The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [150]
“I need it,” said Alice simply.
Felicity thought, and said, “You could have it tomorrow morning until lunchtime.” She could not have said more clearly: And that is all you are getting from me as quid pro quo! Alice answered this with, “Fine. We’ll consider accounts settled, then.” Hearing it put into words made Felicity blush, but she said, “I’m in a hurry. Same time tomorrow?” And almost ran to her car, a Datsun, which stood parked with all the other conforming, obedient cars along the pavement’s edge.
That’s done, thought Alice, and put all thoughts of the dangerous packages out of her head. Tomorrow she would take them to the municipal rubbish tip, and that would be that. And if any more turned up, they would be got rid of.
Outside her front door stood a man, in a neat grey suit and a tie, so much the official that she thought, Oh no, not the Council again, and put on her competent, I-am-coping-with-everything face.
But it was in an American accent that he said, or stated, “Alice Mellings?”
“That’s right”—and she knew that this forthcoming encounter was one she would need all her wits for. Her excited blood told her so.
“Can I come in?”
Without speaking, she opened the door, and went in front of him to the kitchen, and indicated that he should sit in the chair at the end of the table. She put on the kettle and sat at the head.
He looked younger than herself. But he was the type to look young. He had a smooth face, attentive and polite, like an old-fashioned student. He had rather nice brown eyes, at the moment devoted to her every movement, eyes that examined her as closely as she did him. He had well-cared-for hands. But his most remarkable feature was his featurelessness. There was nothing, but nothing, to fasten on to in him. A clerk; someone essentially indoor, weathered at the worst by a draught or too-cold air from a left-open window. He might have taken an exam in how to be ordinary! Yet there was something excessive in it.… Of course, she, Alice, was only likely to meet nonconformists—or, as her mother in her old-fashioned way put it, bohemians; and, of course, in England in these days, particularly London, no one gave a fuck, but all the same …
It was he who broke the silence with, “Comrade Mellings, I was informed early this morning that you were reluctant to accept a consignment of matériel.”
Alice stared. The use of the word matériel now, in this context, was not thrilling her at all. In this situation (one she wanted to shake off and be rid of), the word matériel was too portentous; it was a word that insisted on being taken seriously.
He said, “Is that true, Comrade Mellings? I would like some kind of explanation.” He spoke as it were abstractly, his own personality removed, but the words he used were enough, and she was suddenly furious. Who the fuck did he think …
“It certainly is true,” she said calmly, and coldly. “It was quite out of order to bring it here. No arrangement has ever been made that any sort of stuff should be sent here.” She deliberately used the word “stuff,” which sounded unimportant.
He licked his lips, and his eyes were slightly narrowed as he stared.
“That is not possible,” he observed, at last. But she could see he was nonplussed, was trying to find some thread or loose end to guide him in.
“Oh yes, it is,” she asserted herself. “All kinds of things were dumped next door and picked up again. But that had nothing to do with us in this house. This is a quite different situation.”
There were sounds from the kettle that enabled her briskly to rise and go to it. Her back to him, she stirred powdered coffee into two mugs. Slowly. Something about him bothered her. He was rather like those large, smooth, shiny bales upstairs, with not a mark on them, and with God knows what inside.
An American? Well …
She took her time in turning, in setting the mug down in front of him. She had not asked what he would drink. Then she surprised herself by yawning, a deep, irresistible yawn. After all, she had hardly slept.