The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [49]
Reggie sat quietly, leaning back in the chair, summing up Jasper, summing up Bert. Alice knew that he warmed to Bert. Well, they were two of a kind. He did not much like Jasper. Oh, she knew that look when people first met Jasper. She remembered how she, too, when she had first seen Jasper all those years ago, had felt some instinctive warning, or shrinking. And look how mistaken she had been.
At eleven, Mary and Reggie went off; they were afraid to miss the last trains back to Muswell Hill and Fulham, where they respectively lived, so far apart.
Philip said he was tired and went to bed.
Jim went into his room, and they heard soft music from his record player, accompanied by his softer drums.
“What’s happened to Faye and Roberta?” asked Alice, and Bert said, “There’s a women’s commune in Paddington, they go there a lot.”
“Why don’t they move in there?”
“They like it here,” said Bert, with a grimace that said, Ask no questions and …
Bert went up to sleep. Jasper and Alice were alone in the kitchen.
“All right,” said Jasper. “I’ll tell you, give me a chance.”
They went up to their room; Jasper had not said she must move out, or that he would; and Alice slid down into the sleeping bag the way a dog slinks, eyes averted, into a favourite place, hoping no one will notice.
They could hear Bert moving about next door. Jasper said, “Bert and Pat are going away for the weekend.” His voice was painful to hear.
“Only for the weekend,” Alice comforted him for the loss of Bert. As for her, her saddened heart told her how much she would miss Pat, even for the weekend. “Where are they going?”
“They didn’t say, and I didn’t ask.”
They lay companionably by their wall, their feet not far from each other. They had not yet found curtains for this room, and the lights from the traffic still chased across the ceiling, and the whole house shook softly with the heavy lorries going north, giving Alice a comforting sense of familiarity, as if they had been living here for months, not days; she seemed to have lived all her life in houses that shook to heavy traffic.
“Would you like to come down to the picket tomorrow?”
“But I really have to be here,” mourned Alice.
“Well, Saturday night we could go and paint up a few slogans.”
She steadied her voice so that it would not betray her surge of delight, of gratitude. “That’d be nice, Jasper.”
“Yes. Get some spray paint.” He turned to the wall. She was not going to hear anything about next door tonight. But tomorrow, tomorrow night … she might. And on Saturday …
She woke when Jasper did, at seven, but lay still, watching him from nearly closed eyes. His wiry body was full of the energy of expectation. Everything from his gingery hair (which she thought of privately as cinnamon-coloured) to his small deft feet, which she adored because they were so white and slender, was alive. He seemed to dance his way into his clothes, and his pale face was innocent and sweet when he stood momentarily at the window, to see what the weather was like for the day’s picketing. There was an exalted, dreamy look to him as he went past the apparently sleeping Alice to the door. He did not look at her.
She relaxed, lay on her back, and listened. He knocked next door, and she heard Bert’s reluctant response, and Pat’s prompt “Right, we’re awake.” Then the knock on Roberta and Faye’s door. Philip? Oh, not Philip, she needed him here! But there was no other knock, and then she began worrying: I hope Philip won’t feel left out, despised? A knock on the door of the room immediately below this one—the big room that was Jim’s, though it was really a living room, and should perhaps be used as such … No, that was not fair. A startled shout from Jim; but she could not decide whether he was pleased to be aroused, or not.
The sounds of the house coming to life. She could go down if she wanted, could sit with the cheerful group and send them on their way with smiles, but her mouth was dry and her eyes pricked. For some reason—a dream,