Miss Carter's War Page 28

  The huge crowd was trying to stop the bus carrying the non-striking workers into the building, so that they could put their side of the argument. But the police would not let the pickets get near enough to talk.

  At first there was friendly banter with some of the police, who were also fighting for a wage increase. But their friendliness cooled when Arthur Scargill arrived with his miners. A policeman with a loudhailer started ordering people to clear the road.

  ‘They’ll never forgive them for winning at Saltley Gate,’ said Tony.

  A very large man grabbed the megaphone from the policeman and said, ‘Me and my comrades built the bloody roads. I’m not going to be ordered off ’em by you, matey.’

  He was backed by an aggressively shouting group with a banner declaring themselves the Workers’ Revolutionary Party.

  ‘They’re just here to make trouble,’ snarled Tony. ‘Middle-class wankers, the lot of them.’

  Marguerite joined the women in the front when she saw one being roughly dragged away by a policeman.

  ‘We have a legal right to picket,’ she protested.

  ‘But not to obstruct the highway.’

  The policeman pushed Marguerite away so violently that she fell to the ground. The mood was changing. The police were manhandling the women strikers, which incited their male supporters to attack them. Suddenly the pent-up fury of the last eighteen months’ battle exploded in a vicious fight between the police and the pickets. Men were shouting, women screaming. Marguerite instinctively started to defend the women, using techniques she had learnt long ago.

  Grabbing her round the waist Tony shouted, ‘For God’s sake, Marguerite. You’ll kill somebody.’

  Appalled, she let go of a shocked policeman whom she had in a choke-hold and gasped, ‘Sorry,’ as Tony thrust her away through the battling crowd. They passed a policeman lying on the ground with blood streaming from his head and a broken bottle beside him.

  A boy in jeans stood by the unconscious man yelling, ‘Serves you right, you fucking pig,’ before being dragged away by his hair into a waiting police van. The police were now wielding batons and seemed intent on injuring people.

  Marguerite and Tony joined a huddle clinging to each other in one of the small front gardens of the street.

  Marguerite was bewildered.

  ‘What’s going on? Why are the police being like this?’

  A man in a pinstriped suit said, ‘This is out of order. The police are definitely using undue force.’

  A grey-haired woman, her coat-sleeve torn in the scrum, said, ‘These are not your usual coppers. They’re a squad called the Special Patrol Group formed to control public order. They’re thugs.’

  Tony was incensed.

  ‘But we’re not bloody terrorists.’

  The woman replied, ‘You don’t have to be. Trust me . . .’

  Marguerite shouted, hoping the police would hear, ‘But they’re our fellow countrymen. Why behave with such venom?’

  Tony took her hand and said quietly, ‘Why did you?’

  Jacob and she are amongst the next four to be herded out by the Milice to be shot. Jacob hurls her in front of him through the barn door.

  ‘Vite. Tu t’enfuis. Je te suivrai. Merde, ma chérie.’

  She runs. The shots, the shouts, she turns her head to see Jacob weaving from side to side behind her, deliberately taking the bullets to shield her. She reaches the trees, turns to see him writhing, juddering on the ground. One hand indicating ‘Go’. If she goes back his absurd bravery will be in vain. So she stumbles on, gasping, sobbing, cursing, down into the ravine and up the other side, eventually losing her pursuers and collapsing under a tree in a paroxysm of rage and hatred. Never again would she run away. She would confront brutality with all her might to avenge the deaths of her comrades and Jacob’s sacrifice for her.

  The police were arresting numerous people, but the situation seemed out of control.

  ‘They look as if they’re going to seal the road off,’ Tony said. ‘Let’s get out or we’ll be trapped in this.’

  They managed to force their way through a phalanx of police and reach the tube along with other shocked protesters.

  When they got home a frail Donald poured them brandies, as they sat trying to make sense of what had happened.

  Tony said, ‘Remember it was only a small minority making trouble. The vast majority were supporting some Asian women in a just cause. That’s got to be good.’

  ‘Yes, but that small minority of hotheads in the police and the crowd were violent and out of control enough to destroy the whole thing, Tony.’

  He caught her eye.

  ‘Yes, I know, me too. I don’t exclude myself. I hate how I reacted. But I was so angry. Something’s changed, Tony. I remember you telling me that society was kinder. Not any more. Not today.’

  Donald refilled their glasses.

  ‘Look at you two. You’ll be saying “Young people are not like they used to be in my day” in a minute.’

  They were silent. Then almost in unison Marguerite and Tony said, ‘Well, they’re not.’

  Donald roared with laughter.

  Tony continued, ‘They have no values. They don’t care.’

  ‘What about Rock against Racism? Thousands of kids standing up to racist bullies.’

  Tony stared into his glass. ‘They’re just going to a lot of free concerts.’

  ‘Oh, you miserable old git. Drink your brandy and cheer up. This was obviously a horrid experience for you both, but people are basically lovely. It’s not the end of society as we know it just because a few hooligans had a punch-up.’

  Tony stood up and hugged Donald.

  ‘What would I do without you, my little Mary Sunshine?’

  Back in her flat, Marguerite wished she had someone to comfort her. She lay in bed, rigid and open-eyed, trying to understand the violence in herself, and others. Like Miss Fryer and poor lost Bert, she was finding some changes difficult to comprehend. That hatred today, the hell of the Bull Ring. Thirty years ago the girls at Dartford County Grammar had been avid to learn, they wanted to excel, to do something with their lives, despite, or perhaps because of, all the odds being against them; her present pupils seemed to regard being clever and working hard as ‘uncool’. But so had Elsie.

  Thinking of Elsie’s ability to rise above disaster uplifted Marguerite and restored her faith. She had respected Chapple’s insistence on not assisting Elsie to chart her future, but she hoped she would pursue the possibility of attending Ruskin College and belatedly enjoy the development of her excellent brain. She had heard nothing from her for several weeks. Maybe this was a good sign, that, with the support of her group, she was sorting out her life. But the next morning there came a phone call.

  ‘Miss Carter, you’ve got to help.’

  Elsie’s voice on the phone was hysterical.

  ‘Elsie, I was thinking of you last night. I was happy for you. Please, please don’t tell me you’ve relapsed.’

  ‘No, it’s the Centre. They’re closing it down.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘That inspection. Those two arseholes that came round and asked stupid, snotty questions. They’ve told a lot of lies and refused the funding, so we have to close.’

  When Marguerite arrived the whole community of CURE were gathered in the main hall, some on chairs, some on the floor. They were listening desperately to Peter, believing that he could solve this problem, as he always did, with reason and calm. Peter was doing his best to reassure them that they could keep in touch with him and the rest of the staff but the terror in their eyes at the thought of being abandoned by the those who had given them hope and security was devastating. The word ‘why’ filled the room.

  Marguerite read the report with growing disbelief. It was Risinghill School all over again. The two men who conducted the inspection were insultingly dismissive of Peter, using the word ‘charismatic’ as an insult, suggesting that it blinded people to hi
s manifold supposed crimes. One of the inspectors ran a residential clinic along strict conventional psychiatric lines, and was obviously appalled by CURE’s lack of discipline and conformity.

  ‘It didn’t help when they discovered I’d once been a member of the Communist Party,’ Dr Chapple laughed. ‘That frightened them to death, then when I said I’d ceased to be a member after the tanks went into Budapest, they seemed to regard me as some sort of deserter, which was worse.’

  Peter tried to make them laugh when he read out one passage.

  ‘Listen to how they describe you. It will make you proud. “The group presented as being articulate, pseudo-intellectual, cohesive, anti-establishment, anti-psychiatry, anti-everything except each other.” I think we can safely say they got that right. We are out of the norm, it’s true. But if we are judged unorthodox, so what. What matters is that our treatment is successful. Looking round at you all I can see that it has been. And promise me that you will continue to be there for each other and anti-bullshit when you leave this place.’

  Several of the patients were openly weeping. Elsie had her arms tightly folded. Chapple’s mouth was set in a fixed grin but his eyes were angry as he comforted them. Several started wrecking the place, breaking windows and kicking down doors, and no one stopped them. Marguerite watched in disbelief as another visionary project was falling apart, thanks to two hidebound, blind idiots, who had, judging by the report, set out to destroy something they could not begin to understand. She marvelled that the narrow-minded bigots always seemed to win.

  Elsie came towards her.

  ‘I’m off, Miss Carter, I can’t bear this.’

  Marguerite gripped her by the shoulders.

  ‘Yes, you can, Elsie. You must. You must prove that Peter’s work was worthwhile. Please don’t betray him. Don’t fall back.’

  ‘I’ll be all right. I’ve just got to get out of here. It’s doing my head in.’

  ‘Elsie, come and stay with me.’

  ‘No. I’ve got to do this on my own. Don’t worry about me. I’m a survivor. I’ll show the bastards. Oh, Miss Carter, look at him.’

  They both looked over to where Dr Chapple was embracing and talking intently to a succession of patients.

  ‘It’s so unjust. He saved my life.’

  They watched in silence for a while.

  ‘I could do that line better now,’ Elsie said.

  ‘What do you mean, Elsie?’

  ‘That line at the end of Saint Joan. “O God, that madest this beautiful earth, when will it be ready to receive Thy saints? How long, O Lord, how long?’’ ’

  Elsie’s ravaged face was momentarily that of the radiant fifteen-year old girl. But a second later it faded as she snarled,

  ‘Shits, all of them shits.’

  She kissed Marguerite, and kicked her way out of the front door, swinging on its broken hinges.

  Chapter 39

  For several months Marguerite made regular tours of Elsie’s old haunts, terrified that, despite her reassurances, she may have sunk back into her drug-ridden existence. She found no trace of her.

  The winter of 1978–9 was the coldest for many years. Thick snow turned to filthy slush in the streets of London. In January, crossing Leicester Square on another fruitless search for Elsie, she found it piled high with rubbish, dumped there because of a strike by dustmen. Rats ran among the garbage. Britain was grinding to a halt as more and more people competed for increasingly high wage increases: factories were closed, transport was at a standstill, there was no fuel for cars or heating, supermarket shelves were bare, even grave diggers were refusing to bury the dead. Marguerite was saddened by the brutal disregard for others that seemed to have gripped the country. Tony tried to defend his beloved unions until he himself was confronted by their intransigence.

  For several months Donald had suffered recurrent illnesses. Because of the strikes he had caught a bad chill from doing class in a bitterly cold, unheated rehearsal room, after having struggled through deep snow at seven o’clock in the morning from Myddelton Square to Covent Garden. For several days he lay in bed alternating between shivering and sweating. In the middle of one night he had an attack of violent vomiting and diarrhoea, eventually passing out. Tony phoned for an ambulance, but they would not come out when he told them that Donald had regained consciousness. They were on strike and would only come for what they considered emergencies. Tony took Donald, who was by this time feeling slightly better, to the hospital by car, where he sat forlornly in the back seat, holding a basin in case he was sick again. After a cursory look at him, the pickets would not let them into the hospital. An attempt to reason with them fell on deaf ears.

  Tony was furious. He jettisoned his working-class allegiance.

  ‘Who are you to decide? You are not doctors. You’re bloody cleaners and boiler men. We need a medical opinion.’

  ‘We’re in charge now. Emergencies only. He looks all right to us.’

  Tony gave Donald an incredulous look.

  ‘The world’s gone bloody mad.’

  By the time they got back to Myddelton Square Donald was still feeling a bit better. Marguerite had prepared some chicken soup and, after he had managed to eat a little, she helped him to bed where he fell asleep, exhausted by his pointless journey.

  When she came down to sit with Tony he was growling at the television, squirming in frustration.

  ‘Stupid bastards. They’re destroying the Party.’

  After a fierce exchange between some MPs and union men, Margaret Thatcher, perfectly coiffed, perfectly elocuted, voiced her response to the crisis.

  ‘Some of the unions are confronting the British people; they are confronting the sick, they are confronting the old, they are confronting the children. I am prepared to take on anyone who is confronting those and who is confronting the law of the land . . . If someone is confronting our essential liberties, if someone is inflicting injury, harm and damage on the sick, my God, I will confront them.’

  Marguerite and Tony were silent for a while.

  Then Marguerite said, ‘I’m sorry, Tony. I’m going to vote for her. Not just because she’s a woman, but she sounds resolute. Things have got to change. What about you?’

  ‘I can’t, Mags. I can’t. I just can’t. I hate my lot as well. Their weakness, their incompetence, but I can’t vote for those bastards. It would be a betrayal.’

  His eyes brimmed with tears.

  ‘Oh Tony, darling, please don’t. It’s not that important, it’s just politics.’

  He blew his nose.

  ‘It’s not just politics to me, Mags. Ever since I first heard Bevan speak, it’s been a driving force in my life. The Labour Party, the working class have been my gods. They are what I believe in. But now – it’s all crumbling. Just before he died, in 1960, Nye said we’d become a vulgar society, a meretricious society where all our priorities had gone wrong. God, what would he make of us now? Greedy, selfish, ignorant.’

  So great was Tony’s despair that Marguerite could not openly celebrate the advent of a woman prime minister when the Tories predictably won the election with a thumping majority. She was worried about him. He was drinking too much and was often morose and uncommunicative. She knew he was distressed by his parents’ unhappiness. Despite his father’s reluctant acceptance of his relationship with Donald, the rift between them had deepened, and on rare visits to Oldham he came back visibly saddened by the fading of his rose-tinted memories of his working-class childhood.

  ‘The future is scary, the present a nightmare, and the past a fantasy.’

  One night, after an uneasy supper, Donald went to bed because Tony had snapped at him for daring to suggest that at least Margaret Thatcher had good legs.

  Marguerite said, ‘You seem to have lost your sense of humour, Tony. What’s up?’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry, Mags. I’m going to tell you something that you mustn’t tell Donald. It’s something that started way back in 1963. You remember when there was al
l that stuff about Kim Philby disappearing? Well, I was interviewed by MI5.’

  ‘You? Why on earth—?’

  ‘Because they knew Philby had worked with Guy Burgess, who’d scarpered to Russia in the ’50s. And I knew him. Oh don’t worry. I’m not a traitor. I was just a pretty boy who went to the same parties as Guy. Everyone was questioned. All the queers. We didn’t take it very seriously. We were used to be being blamed for everything. Then Philby turned up in Moscow and it all calmed down.’

  ‘Then why is it still troubling you?’

  ‘Then I met Donald, who has never been promiscuous like me. I was terrified of losing him. We agreed to forget about my past. Not even discuss it. Start afresh. We poofs became legal in 1967 and everything was hunky-dory. Till now.’

  ‘Why till now?’

  ‘Some of the parties I went to were given by Anthony Blunt.’

  ‘What? The Queen’s pictures bloke? Who’s been in the papers?’

  ‘Yes, I didn’t know he was a spy. I’ve only just read about it now. They kept it quiet all this time. Giving him a knighthood, letting him work for the Queen. Some kind of fucking gentlemen’s agreement, I suppose.’

  ‘And now Thatcher’s let the cat out of the bag.’

  ‘Yes. And now my fear has come flooding back. Like when I was young. I’m terrified the press will come nosing about. They’ve probably got all the names from his address book, the same as MI5. I’m frightened to death every time the phone rings or someone comes to the door.’

  Marguerite put her arms round Tony.

  ‘Of course they won’t, my love. You’re getting it all out of proportion. They’re not going to be interested in a nice PT teacher.’

  ‘There’s something else, Mags.’ His voice broke. ‘I’m so worried about Donald.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Donald wouldn’t care about your past.’

  ‘I meant his health. He keeps being ill.’

  ‘Well, he’s run down.’

  ‘Two of our friends died recently. They kept getting sick. Then they became riddled with disease. One went blind. They just wasted away and died. The doctors couldn’t explain it. They pumped them both full of antibiotics and other drugs but nothing worked. Someone told me that in America several gay men have died of a mysterious illness.’