The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [174]
“Well, we did,” said Bert, loud and jolly and false, and the antagonism that was the truth of what they felt for each other—Mary and Reggie for them, they for Mary and Reggie—was on the surface, and they all knew it, and their hostile faces showed it. Briefly. The smiles and good will set in again.
“Whew,” said Bert, as the good-byes were being said. “I’m for a bath and a kip. That’s done me in.”
“I’m for a bath,” said Faye daintily, looking at Roberta, who would scrub her back and dry her afterwards.
“Well, good-bye, all you lot,” cried Reggie, cried Mary, jumping into the front of the van with many smiles and waves, and they drove off, leaving behind the reassuring picture of the group waving to them from the garden.
Of course they had paid, before leaving, the exact amount they owed, down to the last greasy penny piece.
And then, almost hysterical with suppressed laughter, the others raced into the kitchen, for tea, for sandwiches. It was one o’clock. Just the right time. Precisely and accurately correct.
Everything was going so well. Had gone well, events slotting into place, luck almost ostentatiously on their side: that the Council should have decided to bury Philip this morning; that Mary and Reggie should have chosen today for moving—the comrades could not have wished for better. And then the car: at the other squat, someone had mentioned—she could not have known how fortuitously—that the man in the next house had gone on holiday with his family, and that the car, an Escort, had been standing outside the house for a week, with another week to go. “He’s asking for it,” she had remarked. Of course the car was locked, but to Jasper—it was one of his talents—this was no obstacle.
Late last night, after coming back from Diva and the Indian restaurant, Bert and Jasper and Jocelin had slipped out of 43, and had gone by Underground back to the other squat. Not inside it: they did not want to involve any more people in this enterprise. Of course, they took the chance that their friends might be coming back from somewhere and see them. But three of them were away; they had said they would be. To open the car, start it, and drive off had taken Jasper and Bert a minute. They drove around Pimlico and Victoria, but did not find anything they liked the look of. They needed a safe place where they could fit in the explosives. They were watching the level of petrol: less than half a tank, and they did not want to have to go into a petrol station. At last, farther away from “the scene of the crime” than they wanted, they found a street of semidetached houses, and one of them was being modernised and rebuilt; at any rate, there were “For Sale” notices, and builders’ equipment. In front of each house was a garden, crammed with shrubs, and a shallow drive, not much more than a place to park. The three discussed this place while they drove around and about the streets. It wasn’t ideal, but they hadn’t seen anything better. The house that was the twin of the one they had in mind was presumably occupied, and although it was by then three in the morning, as usual there was this problem of insomniacs and night owls. Not to mention patrolling policemen. But it would soon be getting light.… Jocelin remarked that it was a pity they couldn’t wait until winter: a long dark night was just what they needed. They even suffered a low moment, thinking that the whole enterprise was misconceived, or at least being too hastily executed. Everything was so improvised! But it was precisely this quality that seemed to be aiding them—and which appealed to them, adding to their secret, rising excitement, making them want to laugh for no particular reason, and to make jokes, the sillier the better.
In the end this mood of theirs triumphed, and they drove back into the street, and turned into the little “drive” in front of the empty house. Jocelin needed about twenty minutes to insert the explosives into the car. Jasper ran to one end of the street, Bert to the other, to keep watch for the police. Jocelin was in fact