The Good Terrorist by Doris Lessing Read Free Book Online Page B

lavatory, holding the lamp high as they stood in the doorway. Since the day the Council workmen had poured concrete into the lavatory bowl, the little room had been deserted. It was dusty, but normal.
    “Bastards,” she burst out, tears in her voice.
    He stood there, undecided; and she saw it was up to her.
    “We need a kango hammer,” she said. “Have you got one?” She realised he hardly knew what it was. “You know, like the workmen use to break up concrete on the roads, but smaller.”
    He said, “I think I know someone who’d have one.”
    “Tonight,” she said. “Can you get it tonight?”
    This was the moment, she knew, when he might simply go off, desert her, feeling—as she was doing—the weight of that vandalised house; but she knew, too, that as soon as he got started … She said quickly, “I’ve done this before. I know. It’s not as bad as it looks.” And as he stood there, his resentful, reluctant pose telling her that he again felt put upon, she pressed, “I’ll see you won’t lose by it. I know you are afraid of that. I promise.” They were close together in the doorway of the tiny room. He stared at her from the few inches’ distance of their sudden intimacy, saw this peremptory but reassuring face as that of a bossy but kindly elder sister, and suddenly smiled, a sweet candid smile, and said, “I’ve got to go home, ring up my friend, see if he’s at home, see if he’s got a—a kango, borrow Felicity’s car.…” He was teasing her with the enormity of it all.
    “Yes,” she said. “Yes. Please.”
    He nodded, and in a moment had slipped out the front door and was gone. When she went into the sitting room, where Jasper and Bert were, waiting—as they showed by how they sat, passive and trusting—for her to accomplish miracles, she said with confidence, “He’s gone to get some tools. He’ll be back.”
    She knew he would; and within the hour he was, with a bag of tools, the kango, battery, lights, everything.
    The concrete in the bowl, years old, was shrinking from the sides and was soon broken up. Then, scratched and discoloured, the lavatory stood usable. Usable if the water still ran. But a lump of concrete entombed the main water tap. Gently, tenderly, Philip cracked off this shell with his jumping, jittering, noisy drill, and the tap appeared, glistening with newness. Philip and Alice, laughing and triumphant, stood close together over the newly born tap.
    “I’ll see that all the taps are off, but leave one on,” she said softly; for she wanted to make sure of it all before announcing victory to those two who waited, talking politics, in the sitting room. She ran over the house checking taps, came running down. “After four years, if there’s not an airlock …” She appealed to Philip. He turned the main tap. Immediately a juddering and thudding began in the pipes, and she said, “Good. They’re alive.” And he went off to check the tanks while she stood in the hall, thankful tears running down her cheeks.
    In a couple of hours, the water was restored, the three lavatories cleared, and in the hall was a group of disbelieving and jubilant communards who, returning from various parts of London, had been told what was going on and, on the whole, disbelieved. Out of—Alice hoped—shame.
    Jim said, “But we could have done it before, we could have done it.” Rueful, incredulous, joyful, he said, “I’ll bring down the pails, we can get rid of …”
    “Wait,” screamed Alice. “No, one at a time, not all at once; we’ll block the whole system, after years , who knows how long? We did that once in Birmingham, put too much all at once in—there was a cracked pipe underneath somewhere, and we had to leave that squat next day. We had only just come.” In command of them, and of herself, Alice stood on the bottom step of the stairs, exhausted, dirty, covered with grime and grey from the disintegrating concrete, even to her hair, which was grey. They