Catherine winced and tutted softly at his mispronunciation of the word. “—and strokes and all the diseases that come under the heading of cancer, if these treatments is used the estimated added life expectancy of the average man now aged thirty to forty is six years. This means, in real terms, that if the treatments are used for all of us, most people will live to the age of seventy-four or -five and a large proportion would have a very good chance of reaching eighty or more. Within the next twenty years, this would have the effect of greatly increasing the proportion of elderly people in the country to the ratio of about two and a half to one. That is to say, for every worker employed in industry and commerce and agriculture and other activities, there would be two and a half people of such age as to be nonproductive and in need of being supported. Some of these nonproductives will, of course, be children, and as such only temporarily in need of support, but this would account for only the half—that is, there would still be two old people to be supported by every one able-bodied worker.”
He folded the papers and put them back in his pocket, and took the heavy glasses off his nose and stowed them away too, and looked impressively from one side of the Square to the other. Only the sound of traffic and the chatter and hiss of the birds perched high on the sills of the buildings around them came back; the crowd stood in a tight mass, no longer moving in swaying clumps, nor eddying and shifting as it had been doing from the very beginning of its formation, just listening.
“Are you beginning to see what all that means?” Collins cried. “I reckon you are! It’s not so bloody marvelous to live to be over eighty, is it? Not if it means you’re just a burden on other people’s backs. I don’t know about you young people down there, but speakin’ as a man who won’t see forty again, I can tell you this—I’d not want to go on in that fashion, being the sort of parasite that’s been battening on me and my brothers and sisters in industry ever since I was fourteen and took my first job down a Kent mineshaft!”
The crowd cried back at him, and he held up his hands and bawled above their din, “But don’t you fret, don’t you worry yourselves! You don’t think the bosses’d let things stay as they are, with workers damned near guaranteed to live to be eighty or thereabouts, do you? Not on your bloody nellies!”
Once more the crowd roared, and for a moment Harriet felt a tremor of fear, looking down on the vast animal in front of her with its octopus tendrils at the edges where, antlike, individual people joined in the mass or drifted away to the teashops of the Strand or up past St. Martins-in-the-Fields toward the penny arcades and cinemas and fried-onion-smelling hot-dog stalls of Leicester Square. It was made up of people, small fragile people, yet it had a terrifying shapeliness and cohesion as it rippled and responded down there on the stones of the Square, the fountains giving it its hugely glistening round eyes. But the fear subsided to lie low in her belly as the man on the platform between the bored black lions continued to shout and echo his anger at the animal he had leashed with his words.
“I’ll tell you what the bosses’ll do! They’ll undo the legislation of years, the protective legislation we’ve fought so bloody hard for! They’ll raise the age of retirement for a start! Make the lazy sods work till they’re seventy, that’s what they’ll say. If a fella’s goin’ to live another fifteen years after sixty-five, then he’d be better off working than retiring, and he’d make a bit more profit for us! Why should we pay insurance and pensions and the rest of it to sixty-five-year-olds when they won’t ’ave the decency to die and save us our good money? That’s what they’ll say. I tell you, cancer and heart disease—they’re the best friends the boss class ’as got, always ’as been. Like my brother Ben Shoeman here said—the bosses, the capitalists, they’ll use their money, the money we made for ’em, to keep their own lives going, and if they do give us a chance to get treatment, they’ll make bloody sure as it’s so that we can go on making the money for ’em—and I for one can tell you I won’t put up with it! What we want out of all this is our chance of life—real good life, not just working hours—as well as them. What we want is a proper economic setup that’ll make it possible for all of us to go on living comfortable and cared for but not a burden on anyone else, from the retirement age of sixty-five, as it is now. And until the Government can guarantee us that this can be done, these treatments shouldn’t be made available to those as can pay for ’em, but only to those as is regarded as entitled to have ’em. People like us!”
A vast cry went up, and Catherine leaned close to Harriet and shouted, “That sounded very confused to me—did you understand it properly? Is he saying the use of curative treatments should be abandoned altogether, or just kept just for trade union members? Or what?”
“I’m not sure—” Harriet shouted back, and tried to move away a little, finding Catherine’s closeness suddenly oppressive, but she was crushed on her other side by the thin young man with the beard, and couldn’t move. But then, to her relief, another voice came shrilling at them from the big loudspeakers that were strung round the lions’ necks and across the base of Nelson’s column, and Catherine swayed away from her to lean over the parapet and stare through her opera glasses at the new figure now standing in front of the microphone.
He was a tall thin man, wrapped in a heavy grayish-colored duffle coat, and his long hair blew in the wind as he stood, his shoulders hunched, both hands clutching the shaft of the microphone in a tight grip.
“I’m an economist. Left wing and not afraid to say so. I don’t see how anyone with an understanding of the way economics operates in this society can be anything else. Only intelligent thing to be is a Socialist. Only the blind and the self-seeking can be reactionaries. By definition. I’ll tell you what all this will mean in economic terms. Can’t prove it, of course—I can only think forward and guess, but I make informed guesses, and I’m usually right. Not ashamed of that either! I’ll tell you first that Alf Collins is quite right! The capitalist pattern is of exploitation of workingmen. Has to be to work at all! Right, then. Bosses don’t want men to die before they reach retirement age—but don’t want them to live much after that, either. A retired man is a drag, a waste of the gross national product, a useless nonproductive hulk. That’s how capitalism sees the old. You’ve only got to look at this country’s record of provision for the elderly to see that this is true! Inadequate pensions, half-hearted provision for the disabled—a mere nod toward humanitarianism, but no more than is absolutely necessary. So you can be sure that no Government in this country, or in any Western country for that matter, is going to put much effort or finance into medical research of this sort. They can’t make any return on it, you see! Where’s the profits in research that makes men live longer, to go on needing money and a roof over their heads and food and the rest of it, long after they ought to be out of the way? The sort of research that makes money for Governments is the sort that finds new armaments, that is said to be for defense—defense! That’s a lot of rubbish! Armaments to sell to racist white people all over the world that want to kill off their black citizens! There’s big money in that, big returns! But other countries aren’t going to buy medical research results that’ll keep those black citizens alive and well, are they? And this Government isn’t going to spend real money on lifesaving for you, either! The money’ll come from where it’s coming from now—the private sector. And the patients’ll come from where they’re coming from now—the private sector! So what are you going to do about it? What I’d like to—”
Somewhere to the right of him, a section of the crowd had been moving and swaying more than any other, and almost gratefully Harriet began to watch it, and stopped listening to the man at the microphone, who was still shouting in his flat unemotional tones that made all he was saying seem so much more frightening.
Suddenly the crowd opened at the edge, near the platform, and a man shot out of the mass and started to climb awkwardly up toward the platform. Watching him, Harriet was reminded irresistibly of a film she had once watch
ed of a human ovary shedding an egg. It had burst a bubble on its surface and ejected the tiny object in just such a peremptory fashion, and she giggled, almost hysterically, at the incongruity of the memory, and Catherine turned and looked at her, surprised. But Harriet shook her head, and stared down at the platform, at the man from the crowd who was now pushing at the duffle-coated figure by the microphone.
For a while there was a great deal of confused noise, as the microphone whooped and shrieked, and the figures on the platform gesticulated angrily at each other, and then Ben moved forward and picked up the overturned microphone and shouted, “We said it was a public meeting, and so it is—and there’s a man here can’t wait till our invited speakers are finished—so okay! So we’ll treat him with a courtesy he didn’t offer us, and give him the platform. Here you are, fella—go ahead—” and he shoved the microphone at the other man and stepped back.
There was a moment of silence, as the little man by the microphone stared at it, and Harriet could almost feel the fright that was in him, knew it had suddenly overcome the anger and urgent need to join in that had carried him from the anonymity of the crowd to the loneliness of the platform.
But then he seemed to find his anger again, and he pulled the microphone closer, and spoke, and at first his voice was high and shrill and rather tremulous, but it strengthened as his anger rose higher, fed by his own words.
“Make me—sick—sick and tired. Sick and tired, all this high-flown rubbish! You kids—you think you’re the only ones as ought to live? ‘We Want More Room at the Top!’” He flung one arm up toward the streamer and its slogan that flapped lugubriously above his head. “What you mean is you want euthanasia for anyone over forty—you reckon we’re all dead, all of us that aren’t wet kids like you lot any more! Well, I’ll tell you, it’s some of you as ought to be cleared out of the way! Shoved into the army, like we was at your age! You wouldn’t be here, all you greedy bastards, if it wasn’t for the likes of me, and the poor sods as is your parents! You lot ought to be made to work, instead of being given our hard-earned money to sit around in your universities doing nothing, just dressing yourselves up and being immoral and making revolutions and trouble!—No, you bloody shut up! We’ve all listened to your socialist rubbish—now you lot listen to some common or garden sense for five minutes—”
Some of the crowd roared and shouted its approval, far more shrieked anger and jeered insults, but Ben and Collins waved their arms and gesticulated at them, and the sound dropped enough for the angry man at the microphone to be heard again.
“As for all this rubbish about old people and the rest of it—the trouble with everyone today is they want spoonfeeding! I don’t see why old people shouldn’t work if they’re fit for it. I’m not asking for special treatment on account I’m fifty-five—and I won’t when I’m sixty-five nor seventy-five, neither! If I can’t fend for myself when I’m older, then I don’t want no one else doing it for me. There’s no reason why the Government should stop people as is careful and has a bit of cash from spending it as they want. If I or anyone of my family got one of these diseases, I’d reckon to pay my own way to treatment, not expecting to have it done for me—and there’s plenty of people in this country that’ll feel like I do! But I’ll tell you this much—there’d be no problems about making this treatment cheap and easy to get for everyone if it wasn’t for the money we have to waste on you students and your like! There you sit, fat and greedy and wicked, having sex all over the place in your colleges and the rest of it, eating up the money we’ve made to keep you there, we who left school at fourteen to earn our own livings–put you lot in the mines and the factories and the army and we’d have plenty of money for medical research and the old and—”
She stopped listening, stopped straining to pull the sense of the words out of the booming echoing roar, and leaned against the coping in front of her, feeling the sick beating of her own aorta as the ridge of stone pressed into her belly, and fixed her mind on that. It was all so crazy, so impossibly crazy. How could those men down there across the Square be saying all this to these thousands of people? How could she be any part of it, she with this heavy beating in her middle, she with her cold numb feet, she with her hair blowing so irritatingly in her eyes? How could the long tranquil unnoticed months of work in the shabby laboratories at Brookbank, in the odorous rooms full of animal pens, in little James Ferris’s side ward, have led to all this? It was crazy, and she wanted to shout at them all and tell them so.
“Are you feeling all right?” Catherine said in her ear, and she turned and stared at her, and after a moment shook her head.
“I shouldn’t have come,” she cried above the noise.
“You’ve got to know what they’re saying,” Catherine shouted back. “Better to know than—”
“I don’t want to know! It’s all—I don’t understand it all, and I don’t want to. It’s making it all so horribly complicated. I just did a job of work I wanted to do, that was all, and now—listen to them!”
A great roar had gone up, and the crowd below them shifted and eddied, and there was a sharp increase in the pressure against her back as the crowd behind them craned forward to see why, and she felt a sudden panic rise in her as the stone edging pushed harder into her belly and the weight at her back increased.
She bent her shoulders slightly, and shoved backward, and tried to turn, to push her way out of the crowd, oblivious of the individuals who made up the mass, aware only of the malevolent weight of bodies, and using her elbows and her knees almost viciously, managed to turn her back to the platform in the Square, to move toward the National Gallery.
“Here, ‘old ‘ard—who do you bloody think you’re kicking? Clumsy great bitch—keep your bleedin’ knees to yourself, or I’ll—” He wasn’t young, not one of the straggly thin boys in ridiculous clothes, but an ordinary middle-aged man, almost invisible in his mediocrity with a neatly knotted tie under the grayish collar of his shirt, his narrow shoulders encased in a dark brown suit, and his thin dull hair plastered against his skull by the wind. The violence of his speech seemed doubly menacing because he looked so meek; and she stared at him, at his face so very close to hers, and felt the hundreds of other faces pressing on her from each side; and the panic inside her rose and bubbled and spilled over.
“Let me out—I’ve got to get out—get away from me—” she shouted into the face, and with an immense effort moved her arms, now almost pinned to her side by the weight of the crowd, and brought one elbow up and thrust it at the narrow chest in front of her, and the shock of the impact ran up her arm and jarred her shoulder painfully.
“You stinking cow! I’ll kill you for that—” The meek face split and the words came at her like pebbles that stung her skin, and she ducked her head, and then, suddenly, Catherine’s hand was on her arm, hard and firm, and she could hear her shouting “Make way–please make way—she’s ill—give us air—let us through, please—” And even as Harriet heard the words she knew it was true. She was ill, and she did need air, and she felt a wave of nausea rise in her and was grateful for it and let herself droop against Catherine’s restraining hand.
She was moving forward now, propelled by Catherine, and the crowd shifted and swayed unwillingly in front of them, but it did open a narrow pathway, and they edged forward, Catherine repeating over and over again, “Let us through, please she’s ill—let us through—ill—”
And then they were stopped, quite sharply, as a woman’s face detached itself from the mass and peered closely at them both, and then more closely at Harriet, and she shrilled in a high eager voice, “She ought to feel bloody ill, she should. She’s that scientist woman that was on the telly. It’s her that started all this, with her cures for rich people!”
Harriet stared at her, at her red-faced excitement and narrow-eyed triumph and said, “What?” hearing the note of heavy stupidity in her own voice, and the woman turned her head from side to side eagerly collecting people to listen to her, and cri
ed, “I never forget a face—never, not in all my life, and that’s who she is, I’d take my dying oath. You’re that doctor that found this cancer cure, aren’t you? You are, course you are! I never forget a face, never have. I thought you was wonderful, I did, till I knew what you was up to. Making cures for those as can pay—people like you ought to be—”
“It is—she’s bloody right—it is—take a look—”
“No—don’t be daft—let the poor old thing through—you can see she’s ill—let her through—”
“But it is her—I never forget a face. I tell you it is—ask her and see if I’m not right—”
Catherine was pushing her forward again, trying to get away, but once more the pressure built up before them as the woman who had recognized her pushed against them, bringing other people to push too, and they were pinned, totally helpless, caged in the heavy smell of human bodies.
Harriet closed her eyes and leaned back against Catherine, for one brief moment wondering whether to try to slide into unconsciousness, but she had never fainted in her life and knew that any attempt to pretend to do so would fail; and then the thought of actually fainting, of being even more helpless in the middle of this weight of people, so filled her with terror that she snapped her eyes open again.
Somewhere to her side she felt rather than saw someone pushing successfully through the crowd toward them, for people moved back, pressed against each other, turned their heads away, and stopped looking at her, stopped craning over each other’s shoulders to see her.
“All right—all right—what’s the trouble here? Someone ill? Make way there, if you please, make way—”
“Toytown,” Harriet said stupidly, and giggled, and Catherine looked anxiously at her, and squeezed her arm, and then awkwardly raised her own arm to put it round Harriet’s shoulders, and Harriet said gratefully, “Thanks—”
The policeman, looking just as wooden under his helmet as the row of distant policemen she had seen in front of the platform across the Square, was close beside her now, and he too put a protective arm across her shoulders so that she was wrapped in a shell of safety between the two of them, and again she giggled softly, because it was all so silly.
A Time to Heal Page 17