The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [171]
This idea died a swift natural death.
Alice came to herself, on the pavement’s edge. It was chilly. Overhead a sky full of hazy stars. Opposite, a yellow street lamp.
It was about midnight now. Jasper and Bert and Caroline would not be home tonight; she had known that when they went off. And Bert and Caroline would be humping and bumping away together; all those flashing eye exchanges and atmospheres hadn’t been for nothing. And Jasper would (if he could) be in the room next to them.…
Alice put this last thought out of her mind and entered the house quietly, not wanting to see Faye and Roberta, or Reggie and Mary. But no one was at home, except for Jocelin, still at work. Alice knocked, polite, and went in on a gruff sound that presumably was a “Come in.” On the long table in front of Jocelin were four nasty little devices, identical, ranged side by side, and looking rather like outsize and complicated sardine tins. Everywhere on the trestle were parts of bombs, now dismantled, and some white kitchen bowls holding the household chemicals. Presumably waiting to be returned to their proper packets in the kitchen? Jocelin was sorting items into little piles. She nodded at Alice, not smiling. She looked like a factory worker bending over an assembly bench, but no factory worker would get away with those stray pieces of pale greasy-looking hair falling over her face, and the old stained jersey with the hole in the elbow.
“I’m going to bury these,” said Jocelin. “We can get them when we need them next.” She allowed Alice a smile. “No policeman is going to come digging around in this garden for a bit.”
“Are those four enough?” Alice asked, but only to show she marvelled at Jocelin for planning to accomplish so much with so little, and Jocelin nodded, looking at the four items with a satisfied proprietorial air.
She went to the window and stood with her back to Alice, arms akimbo, and turned to say, “It is dark enough. Come on.”
The collection of components were swept—carelessly, since they were not dangerous now—into a plastic bag, enclosed in another and then another, and they crept out into the night, not making a sound.
They stood for a minute over the place where the police had started to dig, both thinking that that would be the safest place, but could not face it. A lilac bush near Joan Robbins’s fence was still heavy with scent, though its blossoms, black in this light, had gone bruised and blotched. It had some soft soil around it. No lights were on anywhere. Dark houses stood all about, eyeless for once. Making no noise, using a trowel, Alice dug out a good-sized hole, Jocelin’ slid the bundle in, together they covered it over, and in a moment they were inside the house, feeling warm towards each other, successful accomplices.
In the kitchen, Jocelin said, “I forgot, there’s a message. Two, in fact. First, those Irishmen came back.” She sounded unworried, but Alice knew something very bad indeed had happened.
“The ones that brought that … matériel?”
“Right. They wanted to know whereabout on the rubbish tip the two cases were put.”
“What did you say?”
“I said I didn’t know.”
As far as Jocelin was concerned, it seemed, that was enough; she sat stirring sugar into her coffee, her mind probably on her handiwork, still ranged neatly side by side, on the trestle upstairs.
“And then?”
“ ‘Well, now, lady, that isn’t enough for us, is it? You can see that for yourself! We have our orders, and that’s a fact! The lady we saw last time we came, she must accompany us to the rubbish tip, and show us where the things were placed.’ ” This Jocelin delivered in an Irish accent, perfect, as far as Alice was concerned—so accurate that she was thinking: Irish? Is she? And if so, what does it mean? Does it matter? Here is another of us with a false voice!
Jocelin went on, “And I said to them, ‘Are you coming back,