The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [152]
“You will do as you have contracted to do. As was understood,” he said, very soft, very threatening. She felt this way of conveying threat had been taught to him: method 53 for intimidating the subject. The contempt she felt for his obviousness was putting her out of his reach.
“I told you, we haven’t contracted for anything.”
“You have! You have, Comrade Mellings!”
“When did I? It was never even mentioned. It wasn’t mentioned once.”
“How could it not have been mentioned? Did you or did you not accept money from us, Comrade Mellings?”
This did set her back a bit, and she frowned, but said, “I didn’t ask for the money. It was simply given to me.”
“It was just given to you,” he said, with polite derision, mild, to match his general style.
“Yes. All I knew about it was when Comrade Muriel, you know, the woman who looks like a goose, handed me a packet with five hundred pounds, just before she went off to her spy course in Lithuania or wherever.”
This time he went properly red, a raw beef red, and he did actually glare at her, before recovering himself. Again he sat himself up straight, reminded, perhaps by his anger, that even when one was sitting relaxed at a table, nevertheless one’s knees should be set together and one should at the most have one elbow on it.
“If Comrade Andrew or anyone else said anything about spy schools anywhere at all, then it’s just a pack of nonsense.”
She thought about this, taking her time. “I don’t think it was nonsense. Where have Muriel and Pat gone to? They’ve gone off somewhere for training. Well, I don’t care anyway. I’m not interested in America or Czechoslovakia or Russia or Lithuania. None of us are. We are English revolutionaries and we shall make our own policies and act according to the English tradition. Our own tradition.”
He said cautiously, after a considerable pause, “It is of course understandable that you owe first loyalty to your own situation. But we are dealing with a struggle between the growing communist forces in the world, and capitalism in its death throes. That is an international situation, which means that policies must be formulated from an international point of view. This is a world struggle, comrade.”
“I don’t think you quite understand,” said Alice. “We are not taking orders from you or from anyone else. Not from anybody,” she added.
“It’s not a question,” he said slowly, emphasising each word, “of what you have or have not decided, comrade. You cannot renege on agreements already made.”
She completed the circular argument by repeating, “But not by us.”
His violently hostile eyes were hastily shielded from her, as he lowered his gaze.
The silence went on for a time, and Alice remarked, quite in her good-hostess manner, putting people at their ease, “It seems to me that your Comrade Andrew has goofed things up. Isn’t that it? And you are sorting it all out?”
She heard his breathing come too loud. Then slow and regular as he controlled it. His eyes were not available for inspection. Everything about him was tight, clenched, even his hand, where it lay on the table. “Well, don’t get so uptight about it. With so many in the KGB—millions of you, aren’t there?—yes, I know that is for the whole of Russia, only some of you are out keeping an eye on us—well, there are bound to be some inefficient ones.” His glance upwards at her did quite frighten her for a second, and she continued bravely, even kindly, for now she genuinely wanted to set him at his ease, if possible, having won the advantage and made him accept her point of view: “I am sure the same is true of our lot. I mean, what a shitty lot, that is, if even half of what you read in the papers is true.…” This last part of the sentence was her mother, straight; and Alice wondered that her mother should be speaking so authoritatively and naturally from Alice’s own mouth. Not that Alice minded. Dorothy Mellings’s voice sounded quite appropriate, really, in this situation. “Getting caught the way they do all the time. Well, I suppose we wouldn’t be likely to hear about yours: