‘Green wellingtons – much more dangerous.’
‘The cat lovers? Kay told me.’ She winced in sympathy as I sat up and gripped her small hands. ‘It looks like they really hurt you.’
‘One species is sacred – cats.’ I glanced around the room, which seemed smaller and more domestic. Even the scowling samurai was less threatening. ‘Your doctor friend has a special touch.’
‘Richard Gould. He’s a great doctor, especially with children. Kay’s driving him back to his flat.’ She lowered her voice, smiling slyly. ‘He doesn’t like the Adler Institute. In fact, he said everyone there should be hanged. I think he made an exception for you.’
‘Thanks for warning me.’
‘I always tell the truth.’ She beamed winsomely. ‘It’s a new way of lying. If you tell the truth people don’t know whether to believe you. It helps me in my work.’
‘Where? The Foreign Office? The Bank of England?’
‘I’m a fund-raiser for the Royal Academy. It’s an easy job. All those CEOs think art is good for their souls.’
‘Not so?’
‘It rots their brains. Tate Modern, the Royal Academy, the Hayward…they’re Walt Disney for the middle classes.’
‘But you swallow your doubts?’
‘I’m going to resign. The work here is more important. We have to set people free from all this culture and education. Richard says they’re just ways of trapping the middle class and making them docile.’
‘So it’s a war of liberation? I’d like to meet Dr Gould.’
‘You will, David.’ Stephen Dexter entered the room, beer can in hand. ‘We need new recruits, even a psychologist…’
The clergyman had changed out of his leathers, and wore jeans and a Timberland shirt, at first sight the very picture of a fashionable Chelsea vicar with a passion for line dancing, weekend flying, and his parishioners’ wives. He was a tall, thin-cheeked man in his late thirties, with a professionally steady gaze and a strong head that was almost handsome in the right lighting. Hundreds of hours in an open cockpit had seared his face, and a horizontal scar marked his forehead, perhaps a memento of some unexpectedly short runway in the Philippines.
But the scar was a little too fresh, and I suspected that he kept it deliberately inflamed. When he smiled at me I noticed that one of his canines was missing, a gap he made no attempt to hide, as if advertising an innate flaw in his own make-up. I remembered Kay hinting that he had lost his faith, but this was almost an obligation in the contemporary priesthood. He placed his hand on Joan Chang’s shoulder, a schoolmaster with a favourite pupil. His affection was clear, but somehow lacked confidence, part of a larger failure of nerve.
‘Let’s have a look.’ Sipping his beer, like an actor with a stage prop, he stood by the settee. ‘Kay says the cat lovers gave you a kicking. You’ll feel better by tomorrow. We need you with us, David.’
‘I’ll do what I can.’ Unsure what I was committing myself to, I added: ‘If I ever walk again.’
‘Walk? You’ll run.’ Dexter moved his chair, so that the desk light shone into his face. He was playing both interrogator and suspect, testing himself in either role. ‘I watched you in court this morning. The magistrates were faced with something they hate above anything else – a responsible citizen ready to sacrifice himself for his principles.’
‘I hope I am. Aren’t we all?’
‘Alas, no. Protest is one thing, action another. That’s why we need you on the project.’
‘I’m with you. What exactly is the project? Picketing travel agencies? Banning tourism?’
‘Much more than that. We aren’t defined by Kay’s obsessions.’ Aware that this might sound harsh, he took Joan’s hand. Sitting forward, he massaged his cheeks, trying to bring colour into the gaunt bones. ‘Look at the world around you, David. What do you see? An endless theme park, with everything turned into entertainment. Science, politics, education – they’re so many fairground rides. Sadly, people are happy to buy their tickets and climb aboard.’
‘It’s comfortable, Stephen.’ Joan traced a Chinese character on the back of his hand, a familiar symbol at which the clergyman smiled. ‘There’s no effort involved, no surprise.’
‘Human beings aren’t meant to be comfortable. We need tension, stress, uncertainty.’ Dexter gestured at the film posters. ‘The kind of challenge that comes from flying a Tiger Moth through zero visibility, or talking a suicide bomber out of a school bus.’
Joan frowned at this, her eyes losing their focus. ‘Stephen, you tried that in Mindanao. You nearly got killed.’
‘I know. I lost my nerve.’ Dexter raised his head and stared bleakly at the grimacing samurai. ‘When it came to it, I didn’t…’
‘You didn’t have the balls?’ Joan shook his shoulder, irritated by him. ‘So what? Nobody does. Any idiot can get killed.’
‘I had the balls…’ Dexter calmed her with his quirky smile. ‘What I didn’t have was hope, or trust. I was relying on myself. For me, those children were already dead. I should have remembered who I was trying to be. Then I would have climbed on the bus and been with them when the end came.’
‘At least you’re here.’ I waited for Dexter to reflate himself, jaw flexing as it re-engaged with his scarred face. ‘The travel agency you tried to attack. I take it there’s a larger target – Chelsea Marina?’
‘Far larger.’ Relaxed again, Dexter raised his hands. ‘One of the biggest of all. The 20th Century.’
‘I thought it was over.’
‘It lingers on. It shapes everything we do, the way we think. There’s scarcely a good thing you can say for it. Genocidal wars, half the world destitute, the other half sleepwalking through its own brain-death. We bought its trashy dreams and now we can’t wake up. All these hypermarkets and gated communities. Once the doors close you can never get out. You know all this, David. It keeps you in corporate clients.’
‘Right. But there’s one problem about this trash society. The middle classes like it.’
‘Of course they do,’ Joan chipped in. ‘They’re enslaved by it. They’re the new proletariat, like factory workers a hundred years ago.’
‘So how do we free them? Bomb a few theme parks?’
‘Bombs?’ Dexter raised a hand to interrupt Joan. ‘How exactly?’
‘Violent action. A direct attack.’
‘No.’ The clergyman stared at the stained carpet. ‘No bombs, I think…’
Silence had fallen across the room, and I could hear the refrigerator in the kitchen working away, a metallic groaning at the ice face. Dexter released Joan’s hand, and turned to switch off the desk light, his performance over. Something had subdued him, and he fingered the scar on his forehead, trying to rub it away and at the same time make it more prominent, an oblique caution to himself. His Chinese girlfriend was watching him with a mixture of irritation and concern, aware that he had led himself onto dangerous ground that could never bear his weight. I wondered if he had allowed the Philippine military to use him in their aerial attacks on the guerrilla forces. Sitting beside me in the shabby room, he had a certain bleak dignity, but I almost suspected that he was an imposter.
I stood unsteadily by the window as they took their seats astride the Harley-Davidson. Kay had returned in her Polo and waved them goodbye from the gate. In their black helmets, sitting on this fat American machine, they seemed worldly in the extreme, the fashionably agnostic priest and his hyper-observant girlfriend, outriders challenging the placid streets around them.
In fact, they were completely detached from reality, with their naive talk of overturning an entire century. In pursuit of a new millennium, they had torn down a travel poster in a shopping mall, and society had assessed the cost to itself at £27.
Despite my injuries, I felt nearer to my goal. Most of the protesters I had met, like Angela at the Olympia cat show, were sane and self-disciplined, but there was a wilder fringe of animal rights fanatics who planted bombs under scientists’ cars
and were prepared to kill. Had one of these madmen, focused on tourism and the Third World, strayed across the path of Kay, Stephen Dexter and Joan Chang? I needed to unpack their obsessions, and unroll them in the daylight like a cheap carpet.
I sat beside Kay as she drove me to a taxi rank in the King’s Road. She seemed content with the day’s activities, and I was grateful for her kindness to a fellow demonstrator. I admired her for the way she openly wore her insecurities like a collection of favourite costume jewellery.
As we were leaving Chelsea Marina a group of residents had gathered by the estate offices. Strong-willed and confident, they shouted down the young manager who tried to address them. Their voices, honed at a hundred school open days and business conferences, drowned the manager’s efforts to make himself heard.
‘What is it?’ I asked Kay, as she edged the car through the throng. ‘It looks serious.’
‘It is serious.’
‘Some paedophile on the prowl?’
‘Parking charges.’ Kay stared sternly at the luckless manager, who had taken refuge behind his glass door. ‘Believe me, the next revolution is going to be about parking.’ At the time, I thought she was joking.
9
The Upholstered Apocalypse
‘THEY’RE ALL A little mad,’ I told Sally, pointing to the swirl of excited bubbles in the jacuzzi. ‘A strange fringe group. Huge obsessions floating around a cozy living room. It’s useful to see just how odd apparently sane people can be.’
‘So they’re harmless cranks?’
‘I’m not sure they’re harmless. They’re in the grip of some bizarre ideas. Abolish the 20th Century. Ban tourism. Politics, commerce, education – all corrupt.’
‘It’s a point of view. They are a bit.’
‘Sally…’ I smiled down at her, lying comfortably in the whirl-bath with a stack of fashion magazines, the picture of comfort and security. ‘See it in context. This is Kropotkin with pink gins and wall-to-wall Axminster. These people want to change the world, use violence if they need to, but they’ve never had the central heating turned off in their lives.’
‘They’ve got you going, though. You haven’t been so fired up for years.’
‘That’s true. I wonder why…?’ I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror, hair springing from my forehead, face as tense as the Reverend Dexter’s. I seemed twenty years younger, the newly graduated man of science with an askew tie knot and a glowing desire to straighten out the world. ‘I might write a paper about the phenomenon. “The Upholstered Apocalypse.” The middle classes have moved from charity work and civic responsibility to fantasies of cataclysmic change. Whisky sours and armageddon…’
‘At least they cared for you. This doctor, Richard Gould – I looked him up on the net. He helped to invent a new kind of shunt for babies with hydrocephalus.’
‘Good for him. I mean it. He never let me see his face – why, I don’t know.’
‘Perhaps they were having you on.’ Sally caught my hand as I prowled the bathroom. ‘Let’s face it, dear. You’re just waiting to be shocked.’
‘I’ve thought about that.’ I sat on the edge of the bath, inhaling the heady scents of Sally’s body. ‘I’d been pushed around by the police, and they knew I was an amateur. Hard-core demonstrators never get knocked to the ground – far too dangerous. They do their thing and skip off before the rough stuff begins. Like Angela, the Kingston housewife at Olympia. Really quick on her feet, and happy to leave me to face the music.’
‘This film lecturer helped you. She sounds sweet.’
‘Kay Churchill. She was great. Completely scatty, but she saved me outside the court. I was in a bad way.’
I waited for Sally to sympathize, but she lay passively in the bath, playing with the bubbles on her breasts. The X-rays at the Royal Free Hospital had shown no rib fractures, but the cat fanciers’ boots had bruised my spleen, as Joan Chang predicted. Collecting me from the hospital, Sally glanced at the plates with a perfunctory nod. She was immersed in her own perpetual recovery, and had no wish to share her monopoly of doubt and discomfort with anyone, even her husband. In her mind, my bruises were self-inflicted, far removed from the meaningless injuries that presided over her life like an insoluble mystery.
‘David, towel…When are you going back to Chelsea Marina?’
‘I’ll give them a miss. They’re not the kind of people who set off bombs.’
‘But they mentioned Heathrow. You overheard them when they thought you were asleep. That was the first thing you said when the cab driver helped you up the steps.’
‘They were trying to impress me. Or impress themselves. They feed on conspiracy. This biker priest – he’s frightened of violence. Something happened in the Philippines, long before Heathrow.’
‘What about Dr Gould? When he was fourteen he was hauled before a juvenile court, charged with an arson attack on a Kilburn department store.’
‘Sally, I’m impressed.’ I watched her fasten the bath towel under her arms. ‘You should be working for the Antiterrorist Squad.’
‘It’s all on the net. Dr Gould has his own website. He’s uploaded his testimony to the juvenile court – he’s obviously proud of it.’
‘Being arrested by the police is part of the thrill. The teacher catches you out, and you feel loved.’
‘The department store in Kilburn was built by Gould’s father.’ Sally examined her teeth in the mirror. ‘He was a commercial architect and builder. When he died the firm was bought up by McAlpine’s.’
‘Sally…take it easy.’
She stood with her back to the mirror, body and hair swathed in white towels, staring at me through the drifting steam like a priestess at an archaic marine shrine. Looking into her eyes, I sensed that I could see my whole future.
‘David, listen to me.’
‘For God’s sake…’ I opened the window, letting the steam float away. ‘Sally, you’re obsessed by this.’
‘Yes, I am.’ She held my shoulders and made me sit on the edge of the bidet. ‘We have to find the truth about the Heathrow bomb. Or Laura’s death is going to hang over you for ever. You might as well have her mummy sitting in your chair at the office.’
‘I agree. I’m trying to pick up the scent.’
‘Good. Don’t give up. I want to lock the past away and turn the key.’
Sally broke off when her mobile rang. She greeted a friend and strolled into the bedroom, listening intently. She cupped the phone and said to me: ‘David, there’s a picture of you in the Kensington News.’ She sat on the bed and huddled happily over a pillow. ‘He was fined. A hundred pounds. Yes, I’m married to a criminal…’
I was glad to see Sally enjoying my new-found fame. I had taken a week’s sick leave from the Institute, but Henry Kendall rang to confide that Professor Arnold was unhappy with my conviction. Corporate clients might prefer not to be advised by a psychologist with a criminal record. Clearly my status had slipped, along with my claims on the director’s chair.
Luckily there was a long tradition of maverick psychologists with a taste for oddball behaviour. My mother had been a psychoanalyst in the 1960s, a friend of R.D. Laing and a familiar figure on CND marches, joining Bertrand Russell at anti-nuclear sit-ins and being glamorously dragged away by the police. Late-night discussion programmes on television were as much her natural home as the consulting room.
As a child I watched her on my grandmother’s TV set, deeply impressed by the caftans, waist-length black hair and fiercely articulate passion. Free love and legalized drugs meant little to me, though I guessed they were in some way connected to the friendly but unfamiliar men who appeared on her weekend visits, and to the home-made cigarettes she taught me to roll for her and which she smoked despite the protests of my wearily tolerant grandmother.
For all her acclaim, her magazine profiles and pronouncements on Piaget and Melanie Klein, her knowledge of motherhood was almost entirely theoretical. Until the age of three, I was brought up by a ser
ies of au pairs, recruited from the waiting room of her once-a-week free clinic – moody escapees from provincial French universities, neurotic American graduates unwilling to grasp the concept of childhood, Japanese deep-therapy freaks who locked me into my bedroom and insisted that I slept for twenty-four hours a day. Eventually I was rescued by my grandmother and her second husband, a retired judge. It was some years before I noticed that the other boys at school enjoyed a social phenomenon known as fathers.
By the time I joined University College London my mother’s hippy phase was long over, and she had become a quiet and serious-minded analyst at the Tavistock Clinic. I hoped that her maternal instinct, suppressed through most of my childhood, might find a late flowering. But we never became more than friends, and she failed to attend my graduation ceremony.
‘She sounds a bitch,’ Laura had commiserated, inviting me to join her family at the lunch after the ceremony. I replied truthfully: ‘She’s a free spirit. She loved me deeply – for ten minutes. Then it was over.’
At the Adler, dealing with dysfunctional families, I found that all too many parents were indifferent to their children. Popular myth assumed that child-parent relationships were rich and fulfilling, but in some families they were absent altogether. Laura stepped into a waiting vacuum; with her aggressive emotions, fiercely for or against me, she was the opposite of my mother. After my gentle grandmother, treating the smallest tantrum with the wisdom of Solomon, Laura had been a typhoon of cleansing passion.
Now my mother was an elderly patient in a Highgate hospice, dying of inoperable ovarian cancer. Her huge and still swelling abdomen made her look pregnant, a seventy-year-old woman still unaware that she was with child. Sitting beside the bed of this barely responsive being, I realized rather sadly that I was no longer very interested in her.
‘David…’ Sally switched off her phone. ‘You’re a celebrity. Dinner invitations are pouring in…’
‘Heaven forbid. I’ll have to think up a party turn.’
‘Don’t mock yourself – you do that too often.’ Sally stared at me with real respect. ‘You’ve fought with police. How many people can say that?’
Millennium People Page 7