‘Yes, and you get paid for what you do.’
‘Oh Marsha, isn’t it sordid to bring it down to that?’
‘It isn’t sordid at all. You don’t want to be dependent on your husband.’
‘But — but —’ How could she explain about Derek? ‘This child benefit thing was a clincher. I was so bloody angry — I thought — my God — what woman in her right mind would become a mother, to be treated with such contempt? But it’s all excuses. I’m frightened. I’ve been the go-getting career woman for so long I think I’ve lost the bits of me that could love a baby, but you have to. And that’s an oppression in itself. A few weeks ago I thought — the hell with it. I’ll show them. I’ll have a baby, and survive as me. And then, before I could leap on Derek, I saw a little blind kid. And I thought, Jesus, am I mad? I’ve been wondering if I could tolerate the sweet brilliant daughter that my fantasies beget — what if I got one of those lolling, slobbering monsters that you see, that grow and grow and never grow up and suck their parents into dry wisps. So I told Derek I had a headache.’ Lynn’s voice was shaking, and she saw anxiety and guilt on Marsha’s face, as if it were her fault, for heaven’s sake. ‘I’m mutilated either way.’
Marsha said slowly and carefully, ‘It’s only society that makes you think that. A society that values women by their children and nothing else —’
‘I am not undervalued, Marsha, and I still want a child.’
There I It was said! The meeting was coming together again, and not a moment too soon. Posy was on her feet and demanding that everyone listen to her.
‘We’re all angry, right?’ The women seemed to have forgotten their dislike of leaders in relief at her air of purpose. ‘We’re all angry, right?’ The women looked angry. Posy had a good sense of timing and her voice shook. ‘And we want to take some action. It might not be effective. We know we can’t get this appalling betrayal reversed this minute. We know we’re dealing with forces that are mightier than ourselves — at the moment.’ Lynn glanced at the felt boots that encased Posy’s rocklike feet and found it hard to believe that there were mightier forces. ‘We want something short, sharp and appropriate to give a keynote to a long-term struggle. Am I right? Right. Now. Tell me what would happen at a car factory, for example. What would happen if the men were promised a pay-rise, and at the last minute management said, sorry, we’ve changed our minds. What would happen, eh? Would the workers sit around in the sun and have nice chats and smoke joints as I see some of you are doing, just to keep your wits razor-sharp at this watershed of history?’ Some of the guilty women grinned sheepishly; others screwed up their faces to draw even deeper on the weedy cigarettes. ‘What would they do, eh? Go back to work like good children, and say, oh well, next year?’
Posy singled out a timid woman and glared till she said ‘No.’
‘What, then? What would they do?’
‘Go on strike, I suppose,’ someone said.
Posy cupped her hand dramatically to her ear. ‘Pardon?’
‘Go on strike.’
‘On — ?’
'Strike.’
‘Oh, on strike?’ She could have made it big as a pantomime dame. ‘On strike? They’d go on strike, would they? So what must the mothers do, sisters?’
'Go on strike?’
Posy had mistimed.
‘What do you mean?’ women demanded.
‘Mean? You know what a strike is?’
‘Yes, but who against? Against their kids?’
‘Against the state.’
Lynn heard an angry voice say, ‘Mothers don’t work for the state’; it was only when Posy turned and said, ‘Wanna bet?’ that she realised the voice was hers. Posy went on: ‘I think we should organise a mass march of mothers to the Social Security office. When we get there, the mothers’ll leave the children for a symbolic hour.’
To Lynn it seemed that all the other women had disappeared; the issue trembled between her and Posy. The idea was simply grotesque.
‘What point would you be making?’
‘What point? What point?’ Posy’s lip curled. ‘Let’s not worry too much about the point. The finer points of socialist-feminist theory, which may not be of too much interest to housewives who were relying on this money and aren’t going to get it. Women whose husbands are getting their pay-rises all right but neither know nor care what’s happening to food prices and expect them to manage on the same housekeeping money as last year, and oh yes,’ she turned on the women in socialist badges, who hadn’t said a word, ‘that happens, even in the sainted working class. Anyway, let’s just do it, hm? And see if the women don’t get the point, even where we intellectuals fail?’
Lynn got up and made for the stairs. Marsha followed.
‘Come back, Lynn.’
‘I didn’t come here to be attacked. I don’t need her.’
‘You were quite fierce yourself.’
‘Maybe. Well, that’s my problem.’
She ran down the long height of the building, her one thought to get back to Derek. But he would be out, damn it, shopping.
She straightened her sun-glasses and came out of the tower into sunlit stillness. Her feet sizzled on the pavement — she must have stepped in something wet. She would go home for a cool drink and a long lie-down. She screwed up her eyes behind her dark lenses. Something caught her attention, red cloth flapping. A black girl was standing by the big sign that proclaimed feminist occupation of the tower. She was short and young, maybe still in her teens. Her dark skin had the slight pallor that might romantically be explained by its being too long in a damp and foggy climate, but was more likely to be the result of the rape of a slave a few generations back. She wore a red scarf on her head, and red cheesecloth draped her body, though whether it was a dress, a skirt and blouse or just bits of material was not clear. She was staring at the notice that claimed ‘A Woman’s Right to Choose’ and Lynn noticed, as a stray breath of wind stirred the stillness of the robes, the clear round bulge of the girl’s belly.
‘Hello,’ Lynn said.
‘Hello,’ said the girl. She spoke as if half-asleep or drugged; somehow not quite there. Her features moved slowly, exaggeratedly, like a bad actress.
‘Did you come for the meeting? They’re on the roof. ’
The girl shook her head and glanced again at the notice, furtively.
‘Do you need an abortion? Is that it?’
‘There isn't a baby.’ The voice was very definite.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Judy.’
‘Have you been to a doctor?’
‘I took some pills.’
‘Did your doctor give them to you?’
A sheepish grin. ‘Don’t ask who gave them. I took them all, swallowed them right down. They said if I did there wouldn’t be a baby any more. Don’t ask where I got the money.’
‘Judy, have you been to a proper doctor?’
‘There isn’t a baby, not now.’
Lynn felt helpless. There quite clearly was a baby, or something, in that stomach. She said, ‘Look, there’s this charity that I know where you can talk it all over and they’ll help with whatever you decide to do.’
‘You mean kill the baby?’
Lynn said craftily, ‘I thought you said there wasn’t one.’
‘Is there?’
‘It’s not exactly a baby — but you do look pregnant.’ She put her arm round Judy. ‘Don’t you? You go to this place I’m telling you about. I don’t have the number ... can I contact you?’
Judy smiled beatifically and shook her head.
‘You ring me then. Tomorrow. Here’s my number. ’
Still smiling, Judy walked away, waddling slightly.
‘Don’t forget,’ Lynn called.
But Judy didn’t phone. Next time Lynn saw her was at the demonstration outside the Social Security office. Lynn’s compromise between participating and staying away was to persuade the local paper to let her report it. That way her ambivalence
could pass as objectivity.
Feminist organisers of a ‘strike’ by mothers were doubly disappointed today —
Despite hopes of a larger turnout, local women’s liberationists were well pleased —
Fifty women and children picketed the local office of the Department of Health and Social Security ... their original plan for a thousands-strong ‘strike’ in which mothers would have dumped their children at the office in support of their ‘pay claim’was thwarted by Department officials who closed up for the day —
Lynn wondered sadly how many of the women standing about outside the offices were new converts, and how many were organisers. Her interest revived at the appearance of one of her neighbours from Seyer Street, a fat, hot, sad, toothless woman shuffling along with a push-chair, her numerous children swarming round her, fighting, snatching each other’s bright gluey sweets, clutching each other’s hands. Ordinary Woman joins women’s movement! Now there was a case for child benefit! The husband, of course, was never in work, but held the male prerogative of receiving every penny of the family’s dole money straight into his tobacco-stained fingers.
Lynn stepped forward with her notebook just as Marsha approached the woman to welcome her.
‘We’re glad to see you.’
The woman, Mrs Hindley, said nothing.
‘Do you recognise me? I live in your road,’ Lynn tried.
‘Hindley’s giro hasn’t come —’
‘Unfortunately, the office is closed —’
‘Closed!’ The woman looked at her children, at each other’s throats like puppies in the dirt. ‘Closed!’
‘You see, it’s a demonstration. Let me explain.’
‘I’ll have to come back tomorrow. Stop that, you kids.’
‘Please stay, it’s just your sort of situation —’
But the woman trailed off miserably, the children demanding their turns to share the push-chair with the baby.
Lynn stood and watched a little longer. The women talked to passers-by, and there was much emphatic nodding of heads and signing of petitions.
Public opinion seemed sympathetic, and two hundred signatures were —
One noted non-signator was Mrs Hindley of Seyer Street, who found herself rather inconvenienced by such, a large group of women campaigning for her rights —
God damn it Lynn, how cheap! Whose side are you on?
She crossed it out.
She shivered in spite of the sun as a brown figure dressed in red crept into her field of vision. It was Judy, pregnant as ever.
‘Hello. Do you want that number?’
Again the slow, ghostly smile. ‘It won’t be necessary.’
‘You’ve decided to keep the baby?’
‘There isn’t a baby.’
‘All the same, I wish you’d —’
Judy put out her hands and held Lynn as she might hold a child to whom something very important had to be explained.
‘There isn’t room for a baby.’
And she continued her slightly swaying walk towards the demonstrators, who gave her a banner to hold saying ‘Child Benefits Now’.
Chapter 2: After the Summer
The government appointed a minister with special responsibility for the drought. He walked along cracked river-beds with film-crews and measured reservoirs. He was photographed pulling dead roots from dusty earth. He responded with courtesy to suggestions that aboriginal or Red Indian rainmakers be hired by his department. He wrote a lot of letters. And early in September, it rained.
It was as if the skies had grown tired of complaints. I give you a good summer and all you do is moan and appoint ministers. You want rain, do you? Watch this. The skies opened. Rivers and reservoirs overflowed. The umbrella sellers re-appeared — particularly in those parts of the country where domestic water supplies had been cut off and consumers needed shelter while they queued at the standpipes pending reconnection.
Lynn was shopping when the first rain hit her part of London. She’d expected rain when she left the house, but still wore only a light cotton frock and sandals. Big wet drops fell on her skin, burnt so red and leathery that it clashed with the bleached gold of her hair through which drops coursed, sizzling in the dryness. The drops were grey and warm, soft and plump as ripe fruit. She felt her lips smile as she walked. Drops hit the ground and disappeared in the dirt. More followed. She stood still, listening for the blades of grass that would poke up between paving stones and duck down again to spread the news: it’s raining. Get your green on.
She looked round for strangers to share her pleasure. The rain was sheeting down now, the sky was rumbling. She wanted to pull off her dress and dance, but smiling at strangers would have to do.
The street was empty. She was astonished. Had the magic that brought the rain spirited away the people? Had a sacrifice been demanded?
They were sheltering. They were escaping from the rain drops into doorways and shops. They were hiding in the bus-shelter and in telephone boxes. They were covering their heads with newspapers, their arms with plastic shopping bags as they ran plish-plash across the zebra and into the post office and Tescos.
‘It’s not prussic acid, you know,’ Lynn muttered spreading her arms to feel the drops falling on their tender undersides.
‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ she glowed in the packed greengrocers. The shelter-seekers moved away. Lynn giggled, patted some shrivelled tomatoes. ‘They know it’s wonderful.’
‘Please don’t touch the tomatoes,’ said the assistant.
‘I’ll take a pound.’
‘You can stay and shelter if you want.’
‘What from?’ Lynn sang.
‘Some people.’
‘Catch her death of cold.’
‘Lives in Seyer Street.’
‘Oh well —’
She waltzed into an off-licence.
‘Bottle of champagne, please.’
‘You just got married?’
‘Why, do I look miserable?’
Her hair flapped in her face and she sucked water from the rats’ tails. She jumped in filling puddles, and grinned at toys abandoned on neat lawns. Windows slammed angrily shut as she passed, and she heard the howls of children thwarted in their play. The sky was grey. The brown grass was springing to life. Trees wept. She turned the corner into Seyer Street. She’d hoped the women in the tower would be doing a rain-dance too, but they were skulking inside — anxious, no doubt, to see if the building was waterproof. ‘What if it isn’t?’ she shouted gaily, her words lost in the beat of the rain, ‘it’s only water.’ She resisted an urge to sing ‘Singin’ in the Rain’, but it was close. She looked down the street.
Six tanned naked Hindley children were carefully mixing dust and water into mud and throwing it at each other. Reaching up to the rain. Rubbing it on themselves, drinking it. They were malnourished, ill-kempt noisy little vandals most of the time, and Lynn kept a weather eye on her windows when they ventured to her end of the street; now she wanted to hug them.
She glanced at their mother, leaning on the gate, watching. Mrs Hindley glared back, defensively. Lynn smiled. Mrs Hindley’s lip quivered. ‘They’re only young once,’ she said. She was drenched.
‘Derekl De-rekl’
‘You don’t have to shout.’
‘Sorry, didn’t see you sitting there. Always got your nose in a book. No good will come of it.’
‘Have you been down a well?’
‘Derek! It’s raining!’
‘So it is. Ah well, we had it coming.’
‘Derek, for heaven’s sake. It’s redemption, not retribution!’
‘Coo, ’ark at ’er,’ said Derek, and she clasped wet hands to his face and ran them down the front of his shirt. He protested, ‘Stop it, you’re wet, I’m trying to read —’
‘All right.’ She flounced into the kitchen. ‘Read, then.’ He followed as she knew he would. She brushed him aside and popped the champagne. She took a glass and went to the back door and raised it l
ike a chalice. When it was full she swilled it down and held it up for more. She put the full glass and an empty glass and the champagne bottle on a tray.
‘Now where are you off to?’
‘A thanksgiving ceremony.’ She stopped at the door of the bedroom and barred his way. ‘Er, sorry. It’s women only.’
Oh. Okay.’
‘However —’
‘No, I don’t want special treatment.’
‘— in view of your long commitment to feminism, you can be an honorary woman. ’
‘Oh, thank you, dear. Thank you very much.’
Lynn’s cotton dress struck to her as she tried to pull it over her head, leaving her helpless and muffling the noises she made as Derek started to play the washboard on her ribs.
‘You’ve torn it. Derek! You can sew it up!’
‘Hush. You’re like an eel.’
‘What about your reading, Professor — ? That was so important —’
‘You are ruining my career, Jezebel —’ His fingers were all over her and in her and around her. ‘You’re very wet.’
‘I’m raining.’
He stopped. ‘You haven’t got your cap in.’
She muttered into the pillow, ‘It’s okay.’
Derek took away his hand and sat up and looked at her. ‘Lynn.’
‘It’s okay, Derek. Please.’ Now, please, before I think. Which of us would be here now if our parents had thought? Which bird or flower or puppy for that matter?
He put his fingers to his lips. ‘Lynn, I don’t even know what you’re saying. I don’t know if you’re saying we can take a chance or if you’ve ... changed your mind. I must know.’ He kissed her. ‘And, what’s more important, you must.’
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