The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [58]
He nodded. Reached for a neatly folded newspaper and opened it in front of him, turning the pages. “Have you seen today’s Times?”
“I don’t read the capitalist press.”
“I think perhaps that is a pity,” he commented after a pause. And pushed across the paper, indicating a paragraph.
Asked whether they welcomed these reinforcements to the picket line, Crabit, the strikers’ representative, said he wished the Trotskyists and the rent-a-picket crowd would keep away. They weren’t wanted. The workers could deal with things themselves.
Alice felt she could easily start crying again.
She said, “But this is a capitalist newspaper. They’re just trying to split the democratic forces, they want to disunite us.” She was going to add, “Can’t you see that?,” but could not bring it out.
He took back the paper and laid it where it had been. Now he was not looking at her.
“Comrade Alice,” he said, “there are more efficient ways of doing things, you know.”
He stood up. “I’ve got work to do.” She was dismissed. He came out from behind the table and walked with her to the door and back through the hall to the front door.
“Thank you for coming to see me,” he said.
She stammered, “Would there be a room in this house we could use for a … discussion. You see, some of us are not sure about … some of the others.”
He said, “I’ll ask.” He hadn’t reacted as she had feared he would. Bringing it out had sounded so feeble
He nodded and, at last, gave her a smile. She went off in a daze. She was telling herself, But he’s the real thing, he is.
He had not told her his name.
She walked along the short stretch of main road slowly, because in front of her, in the middle of the pavement, was a girl with a small child in a pushchair. The child looked like a fat plastic parcel with a pale podgy spotty face coming out of the top. He was whining on a high persistent note that set Alice’s teeth on edge. The girl looked tired and desperate. She had lank unwashed-looking pale hair. Alice could see from the set angry shoulders that she wanted to hit the child. Alice was waiting to walk faster when she could turn off into her own road, but the girl turned, still in the middle of the pavement. There she stopped, looking at the houses and, in particular, at number 43. Alice went past her and in at her gate. She heard the girl say, “Do you live here? In this house?”
“Yes, I do,” said Alice, without turning, in a curt voice. She knew what was coming. She walked on up the path. She heard the wheels of the pushchair crunch after her.
“Excuse me,” she heard, and knew from the stubborn little voice that she could not get out of it. She turned sharply, blocking the way to the front door. Now she faced the girl squarely, with a no written all over her. This was not the first time, of course, that she had been in this position. She was feeling: It is unfair that I have to deal with this.
She was a poor thing, this girl. Probably about twenty. Already worn down with everything, and the only energy in her the irritation she was containing because of her grizzling child.
“I heard this house is short-term housing now,” she said, and she kept her eyes on Alice’s face. They were large, grey, rather beautiful eyes, and Alice did not want the pressure of them. She turned to the door, and opened it.
“Where did you hear that?”
The girl did not answer this. She said, “I’m going mad. I’ve got to have a place. I’ve got to find somewhere. I’ve got to.”
Alice went into the hall, ready to shut the door, but found that the girl’s foot stopped her. Alice was surprised, for she had not expected such enterprise. But her own determination was made stronger by her feeling that if the girl had that much spirit, then she wasn’t in such a bad way after all.
The door stood open. The child was now weeping noisily and wholeheartedly inside his transparent shroud, his wide-open blue eyes splashing tears onto the plastic. The girl confronted Alice, who could see she was trembling with anger.
“I’ve got as much right here as you