The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [178]
“Have you any information about a man called Andrew Connors?”
She stared at him, a wild inappropriate laughter threatening her. She said, with a sudden derisiveness, like a jeer, “Don’t tell me that you are still another phony bloody American? No”—she caught herself up—“of course not; English accent; well, what’s in an accent?”
Her visitor looked startled, not surprisingly, and took his time in answering. At last he said, with a certain quiet authority that was not unlike Gordon O’Leary’s, “I agree, Miss Mellings, that accents are not always what they seem. But about Andrew Connors—I need some information about him.”
In her normal condition Alice at this point would have said: “Indeed? And who are you”—that kind of thing—but as it was she itched with the need for him to be gone, so that she and the others could leave. She was in a fever, a rage, of impatience. She said, “Well, what sort of information? I don’t know anything much. Anyway, why don’t you ask Gordon O’Leary, he seems to know everything.”
A pause. If she had had her wits about her, she might not have liked the way this man suddenly focussed on her: narrowed eyes; a close, expert inspection.
“Well, perhaps I will,” he remarked.
“Yes, and he can tell you about it all. Look, I do have to go in, I am so sorry.…” She was about to go in, shutting the door on him, when “niceness,” the hospitable person in Alice who could never bear to disappoint, or seem unfriendly, caused her to add, disastrously, “And when you see him, just tell him from me that if any other little consignment of matériel or anything else turns up here, we are going to throw it straight back into the street and leave it there.” She said this quite brightly, even smiling, as if she had said, “When you see him, say hello from me.”
She had turned away, was about to go in.
“Just a minute, Miss Mellings.”
“Oh, God,” she cried, “oh, please, I have to go.”
“All right. So you have said. But there is something I have to discuss with you.”
“Then let’s discuss it, but not now. Anyway, I have already discussed it. I keep saying, we are not taking orders from Russians or anybody else. You don’t seem to understand that, comrade … You didn’t tell me your name.”
“My name is Peter Cecil,” he said.
“Peter Cecil?” she said, and might have laughed again. “Well, your accent is really perfect. Bloody marvellous. Congratulations.” She did give a little laugh here, girlish and merry, and though she did not really take him in, because of her pounding heart, her general overstimulation, she looked at him enough to see that he really did seem the essence of an Englishman, to match his name.
“Thank you,” he said, pleasantly. “Perhaps you would care to have lunch?”
“Yes. But I was going to say, you don’t seem able to take it in, but we are British, you understand? British communists.” She hesitated and added, since the situation seemed to demand elucidation: “Freeborn British communists.”
“Ah,” he said. “Well, where can we meet? Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow? Well, why not? Tomorrow’s all right. Do you know the Taj Mahal? That restaurant in the High Street?”
“Very good. Tomorrow. At one. Thank you for your time, Miss Mellings.”
“Not at all,” said she, forgetting him entirely, as she ran in to the others, who were saying: “For God’s sake, Alice, come on, will you. We’ve got to go. Get a move on.”
It was twenty to three. At the station they waited ten minutes for a train, much longer than they expected. At Baker Street they sat in the train, the doors open, with people drifting in, taking their time, for another seven. They joked they could not remember waiting for so long before. At Green Park they waited again. They were frantic with suspense; felt like bombs themselves, which could go off. Coming out of the Underground at three-thirty, Bert burst into a run, and the other two ran after him, to slow him down. “Stop it,” said Roberta, irritable. “We have to be unnoticed, remember.”
No one looking at Roberta was likely not to notice her.
She was very pale, was sweating, her face was tragic with seriousness.