Marcher: The Author's Preferred Text

by Chris Beckett

  Only Joy and Cyril looked Stacey in the eye.

  ‘Welcome, Stacey,’ Cyril said with old-fashioned courtesy. ‘Do have a seat. Let’s start by checking you know everyone here.’

  The child, little Kaz, reached out across the table for one of the carafes of water that stood there. Stacey smacked him, hard, and everyone winced while Kaz began a pale thin sobbing.

  ‘Well, I know Miss Frost of course. I’ve known her since I was a kid. And I know him,’ Stacey looked at Dr Rajman. ‘He sorts out Wolfie’s inhalers and that.’

  She suddenly treated them all to a smile of dazzling sweetness.

  ‘Yes and I know her,’ she went on in the incongruously rustic accent of the Bristol Zones. ‘I know Lisa Finch.’

  WPC Stimbling was introduced.

  ‘And I’m Harriet Vere-Rogers,’ gushed the lay representative. ‘You don’t know me, Stacey, but I’m not a professional person like the other people here. I’m just an ordinary Bristol person like yourself.’

  There was a moment’s silence while everyone absorbed the preposterousness of Mrs Vere-Rogers’ claim. Then Cyril cleared his throat.

  ‘Now, Stacey,’ he continued, ‘we understand that you don’t want to be registered as a Social Inclusion Status citizen. I wonder if you could tell us a bit about why?’

  ‘Well, not being funny or nothing, but, like, I don’t want to be a dreggie no more, know what I mean?’

  ‘I’m sure we all understand that, but I wonder if you’ve thought where you would live if you weren’t on the Social Inclusion register? Because of course you’d have to give up your tenancy here on the Meadows within six months.’

  His tone was gentle and sympathetic but in reality his mind was far away. He had been here so many times before.

  ‘Well I hadn’t really decided about that yet, know what I mean? I thought I’d look in the papers and that, and try and get a place for me and the kids.’

  ‘What about money, Stacey? You know, don’t you, that only registered citizens can claim Social Inclusion Allowance? Able-bodied people don’t get benefits outside, except for very short periods in exceptional circumstances, not unless they’ve subscribed to a private scheme.’

  Kaz, who’d now stopped crying, reached out again for the jug of water. Stacey distracted him by taking out a family-sized packet of fruit gums, ripping it open and giving him the lot, which he devoured in handfuls.

  ‘I could get a job,’ Stacey said, without much conviction.

  ‘Good for you, but then of course there’d be the care arrangements for the children…’

  ‘Wolfie’s in the nursery now and I been trying to get a place for Kaz.’

  ‘But you mustn’t forget, Stacey, that you only get subsidised daycare in the Zones. Outside you have to pay the market rate which is, oh…’

  Finding that he had absolutely no idea, Cyril looked for help to Alice, and she suggested a figure which clearly startled Stacey very much. The Soulfire on Stacey’s forehead changed from a gentle green to a smouldering red, and a death’s head appeared in the middle of it, staring out from its depths.

  ‘I hate fucking meetings,’ Stacey muttered, ‘they do my head in.’

  ‘You see, Stacey,’ Cyril explained, ‘before you came in we were talking a bit about your circumstances and we really do think that it isn’t the right moment just now for you to drop your Social Inclusion status. Of course you are perfectly entitled to disagree and, if you want to, you’re quite free under the Act to go to court and challenge our decision. But I’d like you to think carefully about what is right for you and see if we can’t come to some agreement. Will you do that?’

  ‘Yeah, all right. I’m not being funny or nothing,’ said Stacey humbly.

  Most people were humble at this point in Cyril’s experience. Only a minority erupted into rage as they saw the net closing around them.

  Joy Frost stepped in.

  ‘Stacey, I think you and I get on pretty well don’t we?’

  Stacey nodded.

  ‘Well, listen. You used that silly word “dreggie” just now. Well there are silly words for everything. People call the likes of Lisa and Cyril here “deskies”, don’t they? They call me an old battle-axe, so I’ve been told, and I bet you know much worse names which I haven’t heard about. But what I always ask people to remember is this: Social Inclusion status doesn’t mean that you are being thrown on the scrap heap. It means that society recognises that you need special help to sort your life out. I for one happen to believe you need that special help and I happen to believe you deserve it. By keeping you on the Social Inclusion Register we are simply making sure you get it. A time may come, Stacey, when you don’t need those things and when that day comes, you get back to us and I can promise you that Cyril and I and Dr Rajman and Lisa and everyone else round this table will all shout “Hooray! Well done! Let’s get you off that register straight away!” But we do think that just at the moment, you still need that help.’

  Cyril smiled with affection and genuine admiration. Joy really believed what she said. In spite of everything she still believed in it, or believed at any rate that, by sheer commitment, the deskies could make the rhetoric real.

  ‘So what do you say, Stacey?’ Joy said. ‘You must admit that it does make sense for the moment doesn’t it?’

  Stacey nodded reluctantly, crestfallen but resigned. Kaz meanwhile took the opportunity to empty the carafe across the table. Dr Rajman swore. Alice fetched some paper towels. Karen Stimbling had a fit of the giggles. Mrs Vere-Rogers dabbed at Dr Rajman’s sodden notes.

  ‘But before you finally make up your mind,’ said Cyril, ‘there are some obligations attached to registration as well as benefits, which I’ve now got to go through with you.’

  Although he knew this part of the Act by heart, Cyril had the habit at this point of opening the copy of the statute that lay in front of him and smoothing down the relevant page, so as to remind people – and remind himself – that he didn’t make the rules.

  ‘First of all there are some rules about your movements outside of the Zone. As you know, normally you can go where you like when you like. Your only obligation is to show your ID to the Line Officer. But if you commit offences you can be prohibited for a fixed period from crossing the Line.’

  Stacey nodded impatiently. She knew all this. You got caught shop-lifting down in Broadmead, you’d be given a one-month ‘Restrict’. You got caught burgling a house in Clifton and you’d have Restrict for six months or a year. Everyone knew that!

  ‘It sounds so awful, doesn’t it?’ exclaimed Mrs Vere-Rogers to everyone around the table, as if afraid they might suddenly renounce the system that provided their livelihoods. ‘But don’t forget that in the old days before the Act, a lot of the people who would now be put on Restriction Orders were actually sent to prison.’

  ‘There are some rules about credit as well,’ Cyril went on. ‘You can’t get a credit card if you are on the Social Inclusion Register and you can’t take out most types of loan.’

  Dickie Clarke laughed: ‘I wish I could get those rules applied to my wife!’

  ‘I wish someone could apply them to me,’ piped in WPC Stimbling.

  ‘Absolutely!’ cried Mrs Vere-Rogers.

  ‘The only other restriction,’ said Cyril, ‘is about voting in elections…’

  ‘Oh I ain’t bothered about that!’

  ‘All as bad as each other, eh, Stacey?’ chuckled Dickie, and Mrs Vere-Rogers, the prospective parliamentary candidate for the Labour Party, gave a little shout of laughter.

  Stacey’s Soulfire had returned to a smiling green.

  ~*~

  The taxi-driver – he was a short, plump Asian man with the strong accent of a recent immigrant – kept glancing in the mirror at Fran and Charles, trying to work out what the relationship was between them and what was going on. He could see that Fran had been crying. He could see that Charles was dry eyed but very agitated. He wondered whether they’d had some lov
ers’ quarrel but there was no obvious antagonism between them and they seemed oddly assorted to be lovers anyway. Perhaps she was the young man’s older sister or his aunt? Perhaps the two of them were coming from some family tragedy, some huge row? But then why had they abandoned a new and expensive car?

  As he turned into the estate near the M4/M5 intersection where Britannia House was located, it occurred to the taxi driver for the first time that their destination was the offices of the Immigration Service, and he became afraid. Charles and Fran both knew this because the slip let them feel his fear almost as if it was their own. They couldn’t tell whether his own immigration status was irregular or whether he was implicated in some way in some illegal activity related to immigration, but for some reason he was frightened, imagining himself to have been caught in some sort of elaborate sting.

  Later he would realise how absurd this was. If the immigration service had wanted to call him in for questioning they would hardly need to pose as a couple in distress in a lay-by on the road to Weston. But that was later. Now, when Charles reached over to pay him, his own fingers shaking, the driver too was struggling to get a grip on the notes and coins. There is such a thin line between the everyday life that people try to make for themselves and the things they fear, constantly crowding in.

  ~*~

  As he went out to his car after the meeting, Cyril found Mrs Vere-Rogers just about to get into her Volvo.

  ‘Thank you so much, Mr Burkitt,’ she enthused. ‘I really was very impressed. I only wish some of the critics of the Social Inclusion system could have been there to see it for themselves. What I can’t seem to get through to those people is that most folk in the Zones happily choose registration of their own free will when it’s properly and sympathetically explained to them, because they can see it’s in their own interests!’

  Cyril gave a little shrug. ‘Well, I do my job to the best of my ability but I must say I have my doubts about the system myself.’

  ‘Oh but you mustn’t, Mr Burkitt. You’re doing a marvellous job, and not only for the people who live here but for the whole country too.’

  ‘I wish I could share your conviction.’

  The Lay Representative looked earnest.

  ‘Mr Burkitt, please don’t think me one of those dreadful know-alls, but it so happens I’ve just completed a thesis on this for my PhD and I do know what I’m talking about.’

  She fixed him with a gaze of disturbing sincerity.

  ‘Do you know that for more than a century, except during times of war, there has always been a few percent of the population outside the world of work, and that economic science tells us that this is actually necessary in order to control inflation and maintain economic growth? What you are doing here is to look after those few percent of the population in as humane and decent way as possible, keeping them separate from the rest of society to maintain the work ethic outside, yet at the same time helping these temporarily excluded individuals back into the wider society as soon as they are ready to make the move. I can see that it must be hard at times because you are all such wonderful caring people. But this really really is the best for everyone…’

  She wagged a finger at him playfully.

  ‘…and I have read all the books.’

  ‘Well…’ began Cyril with a resigned shrug.

  But Mrs Vere-Rogers hadn’t finished yet.

  ‘Of course all this shifter nonsense is a worry for you all, I know.’ She looked deep into his eyes with an alarmingly compassionate expression on her face. ‘We’re going to have to have a good look at that, we really are, a jolly good look. But that’s an entirely different matter isn’t it? You really mustn’t let it take away from what you’re achieving.’

  Cyril climbed into his car and drove through the gate of the compound and back onto Meadow Way. He was heading for a meeting in another Zone called Knowle South and he turned into Holly Rise, his usual short-cut to the Thurston Road. As he did so he noticed, without paying it much attention, that an old Ford which had just followed him out of Central Square had turned the corner after him.

  Were the shifters a completely separate matter, he wondered, as he headed down Holly Rise?

  ~*~

  The Ford pulled out, accelerated in a cloud of dirty exhaust smoke, and swerved across in front of him. Forced to swerve himself, Cyril crashed into a street lamp, crushing his engine and flinging him violently forward into the white airbag that bloomed from his steering wheel.

  Three young men had jumped out of the Ford with sledgehammers in their hands.

  Ah, thought Cyril, strangely calm. So this is it. This is what it’s going to be like.

  One hammer smashed through his windscreen, another through his side window. Then his door was pulled open and he was dragged out head first onto the road.

  ‘Deskie bastard!’ one of them hissed at him, ‘You’re dead meat!’

  Time stretched out. It seemed possible to contemplate every angle and weigh up every possible move. Cyril rolled to one side just in time to avoid a hammer blow, which struck sparks and chips of concrete out of the kerb. He rolled the other way to avoid a second. Then, realising that he would soon be pulverised if he stayed on the ground, he pulled himself to his feet and flung himself on his nearest assailant, throwing his arms around the man as if in passionate embrace and whirling him round in a crazy waltz, so the others wouldn’t be able to strike at him without risking hitting their friend.

  There was a cheer. All around the unfolding drama, the dreggies were coming out of their houses to watch, old and young, men and women, some of them rooting for Cyril, some for the men who wanted to kill him.

  Thrub – thrub - thrub came faintly from over the roof-tops.

  ‘I’ll rip your fucking head off, deskie,’ muttered the man in Cyril’s embrace, dropping his hammer and seizing Cyril round the throat with both hands.

  The air was acrid with burning oil from the crushed engine of Cyril’s car.

  ‘Go on, Jod! Strangle the bastard!’

  ~*~

  Small plastic cylinders began to clatter to the ground, seeping a smooth white vapour, and a loudhailer crackled into life somewhere in the sky, giving out stern but totally incomprehensible instructions.

  ‘Arznad arnefy pootha!’ it sounded like, ‘arznad arnefy poonathol!’

  The helicopter was directly overhead and descending rapidly.

  ‘Come on, Jod,’ shouted one of the men. ‘We’d better run for it.’

  The man in Cyril’s arms pulled away and Cyril sank to the ground as gas from the canisters came scalding into his eyes. The onlookers fled back into their houses, shrieking excitedly.

  Time passed. Something dripped peacefully from the engine of Cyril’s car. The wind from the helicopter’s rotor blew gas and smoke around his face, like a toxic breeze on the surface of an alien planet.

  ~*~

  ‘You need to move away from the car, sir,’ said the gentle voice of a police officer. ‘As quickly as possible please, sir. Because of the petrol.’

  Kindly hands helped Cyril up. A woman from one of the houses offered him a box of tissues to wipe his eyes. An old man brought a glass of water. A policeman produced a fire extinguisher and doused Cyril’s smouldering engine.

  ‘I’m fine!’ Cyril called out excitedly, feeling himself at the centre of a universe of love. ‘I’m absolutely fine!’

  It seemed to him that he’d never felt so fine in his entire life.

  ‘How is my car? I’ve a meeting at Knowle South which I need to get to.’

  ‘We’ll phone and cancel for you,’ said a sergeant. ‘One of my officers will run you down to the hospital.’

  ‘Hospital? No need! No need at all. I’m fine! Never felt better.’

  ‘You’ve had a very close shave there, sir. Very close. It’s lucky our chopper spotted that car following you, otherwise this could have turned out much worse for you.’

  ‘Honestly, nothing more than a couple of bruises. If you c
an just phone the office in Knowle South to say I’ll be a bit late…’

  ‘You’re suffering from shock sir. It’ll hit you in a bit. PC Leonard will run you down to the hospital for a check-up and then take you home. Is there anyone you’d like us to phone. Your wife perhaps?’

  ‘My wife is dead,’ said Cyril. ‘She’s dead. She died. She sadly died…’

  He had a momentary glimpse of a chasm, an immense gaping emptiness. But then the waves of love came back again, lifting him up and carrying him away.

  It was like being in heaven.

  ~*~

  ‘Ugly business, sir,’ said young PC Leonard as he drove Cyril away from the scene.

  He was a prim, intense young man of twenty-two who had joined the force in order to combat evil.

  ‘Someone phoned me this morning and threatened me,’ Cyril said. ‘I’ve been trying all day to think who it was.’

  ‘We’ll need to get the details off you, sir, as soon as you’re ready.’

  ‘Yes of course, but the trouble is that there are so many people round here who hate me.’

  ‘I don’t see why, sir, when all you’re doing is trying to help.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s how they see it.’

  ‘Yes well, that’s outsiders stirring them up, isn’t it? It’s foreigners, and university people… And of course there’s these shifters we’ve been hearing so much about. If only we could be left alone to get on with the job here, we could do wonders, don’t you think, sir?’

  They had come to the Line. The gate opened for them and, secure in his little bullet-proof booth, the Line officer waved them through.

  ‘I was at the zoo yesterday,’ Cyril said affably as they moved off. ‘I took my grandsons and my daughter to the zoo.’

  ‘The zoo!’ exclaimed PC Leonard. ‘My wife and I love the zoo. We’re Friends of the zoo, in fact. We’ve got a season ticket and we’ve got a…’

  Cyril had not taken in a word of this.

  ‘They’re funny places, zoos, aren’t they?’ he said, not even noticing that he was interrupting. ‘Once upon a time they were just for entertainment. Chimps’ tea-parties, camel rides, all that. Then someone decided it was wrong to keep animals just to laugh at them, and zoos were suddenly all about conservation and science and saving the planet. And now of course they’re supposed to be about something else again: resurrecting dead species, increasing bio-diversity, all of that. Doesn’t make much difference from the animal’s point of view, though, does it? It all boils down to the same thing in the end. Them locked up in cages: us lot looking in…’