The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [159]
Somebody going out to buy cigarettes came back with the local Advertiser—the sheets given away on the streets or put through letter boxes or under doors. In it they found this piece:
A bomb exploded at the corner of West Rowan Road early on Friday morning. A cement post was destroyed and another chipped. The blast damaged the brickwork of nearby houses, and blew the windows out of four of them. Mrs. Murray, a widow of 87, said she was sitting by her upstairs window and had seen three youths near the cement post. It was not yet light, and she could not see them properly. She thought they were having a bit of a lark. She went to lie on her bed, still dressed.
“I sleep badly these days,” she said. She heard the explosion, and glass flying into her room. “Lucky I wasn’t still sitting at the window,” she confided to our reporter. Mrs. Murray sustained minor injuries from the glass and was treated for shock.
“Oh, poor old thing,” quavered Alice. She did not look at Jocelin, for she knew the look would be reproachful.
“Silly old cow,” said Faye. “Pity we didn’t do her in properly. We’d have done ’er a favour, we would. These old crones, their life isn’t worth living. ’Alf dead with boredom, they are, years before they go.”
They decided to laugh, to placate her. Faye was in the grip of one of her violent, reminiscent moods—but provoked by what? They never knew. She only sat and trembled a little defiantly, not looking at them, not looking even at Roberta, who was sitting rather hunched, her silvered poll lowered, eyes down, suffering for her.
“Well,” said Jocelin, “I think I know what to do. I’ll get it right this time.”
She sounded angry, even bitter. They were all bitter with frustration. A paragraph in the local Advertiser! They felt it was a snub of them, another in a long series of belittlings of what they really were, of their real capacities, that had begun—like Faye’s violences—so long ago they could not remember. They were murderous with the need to impose themselves, prove their power.
They went on drinking. Alice was sober, as usual, and apprehensive. It was Saturday, after all. And at eleven o’clock, as she had half expected, there was a loud knocking at the front door. She was up at once, sliding out of her seat, and at the kitchen door before the others had come to. She said to Jasper, “Keep out of sight, d’you hear? Don’t you come out, don’t …” To Bert, “Keep Jasper here. Don’t let him come out.” To Jocelin, “Is there anything they can find?” Jocelin ran past her and up the stairs. “It’s that little fascist. I knew he’d come back. He’s come to pay us back. I knew he would.”
The knocking went on. She opened the door, saying crisply, using all her resources to be in command, to be Miss Mellings, “You’ll wake everyone in the street.”
It was he, the fair, vicious young man, with cold baby eyes, the fluffy moustache. He was grinning and sadistic. He held something behind him, and there was a disgusting smell.
Alice had some idea of what was coming, knew that nothing could be done to stop him. But the main thing was that Jasper should not come out, not in the mood he was in—there would be a fight, she knew it.
Behind the policeman stood another. Both had schoolboy sniggers on their faces; neither looked at Alice—a bad sign.
She said, “What do you want?”
“It’s what you want,” said the little pig, and at this he and his colleague both guffawed, actually holding their hands to their mouths, like stage comedians.
“It’s what you fancy,” said the second policeman, in a strong Scottish accent.
“A little of what you fancy does you good,” said Alice’s enemy. Oh, how she loathed him, how she knew him, through and through! Oh, she knew what went on in police cells when he had someone helpless and at his mercy. But it mustn’t be Jasper.
To provoke him, to draw his fire, she allowed herself