Ghilly held her arms across her chest and spoke in a small, tight voice. “But we agreed to keep to timetable. Labor costs are going up in November. To say nothing of paper costs which have skyrocketed in the last year. We all agreed to stick to schedule.”
“Come on, now, Ghilly,” Wina leaned toward the smaller woman. “The Dutch government is going to cooperate with us as much as our anarchists cooperate with them. Nobody else would dare take on the politics of the book. We’ve got to do it, even if we’re worried about losing a few quid.”
“We’re worried,” said Ghilly sharply, “about losing the Cooperative if this goes on.”
Susan was thinking of the book on Zimbabwe by her friend Alexander. “Too hot for the straight presses,” he had said in an idiom that was 40 years younger than his own. If they were doing Alexander’s book, Susan told herself, they were good people, good political people.
“On the bright side,” said Rita, “I sold forty-five Chile Diaries to Queen Mary College.”
“And I’ve rented a storefront on Camden Road for the women’s bookshop,” Gordon smiled.
“You what?” asked Ghilly.
“I think it’s a fine idea,” said Wina.
“It’s now or not at all,” said Gordon confidently. “I had to use a little entrepreneurial spirit.”
“‘Gall,’ I’d say ‘gall.’” Ghilly shouted. “We’re supposed to discuss that kind of decision. This is a cooperative, Gordon.”
“Relax, love,” he brought over another pot of instant coffee. “The city needs a women’s bookshop.”
Susan had first heard about the Cooperative from Alexander, during one of their lunches at Moishe’s in Leicester Square. They used to meet there every week before his bout with pneumonia. At the beginning, they talked about Salisbury where she had spent two weeks and where he had lived for thirty years before his exile/escape to London. The intensity of their friendship came from those ineffable characteristics which cause expatriates to choose a common home, arriving at the same cafe from forty years and ten thousand miles apart.
“This Cooperative may be idealistic enough even for you,” Alexander had teased her. “It may be enough to shake you out of this London drear.”
“A situational depression,” her therapist called it. Situation: she had a cold all winter from her freezing basement room. Situation: she had gained twenty pounds on lentils and white bread and not a little beer. Situation: her gas fire leaked. Sometimes she had visions of her grandfather who died of tuberculosis in Edinburgh. Sometimes she had dreams of Sylvia who drowned in gas two miles away in Hampstead. Situation: she didn’t have any money. The average free-lancer in London made less than 2500 pounds a year. So she would opt for 15 pounds a week at a cooperative in a drafty warehouse? “Temporary insanity,” her friend Carol would call it.
How like Alexander to worry about her. To forget about his pneumonia and loneliness to tend to her sad face.
“Just what you wanted,” Alexander had said. “Good politics. Good writing. I’ve reviewed one of their non-racist, nonsexist texts. They edit, publish and distribute themselves. You could write that book …” he interrupted himself. “The only problem.…”
“Is that there’s no money,” she said.
“How did you guess?”
But he explained that it would give her a base. And he was right, she needed to spend more time with people serious about publishing. Free-lance journalism was like a cottage industry. Susan fancied herself an old woman knitting all day in a Caithness croft and sending her wares to London. She hated the isolation. Deadlines and checks were her only link with the real world. The checks were infrequent and late. She would stand in the darkroom for hours, staring at the red light in passive resistance. If she finished this assignment, there would only be another. This was definitely not the London she had imagined. Maybe she would find it at the Cooperative.
“How can a man run a women’s bookshop?” Lynda was asking.
“I wouldn’t run it, exactly,” said Gordon defensively. “I just found us the space.”
“And rented it already,” reminded Ghilly.
Susan had hoped they would ask her some questions, tell her a little about what they wanted her to do, but it was getting late and Rita had to take the baby home for his nap. She would ask what happened to Alexander’s book at the next meeting.
The following morning Susan found Lynda alone typing labels and she joined in. Eight-thirty, “American Time” to start work. She could never get used to starting at ten o’clock the way they did here. Half the day seemed gone by then. Her British friends found such diligent Americanism to be quaint, rather schoolgirlish. She found their two hour lunches on Fleet Street romantically decadent at first and then plain boring.
When Ghilly and Gordon arrived, they seemed relieved to see Susan.
“Hey, man, good to see you,” said Gordon. “Typing labels? Into the hard stuff already? Hey listen, we’ll get that darkroom set up today or tomorrow.”
Ghilly set in to washing yesterday’s coffee cups. “Gordon,” she said. “Look at the time, love.”
“Right,” he said. “Catch you later. I’ve got to get down to the Whitehall Gallery. They’re interested in Malcolm’s prints.”
Lynda looked up from her labels. “Why didn’t you bring that up at the meeting yesterday?”
“I thought everybody knew,” Gordon said briskly. “Look, I’ll give you the details soon as I return. Can anybody take care of unpacking those IRA books while I’m downtown?”
Ghilly told Susan that she and Gordon had been editing until 11:00 p.m. the previous night. She was worried about Gordon’s ulcer. No matter how much they all shared the work, no matter how many workers they took on, Gordon was frenetic. Some people had problems with inertia. Gordon suffered from centrifugal force.
Susan liked Ghilly. One of those very sensible English-women. Oxbridge without the tailored drawl and dress. Her modesty came from integrity rather than inhibition. Ghilly was absolutely the sort you would expect to wind up with an unschooled political refugee from Brisbane. She had no doubts about her right to change the world.
“I’ll stack the books,” said Lynda.
That left Susan the rest of the labels. She didn’t mind the tedium; she was just glad to have something of her own to do.
The rape book arrived that week. A month late, so they skipped their meeting. No time for lunch or even coffee as they hustled books off to the shops. Susan piled a dozen copies in her basket and cycled down to the Women’s Liberation Workshop in Soho. Such a crisp May day. The black taxis gleamed like beetles after a rain. While she waited for the light to change at Tavistock Square, Susan watched a Japanese couple in matching Fairisle sweaters rushing off to pay tribute at the statue of Ghandi. The woman carried a huge Selfridge’s bag. Coasting through the traffic, not one bus farted in her face. Susan felt something she hadn’t felt in months—that she was in London, not in some dreary, damp, tense shadow of a city, but that she was in London and there were reasons to be here.
At the Coop meeting that Friday, which was kept short because they still had 300 rape books to deliver, Susan asked when they were scheduling Alexander Norton’s book.
Everyone except Gordon looked blank.
“The Zimbabwe poet?” asked Rita. “But he’s under contract to Longman’s.”
“They don’t want the new book,” Susan explained. “They say he’s lost his edge.”
“More likely his edge is too sharp for their liberal politics,” said Gordon. “I told him we would probably do the book.”
“But,” Susan stumbled. “He thinks it’s definite.”
“He’s in his seventies,” said Rita blankly, “and not very well, I understand.”
“Of course, let’s see the book,” said Ghilly.
They liked Susan’s suggestions for illustrating the Dutch anarchist material. And although Ghilly was apprehensive about costs, they told Susan to start shooting next week.
On Monday, Gordon arrived alone, looking tired and tense. “Ghilly has bronchitis again. She got it last year too. Oh, hell, what a time, man. She was supposed to go up to Leeds peddling books tomorrow. It’s these damn broken windows. Damn, drafty room. Impossible to heat. Damn London weather. Dampness everywhere. It took a month to get those appointments in Leeds. Poor Ghilly. We had to wait two hours at the Health Collective last night. Damn Leeds.”
Susan moved a manila envelope over her picture layouts, so Gordon wouldn’t see them. “She’ll be OK with a little rest. It’s warm at your flat, isn’t it?”
He nodded distractedly.
“And I’ll go up to Leeds for you.”
He smiled, “For us, man.”
“I can leave tomorrow morning.”
“But you won’t know what you’re doing. You’ve never done it before. You don’t know about discounts and delivery dates and PR on the new books.”
“I’ve got a whole day to learn.”
“Half a day. You really should take the five o’clock coach from Victoria tonight to make those morning appointments.”
When Susan got to Leeds, half the appointments fell through.
“A month ago?”
“Cooperative what?”
“Sorry, no time; the Penguin man is in town.”
Maybe Gordon was right. Maybe she didn’t know what she was doing. Her inexperience was a failure for the whole Cooperative.
“How do you cooperate?” Finally, a friendly voice.
He was a heavy old man, with the liberal streak you expected to find in a university bookstore.
Was he being snide? Susan wondered. Who cared? He was the only person who had asked her to sit down all day. Maybe she could sell a small order, through charm or pity.
“We all work together,” she said, trying not to sound like a tired record. “We all share the soliciting, the editing, the dispatching, the publicity, the income. We all came to it with different skills.”
“And yours is?”
“I’m a journalist. Photography and reporting. Right now I’m planning pictures for a book about Dutch politics.”
“Which of these books is yours?” He seemed interested.
“Oh, none of them yet,” she said. “I’ve only been there a few months.”
He looked disappointed and then pensive. “I guess there’s a lot of clerical work to do. It’s always like that, isn’t it?”
Susan was confused.
“Don’t look so surprised. I worked on Red Net in the early days. Why do you think I took time to see you? I’ll order six of each book—by consignment.”
On the coach home, she sketched her shots and the design for the cover of Wina’s book. It was late, after 9:00 p.m., by the time she got up to Hemingford Road. The downstairs door of the old factory was unlocked and Susan felt at once relieved. Someone would be there. Gordon. She wanted—needed—two things from him: reassurance that Leeds was a tough town and some enthusiasm for the Dutch photos. The concrete steps were unlit. It was late. She was in a derelict building on a forgotten street in a big city, she reminded herself. The fear evaporated as quickly as it came. She just couldn’t feel as scared here as she did driving down East 14th Street in Oakland during the middle of the afternoon. She sensed some diplomatic immunity against violence in Britain. “Sense, I’ll give you sense,” Carol would say. But she had never felt threatened in London.
Black. The room was black except for the spotlight of a tensor lamp over Gordon’s notebook. He was scribbling on a yellow pad between the calculator and the ledger. She couldn’t see the orange glow of the fire filaments.
“It’s freezing here,” she said, reaching down to switch on the fire. She stopped, noticing that Gordon was wearing his RAF coat. “What’s this? An economy move?”
Susan wanted to make a joke about Australian radicals wearing colonial military attire, but Gordon immediately began to complain about the printer’s invoice, about how no one was around to help him.
“Rita is off academicing at some language conference. Malcolm, as always, is absorbed in his prints. Wina’s lover from Amsterdam is here. I’ve got no idea how all the IRA books are going to be distributed.”
Susan said she would help—after she set up the darkroom.
“The darkroom,” Gordon exploded. “Everybody’s in this for himself. With Wina, it’s for her anarchist friends. With Malcolm, it’s for his prints.”
“But you’re the one who’s always talking about artists having respect for themselves as workers.”
“Personally,” said Gordon, “I think survival comes before the privilege of self-respect. Somebody has to do the shit-work.”
Susan’s voice was lost somewhere between disappointment and anger. She walked silently toward the corridor. “OK,” she said finally, patiently, reminding herself again that revolutions take time. “I’ll be here at 8:30 tomorrow to help distribute the books. But let’s talk about shit and privilege at the next Coop meeting.”
Alexander’s book was at the printers. Everyone was excited about it. Gordon explained to the meeting that the Zimbabwe book would make the Coop connections in the black community. The print run would be ten thousand. Large for the Coop, but, of course, far below what Alexander was used to with Longman’s.
“Alexander understands our bind,” said Gordon.
It should have been a cheerful meeting, but everyone was strained and tired. Lynda worried about Gordon’s unilateral decision to open a woman’s bookshop.
“Unilateral decision,” Gordon repeated angrily. “How about unilateral work! I’ll be happy to share the decisions—and the work.”
Rita interrupted. “Look, Gordon, we’ve been through this before, haven’t we? We all have other jobs. I’ve got Malcolm and the baby to support. It was your choice to spend twenty hours a day here.”
“And what if I didn’t?” he shouted.
Wina leaned forward. Susan was fascinated by Wina: the pink “Frau-Offensive” t-shirt with the Vent Vert perfume and the declassé roach clip around her neck.
“I think we’re geting emotional,” Wina cleared her throat huskily. “It’s not the decision, itself, Gordon. It’s the way it was made. We agreed to consult on everything. Remember?”
“See if I care,” he threw up his hands. “I’ll go give back the lease now. Don’t listen to me. You’ll see.” He pulled on his coat and strode away. “You’ll see. London needs a women’s bookshop.”
No one was wrong. That was the difficult part. Everyone had a right to be consulted. Together they had imagined the Cooperative, invested in it, worked for it. They should all be part of the decisions. However, they didn’t have Gordon’s dedication or centrifugal urgency.
Throughout the week, they held little caucuses about “the situation.” Wina and Rita resolved to spend more time at the warehouse. Ghilly separately lobbied Malcolm for sympathy, patience or whatever his gentleness might mean. She came to Susan, too. Ghilly appealed to her as someone who spent so much time at the office, who must think Gordon’s decisions were sound ones. Wina and Rita asked Susan if she didn’t find Ghilly and Gordon a little paternalistic.
One night Susan stayed late with Gordon to mail off a press release. He told her about all the workers who had come and gone since the Coop’s beginnings three years before.
“No one wants to slog,” he said. “Teamwork. Look who stayed tonight. No one.”
“All one happy family,” said Malcolm as he opened the Cooperative meeting the next week.
“Sit down, Gordon,” Rita said gently. “You look exhausted.”
“I am tired—damn tired—of sitting through rush hour traffic on that damn 17 bus.”
“Stand, then,” said Rita. “Look, I’ve been thinking about the uneven distribution of work.”
“And of the decision making,” said Wina.
“Yes,” Gordon answered quickly. “Very absorbing problems. But somewhat abstract and personal compared to the distribution of the Chile Di
aries, our rent and the printing bill.”
Wina leaned forward in a wave of Vent Vert. “May I remind you that the personal is political.”
“The economic is more political,” rasped Gordon, “if you remember a little of that dialectical materialism from your CP lover—or was he the one last week?”
“Let’s not get personal,” Malcolm laughed, alone.
A reconstitution, they called it. A few compromises. “We don’t live in an ideal world,” Wina said, agreeing to postpone her book until they knew the profits from the Diaries. I’ll try to keep the big decisions for weekly meeting,” Gordon conceded. Rita admitted it would be practical for him to make a few emergency decisions by himself.
Susan left the Coop early that night, before the sulphur lights. Gordon had asked her what was wrong and she said she didn’t know. She really didn’t know why it was all falling apart around her. Without Wina’s book, there would be no need for Susan’s photographs. Not now. Not ever? Tonight she could see herself for who she was, a label licker and book packer in a cold London warehouse for 15 pounds a week. Her grandfather made 15 pounds a week and died of tuberculosis. “Temporary insanity.” Carol was right. You can fool with reality, you can romanticize only so long. Then physical parameters like sickness and death intervene.
They met again at Moishe’s Cafe. Alexander asked her loving questions about the photography, her friends, the Cooperative. Susan answered briskly and was halfway through the humus before she could be honest.
“Someone isn’t being cooperative,” she said nervously. Then the tears and complaints and guilt flooded out.
“What’s wrong with me?” she demanded. “Why do I believe in last peace marches and cooperative Cooperatives?”
Alexander held her in his tired, watchful eyes.
“Am I crazy? Are they hypocrites?” she asked. “No, they’re good people. But it’s so much more complex than I imagined. Having to survive. Having to work and deal with personal problems and edit and publish and distribute and keep a good political line. Am I too young?”
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