Doris Lessing

Zoë stood vibrating with anger. But she was not going to let her voice rise, either. "If it's so obvious, then why do you go on doing it?"

"There might be different ways of looking at it? Can you conceive there might be different ways of looking at a thing? I doubt it, the way you are.... Can't even meet someone who reads a different newspaper.... Listen. My life has to change. Right? Strange as it might seem, I had taken all that into account, what you said. But I am doing a stock-taking - do you understand? I am thinking - do you see? I'm thinking about my life. That means I am examining a lot of things."

Dorothy and Zoë stood opposite each other, standing straight, like soldiers told to stand at ease, or a couple about to start the steps of an intricate dance.

"And all you can see about me," said Zoë, "is that we've got nothing in common. Is that all? Twenty years of being friends."

"What have we got in common now? We've been cooking meals and talking about our bloody children and discussing cholesterol and the body beautiful, and going on demonstrations."

"I haven't noticed you going on any recently."

"No, not since I understood that demos and all that are just for fun."

"For fun, are they?"

"Yes, that's right. People go on demos because they get a kick out of it. Like picnics."

"You can't be serious, Dorothy."

"Of course I'm serious. No one bothers to ask any longer if it achieves anything, going on marches or demos. They talk about how they feel. That's what they care about. It's for kicks. It's for fun."

"Dorothy, that's simply perverse."

"Why is it perverse if it's true? You've just got to use your eyes and look - people picketing, or marching or demonstrating, they are having a marvellous time. And if they are beaten up by the police, so much the better."

A silence. Zoë was staring at Dorothy, bewildered. She really could not believe Dorothy meant it. As for Alice, who was standing there transfixed with flowers in her hands, staring at the two, and praying inwardly, "Oh, don't, don't, please don't, please, please stop," her mother had gone over the edge into destructiveness, and there was no point in even listening to her. Better take no notice.

'Til tell you something, Zoë. All you people, marching up and down and waving ba

"I just don't believe you mean it."

"I don't know why not: I keep saying it."

"You want to smash things up, you want to break with all your friends."

"Well, I just can't talk to you any more. When I say anything I really think, you start weeping and wailing."

"Well, I care about our friendship ending, if you don't."

"I haven't the energy for all these rows and little scenes," said Dorothy.

Then Zoë had run out of the room, muttering something furious - but not loudly; not once had the voices of the two women risen. And Dorothy, with a pale, listless, dreary look, had gone back to the telephone and sat down, ready to make another call. But had not dialled at once. She had sat, head on hand, looking at the wall.

"Shall I make you a cup of tea?" Alice had brightly offered.

"No, thank you, Alice dear."

But she had gone into the kitchen, made tea, taken her mother a cup, put it by her where she still sat, not moving, head in her hand.

Alice thought (standing on the pavement's edge, though she did not know she was, not yet): She needs someone to look after her, she really does! No food to speak of in the refrigerator, drinking away there by herself. It's not on. No, better if she came to live with us, at number 43. She could have those two big rooms upstairs, when Reggie and Mary move out. Through Alice's mind floated the thought, immediately censored: Then I would have someone to talk to.

Alice saw herself and her mother at that table in the big kitchen, newspapers and books all over the place. Dorothy would talk about the books, and Alice would listen to news about that world she herself could not for some reason bring herself to enter.

This idea died a swift natural death.

Alice came to herself, on the pavement's edge. It was chilly. Overhead a sky full of hazy stars. Opposite, a yellow street lamp.

It was about midnight now. Jasper and Bert and Caroline would not be home tonight; she had known that when they went off. And Bert and Caroline would be humping and bumping away together; all those flashing eye exchanges and atmospheres hadn't been for nothing. And Jasper would (if he could) be in the room next to them....

Alice put this last thought out of her mind and entered the house quietly, not wanting to see Faye and Roberta, or Reggie and Mary. But no one was at home, except for Jocelin, still at work. Alice knocked, polite, and went in on a gruff sound that presumably was a "Come in." On the long table in front of Jocelin were four nasty little devices, identical, ranged side by side, and looking rather like outsize and complicated sardine tins. Everywhere on the trestle were parts of bombs, now dismantled, and some white kitchen bowls holding the household chemicals. Presumably waiting to be returned to their proper packets in the kitchen? Jocelin was sorting items into little piles. She nodded at Alice, not smiling. She looked like a factory worker bending over an assembly bench, but no factory worker would get away with those stray pieces of pale greasy-looking hair falling over her face, and the old stained jersey with the hole in the elbow.

"I'm going to bury these," said Jocelin. "We can get them when we need them next." She allowed Alice a smile. "No policeman is going to come digging around in this garden for a bit."

"Are those four enough?" Alice asked, but only to show she marvelled at Jocelin for pla

She went to the window and stood with her back to Alice, arms akimbo, and turned to say, "It is dark enough. Come on."

The collection of components were swept - carelessly, since they were not dangerous now - into a plastic bag, enclosed in another and then another, and they crept out into the night, not making a sound.

They stood for a minute over the place where the police had started to dig, both thinking that that would be the safest place, but could not face it. A lilac bush near Joan Robbins's fence was still heavy with scent, though its blossoms, black in this light, had gone bruised and blotched. It had some soft soil around it. No lights were on anywhere. Dark houses stood all about, eyeless for once. Making no noise, using a trowel, Alice dug out a good-sized hole, Jocelin slid the bundle in, together they covered it over, and in a moment they were inside the house, feeling warm towards each other, successful accomplices.

In the kitchen, Jocelin said, "I forgot, there's a message. Two, in fact. First, those Irishmen came back." She sounded unworried, but Alice knew something very bad indeed had happened.

"The ones that brought that... materiel?"

"Right. They wanted to know whereabout on the rubbish tip the two cases were put."

"What did you say?"

"I said I didn't know."

As far as Jocelin was concerned, it seemed, that was enough; she sat stirring sugar into her coffee, her mind probably on her handiwork, still ranged neatly side by side, on the trestle upstairs.

"And then?"

" 'Well, now, lady, that isn't enough for us, is it? You can see that for yourself! We have our orders, and that's a fact! The lady we saw last time we came, she must accompany us to the rubbish tip, and show us where the things were placed.'" This Jocelin delivered in an Irish accent, perfect, as far as Alice was concerned - so accurate that she was thinking: Irish? Is she? And if so, what does it mean? Does it matter? Here is another of us with a false voice!