by Gavin McCrea
—Oh my, how relevant! said Iris. That’s exactly what people will be thinking when we’re caught breaking into the BBC.
—Breaking in? said Doris. We can be cleverer than that. More, what’s the word, subtler. We have to appear natural, even if what we’s doing is drastic and pushing a situation to the limit.
In frustration, Iris put her headband into her mouth and bit down on it:
—All right. Suppose, by some miracle, what you’re saying happens. We walk subtly and naturally into one of these studios without getting arrested, and a kind stranger agrees to film us and put us on air. What’re we going to do? The camera is pointing at us. Then what?
Together, the Maoists all looked at Doris.
Doris looked at Iris.
Iris’s vision went blank with anger.
—You fucking crazy bastards.
She walked away. Punched the boarded windows. Pressed her forehead against the wood a second before turning back to the room.
—It has just dawned on me what you’re up to. For weeks now, all we’ve been listening to is Doris talking about China and the public trials she saw there. You want to do the same thing, don’t you? You want to put someone on trial. You want to kidnap someone and try them on camera.
The Worker’s Stadium, capacity sixty thousand, a stage with portraits of Mao and slogans written in big letters, and the enemies of the revolution standing in a line with signs hanging around their necks, and a long table of Party men shouting out the crimes of the accused and calling on the public to name their punishment for each, and the crowd screaming Shave her head and Smear ink on her face and Make her sit on a cigarette, and the Party men ordering the Red Guards to carry the punishments out: Doris had described all of this in detail, had marvelled at the sheer performance of it, and Eva and the Maoists had thought it was wonderful, an effective technique of persuasion, of bringing the unjust to task, of making it so that injustice does not return.
—You’re seriously thinking of doing that sadistic shit? said Iris.
Doris, now, was the only one brave enough to speak up.
—That’s the idea, she said. A televised struggle session. Our version of the Chinese tribunals.
Iris was unable to disbelieve what she was hearing; these people were serious.
—Who? she said. Who were you thinking of? To put on trial?
—It doesn’t really matter who, said Eva.
—What? Of course it matters who! Who is the whole point, isn’t it?
—Well, we haven’t settled on who yet. That’s something we should decide all together.
There came a lull, then, during which everyone present looked at everyone else present and wondered what they were thinking, because they themselves did not know what to think. Who? Who? Who? Who? Then everyone, at once, told everyone else what they themselves were not thinking, which they believed everyone else should be thinking.
A clamour.
An outcry.
Mayhem.
Tying her headband back on so that it covered her ears, Iris left the room. Keith came after her but she told him to stay.
—Keep the peace here, she said as she aggressively tightened the knot at the back of her head. I’ll be back in a minute.
She left the theatre through the knocked-out scullery wall and went up the lodging house stairs to her room. Made straight for the framed headshot of her mother. Took it off the wall. Looked at it. Wiped the dust away with her sleeve. Looked at it again. From her mother’s eyes there came a kind of pleading.
Relax, Mama. Just play along and you won’t be harmed.
She removed the photograph from the frame, and put it under her arm, threw the empty frame on the mattress. From the shelf, she took down her copy of Miss Julie, the scrapbook of her mother’s articles and reviews, and her doll Mao, and returned with them to the rehearsal studio.
It’ll look like punishment to you, Mama, but you’ll be fine, I won’t let them hurt you, all I’ll be asking from you are new memories as recompense for the old ones.
The group was still gathered around the table, and still arguing. Iris squeezed in and threw the photo of her mother on top of the map. Everyone fell silent and looked down at it. In the face, there was some Iris and there was some Eva, and at the same time there was no comparison. The woman in the photo represented what everyone desired most: the otherworldly, the inexplicable.
—All right, Iris said, addressing Eva and the Maoists. I fucking hate to admit it, but you might be right. About the telly thing.
She flicked her hair over her shoulder, nervily, and took her headband from over her ears, tucked it behind them. She felt light in the head, high on the uppers and stirred by senses hard to control.
—But let’s face it, cats, kidnapping a stranger, anyone, bigwig or small fry, will put us behind bars for life. Breaking and entering, put ten years on top of that. A job like the one you’re suggesting would take months of planning, years maybe, and even then we wouldn’t get far. We’d be in the back of a Black Maria before you could say Yoko Ono. But—
She caught Eva’s eye, in which there vibrated a faint mistrust.
—but, if you ask me, there’s a better way.
—You’ve got something in mind? said Eva.
Iris rotated her shoulders and jabbed sideways with her elbows so as to impel the neighbouring bodies to make more space for her at the table.
—We’re thinking about the problem arse-up. Why go to the media when we can make the media come to us?
—What d’you mean? said Álvaro. The BBC are hardly going to come here. To some squat in Somers Town.
Iris shook her head and pointed at her mother’s photo on the table.
—That there is the woman who owns these buildings. The one who’s kicking us out. She’s my mother.
She wagged a finger in Eva’s direction.
—Our mother. You don’t look like the kind of people who read the Sunday supps, but if you did, you’d know of her. She’s an actress, a big one.
Iris dropped the scrapbook onto the table and opened it on a random page. An interview with their mother in the Telegraph. The headline read:
I CRIED WHEN STALIN DIED
Then underneath in smaller letters:
NOW I CRY FOR THE CHILDREN WHO SUFFER UNDER COMMUNISM
—She was a communist in the good old days. A full-on, card-carrying politico. But then she went full circle, and now spends her time telling the world that socialism is awful, and nuclear bombs are the business, and America can and should win in Vietnam. Like those ex-drug fiends, you know? who sign up at the enemy camp just in case anyone might think they hadn’t seen the light.
Iris placed the doll Mao on the map roughly where Wherehouse was located. Using the red marker, she drew a line from Mao through the streets of King’s Cross and Bloomsbury, into Soho and then the West End. On St Martin’s Lane, she drew one, two, three circles around the London Carlton.
—This is the theatre where our mother is performing at the moment. About an hour from here, walking at a slow pace. Me and Keith have already checked the place out. Very little security, except for, maybe, an old fart at the stage door round back. It’d be easy enough to get backstage during the show. Or, if we wanted to, onto the stage itself.
She threw Miss Julie onto the table so that it landed beside the photo.
—This is the play she’s in. She’s the lead. Which, for those of you who don’t know Strindberg, is a bit of a joke. Our mother was already too old for the role of MISS JULIE when it made her famous back in the fifties. Now she’s reprising it, she says for the last time, but who fucking knows with that woman. The media seems to be swallowing it because there’s a quite a bit of buzz surrounding the production. Alissa Thurlow’s last MISS JULIE, they’re saying. My guess is, if we planned a happening that interrupted one of her perf
ormances and alerted the journos in advance, maybe drop Doris’s name as a bit of extra bait, they’d come and film whatever we wanted them to.
—A struggle session against your mother? said Sunny.
—In her own theatre? said Keith.
—On camera? said Tray.
—Is that what you’re suggesting? said Eva.
Iris — Dexedrine flowing, heart pumping — nodded slowly.
Later, when they were alone, Eva asked her:
—Why are you doing this? You seriously want to interrupt Mama’s play?
—That’s the idea. That’s what we voted to do.
—I don’t care about the vote. No vote can change the fact that your so-called idea is shit. It isn’t art. Isn’t protest. Isn’t politics. It has no message. Makes no challenge to the system. All this is, is your problems. Your own unpleasant feelings dressed up as something more.
They were in Iris’s room. Eva was by the door, holding on to the knob in case Keith, whom she had ordered out, tried to get back in. Iris was on the bed, covered in a blanket, smoking, coming down, numb, impervious, wanting sleep but hours away from it. With her smoking hand, she gestured to her bookshelf where Mao’s Sayings stood between De Beauvoir and R.D. Laing.
—You call yourself a Maoist, don’t you? she said. Isn’t it Mao who says revolution should explode in every heart and in every home? No true Maoist should be afraid to rebel against her own family.
—You might have the books, Iris, but that doesn’t make you a Maoist. You’re not interested in political change. You’re just building a cover for a personal attack.
—It’s personal only if you choose to look at it that way. We wouldn’t be attacking Mama personally. We’d be undermining what she represents.
—You don’t give a fuck about what she represents. You’re just stuck in anger, and you want to make yourself feel better. You believe she hurt you, and you want to go back to a time before you were hurt. Because that can’t happen, you want to punish her.
A person was not free until she got clear of the family: this was what Iris believed. It was what the counterculture was really about. The hippies got it, the freaks got it, even the politicos got it, when they put their money where their mouth was. The only decent kind of family — she did not know if it existed or would ever exist — was one which permitted each member to lead an independent life. Brothers who were free to wander when they were restless always came back. Sisters who were free to change remained interesting. Children should not feel obliged to swear obedience to their parents. Husbands and wives should not deprive themselves of possible happiness elsewhere if they grew weary of one another’s company. It ought to be made easy that all family members part and reunite indefinitely, as often as they liked. Her own parents had had the right idea. They had taken a chance, had demanded freedom for themselves within their own family, and she was filled with indignation for their having given up that freedom, for their own reimprisonment in the old ways.
—Mama’s not going to get hurt, she said. It’s not going to be violent.
—It’s not going to be anything, Eva said. Because it’s not going to happen.
—We’re a collective. We decide things together.
—This, I do get to decide alone. We’re talking about my mother.
—Let me get this straight. You’re worried about Mama’s feelings all of a sudden?
—Yes.
—Well, I’m sorry about that. But we’ve had a vote. You can’t overrule it.
—Watch me.
—Fundamentally, it’s still your plan. All I did was improve on it. Make it workable. In my version, no one gets harmed. In yours, lots of people, maybe even lots of other people’s mothers, would’ve got hurt. If you got off your high horse for a second, you’d see Mama’s a fair target. She’s also our only ticket for getting onto the telly and putting our message out.
—You do what you like, Iris, on your own time. Whatever makes you feel better and helps you to cope. But I draw the line at attacking my own family, whatever they believe. Your idea has nothing to do with class, or helping families, or transforming hearts—
—Or saving Wherehouse?
—Or, yeah, saving Wherehouse. You just want revenge, and revolution isn’t about revenge.
—Revenge has nothing to do with it.
She said this easily. It came from her mouth effortlessly. So from where did this other idea draw its power: the idea that her injuries had their equivalent and could be paid back through the pain of the culprit? Why did she feel justified in wanting to experience, if only once, the exalted sensation of being allowed to despise and mistreat her mother as beneath her?
—You wear the clothes, said Eva. You do the drugs. You have the lingo. But you can’t stand the fact that you learned everything you know from Mama and Papa. They taught you how to be a rebel, and you hate it. Deep down, you’d prefer if we’d had a conventional upbringing. Mama in the kitchen with an apron. Papa driving home from work in his car. It’d have been easier, wouldn’t it? to fight against that.
—Once and for all, this isn’t about what I feel. Or my childhood fucking traumas.
—Come off it, Iris. This is about one thing and one thing only.
Shivering in Eva’s eyes, trembling about her mouth, was the thing.
—Don’t say it, said Iris.
—I will, said Eva. I will say it. Because clearly it needs to be said. This is all about The East Wind, isn’t it? Mama and Papa’s play? What you think Mama did to you on opening night.
—Shut up.
—But what did Mama do, actually? I’ll tell you what. Nothing. You don’t have anything to hang on her. You just focus on her because you can’t bear to look in the mirror at yourself and come to terms with what you did. Yes, you. To the play. To the theatre. To Mama and Papa’s marriage. To me.
—I was a child.
—That’s right, you were. Ten years old. And still you did it. Planned and executed it. Timed it all perfectly. Not Mama. You.
—It wasn’t me. It wasn’t my fault.
—For fuck sake, Iris, take some responsibility for onn—
There was a knock on the door.
—Wait a minute, Keith, said Eva.
—It’s me, came Doris’s voice.
Eva opened up.
Doris came in accompanied by Simon.
Iris glanced from one to the other:
—So you two are friends now?
—I was telling Simon about our plan, said Doris.
Iris stubbed out her joint on the lid of an empty can (do what the fuck you want) and wrapped herself tighter in her blanket.
Eva, who had gone to the window, stayed facing out while she said:
—And what do you think, Simon? I hope you’ve come to talk some sense into Iris.
Simon had his artificial hand pushed into his pocket, which he thought made it look less conspicuous.
—She can’t just chuck us out like this. This is my home as well. We have a duty to fight back. To stand up for our rights.
—Rights? said Eva, turning now into the room. What rights are you worried about? You’d be bloody fine. With all your dirty money, you could buy yourself a house tomorrow.
She shook her head in Doris’s direction:
—Excuse my family, Doris. I don’t think they’re anything at the moment, ideologically. Which would explain their confused state.
Iris, who had been turning her Zippo lighter around in her hand, now opened and closed its lid in quick succession.
—And what about you, Doris? she said. What d’you think? You didn’t raise your hand in the vote.
—Not being a member myself, I didn’t think it were my place.
—You’re collaborating with us, aren’t you? Your vote is as valid as anyone else’s.
D
oris frowned evasively:
—It ain’t straightforward for me neither. I knew your mother. I worked with her.
Tucked underneath Doris’s arm was Alissa’s headshot. She now held this out to inspect it. Took a few steps closer to the lamp and tilted the photo towards it.
—Celebrity culture is right baffling to me. Is it the same for you?
She was staring into Alissa’s headshot as if it contained hieroglyphics that needed working out.
—You know, when I were in China, I weren’t sure how much of the real country I were seeing because I were escorted everywhere. But one thing I did notice was that they don’t have a celebrity culture. They only have Mao.
Then she held the headshot up, Alissa’s face facing out.
—Like, imagine if Alissa was England’s Mao and hers were the only face you’d see, printed everywhere. Just hers, no one else’s.
She turned the headshot round and looked at it again.
—Still, I guess celebrities have to be rare in every culture, right? There can’t be too many or the whole house would come crashing down.
—Aren’t you famous? said Iris.
—Me? Not really. Not at Alissa’s level anyway. But I ain’t immune to fame, the draw of it, despite what I tell meself. I don’t think anyone is, really. We’s all victims of it, and we’s all supporters of it.
She folded the headshot twice and put it into her pocket.
—Can I keep this?
—Take whatever you need, said Iris.
Doris smiled then, first at Iris, then at Eva.
—So, Eva, what’s your objection to Iris’s idea exactly? It ain’t political enough? Too personal?
—Basically, said Eva.
Nodding, as if agreeing, Doris moved to the wall to examine Jim Morrison’s naked torso.
—I see what you’s saying. But I disagree.
Eva’s left eyebrow rose a fraction. It was not a secret that she looked up to Doris and wanted to be recognised by her. An excruciating moment passed in which she obviously wanted to move or talk and could not do either. Iris offered Eva a smile that had a boast in it. Once she was sure this had been seen, she hid it.