The Good Terrorist

Typical intellectual shit, Jasper had opined, meaning Dorothy to hear it.

Remembering Jasper, Alice understood she could not just turn up now, make coffee, and greet her mother with a smile.

She got on the train, and found another café, where no one would think her remarkable. It was nearly empty; its busy time would not start for another two hours, when shoppers, men and women, came in. Now Alice ate wholemeal buns and honey and was restored to grace, and with an eye on the clock on the wall, bided her time. Her mother would probably go out to the shops about nine-thirty, ten. She liked to get shopping over, for she hated it.

Alice had done the shopping, for four years. She loved it. When she returned to the great kitchen with cartons full of food brought back in the car, she would carefully put everything away. Her mother would probably be there (if Jasper wasn’t) and they would talk, getting on like anything! They always did! At home Alice was a good girl, a good daughter, as she had always enjoyed being. It was she who managed the kitchen…of course, her mother was pleased to have her do it. (There was an uneasy little thought tucked away somewhere here, but Alice chose to ignore it.) For the four years Alice and Jasper had been there, she had shopped and cooked. She had also cooked – sometimes commandeering the kitchen for two or three days at a time – the food she sold at the market. Jasper used to come in quickly, taking his opportunity when Dorothy was not around, and fill himself with whatever she was making that day – ‘her’ soup, for instance; cakes, good healthy bread. Or, if she were not cooking, might be at the market, he sneaked to the refrigerator and took anything there he fancied. Alice kept it well supplied with ham and salami and pickles for him. He cut himself great sandwiches and took them to his room and stayed there, not coming down for hours. Dorothy, at the beginning, had asked, uneasy, ‘What does Jasper do up there all day?’ ‘He studies,’ Alice always said, proud and forbidding. She knew that he did nothing at all, sometimes, all day. He might read the Socialist Worker and the Morning Star. Otherwise he listened to pop, through headphones, and sometimes danced to it quietly by himself, all over the room. He was very graceful, Alice knew; he hated to be seen, and this was a pity. He should have danced: done ballet, perhaps?

Then he would come down again, silently, to get more food. He would never willingly come into the kitchen if Dorothy were there. He never sat down to eat with them. When Alice remonstrated, said her mother did not like it, he had said she did not like him (which was true, as it turned out, though Dorothy certainly had not said so at the start). For his part he thought her a vulgar tart. This epithet, so far off any sort of mark, only stunned Alice’s responses, so she said feebly, ‘But Jasper, how can you say that?’ At which he made loud rude noises, with his lips.

Of course when Dorothy had guests, Jasper was not there. He really might just as well not have been in the house, except for that steady pilfering of food from the kitchen. Anyone would think that Dorothy grudged him the food! Alice had cried out often enough to him, and then when he was merely abusive, to herself.

Now sitting in this friendly, companionable café, where people coming in were likely to greet her; eating more buns, more honey (to fill in time now, not from hunger), Alice was thinking: Well, but she does hate Jasper, always did, people do. And she did grudge him his food, probably; if she hated him. Alice thought, at last, in something like a little panic: What must it have been like for her, never having her own kitchen, not even being able to come into it, for fear of running into Jasper? And then: I was simply doing everything, all the cooking. And she loves cooking…

At half-past nine Alice left the café, calling goodbye to Sarah, who had served there for years. Once a refugee from Austria, she was now an elderly woman with photographs of her grown-up grandchildren stuck on the wall behind the counter. Alice walked up, not too fast, to her mother’s house. She stood outside for some time, then thought that any watching neighbour would find this peculiar. She let herself in with the key she had not handed her mother when she had left yesterday for ever. Not a sound in the house. Alice stood in the hall, breathing in the house, home; the big, easy-fitting, accommodating house that smelled of friendship. She went into the kitchen and her heart turned over. On the floor were tea-chests full of dishes and plates, and, stacked all over the table, teacups and saucers and glasses, already tucked into newspaper. Oh, of course, now that she and Jasper had left, her mother would be giving the unnecessary china and stuff to jumble. Yes, that must be it. A small child, threatened, eyes wide and frantic, Alice stood looking at the tea-chests, then ran upstairs to her own room. It was as she had left it yesterday. She felt better. She went up a floor to the room Jasper had used. On the floor was a rug, Bokhara. Once it had been in the sitting-room, but it got frail, and found a safe place under a table in the room which, until Jasper commandeered it, was little used. It was beautiful. Alice tenderly rolled it up, and ran down with it to the kitchen. Now she hoped that she would not run into her mother. She looked around for paper and a biro, wrote, ‘I have taken the rug, Alice’ and stood this note among the wrapped glasses. Again she was endangered by the sight of the tea-chests. But she made herself forget them, and went out of the house. At the end of the street her mother was coming towards her under a canopy of bright green. She walked slowly, head down. She looked tired and old. Alice ran fast the other way, clutching the heavy rug, until out of sight of her mother, and then walked, increasingly slowly, to Chalk Farm. The carpet shop was only just open. A middle-aged woman sat at a desk, cup of coffee before her, and pushed down dark glasses to look over them at Alice.

‘You want to sell?’ she inquired. ‘Pretty!’ as Alice unrolled the rug on the floor, breathing hard. Together they stood looking, captivated and quietened by the pool of soft patterned colour on the floor. The woman bent, picked it up, and held it against the light. Alice moved round to stand by her and saw the light pricking through, and in one place glaring. Alice’s throat was tight at the back. She thought wildly: I’ll take it to the squat, it’s so beautiful…but waited as the rug was thrown down on the floor again, just anyhow, in folds, and the woman said, ‘It’s badly worn. It would have to be mended. I couldn’t give you more than thirty.’

‘Thirty?’ moaned Alice. She didn’t know what she had expected. She knew it was, or had been, valuable. ‘Thirty,’ she stammered, thinking it had not been worth taking it.

‘My advice is, keep it and enjoy it,’ said the woman, going back to her desk, letting the dark glasses fall back into place, and drinking coffee.

‘No, I need the money,’ said Alice.

She took the three notes and, lingering to look at the rug lying there abandoned by her, went out of the shop.

She bought food for Jasper and went back to the squat. The street had a morning look, no one out, people had gone to work and to school; inside the women would be cleaning or with the kids. But she did not expect anyone to be up yet in her house; in squats no one got up early.

But Pat was in the sitting-room by herself, drinking coffee from the vacuum flask. She indicated with a gesture that Alice should help herself, but Alice was still full of her good breakfasts, and shook her head. She said, ‘I’ve got a bit of money, but not enough.’

Pat said nothing. In this strong morning light she looked older, all loosened and used, not cherry-bright. Her hair had not been brushed yet, and she smelled of sex and sweat. Alice thought, Today we’ll tackle the bathrooms. There were two.

Pat had still not said anything, but now she lit a cigarette, and smoked it as though she planned to drown in smoke.

Alice had seen that Pat was one of those who needed time to come to in the mornings, and was not going to say anything. She sat quietly and surveyed the state of the room: the curtains were rags, and could not be expected to stand up to dry-cleaning. Well, perhaps her mother…The carpet – it would do. A vacuum cleaner?

She knew Pat was looking at her but did not meet the look. She felt Pat was an ally, did not want to challenge this feeling.

Pat said, coughing a little from the smoke, ‘Twenty-four hours. You’ve been here twenty-four hours!’ And laughed. Not unfriendly. But reserving judgment. Fair enough, thought Alice. In politics one had to…

There was a sudden arrival of sound in the street, and the rubbish van stood outside. With an exclamation Alice ran out, and straight up to two men who were shouldering up rubbish bins from the next garden. ‘Please, please, please…’ They stood there, side by side, looking down at her, big men, strong for this job, confronted by this girl who was both stubbornly not to be moved, and frantic. She stammered, ‘What will you take to clear this garden…? Yes, I know…’ Their faces put on identical expressions of disgusted derision, as they looked from the sordid mess to her, back to the mess, at her, and then steadily at the mess, assessing it.

‘You should call in the Council,’ said one, at last.

‘You are the Council,’ said Alice. ‘No, please, please…look, we’ve come to an arrangement. An agreed arrangement. We will pay the expenses. You know, an agreed squat.’

‘Here, Alan,’ shouted one of them towards a great shaking throbbing lorry that stood there ready to chew up any amount of plastic cartons, tins, papers – the rubbish that crammed the garden of her house to the level of the windows.

Out of the lorry came another large man in blue dungarees and wearing thick leather gloves. Alan, arbiter of her fate, yet another one, like Philip, like Mary Williams.

She said, ‘What will you take to clear it?’ This was both calmly confident, as befitted her mother’s daughter, and desperate; and they stared, taking their time, at that plump childlike formless face, the round anxious blue eyes, the well-washed but tidy jeans, the thick jacket, and the nice little collared blouse, with flowers on it. And all, everything, impregnated with a greyish dust, which had been brushed and shaken and beaten off, but remained, obstinately, as a dimming of the colour.

They shrugged, as one. Three pairs of eyes conferred.

‘Twenty quid,’ said Alan, the driver.

‘Twenty pounds?’ wailed Alice. ‘Twenty!’

A pause. They looked, as one, uncomfortable. A pause. ‘You get that lot into plastic bags, love, and we’ll pick it up tomorrow. Fifteen.’

She smiled. Then laughed. Then sobbed. ‘Oh thanks, thanks,’ she snuffled.

‘Be around tomorrow, love,’ said Alan, all fatherly, and the three moved off as one to the opposite house and its rubbish bins.

Alice checked for the safety of her thirty pounds, in her pocket, and went back into the house. Pat was where she had been, in a smoke trance. Jim had come down and was eating the food she had brought for Jasper. She said, ‘If we get the stuff into bags, they’ll take it tomorrow.’

‘Money,’ said Pat.

‘Money money money money,’ said Jim, stuffing in bananas.

‘I’ve got the money. If I get the plastic bags…’ She stood before them, all appeal.

‘I’m on,’ said Jim.

‘Right,’ said Pat, ‘but what about the house next door? We can clear this place up as much as you like, but that place is worse than this.’ As Alice stared and stared, her pink mouth slack and doleful, ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t notice? The house next door?’

Alice flew out, and looked first into the garden where the woman neighbour had spoken to her. Suburban order. But there was a tall hedge at the other side of this house, and beyond it…She ran into the main road, and along it a short way, and saw, which she had not done before, because she had made her little excursions by another route, a house identical to the one she was reclaiming, with broken windows, slipped slates, a look of desertion, and a rubbish-filled garden. It stank.

She came thoughtfully and bitterly back to the sitting-room, and asked, ‘Is it empty?’

Pat said, ‘The police cleared it three months ago, but it is full again now.’

‘That’s not our problem,’ said Alice, suspecting it might turn out to be. ‘I’m going to get the plastic bags.’

Enough cost her ten pounds.

Pat looked at the great heap of shining black on the steps, and said, ‘A pretty penny,’ but did not offer. She said, ‘Are we going to do it with our hands?’

Alice, without a moment’s hesitation, ran into the next garden, rang the bell, conferred with Joan Robbins, and came back with a spade, a shovel, a fork.

‘How do you do it!’ said Pat with tired irony, but picked up the fork and a sack and began work.

They laboured. Much worse than it looked, for the lower layers were pressed down and rotting and loathsome. Black glistening sack after sack received its horrible load and was stood next to another, until the garden was crammed with black sacks, their mouths showing decomposing refuse. The thin cat watched from the hedge, its eyes on Alice. Unable to bear it, she soon went in, filled a saucer with milk, another with scraps of cheese, bread and cold chips, and brought them out to the cat, which crept on raggedy paws to the food and ate.

Pat stood resting, looking at Alice. Who was looking at the cat. Jim leaned on a shovel, and said, ‘I had a little cat. It got run over.’

Pat waited for more, but there was no more to come. She shrugged and said, ‘It’s a cat’s life.’ And went on working.

But Jim’s eyes had tears in them, and Alice said, ‘I’m sorry, Jim.’