Benefits

by Zoë Fairbairns

‘A thing of — of —’

  ‘Filth and corruption,’Judy hissed.

  The bundle giggled. ‘Really,’ said Judy.

  ‘Identify yourself, or shall we burn you at the stake?’

  ‘Rape you?’

  ‘Break you on the wheel?’

  ‘Veil you?’

  ‘Slash your holy cli — cli —’

  ‘Clitoris!’

  ‘ — clitoris, close you and sew you?’

  ‘Hide you in a nunnery?’

  ‘Sell you in marriage, enslave you with a baby every spring?’

  ‘Poison you with untested drugs?’

  'Speak!’ they commanded in unison, ‘What are you?’

  The bundle lifted her head and proclaimed: ‘I am woman.'

  ‘Prove it!’

  The girl raised herself to her knees. She parted the front of her robe between her thighs. She was naked underneath. Her genitals had a soft covering of blonde hair. She reached between her legs and pulled on a little thread that hung there. A red dripping sponge emerged. She held it up triumphantly. All the girls clapped. She laid it on the velvet.

  ‘Is it holy blood?’Judy intoned.

  ‘All womanblood is holy blood.’

  ‘Is it magic blood?’

  ‘All women are magic.’

  ‘Is your monthly bleeding sickness and weakness?’

  The little girl sat back on her heels and frowned with the effort of remembering.

  ‘It is strength and knowledge. It is not to be afraid of men who shed the blood of others, my body sheds its own. It is ... it is to know my power to create life. It is to know the hour and the day and the season from my own ... my own ... ’

  ‘Rhythms,’ Judy said, ‘Very good.’

  ‘Rhythms.’

  ‘What do you ask, this day of your maturity?’

  ‘Sisterhood and love.’

  The girl passed among her friends. They kissed and hugged her, and gave her presents. They gave her an egg, a feather, a hand-made jewel. Then they began to dance. Each girl shed her robes and danced naked. The robes made a red pool of cloth in the middle of the room, a pool that grew and disappeared, disappeared and grew, as the girls pulled and threw off the robes.

  Judy clapped her hands. They rushed to the walls and tugged the drapes. The candles were put out. The walls were white. Daylight dazzled. And the twelve girls grinned and nudged each other and breathed hard with relief and gave tips to the girl whose day it was.

  ‘Watch yourself and you’ll learn all about your body. You’ll be able to detect illness long before doctors can. Or pregnancy. Then there are things we can do that doctors have never dreamed of —’

  Judy put her arms round two girls.

  ‘Once,’ she said, ‘We made believe we were sick and bewitched at this time. Unclean. It was our way of getting a holiday, because they forbade us to milk the cows or go to bed with them. Lucky for us! Remember that —’

  Footsteps interrupted her. The door was wrenched open. Judy glared. Marsha stood there, pale and puzzled.

  Judy gasped. ‘The favourite of the goddess!’ She fell on her knees and signalled for the girls to do the same.

  Marsha said curtly, ‘You’re supposed to be on watch.’

  A girl said, ‘It’s my menarche.’

  ‘Tough.’

  Judy leapt to her feet, spitting like a cat. ‘You speak that way in this holy —’

  ‘I’m the favourite of the goddess. I say what I want.’

  Judy began to moan. Marsha’s eye fell on the swirl of drapes, the roses and the candles, the anxious children. She didn’t know what had been going on but it looked special. Judy ought to know that play and lookout duty did not mix, but still —

  ‘I’m sorry. Happy day. Now go and help your mothers.’

  They trooped out.

  ‘It should be a joyful time,’Judy said sullenly.

  ‘Yes,’ Marsha went to the window, ‘it should.’ Seyer Street stretched below. You could see right into some of the houses through the dilapidated roofs. People still lived there, mainly the proliferating Hindleys. Usually you could see them, playing or brawling or chatting in the street. Today the air was thick and still. Marsha wanted to cry.

  At her elbow Judy whispered, ‘It will be good when they come at last. There’s too much fear now.’

  ‘We won’t stand a chance. We’re not armed.’

  ‘Armed? We’re magic.'

  ‘Magic.’

  ‘Magic.’ Judy’s face was radiant. ‘Magic. And they are fools who attack us in the source of our magic.’ She pressed her hands over her womb.

  Marsha sighed. Her whole body ached. The pleasures of last night had been wrenched away like a pulled tooth. Something moved at the far end of Seyer Street.

  She watched with interest as two low-slung shiny green armoured vehicles started to lumber towards the tower. They were only insects. Behind them policemen crept, but they were only insects too, less than insects, maggots.

  ‘We ought to give the alarm,’ she said, as if it was an interesting idea she had just thought of. She did not move. The policemen formed two rows facing the tower, leaving a space for the vehicles to get through. They crushed the barbed wire like tangles of hair. When the front wheels hit the vegetable patch Marsha flinched and ran.

  ‘Invasion, attack, emergency I’ Her voice was wild, not her voice at all. ‘Invasion, invasion, it’s police, it’s men!’ She looked down the long tightening coil of the stairs; curious faces looked back. They’d seen. They were in position. They were ready (even the menarche children) with their pitiful ammunition. Marsha wondered: should she jump? She felt no fear — she just couldn’t imagine oblivion being so near when she felt so full of life. She might as well, though. They would manage — if at all — without her. So obsessed with her own problems, she hadn’t even made herself useful on her shift as a guard.

  Wind gusted from the woom. Marsha went back in. Judy stood by the open window undressing, looking upwards.

  ‘My moment has come,’ she said.

  ‘Come away from there.’

  ‘They will never take me. The goddess will raise me to herself.’ Judy continued to unwind her clothes, a long, wide, red strip bandaging her body in great loops. It went under her arms, between her legs, round and round like wool unravelling. Her body was straight and brown, and thin with hunger.

  ‘Judy —’

  Marsha caught her attention.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘This? This is a water pistol.’

  Judy laughed softly and rolled her eyes. ‘What will you do? Spray them?’

  Her question hung in the air as she jumped. She jumped so high from the window that Marsha had to wait to see her fall. The sloughed-off red garments lay where she had left them. Marsha could not move. She closed her eyes, not to see Judy’s face as she realised the goddess was not going to lift her. From far away she heard a cracking thump of sound and then another as if the body had bounced. The building froze with horror beneath her.

  Answering Judy’s question she said slowly. ‘No. This is for somebody else.’ She took off her own clothes and started to wind the warm red bandages around herself.

  ‘You took my tower,’ said Marsha. She had snapped the little yellow cylinder into the gun and now she was pointing it into David Laing’s face. It had been easy to get away. The police had responded to Judys fall with an electronic voice saying that anyone who left could go free, they only wanted to repossess the building which was structurally unsafe. Prepared for this, the women ignored it; they knew of the gangs who would be waiting round the corner, predators who followed the eviction squads like carrion crows, rapists, kidnappers and moralists with scores to settle with women who had dragged the nation so low. But Marsha had slipped out anyway, winding and unwinding her red robes, raving and staggering and muttering imprecations to the sky, brandishing her gun.

  The women had tried to stop her, thinking her maddened with shock. But she slipped throug
h their fingers. In the street men approached her but turned away in disgust from her haggish grin and wild laughter. She ducked round the corner and was gone and never saw what happened next.

  Even the police and the women missed its beginnings, it was so unexpected. It was like an old cartoon film, the way the doors of the Seyer Street houses collapsed flat off their hinges and ragged men, women and children roared out. At first the women in the tower thought they were police reinforcements, but the air filled with war whoops and whistles and the crash of sticks on pans and dustbin lids and the cry ‘Hindleys to the rescue! Leave our women alone! Hindleys forward!’

  The men waved clubs, the women threw slippery oil, the children flung stones with accuracy and without mercy. The police were astonished to find themselves trapped between tower and street.

  ‘Leave our women alone!’ Oh, the Hindleys had had a joke or two (some a bit near the bone) about the weirdos in the tower but Seyer Street and its environs were their territory. Besides, there were matters outstanding between the government and the Hindley family.

  The youngest of them knew the story of how poor grandmother Hindley had died in middle age — starved herself to death, she did, because some busybody do-gooders had told her she was too fat and went on about it till she stopped eating altogether. ‘I prefer it,’ she’d repeated as she wasted away. Grandpa Hindley’s eyes still misted over when he told the tale: ‘I kept telling her she weren’t too fat for me. A fine stately woman.’ The social workers had been sent on their way shortly after, and the government soon stopped sending visitors to look at the street. And when Benefit became selective, it was Seyer Street’s proud boast that not one of its women was considered eligible.

  The Hindley children had grown up regardless, and filled the street with their own badly-behaved offspring — they were a force to be reckoned with! They were a clan, a community — there weren’t many lorries they couldn’t hijack, there weren’t many fortifications they couldn’t scale into a hypermarket in the middle of the night! Grandpa Hindley, a mighty age, rolled around the street in an armchair to which the grandchildren had nailed wheels, and directed operations. ‘A Hindley man’s a FAMILY man,’ he liked to say, just to hear Patsy’s youngest pipe up: ‘What about the girls, grandad?’ ‘A Hindley woman’s a fighter,’ he’d twinkle, and now he urged them on as they charged up Seyer Street, screaming and waving weapons, till the surprised police withdrew for further instructions. Four Hindley youngsters picked up Judy Matthews’ broken body, covered it with clothes of their own and delivered it to the door of the tower.

  Meanwhile Marsha was insisting on admission to David’s office. It was not easy. Security was tight, strange women were suspect, and even though she’d dropped her mad act as soon as she was out of sight of the police she knew she was trembling and high and her voice was coming in rushes. She sent up the message. ‘Tell him I’ve changed my mind about his proposal,’ and word came back that she was to be let in, much to the surprise of the guards who insisted on searching her. But she had been right on one thing: they were reluctant to probe too closely a middle-aged lady’s knickers.

  David was dwarfed by a huge bare desk. She was a flame reflected in his eyes. He was going grey. His gold spectacles pressed so tight on the bridge of his nose that they must almost cut the flesh. The room was dim. He didn’t look as if he’d been doing anything much.

  ‘You took my tower.’

  ‘What’s that,’ he said, ‘a water pistol?’

  ‘No it isn’t.’

  ‘Let me see —’ He started to walk round the desk. He was treating her like a child. He wasn’t frightened.

  ‘Get back.’

  He shrugged, sat down as if it didn’t matter. He glanced over her shoulder. She felt the presence of someone and followed his eyes. Nobody. The room was empty but for the two of them. And in that second of turning he could have disarmed her. She must take hold —

  ‘You took my tower. And Judy Matthews is dead. And Lynn’s daughter —’

  David said, in social worker tones, ‘I’m sorry about that. But my latest reports say the police were beaten off.’

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘Marsha, if you’re planning to injure me in some way, please do it. Your hand’s shaking and it’s making me nervous.’ He really did think it was a water pistol. ‘Your clothes are rather curious.’

  ‘They’re Judy’s clothes.’

  ‘I could lend you a coat. I could get you some hot coffee at least.’

  ‘Don’t keep trying to change the subject. I’ve come here to kill you.’

  A door opened behind her. This time there was no mistake. Two uniformed men blocked the opening. She panicked and hid the gun. David asked them to bring coffee and a warm garment. When they had gone he said, ‘You’ll never make it as an assassin, Marsha. There’s a little emergency button I can press with my foot. That’s just one of my tricks.’

  ‘I don’t care about getting caught.’

  ‘You care about making yourself useful.’

  ‘You bastard.’

  ‘You see, political assassination only makes sense if the victim is a lunatic, a genius or an autocrat.’

  ‘You’ve given it a lot of thought.’

  ‘Yes. The only other purpose it serves is to make an otherwise ineffective person feel heroic.’

  ‘For just that I could kill you.’

  But the moment had passed and she knew it. She felt tired and foolish. Someone brought coffee and a sort of dark overall. It covered Judy’s robes and the red flames vanished from David’s eyes. It smelt and didn’t even make her warm. She cast it off. She sipped at the coffee. It was the real stuff. Its smoothness was almost unpleasant; after a time of drinking koffee your palate learned to brace itself and the experience was tolerable.

  ‘I take it you have nowhere to go.’

  ‘If the tower’s safe —’

  ‘But you’ve failed in your mission. You won’t want to go back there.’

  ‘Will they try again?’

  He shrugged. ‘Depends how important we decide it is.’ She had the feeling of a trap closing. ‘Cabinet ministers have very large flats. It’s assumed we have wives and things. Why don’t you come and stay for a few days, sort yourself out, sort me out. No strings. No one would need to know.’

  She laughed wildly. Went to kill the bugger and ended up living with him. And saved Collindeane Tower. It would shake up Lynn’s ideas for a start. What an alliance! Well — it was what he’d always said: her compassion, his common sense ... the tears ran down her cheeks. Through them she realised he wasn’t sitting at his desk any more. She panicked as his hand closed on her wrist. ‘Give me that —’

  ‘David don’t fool around, it’s not a toy —’

  He wasn’t fooling around and he knew it wasn’t a toy. His face was set as he fought her. Her hand clamped on the trigger. She struggled to point it — where, which way would be safe, which way would protect them from burning in this confined space —

  ‘David it’s not an ordinary, it’s not a bullet —’

  The wave of hot air knocked her backwards. Her skin singed. The desk fell, protecting her. She closed her eyes but the pillar of flames that David had become glowed through their lids, vaporising him as he stood. All kinds of sound beat round the inside of her head, the click of the gun, the whoosh of flame, hissing, crackling, but not a sound from David, not a scream. The screaming she heard was all hers.

  ‘You misled us,’ the professor stormed at Mr Peel, now Secretary of State for Family Welfare.

  ‘I think not, sir.’

  ‘You told us your women would accept the project. What do we see? Mothers on strike and political assassination.’

  Peel was contemptuous. ‘Political assassination. They were lovers.’

  ‘Lovers!’

  ‘Years ago, but you know how it is. Hell hath no fury.’

  ‘Mr Peel, that weapon is well-known among foreign terrorists. Where did she get it?’

>   ‘She’s helping police with their enquiries.’

  ‘And her associates?’

  ‘The place is being dealt with. Finally.’

  The professor drummed his fingers. ‘We are going to have to rethink this, Peel, we really are. It is a pity. This country would be so suitable in many ways, but —’

  Peel started to whine. He hated the indignity but he cared for the Europop idea. It fired him. He was wild at being thwarted. He wanted to be the man who made birth policy rational. ‘Professor, you’re worrying about a minority, and we’re dealing with them. We’re dealing with them! Haven’t you seen our figures — well over half of all women are registered at their local Centres, numbers going up every day, the childbearing ones fitted with pellets —’

  ‘Yes, and they are simply removing them if we advise against pregnancy! We have told them it is an appalling and dangerous business but some of your women are so obsessed with motherhood they will take any risk —’

  ‘Professor — don’t be insulted. How can I put this?’ Peel was earnest, boyish, ‘Basing the project on getting those things inside women and keeping them there — well. Isn’t it a bit primitive? Isn’t there a simpler way?’

  ‘There is, yes.’

  ‘And what is it?’

  The professor sighed. ‘It’s stage two, and ultimately of course it is the solution, hopefully worldwide. But we have to win public opinion in stages.’

  ‘You amaze me.’ Sensing he had the moral advantage, Peel let his eyes glisten with contempt. ‘If we have it in our power to solve the population problem, how can we not do it? Tell me, at least.’

  Some other time, the professor promised, and took himself off. Peel’s mind was full of other things. Word came that it was all over at Collindeane Tower and he called his car to take him to see. His brain was on fire. Beggars rushed the speeding vehicle; it was usual but today his contempt was virulent. It was not need that he despised, heaven knew — any man could be down on his luck, and need sharpened the wits — it was the refusal to see it that way. The utter lack of self-respect that led a man to beg. The outrageous assumption that because you wanted something you needed it, and because you needed it, it was your right. The giver of charity was selfish. He did it because it made him feel good.