by James Graham
Lights down.
Another explosion.
Scene Seven
The basement office – looking much less tidy and rigid. Smith, Parker and Henderson.
Smith (on the phone) Sir, please – just give me more time with those in custody, all of them. Don’t – no, I don’t, with respect, sir, I don’t want the ham-fisted PC Plods in your department charging in there and bungling it up; we’re getting inside their heads, it’s working, just give me more time.
I apologise if that sounded . . .
Yes, sir.
He puts the phone down, and flicks a desk or equivalent. Angry . . .
God dammit . . .
They’re just using us . . . They want to take all the credit themselves.
Henderson Credit for what? We don’t have anything. We’ve arrested every young radical in the city, practically, except the four we’re actually looking for –
Morris bursts in.
Morris (holding aloft a file) We have names!
Parker What?
Morris I cross-referenced the names in Prescott’s address book with the Euston locker one, narrowing it down to those we have so far had zero contact with; I cross-referenced – see, sir, lines, weaving a web – I cross-referenced those with open cases of political activists nationwide and came up with case CH 1589TK, four individuals arrested in a pub south of Manchester for suspicious behaviour, fraudulent documents found on their person, no-shows at the court hearing in Colchester and have not been seen since –
He smiles, whacking four large photographs in the centre of the board.
John Barker. Hilary Creek. Jim Greenfield. Anna Mendelson. I think it’s them. I think it’s the Angry Brigade. He hands Smith four files.
Smith Circulate these images to every department, also every single estate agent and post office inside the Greater London area.
Parker Every –? Why?
Henderson Post office because it’s the one thing we know that they do on a regular basis, after all we receive the ruddy things –
Morris And estate agent?
Smith We’ve raided every commune and every squat known to us in the capital. Did it ever occur to you that they may actually be living legally, renting somewhere ‘above’ ground? ‘The Angry Brigade is the person sitting next to you.’ Go.
They all exit, bar Smith who turns to the map, the dots.
Smith Where are you? Come on . . . where are you?
The phone rings. He answers.
Smith Smith.
Voice (female, off) Having fun?
Smith . . . hello.
Voice I hope your wife isn’t a fan of Biba. Sorry if so.
Smith I’m glad that you called again.
Voice We’re getting closer.
Smith So are we, Hilary.
Pause.
Or is it Anna?
Anna Mendelson.
It’s Anna, isn’t it?
Anna No.
Smith I think it is.
Anna . . . we don’t have names.
Smith You did. Anna Mendelson from Stockport. Studied English at Essex University. Parents Maurice and Tina. Was Head Girl at school, won a prize for drawing. Played in the school band.
You did have a name, Anna. You had a family. You had a life. A future –
I can save you. You can live –
Anna What makes you think I want saving?
Smith You want a normal life, free. Family. Children. Love. I can tell –
Anna You can’t tell that.
Smith I can.
Anna How?
Smith Because you’re the one that keeps calling me.
Silence.
The phone goes dead.
Smith stands. He smiles. He takes something out of his pocket. A spliff.
He lights the spliff. Smokes. Turns on some music. Hawkwind’s ‘Paranoia’.
He begins drawing his finger around the map again, searching –
Smith Archway . . . Holloway . . . Finchley . . . Finsbury . . . Farringdon . . . Kennington . . . Kensington . . . Islington . . . Islington . . . Dalston . . . Hackney . . . Dalston . . . Hackney . . .
The music building . . .
Scene Eight
The basement office.
Smith HACKNEY!
Parker What?
Henderson How do you know?
Smith Hackney, Dalston, Stoke Newington, London Fields . . . somewhere, somewhere here. These stars here are all the phone boxes we traced Anna’s calls from, look at the pattern.
Morris There isn’t one.
Smith Feel one, look! Not in the location of the boxes themselves but in the lines that lead towards them. Imagine! –
He stands in the middle of the room, pretending to hold a gun.
If I stood in a room with a gun and spun, firing shots into the wall. Looking at the walls you would see no discernible pattern. But the trajectories that each of the bullets travelled in to reach them, like a spider web of invisible lines, would all lead back to this spot I am standing in now.
The phone rings. He answers.
Smith Yeah?
Post office? Whereabouts?!
Doing what, posting what, what was it?
He listens, then punches the air, slamming the phone down.
STOKE NEWINGTON!
Henderson What?
Smith Post office! Recorded sighting a woman matching who but Anna Mendelson’s photograph coming to post a letter this morning! The post mistress has it. I knew it! She’s struggling to stay underground, she wants contact with the real world, that’s how we’re going to get her, she almost wants it.
Henderson Wants what?
Smith To be caught.
Parker (with the phone) I’ll send a car to retrieve the letter and match fingerprints.
Morris Sputum, on the envelope as well!
Smith (on his own phone) All constables and plain clothes in patrol and on the beat in H, N and K division, send a message out, four suspects known to be in the area, do not approach if spotted, call in immediately. (Phone down.)
Henderson Well done, Smith! We’re so close!
Morris Haul ’em in! The whole cell whoow!
Smith turns the music up, and it becomes deafening.
Parker finishes her call and joins the others with the map.
Smith lights a spliff and offers it to Henderson. After consideration, she takes it and smokes.
Morris jumps about dancing to the music. He puts his arms around Smith and Henderson and they group hug, close.
Smith is looking at Henderson. They kiss.
A beat. They kiss again.
Morris stops. Watches. He leans in and kisses Henderson.
Smith kisses Parker.
Henderson moves Parker away from Smith. Beat.
Henderson kisses Parker.
Parker detaches herself and moves away.
Smith grabs Henderson and they kiss, moving on the desk, pushing things over. Morris joins in, kissing Henderson, kissing Smith, ripping each other’s clothes off.
The music grows louder. The lights flicker.
Parker watches, holding herself, struggling . . . as the three rip into each other passionately. She runs out.
They continue.
A phone rings. And rings. Smith pulls himself out of the tryst, grabbing the phone.
Smith YES?!
Beat. He kicks the music off.
DO NOTHING UNTIL I’M THERE.
He puts the phone down, picks it up again, dials.
Henderson What . . . what is it? (Noticing Morris on top of her.) Morris . . .
Morris (sheepishly getting off, pulling at his clothes) Henderson.
Smith puts the phone down, they snatch their things, pulling their shoes on.
Smith 359 Amhurst Road, Stoke Newington, patrol car spotted John Barker entering the property seven minutes ago, other three suspects believed to be inside.
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Darkness.
The words of communiqués flicker and travel about the space.
The sound of punk rock, pornographic orgasms and explosions building.
The kicking of doors, shouting, torchlight flooding into the darkness.
Smith POLICE, YOU’RE UNDER ARREST!
A torchlight hits Anna.
Smith holds the torch. He lowers it.
They stare at each other.
Blackout.
The Brigade
Anna It feels right, here.
Jim I know.
Anna Like we’re – I don’t know, like something special could happen here, in this house. Does that sound –
Jim No.
Anna Silly, or –?
Jim No. It doesn’t. No, it’s –
Anna Why don’t – do you know what we should do, we should leave all the doors open.
Jim What do you – oh right, like –
Anna I just mean a house where no door is ever closed, why are we closing them?
Jim I don’t know, no you’re right, that’s a good idea.
Anna What are we hiding; are we embarrassed? I’m not embarrassed, why should I be embarrassed?
Jim You shouldn’t be embarrassed.
Anna Worse than that actually, it’s shame, we’re ashamed of the perfectly natural things that humans do to be human that we want to hide away. Am I embarrassed of my body, because it doesn’t look like the bodies in magazines, do I not want people to see the way I look when I sleep; people need to sleep.
Jim It’s for – they think it’s for privacy, don’t they. To be with their thoughts, or –
Anna Privacy isn’t a space. It’s a state of mind.
Jim It – yep. Sorry.
Anna What for, we’re not arguing, we’re just talking.
Jim I know I just feel – I meant of course that makes perfect sense, I get –
Anna What?
Jim Nothing, I wish I thought the way you thought sometimes that’s all, it doesn’t matter, doors.
Anna Doors.
Jim Open . . . hold on, then.
Anna My God.
Jim What?
Anna Your eyes.
Jim . . .
Anna How can you be given eyes like that, when other people just get dead stones. It isn’t fair, I can hardly bear it.
Jim I don’t know.
Anna What were you going to say?
Jim Erm. I don’t remem – the doors. If we’re – do we – why do we even need doors?
Anna Exactly.
Jim No but I mean why do we even need the doors, then? Why don’t we rip ’em off? We could burn ’em actually.
Anna Well then bugger it, the walls.
Jim The walls.
Anna Let’s / knock down the walls.
Jim Knock down the walls.
Anna The walls, that’s brilliant, who decided there should be walls? Is it safe, to do that?
Jim You just have to tap it and listen, see if it’s structural.
Anna That’s what we’re doing – that’s brilliant, we should write that down.
Jim Write what down?
Anna We’re tapping on this country’s structural walls, seeing which ones if removed would bring the whole thing down.
Jim Yeah you should write it down. Don’t though.
Anna I won’t.
Jim Sometimes I’ve seen you writing letters.
Anna I don’t post them.
Jim You can’t, Anna.
Anna They’re just for me. It feels like contact if I just write the letter and throw it away.
Jim I get – sometimes I get . . . nothing.
Anna You have – doubts?
Jim No.
Anna Not about the reasons why, about what has to change, in the world, just about – what we’re doing and how we’re doing it.
Jim It’s just the . . . the, erm –
Anna The no-turning-backness. Of it.
Jim Maybe.
Anna I know.
Jim If we got caught –
Anna Yeah.
Jim John said . . . we would represent ourselves, in any trial, no lawyers.
Anna Yeah, what do lawyers know about justice. What do they know about us, they’re part of the problem –
Jim I probably wouldn’t. I’m just saying. I probably wouldn’t represent myself.
Anna . . . It, it’s not too late to – I’d be heartbroken, but it’s not too –
Jim I haven’t changed my mind, I haven’t. I just sometimes get . . . around John.
Anna What?
Jim And you. Your level of – what’s the word, when you have words to describe something well, like –
Anna Articulate.
Jim Articulate – so, see, I couldn’t even articulate the word articulate, that’s how inarticulate I am sometimes and it, it, sometimes it scares me.
Anna Don’t be scared.
Jim I shouldn’t have dropped out of Cambridge, that was stupid. Should have stayed, learned.
Anna See you went to Cambridge, they don’t let inarticulate people into Cambridge.
Jim It’s politics.
Anna Everything is politics.
Jim Everything is political, not everything is politics.
Anna That was artic – . . . see! Jim, that was articulate.
Jim That was John. He said that, not me, I just . . . I only ever just –
Anna No.
Jim – really.
Working-class quota, that’s what got me in, box ticking.
Anna You worked hard.
Jim . . . I did work hard.
Anna Don’t be scared.
Jim Scared’s the wrong word. Fucks me off, that’s the right word. Your private schools. You, John and Hil.
Anna It isn’t your fault.
Jim I really love this, talking to you, you’re brilliant.
Anna I love you.
Jim I love you.
Anna I love you. Do you think people will die?
Jim I don’t know.
Anna I remember my mother. I remember this one conversation we had in a Wendy house at the bottom of our garden.
Jim Did you know that Wendy house comes from Peter Pan, the place for Wendy to go and look after the erm the erm the Lost Boys –
Anna And cook and clean and be the archetypal mother role in an oppressively misogynistic society, yes I did know that but I didn’t know it at the time, so give me a break, I liked the little curtains with the flowers.
Jim And it was your own space.
Anna Away from the grown-ups.
Jim Where you could be as naughty as you liked.
Anna I’d hit a girl at school because she was being mean to me, she was always being mean to me. I’d had some, uh, some . . . problems around that, at school, sometimes, they made me see someone, a couple of times –
Jim See –? What kind of –
Anna It doesn’t matter really, anyway, I’d hit a girl and the school had called my mum and she came home and I was in the Wendy house. And she came in and said. She told me that violence never solved anything.
And I’m just saying that to put that there so that it’s there, so that it’s been said.
Jim OK. Well here’s my response to that, Anna.
I remember my mum. My mum was a good woman, I remember watching my mum doing the ironing. Ironing is not on the surface a particularly violent act but I would watch her and something would make me all, I don’t know, queasy and uneasy about it. But in those, erm, rigid and repressive traditions that assign individuals ancient gender roles that saw my father sat in his armchair watching the flickering box, fat on the food that my mum had just cooked while behind him she ran an iron over his shirts, perfectly happy and unquestioningly because the ant doesn’t question the crumb she is lifting to take
back to the farm, the fact is that it made the five-, eight-, whatever year-old me queasy because what I was watching was one of the most violent acts I could imagine. No I know there wasn’t any blood, there weren’t any bullets being fired no bones snapping or people screaming but in the hissing of that iron – hisssssssssssssssssss – and in the fabric of I don’t know the old shaggy carpet on the floor and the patterned paper on our walls in the two-up two-down terraced box we lived in in our ‘open prison’ that is the north of England – in all of that, there are silent, invisible, but real, BOMBS going off. Every second of every minute of every day.
There is violence in the five-day week, and in the illusion that the weekend means you’re free, but the weekend is just parole, nothing more. There is the violence in the boredom and the inactivity of the unemployed. There is violence in the long streets of houses – boxes for the workers, cells for the inmates, the illusion of freedom this space gives us, like the free-range chicken who wrongly equates having more soil to trample around on with escaping the axe. There is violence in the road grid of the city, in the rapid transit systems that take us to and from our prison-cell homes to the bee hive. There is violence in the boy dressed in blue and the girl dressed in pink. There is violence, Anna, in the boy who is given a train set, and the girl who is given a Wendy house.
So with the greatest of respect to your mum, and her theory about violence, and I am sure that she is lovely, I am, but fuck your mum. Because there is more violence in her statement than on the streets of Paris. On the streets of Germany and on the streets of Madrid. And, very soon, on the streets of London. The blood that pours out of that sentence is awful. It’s awful.
Anna Maybe we could get rid of the stairs as well.
Jim We need the stairs to get upstairs.
Anna Maybe fuck upstairs.
Jim Maybe fuck upstairs. But no, we need them.
Hilary Shit.
Anna I know, are you cross, don’t be cross.
Hilary It’s a toilet.
Jim Yeah.
Hilary What’s it doing there?
Jim Nothing, just being a toilet.
Hilary In the middle of the room.
Anna It didn’t used to be in the middle of the room, there used to be walls around it, Jim knocked them down.
Jim It’s safe.
Anna No rooms, Hil, right? Then no one gets the biggest, and no one gets the smallest, we’re just, we’re just here.
Hilary John?
Anna John?
John . . . Yeah.
Anna Yeah.