The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [19]
She went into the deserted hall and heard the lavatory flushing. Held her breath, standing there, thinking, The pipes … But they seemed to be all right. Jasper came out and said to her, “I’m going to sleep.”
“Where?”
This was a delicate moment. In her mother’s house, Jasper had had his own place, appropriating her brother’s room, in which he curled himself up, a hedgehog, guarding his right to be alone at nights. She, daughter of the house, had slept in the room she had had all her life. She did not mind, she said; she knew what she felt; but what she did mind, badly, was the thoughts of others, not about her, but about Jasper. But they were alone in the hall, could face this decision together. He was gazing at her with the quelling look she knew meant he felt threatened.
Pat came out to them, saying, “The room next to ours is empty. It probably needs a bit of a clean; the two who were in it weren’t …”
In the great dark hall, where the hurricane lamp made its uncertain pool, the three stood, and the women looked at Jasper, Alice knowing why, but Pat not yet. Alice knew that Pat, quick and acute, would understand it all in a flash … and suddenly Pat remarked, “Well, at any rate, it’s the best empty room there is.…” She had taken it all in, in a moment, Alice knew, but it seemed Jasper did not, for he said heartily, “Right, Alice, let’s go.”
Pat said to them, as they silently went up, “Alice, don’t think we don’t think you aren’t a bloody marvel!” And laughed. Alice, not giving a damn, went into the big empty room behind Jasper. His backpack had been undone; his sleeping bag lay neatly against the right wall at the end, as far away as it could get. Alice said, “I’ll fetch my things,” waited for him to repudiate her, but he stood, back turned, saying nothing. She ran down to the hall, hoping Pat would not be there, but she was, standing quietly by herself, as though she had expected Alice to come down, wanting to do what she then did, which was to advance, take Alice in her arms, and lay her smooth cherry cheek against Alice’s. Comfort. Comradely reassurance. And a compassion, too, Alice felt, wishing she could say out loud, “But I don’t mind, you don’t understand.”
“Thanks,” she said to Pat, brief and awkward; and Pat gave a grunt of laughter, and waved as she went back into the sitting room, where—of course—the comrades were discussing Alice, Jasper, and this explosion of order into their lives.
Up in their room, it was dark. But some light came in from the sky and from the traffic. Alice spread her sleeping bag on its thin foam-rubber base, and was soon lying flat on her back, on her pallet, on the wall opposite to Jasper, who lay curled as he always did, in a fierce aloneness that made her ache for him. He was not asleep, but soon he slept, as she could see from a loosening of his body, as if he had been washed up on a shore and lay abandoned.
Too tired to sleep, she lay listening to how people were going to bed. Good night, good night, on the landing, and the corridor running from it. Roberta and Faye in one room, of course. Jim in another. And, in the room next to this one, Pat and Bert. Oh no, she did not want that, she did not want what she knew would happen. And it did, the grunting and whispering and shifting and moaning—right on the other side of the wall, close against her ear. It was too much. Love, that was; which everyone said she was a fool to do without; they were sorry for her. Theresa and Anthony, at it all night and every night, so said her mother, after years of marriage, grunting and panting, moaning and wanting. Alice lay as stiff as a rod, staring at the shadowed ceiling, where lights from the cars in the road fled and chased, her ears assaulted, her mind appalled. She made herself think: Tomorrow, tomorrow we’ll get the electricity done.… Money. She needed money. Where? She’d get it. She wasn’t going to cheat