The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [76]
Faye and Roberta? She had heard them come in very late. Pat said they went to late-night movies, and then on to parties. Their other life—women. The close, sweet, bitchy—as far as Alice was concerned—cloying, claustrophobic world of women. Not for her! But they were welcome to it. Let a thousand flowers bloom, and all that.… Ten in the morning, and Mary and Reggie were still in bed. Mary had come down, made mugs of coffee, taken them up, and they lay, no doubt, side by side, in that amazing double bed, which had a proper headboard and little built-in side tables. Even the thought of that bed, the life that the bed implied, made Alice feel threatened. Stuck together for a lifetime in that bed, drinking cups of coffee, looking at people who were not like themselves in that cautious keep-off way.
Where was she going to get money. Where. She had to have it. Had to have money. Had to.
Sunday.
Good grief, it was only Sunday, six days after she and Jasper had left her mother’s—had left home. She had achieved all that, in such a short time. Full of energy, she went up to the attic and to Philip, in his white overalls, a brave manikin moving about under the rafters of the attic. There was a horrible smell of rot.
“Two of these beams ought to be replaced,” he said. “Dry rot. We’ll have the whole house down.”
Money. She had to have money.
Too early to ask Mary and Reggie. At some point a negotiation would take place. Already she could see their faces, the faces of the fucking bloody middle class, when the subject of money was on the agenda. God, how she hated them, the middle classes, penny-pinching, doling out their little bits, in their minds always the thought of saving and accumulating, saving—thought Alice, her mouth full of bile, as she stood gazing up at a beam a foot across that looked grey and flaky, with whitey-yellow fibres in it. The dry rot itself, which would lay its creeping arms over all the wood, if it were allowed, then creep down the walls, into the floor below, spread like a disease …
She thought: I’ve been living like this for years. How many? Is it twelve, now? No, fourteen—no, more … The work I’ve done for other people, getting things together, making things happen, sheltering the homeless, getting them fed—and as often as not paying for it. Suppose I had put aside a little, even a little, of that money, for myself, what would I have now? Even if it were only a few hundred pounds, five hundred, six, I wouldn’t be standing here sick with worry.…
“How much will it cost to replace those two beams?”
“The wood, about fifty—second-hand. Though I could probably find what I need on a skip if we could borrow the car again.
“As for the labour …” he said with a defiant little laugh.
“Don’t worry,” said Alice. She was thinking: And he’ll need help. He can’t possibly shoulder great beams into place, stand about propping up beams; he’ll need scaffolding or something. That means money.
She would go down and ask Mary and Reggie.
On the table a note, “We’ve gone to the Greenpeace demo. Love. Reggie and Mary.” His writing. “Love”! She sat at the table and counted what she had left. She had thirty-five pounds.
She went up again and worked on with Philip, clearing rubbish out of the attics. Where did it all come from, always rubbish and rubbish, sacks of it again, old clothes, rags most of them, and an old carpet, quite fit for use, more old clothes. Junk. Junk? At the bottom of an old black tin trunk, under cracking and broken shoes, were layers of fine soft material, dresses wrapped in black tissue paper. Evening dresses. She threw them down through the trap door and jumped after them to look. Well, look at that! Three really beautiful evening dresses, each individually wrapped in the black tissue paper. The early thirties. One was of black and orange and yellow lace, with gold thread in it. It had a plain smooth bodice to the hips, then flared out in a lot of little points, like petals. The metallic smell of the gold lace made her want to sneeze.
Alice stood