The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [181]
Jasper got out of the car, opening the door against the flow of the traffic, and stood inside the half-opened door, bending down to look into the car and at Faye.
“For God’s sake,” prayed Roberta.
Then Jasper straightened, shut the door, and came away down the side of the car, meaning to go round it, onto the pavement, and to open the door for Faye. At least, that was how it seemed to the three who watched. For there was no reason at all, if the door was not jammed in some way, for Faye’s not opening it, and just as quickly as she could. Time was running out. There were five minutes to go. But time had run out, for then came the explosion, and it seemed that the windows of all the world were crashing in, while the car flew apart.
“Faye, Faye,” Roberta was sobbing, as she ran across the street, not looking to see whether there were cars or not; and “Jasper,” whimpered Alice, running after her.
All down the side of the hotel, it was a scene of disaster; bodies on the pavement, some lying still, some struggling to sit or rise; bits of metal, of shattered glass, handbags, masonry, blood.
When Alice got to the scene, Jasper was not there. Then she saw him running away down the other side of the street, hands to his head. Blood was all over him.
Idiot, she was thinking. Don’t run away, much better wait here, there are a lot of people hurt; you’d just be one of the hurt people.
Roberta was standing among the bodies, staring at the wreck of the car, which seemed to have sunk into itself; a low tangle of metal. Roberta, moaning, turned away from the car, and, bending, began to peer into the faces of the wounded and—-as Alice had just realised—the dead on the pavement.
Suddenly, Roberta cried out, and was sitting on the pavement, cradling a bloody mess that, Alice reasoned, could only be Faye. Yes, she could see an arm, white, pretty, whole, with a tangle of coloured bangles on the wrist.
Alice stepped up to Roberta and said, “Stop it. There’s nothing you can do, you know. We have to get out.”
Roberta, her eyes not seeing Alice, or anything, stared at Alice, then down at the red bundle. She was sobbing, in a dry, breathless, frantic way.
“Roberta,” said Alice again, reasonably, and even managed a companionable, persuasive smile. “Please get up.”
And at this moment, into this scene of disorder, of destruction, which had remained more or less the same for the last five minutes since the explosion, erupted Society, erupted Law and Order, in the shape of a wailing of ambulance sirens, and the police, who suddenly were everywhere, hundreds of them, it seemed. The ambulances, parked nose to tail up the street, began their sober, careful job of collecting casualties and corpses from the pavement. But the police were in a state of panic, out of control, rushing about, shouting orders, hustling the onlookers, who of course had arrived by now, and who were generally adding to the confusion.
To the ambulance man who bent over Roberta, Alice said, “She’s not hurt, I don’t think. But she”—for some reason Alice could not bring herself to use Faye’s name of this mess of blood and flesh—“she was right in the way of the explosion.”
“And where were you?” asked the ambulance man, gently assisting poor Roberta to her feet.
“I was over there, on that pavement,” said Alice truthfully. “No, I’m not hurt.”
By now two of them were crouching beside Faye, and Roberta and Alice stood upright, Alice holding Roberta.
“She’s dead,” Alice said reasonably to Roberta.
“Yes, I know,” said Roberta in a normal voice.
At this point a policeman charged up and ordered, “What are you doing here, are you hurt? Then move along.”
Alice put her arm round Roberta and walked her away. She did not want the policeman to come to his senses and start questioning Roberta, who, on casual inspection, did not look abnormal, though she was soaked with blood from the waist down.
She had not thought what she would do with Roberta, blood-soaked and in a state, away from the crowds and the police; but they were stopped by another