The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [179]
They walked rapidly round the hotel, past the people on the pavements. The three did not look at one another or, very much, at the possible victims. Alice was thinking: But people might be killed.… Oh no, that couldn’t happen! Inside her chest, however, a pressure was building up, painful, like a cry—but she could not let it be heard. Like the howl of a beast in despair, but she could not reach it, to comfort it.
What were the others thinking? Roberta—well, that was easy, she thought only of Faye. Bert? He seemed not much different from his genial self; but surely he must be wondering, like Alice, Will this girl be killed? This old woman? Perhaps this one, or that one?
There was no sign of Jasper and Faye. Having circumambulated the hotel twice, Roberta said, “There’s no point in this. And we shouldn’t be together.” Without even looking at them, she walked off by herself and stood on the opposite pavement, from which she could see the side of the hotel in front of her, and on her left the street along which Faye and Jasper could reasonably be expected to drive.
Bert went off, without looking at Alice, to stand on the pavement opposite the front of the hotel. Alice, then, logically, could have gone to stand on the side where Roberta was not, but decided that the front was best, and stood near Bert.
It was a quarter to four.
No sign of the car.
A bus very slowly went by. Jocelin sat downstairs near the window, looking at them. She mouthed at them, “A—quarter—to—five.” Then she briefly held up her left hand with its five fingers spread, lowered it, held it up again, this time with four fingers showing, bent down the forefinger, quickly again mouthed, “A—quarter—to—five,” and then stared ahead of her.
“I think,” said Bert facetiously, “that it will be a quarter to five.”
Four o’clock.
The great hotel, with its look of sedate luxury, brooded massively there with people teeming about it. Alice thought, Well, perhaps something has gone wrong and they won’t come. It’ll be all right.
“Shall we tell Roberta it’ll be a quarter to five?” she asked Bert. He said, “No, we can’t draw attention to ourselves.” Then he changed his mind and ran across the street, in and out of the traffic. Roberta was standing on the very edge of the pavement, absolutely still. Alice watched Bert go up to her, say something, then take her by the arm, apparently urging her to stand in a less noticeable place. Roberta shook off his hand on her arm, and stayed exactly where she was. Bert stood beside her for a minute, then slowly came back, this time waiting for the lights to change.
Alice could see his face clearly. She had not seen him like this, not ever. Would not, perhaps, have recognised him. He had about him a look of isolation, separateness; as if nothing could bridge the distance between him and the people who streamed with him across the road, as if he were cursed or cast out. He had a leaden, sickly colour, like a corpse.
The howl, or cry, in Alice’s chest forced itself out of her mouth in a yelp, and she found she was dashing off away from Bert and into the hotel. She was looking for a telephone. Two booths, back to back; and one was empty. She thought: Oh my God, if the right directory isn’t here! But it was, and she found the Samaritans’ number and dialled it, while the little whimpering yelping cries came out of her, uncontrollably, as though the animal lodged inside her were being beaten.
The friendly, nonjudging Samaritan voice.
Alice said, “Oh, quick, quick, there’s a bomb, it’s going to go off, come quickly, it’s going to be in a car.”
“Where is this car?” enquired the Samaritan, in no way discomposed. When Alice did not at once answer, “You must tell us. We can’t get someone there until you tell us.”
Alice was thinking: But the car isn’t even there yet. How do I know it will get there at all? Then she thought of those people, all those poor people, and she said despondently, “Well, perhaps it will be too late, anyway.”
“But where? The address, do tell us the address?”
Alice could not bring herself to give the address. “It