The Good Terrorist

Alice slept through the two events of that evening.

The first was that the vicious policeman from the station came in with a policewoman, on some business to do with a stolen car. Jasper and Bert were there, and things didn't go well, would certainly have ended in violence and arrests, only luckily Mary and Reggie appeared, and dealt with the police in their own language, on their own terms. But Mary and Reggie were afterwards cold, were disapproving, saying that there was really no need for trouble with the police if people knew how to handle them. "And, of course, if they behave themselves," was implicit.

They went upstairs, but Reggie came down again almost at once to ask whether in fact Jasper and Bert knew anything about the stolen car?

"We are revolutionaries," said Bert, furious. "Not crooks."

Then, late, after twelve, Felicity came again to say the hospital had telephoned. Philip was dead. She was very upset, so Alice was told next day. She had had to be asked in, fed Alice's soup and Roberta's brandy.

None of this Alice knew till next day. Mid-morning. They were all in the kitchen, the sun coming in, the cat on the window sill.

She said, first, "He went under fast, didn't he?"-mentally seeing a small broken thing, like a bird or an insect, trying to clutch hold of a straw, a twig, and failing. The others did not understand, but Faye, with a cold smile, said, "Lucky Philip." Mary said that Philip had struck her as unstable.

Alice remarked that if the police had got this house in their minds as the place to come and have a bit of fun, then it wouldn't be worth living here. The others of course stared at her, curious: the indifference with which she said it, that was the thing.

Then Alice got up and went upstairs, put Philip's ladder in position, climbed into the attic, and stood under the great rotten beams, keeping the light of the torch on them. She was thinking - or trying to think, to make her mind, or her comprehension, accept it - that Philip had tackled everything else in the house, all the threats and dangers. But this threat, the main one, he had not dealt with, could not. Because - simply - of his size. Because there was nothing to him but a handful of frail bones and a skim of flesh. Alice could see in her mind's eye the sort of man who could have pulled down these two rotten beams, then put in others. A large bale of a man (she could see him), shouldering the beams into place. Effortlessly. Humbled but uncomprehending because of the arbitrariness, the frivolity, of life, she went downstairs again, and remarked that if those beams were not dealt with, the house would start falling in, from the top. She sat in the chair she had been in before going upstairs to the beams, at the side of the table. At head and foot, like mother and father, sat Mary and Reggie. They radiated disapproval. They knew they did, but not that they were full of panic as well.

"The beams are obviously going to have to be put right," said Mary.

Jasper and Bert, Faye and Roberta, who had been observing Alice put things right for weeks, all looked at her, waiting for her to say, perhaps, "It is all right, I have fixed everything." Jocelin and Caroline were uninvolved.

Alice remarked, "Oh, so you have found yourself a flat, then?"

Startled, even affronted, Mary said, "Yes, but how did you...?" And Reggie, "But we haven't told anybody yet; it's not final."

"And so," said Alice, "this house is back on the list, is it?"

"Not for demolition," said Mary. "It was agreed a mistake was made. Both this house and number forty-five will be converted. But, at any rate, nothing will happen immediately. The point is, there will be plenty of time for you to find somewhere else."

"Find another squat," said Reggie kindly.

Again the others looked at Alice, who had put so much into this house, and again seemed surprised that she was unconcerned.

She was examining Mary, examining Reggie, quite frankly, for she needed to know what happened. She could see the two, sitting up side by side in their marriage bed, discussing them all, with identical looks of scandalised criticism. Jim. Faye's suicide attempt. Now Philip. Alice saw that they must have felt trapped among lunatics. Well, never mind, these two good houses were saved, and a lot of people had found shelter for a time.

"Have you got a job?" asked Alice, sure that Reggie had.

Again, annoyance; because, of course, the middle classes did not like to be so transparent.

"As it happens, yes," said Reggie. "It's a new firm, in Guildford. Of course, it'll be a risk, the failure rate with new firms at the moment being what it is. But it's an interesting venture; it may succeed."

The fact that he didn't say what it was meant, Alice thought, that the "venture" was something they, the others, would criticise.

Chemicals; Reggie was a chemist. Well, she couldn't be bothered to be interested.

Reggie got up. Mary got up. Smiles all around. But relief was what they felt. Body language. Written all over them. They had felt, Mary and Reggie, that they should sit for a while with the others, because of Philip's death, and now that was enough, they could go back upstairs and get on with their own, sensible lives. They wouldn't lose hold of life and slip down and away, to be washed into some gutter.

Funny, thought Alice. Sitting around this table, let's say three weeks ago, all of us. You'd not have said that Philip was due to lose hold. Jim? Yes. And Faye...? Alice was careful not to look at Faye, feeling that a look at this moment would be like a doom or a sentence. To her, Alice, the room seemed full of ghosts, and her heart ached for poor little Philip, who had tried so hard, been so gallant. It wasn't fair.

Well, with Reggie and Mary off soon, there wouldn't be many left here. Jasper and Bert and herself. Caroline and Jocelin. Faye and Roberta. Seven.

Pat, gone. Jim, gone. Philip, gone. Comrade Andrew - disappeared somewhere. Even the goose-girl seemed to Alice, in this mood, like some good old friend, taken from her. Very well, let them take this house away. Why not? She wasn't going to care. She knew she had her look: she could feel Jasper's eyes on her. To avoid them, she got up and began preparations for another cauldron of soup.

"Comrade Alice," said Bert in his political voice, "we are all here. We had decided to have a meeting when Reggie and Mary crashed in."

"Oh, were you going to bother to call me?" asked Alice. But she came back to her seat, noting that Bert and Jasper had put themselves at the head and the foot of the table.

Mid-afternoon. Sunshine. Joan Robbins was cutting her hedge with old-fashioned shears. Clack, clack, clack, with irregular intervals that kept the ears straining. In the jug on the stool were some early roses. Yellow. The cat lay on the window sill outside the glass, looking in.

Bert began, "In view of our observations in Moscow and subsequent discussions, Jasper and I agree that we should formulate a new policy. Of course it will have to be discussed fully in its implications, but, just to indicate where our conclusions are pointing, we have a tentative formulation. That the comrades present see no reason to accept directives from Moscow."

"Or from any other extraneous source," added Jasper.

Bert leaned forward, and looked at them all challengingly.

"Right on," said Caroline. She was peeling an orange and licking the juice off her fingers. "I agree, absolutely."

"Me, too," said Jocelin at once.

"Well, yes," said Roberta, "but it certainly wasn't our idea, was it? I mean, Faye's and mine?"

"Bloody well right," said Faye. "Whose idea was it to get us all involved with shitty Comrade Andrew and his works? It was yours, Comrade Bert, and yours, Comrade Jasper." She was using her proper BBC voice, and this, as always, came as a shock after her usual coquettings with the language. She sounded cold and full of hate.

Bert and Jasper were disconcerted. The fury of their disappointment in Moscow had been soothed away by discussions on policy, on "formulations," and they had lost sight of recent history in theorising. Alice could see that they were really having to make an effort to remember.

Bert was not prepared to relinquish the pleasures of the "implications," and he said, "But it is essential to analyse the situation. Advisable, at any rate," he amended, lamely.

"Why?" said Jocelin. And "Why?" asked Faye.

A silence.

Alice said diplomatically, "There are certain things I'd like to know before we drop the subject."

Faye sighed. Exaggeratedly. She was making an effort to sit here with them at all. She was very pale. There seemed to be life only in her bright hair, which made its pretty ringlets and curls around her emptied face.

"I'd like to know how next door, how number forty-five, got involved with the bloody Russians," said Faye.

"Good question," said Caroline, making little piles of orange peel with her solid white fingers, which had rings gleaming on them.

"Does anybody know?" Alice persisted.

"Jocelin knows," said Caroline.

Jocelin shrugged, as if irritated by the whole thing.

They all looked at Jocelin. She was not easy to look at. This was not because of her appearance, which was unremarkable. She was a blonde, whose ordinariness was pointed by pretty Faye, so delicate and fine, always presenting herself this way and that. Jocelin did not care whether she was admired, or even seen. Cold green eyes observed everything, and she was angry all the time, as if a generalised anger had taken her over at some point and she had come to believe that this was how one experienced the world. Not easy to withstand that hostility; and people tended to look not at her face, but at her hands, which were fine, with long clever fingers, or at her clothes, hoping to find something of interest there. But she wore, always, jeans and a jersey.

"This is what happened," said Jocelin. "As far as I know. There was a house over in Neasden, which worked very well as an exchange point, for some weeks. No one expects to use a place for longer than weeks. But suddenly the police were on to it. There was an informer. Or something."

She lit a cigarette, and Alice could see this was to give her time to work out exactly how much she wanted to say.

Alice prompted, "Exchange what, exactly?"

"What was going through next door - at forty-five. Propaganda material mostly. But also materiel."

This businesslike word caused, as Alice could see, agreeable frissons in Bert and Jasper, who both, not knowing they did, leaned forward intently to stare at Jocelin. And then, realising what they were doing, looked away, uncomfortable.

"It was a question of finding somewhere, quickly. Very quickly. Someone said that forty-five was empty. All that was needed was a place for two days. So it was thought."

"Who needed it?" said Bert, clumsily.

"Obviously, Comrade Andrew," said Caroline, crisp and disapproving.

"Yes," said Jocelin. "He had been organising propaganda material. Mostly for the IRA. Printed in Holland, mostly. And... other things. Some of it tricky stuff. Very." Here she smiled coldly at them, but with closed lips, and they all smiled uneasily and averted their eyes.

"But the house wasn't empty," said Caroline. "I was only away for a few days. I came back and found two rooms stacked with stuff. And then Comrade Muriel appeared, then Comrade Andrew." Caroline laughed, genuinely, and, relieved, they all laughed. Not, however, Jocelin, who turned her green eyes on them, one after another, waiting to go on.

"It seems it was not easy to find another suitable house," said Jocelin. "Nothing really safe. Meanwhile, they went on with forty-five. They had all kinds of makeshifts. Once there were four dustbins full of pamphlets covered with rubbish in the garden. They had plastic rubbish sacks with materiel more than once. But it couldn't go on like that. Next, most of the comrades left all at once from this house, and Comrade Alice moved in." She smiled, but her eyes were like lumps of green stone. "Comrade Alice's combination of remarkable talents were a godsend. It seems that Comrade Muriel and Comrade Andrew were about to follow your example into getting forty-five an agreed tenancy with the Council. But they had second thoughts: that it would risk all kinds of visits from the Council, and the stuff kept arriving, any odd time of the day or night, and being taken off again, too. No, they decided that it was enough that such perfect respectability existed next door. And there was a Council official, too. Mary Williams moved in. And then there was even a CCU Congress." She laughed, making it clear what she thought of the CCU. And of them?

"But how did you get involved in all this," demanded Faye. "You didn't like Comrade Andrew any more than we did."

"I didn't say I didn't like him," said Jocelin. "Like - who cares about all that? I was not involved with Comrade Andrew, or any of his doings. I decided to move in here because I was told by Muriel that you wanted to work with the IRA."

And now she looked at them again, slowly, one after another, taking her time about it. She said softly, "That is my interest. But about Moscow, the KGB and all that, I'm not interested - but that's all history, isn't it, now that Andrew has gone. Wherever he has gone. And I wouldn't like to be in his shoes."

"No," said Caroline. "No."

Alice felt hurt for Comrade Andrew. It seemed something was softly whimpering away in there, in her chest. That was the end of Comrade Andrew, then? They didn't care what happened to him! Or if they never saw him again!

Jasper was saying, "Why? What? I don't know what you mean?"

And Bert, "What did he do?"

Nobody answered. They couldn't be bothered. Comrade Andrew was not worth the effort. Gone. Disappeared.

Jasper said hotly - it came bursting out - "Bert and I went to Ireland. We saw the comrades. They weren't all that interested."

"So I heard," said Jocelin calmly. "Yes, I heard about that. But what of it? Who are the IRA to tell us what to do in our own country?"

This struck them all with the force of some obvious and ineluctable truth that inexplicably had not been seen by them till this moment. Of course! Who were the IRA, to tell them what to do?

Bert laughed softly, and his white teeth showed. Jasper laughed - and Alice suffered on hearing it, for she could measure by it how hurt he had been, how put down, by the refusal in Moscow to take him seriously, after the refusal in Ireland. Jasper's laugh was scornful and proud, and confidence was rushing back into him, and he looked about at them all, justified.

"Right on," said Faye. "At last. As far as I am concerned, you've all just seen the light. We have to decide what to do, and we will carry it out. We don't have to ask permission of foreigners." She was still using her cold, correct voice.

"Absolutely," said Roberta.

"Then that's that," said Alice. "All we have to do now is to make a plan."

At this point, a knock on the front door. Alice went, and came back in with Felicity. It was a question, since Alice was Philip's "next of kin," of her going to the hospital for the formalities.

Felicity did not want to sit down; did not want, as they all saw, to be forced into taking on Philip's affairs.

Alice said angrily, "Why me, Felicity? Why not you?"

"Look," said Felicity. "Philip came to stay in my place because he was stuck. Desperate. As far as I was concerned, he was just someone without a place to live."

"But he must have a family, or someone?"

"He has a sister, somewhere."

"But where?"

"How do I know? He never said."

The two women faced each other, as if in a bitter quarrel. Seeing how they must look, they became apologetic.

Felicity said, "When I said Philip could stay, I thought it was for the weekend, a week. He was with me for over a year."

Alice saw that it was she who was going to have to do it, and she said, bitterly, "Oh, very well." Now she had got her way, Felicity became "nice," and refused a cup of tea with many hurried apologies, and fussed her way out of the house.

"Poor Alice," said Roberta. "I'll come with you." Alice began to cry. They all looked at her in amazement.

"Of course she is crying," said Roberta. "Of course she is. She is tired." She put her arm around Alice and took her to the door. "Don't do anything we wouldn't do when we've gone," she said facetiously to them all, but her eyes were on Faye, who, betrayed, tossed her head and would not look at Roberta; she had suddenly again become a cockney maiden.

The two women were at the hospital for some hours, signing forms, seeing appropriate officials. Alice agreed to get a death certificate. She arranged to go through Philip's possessions with a Council representative, who would come tomorrow.

At midnight, Roberta tucked her up with a cup of hot chocolate, making it clear that that was it: she did not feel obliged to do more for Philip, though she would if Faye were not so needful.