Clouds among the Stars. Victoria Clayton
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of white a youth with long matted hair aimed a blow at my cheek, snatched my bag from my shoulder and ran off with it. I was much too frightened to put up a fight. Someone was screaming. I wanted to scream too, but I was breathless with shock and fear. I stared in awe as Yell climbed the statue of Abraham Lincoln, shouting defiance and waving a banner before someone hit her smack on the forehead with an orange and knocked her from the pedestal into the crowd. A police car, with lights flashing and siren blaring drew up at the perimeter of the scrimmage. I saw a gap between the combatants and before I had time to think what I was doing I was through it and running hard.
I ran for what seemed like miles until the pain in my knee forced me to stop. I sank onto a step in a doorway, almost weeping with pain and despair. Although some of the brotherhood considered it their bounden duty to be militant whenever possible, and there had been much talk of previous bloody scrums, I had never witnessed them. This was only my second demonstration. The first had taken place on a hot July day in St James’s Park when everyone had been too good-humoured to care much about anything but sunbathing and ice creams.
Violence at first hand was unfamiliar to me. I had lived all my life in peaceful Blackheath and Maria-Alba disapproved of smacking children. At St Frideswide’s the nuns had patrolled the playground and even the sticking out of tongues was strictly forbidden. The crazy, indiscriminate aggression I had just witnessed was deeply disturbing. But none the less I was ashamed of myself. I had enrolled myself in the cause and at the first hint of danger I had run away. I had deserted not only my comrades but also the man I loved. At this moment he might be lying helpless while the battle raged about him, badly hurt or – terrible thought – even dead.
A car drew up at the kerb and a woman with bleached hair and a hard face stepped out. She looked at me with an expression of loathing. ‘This is not a public bench. I shall fetch the porter if you don’t move off.’
I hobbled as fast as my knee would allow me back to Parliament Square. It took some time as blood was seeping through the leg of my jeans and the rubbing of fabric on flesh was agony. ‘Actor on murder charge,’ shouted the man who had a kiosk near the Sanctuary. It went through my mind that my parents would be very interested in this piece of news, as they knew every thespian of any reputation. Then the square came in sight and I forgot about it.
The fighting was over. People stood about, talking, but of Dodge and Yell and the other members of SPIT there was no sign. I spotted a Black Maria disappearing into the traffic. The pavement was littered with squashed oranges and broken eggs and trampled placards. A packet of lard oozed and glistened on the pavement. The only person I recognized was the old woman with the black straw hat. She was trying to persuade a policeman, who was attempting to get her into the police car, to dance with her.
‘Anyone see what happened this afternoon?’ Another policemen addressed the crowd. ‘We’d like to take statements from some of you.’ The crowd thinned rapidly and I joined the exodus.
The warmth of the day had gone now and Nikolskoye looked particularly uninviting in the fading light. I almost turned back when I saw Hank and Otto walking up the steps but I knew I ought to face up to having behaved badly. I steeled myself to bear their resentment.
‘Hey! Look who’s here!’ Hank called when he saw me. ‘You were great, Harriet! Ha, ha! When I saw you hit that policeman! I’d never have believed it! I had you down as a stuck-up bourgeoise coquette.’
I grinned feebly as Otto gave me a clenched-fist salute. ‘Come in, Sister, and ve shall drink you a toast. It vas a good day’s work, nicht war? Leetle old ladies must take care ven Harriet is about. She vill knock them down!’ He mimed a punch aimed at my shoulder.
I noticed that Otto was missing an earring and that his lobe was a nasty mess. Hank’s nose was swollen to twice its usual size. We went upstairs, the two men congratulating each other on the blows they had managed to get in, in the name of freedom. What had seemed to me to be a disaster, bordering on farce, was apparently another glorious chapter in the history of heroic resistance to the forces of oppression. My appearance at headquarters met with cries of approval. Dodge and Yell were absent, having been taken to the police station, but it was generally agreed that neither of them had been much hurt.
My health was drunk in warm beer and my fearless militancy made much of. We finished Yell’s cake and then Hank went out for fish and chips, and we had a greasy feast of celebration. Though it was hard to see wherein lay the victory exactly, I went along gratefully with the general mood of self-congratulation. I had never in my life been fêted for anything and it was a heady experience.
It was half-past six when I got home. I looked wildly dishevelled, almost villainous, in the hall mirror – the personification of caducity. My hair was hanging in strings from the egg and the blood from a cut on my cheek had dried in a streak of blackish-red blobs. My knee was agony and my thumb was sore.
‘Ehilà, Harriet! C’è da impazzire!’ Maria-Alba’s head appeared in the lighted doorway that led to the basement stairs. Her eyes and mouth were large with anguish. ‘Clarissa is having the fits and Ophelia is lock in the bedroom. Bron is gone to The Green Dragon and Portia is nowhere found! Non so più che fare!’
‘Harriet!’ Cordelia flung herself at me. ‘I’m going to kill myself! I’ve made a potion of laburnum seeds and deadly nightshade for us all to drink …’ The rest was drowned by sobbing.
‘What is it? What’s the matter?’ I was used to my family’s dramatics. I expected Maria-Alba to tell me the boiler had gone out, and Cordelia that she had been given a C for Latin.
‘Waldo sarà impiccato per omicidio. Your father is to be hang! For murder!’ Maria-Alba sank to her knees and wrung her hands above her head.
Cordelia screamed and fainted.
We laid Cordelia on the ebony and gilt day bed, which had come from the set of Antony and Cleopatra. Its frame was made of writhing snakes with leopards’ heads supporting the scrolled arms. The coats, lacrosse sticks, cricket bats and school satchels that had been carelessly chucked on to it over the years had chipped off most of the gesso, and Bron, when a small boy, had indelibly inked spectacles round the leopards’ eyes, but it made a striking effect as you walked in through the front door. Next to it, a life-sized statue of Anubis, the Egyptian god with the head of a jackal, acted as a hat stand.
Maria-Alba snatched several feathers from an ostrich boa that was draped round Anubis’s neck, set a lighted match to them and held them under Cordelia’s nose. Cordelia came to immediately, complaining volubly about the disgusting smell. She gazed up at me with tragic eyes.
‘Don’t kiss me goodbye, my dearest sister, lest you take the poison from my lips. I love all my family but you’re my favourite. Portia was a pig yesterday when I asked if I could borrow her mohair jersey.’
‘Stop acting at once, this minute, and tell me truthfully. Did you swallow any nightshade and laburnum mixture?’ I spoke sharply because Cordelia frequently told lies. Also I wanted to bring myself back from the immense distance to which Maria-Alba’s broken sentences had sent me. I saw myself bending over my sister in one of those out-of-the-body experiences people have when they nearly die. My sight was dim and I seemed to be intermittently deaf.
‘I – I – don’t remember.’ Cordelia pressed her hand to her head and fluttered her lashes.
‘C’è bisogno di emetico. Salt and water,’ said Maria-Alba grimly. ‘I go make it.’
‘You’ll be wasting your time because I won’t drink it.’ Cordelia sat up, looking cross. ‘I hate this family. Isn’t it bad enough that my own darling father is a prisoner and a captive and perhaps even going to be hung without you trying to make me sick?’
‘Hanged,’ I corrected automatically while muffled shock waves boomed in my head like the tolling of a submerged bell.
Cordelia