The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [46]
“We can’t let them,” said Alice.
“I agree. Well, it’s what Bob says that counts, and he is furious, he is really. He is really going to fight. He says it’s a crime these houses should come down.” She hesitated, and took the plunge into what she clearly felt was a descent into even worse indiscretion with, “I was in Militant Tendency for a bit, but I don’t like their methods. So I left.”
Alice sat silent with amazement. Mary, in Militant! Well, of course she wouldn’t like Militant’s methods. And she wouldn’t like the methods of Alice, Jasper, Pat, Roberta, or Faye. Nor, for that matter, Jim’s (so Alice suspected). But that Mary had gone anywhere near Militant, that was the impossibility! She asked cautiously, “And Reggie?”
“He was trying out Militant for the same reason I was. I was shocked by what I saw going on at work, jobs for pals, as I said.…” Again the brief, social smile, like a frozen apology. “We decided at once Militant was not for us. We joined Greenpeace.”
“Well, of course,” said Alice, hopefully, “but if you are Trotskyists …” With a bit of luck Mary would say yes, she counted herself with the Trots, and then of course this house would be impossible.… But Alice heard, “We’re not anything at the moment, only Greenpeace. We thought of joining the Labour Party, but we need something more …”
“Dynamic,” said Alice, choosing a flatteringly forceful but not ideological word. “I think perhaps the CCU would suit you. Anyway, come and see the house.” She got up, so did Mary—it was like the termination of an interview. Alice had decided that she really did like Mary. She would do. But what of Reggie? Thoughts of Reggie accompanied the two women as they went rapidly around the upper floors. Alice flung open doors on empty rooms, and heard how Mary sighed and longed, and was not at all surprised to hear her say, as they came down the stairs again, “Actually, Reggie is in the pub down the road.”
Alice laughed, a robust girl’s laugh, and Mary chimed in, after a pause, with a breathless little tinkle.
“The thing is,” said Alice, “we have to discuss it. All of us. A group decision, you know.”
“If we come back in half an hour?”
“Longer than that,” said Alice, and added, because of Mary’s beseeching eyes, “I’ll do my best.”
She went into the kitchen, where they sat in a fug of comfort (created by her), and sat down, and she put the situation to them.
Because of all that food and chat and good nature and togetherness, there was an explosion of laughter. Literally, they fell about. But there was a theatrical quality to it that Alice did not much like.
Silence at last, and Pat said, “Alice, are you saying that if we don’t let them come here, we won’t get this house?”
Alice did not reply at once. At last she said, “She wouldn’t do anything spiteful on purpose, I am sure of that. But if she was coming here to live, she’d be careful about what she said. It’s human nature,” said Alice, feebly, using a phrase that of course was simply beyond the pale.
“What could she say that would make such a difference,” Pat persisted.
“If she said, They are a bunch of reds, Bob Hood would soon find a reason to have us kicked out. She doesn’t care, because she’s one herself.”
“That girl is a revolutionary?” asked Bert, laughing.
“She’s a Trotskyist. Of a sort. Or she was one.”
“Then how can they come and live here, Alice,” said Bert, firm but kind.
“I don’t think she’s anything much, at the moment. Ideologically. And anyway,” Alice persisted, courageously, knowing what this argument of hers had cost her in the past, earning her all kinds of accusations, “in a sense, aren’t we? After all, we don’t say that Trotsky never existed! We give him full credit for his achievements.