All the Rage (12 page)

It wasn't a great day to be wearing a top hat.

And ‘Not a Good Day to Wear a Top Hat' did indeed appear as my catchline. Set the style – observant, amused, keen not to overestimate the significance of events.

Mark coaxed Emily along to Shaftesbury Avenue and scolded his mind into focus. He was fine by the time a dark knot of angsty figures ran and yelled down the pre-emptively cleared road.

If I was a serious anarchist bent on mayhem I wouldn't dress in black and – oh, grow up – wave a fucking flag.

Police, also dressed in black, moved in sharply around the outskirts of the group and then closed. Emily seemed fascinated by the flag-waver, a skinny twenty-something with a Jesus face.

He wanted somebody to beat him up. Is that what she wanted in a man, that he should suffer? Would she have wanted to beat me?

I would have let her.

I would have begged.

The Met tested their day's waters, locking into solid ranks. Mark found the whole situation both weirdly childish and horribly serious. It worried him.

I knew the day was going to turn at some point and eat us up. It was going to be bad.

He clasped Emily's arm like an indulgent father squiring his activist daughter.

The solitary time I did that, played that card.

And the police cordon parted, let them through, then dissolved altogether with a carefully presented unconcern. The anarchists bolted off wildly as they might have been expected to. Mark thought their triumph unwise. He kissed the top of Emily's head to cheer himself. Her hair smelled of hotel shampoo.

And of nothing.

‘Can we now?' Emily pliant – even daughterly – letting him take charge in a whole new way. ‘Can we march?'

My hand around hers, around what was given completely.

She looked at me.

Someone shouting through a loudhailer, and mild chaos waiting for us to join it, but we were a couple. We were really there.

‘Yes, babe.' And Mark anxious that he shouldn't cry and also uneasy and too ragged to identify exactly why. ‘We'll do it now and we'll get all afternoon together.' He slipped his hold to her waist and squeezed. ‘But I'll have to make notes and be . . . and then I'll need to work, flat-out work. I should have sketched some bits down yesterday. It's okay, though. And I'm glad I'm here, and I'm glad I'm with you and it's a good idea.'

Stepping out from the pavement and into the road – that moment – I'd forgotten what it was like.

Hello.

This is me in the world that's different.

This is everyone else.

And this is us.

We are us.

Real.

It wasn't hard to lean against her and be carried, to be shaken loose into enjoying it. She'd point out good bits: a kid in a pushchair with his own hand-made sign, a bunch of blokes in amazing hats playing concertinas. He did the same: the Writers' Guild placards – typographical humour – an old lady near the entrance to Hyde Park who was holding this kind of essay up under her chin; it was unfurled to the ground, as long as herself. It said what her name was and that she was from Tower Hamlets and not happy with the government – who was happy with government? – and Mark didn't read the rest.

Mark had liked the energy: the cardboard tank that pumped out reggae, and he and Emily heading on while all the rage burned by them and insisted on producing a variety of elation and music and

Muzzy fellow-feeling. A consoling fantasy of change.

They all wanted an afternoon stroll to have built Utopia by Monday.

Emily pulled him into the park and there it was as he'd expected – the forward momentum pooled and sank, there was litter and dirty clothes and Quakers eating shredded vegetables out of Tupperware containers. He was no longer uplifted and it was chilly and he'd have been wiser to keep their room on for another day and look out of the fucking window – cosy and with Emily – take a nap and then knock out the story as required.

And he was exhausted suddenly, overwhelmed and achy, and then he went wrong.

I made her unhappy.

She wanted me to sit on the grubby turf with her, take in the scene, listen while the converted doggedly tried to convert the converted.

But I'd done that before.

When I was her age.

I'd already disappointed myself back then and didn't intend to again.

So I disappointed her.

Worse.

He'd been – to a minor degree – short with her. She was laughing and lying on the grass, wriggling like a puppy, playing a game that he didn't have time for.

‘Emily! I have to work. For God's sake!'

I'd never shouted at her.

Older man in a bourgeois overcoat, screaming at a sweet, sweet girl, killing her smile.

I couldn't seem to bring it back right after that and I tried.

I did.

‘No, Emily, sweetheart. I'm all messed up. I messed up. I promise. Forget what I said. I'll stay here. If you want me to. I'll do whatever you want.' His clumsy, pathetic gestures wagging and losing themselves in the air ahead of him. ‘Baby. I'm sorry. I really am . . .' He wanted to cry for her, but couldn't and knew his face was somehow outwith his control and frightening to her. She fluttered to her feet, harm apparent everywhere, and started out for the road without him. He didn't try to touch her in case he did more harm.

And the brothers and sisters might have pitched in and stopped me if I laid hands on her – nothing more judgemental than a revolutionary. They despised me.

But I beat them to it.

‘Let me, please let me be with you.' Remembering he'd said this as he slipped the key card into the lock of their first hotel room. It was a revelation – how abject he had sounded. ‘Emily.' Not as abject as today. ‘Christ, please.' The fracture in his voice presumably what slowed her and let him reach and hold and find and kiss her better, surely better.

The comrades approved. Solidarity giving rise to love.

Love.

Which was what you would battle to save, and Mark didn't love the unfriendly world, or impractical ideas, or people, he loved Emily. He had marched for Emily and she had made it beautiful for him and he should let go and appreciate that.

And I did. I partly marched again and partly strolled with her back west until the demonstrators coalesced into a stolid mass: rumours and shifting and then cheers.

I stood with everybody else, I stood with Emily – got to keep Emily – got to keep Emily safe – and I watched a bunch of arseholes climbing the front of Fortnum's and I cheered.

They were up there with coloured chalk for scrawling and a painted bed sheet for unfurling – more cheers – and I wouldn't have put it past them to stage some agitprop on the shop's canopy instead of simply swanning about while the staff peered out through the windows, amused and curious.

There were rumours – correct – of others storming the entrance.

Storming a tea room.

A – rumours again – non-tax-paying tea room.

Barging inside a posh tea room while badly dressed and singing some songs. Anarchists in the queen's grocer's.

A redefinition of storming.

Emily had cheered, too, and made Mark call out louder until he could feel her voice in his chest. He raised his hands above the press of bodies as apparently most people had – taking pictures full of raised hands holding cameras to take pictures – and a kid was writing
TORY SCUM
on Fortnum's wall in what was pretty close to the store's famous shade of green.

I did wonder if that was intentional.

Eventually Mark slipped round to Emily's back, embraced her until she was snug and they fitted and were in triumph.

More cheers.

Mark preferred not to wonder why the Met hadn't closed and confined the whole pack of them. The marchers were effectively kettling themselves. The police he'd seen along the route had been chatting in gaggles, lounging, steadily denying they could exert any kind of control. A paint-cannon had fired in the distance throughout the morning – a low threat of sound – windows had been broken, landmarks were defaced with no reaction.

Mark tried not to guess that night would fall on indulged transgression with no good marching comrades left between it and a hard reassertion of the law.

It would be dreadful.

He wanted to bring Emily into the office and write with her there – she'd be out of harm's way and close and fine – but he wouldn't have got down a word with her about, he had to be realistic. And every passing bastard would have wanted to hear who she was.

I wasn't ashamed of her.

She'd checked in the day before looking like an upmarket secretary – I'd thought that would play well – but when she left the hotel in the morning she was dressed for the demo: fatigues and boots and an ethnic hat – crazy tweed jacket. But it only seemed crazy because it was so big – because it was mine.

Beautiful baby.

On both days.

Sexy.

She'd have knocked the office over and I'd have adored it.

In theory.

‘Baby, sweet baby, though. I've gotta go.' His syllables against her neck, being sweet as he could to match her sweet. ‘Come with me as far as the Underground. Would you?'

‘Don't we have some more time?'

‘I can't. Work.'

‘I could sit in your office while you work.' She was able to say this, because she'd been close enough to hear his thinking. Naturally.

He'd kept his plans vague and persuaded her to edge herself free with him and to pick their way, slower and slower, until they found an operational and fairly uncrowded Tube station. Covent Garden again. ‘I don't want to leave you, sweetheart. Emily. I don't want to. You're my wife. It's killing me.' At the top of the stairs, he'd ricocheted through his goodbye. ‘I'll make it better. Soon. I'll make us all better, just fine.' He'd spoken unwisely.

Holding her head – everything she thought of me – between my hands.

The touch spoke in my palms for hours afterwards. She was there, she was sheathed between the tendons. It made me clumsy. For five- and ten-minute spaces I couldn't type.

By the time he'd hit his deadline, the predictable spasms of violence were breaking out on the streets – resistance against resistance – and he could end the article with a riff on youthful altruism versus betrayal, anger and nihilism and the British tradition of blahblahblah. He'd let the newsier pieces do the rest.

The risk of Emily reading it was low, but I could still feel her being somewhere and frowning at me.

It was a grim trip home – cab driver full of aggressive certainties. Then he'd slipped in beside Pauline after an arduous shower. She mumbled and turned, became still.

He'd wanted to sleep for a decade.

Or just until Monday and then call Emily and work out how to do this again.

He'd left his clothes in a heap by the bedside cabinet.

In my dreams, I unreeled the day, had it again. I sat folded behind Emily in the bath and washing her hair. I made sure the soap didn't get in her eyes.

When Pauline rattled him awake, he struggled to surface.

And I was angry.

I'd been awake for thirty-six hours, high-profile piece to finish under the gun, on my feet, on my back, on my mind – too much for a Burroughs boy.

I was very angry.

And having this knowledge that sometimes a sweet thing can be exhausting.

I was outraged.

Pauline had waited until Mark had opened his eyes.

Then she'd hit him.

A slap.

Just one.

Passed me my phone, which I hadn't turned off to preserve my privacy and hadn't tucked away.

I'd been too tired to be sensible.

Only that once.

Which was enough.

More than enough.

As he took the phone from Pauline, he'd understood who would be calling.

Emily.

Very drunk.

Emily.

Very explicit and drunk.

Emily.

In hospital for reasons she couldn't make plain.

Emily.

She couldn't make much plain.

Emily.

She told me she loved me.

Emily.

Almost inaudible.

Emily.

She told me she wanted to be my wife now.

Emily.

Almost inaudible.

Emily.

I couldn't go and get her.

Emily.

Almost inaudible.

Emily.

I couldn't do what she wanted.

Emily.

Almost inaudible.

Emily.

I couldn't explain.

Emily.

Almost inaudible.

Emily.

She ought to have understood.

Emily.

Almost inaudible.

Emily.

I'd asked her to be my sober girl and she'd let me down.

Emily.

She'd let me down very badly.

Emily.

Almost inaudible.

Emily.

It was funny the way he could hear it all more clearly now – remembering on a hopeless railway platform and too late.