The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [27]
He said, “We had a rare old row when I left.”
She thought, She threw him out.
“Never mind,” she said. “I’ll manage. I’ll get cleaned up and I’m going to the Electricity Board. So be careful, in case they switch it on.”
“You think you can get them to do that?”
“I’ve managed it before, haven’t I?” At the thought of this and other victories, her depression lifted and she was popping with energy again.
In the hall, the two desperadoes were just about to go out into the world of the streets, gardens, neighbours, cats, cars, and sparrows.
They looked just like everybody, thought Alice, seeing them turn round, the pretty fair Faye, delicate inside the almost tangible protective ambience of swarthy Roberta, as strong as a tank—as strong as I am, thought Alice, standing there, looking, she knew, like a clown who has just been showered with flour.
“Well,” said Faye, humorous, and Roberta commented, “Well,” and the two women laughed, and went out the door as though all this hard work had nothing to do with them.
“No good expecting anything,” said Alice to herself, stoically, after so much experience of those who did and those who wouldn’t. Again she went up to the bathroom and stood naked in desolation, while the bath filled with cold water to the level of the grime mark that showed where she had done all this earlier that day. And again she stood in cold water endeavouring to rid herself of the dirt, her mother’s daughter, thinking viciously of the four years she had lived inside her mother’s house, where hot water came obediently at a touch. They don’t know what it costs, she was muttering, furiously. It all comes from the workers, from us.…
She did her best; she put on a nice neat skirt, which she had purloined from her mother with a joke that it suited her better: she needed a skirt sometimes for respectability, some types of people were reassured by it. She put on another of the little neat-collared shirts, in blue cotton this time, that made her feel herself. She did her best with her hair, which felt greasy and gritty, although she had stood with it held down in a bucket of the unyielding cold water. Then she went into the sitting room. Pat, relaxed in a big armchair, was asleep. Alice went over quietly and stared down at this unknown woman, who was her ally. She was thinking: She won’t leave yet. She doesn’t want to. She doesn’t think much of Bert; she’s going to stay because of all that love.
Pat lay sprawling all over the chair as if she had dropped down off the ceiling. Her head was back, her face lifted and exposed. Eyes, lips trembled on the verge of opening. Alice expected her to wake, and smile. But Pat stayed asleep, vulnerable under Alice’s meticulous inspection of her. Alice continued to stand there, looking. She felt that she possessed Pat, in this look—her life, what she was and would be. Alice could never have allowed herself to sleep like that, open to anyone to come in and look at. It was careless, foolish, like walking about the streets with money held loose in a hand. Alice came closer and bent right down over Pat, to stare at that innocent face with its lightly shuttered eyes, behind which an inhabitant had gone off into that unknown country. Alice felt curious. What was she dreaming about, looking like a baby that has just napped off after a bottle? Alice began to feel protective, wanting Pat to wake up in case the others should come in and see her, defenceless. Then Alice thought, Well, it will probably be Bert, won’t it? Sleeping Beauty! Now it was scorn that she felt, because of Pat’s need. If she’s got to have it, she’s got to have it, said Alice judiciously to herself, making necessary allowances. And stepped lightly out of the sitting room, through the hall, and into the outside world. It was about three o’clock on a fresh and lively spring afternoon. She took the bus to Electricity, with confidence.
Electricity was a large modern