The Good Terrorist - Doris May Lessing [95]
“I’m off, Alice,” she said, quickly, hardly allowing her eyes to meet Alice’s.
“You’re through with Bert?”
Tears filled Pat’s eyes. She turned away. “Some time I’ve got to break it. I’ve got to.”
“Well, it’s not for any outsider to say,” remarked Alice. Her heart was sick with loss, surprising her. It seemed she had become fond of Pat.
“I’ve got to, Alice. Please understand. It’s not Bert. I mean, I love him. But it’s the politics.”
“You mean, you don’t agree with our line about the IRA?”
“No, no, not that. I don’t have any confidence in Bert.”
At least, she did not say, as well, “in Jasper.”
She said, “Here is my address. I’m not fading out. I mean, I don’t want to make any dramatic breaks, that kind of thing. I’ll be working in my own way—the same sort of thing, but what I see as rather more … serious.”
“Serious,” said Alice.
“Yes,” she insisted. “Serious, Alice. I don’t see this tripping over to Ireland, on the word of somebody called Jack.” She sounded disgusted and fed up, and the word “Jack” was blown away like fluff. “It’s all so damned amateur. I don’t go along with it.”
“I thought you’d be off.”
Pat swiftly turned away. It was because she was crying.
“We’ve been together a long time.…” Her voice went thick and inarticulate.
“Never mind,” said Alice dolefully.
“I do mind. And I mind about leaving you, Alice.”
The two women embraced, weeping.
“I’ll be back,” said Pat. “You were talking about a CCU Congress. I’ll be back for that. And for all I know, I won’t be able to stand breaking with Bert. I did try once before.”
She went out, running, to leave her emotion behind.
The two men came back on Sunday night. Alice knew at once they had failed. Jasper had a limp look, and Bert was morose even before he read the letter Pat had left for him.
She made supper for Jasper, who at once went up to his sleeping bag on the top floor. Bert said he was tired, but she followed him, and found him standing alone in the room he had shared with Pat. She went in and, though he was not thinking of Ireland, said, “I want to ask some questions. Jasper’s sometimes funny when he has had a disappointment.”
“So am I,” said Bert, but softened and, standing where he was, hands dangling down, said, “We didn’t get anywhere.”
“Yes, but why?”
She was thinking that rejection brought out the best in Bert. Without his easy affability, the constant gleam of his white teeth amid red lips and dark beard, he seemed sober and responsible.
He shook his head, said, “How do I know? We were simply told no.”
She was not going to leave until he told her everything, and at last he did go on, while she listened carefully, to make a picture for herself that she could trust.
“Jack,” in Dublin, had been to bars and meeting places, had made enquiries, had met this man and then that, reporting back to Bert and Jasper that things were going on as they should. Then Bert and Jasper—but not Jack, a fact that had to give her food for thought—met a certain comrade in a certain private house in a suburb. There they had been questioned for a long time, in a way that—Alice could see, watching Bert’s face as he recited the tale-had not just impressed but sobered the two. Frightened them, judged Alice, pleased this had been so, for she did feel that Jasper was sometimes a bit too casual about things.
Towards the end of this encounter, or interview, a second man had come in, and sat without saying a word, listening. Bert said with a short laugh and a shake of the head, “He was a bit of a character, that one. Wouldn’t like to get across him.”
At last, the man who had done all the talking said that while he, speaking for the IRA, was grateful for the support offered, they—Bert and Jasper—must realise that the IRA did not operate like an ordinary