The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [86]
“I like you, Alice,” he stated. “You are a really sincere person, you know what I mean?” He did not add “unlike the others.”
She could have wept, knowing that what he said was true, feeling confirmed and supported. She stayed near him till he slept, went out into the dark hall, switched on the light with pride and with the knowledge of what that little act meant, what it had cost, would cost: she pressed a tiny switch on the wall, and electrons obediently flowed through cables, because the woman in Electricity had so ordered it.
Money. Where from?
Standing there, surveying the hall, so pleasant now (though she knew that really she ought to get carpet foam and do over the carpet, which after all had been folded up in the dust of the skip), she saw that Philip had mended the little cupboard under the stairs that the policeman had kicked in.
At this moment, a knock, and with a premonition she went to open the door, a look of authority already on her face.
It was the policewoman she had seen in the police station. At the gate stood her partner, a young man Alice had not seen before.
“Good evening,” said Alice, “can I help you?”
She stood with the door open behind her, so that the order of the hall could be properly seen; she saw the policewoman taking it in. The young policeman was, as Alice was not surprised to see, trying to locate with his eyes the place in the garden where these crazies had buried …
“Does a James Mackenzie live here?”
“Yes, he does,” said Alice at once.
“Can I speak to him?”
“You could, but he’s not here.”
“When will he be back?”
“He might not be back tonight. He’s gone to visit friends in Highgate.”
“He wasn’t here this weekend, then?”
“He was here last night.”
“He was here all last night?”
Alice said, “Yes. Why?”
“He was here all through the evening?”
“Yes, he had supper here, and then we spent the evening playing cards.”
There had been the slightest tremor in Alice’s voice; she had been going to say, “We all spent the evening,” but remembered in time that “all” might not be prepared to stick their necks out for Jim, if “all” could be reached and warned in time.
“You and he were here?”
“And a friend of his. A white boy. William something-or-other.”
Alice knew that the little hitch in the smoothness had reached the policewoman, even if only subliminally. But it was all right, she thought; she could tell that from the indecision of the woman’s manner.
Alice yawned, put her hand over her mouth, said, “Sorry, we were up late …,” and yawned again, offering the right sort of smile to the policewoman. Who smiled briefly in return, as she again looked carefully into the reassuring hall.
“Thanks,” she said, and went off to the gate, where she and her companion resumed their sharp-eyed stroll around the guilty streets.
Alice glanced quietly into Jim’s room. He was asleep.
She then went into the kitchen and wrote a letter to her mother, which she would have ready for Monica Winters, who would certainly be turning up here in the next day or two.
While she was doing this, within a few minutes of one another came Jasper, then Pat and Bert, then Roberta and Faye. The six sat round the table in the kitchen, with an assortment of take-away, which they had brought in separately and would now consume together: pizzas, and fish and chips, and pies. Alice made coffee, set the mugs around, and sat at the head of the table. Her happiness because of this scene was so strong she closed her eyes so that it would not beam out in great mellow streams and betray her to the sternness of the others.
Bert wanted to know about Jack. Jasper reported. The glances exchanged by Faye and Roberta told Alice that trouble would ensue.
It did. Faye demanded, in her pert, pretty way that did nothing to hide her seriousness, why all these plans had been made without a meeting to get everyone’s approval? Pat said she agreed: Jasper had no right to take it on himself.…
This, Alice knew, was partly directed at Bert,