a blank area slowly spreading through her.
And there was another thing. (But this was certainly not a new thought.) Here they were, committed to “doing something real at last,” all ready for it—you could say that number 43 was now quivering on the edge, like people in a little boat on the verge of a waterfall (here Alice painfully shook her head, like a dog clearing its ears of water)—yet they did not really have much confidence in one another. (Alice was replaying, as it were, the look on Jocelin’s face as she saw that Jasper and Bert lolled on the stairs, while she, Jocelin, ran down to help carry the big packages.) No, Jocelin did not admire Jasper! What did she think of Faye? Well, it was not hard to imagine. Almost certainly, though, she must approve of Roberta? Caroline? You could hardly imagine a greater contrast between the indolent, sensual woman and the cold, functional Jocelin. And herself, Alice? Did she despise her, too?
It occurred to her that she was using Jocelin as a touchstone, a judgement point. As though Jocelin were the key to everything? Well, it was she who was at work on the bombs, or whatever.
Alice went up to the top of the house, saw that light showed beneath the door of Jocelin’s workroom, knocked, heard a low “Come in.”
Jocelin looked up from where she sat behind her trestle, her hands intricately engaged with a length of copper wire. Close by her stood packages of various household chemicals, looking reassuring in their bright packaging.
Jocelin went on looking at Alice, waiting for her to explain herself. She was formidable and frightening, Alice thought. Yet what could be more ordinary than Jocelin? A stranger would see a rather slatternly blonde, strands of pale hair falling over her face, smears of some sort of white powder on her old grey sweater. But it was her concentration, her focussing of herself behind what she did …
Alice said feebly, “Hello,” and Jocelin did not respond, but went on working, pouring white grains from an old saucepan into a copper pipe.
“I didn’t like what happened down there,” said Alice, sounding ineffective even to herself, and Jocelin nodded and said, “No, neither did I. But I don’t see that we can do anything but go on. We must get the job done quickly, and then