The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [16]
He laid his hand on her shoulder and pressed down. She smiled, with small pouting kissing movements, eyes tight-closed, and he went back to the kitchen, saying: “I’ve done some soup and a salad.”
“Oh, darling Anthony,” said Theresa, “thank you—soup—it’s just what I need.”
What Alice felt then was a slicing cold pain—jealousy; but she did not know it was that, and she said, to be rid of the scene, rid of them, “You said I could have fifty pounds. Can I have it, Theresa?”
“I expect so, darling,” said Theresa vaguely. And in a moment she had sat up, had opened her smart bag, and was peering inside it. “Fifty,” she said, “fifty, well, have I got it? Yes, just …” And she fished out five ten-pound notes and handed them to Alice.
“Thanks.” Alice wanted to fly off with them, but felt graceless; she was full of affection for Theresa, who looked so tired and done, who had always been so good to her. “You are my favourite and my best, and my very best auntie,” she said, with an awkward smile, as she had when she was little and they played this game.
Theresa’s eyes were open and she looked straight into Alice’s. “Alice,” she said, “Alice, my dear …” She sighed. Sat up. Stroked her deep-red skirt. Put up a white little hand to smooth her soft dark hair. Dyed, of course. “Your poor mother,” said Theresa. “She rang me this morning. She was so upset, Alice.”
“She was upset,” said Alice at once. “She was.”
Theresa sighed. “Alice, why do you stick with him, with Jasper, why—no, wait, don’t run off. You’re so pretty and nice, my love”—here she seemed to offer that kind face of hers to Alice, as if in a kiss—“you are such a good girl, Alice, why can’t you choose yourself someone—you should have a real relationship with someone,” she ended awkwardly, because of Alice’s cold contemptuous face.
“I love Jasper,” Alice said. “I love him. Why don’t you understand? I don’t care—about what you care about. Love isn’t just sex. That’s what you think, I know.…”
But the years of affection, of love, dragged at her tongue, and she felt tears rushing down her face. “Oh, Theresa,” she cried, “thank you. Thank you. I’ll come in to see you soon. I’ll come. I must go, they are waiting.…” And she ran to the door, sobbing violently, and out of the door, letting it crash. Down the stair she pounded, tears flying off her face, into the street, and there she remembered the notes in her hand, in danger of being blown away or snatched. She put them carefully into the pocket of her jacket, and walked fast and safely to the Underground.
Meanwhile, back in the beautiful flat, they were discussing Alice. Anthony kept up a humorous quizzical look, until Theresa responded with, “What is it, my love?”
“Some girl,” he said, the dislike he felt for Alice sounding in his voice.
“Yes, yes, I know …” she said irritably—her exhaustion was beginning to tell.
“A girl—how old is she now?”
She shrugged, not wanting to be bothered with it, but interested all the same. “You’re right,” she said. “One keeps forgetting.”
“Nearly forty?” insisted Anthony.
“Oh no, she can’t be!”
A pause, while the steam from the plate of soup he had brought her, and had set on the little table beside her, ascended between them. Through the steam, they looked at each other.
“Thirty-five; no, thirty-six,” she said flatly at last.
“Arrested development,” said Anthony firmly, insisting on his right to dislike Alice.
“Oh yes, I expect so, but darling Alice, well, she’s a sweet girl—a sweet thing, really.”
In Alice’s little street the houses were full of lights and people, the kerbs crammed with the cars of those who had returned from work; and her house loomed at the end, dark, powerful, silent, mysterious, defined by the lights and the din of the main road beyond. As she arrived at the gate, she saw three figures about to go into the dark entrance. Jasper, Bert. And the third?—Alice ran up, and Jasper and Bert turned sharply to face possible danger, saw her, and said to the boy they had with them, “Philip, it is all right, this is Alice. Comrade Alice, you know.” They were in the hall,