Virtue

by Serena Mackesy

  Knowing Godiva, she probably would have been pissed off at the low turnout.

  The microphone clunks again, and Leeza says, ‘Thank you.’ My companions shift and start to tidy each other’s mascara, sort out banners and placards from the stack by their feet.

  ‘Right,’ says Leeza. ‘We’re going to move off now. I’m sure you all know the route, but we’ll be walking up White-hall, through Trafalgar Square, down Pall Mall, along Piccadilly and finishing in Hyde Park where there will be speeches and a funfair. And, people, let’s make sure that we show how a peaceful demonstration’s done. Let’s make this fun, and friendly, and get as many people joining us as we can along the way. Let’s do it for Godiva!’

  A cheer rises from the crowd, and despite myself I feel a shiver of emotion, but you can get a shiver of emotion from practically any large group of people applauding the same thing. If there’s one thing they discovered at Nuremberg, it’s that.

  We shuffle off, milling about as the wheelchairs move to the front, then the mums with kindergarten-age children all dressed in their party gear, then the grannies and the grandads. After that, everyone falls in with their pals from the Godalming Godiva Memorial Society and the Bradford Mothers’ Exchange. And among them, me, trying to stay both with and apart, keep myself separate from the gannets – separate from everyone, to be honest. I’m only meant to be here as an observer, to report to Harriet the things she won’t see on the news – the Divettes, leggy and sparkling, a huge pink banner proclaiming them to be the Gay Godivas. Oh, I wish Haz could see them. She’d want to kiss every one of them.

  I drop over to walk on the pavement, weaving my way round the scatter of tourists outside Downing Street who turn to watch the parade go by. More flowers are laid at the Cenotaph, people wave in the sunshine, beckon the pavement lurkers to come and join them. A lovely sunshiney day out, and some of the people on it really believe that they are doing something big, something important. It passes in waves through the crowd. We’re going to change the world. We’re going to make the world a better place. This is how we make our feelings known, how we make the people that don’t care sit up and take notice.

  Slowly I realise that there’s been someone walking along beside me, keeping pace with me, for a while. I glance over. A tallish man, faintly familiar, fair hair trimmed to just below ear level at the back, a starburst of heavily-cropped curls at the forehead, open shirt, loose jacket, faint suntan as though he spends a good deal of time outdoors. ‘Anna?’ he says, and I think: okay, good, he’s familiar because we’ve met, and then because I don’t feel that I have to be nervous of him, I notice that he’s extremely good-looking: lean, muscular, long legs, big hands; a calm expression, one of those I’m-in-control looks that make you feel instantly safe.

  I can’t for the life of me remember who he is. Someone I chatted up once? Someone I slept with? No. I’d remember. He’s the sort of guy you would remember. He’d be the kind of guy you’d allow to stay for breakfast, even let lounge around your house reading the Sunday papers. He smiles at me with lovely strong teeth; a slight gap in the middle ones. We all know what that means.

  ‘Hello,’ I say. ‘Sorry, I’ve—’

  ‘Mike,’ he replies. ‘We met the other night.’

  Nope. Rings absolutely no bells. Mike. Mike from where? A friend of Mel’s perhaps? Lindsey’s? Definitely not someone I know well, but equally definitely someone I’ve been glad to see when I’ve seen him.

  ‘Hi,’ I say with that false smile of social recognition. ‘How are you?’ Wonder whether to kiss him, then think: no, I don’t think I know him that well. He’s out of context, that’s why I can’t place him.

  ‘Fine,’ he says. ‘You?’

  ‘Yeah, good. Thanks.’

  ‘Got over the break-in?’

  Okay, so he knows about that. He must know someone who knows us quite well, then.

  ‘Just about.’

  ‘Have you sorted out your security?’

  ‘Too bloody right. I don’t think you could break out of the place now.’

  He nods. ‘Good. You can’t be too careful. And your flatmate? What’s she done?’

  ‘Um,’ I say, ‘well, we’re sort of hoping it was a bit of an isolated incident.’

  ‘Hmm,’ he says.

  We walk along together for a bit, then I try another tack. ‘What are you doing here, anyway? You’re not a Godiva fan, are you?’

  ‘Me?’ He stops for a moment, laughs, then moves on again. ‘I’m working.’

  Working. Right. A journalist. Damn.

  Then he laughs again. ‘You haven’t got the faintest idea who I am, have you?’

  I blush, shake my head. He sticks his hand out. ‘Mike Gillespie,’ he says. ‘PC Mike Gillespie. I fished you out of your cellar the other night.’

  Older copper. Of course.

  ‘Oh, God,’ I say. ‘How are you? I didn’t recognise you—’

  ‘With my clothes on,’ he finishes for me. ‘I must say, you look quite different out of school uniform.’

  ‘I should hope so.’

  ‘More, well, grown up. It took me a while to find you.’

  I’m suspicious again. ‘Find me?’

  ‘Don’t worry. I just figured you’d be here somewhere. Thought I’d keep an eye out for you.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I’m flattered.

  ‘Lady Harriet not with you?’

  ‘No. I’m reporting back to the homestead.’

  He nods. ‘Probably wise. I don’t think everyone here is well disposed to her.

  ‘Please, by the way,’ I say, ‘don’t call her Lady Harriet. It makes her really uncomfortable.’

  ‘Not uncomfortable enough to remove the Lady from her bank cards.’

  ‘Of course not. You get much better lines of credit if you’ve got a handle to your name.’

  We merge into Trafalgar Square, and instead of wheeling immediately left, the crowd seems to be being guided up to the open area beneath Nelson’s column by a line of uniformed policemen strung from the bottom of Admiralty Arch all the way along to the far side of Pall Mall. ‘What’s going on?’ I ask.

  ‘Oh, mmm. You’re all going to have to wait here for a bit. There are two more marches going on today. Farmers for Hunting and Pensioners for a Fair Deal, and everyone wants to go past Downing Street. The Farmers are being taken down the Mall to Horseguards and the pensioners are being diverted up to Piccadilly Circus. That way you don’t clash.’

  ‘Bloody hell. So no one can drive anywhere in central London at all today.’

  Mike shrugs. ‘It’s called democracy. And it’s probably better than having gridlock on three consecutive Saturdays.’

  ‘Hang on. I thought it was Afghans for Equality next weekend.’

  He gives me a penetrating look. Those eyes really are very blue; dark blue like the Mediterranean. ‘You really are a funny one, aren’t you?’

  I plonk myself down on the wall of the fountain between two groups of drag queens who are moaning and applying sticking plasters to their heels.

  ‘So what kind of trouble are you expecting today?’ I ask. ‘Surely all these housewives are a pretty law-abiding lot, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Crowds always contain an element of risk. We’d all be sacked if we just left a thousand people to wander the streets of London without supervision.’

  Suddenly, trouble starts anyway. Duchess Godiva, three down from me, suddenly leaps to her feet and bears down on a sturdy matron, spitting and screaming. ‘Say that again to my face!’ she shouts, voice suddenly full basso and loud as a foghorn. ‘Come on! Say that to my face!’

  Matron squares up to her. ‘I said,’ she shouts back, ‘that people like you should be kept off the streets. It’s people like you that give homosexuals a bad name!’

  Duchess puts a hand on a hip and snarls, ‘Well, it’s people like you that give women a bad name. Look at you. I’m surprised you even bothered to take your curlers out before you came down here.’


  And matron responds, ‘Well, at least I’m not spreading disease like some people I could mention.’

  Eight more Godivas, who have been listening intently and nudging each other, let out a concerted gasp of offence, leap to their feet and head for the fray. Sturdy matron finds herself surrounded by more muscles and spangles than at a Hulk Hogan fight. ‘Who are you calling a disease spreader?’ a voice rises up. ‘Perhaps you ought to try spreading your legs a bit more often and you wouldn’t be so angry!’

  Sixteen sturdy matrons are running to the aid of their friend. ‘Leave her alone! You get off her!’

  Black Godiva rounds on a grey-haired woman who is prodding him with her handbag. ‘Oh, go and buy a dildo, you silly old cow!’ he shouts. She shrieks, pulls her arm back and gives him one full in the face. For a moment he staggers and I think he’s going to break his ankle, but natural balance kicks in and he plunges forward, rips off her hair bobble, waves it in the air triumphantly.

  Someone knocks his wig off.

  Someone else grabs someone’s handbag and lobs it into the fountain.

  The remaining Divettes leap to their feet and start applauding. ‘Cat fight! Cat fight! Go for it, girls!’

  All hell breaks loose. Mike gets to his feet and moves cautiously forward while the uniformed branch start running towards the melee of dropping hair, straining Lycra, ripping polyester, popping bobbles. I don’t know whether to laugh or laugh. So I laugh. Stand up to get a better view and move out into clearer ground because I come up to the belly buttons of some of the Godivas and can’t see for sparkling hotpants.

  I’m only dimly aware of the fact that a small crowd is gathering around me as I stand. A beehive flies ten feet into the air, catches a gust of wind and spirals sideways. False fingernails clatter to the ground, elastic pops. A black figure attempts to crawl out between someone’s legs, but a large hand reaches out and hauls her back, leaving only a pair of hexagonal, tan-rimmed spectacles on the pavement.

  And then suddenly there’s an arm round my stomach and a hand over my mouth, and I’m pulled backwards and off my feet. I try wildly to look behind me to see who’s doing this, but they’re holding my head too firmly and all I can do is roll my eyes. I flail out with my arms, and more hands grab my wrists, pin them back so that all I can do is thrash hopelessly with my legs.

  To begin with, I’m annoyed but not frightened; think that someone I know has snuck up on me and is playing a stupid practical joke. And I think: well, fuck it, if you’re going to do something like this, I’ll join in. So I bite down, hard, on the hand, which whips away with an angry ‘Ow!’ And then it comes back, harder this time, clamps over the whole lower half of my face, covering my nose so I struggle to breathe. ‘Come on. Get on with it,’ says a man’s voice, one I don’t recognise, one with a strong London accent and an element of calm that I really dislike. No one’s laughing behind me. They’re just pulling me away from the crowd, over towards the kerb, and there’s nothing I can do.

  ‘The little fuck bit me.’

  ‘Well, don’t cry about it.’

  The arm round my stomach loosens, throws me further up, grips again. I kick out, as hard as I can, catch someone a blow on the leg. He swears. Then a hand grabs a handful of my hair, jerks my head agonisingly back, and a voice hisses, ‘Stop that. Any more of that, and I’ll really fucking hurt you.’

  The voice says, ‘He’s really going to fucking hurt you anyway.’

  We’re far away enough from the fight that I can hear their heavy, struggling breathing and the scrape of boots on pavement. We must be near the road now; surely someone can see me? I heave in his arms, manage to get my face free for a second and scream. ‘Help me! Someone!’

  And then the hand clamps back down and fingernails dig into my cheeks. How many are there? Two? Three?

  They swing round and I see a white van, back doors open, parked on the kerb. Oh, God, they’re going to stick me in there. I’m being kidnapped by White Van Man. I know that if they get those doors shut on me, it’s all over. The dark interior gapes at me; a couple of spanners, a roll of carpet tape. Oh, God, I’m in trouble. I brace my feet against the sill, push against it.

  The man holding my stomach swears again. ‘Someone get round there,’ he snarls. ‘Break her knees if you have to.’

  And then he goes, ‘Oof,’ and drops me. I land on my bottom, catch the back of my skull on the tow bar sticking out from the back of the van, teeth jangling, crumple up, dazed, and lie with my face on the road among the burger wrappers, half-leg Doc Martens missing my nose by inches. Raise my head in time to see Mike with the heel of his hand in the face of a looming skinhead, pushing him backwards, while a man in uniform catches another a full-on whack round the ear with a nightstick. Then I drop my cheek back onto the tarmac and go to sleep.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The Start of Something Big

  ‘And it never occurred to either of you to tell anyone about this?’

  I feel about yea high.

  ‘No.’

  Mike looks up from the screen, says, ‘So there’s been all this stuff coming in, and you thought it didn’t mean anything.’

  My head is splitting despite the ibuprofen and the tea. ‘No,’ I say wearily. ‘I’m sorry, but it didn’t.’

  ‘Why on earth not?’

  I lean my elbows on the desk and my head in my hands. ‘Because they usually go away after a while.’

  Now he’s really giving me the look. If he hadn’t just hauled me out of a bunch of Millwall’s finest, I might be a bit hacked off at being treated like a stupid teenager.

  ‘They usually go away after a while,’ he repeats slowly. ‘Now, just talk me through all this. Your friend makes a habit of getting these?’

  ‘Um.’ I can’t think of any way of ameliorating the answer, so I finish, lamely, ‘Yes.’

  Then I say, ‘Not all the time. Just when there’s been something in the news. Anniversaries and that.’

  ‘And,’ he says again, ‘it never occurred to you to tell anyone?’

  I slap a hand hopelessly down on the desk. ‘Mike, her mother used to get this sort of thing all the time. Well, obviously not emails, but she’d get letters in block capitals practically every day, and no one ever actually followed through. And my mother gets the odd one too.’

  ‘Your mother.’

  ‘You don’t want to know.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Grace Waters. But we don’t talk.’

  Mike does a little grimace. ‘I’m not surprised. You don’t seem like you’d be exactly compatible.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  He turns back to the screen. ‘So you think that “I know where you live” is a normal sort of anonymous email to get, do you?’

  I attempt a shake of the head, stop when tears of pain spring to my eyes. ‘No, of course I don’t. But this sort of stuff is always meant to scare you, and if you let yourself be scared, they’ve won, haven’t they?’

  ‘And “I wish you were dead instead of her”?’

  ‘Well, they probably do. That doesn’t mean that they’re going to do anything about it.’

  ‘Good God, woman.’

  He runs the cursor down Harriet’s inbox, glancing at the subject space as he does so. Subject: You should be ashamed. Subject: Why don’t you kill yourself? Subject: Disgusted. Subject: Better look behind you. Subject: You’re no Lady. Subject: If I had a daughter like you, I’d have drowned her at birth. Subject: She didn’t deserve this.

  Mike shakes his head in disbelief. ‘You know, when I met you, I honestly got the impression that you were pretty bright. And Harriet, too. And now I see this lot, and I begin to wonder. I mean, didn’t it occur to you at all that there might be a link between the break-in and this lot?’

  Maybe a glass of water. I go over to the sink and, while I wash up one of Harriet’s paint-stained mugs, say, ‘Well, of course it did. But you can’t be paranoid. The kind of people who write that sort of thing hardly ever actual
ly do anything. They get it all out of their system by writing it down, don’t they?’

  He growls. Not the sort of noise you expect to hear from Her Majesty’s Constabulary. ‘Have you ever heard of stalkers, stupid?’

  At which point I burst into tears. It’s bad enough being dragged off and concussed without someone calling you stupid.

  He’s on his feet in an instant and over by me with an arm round my shoulders. ‘Sorry. Look, don’t cry. That was very harsh.’ He squeezes me a bit harder in that clumsy man-sympathy sort of way. I can’t tell if it’s fatherly or something else. Whatever, it’s nice. An entirely inappropriate occasion, but I allow myself a small burst of feeling horny. Well, it’s been weeks since the ocker took off for Barcelona and it’s going to be a week at least till he comes back. A girl could shrivel up and die in that sort of time.

  He gropes around on the counter, finds some kitchen roll, tears a bit off and holds it to my nose. ‘Come on. Blow,’ he says, and suddenly I feel all little and pathetic, and I want looking after. So I cry for a bit, and then I spin it out for a bit longer because it’s nice being comforted for a change.

  ‘Anna, it’ll be all right,’ he says. ‘Now I know what’s going on, it’s only a matter of time before we pick up whoever it is and things get back to normal.’

  ‘But I don’t understand why they tried to grab me,’ I wail. I’ve got enough on my plate as it is.

  Mike pats me and says something that sounds suspiciously like ‘There, there,’ then continues, ‘it’s just bad luck. If they are a stalker, they’re obviously not a very good one. Look. Why don’t I make you a cup of tea?’