The Good Terrorist (39 page)

“It’ll go into her lungs, you are drowning her,” said Philip.

And then, miraculously, Faye swallowed.

“Faye,” commanded Alice, “Faye, drink, you’ve got to drink.”

Faye seemed to want to shake her head, but swallowed. It was because she was in the habit of taking orders, commands from Roberta. Alice knew that, so she made her voice soft and full and loving like Roberta’s and said, “Drink, you must drink.”

Slowly, over twenty minutes, Alice got a pint or so of the mixture into Faye.

Then she rested. She was running with sweat. The sweat was from terror, she knew that.

Philip knelt at Faye’s feet, watching. His look of disapproval, even of horror, had not abated. It was Alice who horrified him, and she knew and could not care.

“She’s not going to die,” she said, loudly, for Faye’s benefit as well as Philip’s.

She said, “You stay here. Make her drink some more, if you can. She must have done it only a minute before we came in. I’m going to telephone Roberta.”

Philip took her place, his arm under Faye’s head. He reached for the jug full of liquid.

Alice thought, seeing them like that—frail white Faye, frail pale Philip—that they were two of a kind, victims, born to be trampled over and cut down. There was a flash of vindictiveness in this thought, as far as Philip was concerned, for she knew that he still hated her.

She ran next door to Joan Robbins. The house was in darkness, and Alice put her finger on the bell and kept it there. She could hear it shrilling. A window went up above her head, and she heard Joan Robbins’s voice, sharp, “What is it? Who is it?”

“Let me in, let me in,” cried Alice, her voice like a child’s, or like Faye’s. “It is Alice,” she wept, since Joan Robbins did not at once leave the window. “Alice from next door.”

The lights went on in the hall, and Joan Robbins stood there in a flowered dressing gown and bright-red mules, looking angry, puzzled, and afraid.

“I must ring someone—I must—someone’s ill,” she stammered, and Joan Robbins stood aside.

At the telephone, she fumbled for the books, which Joan took out from a plastic cover and gave to her.

She found “Directory Enquiries,” got the number, rang the hospital in Bradford, left a message for Roberta. “Tell her her friend is ill, she must come at once.”

Then she started turning the pages over, looking for another number, and it was not until she saw “Samaritans” that she knew what she wanted.

“Don’t you want nine-nine-nine?” asked Joan Robbins curiously. Alice shook her head and stood, eyes shut, breathing irregularly, as if she might faint, and Joan padded off to her kitchen to make her a nice cup of tea.

Alice rang the Samaritans. A pleasant, steady voice spoke. Alice did not hear the words, only the tone. She stood silent, listening. She was going to have to say something, or this voice would stop, go away.

She said, “I want your advice, that’s all, your advice.”

“What’s the trouble?”

She said nothing, but stood listening to the sensible, helpful voice. Which went on, saying that Alice should not ring off, that no one would put any pressure on Alice or on anyone else, no one would report Alice, no matter what she or anyone else had done.

Alice did not speak until she heard Joan Robbins coming back. She said quickly, “Someone has cut her wrists.”

There was no time for more. Joan arrived with two mugs of hot tea.

Alice picked up hers at once, knowing how badly she needed it. She stood trying to drink the boiling liquid, listening, listening. “You must get your friend to hospital. As quickly as you can. Call the ambulance. Call nine-nine-nine. It’s a matter of life and death. You really must.”

“Suppose I don’t?” said Alice at last, choosing her words because of Joan, who stood helplessly by, urging her with smiles and looks to drink up.

“Then, if you don’t—but you really should—the main thing is to keep your friend awake and get as much liquid into her as possible. Can she drink?”

“Yes,” said Alice, and went on listening as if she heard some impossible, far-off music that beguiled and comforted, soothed and offered infinite, unfailing support.

After some minutes, she simply put down the receiver, letting that gentle, sensible voice disappear into the realm of the unreachable. She adjusted her face to her usual bright, good-girl’s smile, and said to Joan Robbins, “Thank you. Thanks a lot. That was the Samaritans. Do you know about them?”

“I have heard of them, yes.”

“They are very good, really,” said Alice, vaguely. “Well, I had better get back. I’ve left someone coping and I don’t think he’s much used to people being ill.”

Joan followed Alice to the door, with the look of someone who feels that everything has not been said, and who hopes that it might be said even now.

“Thank you,” said Alice politely. Then, wildly and gratefully, “Thank you, thank you.” And she ran away into the dark. Joan Robbins waited to see her go in at the door of number 43. Then she went back into her kitchen, where she examined the smears of blood on the telephone directories and on the table. She wiped the table and stood thinking for some minutes. Then she decided not to call the police, and went quietly to her bed.

Alice found Philip and Faye exactly as she had left them. But Faye’s eyes were open, and she stared, expressionless, at the ceiling.

“I’ve rung Roberta,” said Alice.

Then she searched around for a clean nightie or something, found pyjamas, fetched hot water and cloths. She and Philip stripped Faye. They peeled off her soaked sleeping bag, lifted off blankets, and slid away the foam-rubber mattress, which was filled with blood like a sponge. Then Faye was washed and dressed. Through all this she was limp and meek. But Alice was not deceived. She knew that Faye was waiting for the moment when she and Philip turned their backs, when the strapping would be off those wrists.

Alice’s sleeping bag was brought, and more blankets. A hot-water bottle was found in a drawer. It took a long time, but finally Faye was lying clean and tucked into warmth and comfort.

It was well after three.

Alice was thinking: If Roberta was at the hospital, she will have had the message, she will be on her way, she might be here by morning.

Meanwhile, she and Philip must sit up, in case one fell asleep.

No one slept. Faye lay where she had been put, her face like a little ghost’s. She did not close her eyes. She did not look at them. She said nothing.

Philip knelt at Faye’s feet, and Alice sat at her side. From time
to time Alice lifted Faye up and put the cup to her lips and Faye swallowed.

Philip went off to make more of this mixture of salt and sugar and water, and to make tea for himself and Alice. But he did not look at Alice, would not meet her eyes.

He had been so badly shocked by her, by the situation, that he was simply divorcing himself from it.

She thought, defiantly, even mockingly: That defines Philip, then! That’s what he’s like!

Morning soon came, it being halfway through May. With the prickly, hollow feeling that accompanies exhaustion, Alice listened to the dawn chorus, thinking that she would like to hear it more often; tried to catch Philip’s eye, to share this moment of renewal, or promise, with him, but he knelt there, like a little devotee, patient, modest, ready to be useful. And absolutely cut off from her.

At last she said, “If you go and sleep, Philip, I’ll make myself stay awake. And then, when I can’t stay awake, I’ll shout up the stairs.” Meaning, I can’t leave her, we can’t, not for a second. He heard this, understood, nodded, and went out.

Faye slipped off to sleep, or was pretending to sleep—Alice did not know which, but was taking no chances. She sat on, from time to time flicking water onto her own face, slapping her cheeks. When she did this she thought she saw a flicker of something that could be amusement, or at least comment, on Faye’s passive face. The sounds of a normal Saturday morning, the milkman, children playing in the street, voices from the gardens. What a lot of sounds there were that she never ordinarily listened to.…

The bloodstained pile in the corner was beginning to sicken Alice. But she could not, must not move. She knew Faye was not asleep.

Time passed … passed. More than once she had caught herself as she dropped off, even jerking awake. Once when she did this, she saw Faye open her eyes; they exchanged looks. Alice: I’m not going to let you; and Faye: You can’t stop me if I want to.

Then, at last, steps bounded up the stairs, the door opened, and Roberta was kneeling by Faye, whose eyes were now open. She said in a voice that mingled passionate love, anger, exasperation,
incredulity: “Faye, oh, Faye darling, how could you, how could you!”

Alice stood up, and watched how Roberta gently, tenderly, gathered Faye to her, kissed her, cradled her, then bent down to kiss the wounded wrists, one after the other.

Faye turned her face into the bosom of her friend, and lay there, at home.

Roberta looked at Alice over Faye. Her face was running tears.

As well it might, thought Alice.

Roberta said, “My mother’s in a coma, so it’s all right.”

“That’s all right, then.”

Alice gathered up the stained things and said matter-of-factly, “Philip has been asleep for some hours, so he can come and help when you want help, but I have to sleep now.”

She went to her room, where she did not sleep, not for a long time. She was replaying the scene over and over again in her mind, of Roberta’s infinite tenderness with Faye, the passion of love in her face as she looked at Alice, Faye’s face pressed to her breast.

When she woke, she was determined to leave. It was all enough, it was too much. If Jasper wanted her he would have to come and find her. And, no, she would not be leaving an address. She would have breakfast, then go.

But, of course, it wasn’t morning. She had slept through the day. Downstairs she found Philip disposing of the remains of a pot of her soup. She could see in him last night’s hostility softened, modified. After all, Faye had lived. Yes, Alice knew Faye might easily not have lived. But at least she had kept Faye out of the hands of Authority.

She waited, indifferently, while he explained something he had been planning to say, probably working on it all day in his mind.

Half listening, her mind on trains for tonight, or tomorrow, and where to, she heard herself sigh, and this brought her attention fully back to Philip.

Yes, he looked awful. Worse than was warranted by not sleeping last night.

Working from eight in the morning till late in the evening, and over weekends, he still had not been able to keep up with what he had promised. The date he had given for finishing was passed, and there was painting still to be done, several days of it. The Greek said he had been tricked by Philip: never would he have employed one person alone to do that big job of conversion and decoration, let alone a sparrow like Philip. If Philip could not finish the job in a couple of days, he—the Greek—would consider it a breach of contract, and Philip would not be paid the second half of the money. (Yes, Philip had been in this position before, but had not expected to be this time.)

What Philip wanted was help from the commune. Reggie wasn’t working! What did Reggie do with himself all day? Philip demanded hotly of Alice. He wasn’t even trying for a job. He went around salesrooms and auctions, picking up bargains. Did Alice know that the attic was filling with Mary and Reggie’s furniture, let alone the room next to the one they slept in? What would it cost Reggie to help Philip for a couple of days?

“But can he paint well enough?” asked Alice, almost mechanically, and Philip’s conscious look chimed with the conviction that suddenly came into her: of course, Philip wanted her, Alice, to go down and help. It was she who had painted most of this big house—painted it fast, and very well. They had joked, these communards, that a professional could not have done it better. And, in fact, at this or that time in her past she had done it professionally, and no one had complained.

His dislike of her, which she had felt so strongly last night, was partly that he had been thinking like this for some time: Alice was the one who could solve all his difficulties, and yet she did not seem to see it, refused to recognise his need.

Alice sat there quietly, eyes lowered, shielding herself from Philip, thinking. Why should he expect this? What right had he? The answer was plain enough: he had done all the work on this big house, for wildly inadequate pay. It was Alice who had wanted it; the others hadn’t really cared. Now it was Alice who should make it up to him. Oh yes, she could see it all, the logic of it, the justice. But she wanted to leave, to get out and away. This house,
for which she had fought, she now felt as a trap, ready to redeliver her back to Jasper, from whom she must escape. (Even if only for a little while, her sad heart hastily added.) Yet she knew she was going to help Philip, because she had to. It was only fair.

She said she would, and saw Philip’s whole body, that sparrow’s body, convulse briefly with sobs. His face was illuminated, prayerful.

She went with him down the road to look at the premises. They were enormous, not one of these little cubbyholes off the street with a counter over which a few pies or sandwiches were passed. Along the middle of the room ran a broad counter, finished but unpainted, and there was a large area behind that for the cooking and preparation. Stoves, refrigerators, deep freezes had already been delivered and stood waiting to be put in place. But the walls at the back needed plaster. The walls on three sides were not bad, but should be cleaned down before painting. Alice, from Philip’s look, knew that he had intended to do more to these walls than he now did. Paint would go on before paint, ideally, should. Philip watched her, waited for her verdict.

But as she hesitated, knowing that if an employer was looking for an excuse not to pay, or to pay less, he would find one here, she heard that someone else was with them in the great empty place, and turned to see the Greek, Philip’s employer. At one glance she knew that Philip was going to be cheated, no matter what he did, or how she helped him.