Remember Me... (65 page)

Joe felt that he had walked into a revivalist meeting. A vivid and noisy congregation of the faithful was gathered together waiting to hear the word. Issues which had once been alive to Joe were here again, full on, arguments over a social structure and a political system which could be changed and for the better and by them in this large committee room, windowed onto the Thames, about to be addressed by a Labour Cabinet minister.

Joe let much of it go over his head. He was more absorbed by the congregation than the preacher. Besides the shock of the normal winded him. These were the people he would have been part of had he stayed working full time in television. They were a new battalion, largely, he would guess, grammar-school-educated, like himself, many of them first-generation university graduates, scholarship produce delivered by enabling Acts of Parliament in the 1940s, and now bound together by the generational kinship David had spoken of.

They were young adults confident in their new identity and in the medium to which they gave their best energies and which increasingly was to give them an influence beyond their traditional class reach. But most of all, Joe thought, they were young people who saw themselves on a mission to unleash their high-mindedness through the new technology. It was as if he had opened a door in space and discovered a parallel universe which was also his own. These were his lot. It was a revelation and for a few moments he had no fear, no panic, no vertigo.

There was polite applause for the Cabinet minister which segued into a warm growl of expectation as Peter got up to speak. His friend was a fine orator, Joe thought, with something Gladstonian about his delivery. The Oxford Union had drilled Peter in the ways of parliamentary discourse but it was the man's own passion which gave the words their authority; and the laugh, even the giggle, which now and then both punctuated the speech and punctured any pomposity.

Peter's background was all but identical to that of Joe himself and he made a note to himself to write the outline of a novel in which someone like Peter would seize the opportunity, get onto the political ladder and slash and struggle his way to the top, to be Prime Minister and a Prime Minister whose ‘peasant' past would never be abandoned. Loyalty to the past would be the charge to all his policies. Peter, he fantasised, was the very man to change a country so painfully uprooted from Empire and still bound in all the entanglements of increasingly redundant traditions. As he thought of the novel Joe smiled; it was at that moment, she said later, when she had first noticed him ‘smiling to himself'.

‘What we are here for may seem to some of small concern,' Peter began quietly. ‘Those who rule over us want the status quo to continue in television as in so much else. They are the status quo. They want us to be grateful and obedient and uncomplaining and the greatest of these three is uncomplaining.'

As Peter swept on, Joe felt both impressed and daunted. How could you have the confidence to stand up and talk so fluently without notes to so many of your contemporaries, the sharpest judges? Peter seemed to have a control over a situation which would have been utterly impossible for Joe. He envied Peter's fluency. He flinched at the thought of himself being pressed into such service. Yet not long
ago he could have made something of a fist of it. Again he saw the gap he had let grow between his immolated self and the world as it was for his lot.

‘But television will not play their game. Because there's money in television. Because in its short life television has become the constituency of the people of this country and not the other way round. Because television is a truly democratic medium. And because people like you want to use television to make trouble for the powers that be and for the powers that should not be. We want to make the sort of trouble that brings about change and improvement to replace the change and decay we see around us now.'

Peter's voice rose; his eyes glittered. He laughed. ‘Don't worry. No one is asking you to fight on the beaches. In the streets? Well. Demonstrate at least. Because they do not realise what you instinctively realise which is that the medium will not be a domestic pet any more. It is on the way to becoming a monster. A money-making monster and also a monster of hidden and not so hidden propaganda. All of us here want it to be another sort of monster. Our monster. A monstrous regiment for good. And for that we need the television channels old and potentially new to serve the Public Interest.

‘That is why we are all here this evening. That is why we will press this government and future governments to set up a Royal Commission. That is why we will lobby and pester and argue our case. Those of us who make the programmes and who have the best interests of the viewers at heart will have our voices heard and if we are resolute and if we do not give in, our voices will prevail.'

Later in St Stephen's Tavern, there was an unattractive and long ringing sound. ‘That's a division bell,' said Peter, rather proudly. ‘The MPs can be drinking here and the bell goes for a vote and they can be in the lobbies within the allotted time.'

‘Division Bell,'
said Joe. ‘Not a bad title.'

‘I'm surprised there's nobody from Parliament I know in here.' Peter was a little disappointed. St Stephen's Tavern was not living up to expectations.

‘I'm not surprised with your gang here. They've probably scared them off.'

‘You are looking,' said Peter, gazing around with affection at the vivacious clusters of young media men and women raising the conversation in the pub towards a pitch of unintelligibility, ‘at the vanguard of a new Britain.'

‘What?'

‘Just you wait,' he said. ‘If you'd stayed in television you would feel it in your bones as I do. Hello!' He waved across the room and followed the wave. ‘Back in a minute.'

His departure was too abrupt. Joe had, even in that brief time, become too dependent on his friend. Abandoned he felt giddy. But he could not, he would not let himself down. He felt suddenly physically feeble. The rapid transition unnerved him.

He steadied himself against the bar and sipped at the pint of bitter. The flush of engagement he had felt in the committee room had already waned and without Peter he found the crowd in the big bar, the unclouded faces and the wall of noise, intimidating. He focused on memorising the new poem. ‘How do you know that the pilgrims track,/Along the belting zodiac . . .'

‘What were you smiling about?'

‘Was I?'

‘Not now. You're just muttering to yourself now. Back in the meeting. Before Peter spoke. You just sat there with a grin on your face.'

Joe tried to remember. He had begun to sink back into the well of himself and this interruption on top of the ever-increasing volume of the ‘vanguard of a new Britain' disturbed him.

‘It doesn't matter,' she said. ‘I'm Helen, one of Peter's researchers. I know who you are. Peter talks about you.'

Joe held out his hand. The hand that took it was short but broad and strong. The handshake was a moment of pause. The eyes that met his were blue-grey, beautiful and calm. Her skin had the fair complexion that went with her blonde Anglo-Saxon hair, worn loose and long and flung back over her shoulders. Her mouth was entirely sensuous, curved like a bow, unsettling, he thought, until there came that open smile of unthreatening warmth and confident companionability. She was dressed in what Joe thought rather a student hippie fashion, a puff-sleeved cream blouse, a fawn waistcoat, a short fawn skirt, knee-length
shiny brown boots. Later she would put on a white wide-brimmed hat; the hat suited her, and gave the outfit a charge: her own style.

‘I saw your film,' she said. ‘Not the Elizabeth one. I haven't caught up with that. The Nijinsky. When I was at school. Our music teacher used to take us to the ballet. I thought it was terrific. Especially the slow motion.'

I must go now, he thought.

‘What are you researching?'

‘I'm trying to set up a programme about different types of protest,' she said, frowning. ‘The sit-ins, the marches, the usual picketing stuff, even letters to the editor signed by dozens. To be honest I'm not getting very far. There's not very much new except maybe the sit-ins.'

‘Would you like a drink?'

‘No, thanks. I've got one over there with my friends. Would you like to meet them?'

‘Yes . . . but not now if you don't mind. I'm late home already.' She nodded, smiled and turned away. He watched her go and wished he had taken up her invitation.

He sought out Peter.

‘I must go. It's been terrific.' He heard an echo of Helen's voice, the use of that word.

‘A few of us are meeting at my place on Saturday morning to make placards for Sunday's women's march. It won't be a big turn-out so it's important we get as many people as possible.'

‘I'll try.'

‘Do.' Peter escorted him towards the door. ‘It's good to see you again. We'd lost touch.' Peter nodded at Helen's group. ‘All the gang will be there.' They were on the pavement. ‘How's Natasha?'

‘Fine.'

‘I liked her novel very much. You're quite a cottage industry.'

‘I suppose we are.'

‘Don't forget us in the real world. And Natasha's very welcome, of course.'

‘I'll see . . . Thanks again.'

Peter went back into the fray, leaving Joe at once relieved and vulnerable. All pressure unnerved him now. He decided to walk along
the Embankment to Charing Cross. He could catch the tube directly to Belsize Park. He had stopped going to Hampstead underground. There were fewer steps at Belsize Park. The walk by the river should steady him for the tube.

So she thought that the Nijinsky was ‘terrific'.

‘Have you always been useless?' she asked.

Joe looked up. He was sitting on the floor leaning against the wall watching Peter's flat turn into a domestic factory dedicated to the artefacts of protest.

Helen was holding the two placards he had worked on. One had already come loose from its nails, on the other the slogan was daubed so ineptly that ‘Equal Pay' had become ‘Equal Pa'.

‘I was never any good at carpentry.'

‘OK. But what about this?'

‘Or art.'

‘Most of the paint is on your pullover.'

‘It's old. I took precautions.'

‘Can you make tea?'

‘Definitely.'

‘We're all parched,' she said, and swung her head in the direction of the kitchen. ‘You aren't useless on purpose, are you?'

‘Certainly not!'

‘That's all right then.' She smiled and the smile activated him. He stood up and made for the kitchen, glad to be out of the mêlée.

After the initial fun of the start of the march, he began to look around him. They were walking through the City of London. Helen was holding her placard and, on command, joined in the chants of defiance which pealed through the empty City streets and rang around the empty offices. A few policemen walked grumpily alongside the marchers.

‘You don't look up enough in a city, do you?' he said. ‘Of course you don't often get the chance to walk down the middle of the road in broad daylight. But there are all sorts of styles and curiosities up there. Look at what they've done to that bank. It's just a bank but they obviously felt
they had to give it authority by way of neo-classical architecture; why did that make it a better bank? I suppose it proved they had good taste and if they had good taste in one matter . . .'

‘What do we want?' yelled someone at the front.

‘Equal pay!' the marchers yelled back.

‘When do we want it?'

‘Now!
'

Helen raised her placard and shook it at the bank.

‘Joe,' she said, ‘we're supposed to be on a march. You're embarrassing.'

‘I'm sorry. Really. I'll shut up.'

‘You don't have to shut up.'

‘I'll join in the chants.'

‘They're not chants.'

‘I'll shut up.'

‘Don't do that,' she said, and took his arm.

‘OK.' Joe felt a rush of self-consciousness and said, stiffly, ‘Do these demonstrations do any good? I mean equal pay's so obvious, can't it just be discussed and agreed?'

‘There have been no advances in this country without protests.'

He nodded: she looked even better when she was serious.

‘What do we want?'

‘Equal pay!'

‘When do we want it?'

‘
Now!
'

‘You joined in,' she said, and laughed.

‘I'm a lifelong feminist,' he said. ‘Ask my mother if you don't believe me. Of course the word was not invented then, but words often arrive rather late for the purpose. Some never arrive.'

‘What
are
you talking about?'

‘The real thing,' said Joe, ‘ask Peter.'

‘Peter never told us you were a bit bonkers. Ask your
mother
?'

Joe liked that. It was as if he had been handed a safety cushion. There was something cushioning about her lips. She was the real world.

Natasha had been pleased to see Joseph go off with Peter and take part in the march. It gave her two days in Kew. She stayed overnight on
the Saturday and Joseph came down to join her and entertained them with stories of placards and the march in prospect and Peter's speech. He did not mention Helen. Natasha was happy to be with their old friends, old times, Joseph more in command of himself, talkative, funny. They slept together more closely that night than on any night for months.

It seemed to have a course ordained. There was no straining. There was another march but mostly it was evening meetings with varying fractions of the gang. There was the worst meal Joe was ever to have in his life at an Italian restaurant in Westbourne Grove; a night in a traditional jazz pub where conversation was mime and semaphore; a couple of other evenings in pubs in and around Soho. It was in the Marquis of Granby, a rather plush-red-velvet pub in Cambridge Circus, in which they found themselves the last of the pack and had a quiet half for the road. Afterwards they walked towards Leicester Square. Joe decided he could not go down into the underground with Helen watching him so he hailed a taxi and he took her to her flat in Kilburn, a flat she shared with two other researchers. Her bedroom, he thought, was a cross between a library and a sitting room; the bed was pushed tight into a corner and covered with cushions to double as a settee.