The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [70]
In the anteroom at Electricity she smiled and waved to Mrs. Whitfield: Here I am, a good girl! But Mrs. Whitfield looked away. Four people went in before Alice. What a waste of time.
She sat in front of the official, in the large light office, and knew that Mrs. Whitfield would not cut off the electricity. At least, she did not want to. It was up to Alice. Who began talking about her father. He was rich, he owned a printing firm. Of course he could easily pay the bills if there was need. But he was, Alice admitted, in a bad phase at the moment.
“He’s had a lot of trouble,” breathed Alice, on her face the look of one who compassionately contemplates human misery, absolving it from blame. And at that moment, it was what she felt. “The breakup with my mother … then all kinds of problems … his new wife, she’s nice, she’s a good friend of mine, but she’s not a coper, you know what I mean? He’s got a lot on his back.” She burbled on like this, feeling dismally she was not helping herself, while Mrs. Whitfield sat, eyes lowered, pricking out a pattern with the tip of her ballpoint on the top left-hand corner of Alice’s form.
“Your father,” she remarked at last, “was quite definite about not being prepared to guarantee payment.”
She did not want to look at Alice. Alice was trying to make her raise her eyes, take her in. What could Cedric Mellings have said?
She said, “There are ten of us in the house now. That’s a lot of money coming in every week.”
“Yes, but is some of it going to come this way?” Mrs. Whitfield was too dry to relent, yet. “Aren’t any of you in work?”
“One is.” She added, on an inspiration, “But she is a Council employee. She works in Belstrode Road, and she doesn’t want to give her address as a squat. She couldn’t find a place; she was desperate.”
Mrs. Whitfield sighed, said, “Yes, I know how bad things can be.” But now she raised her eyes and did look differently at Alice, the housemate of a Council official who worked at the main office for this area. She said, “Well, what are we going to do?”
That was it, she had won! Alice could hardly prevent herself from openly exulting.
She said humbly, “I have a brother. He works for Ace Airways. I’ll ask him.” Mrs. Whitfield nodded, accepting the brother. “But he’s in Bahrein at the moment.”
Mrs. Whitfield sighed. Not from irritation, but because she knew it was a lie, and felt sorrowful because of Alice. She had lowered her eyes again. A second tricky little pattern was appearing beside the first on Alice’s form.
She enquired mildly, “And your brother would be prepared to guarantee the electricity bills for ten people?”
Alice said, “But he would know he wouldn’t have to pay them, wouldn’t he?” She hurried on, in case Mrs. Whitfield felt obliged actually to answer the question: “But I am sure he’ll say yes.”
“When is he coming back from Bahrein?”
“In about a month. But I’ll go up and see him about it, talk to him and explain. That’s where I went wrong with my father. I should have gone over and explained, instead of just assuming …” Her voice trembled. It: sounded pathetic, but hot red waves of murder beat inside her. I’ll blow that house of theirs up, she was thinking, I’ll kill them.
“Yes, I do think that would be a good idea,” said Mrs. Whitfield.
A long pause. Not because she was undecided: the decision had been made. She wanted Alice to say something more that would make the situation better, or seem better. But Alice only sat and waited.
“Well,” said Mrs. Whitfield at last, sitting upright inside the corset of her strong, short-sleeved brown dress, with her fat arms and fat brown forearms, fat hands with the little rings twinkling on them, all disposed regularly about her, her feet—no doubt, though Alice could not see them—placed side by side. “Well, I’ll give you five weeks. That should be plenty of time to see your brother.” She was not looking