by Gavin McCrea
—Too much for you? Would you prefer I give it to someone else? Sunny, how about you? You know what Mao says about guns. D’you want it?
Sunny shook his head:
—This is Iris’s call to make.
Iris, by turns electrified and perturbed, continued to hesitate. The cameras’ spotlights were switching between the gun, Iris’s face and Doris’s face, at times moving in sequence, other times deviating one from the other. Iris watched how the gun’s aspect changed in the different configurations of light, the barrel appearing slightly longer or slightly shorter, the handle slightly slimmer or slightly thicker. It was not an ugly object. Some people even thought guns were beautiful.
Doris gently pushed on Iris’s wrists so that her hands, and with them the gun, moved closer to her body.
—I want you to be in charge of it because I know you’ll do the right thing.
—Whether I use it to not, we won’t get away with having it. You’re asking us to consent to our own arrest.
—If you go down, I’ll be going down with you.
—I wouldn’t know how to use it anyway, even if I wanted to.
—Can you use a Hoovermatic?
—What? Yeah.
—Then you can use this.
Tray began to speak, and the cameras shone their lights on his face:
—Hurry up and decide, Iris. We have to go.
Iris looked at Tray, then at Keith who was standing beside him. The politicos, the freaks: no one was doing it right. No one was learning anything. Revolution was a permanent way of life. Not a history lesson. Not a drugs party. Not a programme for the next century. It was here. She had to show everyone, now.
—All right, she said.
The cameras swung back to her, in time to see her wrap her fingers around the gun. Having no pocket or belt to put it in, she was forced to keep it in her hand. She was surprised by how cold it was and how quickly it warmed to her.
—How about you guys? she said. I don’t blame you if you want to bow out now.
No one moved, except for Doris, who was already retreating back to St Martin’s Lane, escorted by her loyal cameraman, to whom she was giving some sort of speech.
—You not coming with us, Doris? Iris called after her.
At the corner of the lane, Doris turned back:
—I’ll be there in spirit.
The breakaway cell, now really armed, skulked to the stage door. Iris, Keith, Sunny, Rolo and the second cameraman lined up in that order against the wall. Tray knocked.
A man’s voice arrived muffled though the metal door:
—Who is it?
—Delivery, said Tray.
—We don’t open this door during performances, said the voice. Deliveries have to be made before the play starts.
—This is a special delivery, sir, Tray said, his accent making the scene feel like the telly. Flowers for Alissa Thurlow.
—Go to the front. One of the staff will sign for them.
—But, sir, these are from the Prime Minster. Official note paper.
After a long moment, there came the sound of the emergency lever being pushed down. The door opened just a crack, but enough for Tray to get his fingers in. Grimacing with effort, Tray wrenched the door wide. The doorkeeper, still gripping the lever, was pulled out with it; as he stumbled into the lane, Tray elbowed him in the neck, and he fell onto his face with a crack. Tray tied his hands behind his back with wire, while Sunny stuffed his mouth with a pair of underpants and sealed it with duct tape. The two Maoists then dragged the man — a frail-looking gent in a black suit, no younger than sixty — in through the stage door, and the others followed after them.
Tray led, pushing the man in front, as a kind of guide and shield, both. They went up a flight of stairs, on which the man fell numerous times and needed to be hauled to his feet, then took a sharp left onto a narrow passage leading to the dressing rooms. The first door had her mother’s name on. Knowing that she would be on stage at this time, Iris kicked the door open, and Tray pushed the man onto the ground inside. The only light in the room came from a small reading lamp on the dressing table; the main light was off, and no one thought to turn it on. The obliging cameraman pointed his spot at the man’s feet so that Sunny had light enough to tie them to the radiator. Watching this — the rigour both in Sunny’s gestures and in the doorkeeper’s expressions of fear and pain — Iris felt something she had never consciously felt before. It was not pleasure exactly. But rather a kind of cleansing. Seeing the man suffer did her good. There was a ridding quality to it. Her own scruples had momentarily vanished, and it was not all that horrifying. The not-done things were done every day. The only difference on this occasion was that they were being done through her. The balance of good and evil in the universe, the final sum, had not shifted one bit.
Back out in the passage, the group opened the dressing-room doors one by one. As anticipated, the rooms belonging to the other principal actors — Virginia de Courcy playing CHRISTINE and Eric Humphries playing JEAN — were empty. The final two rooms were larger and shared by the bit-parts, THE PEASANTS: one for the women, the other for the men. Sunny stood in front of the women’s door, his fake rifle cocked; Iris in front of the men’s door, the gun pressed against her right thigh. Three, two—, they flung the two doors open at the same time. Iris heard the protestations of the seven women next door (ever heard of knocking? who the hell are you? robbed a toy shop, have you? piss off out of here, we’ll have somebody to you if you don’t) before she registered the faces of the seven men in this room: the black pencilled around their eyes, the cracks in their foundation at the bridge of their noses and the creases of their foreheads, the bemused fluttering of their eyelashes, and then, from behind their yellow teeth, their roars of laughter.
Iris stepped into this laughter — into the fag smoke and the bad smells on which it was conveyed — and in a single fluid motion raised the gun past her ear and over her head and pressed the trigger. She felt a shock to her hand and a current run down her arm that culminated in a pleasurable vibration in her chest. This sensation, when it had passed, left behind itself an obscure longing for itself, and she was tempted to shoot again, just to retrieve it. The sounds of the bullet leaving the barrel, and the ceiling splitting, and the plaster falling, she barely noticed, though they must have been impressive, for the women in the next room fell silent, and the men here ducked down or went to cower in the corner.
—Any more sneering out of any of you, she said, and you’ll be leaving here on a stretcher. Understood? Now make a line against the wall. Come on, on your feet. Hands behind your heads. Facing me, that’s it.
While the men were arranging themselves, one of them lunged forward as if to grab Iris’s right arm, which she had kept lifted, the gun pointing up. Tray, who was shadowing her, thrust his boot into the space in front of her and caught the man’s knee, making him stumble, then slump onto his side. He rolled on the floor in agony, his leg pulled to his chest. Tray smote him in the face, then pulled him up by the skin of the neck, like a dog.
—Fucking hero, huh? Get into the goddamn line.
The gunshot brought the stage manager down into the passage.
—What the bloody heck is going on back here? Iris heard her rasp.
Then came the sound of Sunny and Rolo grappling with her, and taping her mouth, and tying her up in one of the empty dressing rooms. One of the things that, afterwards, Iris would remember most vividly were the dull, echoing thuds of this woman’s limbs banging against the walls as she struggled to free herself from the men’s hold.
Iris supervised while Tray transferred the male actors, two by two, into the next room. Sunny and Keith had already put the women sitting on the floor, with their legs crossed and their hands behind their heads. The men were ordered to do the same. Rolo kept watch in the passage. Keith guarded the door. Tray and Sunny loom
ed over the captives threateningly. The cameraman panned across their faces. Iris, brandishing the gun with the casualness of the novice yet to comprehend its ultimate power, explained to the actors what they should do next.
—Wait for your call. Go to the stage. Act your parts as normal. Did you all hear that? Act your parts as if nothing has changed.
These actors were THE PEASANTS. About halfway through the play, in a section Strindberg calls a ballet, THE PEASANTS leave the barn where they are celebrating Midsummer’s Night and enter MISS JULIE’s house. They occupy the empty stage, drinking and dancing and singing, then exit just before MISS JULIE comes back in.
—Tonight you’re going to be joined on stage by some special guests, Iris told THE PEASANTS. Some of them will be children. Don’t be alarmed or make any sudden moves. Don’t fall out of character. Feel free to interact with them, they’re harmless, but if you mistreat any of them, or use them to interfere in our performance, you’ll get a bullet in your kneecap. I won’t hesitate, you hearing me?
The setting of this particular production of Miss Julie was contemporary, so instead of nineteenth-century dress, the actors were wearing hippy and bohemian clothes, like revellers at a music festival. A lot of attention had been paid to the details of the costumes, which had been designed not to look like costumes at all but rather authentic examples. But the result, at least to Iris’s eyes, was to turn authenticity into a lie. There was nothing glaringly out of place in the actors’ attire; it was simply that the authenticity had turned fake because it had started to reflect on itself and postulate itself as genuine.
—All of this is being filmed, said Iris. There’ll be more cameras in the auditorium. These are for our purposes, to make our art. You can just ignore them. Don’t play to them. Be yourselves, in your roles. And don’t delay your exit. Leave on cue as you always do. Got that? Play by the rules, and no one will get hurt.
THE PEASANTS gave no sign that they had understood, but nor did they show any appetite for rebellion. Everyone just stayed in their places, their eyes cast down, waiting for the call to come through the tannoy. It was quiet in the dressing room to the point that Iris could hear the air entering and leaving people’s nostrils. She herself was experiencing an unruffled calm, a sort of unenforced stifling of her emotions, a prerequisite state for high-powered people in important posts probably, but hitherto alien to her. Seeing all of THE PEASANTS crammed into this tight space brought home to her just how numerous fourteen bodies were. Doris had been right: without the gun, it would have been impossible to get so many people’s cooperation. The gun already felt quite normal in her grip. It had bonded to her, and she to it. In the same places in her body where sex happened — on the insides of her thighs, and around her vagina and arse, and in her chest, and at the back of her neck, and on her scalp — she felt the desire for another opportunity to fire it.
After a while, her attention was drawn away from THE PEASANTS by a scratching noise outside the door. She turned to see Rolo grinding the soles of his boots into the floor, as if to crush an insect; beside him, Sunny was licking his lips and swallowing, seemingly overcome by a sudden parch. Moving her gaze back inside, she noticed that one of Tray’s eyes was winking, his fingers twitching. The LSD was beginning to take effect.
Iris made eye contact with Keith. The black make-up had changed his aspect most dramatically of the group. It had completely altered the natural expression of his face. Only his eyes had escaped the metamorphosis: bloodshot, bugging, they expressed a profound anxiety as to what would happen next.
The Tannoy crackled and a scratchy voice came through:
—Eleanor, this is Jerry. Are you in the dressing rooms? If so, can you come back to the stage please?
Then a minute later:
—Ballet, places. Ballet, places. Three minutes. That’s three minutes. Sorry for short notice. Eleanor seems to have disappeared.
Immediately the dreaminess that had settled on the room cleared, and everything was action. Tray, Sunny, and Rolo formed an advance guard, leading THE PEASANTS into the passage and out towards the stage. Iris and Keith took up the rear. From this position, Iris watched THE PEASANTS flow out onto the stairs, take a left through an anteroom and file into wings stage right. By the time Iris got there, Tray, Sunny and Rolo had neutralised two more crew members (the assistant director Jerry and an odd job man) and left them tied together underneath the props table. Virginia de Courcy, the actress playing CHRISTINE, witnessed the skirmish from the opposite wing. She let out a shriek, loud enough to be heard in the auditorium and to cause the actors on stage to drop their lines, before dashing into the backstage rooms on the other side of the theatre. Iris gestured to Tray that he should go after her; by holding a hand to her mouth, she gave him to understand that he should not return until Virginia de Courcy — three-times Evening Standard award winner and daughter of Francis de Courcy CBE — had been properly dealt with.
Iris directed THE PEASANTS into the corridor behind the backdrop, from where they were to make their entrance through the rear door. Leaving them there to wait, she went across to the other wing, stage left, and took up a position between the central scenery flats. The cameraman came with her, filming the view from over her shoulder.
A kitchen scene filled the entire stage: modern fitted cabinets with a washing machine and a spin dryer and an electric cooker and a Kenwood Chef in pride of place on the white countertop. Her mother was standing in the strongest point, between the sink and the table, dressed almost as she did offstage, in the uniform of the traitor generation: a blouse and pearls and a figure-hugging skirt to the knee. Eric Humphries was in black-and-white livery of the sort still used by waiters in upmarket hotels.
—Am I to obey you? her mother was saying to him.
—For once, Eric was replying, for your own sake, I beg you!
Behind the backdrop, THE PEASANTS began to sing a lewd song, softly to begin with, then increasing the volume, as if they were approaching from a distance.
—The other servants are coming here to look for me, Eric said then, and if they find us together we are lost.
To which her mother said:
—I know these people, and I love them, as I know they love me. Let them come here, and I’ll prove it to you.
By now her mother had noticed her. Iris could see her mother’s eyes moving across her body, quickly, not resting, but rather accumulating flashes with which she could gradually build a more solid picture. Only when the play allowed it, did her mother permit herself a proper look: Eric dropped to his knees in front of her, and she rested her hands on top of his head and pulled it into her pelvis, and, while Eric rubbed his face into her skirt and cried Please! Come! she stared out into the wings, as if into nothing, but in fact right into Iris’s eyes.
Defying the urgent pace demanded by this moment in the play, her mother stayed like this, transfixed, for several beats. Iris maintained her stare. It was said that motherhood bestowed a strange power on a woman, that she never hated her child, however terrible the child’s wrongs. Iris thought now that maybe this was true, for in her mother’s eyes, while she did see disgust and disappointment and whole oceans of rage, she did not see any hatred. An observation which did not provide any solace. What does a child have to do, can she do anything, to be more than merely not hated?
On the opening night of The Sing-Song Tribunal — back then — she spent the first half in the spot box with her father, helping to operate the Kodak cine-camera which had been set up there to record the performance. The final rehearsals had not gone well. News that the Soviet Union had invaded Hungary had caused another split in the ensemble between those, headed by her mother and including Doris, who wanted The East Wind to renounce once and for all its association with the Party, and those, like her father and Max, who wanted to remain in the Party and give it one last push in a Maoist direction. There had been terrible quarrels, discipline had complete
ly broken down, and now her father was prepared for a flop. Having buttons to press, and spools of film to change, and having Iris there to distract him, helped stave off the oncoming horror.
During scene three, when Eva as the young LIXIN enters Shanghai for the first time, he whispered to Iris that the performance was going better than he expected. But he warned his daughter not to allow this to become her fixed opinion, for he could not tell how the people were receiving it. Being such a motley collection, a general assembly of coteries and cliques, the audience was impossible to read as a single mind. After the intermission lights came up, there was a silence, one quickly broken by a couple of whistles and boos — though muted, these were enough to wring out Iris’s heart — but in response someone said:
—Shh!
And some else called out:
—Bravo!
And then an applause welled up, rising to a hurricane of acclaim.
Her father gripped her arm hard enough to hurt her.
The transition from pre-emptive disappointment to joy was instant, the height of the climb extreme. Far beneath them, suddenly, lay the valley of grief carved out in their fabric by past failure. A halftime applause. Unheard of. He hugged Iris and kissed her, and said:
—I knew it. I fucking knew it.
Before the crowd had left their seats, while the route was still clear, he dashed up the aisle into the foyer, across the bar, and through the backstage door. Iris went with him, clinging on to the back of his shirt in order to keep up.
—Where’s Doris? her father said to everyone they passed.
Doris was meant to be in the wings, acting as stage manager, but when they got there, she was nowhere to be seen. In the semi-darkness backstage, the actors were walking around in circles, bewildered, embracing and re-embracing each other. Mouths open, eyes wet, hands reaching out, they grabbed Iris and wanted to grab her father too, to hug him, but he pushed them away:
—Where’s Doris? Have you seen her? Where did she go?