The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [22]
Jasper used to come in quickly, taking his opportunity when Dorothy was not around, and fill himself with whatever she was cooking that day—“her” soup, for instance; cakes, good healthy bread. Or, if she was not cooking, might be at the market, he sneaked to the refrigerator and took anything there he fancied. Alice kept it well supplied with ham and salami and pickles for him. He cut himself great sandwiches and took them up to his room and stayed there, not coming down for hours. Dorothy, at the beginning, had used to ask, uneasy, “What does Jasper do up there all day?” “He studies,” Alice always said, proud and forbidding. She knew that he did nothing at all, sometimes, all day. He might read the Socialist Worker and the Morning Star. Otherwise he listened to pop, through headphones, and sometimes danced to it quietly by himself, all over the room. He was very graceful, Alice knew; he hated to be seen, and this was a pity. He should have danced: done ballet, perhaps?
Then he would come down again, silently, to get more food. He would never willingly come into the kitchen if Dorothy was there. He never sat down to eat with them. When Alice had remonstrated, said her mother did not like it, he had said she did not like him (which was true, as it turned out, though Dorothy certainly had not said so at the start). For his part, he thought her a vulgar tart. This epithet, so far off any sort of mark, only stunned Alice’s responses, so she said feebly, “But, Jasper, how can you say that?” At which he made loud rude noises, with his lips.
Of course, when Dorothy had guests, Jasper was not there. He really might just as well not have been in the house, except for that steady pilfering of food from the kitchen. Anyone would think that Dorothy grudged him the food! Alice had cried out often enough to him, and then, when he was merely abusive, to herself.
Now, sitting in this friendly, companionable café, where people coming in were likely to greet her; eating more buns, more honey (to fill in time now, not from hunger), Alice was thinking: Well, but she does hate Jasper, always did; people do. And she did grudge him his food, probably—if she hated him. Alice thought, at last, in something like a little panic: What must it have been like for her, never having her own kitchen, not even being able to come into it, for fear of running into Jasper? And then: I was simply doing everything, all the cooking. And she loves cooking.…
At half past nine, Alice left the café, calling good-bye to Sarah, who had served there for years. Once a refugee from Austria, she was now an elderly woman with photographs of her grown-up grandchildren stuck up on the wall behind the counter. Alice walked up, not too fast, to her mother’s house. She stood outside for some time, then thought that any watching neighbour would find this peculiar. She let herself in with the key she had not handed her mother when she had left yesterday forever. Not a sound in the house. Alice stood in the hall, breathing in the house, home; the big, easy-fitting, accommodating house, which smelled of friendship. She went into the kitchen and her heart turned over. On the floor were tea chests full of dishes and plates, and, stacked all over the table, teacups and saucers and glasses, already tucked into newspaper. Oh, of course, now that she and Jasper had left, her mother would be giving the unnecessary china and stuff to jumble. Yes, that must be it. A small child, threatened, eyes wide and frantic, Alice stood looking at the tea chests, then ran upstairs to her own room. It was as she had left it yesterday. She felt better. She went up a floor to the room Jasper had used. On the floor was a rug,