The Good Terrorist Read Online Free PDF Page B

on the face of Mary Williams, which told Alice the house would be theirs, and because of some personal problem or attitude of Mary’s. But all Alice said about this, the nub of the interview with Mary, was, “She’s all right. She’s on our side. She’s a good person.”
    “You mean, you’ve got something to show the police?” said Jim, and when Alice handed over the yellow envelope he took out what was in it and pored over it. He was one whose fate, Alice could see, had always been determined by means of papers, reports, official letters. Jim’s voice was genuine cockney, the real thing.
    She asked suddenly, “Are you bound over?”
    Jim’s look at her was startled, then defensive, then bitter. His soft, open boyish face closed up and he said, “What about it?”
    “Nothing,” said Alice. Meanwhile, a glance at Faye and Roberta had told her that both of them were bound over. Or worse. Yes, probably worse. Yes, certainly worse. On the run?
    “Didn’t know you were,” said Bert. “I was until recently.”
    “So was I,” claimed Jasper at once, not wanting to be left out. Jasper’s tones were almost those of his origins. He was the son of a solicitor in a Midlands town, who had gone bankrupt when Jasper was halfway through his schooling at a grammar school. He had finished his education on a scholarship. Jasper was very clever; but he had seen the scholarship as charity. He was full of hatred for his father, who had been stupid enough to go in for dubious investments. His middle-class voice, like Bert’s, had been roughened. With working-class comrades he could sound like them, and did, at emotional moments.
    Pat remarked, “It’s getting dark,” and she stood up, struck a match, and lit two candles that stood on the mantelpiece in rather fine brass candlesticks. But they were dull with grease. The daylight shrank back beyond the windows, and the seven were in a pool of soft yellow light that lay in the depths of a tall shadowed room.
    Now Pat leaned her elbow on the mantelpiece, taking command of the scene. In the romantic light, with her dark military clothes, her black strong boots, she looked—as she must certainly know—like a guerilla, or a female soldier in somebody’s army. Yet the light accentuated the delicate modelling of her face, her hands, and in fact she was more like the idealised picture of a soldier on a recruiting poster. An Israeli girl soldier, perhaps, a book in one hand, a rifle in the other.
    “Money,” said Pat. “We have to talk about money.” Her voice was standard middle-class, but Alice knew this was not how Pat had started off. She was working too hard at it.
    “That’s right,” said Jim. “I agree.”
    The only other person in this room, apart from Alice, with his own voice, unmodified, was Jim, the genuine cockney.
    “It’s going to cost more,” said Bert, “but we will buy peace and quiet.”
    “It needn’t cost all that much more,” said Alice. “For one thing, food will be half as much, or less. I know, I’ve done it.”
    “Right,” said Pat. “So have I. Take-away and eating out costs the earth.”
    “Alice is good at feeding people cheap,” said Jasper.
    It was noticeable that while these five outlined their positions, they all, perhaps without knowing it, eyed Roberta and Faye. Or, more exactly, Faye, who sat there not looking at them, but at anywhere—the ceiling, her feet, Roberta’s feet, the floor—while she puffed smoke from the cigarette held between her lips. Her hand, on her knee, trembled. She gave the impression of trembling slightly all over. Yet she smiled. It was not the best of smiles.
    “Just a minute, comrades,” said she. “Suppose I like takeaway? I like take-away, see? Suppose I like eating out, when the fancy takes me? How about that, then?”
    She laughed and tossed her head, presenting—as if her life depended on it—this cheeky cockney as seen in a thousand films.
    “They have a point, Faye,” said Roberta,