The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [73]
Down they went into the Underground. They had not looked to see whether the police had come into the main road in time to see. Again, Jasper’s eyes demanded they chance it; they walked smartly up out of the Underground on the other side, and saw two policemen—different ones—coming towards them. Cool and indifferent, Alice and Jasper walked past. Then down again into the Underground. They went two stops, to where Alice had seen a long low bridge along a main road over railway lines. By then it was ten, and raining a little. Here the police station was a good way off. On the other hand, cars were passing regularly. On the bridge was already written, in white letters that had run and streaked, “Women Are Angry.”
They stood arm in arm, backs to the traffic, as though looking over the railway lines, and Alice, holding the spray low down, wrote, “We Are All …,” which is as far as she could go without having to move. They moved on a few steps, again stood together, and wrote, “Angry. Angry About …” Another move. “Ireland. About Sexism. About …” They moved. Then they heard—their ears alert for the slightest changes in the grind of the traffic—a car slowing down just behind them. They both shot looks over their shoulders: not a police car. But two men sat side by side in the front seat, staring.
“… Trident”—Alice finished. And they walked on, slowly, very close, knowing the car crawled behind. The intoxication of it, the elation: pleasure. There was nothing like it!
Now, remembering, Alice craved and longed. Oh, she did so hope that Jasper would not be late, would not be tired, would want to go out. He had promised.…
… They had walked, perhaps 150 yards. Luck! A one-way street! The car, of course, did not follow. At the end of that street, they went back to the bus stop and to Kilburn, where they had worked before.
“No to Cruise! No to Trident!”
No one had so much as noticed them there.
Let down, their elation leaking away, they had decided to give up, and taken a taxi back to Alice’s mother’s house, where Alice made them both coffee and scrambled eggs.
Now it was six-thirty.
Mary came in, sat briefly with Alice, said she and Reggie were going to the pictures. She had had a word about this girl, Monica; there was really nothing, nothing at all. She had done her best, Alice must understand.
“Never mind,” said Alice, “I’ve thought of something.”
Mary saw the scribbled-over envelope, smiled, and said, “Reggie and I are going to the Greenpeace demo tomorrow.”
“Good for you,” said Alice.
“But it’s shocking, it’s terrible, the despoliation of our countryside.…”
“I know,” said Alice. “I’ve been on some of their demos.”
“You have!” Mary was relieved, Alice could see, that they shared this; but Reggie “hallo”ed from the hall, and, with a smile, Mary went.
Where were Roberta and Faye? Probably at their women’s-commune place. Where Philip? He might have been thrown out by his girlfriend, but he was going round there still for meals and baths, so Bert had said. Jim? Now, that was a serious question, where was he? The smiling face, the jokey mellow voice—but what was going on, really?
Apart from having his home, his place taken over like this.
Worry, worry, Alice sat worrying.
In came Jasper, smiling, jaunty, stepping like a dancer, and at once he said, “Oh, lovely,” at the forsythia. There: people said this and that about him, but no one knew how sensitive he was, how kind. Now he bent and kissed her cheek; it was a thin papery kiss, but she understood that; understood when—rarely—she simply had to