by Gavin McCrea
The Mountfield girls — whom the office girls at the Sorbonne reminded her of — were used to a higher standard of comfort at home than she was. They thought the beds and the bathrooms and the classrooms were crummy; she found them quite pleasant. Having been well fed at regular meals, they were unaccustomed to feeling hungry, whereas she, whose mother never ate enough, had always been underfed, and so did not feel the bad food as much. With one side of herself she was ill at ease with the girls because they were so middle class and she did not want to accept them. But with another side she admired much of what she found in them. They were reserved but they were also rude, often in exactly the same moment. They were polite and courteous in manner but shot through with aggressive insolence. Puritan yet with their own kind of sex and style. Her plan was to ignore their contempt for foreigners and the working class, and their neurotic dread of poverty, and to work to bring them nearer to the type of middle class that she had decided to be: a player in the roaring, drinking, book-lined and magazine-discussing division; the people who knew what life was really for.
In this way she became popular. She learned, once a girl had shown an interest in friendship with her, to turn up her nose just enough, to be the right amount of superior. Then, while the girl was working to gain her approval, she turned on her charm, what the teachers called character, which in practice simply meant the power to impose her will.
Life at Mountfield was hierarchical in the sense that whatever happened was right, so she had to ensure that she decided what happened, even if it meant she sometimes had to be cruel. Leaving aside a couple of bitchy rivalries, on the whole her relationships, once they had settled into the right pattern, were cooperative and considerate, sometimes fascinating, always affectionate if never literally sexual. She and the girls helped each other, both in being good and in being errant, and together got a huge amount done. Without their favour, she would not have made house prefect, nor later school prefect, nor then member of the first fifteen. She adored them, they were her people, and she dreaded the thought of having to leave them.
The one thing that prevented her from entirely losing herself at Mountfield, and thereby making it her home, was Iris. To the same extent that Eva was welcomed and taken in, Iris was rebuffed and kept out. She was an alien in the halls. A visitor passing through. Around her there had hung an aura of otherworldliness; in her eyes a look that denoted a migration to another plane. Her demeanour was dejected. She was a being with its spirit subtracted. A weirdo. Sometimes, during a normal conversation, her eye would start to twitch, or her lips to smack. When called upon to speak in class, she would repeat the same phrase over and over, or say it backwards for no good reason. If she managed to form a friendship, she would then ruin it by lying. Her fabrications were so extravagant, so stunning in their lack of realism, that the girls found it impossible to get close to her, though their shunning of her was tempered by the suspicion that Iris herself could not determine where fact and fiction met. Worst of all, she wet the bed. The matron put plastic around her mattress but did not allow her sheets to be washed more regularly than the weekly standard. As a result, she went around smelling of piss.
Eva had a duty to defend her younger sister, to help her assimilate, to be with her so that she was not so much alone. But in truth Eva was as wary of Iris as everybody else. When the girls made wide, careful arcs around Iris in the halls, Eva followed their lead.
—That’s your sister, isn’t it? they would say.
—Unfortunately, Eva would say, striding onwards, not looking back.
At home Eva could tolerate Iris, but at Mountfield she found that she despised her. For Iris was holding her back, keeping her from getting properly in. Iris was a link to the chaos that was their parents’ life. She had to be got rid of.
One morning the prefect from Iris’s house woke Eva up to say that Iris had fallen out of bed, a common enough occurrence, only on this occasion there was blood on the sheets.
—I think she’s had a nosebleed.
When Eva went there, she found Iris sitting in the bedside chair, dazed, her tongue swollen in her mouth, and with blood smeared around her chin and on her nightie, and on her pillowcase and on the sheets.
—What on earth have you done now, Iris?
Eva went closer to inspect her.
—That’s not a nosebleed. You’ve gone and bitten your bloody tongue.
Iris looked blankly at her for a moment, then vomited down her front.
Eva and the prefect stood back so as not to get splashed. Turned away so as not to have to see.
—What’ll we do? asked the prefect.
—Leave it to me, said Eva.
It would not be possible to hide the stains on the sheets, but a story could be invented to excuse them. Her first period, for instance. Ten was not too young for that. It would be difficult to explain how the blood ended up on her chest and on the pillowcase, but, with a little imagination, it could be made fly.
But in the end when Eva went to the teachers, she did not tell such a story. Rather she gave them the truth. Her sister had bitten her tongue in her sleep, she said, which could only mean one thing.
Once Iris was expelled — Iris is a kind girl who, when she applies herself, does well, but she has become a risk to herself and others, a liability that the insurance won’t cover, she’ll have to be sent home and kept home — everything at Mountfield that had not quite fitted Eva started to fit her. In this big world, there was home. Finally she could relax. She was alone with her people.
Wearily, Max rubbed a finger across the wrinkles at the corner of his eye. Examined the grains of dried mucus that had transferred to his fingertip. Brushed them away with his thumb.
—So?
An image of the handsome man’s smile flashed in Eva’s mind.
—I don’t think I can go back to the group, she said. Not yet. Can’t they do without me for a couple of days more?
Cyril tapped his watch, calling time.
Max nodded and put his glasses back on.
—Look, Eva, I get what you’re doing. Don’t think I don’t. You got caught up in the events and you didn’t want to sacrifice your experiences for the others. But you must see that once you start a thing, especially if you pose as its leader, you have to follow through.
—There aren’t supposed to be any leaders.
—But there are, aren’t there? And you’re it, I’m afraid.
—Maybe I don’t want to be.
Max waved a hand at her dismissively:
—Opff!
He paced to the window.
Eva and Cyril looked at him looking out at the rooftops.
—Every time I see you, he said without turning round, you get more like your mother, you know that? She was the same. Started wanting it both ways. I’m in and I’m out. I’m top and I’m bottom. I’m rich and I’m communist. I’m West End and I’m radical. But it’s not possible, don’t you see, Eva? Front or back, avant or arrière, you can’t be in the two places at once, you have to make a choice. I used to say to your mother, This won’t always be your place, things change, but right now you have to understand where you are, and be there. If you don’t—. Well, Eva, you know what happens if you don’t. Don’t forget the lessons of—
—My parents’ marriage?
—I was going to say your parents’ theatre. But, now that you mention it, their marriage too. The games we play can so quickly and so easily fall apart.
Get lost, Max, she wanted to say. Fuck off and leave me here where I’m happy. Tell Wherehouse to go their own way. Tell them they’d be better off without me.
Instead she took her jacket off the hook, looked around the office sadly, thanked the women for having her, and followed Max out the door.
The march was to go from place de la Sorbonne to the Renault plant at Boulogne-Billancourt. What started as a strike at Renault had
developed into a full-blown occupation. In the Latin Quarter discussions abounded about how best to support the Renault workers, and multiple propositions were drawn up, but no concerted action was taken. Finally, in response to a rumour that the flics were planning to smash the Renault occupation that evening, the Student-Worker Liaison Committee put out a call for an international brigade to go and relieve the strikers and if necessary fight alongside them.
—I don’t know, said Eva as they made their way to the meeting point. Is our place really in the factories? Are we deceiving ourselves?
—Whatever do you mean? said Max. Aren’t you supposed to be a Maoist?
—Yeah, I am, but—
—Isn’t going into the factories what people like us should be doing, according to the man himself?
—It’s hardly the same thing.
—Why not?
—Because this is Europe, isn’t it? When the rich in China are sent to the factories, they stay in the factories! Their wealth is stripped from them and they become workers like everybody else. Change in China isn’t superficial like it is here. It’s systemic. Total.
Max was walking with an arm around Cyril’s shoulder. Now he put his other arm around Eva, forming an advancing line which negotiated the busy path with difficulty.
—That may well be, Eva, but what’s happening at the Renault plant is significant. For our lives here. In Europe. It would be a crime not to make contact.
—Right. I’m just not sure if it’ll really change anything.
—You don’t really think that, do you?
—I think maybe I do.
Álvaro and the three other remaining Wherehouse members were waiting by a shuttered kiosk outside Luxembourg station. Only the male members were there. None of the women had stayed, and Eva did not blame them. This revolution, like every revolution before it, was men’s play. To belong here meant being a man’s woman.
On noticing Eva approach, shiftily the group muttered warnings to each other, and looked away.
—Hi, she said.
Half-turning, Álvaro’s face, which spoke for them all, was cramped with rage.
—I know, said Max, stepping in, that you’ve some stuff to sort out. I’ve been speaking with Eva about it, and she has promised to explain herself and atone for her sins. But can I suggest we hold off until after the march, or at least until we’re on our way? We’re already late, the Renault factory is in the back of beyond, I’ve no idea how to get there, or which route they’re going to take. I don’t want to miss them or get lost.
Playing at indifference — sniffs and shrugs — the group set off at Max’s pace. Álvaro stayed a step behind, Eva two steps behind him. Arriving at place de la Sorbonne, at the edge of the crowd, at last she found the courage to touch Álvaro’s back.
—Hey, she said.
He recoiled. Swiped away her hand.
—Don’t.
—Sorry.
—Save it. You know it’s over.
She hesitated: did she know? Maybe she did.
—For good this time, he said.
—Oh Álvy, you always say that.
Detaching from her, Álvaro pushed into the mass of bodies, in pursuit of the white handkerchief that Max had raised over their heads, weaving its way to the centre. Reluctantly Eva followed the line that Álvaro carved.
The throng, which numbered a couple of thousand, was overwhelmingly male and overwhelmingly juvenile. One or two girls had been hoisted like mascots onto their boyfriends’ shoulders. Amidst the dancing and saluting, there was the odd flash of a woman’s face. Erupting occasionally from the sea of nice haircuts, an adult man. But the rest: all boys. Tender boys, nice boys, bad boys, wayward boys, awestruck boys, terrified boys. Boys who wanted to forget about being grown up. Maoist boys. Trotskyist boys. Anarchist boys. Libertarian boys. Cliques of anything from two to twenty, swaying arm-in-arm. Calling at each other across the square, or through the open windows. Elated, but with anxious expressions. Loudspeakers boomed. Action newssheets flew from hand to hand. Placards waved. Posters went up and came down. And at the heart of it all were the boys chanting:
—Professors, you are old!
And:
—We exist! We are here!
And though it felt to them spontaneous, they did not for a moment forget the audience for whom they were acting: the eyes of their peers, the photographic lenses, the television cameras towards which, naturally, they directed their spontaneity, reflexively aware of the symbolic potential of each gesture they did not make as well as each one that they did. Impressed by seriousness, warned against too much laughter, on their lips lay unspoken questions.
It was the best-looking political occasion Eva could imagine existing. It was like a golden age. Once she had seen it, she never needed to see anything else. Gorgeous. Yet outside the frame, in the sky above, the black clouds of nuclear apocalypse had not gone away, and below, in her belly, she could feel a sort of shame at seeing herself here: neither a student nor a traditional worker; too old to be the new guard, too young to be the old; one of only a handful of women: was this her place? She was a Maoist, so she knew how she was supposed to look, what she was supposed to be doing, but, if she were to join in, If I were to do the chants and shake my fists, would it really be me doing those things?
Watching the back of Álvaro’s head — a small disc of sallow skin where the hair on his crown had prematurely begun to thin — she thought about how often she had lain with her nose rubbing against that head, smelling the oil and the musk and the almond from his shampoo. Holding him from behind like that, a position which he said gave him comfort, they would talk for hours into the night. In their intimacy, they modelled themselves on high-powered French intellectuals. When speaking about art and literature and film, they were careful always to use a political lens. They understood that their lifestyle and their views placed them, in the eyes of most, on the left side of the left, yet they could not pinpoint precisely where on the spectrum they belonged, which was why they talked so much. They had not read any Lenin and had not got further with Marx than the Manifesto, but they did know their Mao; she made sure of that. They had learned from her parents’ mistakes not to join the official Communist Party, or fall for anything the Russians said, though they did follow closely the pronouncements of the smaller political groups, the Maoist cells, and adopted any articulations that sounded about right for now.
Fixed, however, was their fury at the Labour government in Britain for its refusal to implement any socialist policies and for its support of America’s war in Vietnam. They dreamed of opportunities to give vent to this feeling, and to turn it to good use, which was what Wherehouse was all about. Yet now that they were part of this great happening, in France of all places, they felt disappointed. At least she did, and she imagined Álvaro would be feeling similarly. They could not blame the revolution itself for this. It was bigger and more beautiful than anything they could have wished for. It could only be that they were disappointed with themselves, with each other.
Are we really who we think we are?
After a short speech about the Renault occupation given by a man standing on a box and roaring into a megaphone, the crowd moved off, funnelling into a stream as they crossed boulevard Saint-Michel onto rue Vaugirard. They walked behind a single banner prepared by a Maoist faction:
THE STRONG HANDS OF THE WORKING CLASS MUST NOW TAKE OVER THE TORCH FROM THE FRAGILE HANDS OF THE STUDENTS
When they passed in front of the occupied Odéon, several hundred more joined, eliciting loud applause.
—The streets are ours! Come with us to Renault! they cried at the onlookers as they proceeded down Vaugirard towards the working districts of the south-west.
Eva felt alone in the carnival. Deliberately she walked at a distance from Álvaro and the others, though she made sure not to lose sight of them. To those march
ers who approached her, offered her fags, flirted with her, tried to sell her Humanité Nouvelle, she responded politely but firmly:
—No, thank you.
Every so often Max dropped back and said something like:
—Do you see the man there with the nose? No, don’t look now! That’s the film director Guy Ernaux. He has some cheek being here, with the kind of films he makes.
By the time they had marched the seven kilometres to Issy-les-Moulineaux it was already dusk. They went through poorly lit streets, avoiding the mountains of uncollected rubbish, covering their noses against the smell, calling to the people who congregated in the doors of the bistros, singing with added vigour to the Algerians who lined the path.
—Long live the Algerian Liberation Front! the Maoists shouted.
The Arabs watched apprehensively, some smiling or nodding in an embarrassed way. None joined in.
The marchers crossed the Seine, and as they approached the square beyond which lay the Renault plant, their hearts were pounding like doubled-up fists. Eva was not immune to the excitement; even in her solitude, slowly it had infected her. Duly she did some cheering, and sang, and sometimes called out incoherently because it felt good to do so.
Parked across the square, obstructing the way, was a lorry fitted with a loudspeaker. On top stood a Communist Party official.
—Thank you for coming, comrades, he was saying into his brand-new microphone. We appreciate your solidarity. But please no provocations. Don’t go too near the factory gate. If the police come, do not antagonise them. And go home soon. You’ll need all your strength in the days to come.
Taunting and jeering the man, drowning out his words with bursts of the ‘Internationale’, the marchers moved past the lorry, flowing around each of its sides.