‘I’ve given you money. I’m not supposed —’
‘My Benefit’s been taken away.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘My Benefit’s been —’
Mrs Patel sighed. They were so many. What was there to say?
‘Then maybe you are not a good mother.’
‘In my street it has been taken away from all the coloured women.’
Rashida limped on, pretending not to hear. But the woman’s dark face haunted her. What were they doing here, the two of them, in this cold country? She went to Laing.
‘I have had a complaint from a constituent,’ she said, ‘Benefit policy is not being equitably applied.’
Laing sipped koffee. ‘There are anomalies which will be ironed out —’ he mumbled, his words lost in steam.
Peel was lurking in a corner of the room. His voice was contemptuously loud. ‘You really must stop being so sensitive about your colour, Rashida.’
‘I never mentioned colour, Mr Peel.’
It was a drab, never-ending afternoon, neither cold nor hot but thick-aired and still. Some sounds were clear. A fly buzzed manically as it flung itself at a glass pane, refusing to look upwards at an open window and a route to freedom. The ticking of the clock in Rashida’s office seemed to get slower and louder. She looked for something to do, something she could be bothered to do. A message came up that a Mrs Lynn Byers would like to see her. She knew no one of that name. She wasn’t even a constituent. Still — visits from strangers either raised the spirits or fuelled anger. Either was better than this lethargy.
The minute Mrs Byers came into the room, Rashida felt a link of trust between them. She felt she might have seen her once before — but she had met so many people. Still, there was this feeling of a reunion with an old friend.
‘I’m a reporter.’
‘Oh yes? For whom? And could you please speak up?’
‘Freelance.’
‘Would you like some tea, Mrs Byers?’
‘No thank you.’
‘We have the real thing. We are very privileged.’
‘In that case ... yes please. Thank you.’
Rashida made tea from her special store. Mrs Byers explained that she wanted to write profiles of the founders of the Family Party. She was particularly interested in Rashida as a radical, a dissenting voice. She was acute and surprising; Rashida had not realised her doubts were so apparent, she had always tried to toe the line in public ... now she was speaking freely. Her voice sounded clear in her head. She kept reminding herself she was on the record, that this was just another shrewd and cynical reporter. Finally she heard herself telling Mrs Byers that she was going to retire. Mrs Byers showed no surprise, and asking why seemed a polite formality. Rashida said it was her age, and Mrs Byers said, ‘That isn’t true, is it?’
Rashida said, ‘Why don’t you put your notebook away?’
Lynn showed her the empty pages. ‘I’m not really taking notes.’
‘Oh?’
‘I just wanted to talk to you. I wanted to tell you something. I know I’m taking a chance, but less of one than I thought when I first decided to come.’
‘You are very cryptic,’ Rashida said, and listened to what Lynn had to tell her. And when Lynn finished and said, ‘You didn’t know?’ Rashida said, ‘No, I didn't know.’
‘But you’re not surprised?’
‘No, I’m not surprised.’
‘What will you do?’ said Lynn.
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Me? Well, I — I don’t know.’
Rashida shrugged. ‘I don’t know either.’
‘You know what they say,’ Marsha said, ‘Three ways to spread news. Telegram, telephone, tell-a-woman.’
‘What can Mrs Patel do for us?’ asked Pam. All the Collindeane women were crammed together, excited and a little afraid. The meeting was different from any that had gone before. The feminist traditions of having no one in the chair and allowing no one to dominate were observed, but judiciously; Lynn was doing a lot of talking, a lot of organising, and somehow everyone felt it right to let her.
‘We can have the names and addresses of every woman in FAMILY.’
‘What will we do?’
‘We have to make a definite plan,’ said Lynn, ‘and we have to take a chance. Two chances. First, that other feminists won’t mind us taking a lead because there’s no time to consult. Second, that when we talk to the FAMILY women, they’ll be shocked enough to act with us.’ She paused, flinching for the protest that would surely come, but it didn’t. She ventured on. ‘We’ll have to phrase it in their terms. Yes, motherhood is women’s sacred calling and that’s why it mustn’t be a bargaining counter in male power politics ...
‘“We're all on the same side’” someone said, giving a passable imitation of Isabel Travers. The moment trembled between cynicism and laughter. The women laughed.
They talked for many hours, and there was no dissent.
Collindeane women would set off in twos and threes to hunt out feminist centres and family groups up and down the country and explain what was going on. Finding the feminists would be the hard part. Lynn would look through the crates of cuttings and newsletters that the tower had accumulated down the years to help locate them.
Meanwhile, the government announced the date of the state visit by the president of Europea and his entourage. They’d dot the i’s and cross the t’s on the agreement regarding Britain’s entry and eat lunch with the royal family. The date was carefully noted by the women.
The withdrawal of many mothers from Collindeane, and the confiscation of the Benefit from those that remained, meant the tower was short of money. And for all the women’s ingenuity and the surprising agricultural possibilities of the building, there were limits to how self-sufficient an urban commune could be. There were women in the country who might grow things for them, but transport was a problem and they had nothing to give in return. So more women had to do clerical work for Europea firms or take the dreadful risks involved in thieving, and living standards were lowered. Strict priority was agreed. Boys no longer lived in the tower. Baby girls came first, then pregnant or sick women. If food was short, the others went without. Getting food was the main priority. Repairs to the building were neglected.
So the building was cold and draughty and damp and dirty; and many women went hungry. Marsha rarely felt hungry but was fascinated by the shape of her bones that stood out more and more clearly under her thin flesh. She had eaten nothing but flower-pot grown beans for two days. She supposed her general state of health must be poor, which was why she kept getting thumping feverish colds like this one.
She was supposed to be on a visit up north, but the cold had felled her and she’d stayed behind in the nearly-empty tower.
Her head throbbed, and the effort of raising a handkerchief to her nose made her muscles ache till it seemed better just to lie with her head tipped right back. Except that it made her feel sick. It was a windy day, and the window-boxes were rattling. She’d gone staggering to the medical centre where the women had been sympathetic but brisk: ‘There’s no known cure for a cold, and any that you have heard of are placebos, meaning tricks that insult you. Keep warm, do whatever makes you comfortable, and it will pass.’
‘You mean don’t waste your time,’ Marsha had grumbled, and they had said yes, they were rather busy; they had girls with measles and were keeping anxious eyes on two women whose birth control pellets they had at last found a way to remove.
So she’d found herself a draught-free comer to sit in and feel sorry for herself; but then Judy Matthews came upon her, and her solicitude was even worse than the medical women’s good sense. She informed Marsha that she, Marsha, was a favourite of the goddess, and thus she, Judy, had been empowered by Her to cure her. And not even Marsha’s querulous enquiry as to why a favourite of the goddess should catch such an unpleasant cold in the first place would put her off. She brought pungent drinks down from her chapel in the
roof and slapped hot herbal poultices on Marsha’s neck and joints.
Marsha tried to locate her thoughts elsewhere. ‘Women were always the healers,’ Judy crooned, but Marsha longed for an authoritarian doctor to pump her full of antibiotics. Her mind moved on; Posy had been in her thoughts a lot; not one of her letters had been answered, but she retained the dream that she would turn up one day. She wasn’t even sure that it would be a good idea, politically; a delicate efficiency was imposing itself on the anarchic women under pressure of the emergency, and Marsha could just imagine Posy blundering in and shattering it. But she missed her companionship and love. For all the general feelings of sisterhood and care in the tower, everyone seemed to be in a couple (best friends if not lovers). And Lynn — well, Lynn was married and cautious and a mother, and she came and went and they kissed each other in greeting and had long talks, but something remained unresolved between them and there was no way of getting at it to resolve it when neither of them could articulate what it was.
Just as there had been a time (it was probably still true) when a man and women couldn’t just be loving friends without at least signifying their intention to become — or not become — more, so now, in the women’s tower, question-marks hung over her relationship with Lynn. At least, in her mind they did.
How bloody silly it was! Why couldn’t they just be friends who had grown together? Women would be buying each other wedding-rings next, demanding fidelity, taking each other’s names!
Marsha’s tolerance reached its limit when Judy started dancing round her, singing spells. Her throat was on fire. She practised words to say she felt better now, thank you, and Judy shouldn’t overdo it because you couldn’t be too careful with spells. One of the women on sentry duty saved her.
‘There’s someone for you downstairs, Marsha.’
It couldn't be. The timingl Marsha's throat was suddenly wet, soothed. She knew without asking that Posy had arrived, that if she enquired further the sentry would say, ‘An Australian woman. Quite big.’
‘An overseas woman,’ said the sentry.
In she would stride, all grin and muscle and competence, and declare, ‘Now we can get it together, Marsh. I think we’re old enough.’
‘She’s black,’ the sentry went on, and Marsha’s jaw dropped and her throat was dry again.
‘I’m too ill to see anyone.’ It was almost true. If her aches and pains had retreated as an organised force one minute ago, they were back now as guerillas. Pinpricks stabbed deep inside her ears; spasms shook her lungs and chest. ‘I mean, it’s not because she’s black, it’s —’
‘I think she’s come a long way.’
Judy shook wet twigs in her face. She turned away, coughing.
‘Of course. D’you mind sending her up? And Judy, for pity’s sake leave me alone!’
Judy shot a glare of uncomprehending hurt, followed by a smile of generous peace. ‘I shall pray for you,’ she said, ‘in my chapel.’
The visitor was a short, wiry woman with glossy skin the colour of tree-bark. She looked clean and vigorous and efficient; her manner was hurried yet painstakingly courteous. A vivid multicoloured scarf hid every trace of her hair and fanned out into whorls and wisps like the flamboyant headdress of a bird; in contrast she wore an old-fashioned English raincoat, buttoned tight to her chin against the elements. Marsha made an awed decision not to mention her cold.
‘I’m Marsha,’ she said.
‘I know.’
‘How do you know?’
The woman dipped briskly into a pocket. ‘I have a photograph.’ Marsha looked at it and knew it came from Posy. The woman peered closely at her face. ‘You are thinner. Are you ill?’ It was the enquiry of an engineer who perceives that an important part of a machine is not working.
‘It’s nothing,’ Marsha said, ‘how is Posy?’
‘Unfortunately I have to tell you that she is dead.’ Unfortunately I have to tell you that the machine is beyond repair. Marsha gaped, wanting to hate the woman for her calm, informative stare, but drawing strength from it.
‘How, why did she die?’
‘She died in action.’ The flicker of a smile on the blue-black lips was somewhere between mockery and compassion.
‘Tell me please.’
The woman came from a country long deemed overpopulated by the West. Agencies had striven for years to persuade the women to limit their families in order to transform the society into a modem one that could produce healthy workers and afford consumer goods; but the women knew that their children were the only wealth they had, for who else would care for the homes and the farms when they and their husbands were too old? They had been politely unco-operative with a succession of birth controllers, but finally a team came from Europop with a special plan. They offered free cookers to pregnant women who would permit long silver needles to be driven (quite painlessly) into their wombs to ascertain the sex of the baby. The birth controllers then went to the husbands of the women found to be carrying girls, and offered them motorbikes if they would persuade their wives to abort.
Girls grew up to increase the numbers of mouths to feed after all, they explained, and they couldn’t even help on the farm.
Individual women objected, argued, resisted, but they had no cookers to offer their sisters. And even when the gas cylinders that powered the cookers ran out and were not replaced, a wife with a cooker and a horde of sons remained an important status symbol for the men, and the promise of motorbikes kept up their interest. Some women became restive, but it never occured to them that anyone anywhere else in the world might be interested in their plight. Their village became known as the place where no daughters are born.
And then Posy came. She’d come winging into the country on a jet, then driven a jeep for five days through rock and desert to reach the village whose name she’d spotted in a footnote to a learned article on future strategies for birth control. She’d stopped only to push the jeep out of pot-holes, or trap small animals to eat. She’d roared to a halt in the centre of the village, and jumped to the ground, the only thing moving in the shimmering heat of midday. Arms akimbo, she’d looked round. And through the cracks in the walls of their huts the women had looked at her.
‘How did she seem?’ Marsha asked, trying to control her voice.
‘Myself, I thought I had never seen such a powerful woman. She was almost like a goddess, or a rock of flesh. So much flesh!’ The woman’s voice warmed, though a gust of wind through a crack in the wall made her tighten her raincoat about her. ‘Her arms and legs were bare. In our society it would be immodest, but Posy did not look immodest. She had a great red hat that made her look even taller; the sun glowed on it, it almost seemed to bum. She had dark glasses over her eyes, and more glasses — for spare? — over the hat. With the sun on them she seemed to have four eyes. Her legs and arms were as thick as trees, and everyone in the village could hear her voice. She spoke our language — not well, but she had tried to learn so we listened to her.’
‘What did she do?’
She had summoned the women to hear her. Polite and curious, they had gone. The men went too. Posy said she would not speak if the men were there. The men objected and the women supported their protest, so Posy said in that case the men must sit at the back and keep quiet. The women laughed at such turning of the tables and the men obeyed. Secretly the women nudged each other and agreed that the white woman was mad, and what she said next convinced them further.
‘There is a world conspiracy of men against women!’ she shouted.
‘There is a world conspiracy of white against black!’ retorted one of the men, who was in touch with a national liberation movement. Posy was undaunted.
‘What do they mean,’ she demanded, ‘by a “population problem?” They mean that they have built a world that cannot feed its own people!’
Everyone nodded. Posy had not specified who ‘they’ were.
‘They say they can solve the problem by wiping out women! That’s al
l they see you as — baby-trees to be chopped down when no more babies are required. Well. Which would you prefer? To exist in a world with a few problems, or not to exist in the sort of nightmare that an all-male society would be? Think about it! What would it be like?’
One woman said shyly, ‘They would fight all the time.’
‘Quite! All violence and pomposity!’ She turned on the men. ‘How can you trade your daughters for junk machinery that doesn’t even work?’
‘Yes,’ said the women, ‘how can you?’
The men sulked: they had meant no harm, and their wives had been pleased enough to accept the cookers. But there was no stopping Posy. ‘The powerful Western nations, all of which are run by men, want to carve up your country. They want to eat the food that you produce, steal the goods that you make so that they can sell them back at twice the price, despoil the land that you have conserved. To do that they have to stop you having children who might also want a share of the food and the goods and the land. They want to run your lives to fit in with the way they want to run their lives, and the first thing they want to grab is the very source of your lives — your wombs!’
In time, the women began to think maybe she was not so mad after all; and some of the national liberation men nodded at her words too, when they were not directed against them. Next time the birth controllers showed their faces they were chased from the village, and the unborn girl-children remained intact.
Posy said she’d love to stay, but the women of the whole world needed her. The village women were secretly relieved but they asked her to stay for a holiday. She was tired. She huffed and puffed in the heat and refused to protect her skin from the sun, insisting that sunburn was thought attractive in her country. She strode about in shorts and raved of the world revolution of women that was coming, and whole families came from neighbouring villages to look at her.
They gave a farewell party for her the night before she was due to speed away in her jeep. The women put a garland round her neck and hoisted her on to their shoulders to carry her through the village. But she was heavier than they thought. They dropped her.
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