The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [74]
He stood near her, beaming, positively dancing, with the excess of his pride and pleasure.
“So it was all right.”
“Thirty pounds.”
“A lot, surely?”
“They knew me,” he said with pride.
“How was the cell?”
“Oh, not bad. They fed us—not bad. But I was with Jack—though it’s an alias, you understand!”
“Yes, of course,” she beamed back. “What I don’t know …”
“… won’t hurt you.” He rubbed his hands, and began a light, smart quick-stepping about the kitchen: to the forsythia, which he touched delicately; to the window; and back to her. She put on the kettle, put coffee into a mug, and stood by the stove, so as to be standing, not sitting, while he moved so electrically and finely about.
“Bert doesn’t know, either. Where is he? Bert?”
“But he told you, he’s gone for the weekend with Pat.”
“Oh yes … for the weekend—how long?” He was now standing still, threatened, frowning.
“Sunday night.”
“Because we’re going for a trip,” he said. “He knew we were going, but not so soon. Jack says …”
“A fine Irish name,” said Alice.
He chuckled, enjoying her teasing him. “Well, there are Jacks in Ireland.” He went on, “And how did you know … But you always do, don’t you,” he said, with a flash of acid.
“But where else?” she wailed, humorously, as she always did when he was surprised by what to her was obvious. “You and Bert and Jack are going to Ireland, because Jack is IRA?”
“In touch. In contact. He can arrange a meeting.”
“Well, then!” said Alice, handing him a mug of black coffee, and sat down again.
He stood silent, stilled a moment. Then he said, “Alice, I’ve got to have some money.”
Alice thought: “Well, that’s that”—meaning, the end of this delightful friendliness. She strengthened herself for a fight.
She said, “I gave Bert the money he gave you for your fine.”
“I’ve got to have my fare to Dublin.”
“But you can’t have spent your dole money!”
He hesitated. He had? How? She could never understand what he did with it, where it went—he had not had time for … that other life of his, he had been with Bert, with Jack!
“I said I’d pay Jack’s fare—the fine cleaned him out.”
“Was he fined thirty pounds, too?”
“No, fifteen.”
“I have been spending and spending,” said Alice. “No one chips in—only a bit here and there.” She thought: At least Mary and Reggie will pull their weight, at least one can say that of their kind.… To the exact amount, no more, no less.
“You can’t have spent all that,” said Jasper. He looked as though she were deliberately punishing him. “I saw it. Hundreds.”
“What do you suppose all this is costing.”
Now—as she had expected—his hand closed around her wrist, tight and hurtful. He said, “While you play house and gardens, pouring money away on rubbish, the Cause has to suffer, do without.”
His little blue eyes in the shallow depressions of very white, glistening flesh stared into hers, unblinking, as his grasp tightened. But long ago she had gained immunity from this particular accusation. Without resisting, leaving her wrist limp in his circle of bone, she looked hard back at him and said, “I see no reason why you should pay Comrade Jack’s fare. Or expenses. If he hadn’t met you, what would he have done for the fare?”
“But he’s only going over for our sakes—so we can make contact.”
She forced herself to fight him: “You picked up three weeks’ money this week. You had a hundred and twenty pounds plus. And I paid your fine. You can’t have spent more than at the most twenty pounds on train fares and snacks.”
When she did this, let him know that she made this silent, skilled reckoning of what he spent, what he must be doing, he hated her