1985 (27 page)

Bev went out, a thing not previously known, and encountered two bruisers in official overalls. One of them said:

‘Well, mate. Not satisfied with the entertainment provided?'

‘I've seen it all before,' said Bev. ‘Indeed, I've lived through it.' And he made off towards the dormitory.

‘Indeed indeed,' said the other, a man with unusually close-set eyes and no lips, ‘indeed.'

‘Well, it adds to it,' the first said, barring Bev's way. ‘We don't like what you did to Mr Pettigrew earlier on. None of us here does.'

‘Who,' asked Bev, ‘is
us
?'

‘Mr Pettigrew,' said the second, ‘is the boss.'

‘There are no bosses any more,' said Bev. ‘There are representatives, delegates, secretaries, chairmen. But no bosses.'

‘For your type,' said the first, ‘there has to be bosses. Boss language is all your type understands. This way.'

Bev was gloomily pleased that the organization was at last showing, as he had always suspected it would, the quiet face of violence. He was elbowed to a lift he had not previously seen used. It went down, as was to be expected. It stopped, and opened directly into a cellar that still held wine bins, though all now empty. There were a plain deal table and three chairs. There was strip-lighting, already on. Another man, not tough looking, was standing thoughtfully under the light, cleaning his nails with a match. ‘Ah,' he said, looking up, without enthusiasm. ‘This him?'

‘Him, Charlie. What they call an educated taff. He's going to do something nice for Mr Pettigrew. It will bring tears of joy to Mr Pettigrew's eyes, it will that.'

‘Ah, that,' said Charlie. He tucked his match away in the top pocket of his overalls and, from the broad and deep thigh pocket, brought out a folded piece of foolscap. ‘It's here to be read. Then signed. But read first. Sit down, Taffy boy. Read it careful.'

Bev sat and read:

I hereby acknowledge that, after a most useful course of rehabilitation at the Trades Union Congress Education Centre, Crawford Manor, East Sussex, I have been brought to a very clear understanding of the errors I formerly cherished concerning the aims and organization of British Syndicalism. I have no hesitation in recanting those errors herewith and wish it to be known, publicly if need be, that henceforth I will be a co-operative member of my union and an ardent supporter of the principles for which it, with its brother unions, stands.
Date: Signed:

Bev said: ‘I'm not too happy about that verb at the end. Mr Pettigrew's work?'

‘It's nice and flowery,' said Charlie. ‘It's a good piece of writing. Here's a pen here.' He held out a ballpoint. ‘All you have to do is shove your moniker down. I'll put the date in.'

‘Does this happen to everybody?' asked Bev. ‘Does everybody have to come down here to sign? Or am I specially favoured?'

‘Some comes here,' said Charlie, ‘but not many. It looks like you're the only one on Course 23. It's good reports on the rest, but you seem to be a right bastard.'

‘Did Mavis tell you that?' asked Bev.

‘No names has to be mentioned. And if you're thinking this is Mr Pettigrew's idea, then you've got another think coming. Mr Pettigrew is above this cellar business. He grieves if anybody leaves here still a bloody-minded bastard, though them wouldn't be his words. He's innocent, Mr Pettigrew is, and has to be protected like from the rough side of life. So now you know what's to be done, Taff, and, if not, what has to happen, so let's get it over, shall we?'

They all nodded sadly as Bev tore up the document. The lipless man said: ‘Charlie here has got plenty more of those.'

‘Not all that number,' said Charlie. ‘You'd better start, lads.'

They started. They were good at their work, which left no marks. Bev lay panting on the floor, trying to draw air in, and the air just wasn't available.

‘Come on, lad,' said Charlie. ‘All you have to do is sign. You can do what you like when you leave here, but for God's sake, lad, don't be more of a swine to Mr Pettigrew than you've been already.'

Bev found enough breath to say, ‘
Fuckyou
.'

‘Dear dear dear,' said Charlie. ‘Naughty words. Try again.'

‘Did you bring the pliers, Bert?' asked the first tough. ‘The dentist's ones? This geezer's got a fair number of pegs in his cakehole.'

‘Left them upstairs,' said the one with no lips. ‘Shall I get them?' To Bev he said: ‘Always used those when I was in the police. Hurts more than just knocking them out and it shows less.'

‘Later perhaps,' said the other. ‘We'll see how we get on now.'

‘Perhaps he'll sign,' said Charlie. ‘Come on, Taff, be reasonable.

‘
Bastardsfuckyou
.'

‘Oh, all right then, ungrateful little swine.'

I can always recant the recantation, said Bev's brain clearly as he was kicked and thumped. I'll sign, but not just yet. I'll wait till they start the tooth-pulling. I can stand this, I can stand any amount of – The brain itself was astonished as its lights began to go out, having just time to say: ‘No need to sign after all.' Then there was nothing.

Bev had been the only patient in the little sickbay; he had, indeed, been very nearly the only inmate of Crawford Manor. His course had ended, the reformed had gone off to the world of resumed work and consumption and syndicalist loyalty, the staff had taken their four-day break. But Bev had had a male nurse with a doctor's telephone number, and the male nurse had dished him up coarse meals made mostly of corned beef and onions, no invalid diet. But Bev was no longer really an invalid. Tomorrow, when the new course started, he would be free to go. But Mr Pettigrew did not wish him to go, not just yet. Mr Pettigrew did not take breaks. He worked all the time. He and Bev, Bev in an issue dressing-gown, had been together nearly all day for three days, either in the ward or the up-patients' tiny sitting-room. Bev wanted to know about the medical report, Mr Pettigrew wanted Bev to sign the document of recantation.

‘I say again, Bev, that you were found in the grounds at night in a condition of syncope. The medical officer diagnosed slight anaemia. Our psychiatric consultant considers that the loss of consciousness might well have been caused by profound psychic tension, a struggle between selves, as it were. I incline to the latter view.'

‘I was beaten up. I want that to go on the record.'

‘You may have been. I can well understand that some of your er fellow-students might have wished to use violence against you. But to allege that violence might have been administered here, officially, is wholly monstrous. Violence is not a proletarian weapon. It is the monopoly of capitalism and totalitarianism. Besides, there were no marks on your body – except such marks as were obviously occasioned by your falling heavily on to a gravel path.'

‘The lack of marks,' said Bev wearily, for the tenth time, ‘is a sure sign of professional violence. But how can one man's truth prevail?'

‘That is very nearly a sound aphorism,' said Mr Pettigrew. ‘How can one man prevail in anything? Truth and virtue and the other values can only rest in the collective. Which brings me again to our unfinished business. I wish you to be manumitted, clean and reformed. Comprehensive School B15, Isle of Dogs, is only too anxious to have you. Your union card is ready. Sign, please please sign.'

‘No,' said Bev.

‘You know the consequences. The consequences have been presented to you very candidly.'

‘I know,' very wearily. ‘I'm an unreformed criminal. I can only survive by living the life of a criminal. And if I'm caught next time, there'll be no course of rehabilitation.'

‘Next time,' said Mr Pettigrew gravely, ‘it could be a matter of indefinite confinement. I'm not saying
will be
, but I
am
saying
c
–'

‘I beg your pardon?' Bev interrupted him in large-eyed incredulity. ‘You mean if I steal another bottle of gin – or try to; Christ, that's all I did last time: tried to – you mean I get a life sentence? I don't believe it. God, man, that's going back to the eighteenth century.'

‘In the eighteenth century you could have been hanged for stealing a loaf, let alone a bottle of –'

‘Gin was cheap then,' said Bev in the schoolmaster's way that not even impending death can kill. ‘“Drunk for a penny, dead drunk for twopence, clean straw for nothing.”'

‘Hanging then was done without regret. We're not in the so-called Age of Enlightenment now.'

‘We're certainly not. Universal darkness buries all.'

‘You ought to know that the concept of penal servitude has drastically changed in the last ten years. Prison with hard labour is not permitted by the TUC. Labour of any kind entails union representation. We cannot allow prisons to be sweatshops. Very well, there is only one kind of confinement available now.'

‘You mean solitary? Solitary for life?'

‘Oh no. The TUC would not permit any such fiendish punishment. May I put it this way – that the distinction between the place of penal detention and the mental home must, of necessity, progressively narrow. Which represents, in terms of the amenities of enforced confinement, an improvement. Mental homes don't become like prisons, I mean – it's the other way round. You can see that this had to happen.'

Bev looked at him with wide eyes of horror for at least five seconds. ‘The bin? The asylum? Impossible, you have to establish insanity.'

‘Would insanity, in your case, be so difficult to establish? You're recidivist, atavistic, a confirmed criminal, a danger to the community. You reject the sanity of work.'

‘I reject,' said Bev in a small voice, ‘the insanity that goes along with
work in your syndicalist state. I'm entitled to my eccentric philosophy.'

‘You admit the eccentricity? Yes, of course, you have to. The gap between eccentricity and insanity is easily bridged. Put away – think of it – with paranoids and schizophrenes and cases of general paralysis of the insane – that's how you'll be, Bev. Not indefinitely for punitive reasons, but because it's impossible to quantify the time in terms of a judicial sentence.
Indefinitely
meaning until somebody thinks it worth while to initiate the long bureaucratic process of approving your discharge on the grounds that adequate familial custody and care will be available.
Indefinitely
not in the sense of permanently but because there's no rational period of confinement shorter than an indefinite one. All a question of somebody caring. The State won't care. The TUC won't care. Why should it care about one who's thrust himself deliberately away from the protection of its maternal bosom? As for family – you have no family, Bev.'

‘I have a daughter.'

‘You have a daughter – Elizabeth or Bess or Bessie. She presents another problem. The State Institutions for Children in Need of Care and Protection are, unfortunately, overcrowded and, being desparate as to vacancies, they must consult a strict table of priorities. There seems to have been a mistake made in the documentation that accompanied the admission of your daughter to
SICINC
G7 in Islington. You said, apparently, something about being distraught over the death of your wife and unable to look after your daughter. It was naturally understood that the arrangement would be temporary. It was not appreciated that you had decided to deunionize yourself and join the beggars and vagrants and criminals. You are not one of the legitimately unemployed. You have no claim on the beneficent offices of the
SICINC
system. Your daughter must leave. She can, of course, accompany you in your derelict hopelessness, but to subject a child to that situation is a crime in itself. Sign, Bev. Join the comity of workers. Teach what you have to teach, draw your pay. Organize voluntary evening classes in the history of the Renaissance and the Reformation. Show sense.
Sign
.'

He had the document and the pen ready. The pen was an attractive one, a stout ink-barrel of old-fashioned vulcanite, the nib sturdy and gold and blackly moist.

‘No,' said Bev.

Pettigrew kept his temper. ‘Very well,' he said. ‘“Between the stirrup and the ground –” You still have till tomorrow. One more thing. The MO says you must watch your heart. He wasn't too happy with what he heard. You're not fit to cope with the stresses of the life of the outcast. Tomorrow morning you may dress in whatever clothes you possess and report to me in my office at nine. I would pray, if prayer was in order, for some angel of good sense to descend on you in the night.' He got up, smart in his tweeds (for this was, after all, the country), and settled his glasses and pushed back his tow lock before giving a valedictory sad shake of the head. Bev said:

‘As, in one capacity or the other, I'm to re-enter the outside world, would it be possible for me to have news of it? We've been sealed off for the last –'

‘The strike of the communication media continues, and rightly. You need no outside news. You have enough to do this evening without reading rags or gawping at the box. Think, man, think, think.' And he left.

Bev did not think. He merely mused on various possible futures. He was quite certain that he would never give in. If the worst came to the worst, London afforded many spectacular opportunities for martyr's suicide. But how about poor Bessie?

He tossed much of the night but had one period of still sleep in which he dreamt, irrelevantly to his troubles, of angelic trumpets blowing over the city (of course, Pettigrew had put angels into his head) and then a voice crying: ‘The kingdom is fulfilled.' Workmen in strange robes were hacking at barrels, and golden liquids gushed out to flow bubbling along the gutters. Banners with unreadable inscriptions flew from high buildings. There was a distant thunder of horsemen, and the thudding hooves came nearer though the riders remained invisible. ‘They're coming,' cried Ellen, restored and whole, ‘but for the sake of the All High don't let them get away with it.' Then the hooves were deafening. The sky, blood-red, turned primrose. Bev awoke sweating.