The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [170]
Zoë stood vibrating with anger. But she was not going to let her voice rise, either. “If it’s so obvious, then why do you go on doing it?”
“There might be different ways of looking at it? Can you conceive there might be different ways of looking at a thing? I doubt it, the way you are.… Can’t even meet someone who reads a different newspaper.… Listen. My life has to change. Right? Strange as it might seem, I had taken all that into account, what you said. But I am doing a stock-taking—do you understand? I am thinking—do you see? I’m thinking about my life. That means I am examining a lot of things.”
Dorothy and Zoë stood opposite each other, standing straight, like soldiers told to stand at ease, or a couple about to start the steps of an intricate dance.
“And all you can see about me,” said Zoë, “is that we’ve got nothing in common. Is that all? Twenty years of being friends.”
“What have we got in common now? We’ve been cooking meals and talking about our bloody children and discussing cholesterol and the body beautiful, and going on demonstrations.”
“I haven’t noticed you going on any recently.”
“No, not since I understood that demos and all that are just for fun.”
“For fun, are they?”
“Yes, that’s right. People go on demos because they get a kick out of it. Like picnics.”
“You can’t be serious, Dorothy.”
“Of course I’m serious. No one bothers to ask any longer if it achieves anything, going on marches or demos. They talk about how they feel. That’s what they care about. It’s for kicks. It’s for fun.”
“Dorothy, that’s simply perverse.”
“Why is it perverse if it’s true? You’ve just got to use your eyes and look—people picketing, or marching or demonstrating, they are having a marvellous time. And if they are beaten up by the police, so much the better.”
A silence. Zoë was staring at Dorothy, bewildered. She really could not believe Dorothy meant it. As for Alice, who was standing there transfixed with flowers in her hands, staring at the two, and praying inwardly, “Oh, don’t, don’t, please don’t, please, please stop,” her mother had gone over the edge into destructiveness, and there was no point in even listening to her. Better take no notice.
“I’ll tell you something, Zoë. All you people, marching up and down and waving banners and singing pathetic little songs—‘All You Need Is Love’—you are just a joke. To the people who really run this world, you are a joke. They watch you at it and think: Good, that’s keeping them busy.”
“I just don’t believe you mean it.”
“I don’t know why not: I keep saying it.”
“You want to smash things up, you want to break with all your friends.”
“Well, I just can’t talk to you any more. When I say anything I really think, you start weeping and wailing.”
“Well, I care about our friendship ending, if you don’t.”
“I haven’t the energy for all these rows and little scenes,” said Dorothy.
Then Zoë had run out of the room, muttering something furious—but not loudly; not once had the voices of the two women risen. And Dorothy, with a pale, listless, dreary look, had gone back to the telephone and sat down, ready to make another call. But had not dialled at once. She had sat, head on hand, looking at the wall.
“Shall I make you a cup of tea?” Alice had brightly offered.
“No, thank you, Alice dear.”
But she had gone into the kitchen, made tea, taken her mother a cup, put it by her where she still sat, not moving, head in her hand.
Alice thought (standing on the pavement’s edge, though she did not know she was, not yet): She needs someone to look after her, she really does! No food to speak of in the refrigerator, drinking away there by herself. It’s not on. No, better if she came to live with us, at number 43. She could have those two big rooms upstairs, when Reggie and Mary move out. Through Alice’s mind floated the thought, immediately censored: Then I would have someone to talk to.
Alice saw herself and her mother at that