The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [6]
“Right,” said Pat, examining her curiously. “Well, no point in asking mine. Haven’t seen her for years.”
“Well, then,” said Bert, suddenly getting up from the chair and standing in front of Pat, a challenge, his black eyes full on her. “So you’re not leaving after all?”
“We’ve got to discuss it, Bert,” she said, hurriedly, and walked over to him, and looked up into his face. He put his arm around her and they went out.
Alice surveyed the room. Skilfully. A family sitting room it had been. Comfortable. The paint was not too bad; the chairs and sofa probably stood where they had then. There was a fireplace, not even plastered over.
“Are you going to ask your mother? I mean, to be a guarantor?” Jasper sounded forlorn. “And who’s going to pay for getting it all straight?”
“I’ll ask the others if they’ll contribute.”
“And if they won’t?” he said, knowingly, sharing expertise with her, a friendly moment.
“Some won’t, we know that,” she said, “but we’ll manage. We always do, don’t we?”
But this was too direct an appeal to intimacy. At once he backed away into criticism. “And who’s going to do all the work?”
As he had been saying now for fourteen, fifteen years.
In the house in Manchester she had shared with four other students she had been housemother, doing the cooking and shopping, housekeeping. She loved it. She got an adequate degree, but did not even try for a job. She was still in the house when the next batch of students arrived, and she stayed to look after them. That was how Jasper found her, coming in one evening for supper. He was not a student, had graduated poorly, had failed to find a job after halfhearted efforts. He stayed on in the house, not formally living there but as Alice’s “guest.” After all, it was only because of Alice’s efforts that the place had become a student house: it had been a squat. And Jasper did not leave. She knew he had become dependent on her. But then and since he had complained she was nothing but a servant, wasting her life on other people. As they moved from squat to squat, commune to commune, this pattern remained: she looked after him, and he complained that other people exploited her.
At her mother’s he had said the same. “She’s just exploiting you,” he said. “Cooking and shopping. Why do you do it?”
“We’ve got four days,” said Alice now. “I’m going to get moving.” She did not look at him, but walked steadily past him and into the hall. She carried her backpack into the room where Jim was drumming and said, “Keep an eye on this for me, comrade.” He nodded. She said, “If I get permission from the Council for us to live here, will you share expenses?”
His hands fell from the drums. His friendly round face fell into lines of woe and he said, “They say I can’t stay here.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, shit, man, I’m not into politics. I just want to live.” Now he said, incredulously, “I was here first. Before any of you. This was my place. I found it. I said to everyone, Yes, come in, come in, man, this is Liberty Hall.”
“That’s not fair,” said Alice, at once.
“I’ve been here eight months, eight months; Old Bill never knew, no one knew. I’ve been keeping my nose clean and minding my own business, and suddenly …” He was weeping. Bright tears bounced off his black cheeks and splashed on the big drum. He wiped them off with the side of his palm.
“Well,” said Alice, “you just stay put and I’ll get it on the agenda.”
She was thinking as she left the house: All those buckets of shit up there; I suppose Jim filled them, nearly all. She thought: If I don’t pee I’ll … She could not have brought herself to go up and use one of those buckets. She walked to the Underground, took a train to a station with proper lavatories, used them, washed her face and brushed her hair, then went on to her mother’s stop, where she stood in line for a telephone booth.
Three hours after she had left home screaming abuse at her mother, she dialled her mother’s number.
Her mother’s voice. Flat. At the sound of it, affection filled Alice, and she thought, I’ll ask if she wants me to do some shopping for her on