The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [79]
“Bloody filthy accumulating middle-class creeps”—and papers, jars, boots, rags went hurtling through the trap around Mary and Reggie.
“What is wrong, can we help?”
She saw the two agitated, concerned faces, responsible citizens, turned upwards, side by side, illuminated by her jerking, wavering torch, and suddenly she laughed. She stood above them and staggered about, laughing.
“Oh, Alice,” cried Mary, “Oh, Alice,” squealed Reggie, and they sounded admonishing, petulant, reproachful, and Alice fell, rolled to the trap-door edge, caught its edges with her strong hands, swung herself down, to land on her feet by Mary, by Reggie, laughing and pointing at them, “If you could see yourselves, if you could just see …”
And she staggered and hooted among the sordid piles, and kicked shoes and clothes around. Broken glass scattered.
Mary and Reggie looked at each other, at her, and went hastily into their bedroom. The sound of that door closing, polite and restrained despite everything, made Alice laugh again. She collapsed on the floor, among all the rubbish, laughed herself out to silence, and looked up into the trap, to see the torchlight shining there. It showed the slanting beams of the roof, it showed the two rotten beams, which even down here and in this light looked cheesy.
She climbed up again and, refusing to look at the dangerous beams, began soberly to close the trunks, tidy up a little. Was she really going to clear everything out of here? For what? For whom?
She put out the light, leaving it exactly where it had been, for Philip. She left the attic, by the ladder this time, and then kicked all the junk into a great heap along the banisters. She was making a frightful noise, but what of it. Do them good, she was thinking. One day Mary and Reggie will say, Yes, we did try living in a commune, we gave it a fair trial, but we are afraid …
She was shaking with laughter again. She went downstairs, yelling, sobbing with mirth. If mirth it was: she heard these sad wails and thought, I’m laughing out of the wrong side of my mouth.…
At three in the morning, she went forlornly to bed, promising herself to get at least one room painted tomorrow. This one, perhaps. She knew Jasper would be pleased, even if he did seem to jeer. With her mind on Jasper, what he was doing, with whom, she slept fitfully, rose many hours before anyone else was likely to, cleared the room of the little that was in it, fetched up Philip’s trestles and the paints and rollers, rubbed over ceilings and walls with a duster tied around the head of a broom, swept off the floor the resulting films of dust. It was still only seven o’clock.
Sitting by herself in the kitchen with coffee, looking at the golden forsythia, she was aglow with health, energy, accomplishment. If Jasper had been here, she could not have done this, she would have had to adapt her pace to his.… Sometimes, very seldom, the thought came into her head: If I were alone, if I did not have Jasper to worry about … Rarely, and this was one of the times, she knew she was tied to him by what seemed like a tight cord of anxiety that vibrated to his needs, never hers; she knew how she was afflicted by him, how he weighed her down. Supposing she left him? (For he would never leave her!) If she found a place of her own, with other comrades, of course—why, she had moved so often, it was nothing, she could do it easily. Without Jasper. She sat quietly, her freckled girl’s hand just encompassing the big brown mug, as though it had alighted there, her eyes held by the blessed, blissful forsythia that filled the whole kitchen with energy, with pleasure. Without Jasper. She began to make uneasy, restless little movements, and her breathing became faster, then slowed to a sigh. How could she live without Jasper? It was true, what people said: they were like brother and sister. But supposing … The thought of another man made her give an incredulous little shake of the head. Not that plenty hadn’t come near, to ask, Why Jasper, why not me? Had said,