‘Who is that?’ he demanded. The line crackled. He cursed as he fiddled with the volume control ... damn gadgets ... never had volume controls confusing the issue on a perfectly simple telephone in his day ... the line screeched. He flinched. The screech became women’s laughter.
‘Who is that?’
Giggles. ‘Who does it sound like?’
Damn silly schoolgirl giggles. Had he been called away from a turning point in the nation’s history for a practical joker? He’d have things to say to the switchboard, and their bossl ‘It sounds like some damn fool women —’
‘That’s right.’ A shadow fell across the phone and the prime minister looked up into the grave face of a police inspector. The shrill voice nagged on: ‘That’s right. This is the women. You have our children.’
‘I haven’t got any children,’ said the prime minister.
‘You have now,’ said the woman.
The policeman was starting to talk in his ear. He silenced him impatiently. The woman went on: ‘We’ve decided not to look after them any more, you see. We’re having a day off.’ The voice was pert, almost coquettish now. Giggle, giggle, giggle. ‘Sorry, I should say we’re on strike.’
‘Damn kids —’ the inspector began.
'Quiet.’
‘And don’t think the children’ll give you any excuse to take it out on them. They’re all very obedient, FAMILY-reared.’ The phone went dead. The prime minister’s enraged hand twiddled the volume control till it fell off. He turned on the inspector who informed him, quietly and with respect, that the streets through which the Europea party would pass after lunch were now blocked, thronging with children, unsupervised, in their thousands.
‘Arrest them.’
‘Children?’
‘Send them home.’
‘They won’t say where they live.’
‘Aren’t they vandalising or something?’
‘No, sir. They’re mainly playing. They’re just a bit obtrusive.’ Equally obtrusive was the graffiti that had started to appear on walls along the route, the inspector continued. In places where it certainly had not been the night before when his men checked. What did it say? He consulted his notes. It said things like ‘Benefits for all The Women.’ ‘The Women are on Strike.’ ‘The Women are not Test Tubes.’ ‘The Women are not Guinea Pigs.’ ‘No to Europop.’ ‘No to Europea.’
‘But they didn’t know?’ the prime minister roared.
‘Sir?’
‘Change the route, dammit.’
‘Sir, they’re everywhere and we haven’t got long.’
‘Good god, you’ve handled worse crowds than a bunch of children, I should hope. Deal with it, give ’em sweets or tear gas or something —’
‘Tear gas, sir?’
‘Anything! Well, not tear gas, you know what I mean, use your discretion, man, you’re paid enough. Tear gas on children! You think the president wants to tour London on a carpet of dead infants?’
‘... quite accustomed to the idea of motherhood as a public service,’ the princess was explaining to the president as they sat round a table that was slightly too long and shiny for. the simple meal it carried. ‘Why, they even get paid.’
The prime minister glanced at Laing, picking morosely at his salad. Somehow he had to speak to him.
‘What was your message?’ asked the president, chatty and imperious.
‘Just a small matter.'
‘What?’
The prime minister gave a short laugh. ‘My mother-in-law’s birthday present, as a matter of fact.’
The president enjoyed this and bellowed with laughter. ‘A matter of state, that, eh?’
‘Is your salad to your taste, Mr President?’ the princess asked.
‘Thank you. I am not fond of salad.’
A sealed envelope passed to the prime minister with his after-lunch cup of koffee revealed that when a Northern train pulled into Birmingham an hour ago, it was found to be full of unaccompanied children eating sandwiches. They would not give their surnames. Pupils at a school in Norfolk had refused to go home for their lunch, or, indeed, at all; and three big city cathedrals swarmed with youngsters. Graffiti was appearing everywhere, reports still poured in and all London’s main streets were blocked.
The prime minister faked a cough and got up from the table. The cars were due in thirty-five minutes. He phoned Isabel Travers.
‘But you know I am no longer active, prime minister. My health is delicate.’
‘Isabel, this is an emergency.’
‘I understand that.’
‘You have stature. Go on television or something. Good God, you can’t expect me to deal with this.’
Isabel’s sigh was heartrending. ‘I shall make some enquiries and call you back. Where are you?’
‘The palace.’
‘The palace?'
‘Yes, the palace, and we’ve got thirty-five minutes.’
Back in the drawing room the royal ladies were examining the pale yellow foam on their koffee while the professor harangued the silent room on the dangers to civilization of random productive coitus. The president’s eyes bored into the returning prime minister.
‘Something has happened, I think.’
‘No, no.’
With ten minutes to spare, the prime minister learned that Isabel Travers could do nothing. FAMILY, so disciplined and orderly and reassuring, was in disarray. Rashida Patel had taken leave of her senses and made unauthorised use of the mailing lists. Women’s liberationists had spread panic in the ranks with a rumour that the government planned to forbid some women to have babies. Their reaction was only to be expected; the mass abandonment of children had been planned as a protest for months, with skill and precision. In time the misunderstanding over the government’s plans would be cleared up, but for the moment it was not even clear who was loyal and who had gone over to the group who had rather arrogantly assumed to themselves the title of ‘The Women.’
Isabel said, ‘I am assuming that the misunderstanding will be cleared up.’
The prime minister scoffed to avoid answering.
‘I am assuming,’ she continued, ‘that there is no truth — because you are tampering with women’s birthright if it is true, you know, and getting into dangerous areas.’
‘Isabel, I am not a fool.’
‘I know that, prime minister, but over the next few years a generation of girls will be coming to maturity who know in their hearts that their fulfilment as women lies in their freedom to choose motherhood, and they will not lack my sympathy if —’
‘Isabel!’ the prime minister howled, ‘do something!’
‘Seems to be a slight hitch with one of the cars. Old-fashioned things.’
The president’s scepticism was palpable. ‘We have a tight schedule.’
The prime minister’s attempt to reply was aborted in a hum that became a high-pitched roar from far below in the street. The startled lunch guests flocked to the windows. The prime minister collapsed in a chair and covered his eyes.
A colourful sea of children swamped the base of the palace, and more were coming: rolling up Oxford Street and Charing Cross Road and Tottenham Court Road and all the little side-streets in between to converge on the towering building, shouting and waving. It wasn’t a riot, it was more like playtime. Nonplussed policemen stood together in groups. Guns bulged on their hips — boys approached, asked to see them. Occasional tough guys drew batons, but the children merely examined them.with fascinated curiosity. Police dogs were brought; the children patted them. Police horses were fed sugar and had their noses stroked. Children climbed over parked cars, taking their shoes off first to protect the paintwork. Nearing the palace, they stopped running and sauntered, or sat down and ate sweets. Many carried banners or paper lollipops. There was just one slogan: ‘The Women are on Strike!’ The president asked, ‘What is all this?’
‘A traditional festival?’ the princess suggested faintly.
‘Don’t be alarmed,
’ said the prime minister.
‘I am not alarmed,’ said the president.
‘What do they mean?’ wondered one of the wives.
‘On strike?’ read another, ‘Well! I won’t say I haven’t been tempted myself. ’
The party turned back from the window. David Laing was at the koffee pot, helping himself. The princess took the pot delicately from him and offered the president a refill. ‘Now,’ she beamed, ‘I wonder what all this is about.’
Laing sat down and stretched himself. He yawned and scratched his hair. His moodiness seemed to have lifted. He was bitter and glib. ‘It’s obvious. They don’t like their terms of employment. Can’t say I blame them much.’
The president’s face was purple. The prime minister laughed. ‘It’s a practical joke. Never let it be said that our women lack a sense of humour. Always saying, aren’t you, that the only time we appreciate the work you put in is when you, ah, don’t.’
‘Quite,’ said a wife.
‘A joke, ’ said another.
‘You think you can control productive coitus among that lot?’ the president demanded of the professor.
‘The tour is still on,’ the prime minister said, ‘it’s just that, er, you may see some mild disorder.’
‘It might be interesting for you, Mr President,’ said the princess.
The president indicated that there would be no tour. The party would proceed to Dover. He added that on his not-infrequent visits to the underdeveloped world, governments made it their business to ensure that he was not troubled by protesters in the street. Had he come to London to fight his way home through unruly children? ‘What’s the matter with your women — or your men for that matter?’ he demanded, glaring with such challenge at the prime minister’s crotch that the princess blushed and busied herself with a crease in the tablecloth. The president became ribald. ‘How far does it go? What else do your women refuse?’
The professor spoke softly to Peel and Laing. ‘The Europop project will run into difficulties if the women are not co-operative.’ He shook his black locks.
‘Yes I expect it will,’ said Laing.
‘You said they would be.’
‘They will, ’ said Peel.
‘Oh yes,’ said Laing, ‘they’ll co-operate. They’re all in favour of it. They don’t know what it is yet, but —’
‘They obviously think they do,’ said Peel, ‘Professor, you have my assurance. The trouble-makers are a tiny minority. Their leaders will be dealt with, and then — is something funny, Mr Laing?’
‘Don’t you understand? They don’t have leaders.’
‘What nonsense. This thing was led.’
The Europea party swept to Dover in sealed cars through back streets.
‘You were a lot of help,’ Peel stormed at Laing, ‘What in hell are you smiling at ?’ His composure was shattered, his eloquence gone. Clenched white, his fists pounded his knees.
‘Nothing, I’m sorry, it is serious I agree, it’s just ... well, you have to laugh. Whoever they are, they’ve called our bluff.’
‘I have heard,’ said Peel, ‘that in some parts of the world they reduce population growth at a stroke by aborting girls. Works wonders over a generation or two.’ His teeth showed. ‘Why the hell didn’t you think of that, prime minister?’
The mass media had always reserved a special tone, somewhere between smirking glee and moral outrage, for stories about feminists. Now embarrassment was added. The premature departure of the visitors was a serious business. ‘These women cannot realise what they have done.’
All day crowds of children kept turning up at stations and terminals and ancient monuments, in universities and parks, hotel lobbies and laboratories, offices and factories. When it became clear that their mothers intended leaving them overnight, the prime minister ordered that they be taken to women’s prisons. That would shame mothers out of their nonsense. The women prisoners were reported to be enchanted, the officers rather less so. The children kept scampering along corridors when it was time to lock them into cells, wanting bedtime stories and carrots and drinks of water. Then the men in men’s prisons started demanding their share of the children.
Next morning the prime minister ordered firms to give fathers time off from work to go and collect their children. But many men could not be spared, and, besides, no individual knew where his children were. The women had been away all night. The Department for Family Welfare set up reception centres staffed by girls from Young Families of Tomorrow. The children’s behaviour at the centres was impeccable. They said please and thank you and ate nicely. When the younger ones cried they were comforted by the older. But they would not give their names.
The princess agreed to go on television.
‘The hearts of my husband and myself go out,’ she said, ‘not just to the children who have been abandoned, but to the women who have felt driven to take this step. Not everyone will agree with me for saying this —’ in a glass box at the back of the studio Peel and the prime minister glanced at each other over Laing’s impassive head; she was departing from the script they had given her ‘— but the needs of women are still not adequately respected by policy makers. There is still, er, lots of discrimination. But this is no solution. You have made your point. You are not bad women. It is late. Your children are bedding down in strange homes or wriggling to find comfort on the hard floors of large dark halls. Their courage forsakes them as they long for a mother’s goodnight kiss. Come and take them home before irreparable damage is done. At my personal request a group of MPs will meet with your leaders, and they will give, I promise, the most sympathetic ...’
Laing said, ‘They don’t have leaders.’
The princess said, ‘Was I all right?’
The reply was lost in the shouts of children invading the foyer downstairs. The princess’s aides had to advance before her to clear a passage.
Fascinated foreign correspondents asked, ‘What will you do with the children?’
‘Nothing,’ said Mr Peel.
‘You will let them starve?’
‘Of course not,’ said Laing and the prime minister together.
‘What is it costing you to keep them in reception centres?’
‘No comment.’
‘What are the demands of the women?’
‘This is what is so absurd. We don’t know. They haven’t even said who they are.’
But sharp-eyed newsmen had spotted the half painted-out graffiti, and wondered what it all meant. Mr Peel cut in on their speculations in a tone of hurt surprise that it was really necessary to go into all this. There were plans, he explained, to let in a few foreign demographers to collect figures on the British birth-rate. That was all. The women had got hold of the wrong end of the stick and reacted hysterically. As usual.
Although a few hundred women had trickled back here and there by the end of the week, public indignation was running high. Any woman of child-bearing age seen on the street without children in tow ran the risk of being stoned, spat on or refused admission to public buildings or transport. Some reported attacks by gangs of men who threatened a repetition if the women did not go back to their children. The policemen wrote down the details carefully. Then they said, ‘Are you sure you didn’t ask for it?’
For safety and support, striking women were banded together in pre-arranged houses and feminist squats, carefully stocked up with food. They knew each other, they had been planning together for weeks. Now they had long, hungry hours to talk.
The women who were in FAMILY tried to explain why, and the women who were in women’s liberation tried to understand. Then it was the other way round. Everyone was kind and cautious in what she said; concern for the children never took long to surface.
In a packed flat in Collindeane Tower, Lynn ventured: ‘Maybe it would be useful for us to try and understand why we feel so responsible.’
A girl about Jane’s age who had abandoned a very young baby in a hypermarket but who was losing
courage, turned on her. ‘What do you mean, we? It’s all right for you. Your daughter’s grown up.’
‘Yes. She’s probably looking after yours.’
‘What?’
‘Your daughter?’
‘She’s a Young Family of Tomorrow person.’
‘How come?’
‘It’s not so rare, rebelling against your mother.’ There was a pause. Lynn’s anguish was showing, but it’s not me, it’s not me that needs support. ‘She’s just got married to spite me, she was going to wait, she said she’d give us time to come round and like Martin but when she found I was involved in ... in all this she said she wouldn’t live under the same roof ...’ She forced a smile, a change of subject. She looked at the young women. ‘I always wondered what you’d be like.’
‘Who?’
‘The new generation.’
‘And are you proud?’
Lynn said yes, but she didn’t know.
At other times they discussed organisation, leadership. The FAMILY women were used to agendas and votes. They admitted that nothing had convinced them so effectively of the need for resistance as the defection of one of their founders. The feminists explained that they thought loose organisation was more democratic. It was better to take individual responsibility than to be swayed by the views of some cult-figure.
They were hungry for news. They had none of their own. The FAMILY communications networks were closed to them, feminist contacts chaotic. A firm report that one group was weakening would be followed by indignant assertions of hundred per cent solidarity. Tales that rapists had invaded a squat spread panic; counter-rumours bred hope and doubt. They discouraged each other from taking note of the mass media news, but it was all they had.
It told them that many fathers had fetched their children from the reception centres, but, on delivering them at school had been told that the authorities were taking no chances on a repetition. The schools were closed. It told them that young children had therefore to go to work with their fathers, which fathers didn’t like. Children impaired their concentration. Firms set up crèches and playrooms and let fathers work special shifts, but the pay was less, even before child-care costs were deducted. Even with care, the children disrupted the working day. Their demands could not be predicted and they were used to undivided attention. They missed their mothers. They wanted cups of milk, dispensed by father and only father. They played and chatted in office corridors, whining for paper to draw on and turns on transmitting machines. They fingered goods in shops, and disappeared, exploring, down burrows on building sites, and whole operations had to be held up while they were extricated. They turned awed eyes on the world of work in which daddy lived, and asked questions. In one factory a child stood by a production line and pointed at a gadget of which a man had been making a thousand a day for seventeen years and said, ‘What’s that for?’ The man said, ‘I’m blessed if I know,’ and went to find out. Sometimes a toddler was spotted sliding down a conveyor belt and emergency switches had to be pulled.
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