The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [26]
He explained, “I’ve been wanting to be independent. On my own.” Knowing she was thinking of the others, their plans, he said, “I’m CCU. I don’t see why there should be any problem?”
But not IRA, thought Alice, but knew she would deal with all that later. “If it’s up to me, yes,” she said. Would that be enough? He had taken her as the boss here—as who would not?
He now turned his attention to the ripped wires that were tugged right out of the plaster; the gas stove, which had been pulled out to lie on its side on the floor.
Bitterness was on his face; the same incredulous rage she felt. They stood together, feeling they could destroy with their bare hands those men who had done this.
Men like the dustmen, thought Alice steadily, making herself think it. Nice men. They did it. But when we have abolished fascist imperialism, there won’t be people like that.
At this thought appeared a mental picture of her mother, who, when Alice said things of this kind, sighed, laughed, looked exhausted. Only last week she had said, in her new mode, bitter and brief and flat, “Against stupidity the gods themselves.”
“What’s that?” Alice had asked.
“Against—stupidity—the gods—themselves—contend—in vain,” her mother had said, isolating the words, presenting them to Alice, not as if she had expected anything from Alice, but reminding herself of the uselessness of it all.
The bitterness Alice felt against the Council, the workmen, the Establishment now encompassed her mother, and she was assaulted by a black rage that made her giddy, and clenched her hands. Coming to herself, she saw Philip looking at her, curious. Because of this state of hers which he was judging as more violent than the vandalising workmen deserved?
She said, “I could kill them.” She heard her voice, deadly. She was surprised by it. She felt her hands hurting, and unclenched them.
“I could, too,” said Philip, but differently. He had set down grimy bags of tools, and was standing quietly there, waiting. He was looking at her with his by now familiar and heart-touching obstinacy. The murderess in Alice took herself off, and Alice said, giving him the promise he had to have before he did any more work, “It’s only fair, if you do the work.”
He nodded, believing her, and then transferred that obstinacy of his to the attention he gave the mangled wall. “It’s not so bad,” he said at last. “Looks as if they smashed the place up in a bit of a fit of temper: they didn’t do much of a job of it.”
“What?” she said, incredulous; for it seemed to her the kitchen, or at least two walls of it, was sprouting and dangling cables and wires; and the creamy plaster lay like dough in mounds along the bottom of these walls, which were discoloured and scurfy.
“Seen worse.” Then, “I’ve got to have the floorboards up; can’t work with that down there.”
The fallen plaster had gone hard, and Alice had to smash it free. The kitchen was full of fine white dust. She worked at floor level, while Philip stood above her on the big table he had dragged to the wall. Then the plaster and rubbish were in sacks, and she swept up with the handbrush and pan, which were all she had. She was irritable and weepy, for she knew that every inch of the ceiling, the walls should be washed down, should be painted. And then the house, the whole house, was like that, and the roof—what would they find when at last they got that horrible upper floor free of its smelly pails? Who was going to replace slates, how to pay for it all? She was brushing and brushing, and each sweep scuffed up more filth into the air, and she was thinking, I’ve got to get to the Electricity Board; how can I, looking like this?
She stood up, a wraith in the white-dust-filled air, and said, “Your friend—is she at home, would she give me a bath?”
Philip did not reply; he was examining a cable with a strong torch.
She said, furious, “There were public baths till last year, nice ones, not far, they were in Auction Street. Friends of mine used them—they are in a squat in Belsize Road. Then the