Benefits

by Zoë Fairbairns

‘Promote the “better” people? Eliminate the others? That's what you’re saying, isn’t it? Keep women in their place without Benefit?’

  David stared at her and smiled ironically. ‘You understand every word I say.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And you see why I need you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘It’s yes, then?’

  She listened to the purr of the car, looked out into the murky streets. An icy sleet was beginning to fall. She had nowhere to go.

  ‘At least spend Christmas with me,' he coaxed, ‘and let me tell you —’

  ‘Christmas. Is it?’

  ‘Nearly. Is it yes?’

  ‘No, David, it isn’t. You can keep your guilt all to yourself and we’ll fight you. May I get out now, please?’

  Obediently David tapped on the glass partition and the car stopped. Marsha stepped out quickly and the car was gone in seconds.

  There was one position, just half-way up Seyer Street, from which Collindeane Tower was invisible. The houses blocked it; then if you walked on, it sprang into view again, dark against the chill racing clouds.

  The street looked derelict; some of the houses were no more than ruins, but here and there a light flickered or a shiny green curtain twitched as Marsha edged by. She raised her eyes to look at the tower. It was terraced with window boxes from which foliage and twigs spilled, as if the whole place had been taken over by giant creepers. It seemed amazing that the block stood at all; it tilted, and cracks wound up the wall showing light or boards or curtains damming out the cold from inside. More windows were blocked with paper or wood than glazed; the grass patch was ploughed up; and the courtyard looked like a scene from the first world war, coil upon coil of wire, barbed with rusty spikes. As she looked closely, Marsha could make out a possible pathway through the wire, like the parting of the Red Sea, wide enough for a slim, careful person. But a metal gate cut the path in half, and behind the gate there stood a woman with a thick coat, a club and a large dog on a leash. The sign that had once proclaimed ‘All Women Welcome’ was gone.

  Fear, pride and loneliness choked her. She approached the guard through the gap in the wire. She shivered, but she hardly felt the cold. The battered old tower was ablaze with lights, winking from behind makeshift curtains and through cracks in the wall. Wisps of noise reached her: a few notes of music, the wail of a baby. She looked into the guard’s face and felt reassured; the glance was strong and steady in its challenge, but not unfriendly. The girl was so young. She was of strong build, but had the skin and features of a teenager. Young for such responsibility.

  She met Marsha at the gate. The dog lowered her head. Marsha searched her mind for a greeting that would forestall the girl crying ‘Halt.’ None came.

  The guard said, ‘Would you stop, please? Who are you?’

  Marsha gave her name and the woman frowned. ‘Haven’t I heard of you?’

  ‘You might have heard of my friend Posy —’

  The girl said, ‘I think you should understand that we accept no leadership.’

  ‘I know, I know, it’s not —’ Marsha stopped. She was being goaded into denouncing and mocking Posy. Well, Posy had her faults, but who was to say that if the women’s movement had listened to her it would still be skulking in a high-rise fortified slum, guarded by children with dogs, while people like David Laing ... ‘Posy and I helped set this place up,’ she said, adding without thinking, ‘I put a lot of money into it.’

  The girl’s glance made Marsha shudder; she’d seen it before, directed at Posy: indulgence for an eccentric older sister grown too big for her boots. The dog sniffed at Marsha’s bags. The guard pulled her away.

  ‘What’s the dog called?’ Marsha asked miserably.

  ‘Germaine.’

  ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘To check up on your investment?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Marsha, ‘I just got back from abroad. It's been a long time, and this seemed the obvious place to come.’

  ‘I didn’t realise.’ The girl’s name was Pam. She was the daughter of one of the early squatters in the tower, though Marsha did not remember her. She had lived there all her life.

  Marsha flinched for the slipping away of time that she would feel when she lifted her foot over the threshold of the tower. But time did not slip; instead it seemed to pile in on her, past, present and future shattered and whirling around her like a window-pane grabbed by wind. The tower was timelessly old and modem, the guard at her side was a child, she was every age and none. The dust smelt the same as ever. Women scrubbed and mopped to hold back the tide of dirt; that was timeless. But there was a futuristic weirdness about the place too, it was almost supernatural, the upward-stretching coils of staircase, the disrepair, the dim light, the hum, heaven and hell in one place.

  ‘What’s that noise?’

  ‘I don’t hear anything,’ Pam said.

  Soon Marsha didn’t hear it either; it was the noise of people in the building, living with their doors open.

  Pam showed her round. There were rooms where walls parted and windows did not fit and damp fungus grew. The floors were covered with mattresses, some with women asleep. There were bruises, wounds and bandages. It was like a refugee camp.

  ‘It is,’ said Pam, ‘one thing about family values, it brings a lot of rape.’

  ‘Organized?’

  ‘We think so. We call them Family Men.’

  ‘Just in London?’

  ‘No, Everywhere.’

  ‘And are there places like this ... everywhere?’

  ‘We think so.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Somehow there’s always something more urgent to do,’ said Pam, ‘than send out a newsletter.’

  ‘But you have lists ...’

  ‘It’s safer not to be on lists.’

  ‘Is that why ... the barbed wire?’

  ‘Yes. Do you want to stay the night here?’

  ‘No, it’s all right.’

  ‘Please,’ said Pam, ‘I’m sorry I was so crass out there.’

  Marsha smiled.

  Pam showed her the floor where they stored food; sacks and boxes and tins lined the walls of four flats. Some of the food was grown on the premises — winter greens on the roof and in the window boxes, potatoes in the ploughed-up surround of the tower, and an ingenious range of indoor cultivation: mushrooms in bags in dark cupboards, herbs, beans — even Lynn’s account of chickens running free on the upper floors was true. Other food was bought by women who drew Benefit or had jobs, or was stolen.

  ‘But we don’t talk about that.’

  There was a cooking floor — rows of rickety little cookers and spirit stoves and tables. Marsha found this oddly disappointing — she had expected canteen-size vats and large, comforting, brown earthenware pots. Pam read her mind. ‘We can’t afford to make a big production out of it,’ she said, ‘everyone ate too much. Now you eat when you’re hungry, and not always then.’ There was a medical floor, spotless and staffed by a couple of doctors who trained the women to become specialists in one skill apiece: early abortion, for example, or chest infections, or so-called old- fashioned methods of contraception involving rubber, or sponges and herbs and bodily rhythms. These, Pam said, turned out to be at least as reliable and far safer medically than techniques involving chemicals and male supervision.

  Each flight of stairs led to a tier of flats more dilapidated than the last. Rich tapestries billowed over holes in the walls, but the women bustling about in light clothes (nodding to Pam, smiling to Marsha) seemed not to notice the cold gusts that made Marsha shiver. There were rooms for babies and young children to play; rooms for exercise and training, old women and young girls practising unarmed combat together, laughing and deadly serious. And everywhere the cleaning and the mending and the maintenance went on, as if the tower were the Forth Bridge upended.

  ‘What about men?’ said Marsha.

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘Do the
y come here?’

  ‘No. Some of the sisters are hostile or frightened, and with reason. Sons are a problem. We haven’t agreed a policy on when they become men, and of course many of the women would leave if we didn’t allow sons. So they have a special floor.’

  ‘This may sound like a silly question, but how do the women conceive?’

  Pam smiled. ‘Some still go for the traditional manner. Some prefer aid, and we can fix that. Some are raped.’

  ‘What’s at the top?’

  ‘The woom. ’

  ‘Pardon?’

  Pam spelled it out. ‘A little girl called it that and the name stuck. It’s a sort of chapel. Some of the women are into things spiritual. I’m not. It dissipates energy. It’s Judy mainly — hey, you may know her. She’s been her since the beginning. She’s ... well, not always calm or happy. She says there’s a goddess who talks with her and watches over the tower and keeps it safe, and who are we to argue? Women can do anything here, believe anything, as long as they understand, no men and no leaders. Now. Do you want to stay?’

  Marsha longed for the anonymity of a hotel room. Today had been going on for years. ‘I must go,’ she said.

  ‘There’s one thing I didn’t show you,’ said Pam.

  It was a quiet, clean room with a wide bed and cushions and pictures of flowers on the walls. It was as near as anything in the tower got to luxury.

  ‘There’s always someone who wants to be alone. You won’t be disturbed. ’

  At the sight of the bed, Marsha’s legs gave. Pam helped her lie down, loosened her clothes, pulled covers over her. The bed swayed with the motion of the ship. Dim thumps came from above and below. She must have fallen asleep immediately because she woke to find a mug of some kind of herbal drink, just the right heat to swallow. She did not remember Pam bringing it, or lighting the candle that flickered by the bed or drawing back the curtains so that she could gaze out into the cold, blue night with its scattering of stars, its few wide clouds and its thin slice of moon.

  She didn’t know how many days she stayed in that room, thinking, sleeping, relieved to find herself not wanting to eat much. She met some more women and helped with odd jobs. She was disconcerted to find that Judy Matthews (for it was the same Judy, wild-eyed, dreamy, volatile as ever, and still obsessively wearing red) not only recognised her but kept falling to her knees in front of her, seeing her as some manifestation of her goddess, come from a far-off place.

  ‘Must’ve been reading the papers,’ Pam said slyly, digging Marsha in the ribs, and Marsha dug back.

  ‘I must go and see Lynn at least,’ Marsha thought. She was so comfortable in the tower and the atmosphere was so free of any hint that she should leave or even make herself useful that she was starting to feel unwanted.

  ‘At least stay for Christmas,’ Pam urged.

  ‘Do you have it?’

  ‘Not as such. The birth of a male who thinks he’s god isn’t such a rare event. But Judy says there are earlier origins of a midwinter festival — it used to be the birth of the sun s-u-n, to the goddess, and the goddess-worshippers in places like ancient Egypt used to have lovely female ceremonies.’

  ‘I thought you weren’t into things spiritual,’ said Marsha.

  ‘Well.’ Pam turned up her nose. ‘It’s only once a year. And it’s very beautiful.’

  It was. Marsha watched from the end of the street. She felt she had no right to be part of it. It was dark early morning. She pulled her coat close round her shoulders. Seyer Street seemed to decay before her eyes despite the beautifying effect of the snow that had begun to fall. The tower was in complete darkness, leaning slightly in the barbed wire field, stark against the lightening sky.

  Marsha strained her eyes; a dark figure on the roof swam into view and out again. Snow crystals stuck to her eyelids.

  She moved her feet up and down. They sounded like pistol-shots on the hard ground. The tower bisected the elusive pale line of dawn.

  A clear tone cut the silence. A steady, high, wailing note that was unlike human or animal but pulsated with triumph. A dot of light glowed on the roof, in the hand of a robed woman. And then the tone turned to words, miraculously clear in the stillness: ‘The Virgin has brought forth! The light is waxing!’ And the figure turned towards the sunrise, a tiny silhouette with uplifted arms. Collindeane blazed with light, and shouts and songs came from the women who appeared with lamps at the windows. In ones and twos the lamps winked and burned the shape of a diamond down the side of the tower, and near the top of the diamond where the lights were closer together, they picked out a smaller round shape, winking like a jewel turning in firelight.

  Chapter 5: Lynn

  Feminists had been pushing leaflets through letter-boxes urging women to ignore Christmas. If they were not taking part in female festivals they should stay in bed on December 25, go for long walks together, or do political work. Christmas was a myth. Christmas had never been a holiday for women. Christmas was when families came together in greed and discord, and women slaved in kitchens. Christmas was in celebration of the male god of a brutally masculist religion, it was about a misogynist fantasy, a woman who was maternal but not sexual — the reverse of the truth more often than not.

  One such leaflet had flopped through the front door of the Byers’ house just as Lynn was embarking on her thrice-daily battle to persuade Jane, red-faced and sulky, to swallow the enzyme tablets that would supplement the failings of her own digestive system; and an embarrassed Derek was trying to explain politely that he needed his meal now as he had a departmental meeting to go to. Lynn stamped exasperated to the front door and read the badly-printed bit of paper.

  ‘Great,’ she said, ‘Christmas is off this year.’

  If only Derek had laughed or argued the moment would have passed; but he just said, ‘All right, dear,’ (playing the henpecked husband; was he asking for it?) and that appeared to be settled. And when a woman came round from the Neighbours’ Association (a FAMILY front which Lynn had refused to join) to ask if anyone from the Byers household would care to join the estate’s Christmas party, Jane had piped up, ‘Ooh yes, because mummy says we can’t have Christmas this year.’ And Derek had said, ‘Er, yes, that is kind, my wife has been rather tired of late,’ and the bearer of the invitation (mother of six, who also housed her husband’s elderly parents) had given Lynn an expressive glance and said, ‘Excellent. I’ll expect the three of you then.’ And Lynn had growled, ‘Two.’

  So now she was all alone on Christmas afternoon. It was still early, but midwinter gloom was gathering. She went to the front door and peered out at the neat estate with its festive lights beaming smugly through curtains on to the vegetable allotments. (The Neighbours’ Association had agonised long over whether to permit allotments; cheap food versus the tone of the neighbourhood; cheap food won.) Lynn yearned for Seyer Street. Of course it was no place to raise a child with lungs so vulnerable to infection that a common cold could kill her; the houses on the estate were clean, centrally heated, with indoor loos; but she detested the rise in their station in life, the professorial couple. And the way the houses were built, the open-plan ground floor with no door to slam between herself and the rising tide of debris that being a full-time housewife somehow created; and the upstairs, the trendy brainwave of ‘accommodating a family’s needs at different stages in the life-cycle’ by having not rooms but adjustable partitions. Thus the newly-married couple were expected to frolic freely in the open space, like rats in a garage; the first baby could be closeted off in a comer; and each additional toddler or teenager could have its own territory, ceded by parents who by now probably didn’t need that big a bedroom anyway. And in time, of course, when the children moved out, the elderly grandparents could move in. ‘Homes built for a lifetime of caring,’ crooned the builders’ blurb.

  It was disconcerting to have won the battle over Christmas so easily, to be by herself as requested. (Where has it gone, that old exultation in being alone? Died the death p
robably — and a merciful release. I am never alone.) What should she do? Read something? A bit feeble. Write something? Ah, but either it would work or it wouldn’t, and either way it would hurt because she’d never get it finished. Drink something? Nothing in the house. She giggled. How sacrilegious could you be? How low could a mother sink, how much more could a husband tolerate? A gust of wind blew burning powdery snow in her face. She slammed the door, put the radio on for company.

  We take you now into the candlelit chapel at King’s College for the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols —

  She caught her breath. Even in the Christmases of her most rebellious, anti-religious youth she had loved this, braving teasing to listen to it. She’d missed it, the past few Christmases, too busy with the parties Jane always wanted. She didn’t even know they still had it. Now she could listen alone. Was that all right? Was it all right for a wife-and-mother who’d gone on strike against domestic chores to listen to the carol service from Cambridge?

  Once in royal David’s city

  stood a lowly cattle shed

  Tears pricked the backs of her eyes. Lovely pain surged in her. As the note rose she waited for the falter, the flaw that was never there.

  And his shelter was a stable

  and his cradle was a stall

  The Benefit babies weren’t being sheltered in stables or cradled in stalls, she thought suddenly; adding fiercely, not quite. Her mind wandered to the women she’d read about, unable to find jobs or weary of depending on oafish husbands, who were increasing their families as the only way of increasing their incomes. Market forcesl You want babies, you pay for ’em! Lynn laughed. The poor little things shot from their startled mothers under the ministrations of the new vacuum-operated labour-aids in the great state maternity wards which were virtually all that remained of the National Health. Yes, birth was moving forwards to the twenty-first century, but what about the other technological miracles so breathlessly promised in the colour supplements up until a few years ago?