The Sisters Mao

by Gavin McCrea

  —Dig it.

  —I can’t promise you haute cuisine either, in case that’s what you’re used to. But we’ll find something. But afterwards you have to split. No hanging around.

  —Roger that. No hanging around.

  They got a bus up the Euston Road as far as King’s Cross station. She paid for the tickets because Keith had nothing in his pockets. Although the money was not much, just a few of the new pence, she did not like spending it, for technically it was not hers. She had already spent her share of the takings (on what, she did not want to recall) and was now dipping into Simon’s: Simon, her uncle, her father’s brother, who also happened to be her supplier, and who was not going to be happy. She had outstanding debts to him, and his patience with her was running out, his threats escalating. She was not looking forward to facing him.

  From the bus stop, they doubled back on Euston Road and took a right onto Midland Road. The high walls of the station on the right side and the goods depot on the left offered respite from the wind, though this was short-lived: they became exposed to the weather once again as they went past the railway lines. Between the gaps in the corrugated iron fence, the windows of the moving trains flashed; signal lights twinkled red and green. The gasworks, which loomed over the tracks, came in and out of their vision; its stink invaded their noses. The bridge at the foot of St Pancras Road was covered with advance publicity of a film. Underneath, men slept. Women, recognising Iris as belonging to the commune, waved at her. Iris made a concerted effort to smile and wave back. Every profession had its dignity.

  After the coal depot and before the flat blocks, they turned onto Chenies Place and then onto Purchese Street. At the school, they took a right onto the Somers Town terraces, where Iris instinctively noted the familiar distinctions between the streets: washing on every clothesline, then none at all; whitened steps and frosted glass, then railings and iron bars; emptiness, then bodies and noise. Iris navigated them through. Outside the solitary fish and chip shop, men fell quiet as they passed. On the steps of the houses, women stopped their work and gave narrow stares. Children, roaming unsupervised, jeered by making monkey impressions. Iris told the children that if they did not shut up, she would never again invite them into the commune to make things.

  —Aw what, Miss Iris? said one. You ain’t serious.

  —I am too, she said. Now bloody behave.

  Keith walked through the packs of children without acknowledging them. Hands in his pockets, face lifted, gaze raised above the chimney stacks: tough was the surface that could withstand such constant grinding.

  The commune, up ahead, was spread over two buildings. The first was a large red-brick warehouse on the corner of a crossroads. Graffiti and boarded doors covered the bottom third of the façade; the middle third was a windowless belt of plain red bricks; on the upper third the brickwork was arranged to spell out TYTELL MEDS EST 1904. The second building, an adjoining three-storey Victorian residence, had once been a temperance house for the local workers. Access to the commune was through the temperance house door. Painted bright red, with a distinctive — but long broken — Chinese lantern hanging over it, the door was meant to be kept open during the day, as a welcoming in, but for some reason it had been boarded and chained.

  Approaching from the perpendicular terrace, Iris saw the change.

  —What the fuck? she said, feeling too worn out to adapt to new circumstances.

  She went to the door and pulled at the lock. Took a few steps back and scoured, senselessly, the windowless walls for any signs of life.

  —Where. House, said Keith, reading the large letters written in white paint across a board next to the door. Oh, Wherehouse. I get it. Is this it?

  —Yeah, but—

  —And Tytell Meds? said Keith, pointing up at the factory wall. What’s that about?

  She looked up and down the street. A silence had settled on everything, which made her fear the world ahead.

  —It was once a pill factory.

  —Nice.

  —Nah, nothing like that. Just painkillers, tonics, that sort of stuff. Big operation, though. Exported all over the world. Germany, mostly. Sod’s luck. When the war started, it became a coal store. And was left empty after that.

  —Your family was in the painkiller business?

  —Painkillers? My family? No. My parents bought this building in the fifties, when it was already derelict, and converted it into a—

  Suddenly furious, she took a running kick at the boarding on the door.

  —theatre! Fuck!

  —Hey, take it easy.

  With one hand Keith took her wrist, and with the other he warmed the space between her shoulder blades, as if burping a baby.

  She shook him off:

  —It’s locked. It’s never locked. Something’s going on.

  —Okay, calm down. We’ll figure it out.

  He blinked at her the questions he was unwilling to speak.

  —Before you ask, she said, I left without the key. Don’t normally need it, do I?

  —I didn’t say anything, he said.

  She went round the side of the temperance house steps and, crouching down, reached in through the bars and knocked on the basement window.

  —Neel? Neel? You there?

  —What do you want? came a voice.

  —Neel, it’s Iris. I forgot my key. Let us in the window, can you?

  Neel was one of two Indian medical students whom the group rented the unwanted lower rooms to. Neel, in the front basement, and Sid, in the back, were not part of the commune, but their contributions covered some of the building’s expenses, and it was handy to have them there for emergencies. Neel always had rice and lentils if the kitchen ever ran out, and Sid could usually be paid to steal prescription medicine from the hospital; some of Iris’s worst comedowns had been cushioned by morphine from the University College.

  The latch on the window clicked, and she pushed it open.

  —You’re a star, Neel! she called after the figure that was already scuttling back into the dark of the flat. Do you know where everyone is?

  —Not my problem!

  The two central bars of the grille covering the window were for show only; they were in fact broken and could be easily twisted out. The sound of the bars hitting the ground where Iris threw them reverberated around the nearby terrace. She slid through the gap, landing heavily on the kitchenette counter inside, causing spoons left in unwashed cups to jingle. She jumped down, ran through the flat — two weeks late with the rent, Neel and Sid were skulking in their rooms — and out of the door, then up the basement stairs to the hall. She opened the front door and helped Keith to duck under the chains.

  —Jesus, he said, squinting at the by-now ragged posters of Che and Fidel and Ho Chi Minh and — larger and a little less ragged than the others — Mao.

  —Hmm, what? I can’t hear you.

  Iris was checking under the stairs and out the back for signs of life.

  —I said, Jesus. This place.

  —Oh yeah, she said, returning. It’s boss, isn’t it? Was a temperance house originally, but that closed down after the war, and the building was left vacant. My parents, when they were planning their theatre, wanted all of the actors to live together, as a sort of community, so they bought here as well and turned it into the lodging house. A community of alcoholics, I guess, was the idea.

  Keith gazed at her blankly.

  —That was a joke, spade. Wait here.

  In the kitchen out back, mould was growing in half-filled cups of tea; what little remained in the vegetable rack had shrivelled and sprouted. Up the main stairs, the common room was empty; the sleeping bags and foam beds that were usually piled into the corner, gone. Up again, on the second floor, the doors of all the bedrooms, except her own, were closed and locked. Nobody answered her knocking. She checked the landi
ng lights: still working.

  She came back down to the hall. Gave Keith a half-full packet of kidney beans.

  —This is all there is.

  Her hands freed, she clutched her hips and thought for a moment.

  —This situation is seriously off.

  The Wherehouse commune was never deserted like this. People wandered in and out at all times. Not just the eight core members, but their friends also, and friends of those friends. Only the previous week, a handful of Dutch travellers, distant acquaintances of Eva’s boyfriend, had come unannounced and slept for four nights on the common-room floor. This open-door policy was not without its difficulties. The people Wherehouse attracted, members and visitors alike, were the sort who did not feel easy in society. Creative and bright and funny as they often were, they also had their idiosyncrasies. Having abandoned the centre for the fringe, they had become sensitive to rules and sceptical of programmes and were tricky to manage as a consequence. Soon after Eva became a Maoist — senseless to try to put exact dates on these things, but Iris estimated that the cycle of Eva’s conversion had probably been completed by the winter of sixty-six — a manifesto was adopted aimed at bringing into the commune only people with a minimum grade of political knowledge. But this had proved impossible to implement, and in reality no matter how screwy people were, as long as they agreed to hate capitalism and imperialism and most of all America, they were acceptable. And it worked the other way too: as individual as everybody insisted on feeling, there was safety in the pack; comfort in knowing that someone sympathetic would always be around. If the price of this was an occasional dip into Mao’s Sayings, most were willing to pay it. Keeping the peace really just meant getting the balance right.

  —When was the last time you were home? said Keith.

  She shrugged. Counted back.

  —Four, five days? If the place is left empty like this, it’ll be filled with squatters inside a week.

  —No one left a message? Did you check the fridge?

  —Fridge?

  She smiled at his goodness.

  —You know, Keith, I’m glad you came.

  He cleared his throat, embarrassed.

  She thought he might kiss her then, but he did not, which was a relief. It was not what she wanted for them either.

  —Let’s try next door.

  He held up the packet of beans:

  —Shouldn’t we put these on first?

  —What? Oh!

  Laughing, she knocked it out of his hands onto the floor.

  —You settle too easily. We’ll find better than that yet.

  She led him down the hall to the old scullery, a wall of which had been partially removed to give access to the theatre without having to go outside. It had been Eva’s idea, to knock through, one of her many which turned out to be unpopular, for it allowed the cats which lived in the theatre (last count, eleven) to stray into the lodging house. Neel and Sid in particular objected to this feline infestation, on hygiene grounds, and threatened to call the council unless it was contained. A solution was found whereby a board was fixed onto a rail, which could be slid across to block the entrance. Painted onto this board were cutesy illustrations of cats defecating, and the words:

  KEEP SHIT SHUT.

  As soon as Iris rolled the board back, the smell assaulted them: a torrent of piss and shit and ammonia.

  —Whoaff! said Keith, slapping his hand to his face.

  —Ach, Christ.

  Going through into the foyer, she untied the bandana from her wrist and put it over her mouth. Dollops of shit dotted the floor. From various positions around the room — under the furniture, on the ledges — cats meowed.

  —I thought cats were supposed to be clean, said Keith.

  —Normally they go outside, she said. The door is meant to be left open during the day, and at night we leave a window in the back ajar. No, this, my friend, is a protest.

  Iris offered Keith her bandana. He refused it with shake of his head. She shrugged and tied it back on her wrist. The smell was not so disturbing when you just took it.

  —From what I can see, they’ve been left alone more or less since I’ve been out. How would you like it? To be stranded here without food and company for that length?

  Keith sucked his teeth as if to say that being stranded was something an intelligent being these days learned to get used to.

  She blew through her lips and peered round:

  —And as usual it’s left to me to clean up.

  —You gonna clean all of this?

  Iris gave him a patronising look:

  —You ever lived in a commune? Nah, didn’t think so. Anyone who’s lived this life knows it’s always like this. There’s always one or two who do the dirty work.

  —Doesn’t sound fair to me.

  —It’s not.

  Although Iris had a mother, she had always had a feeling of missing a mother. This feeling did not have so much to do with missing her own specific mother (she hoped never to see her again), but with missing what she believed a mother should be. A warmth or a certain kind of touch. An order and cleanliness in a room. Iris, wanting that others should never feel the same lack, acted — unofficially, for in the commune there were no fixed roles — as a sort of housemother. Cleaning. Cooking. Shopping. Housekeeping. Teaching. When it came to the collective’s artistic work, she preferred the sewing and the painting and the gluing and the planning to the presenting and the performing. Steered away from acting by her parents — an epileptic on the boards would be a danger to everyone — and fearful of the limelight as a result, she preferred to make her mark behind the scenes.

  —The only thing I mind, I mean what really bothers me is that they’ve gone somewhere, you know? That they’ve left without telling me.

  —You don’t know where they might’ve gone?

  —That’s the thing. I haven’t the foggiest.

  The thought that she had been left alone was awful. Anger leaked away, leaving sadness as she took the key from the hook and unlocked the chains on the foyer door. Keith helped her to remove the boards and railings. Clearly he had noticed she was having feelings and wanted to take them away, because when he next spoke, he did so brightly.

  —So this was your parents’ theatre, huh? he said.

  She swallowed. Ran her forearm across her nose.

  —Back when I was ten we all came to live here. My family and all the actors.

  —Your parents moved you into a pill factory?

  She laughed:

  —Yeah. I mean, we slept next door in the lodging house. But we spent most of our time here in the theatre.

  —Fuck. That’s—

  —Round the bend? Believe it. In fairness, we were only here a few months in the end. The theatre didn’t stay open for long.

  —What happened?

  —Don’t know.

  —You don’t remember?

  —I do. It’s just—

  —A long story?

  She inhaled loudly, deeply, as if seeking in this single breath the force to carry her whole life.

  —A long story, yeah.

  With the boards and railings cleared, and the door flung open, light and air poured in. Several of the cats dashed out.

  Keith removed the dirt from his hands by clapping them.

  —So when did you and your sister decide to move back in?

  —Three years ago.

  —Your parents gave you the place?

  —My parents aren’t together any more. It’s my mother’s.

  —She gave it to you?

  —Not exactly.

  —You just took it over? She doesn’t know you’re here?

  —No, she knows we’re here, but we’re not supposed to be. Every so often she threatens to kick us out and put the building on the market.
/>   Keith was peering around the foyer, taking it in. Concrete floor, bare brick walls, metal beams: he was struggling to see how this could have been anything but what it was built to be.

  —So your idea was always to start this group? This happenings club?

  —Eva wanted to try it. It was her idea initially.

  That was not strictly true. Iris had been involved at every step.

  —What about you?

  —I came round.

  She climbed over the counter of the old box office and retrieved a carton of dried cat food from the cupboard. She handed the box to Keith.

  —This what we’re having? he said.

  —Shut up and put some into the bowls. And some water too, please. There’s a tap in the toilet, which is in the auditorium, through those doors there.

  He did not look happy.

  —I told you you’d have to work. I’m not asking you to pick up the shit. I’ll do that.

  —Okay.

  —Good. I’ll be a back in a minute. Stay down here.

  —Where you going?

  —I just need to check on a thing. A minute and I’ll be back, and then we’ll get some grub.

  He pouted.

  She slapped him on the shoulder, as a man might do to say Cheer up, son, and left the foyer by the low passageway leading to what had once been the bar: a large, high-ceilinged room with a mezzanine that wrapped round three sides. She went up the mezzanine stairs. Knocked on the old office door, which was now her uncle’s bedroom.

  —Who is it?

  —It’s me. Open up.

  Yin yang. Black white. Circle line circle. For Iris, being the founder of a commune, and now its caretaker, meant being recognised as MOTHER; the nourisher of something of her own, which in her mind was the same as being good. But it was also true that, by going out to sell and bringing home the earnings, she was being FATHER too. The provider. The bread earner. A role as important as its opposite, which she performed just as well, but which the group refused to acknowledge.