The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [25]
Pat stood resting, looking at Alice. Who was looking at the cat. Jim leaned on a shovel and said, “I had a little cat. It got run over.”
Pat waited for more, but there was no more to come. She shrugged and said, “It’s a cat’s life.” And went on working.
But Jim’s eyes had tears in them, and Alice said, “I’m sorry, Jim.”
“I wouldn’t have another little cat,” he said. “Not after that one,” and went furiously back to work.
Soon both gardens, back and front, were cleared. Pallid grass was ready to take a new lease on life. A rose, long submerged, had thin whitish shoots.
“It was a nice garden,” said Jim, pleased.
“I smell,” said Alice bitterly. “What are we going to do? And I haven’t even thought about hot water yet. If Philip comes, tell him I won’t be a minute.”
She flew inside; she stood buckets of cold water in the bathroom; she did what she could, inadequately. Hot water, she was thinking, hot water, that’s next. Money.
Philip did not come.
Bert and Jasper descended together in responsible conversation about some political perspective. They told Alice and Pat they were going to get some breakfast, noticed the cleared garden and the ranks of sacks, said “Nice work,” and departed to Fred’s Caff.
Pat would have shared a laugh with Alice, but Alice was not going to meet her eyes. She would never betray Jasper, not to anyone!
But Pat persisted, “I left one squat because I did all the work. Not just men, either—six of us, three women, and I did it all.”
At this, Alice faced Pat seriously, pausing in her labour of cleaning a window, and said, “It’s always like that. There’s always one or two who do the work.” She waited for Pat to comment, disagree, take it up on principle.
“You don’t mind,” stated Pat.
She was looking neat and tight and right again, having washed and brushed up. Alice was thinking: Yes, all pretty and nice, her eyes done up, her lips red, and then he can just … She felt bitter.
She said, “That’s how it always is.”
“What a revolutionary,” said Pat, in her way that was friendly but with a sting in it that referred, so it seemed, to some permanent and deeply internal judgement of hers, a way of looking at life that was ingrained.
“But I am a revolutionary,” said Alice, seriously.
Pat said nothing, but drew in smoke to the very pit of her poor lungs, and held her mouth in a red pout to let out a stream of grey that floated in tendrils to the grimy ceiling. Her eyes followed the spiralling smoke. She said at last, “Yes, I think you are. But the others aren’t so sure.”
“You mean Roberta and Faye? Oh well, they are just—desperadoes!” said Alice.
“What?” and Pat laughed.
“You know.” Foursquare in front of Pat, Alice challenged her to take a stand on what she, Alice, knew Pat to be, not a desperado, but a serious person, like herself, Alice. Pat did not flinch away from this confrontation. It was a moment, they knew, of importance.
A silence, and more smoke bathed lungs and was expelled, slowly, sybaritically, both women watching the luxuriant curls.
“All the same,” said Pat, “they are prepared for anything. They take it on—you know. The worst, if they have to.”
“Well?” said Alice, calm and confident. “So would I. I’m ready, too.”
“Yes, I believe you are,” said Pat.
Jim came in. “Philip’s here.” Out flew Alice, and saw him in the light of day for the first time. A slight, rather stooping boy—only he was a man—with his hollowed, pale cheeks, his wide blue eyes full of light, his long elegant white hands, his sheaves of glistening pale hair. He had his tools with him.
She said, “The electricity?,” and walked before him to the ravaged kitchen, knowing that here was something else she must confront and solve. He followed, shut the door after him, and said, “Alice, if I finish the work here, can I move in?”
She now knew she had expected this. Yes, every time that arrangement, he and his girlfriend,