The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [90]
Then she took him out to supper to celebrate, Philip and Pat joining in, and the evening became one of those when the participants have to pause, to say to themselves: Yes, this is me, it really is me.… Happiness sat with them at the table in the Seashell Fish-and-Chips; they could not stop smiling, or Jim from laughing and sighing. When he said, “I can’t believe this is me, man,” they looked at one another, unable to bear that they could not express what they felt for him, but they could laugh, and—it was Pat who sat next to him—stroke or pat him, or embrace him. The other people in the restaurant, who might at other times have had stringent thoughts about race, or about white women publicly embracing black men (or at least not with such total lack of self-consciousness), were, it could be seen from faces that also showed tendencies to laugh without reason, subdued to the demand of the occasion, which was for a total and uncritical abandon to happiness.
The four went back to number 43, in a close, tender group, Jim as king, as victor, and, unwilling that the evening should be lost, they sat on around the kitchen table, sentinelled by the yellow forsythia, and could not bear to part.
Alice was already thinking: Yes, tonight you’d think we’ll all be friends for life, we could never harm each other, but it could all change, just like that! Oh, she knew, she had seen it all. Her heart could have ached, could have dragged her down, but she did not let it, was keeping that lump of a heart on a short, cruel chain like a dangerous dog.
A postcard showing the Wicklow Mountains arrived from Jasper, with the message “Wish you were here!” She knew exactly the freakish mood he had been in, and her face assumed that smile the thought of Jasper so often evoked: modest, wistful, and admiring, as if his vagaries of genius would forever be beyond her. She kept the card to herself because she knew the others would not understand. Coming downstairs early, long before the others, she had seen it lying on the floor inside the door.
Jim went off for his first day at work in a mood of tender incredulity, still unable to stop smiling.
Pat, instead of joining Alice in their scrubbing and painting, went off to “a friend,” came back saying that Bert had telephoned a message. All was well, and they would be back soon.
What are they doing for money? was Alice’s thought, kept to herself. She also thought: When Bert comes back, Pat will not be here. She could read this from Pat’s face. But she kept that to herself, too.
That evening a knock—furtive and hasty, telling Alice who it was—brought her out to find Monica on the path near the gate-not outside the door, for the girl had been afraid that Faye might open it.
But, seeing Alice, she approached swiftly, her hungry eyes on Alice’s face.
Faye was in the kitchen with Roberta, so Alice shut the door quietly behind her and went with Monica out to the road, and along it to where they were hidden by the healthy bushes of Joan Robbins’s garden.
“Did you hear of anything?” Monica asked, already sullen and hopeless, apparently seeing from Alice’s face that there was no news. She looked puffy and pale. Her hair straggled greasily. From her came such a whiff of defeat that Alice had to force herself to stand up to it.
“There’s nothing to hope for from the Council,” said Alice, and, seeing a sneer or snarl of Well, of course not!, persisted, “but I’ve thought of something else.” She asked Monica to stay where she was, sneaked back into the house as though she were guilty of something, came out again with the letter she had written to her mother. Monica had