The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [44]
Unable to bear the beating of her heart, her churning stomach, she went down, slowly, suddenly out of energy, and collapsed in the sitting room as Pat came in, with Philip.
“Well?” demanded Pat; and Philip’s face was stunned with need, with longing, his eyes a prayer.
“It’s dicey,” said Alice, and began to weep, to her own fury.
“Oh, God,” she wept. “Oh, Christ. Oh, shit. Oh no.”
Pat, close on the arm of the chair she was huddled in, put her arm around the dejected shoulders and said, “You’re tired. Surprise! You are tired.”
“It’ll be all right,” sobbed Alice. “I know it will be, it will, I feel it.”
From the silence, she knew that above her head Philip and Pat shared glances that said she, Alice, had to be humoured, patted, caressed, given coffee from the flask, then brandy from a reserve bottle. But she knew that though Pat’s interest was real, it was not like Philip’s and like her own. Pat’s heart would never pound, or her stomach churn.… For this reason, she did not accept Pat’s encircling sisterliness, remained herself, alone, sad and isolated, drinking her coffee, her brandy. Philip was her charge, her responsibility: her family, so she felt, because he was as she was. She was pleased, though, to have Pat as an ally.
And at this point, Jasper and Bert arrived, with gleanings from London, that great lucky dip, and Alice flew into the hall, to welcome a load of stuff that had to be sorted out; and which switched her emotions back to another circuit. “Oh, the wicked waste of it all,” she raged, seeing plastic bags full of curtains, which were there because someone had tired of them; a refrigerator, stools, tables, chairs—all of them serviceable, if some needed a few minutes’ work to put right.
Bert and Jasper went out again; they were elated and enjoying it. A pair, a real pair, a team; united by this enterprise of theirs, furnishing this house. And they had the car for the whole day, and must make the most of it.
Philip and Pat let the roof go while they helped Alice allot furniture, flew out to buy curtain fittings for which Alice took the money from her hoard.
They ran around, and up and down, dragging furniture, hanging curtains, spreading on the hall floor a large carpet that needed only some cleaning to make it perfect.
Bert and Jasper came in the late afternoon, having scavenged around Mayfair and St. John’s Wood, with another load, and said that was it, no more for today—and the householders sat in the kitchen drinking tea and eating bacon and eggs properly cooked on the stove, with the purr of the refrigerator for company.
And in the middle of this feast, which was such a delicate balancing of interests, the result of careful and calculated good will, there was a knock. It was, however, tentative, not a peremptory summons. They turned as one; from the kitchen they could see the front door, and it was opening. A young woman stood there, and as the others stared—Whose friend is she?—Alice’s heart began to pound. She already knew it all, from the way this visitor was looking around the hall, which was carpeted, warm, properly if dimly lit, then up the solid stairs, and then in at them all. She was all hungry determination and purpose.
“The Council,” reassured Alice. “It is Mary Williams. The colleague of that little fascist who was here today. But she’s all right.…” This last she knew was really the beginning of an argument that would be taking place later, perhaps even that night. Perhaps not an argument, not bitterness, but only a friendly discussion—oh, prayed Alice, let it be all right, and she slipped away from the others, saying, “It’s all right, I’ll just …”
She shut the door on the kitchen, and on a laugh that said she was bossy, but not impossibly so. Oh, please, please, please, she was inwardly entreating—Fate, perhaps—as she went smiling towards Mary. Who was smiling in entreaty at Alice.
As Alice had absolutely expected, Mary