The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [91]
“Did you think I was not coming back?” she scolded. “Really, if you are going to expect the worst, then that is what you’ll get.”
A weak, conscious smile.
“Take this to this address. And take your baby with you.”
“But it’s so late. God knows it’s hard enough to get him off to sleep in that place, and he’s asleep now.”
“Go tomorrow. It’s my mother. She likes babies. She likes looking after people.”
The doubt on Monica’s face did not in any way diminish the total confidence Alice felt. Look what she had achieved with Jim! No, she was on a crest of ability and luck, and she could make no mistakes. She felt that her mother would be good to poor Monica. She said briskly, “It’s all right, Monica. Well, it’s worth trying, isn’t it?”
Peering down dubiously at the envelope, Monica departed to the bus stop in the main road, and Alice went in to join the others around the table. She had prepared a large stew, or thick soup, her speciality, brought to perfection in years of communal living. How many people had joked that Alice could feed crowds out of it! Like the Bible’s loaves and two fishes.
How many had come into this squat or that asking, “Any of your soup left, Alice?” and then sat breaking bread into it, handing back their plates for more. No dietary deficiencies in people who lived on her soup! And in times when there had been very little money, it had kept them going, Jasper and her, for months.
Alice slid back into her place, saying, to their querying, ready-for-any-emergency looks, “It’s all right, it was nothing.”
Roberta and Faye, Mary and Reggie, Philip and Jim, Pat and Alice sat around all evening, compelled into being a family by the magic of that soup, and the red wine that Reggie had contributed, and the good bread, healthy wholemeal, and the frivolous white that Faye insisted on.
This was another evening of pleasure, and Jim was full of tales about Alice’s father and the others working with him, twelve or more, and how lucky Alice was to have such a father—while Alice smiled and kept a lock on her tongue.
Next morning Alice was alone in the house when there was a tumult of thudding knocks on the door, and a voice screamed, “Come out, you, come out of there, come out.”
Alice went out to Monica, who was transformed by fury, ready to kill, as Alice could see. The child in the pushchair, poor ugly little thing, grizzled steadily.
“Why did you do that? Why did you send me there? What have I done to you?” And Monica began kicking out at Alice’s legs, and beating about with her arms.
“What is the matter? What happened? Didn’t she take you in?”
“There’s no one there,” screeched Monica. “Why did you send me there?”
“Well, she’s only out shopping, isn’t she? She’ll be back.”
Monica stopped screeching, her limbs stopped flailing, and she stared, appalled, at Alice. “It’s an empty house,” she said. “No one there. There’s a ‘For Sale’ notice up.”
“You went to the wrong house,” said Alice, vaguely. She was, indeed, struck by something, a thought, or a memory: cases on a kitchen table, filled with crockery wrapped in newspaper. She stared at Monica, who stared at her.
“There’s a mistake,” said Alice, who was as pale as Monica, and as breathless by now. “Something’s wrong.”
“It’s you who’s wrong,” said Monica, with a sudden ugly laugh. She still stared at Alice, as if unable to believe what she saw. “Why did you do this to me? What for? You get some kind of a kick out of it, I suppose. You’re evil,” she pronounced. “You are all evil and mad in this house.” And, bursting into wails, she went running off, pushing and jolting the pushchair so that the child wailed, too. The two went noisily to the bus stop, leaving Alice on the doorstep, stunned, and staring without seeing at the letter she had written to her mother, thrust into her hand by Monica.
Dear Mum,
This is Monica. She is living with her baby in one of those ghastly hotels, you know. Well, if you don’t you fucking well ought to know. Why don’t you take her in? It’s the