The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [85]
His arm still lay there, so gently that she could not find it a pressure. He said, gently, “But, Alice, surely you could …” Do better was what he wanted to say.
She turned to face him, with a bright, steady smile.
“It’s all right,” she said, like a schoolgirl. “I love him, you see.”
Incredulity made his smile ironic, patient.
“Well, Comrade Alice …” He allowed it to trail away, in humour. “Come in any time,” he said.
“Why don’t you come in and see our palace?”
“Thanks, I will.”
And so she went home, her mind a dazzle of questions.
She had been going up to admire her newly painted room, but something took her to Jim’s door. She knocked, heard nothing, went in. Jim lay on the top of his sleeping bag, facing her, his eyes open.
“Are you all right, Jim?”
No reply. He looked so dreadful.… She went to him, knelt, put her hand on his. It was dry, very hot.
“Jim! What’s wrong?”
“Ah, hell, what’s the point?” came out of him in a choking sob, and he put his arm over his face.
Under the loose sleeve was a red wound that went from elbow to wrist. Wide. Nasty. It seemed filled with red jelly.
“Jim, what happened?”
“I got in a fight.” The words came out of a sobbing smother of frustration and rage. “No, leave it, it’ll heal, it’ll be all right, it is clean.”
He seemed to be fighting with himself as he lay there, banging his fist to his head, clenching up his legs, then shooting them out straight.
“But the police didn’t get you.”
“No. But they will know I was there by now. There’s someone who’ll make sure of that! What’s the use? There’s no way you can get out of trouble, you can’t get out, what’s the use of trying.”
“Did you try for a job?”
“Yes, what’s the use?” And he turned over and lay on his back, arms loose by his side.
She had known it. There was a certain struggling fury that went with being jobless, and persevering, and being turned down, that was different from simply being jobless.
“What were you trying for?”
“A printing firm in Southwark. But I don’t know all this new technology—I learned the old printing. I did a year’s course, I thought it would get me somewhere.”
“Printing! You didn’t say. But there must be hundreds of little firms all over the country who still use it for special jobs.”
“Then I must have applied to half of them in the last four years.”
“My father has a printing firm. A small one. They do all kinds of things. Pamphlets and brochures and catalogues.”
“He won’t be using the old way for long.”
“I’ll write to him. Why not? He’s supposed to be a fucking socialist.”
“What’s the use, I’m black.”
“Wait, I’m thinking.”
He was still tense and hot and miserable, but, she thought, better. Like a nun, or his sister, she sat holding his hand, smiling gently down at him.
“Yes,” she said at last. “I’ll write to my father. I’ll do that. Make him practise what he preaches. He’s had blacks before, anyway.”
She could see he was, in spite of himself, beginning to hope again.
“I’ll write it now,” she said.
In the backpack in which she seemed to keep half her life she burrowed and came up with a biro and writing pad.
Dear Dad,
This is Jim
“What’s your name, Jim?”
“Mackenzie.”
“I have a cousin who married a Mackenzie.”
“My grandfather was Mackenzie. Trinidad.”
“Then perhaps we are related.”
A small gust of laughter blew through him, and left him smiling. He sighed, relaxed, turned towards her, put his hand under his cheek. He would be asleep soon.
She wrote:
This is Jim Mackenzie. He can’t get a job. He is a printer. Why don’t you give him a job? You are supposed to be a fucking progressive? He has been out of work for four years. In the name of the Revolution.
Alice.
She neatly folded the letter, put it in a nice blue envelope (choosing the blue in preference to cream, for some reason), and addressed it.
Jim’s lids were drowsing.
“Why don’t you take this round tomorrow. Your cut won’t show.”
She pulled back the sleeve gently. He did