The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [40]
“A wonder, she is,” sang Faye. “Alice the Wonder, the wondrous Alice …” She was tipsy and exhilarated, and everyone enjoyed looking at her.
Without Alice’s asking, Bert and Jasper lifted the cooker upright to stand in its place against the wall.
“I’ll get it properly fixed tomorrow,” said Philip, contentedly.
They went together up the stairs, reluctant to separate for the night, so much of a group did they feel.
Lying along the wall, in the dark, her feet a yard from Jasper’s feet, Alice remarked dreamily, “What have you and Bert decided, then?”
A quick movement from Jasper, which she noted, thinking, I didn’t know I was going to say that.
He was lying stiffly, found out; that was how he had experienced what she had said.
“Oh, I don’t mind, Jasper,” she said, impatient but conciliatory. “But you did discuss it, didn’t you?”
After a pause, “Yes, we did.”
“Well, it does affect us all.”
A pause. Grudgingly, “We thought it mightn’t be a bad thing, having other people here. But they have to be CCU. Jim will have to join.”
“You mean, Philip and Jim will be a cover.”
He said nothing. Silence means consent. She said, “Yes, and of course there’ll be more people coming in, and …”
He said fussily, “You aren’t to let just anyone come, we can’t have just anybody.”
“I didn’t say, just anybody. But the others needn’t ever know we are IRA.”
“Precisely,” said Jasper.
And then she remarked, in her dreamy voice and to her own surprise, “With the comrades in the other house, I wonder …” She stopped. Interested in what she had said. Respectful of it.
But he had shot up on his elbow and was staring at her in the half-dark, where headlamps from the road moved light across the ceiling, the walls, the floor, so they were both irregularly illuminated. He was silent. He did not ask, “How do you know about the other house?,” or say, “How dare you spy on me?”—things that had been said often enough in the past, until he had learned that she could do this: know, without being told.
She was thinking fast, listening to what she had said. So, Bert and Jasper had been next door, had they? There are comrades there? Yes, that’s it!
She said, “Did you just go there, on the off-chance, or—what happened?”
He replied stiffly, after a pause, “We were contacted. They sent a message.”
“To you? To you and Bert?”
From his hesitation she knew that she had been included, but she did not intend to make an issue of it.
“A message came,” he said, and lay down.
“And you and Bert and—the comrades there decided we should have more people in, as a cover.”
Silence. But she knew he was not asleep. She let a few minutes go by, while she thought. Then she changed the subject, saying, “Quite soon people are going to have to start making a contribution. So far I’ve paid for everything.”
“Where did you get that money?” he asked at once, reminded about it, as she had intended.
She had it ready for him; she leaned over in the dark and handed him some notes.
“How much?” he demanded.
“Fifty.”
“How much did you get?”
“Ask no questions,” she said, though she would have told him had he asked; but he only said, “That’s right, squeeze the last blood out of them.”
She said, “Tomorrow I’ve got to tackle the Council. Will you get my Social Security?”
“Right.”
They were both waiting for the sounds of lovemaking from next door, but Bert and Pat must have dropped off. Jasper and Alice had been lying tense; now they relaxed and lay companionably silent, and Alice was thinking: We are together.… This is like a marriage: talking together before going to sleep. I hope he starts telling me what happened today.
She did not want to ask, but she knew that he knew she craved to hear it all. And soon he was kind; he began to talk. She loved him like this. He told her everything, right from the beginning: how the seven of them had been on the train, how they had bought sandwiches and coffee at the station, and had all crowded on the two seats facing each other and shared breakfast. Then how they went by taxi to the printworks. The