Eating Air

by Pauline Melville

  ‘I got away but they tore my fucking beautiful new jacket.’

  A serious, pale young man with black-rimmed glasses who had come in with him was not concerned about the fate of the jacket. His voice was almost apologetic and he was well-spoken. His brow wrinkled and he lowered his voice.

  ‘You must be careful. You don’t want to be picked up just now.’

  Donny took a step towards the group.

  ‘What are you lot all doing in the pub? You should be on the street. There are two thousand Tupamaros guerrillas round the corner waiting for you to lead the revolution. What am I to tell them – that you’ve gone to the pub and Che Guevara’s gone to his mum’s for his Sunday dinner?’

  Hector Rossi, the young man with the sheepskin jacket, laughed and pushed his fingers through his hair making furrows. He spotted Donny’s toolbag.

  ‘Were you just on the march?’

  ‘No. I wasnae. I am one of the working men who doesn’t give a fuck!’

  ‘Are you in a union?’

  ‘Am I fuck. I’m too anarchistic even to be in a group of anarchists. And I don’t vote. If I did I’d do it the same way I do a lottery – shut my eyes and put a little cross wherever my hand ends up.’

  ‘You have to take sides sometime. On something. Surely.’ Hector Rossi was smiling.

  ‘Never. I’m against everything.’ There was humour and a challenge in Donny’s eyes. ‘And it’s because I never take sides that I’m more moral than any of youse lot. I’m honest. And that’s the only morality there is.’

  ‘You’re an individualist then, or a nihilist,’ someone said from the back of the group.

  ‘Neither. I’m a fucking optimist. I’m hoping that one of you seekers after justice will buy me a drink. Look. I don’t like belonging to gangs.’

  A voice piped up from the middle-aged man in the corner of the room: ‘Hear. Hear. Hermits of the world, unite.’ Sil raised his glass.

  Donny looked over at him and gave a shout of pleasure.

  ‘Cheers Sil. Now that’s the type of guy I like. Pure crank.’

  There was uneasy laughter from the protesters, caught between the paradox of Donny’s warmth and his intractable savagery.

  ‘Were you on the march?’ A buck-tooth girl wearing a square-shouldered fake fur jacket turned to Ella.

  ‘No. I’m a dancer with the Royal Ballet,’ said Ella as if that absolved her from any such activity. The girl let out a snort of disdain:

  ‘Oh my god. You have to be a real bourgeois to go there. No ordinary people go to the ballet.’

  Donny took a dislike to the girl.

  ‘Well I love it when people dance. Are you a student?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Well get back to your fucking thinketeria. No ordinary people go there either.’

  Hector went to the bar. His geniality had a steadying influence on everyone. He offered Donny a drink.

  ‘What are you having?’

  Donny looked him up and down.

  ‘Are you a penniless student too or can I have a scotch?’

  ‘No. I’m a printer – well, an apprentice printer. And you can certainly have a scotch.’

  Donny raised his glass. The earnest bespectacled young man with black hair moved through the others to stand next to Donny. He introduced himself.

  ‘Hello. I’m Mark Scobie. Whereabouts do you work?’

  ‘Haringey till tomorrow, then it’s wherever we get sent.’

  Mark shook his head.

  ‘Things are going to get very tough in the building industry if they bring in this Industrial Relations Bill.’

  Donny regarded him with impatience.

  ‘Look. Don’t talk to me unless you can say something cheerful, pal. I don’t like talking to some cunt who’s moaning “Beware the Ides of March” all the time. Hang on while I deal with this thing that’s tugging at me.’

  Ella was pulling on the sleeve of Donny’s donkey jacket.

  ‘Are you going to stay? Because if we’re not going shopping I’m going back to the theatre. I didn’t have much time anyway.’

  ‘I’ll walk you back there.’

  ‘No. It’s all right. You stay here if you want.’

  She gave him a light kiss on the cheek and went to open the pub door. A gust of icy air blew in. Hail-stones rattled and bounced off the pavement like grain. She wrapped her red scarf around her neck, pulled up her coat collar and disappeared into the street.

  Mark Scobie frowned as he continued with his denunciation of Edward Heath’s government. After a few minutes Donny interrupted him: ‘The trouble with you, cha, is that you introduce railway lines into the conversation. I like a conversation to blossom and grow in all sorts of unexpected directions. I don’t like it when you’ve already planned what you’re going to say.’

  It was three o’clock and the publican was turning everyone out.

  ‘Do you want to come back to our place and talk some more?’ Mark Scobie’s tone was exceedingly polite.

  ‘Not particularly. But if you’re offering me a drink, the answer is yes.’

  *

  Mark Scobie rented a house in Bethnal Green. Hector kept a room there but he spent most of his time in Milan. The house was gloomy and unheated. Uncarpeted wooden stairs led up to the bedrooms and a flat at the top. On the ground floor there was a communal sitting-room which contained two decrepit musty-smelling sofas. Maroon and brown Indian cotton covers had been thrown untidily over them and there were several large beanbag cushions on the floor that functioned as chairs. A paraffin stove stood in the centre of the room and there was a black and white TV in the corner. The kitchen on the same floor served as a general meeting place for the household, a fact marked by the endless piles of dirty coffee cups. From the hall it was possible to look down the stairs and glimpse a damp basement room with rotting carpet, a Gestetner printing-machine, an old typewriter and agit-prop posters tacked onto the walls.

  The group of demonstrators and their new-found companion bought chips to eat on the way home. Conversation raged all the way back on the tube. Donny had brought a bottle of whisky with him. He was strap-hanging and taking nips from the bottle at the same time. He looked round at the seated passengers, the apathetic stares and slumped postures. Then he addressed the compartment in general.

  ‘It’s bureaucracy that I hate. I hate bureaucracy. Every time I see a form I tell lies. I can’t bear to have anyone write down my name. I would like nothing better than to burn every single piece of paper with my name written on it. Create disorder. Confuse the bastards. May they die. May they die an agonising death. Soon. Everything’s the wrong way round. Why can’t we have a society where the bailiffs come and give furniture to people who haven’t got any money instead of taking it away?’

  His humorous energy was infectious. Strangers started to laugh and join in the conversation. Before long the whole carriage became unexpectedly intoxicated.

  Discussion was still in ferment when they entered the house. The main room smelled of joss-sticks, dope and old carpet. A few people sat on the floor or sprawled on the sofas. The youth whose jacket sagged with the burden of its badges sat down cross-legged on the floor to roll a joint.

  Donny tossed a chip in the air and tried to catch it in his mouth.

  ‘Personally, I always use violence to obtain my objectives. And that’s what will happen when I die. People will stand up and have one minute’s violence.’ He let out a cackle.

  Mark went down to the basement to roll off some pamphlets on the Gestetner. Hector was on his knees in the front room trying to light the paraffin-stove. He pushed his hair back so that it wouldn’t catch fire.

  ‘Violence is fine. Sometimes it’s the only way to get justice. I don’t have a problem with that.’

  Donny stood watching him. ‘That’s not what I’m saying. I don’t do things because of right or wrong. Or justice or any of that crap. I don’t believe in any fucking cause. Whatever I do I’ll do just for the hell of it. D’you understand me?’

&nbs
p; The yellow light from the stove illuminated the steady intelligence of Hector’s eyes. His manner was open and honest. He looked directly at this new acquaintance.

  ‘I do believe that if you want to buckle down with ordinary people and push for justice you might have to make some sacrifice – give yourself up to the greater good. A revolution would always have to come first. I think, anyway.’

  Donny swayed in the centre of the room as he lit a cigarette.

  ‘What revolution?’ His mood darkened. There was menace in his voice. ‘You want action. I’ll give you fucking action. I trained as a soldier. But don’t talk to me about sacrifice or redemption or any of that shit. You can get your own redemption through your own fucking illusions if you want. Illusions are people’s security. Most people would rather have security than the truth.’

  The stove puffed out a tiny mushroom of smoke and the room filled with the sickly smell of paraffin fumes. Donny looked round for an ashtray.

  ‘Oh I see you use this whole carpet as an ashtray.’ He flicked his ash on the floor.

  Hector shook his head and laughed.

  ‘You’re drunk. Try and be reasonable for a minute.’

  Donny gave him a scathing look. He held up his fist, scrunched the burning stub of his cigarette into the palm of his hand and then opened it and shook the stub onto the floor.

  ‘Be reasonable? What a cuntish idea. Why live in an iron cage when you can get pissed and be free? You and your reasonable fucking world. I don’t belong to it. Do you understand that? It’s reason that causes all the violence in the first place. There’s always violence at the heart of reason. The only thing that guides me in life is … the latest hit song. Or any song that I’ve liked.’

  He stepped back and tripped into a giant blue beanbag that swallowed him into its folds.

  ‘I am the barley god. The honey god. I am the god of fucking Mondays,’ he shouted out from the centre of the cushion. After a few minutes of struggle, Donny fought his way out. His eyes were liquid and mobile. He staggered to the sofa and sat on it leaning forward with his jacket collar bunched up behind his neck. He addressed the floor with a mutter.

  ‘There’s something about all this endless sympathy for the poor. It gets on my nerves. What’s wrong with being rich? Why not be rich? Good luck to them.’

  A girl in a long skirt with a great Botticelli cloud of ribbed dark brown hair and racoon eyes appeared from upstairs. In her arms she held a purring tabby cat.

  ‘What are we going to do with this cat when you and Mark go back to Italy, Hector? I’m going to my parents in Leeds for Christmas and then back to university. There will be no-one in the house. He’s a lovely cat. I’d love to take him with me. I’m going to miss having a cat but I can’t afford to feed him.’

  Donny was on his hands and knees crawling over outstretched legs in search of packets that might contain a cigarette.

  ‘Then get a dead one,’ he snarled. ‘A dead black cat. Jimmy Hendrix for instance.’

  ‘Is Jimmy Hendrix dead?’ enquired Hector. ‘When did that happen?’

  ‘While you were winding up the fascists in Italy,’ said the girl. ‘Choked on his own vomit or something. As you do.’

  In response to the conversation, someone put a Hendrix album on the record player. Hector could hear the guitar screaming as he went downstairs to the cramped basement, where Mark was operating the Gestetner, his hands covered in ink from the roller. The table was a mess of pamphlets and placards and pots of paste. Mark fastened the template onto the machine.

  ‘Has it occurred to you that Donny could be useful? Demolition firms have access to explosives. But he’s been in the army so he might be right-wing. I can’t quite tell where he stands.’

  ‘I don’t think Donny’s right-wing,’ said Hector. ‘He’s just an ordinary working bloke. But we’ve only just met him. It’s too soon to include him in anything. We don’t know him well enough.’

  Hector went back upstairs. Donny was putting on his jacket.

  ‘I’m going out to get some fags,’ he said, pointing at the black and white telly. ‘Don’t let Lassie die while I’m out.’

  ‘Bring us back some then.’ Hector delved in his pocket for money.

  ‘Who said I was coming back?’

  ‘I thought we had to keep Lassie alive till you got back.’

  ‘I’ve changed my mind. I’m not coming back.’

  ‘You can kip here if you like.’

  ‘No thanks, mate. I’m going for a walk.’ He flashed his snaggle-toothed smile. ‘Anything might happen when you’re walking. Life is beautiful then. The flame of life. The spirit of life. That’s all I want. Nothing else. And a packet of fags.’

  Hector saw him out and went downstairs again to Mark in the basement. He leaned against the door jamb.

  ‘You know what? I think he’s all right. Why don’t we ask him if he and his girlfriend would like to have the flat upstairs. Rebecca is going back to university. It’ll be empty. It would be good to have someone in the house. I’m mainly in Milan. You’re backwards and forwards between Milan and here. And that way we’d get to know him a bit better.’

  ‘OK. You’d better run after him. We don’t know where he lives.’

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The Soho period came to an end that winter. Cyrus never recovered from the gang invasion of his flat and went to live with friends in Clerkenwell. Hetty decided to stay on permanently in Muswell Hill. Donny and Ella accepted the offer of renting the top flat in the Bethnal Green house.

  ‘How does Mark manage to keep paying for this house?’ Ella asked the student with the Botticelli hair who was vacating the top-floor flat. The girl looked surprised.

  ‘Didn’t you know? Mark has rich parents. His mother is Vera Scobie the actress. His father is the Attorney-General or something. They have a house in Chelsea and one in Kent. Mark is dead embarrassed by having rich parents. He thinks of himself as a revolutionary. Apparently he’s written a statement to a lawyer disinheriting himself and saying he will not accept any money or property left to him by his parents.’

  ‘Fucking hell!’ Donny stopped struggling with a table and rested it on the banisters. ‘I thought there was something I didn’t like about him. Why doesn’t the cunt give the money to me?’ He swore as the table started to slip from his grasp.

  Ella and Donny settled into their new home. They decided to wait until the ballet company’s summer break before they married. Donny was restless. Sometimes he worked on demolition sites, sometimes as a bricklayer or labourer or scaffolder. Between jobs he spent hours in the National Gallery gazing at paintings, or went on boat trips as far as possible down the river to where he could see the estuary or any other escape route. For a while he went north to Barrow-in-Furness to paint the hulls of ships in Vickers shipyard. Then he came south again, commuting every day to work in Harlow New Town. Unrest was spreading throughout Europe. The newspapers and television reported firebombings and exploding incendiary devices. In Ireland, the IRA stepped up their operations. In West Berlin, the Baader-Meinhof group had attacked three banks. In Italy, the Brigate Rosse undertook a series of bombings and bank robberies. In England, the targets were Conservative ministers, army recruiting centres, banks and the offices of big business. Adrenalin-fuelled outlaws took on the state. Scotland Yard formed a new bomb squad.

  One morning, a young policeman strolled up to Donny as he waited on the concourse of Liverpool Street station amid a throng of commuters.

  ‘Excuse me, sir. Can I have a look in that bag?’

  Donny glanced down at the toolbag resting at his feet. He leaned against a pillar, his head on one side, and regarded the policeman with curiosity:

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Now don’t be silly, sir. Open the bag.’

  Donny said nothing. A smile darkened his hazel eyes. The policeman shuffled uneasily.

  ‘Open the bag at once please, sir.’

  ‘I said no.’

  The pol
iceman tried a joke.

  ‘Come on, let me have a look. What have you got in there? The crown jewels?’

  ‘I’m not telling you.’ Donny looked around him at the throng of other passengers. ‘I’ll tell you what.’ He pointed to a well-dressed businessman reading The Daily Telegraph with his briefcase at his feet. ‘If you go and look in that man’s briefcase I’ll let you look in my toolbag.’

  ‘Just cooperate please, sir. Open your bag.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t be foolish, sir. If you don’t let me look in the bag I shall have to call for assistance.’

  ‘Well you’d better hurry up.’ Donny pointed up at the station clock. ‘My train is due in and I’m going to catch it.’

  The policeman walked away muttering into his walkie-talkie. Donny went to catch his train. As he walked through the ticket-barrier he looked round and caught the policeman peeping at him from behind one of the station’s pillars.

  *

  One evening, Donny came home white-faced and threw down his toolbag. That afternoon a man had fallen twelve feet from the scaffolding planks onto a concrete reinforcing rod that skewered him through the groin and balls. Donny had made roll-ups and held them to the man’s lips until the ambulance arrived. When he reached home Donny slid down against the wall, exhausted. In a moment he was sitting on the floor fast asleep. A flurry of resentment ran through Ella. His work was dangerous and paid little. It was a life of torn muscles, splinters and tiny triangular lumps of flesh gouged from his knuckles by spanners. His muscles ached from carrying planks and ladders. In winter freezing bricks stuck to his hands, taking off the top layer of skin. Once he took Ella’s hand and guided it so she could feel the solid raised lump on his shoulder where the scaffolding tubes rested. She fingered the contours gingerly beneath his damp checked shirt. On that job he lifted between five and ten tons of steel a day. Sometimes she came in late after a performance and looked at him laid out on the bed, too tired to undress, his body spread out like dried mud-flats: hands creviced, muscle fibres split, his face, under streaks of cement-dust, leaden and drained as after sunset.