The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [62]
He said, trying to sound humorous, “Well, Alice, but perhaps I would have to?”
“No, of course not!”
He was—she saw—ready to laugh with her, but she could not.
“What can I do?” she was demanding. “I don’t know what to do!”
“I don’t think I believe that, Alice,” he said, really laughing now, but nicely.
In a normal voice, she said, “Philip, we have to have a guarantor. You are the only one, don’t you see?”
He held his own, this Petrouchka, this elf, with, “Alice, no. For one thing, that address on the letterhead is the place I was in before Felicity—it’s been pulled down, demolished. It isn’t even there.”
Now they stared at each other with identical appalled expressions, as if the floorboards were giving way; for both had been possessed, at the same moment, by a vision of impermanence: houses, buildings, streets, whole areas of streets, blown away, going, gone, an illusion. They sighed together, and, on an impulse, embraced gently, comforting each other.
“The thing is,” said Alice, “she doesn’t want to disconnect. She wants to help; she just needs an excuse, that’s all.… Wait—wait a minute, I think I’ve got it.…”
“I thought you would,” he said, and she nodded and said excitedly, “Yes. It’s my brother. I’ll tell Electricity he will guarantee, but that he’s away on a business trip in … Bahrein, it doesn’t matter where. She’ll hold it over, I know she will.…”
And, making the thumbs-up sign, she ran out, laughing and exultant.
Too late to ring Mrs. Whitfield now, but she would tomorrow, and it would be all right.
No need to tell Mary and Reggie anything about it. Of course, if Mary was any good, she would be prepared to guarantee the account; she was the only one among them in work. But she wouldn’t, Alice knew that.
She needed sleep. She was shaky and trembling inside, where her anger lived.
It was getting dark when Alice woke. She heard Bert’s laugh, a deep “ho ho ho” from the kitchen. That’s not his own laugh, Alice thought. I wonder what that would be like? “Tee hee hee,” more likely. No, he made that laugh up for himself. Reliable and comfortable. Manly. Voices and laughs, we make them up.… Roberta’s made-up voice, comfortable. And that was Pat’s quick light voice and her laugh. Her own laugh? Perhaps. So they were both back, and that meant that Jasper was, too. Alice was out of her sleeping bag and tugging on a sweater, a smile on her face that went with her feelings for Jasper: admiration and wistful love.
But Jasper was not in the kitchen with the other two, who were glowing, happy, fulfilled, and eating fish and chips.
“It’s all right, Alice,” said Pat, pulling out a chair for her. “They arrested him, but it’s not serious. He’ll be in court tomorrow morning at Enfield. Back here by lunchtime.”
“Unless he’s bound over?” asked Bert.
“He was bound over for two years in Leeds, but that ended last month.”
“Last month?” said Pat. Her eyes met Bert’s, found no reflection there of what she was thinking—probably against her will, Alice believed—and, so as not to meet Alice’s, lowered themselves to the business of eating one golden crisp fatty chip after another. This was not the first time Alice had caught suggestions that Jasper liked being bound over—needed the edge it put on life. She said apologetically, “Well, he has had to be careful so long, watching every tiny little thing he does, I suppose.…” She was examining Bert, who, she knew, could tell her what she needed to know about the arrest. Jasper was arrested, but Bert not; that in itself …
Pat pushed over some chips, and Alice primly ate one or two, thinking about cholesterol.
“How many did they arrest?”
“Seven. Three we didn’t know. But the others were John, Clarissa, and Charlie. And Jasper.”
“None of the trade-union comrades?”
“No.”
A silence.
Then Bert: “They have been fining people twenty-five pounds.”
Alice said automatically, “Then probably Jasper will get fifty pounds.”
“He thought twenty-five. I gave him twenty pounds so he’d have enough.