The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [41]
“That was nice,” said Alice softly, smiling in the dark.
And so they talked, quietly, Jasper telling everything, for he was good at this, building up word pictures of an event, an occasion. He ought to be a journalist, thought Alice, he is so clever.
She could have talked all night, because of course she had slept a long time. But he fell asleep quite soon; and she was content to lie there, in the quiet, arranging her plans for the next day, which, she knew, would not be easy.
When she woke, Jasper was not there. She ran to the top of the house, and looked into the four rooms where she had left all the windows open. The two rooms where the horrible pails had been were already only rooms in which people would soon be living. But she had not come for that. On two of the ceilings were sodden brown patches, and, having located on the landing the trap door to the attic, she stood on a window sill to reach. She could, just, and felt the trap door lift under her fingers. No problem there!
Down she ran to the kitchen, where there were voices. What she saw made her eyes fill with tears. They were sitting round the table: Bert and Pat, these two close together; Jasper; Jim smiling and happy; and Philip, already working on the cooker, bending over behind it, a cup of coffee on its top. Bert had gone to his friend Philip’s girlfriend, Felicity, the Thermos had been filled, he had bought croissants and butter and jam. It was a real meal. She slid into her place at the head of the table, opposite Bert, and said, “If this room had some curtains …” They all laughed.
“Before talking about curtains, you had better get things fixed with the Council,” said Jasper, rather hectoring, but only because he was jealous of Pat, who said, “Oh, I’d back Alice. I’d back her in anything.”
Coffee and croissants appeared before her, and Alice said, “Has anybody noticed the ceilings upstairs?”
“I have,” said Pat.
Philip said, “I can’t do everything at once.” He sounded aggrieved, and Pat said, “Don’t worry. It’s not difficult to fix slates. I did it once in another squat.”
“I’ll do it with you when I’ve finished this,” said Philip.
Pat said to Bert, “If someone could get the slipped-down tiles out of that guttering …?”
“No head for heights,” said Bert comfortably.
“I can do that,” said Alice. Then she said to Jasper, not Bert, “If you could borrow the car from next door, you could go looking in the skips for some furniture? I saw four skips in my father’s street with all sorts of good stuff.” She added fiercely, “Waste. All this waste.” She knew her look was about to overcome her, as she said, “This house, all these rooms … people throwing things out everywhere, when there’s nothing wrong with them.” She sat fighting with herself, knowing that Pat was examining her, diagnostic. Pat said to Bert, “There you are, Bert, job for the day. You and Jasper.” As he sat laughing from some old joke about his laziness, she said, irritated, “Oh, for shit’s sake, Alice has done all the work.”
“And found all the money,” said Philip, from the cooker.
“Put like that,” said Bert.
“Put like that,” agreed Jasper, pleased, already restlessly moving about because of wanting to be off with Bert, looting and finding, street-combing.…
Those two went off as Roberta and Faye came in, saw the remains of the croissants, and sat down to consume them.
Alice dragged Philip’s heavy ladder to the front of the house, and went up it. Luckily the house was built squat, heavy on the earth, not tall and frightening. By the time she reached the top, Pat was already on the roof, sitting near the chimney with one arm round it: she had come up through the attic and a skylight. Around the chimney’s base the roof looked eroded, pocked. A great many tiles had slipped and were now propped along the gutter. All that water pouring in, and going where? They had not properly examined the attics yet.
Alice was reaching out for the fallen tiles, and laying them on the roof in front of her. Pat seemed in no hurry