The Summer Before the Dark (29 page)

We don’t want Charity, We Want Work. Give Us Work. Give Us Our Rights, Work and Food
.

A man with a gaunt face walked out from the crowd of people and posters and began to make a speech to the sightseers. “As long as we starve quietly behind four walls, that’s all right, isn’t it? You don’t mind that! But here we are, and here we are going to stay.”

Two policemen jumped from a panda car, shutting the doors smartly behind them. They crossed to the orator and began shaking their heads and waving their fingers like nurses to a naughty child: it seemed that speeches were out of order.

But the man leaped onto the shoulders of two of his friends who raised their hands to support him as he straddled there: for a moment it looked as if this were the beginning of some circus act—a human pyramid. He shouted,
“Here we are. And we shall starve publicly, not out of sight. To the death, if need be. That is why we have come. We shall starve ourselves to death where you can see us doing it.”

The policemen stood irresolutely side by side, looking up at the orator. Their personal sympathies were entirely with the demonstrators: they kept sending glances and smiles into the crowd to say this.

A television van stopped. Men were leaping out of it and running across the road amongst the traffic, holding their cameras in front of them. That evening’s news was in the process of being manufactured.

“They surely aren’t going to be allowed to stay there, are they?” demanded Maureen. She sounded furious, as if she wanted to sweep the demonstrators out of sight, or to have the police do it for her. Now her face had a sullen reddened look; she was crying; tears flooded over the swollen surfaces of her cheeks. Her tears pleased Philip. She knew this and struggled with herself. The more she fought what she felt—whatever that was, mostly rage from the look of it—the more she weltered in emotion. But now it seemed as if Philip had had enough, and he turned the car away from the Embankment and began driving them home.

Maureen turned her shoulder to him and stared out of a window where now there was not a vestige of hunger or similar problems. Philip was smiling. He seemed to feel himself that this was not an admirable reaction, but each time he glanced at Maureen he could not help himself: the victorious smile appeared again and he had to struggle to banish it.

“Very well,” said Kate. “Now tell us what you propose to do about it all.”

“Oh don’t be so silly, Kate, you can see he has no idea, no more than anyone else.”

“We shall put this country first, for a change.”

“Oh how can you be so
feeble?”

This word got to him, and he retorted shrilly, “We shall know how to act, you’ll see.”

“It’s incredible,” said Maureen, laughing, crying, banging her fist on the back of the seat—she looked demented: “The things he says, it’s incredible. Unbelievable. But you do say them, Philip. All of you, it’s not only you. You all say such bloody silly things. I really can’t believe you are serious.”

Said Kate the oil-pourer, the balancer, the all-purpose family comforter, “You never actually say anything concrete, Philip, that’s what’s upsetting Maureen.”

“Well of course he doesn’t,” screamed Maureen. “You shitty idiot,” she yelled at him. “Can’t you see what is in front of your eyes? No you can’t. Of course not.”

“We must put our own house in order,” said Philip promptly, and with decision.

It was clear that these two would continue, one hysterical, one woodenly confident, as long as they were together; able to talk only in windscreen sticker phrases or in incoherences.

But luckily they had reached the tree-lined avenue, the canal with its pleasure boats, Maureen’s flat.

He stopped. “I’m not going to get out,” he said. Maureen got out. Kate followed. Maureen stood looking helplessly at Philip, who was staring at her. Waves of attraction were washing back and forth. Then Maureen said, “Oh God
damn
it,” and ran indoors, stumbling on high heels.

“Goodbye, Mrs. Brown,” said Philip, stiff, correct, triumphant; and drove off.

Inside Maureen had switched on the television. Together they waited for the news. There was another earthquake in Turkey. A conference about the disposal of atomic wastes. A report about the deliberations of a committee of Global Food, in Chile. Then a brief item about the demonstration on the Embankment. The camera swept down the lines, but rather fast, showing the banners and placards, lingering on:
You Don’t Mind If We Starve Out of Sight Where You Can’t See Us
. A van was serving soup and bread to the demonstrators. An orator—the same man with the gaunt angry face—was shouting, “Don’t take it, don’t—it’s to keep us quiet, that’s all.” But nuns were bending over children who were pushed into orderly queues by their parents, handing out plastic cups of soup, and bread. Another van appeared on the scene: a Government Relief Van. The groups of people were melting and re-forming, making queues for the food. The orator was led away by two policemen, a gentle arrest, the camera showed the compassionate faces of the police, who pinned the man’s arms back, while he shouted, “Starve—stick it out—it’s better to stick it out and starve here in the open, instead of like animals behind shut doors.…” The police helped him up the steps into their van, the door closed and the van drove off.

“And now the weather report …”

As soon as the news was over Maureen bathed, and changed into a severe dress in dark-brown denim—the female of Philip’s outfit. She stood looking at herself in the hall mirror, then said to Kate, “I want a uniform, don’t I? I’m probably longing for one. Well, I’m not going to!” She whirled off to the bedroom, and came out in an assortment of clothes and jewellery, put on at random. She said to Kate, “I’ll cook you supper.”

It was a couple of hours before she called Kate into
the kitchen, where she had prepared artichoke hearts and avocado as an hors d’oeuvre, then stuffed veal and spinach, then a salad, cheese, a pudding. She had gone to buy the ingredients, taking a taxi down to a shop that was open, had spent a lot of money. And there was some hock, which she had chilled.

This meal the two women ate at leisure, thinking of the people down on the Embankment, and the millions they represented.

Next day Maureen said she wanted to buy a dress: she had clothes in heaps all over her room. She went out behind heavy dark glasses, in search of a fresh identity, or mask. Or uniform? She could come back as anything at all; she might just as well be wearing a nun’s habit as a belly dancer’s … envy, oh yes, this was envy all right. Maureen could choose to dress as a gipsy or as a young boy or a matron in the course of a day: it was some kind of freedom. Would Maureen have sat for a year on a verandah playing the part of haltered Mediterranean woman with grandfather as a loving tyrant and an old woman as a duenna, even as a tactful submission to others, or as a half joke?—which had turned out to be no joke at all, for hadn’t her life ever since—Kate’s—proved that? No Maureen would not, she could not; she had gone beyond even the pretence of submission; her nature, what she was, would forbid it. That was true? Really? When she wore a 1930’s black lace dinner dress off a barrow, split to the waist at the back, with red lips and curls, or a Jane Austen morning dress with high tight sleeves she could hardly move in, was that not out of nostalgia? If so, it was not for more than an evening, half a day. So if the girl was putting on the clothes of the circumscribed women of the past, out of need to be like them—because being herself
was too much of a strain?—then it was never for long, and she indulged another change of mood. Why did she, Kate, use words like
indulged:
because for years her own fantasies had had to be muted to what the family could stand in her? There was nothing in the world to stop her going out now, and buying her fantasies, and wearing them here, in Maureen’s flat. She decided that this was what she would do.

Down the street a corner block was being lifted to the sky in tall flats. The bottom part of this building was complete: it fitted exactly into its allotted area, with no space left over. For five or so floors it was as it would go on, save that the windows had scrawls of chalk on them. Then began disorder: it was as if the building at that point had been broken off. High in the air men walked on planks, dangled buckets, wielded trowels, manipulated cranes. Men were working, too, at ground level, preparing what was to be hoisted aloft. Kate realised that she was standing still, staring; had been for some minutes. The men took no notice of her.

The fact that they didn’t suddenly made her angry. She walked away out of sight, and there, took off her jacket—Maureen’s—showing her fitting dark dress. She tied her hair dramatically with a scarf. Then she strolled back in front of the workmen, hips conscious of themselves. A storm of whistles, calls, invitations. Out of sight the other way, she made her small transformation and walked back again: the men glanced at her, did not see her. She was trembling with rage: it was a rage, it seemed to her, that she had been suppressing for a lifetime. And it was a front for worse, a misery that she did not want to answer, for it was saying again and again: This is what you have been doing for years and years and years.

She made the transit again, as a sex object, and saw that a girl dressed like a Dutch doll stood on a corner opposite, watching. Full yellow skirts, a tight red jacket, hair in yellow curls, a bright pink patch on either cheek, wide blue eyes.

Kate arrived beside Maureen and said, “And that’s what it is all worth.”

Maureen deliberately batted her heavy black lashes up and down on her cheek and ran the gauntlet while the men howled and whistled. On the other side, out of sight of Kate, she waited. Kate made the journey as an invisible. She noted that as she did so, she was again filled with a need to pull up her skirts and show them her backside, as the Czech women had done to insult the Russian troops when they invaded; she would have liked to blow snot into their faces, or pee, publicly, like a cow, in front of them. All this had nothing to do with what she was thinking, which were her usual thoughts of carefully measured compassion for men who did that kind of work, and had to be so glad to get it; she was thinking, too, that an animal presenting its backside to another offered subservience, defeat, obeisance: which was probably what the Czech women were doing, not knowing that they did: they had been saying in effect, It is all too much for us?

Maureen, seeing her face, took her arm: it was trembling. Maureen said in a tentative, humorous rebuke, “Oh don’t, don’t take on like that, don’t do that, it’s not like you.”

“Isn’t it? That’s what it is all worth. That’s all. Years and years and years of it.”

They went back to the flat. Maureen offered tea, but Kate shook her head, and hastened to her small cold room under the earth, got herself under many covers and lay
huddled up in silence, facing the wall. She slept and dreamed, but did not reach the dream of the seal, the dream was all of Maureen, the bright yellow bird who was in a cage singing No, no, no,
no
.

It was dark when she woke. The lights were on all over the flat. Maureen sat in her kitchen, no longer a doll, but a little girl in an exquisite Victorian nightdress that had many tucks, flounces, lace, embroidery. She was eating cornflakes and cream. She mixed Kate a plate of this without talking.

Later they went to Maureen’s room, and Maureen put on her record player, and dimmed the sound for Kate’s sake. They sat on the cushions, and Maureen put bright pink paint on her toenails and fingernails. Kate drank a little wine; Maureen smoked a little marihuana, and they did nothing. It seemed as if they were waiting. For Kate to finish her dream?

The days began to pass much faster, one after another, all alike. Across London, Kate’s home was open again, her family back in it,
her
life was going on: but she was not there. As they had done so often to her, she sent them brief notes: “Terribly sorry, very busy, will let you know before I arrive.” And, once a telegram: “Having a marvellous time. See you soon.” She felt childish and spiteful when she sent off these messages, but it was something she had to do.

The telephone had almost stopped ringing. The doorbell, however, rang a lot. Once a young man arrived on the doorstep just as Maureen was going out, and was told, “Sorry Stanley, come back another time, I just want to get on with something.”

Maureen talked about Stanley. She classified him with Philip and William, rather than with Jerry: he worked in
some organisation to do with the poor and ill-housed, he was left-wing in the old fashion, which now seemed so irrelevant, he would probably want to marry Maureen, if she gave him time to see the attractions of the idea. They had slept together, satisfactorily. But she was not in love.

“What is wrong with me? What is it? It’s just that I feel all the time that it is so damned
irrelevant
. I mean all the welfare work, the rescuing of humanity—all that. I know I am heartless. I am wicked. I’ve been told often enough. But it’s no good, I can’t feel that it is important. William
still
feels obligated to the tenants—not that there are many, but what there are. He dishes out money to charities. And there’s Philip—well, he’ll be breaking eggs, if he hasn’t started already, but how can he believe in it, how can he?
I
think he’s mad, but perhaps I am. Stanley. He’s the best of them, from the work point of view. He does good. All the time. But when I am with him I think: That isn’t the point, it isn’t the point, it
isn’t
. So all right, you get three hundred people housed … and meanwhile? He can’t see that at all, and probably he’s right? What shall I do Kate? Why am I like this? Philip says it is because I am an upper-class bitch and I was brought up to think of no one but myself. But that isn’t true. I spent a whole year working with Stanley—did you know that? Well, I did. I shared a filthy little flat with five other people and we worked day and night getting poor people under roofs. All the time I was thinking, But that isn’t the point. What
is?”