Clouds among the Stars. Victoria Clayton

you see you’re betraying the sisterhood when you concentrate on the menial tasks and neglect the great ones?’

      ‘Surely there’s nothing political about cleaning a sink?’

      ‘Everything’s political.’ Yell scraped more energetically at the egg, so presumably drudgery was a question of scale. ‘You want Dodge to abandon his principles so he can go on screwing you. You want him to marry you and become a wage-slave in the suburbs. I’d rather be celibate than betray my ideals.’

      I stopped scouring to glance at Yell. She didn’t look well. She was very thin and her skin was pasty, apart from some red spots under her eyes. I decided to try appeasement. ‘I’m sure he’d never even consider doing such a thing. I know how important all this is to him. And the brotherhood. He often says what a support you are to him, particularly.’

      Yell sucked hard on the homemade cigarette she was smoking and blew the smoke straight into my face. ‘You little bitch!’ she said before marching out of the kitchen.

      

      ‘Can’t you women manage to get on?’ complained Dodge, as we walked to the appointed place of demonstration. ‘I’m fed up with all the rowing that goes on in the Sect.’

      ‘I think I’m beginning to hallucinate. I breathed in two whole lungfuls of whatever Yell was smoking. I feel most peculiar.’ I was hungry, having had hardly any breakfast, thanks to Bron, and nothing for lunch but Yell’s cake. I stumbled a little beneath the burden of two stout poles on which were fixed cardboard placards proclaiming our beliefs. Several of the brethren had not turned up and we were having to double up with the banners.

      People stared at us as we walked towards Parliament Square. Their expressions were unfriendly. I had not realised before how many variations there are on the human physiognomy. All had the regulation two eyes, nose, mouth, ears and chin but there were so many squints, wall eyes, crooked noses, misaligned jaws and deranged expressions that it was like being in a painting of hell by Bosch or Brueghel. ‘I do try to get on with her but some people are impossible to please. She seems to hate me but I don’t know what I’ve done.’

      ‘It isn’t you, you dumb cluck.’ Dodge gave me that look of stern condescension I had become accustomed to. ‘She’s in love with me, of course.’

      I looked at Yell’s angular figure marching in front of me. Like me she wore scruffy black, but her hair was short and ragged, which suggested proper commitment to serious issues. ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Are you at all in love with her?’

      Dodge brandished his placard at a passer-by who was shouting insults at us. ‘I’m sleeping with you, aren’t I?’ Which was an unsatisfactory answer.

      On reaching the square Dodge mounted the wooden box brought along for the purpose by Hank and Otto, our two burliest partisans, and began his speech.

      When he was delivering a harangue, I found Dodge quite irresistible. He was magnificent, fierce and solemn by turns. He began by flinging up his arm to direct, with an imperative forefinger, our sights to higher and better courses. Then he rolled his head forward, shoulders drooping, hands outstretched, oppressed by the apathy of the world. He looked marvellous from a distance. Because he considered taking pleasure in food selfish and hedonistic, he ate very little, so his cheekbones were sharp and his eyes smouldered in deep sockets. Also, from a distance, you could not see the sprinkling of acne on his chin.

      ‘Order is slavery,’ he began. ‘Thought in chains. Order is the continuous warfare of man against man, trade against trade, class against class, country against country. Order is nine-tenths of mankind working to provide luxurious idleness for a handful. Order is the slaughter of a generation on the battlefield. It is the peasant dying of starvation while the rich man dies of obesity. It is the woman selling herself to feed her children. Order is the degradation of the human race, maintained by the whip and the lash.’

      As I listened to these now familiar words I felt the customary surge of indignation. As Dodge cited revolution after revolution that had been crushed by tank and gun, my dissatisfaction with the state of the world grew. Why should wealth and land be held by the few while the masses starved? Capitalism was undoubtedly a mistake. ‘Hurrah!’ I shouted with the others whenever Dodge made a particularly telling point. But when he described what anarchy could do to right the wrongs of mankind, I felt less certain. Would people really work more productively because they knew it would benefit their neighbours? I hoped so but I had to admit to a crumb of doubt.

      A crowd gathered. Among them was a bad-tempered-looking policeman. At once I felt guilty, an absurd reaction bred of a childish fear of authority. I shook one of my banners vigorously and gave a cry of pain as a huge splinter from the stick drove itself deep into my thumb. It was then I heard the uplifted voice of a newspaper vendor, crying, ‘Read all abaht it! Famous actor arrested for murder! Read all abaht it!’

      I hardly took in the sense of it as I attempted to grasp with my teeth the end of the splinter, which had disappeared in welling blood.

      ‘Here, before you, is the walking, breathing demonstration of my thesis,’ said Dodge, really warmed up now. He pointed to an old lady in a battered black straw hat, who stood just in front of me, crouching over her cane as she twisted her arthritic neck to stare up at him. ‘Well, Mother, you could tell us a thing or two about capitalist repression, I should think! How many times have you had to put your children hungry to bed while you laboured sorrowfully over some wearisome task for which you were paid a pittance?’

      ‘Shame!’ yelled one of the brotherhood. The old woman stared round at us, cackling and displaying toothless gums, apparently enjoying the attention.

      ‘How many times has your body been numb with cold because the coal mined by brave men, dying of silicosis, has gone to power the great factories that provide wealth only for their owners?’

      ‘Scandal!’ roared the revolutionists. The old lady waved her stick at us and screamed with laughter.

      ‘How many times have you had to scrape and contrive to put a decent meal on the table for your husband when he came home, weary and sore oppressed?’

      The crowd murmured sympathetically but, in a lightning change of mood, the old woman seemed suddenly to resent being the object of universal pity.

      ‘My ’usband was a no-good drunken layabout. ’E never did a honest day’s work in ’is life. When ’e ran off with the tart from the Co-op I was pleased to see the back of ’im!’

      ‘So put that in your pipe and smoke it!’ heckled one of the crowd.

      ‘Yeah! What choo got ter say ter that?’ jeered the old woman with consummate ingratitude. I noticed for the first time that she seemed a little drunk. ‘You blinking lefties think you can tell us all what to do but we ain’t ’aving none of it!’

      Dodge opened his mouth to reply but at that moment one of the placards I was cradling in the crook of my arm, so I could suck my throbbing thumb, toppled over and fell on the old lady. It knocked her hat over her eyes and sent her staggering round in circles until she sat down with a thump on the pavement while her basket went spinning.

      ‘’Ere!’ shouted a spectator. ‘There’s no call for violence just ’cause she don’t agree with you!’

      Dodge jumped from the podium. He and the policeman helped the old lady up but as soon as they put her on her feet she began to swipe at Dodge’s legs with her stick. She possessed a surprising amount of strength for such an ancient old thing. In the confusion I accidentally let go of the second placard. It knocked the policeman’s helmet from his head. He swore loudly and blew his whistle.

      What happened then was terrifying. It began as an exchange of insults between the anarchists and the audience, accompanied by the jabbing of fingers and some pushing and shoving. Then like a flame creeping through dry twigs it flared into violence. In seconds there was a whirling mêlée of fists and boots and flying objects. A fat old man, his eyes glaring and his lips stretched back from his teeth in hatred, kicked me hard on the knee. I staggered against