Millennium People

‘Sounds like a Bartok opera.’ She searched for her mobile. ‘I’ll call my doctor friend again. He should be in the theatre by now.’

‘Operating?’

‘Putting on a play written by his patients. Queen Diana.’

‘That sounds rather touching.’

‘No, sadly. They’re Down’s children. It’s sweet, but a total bore. Snow White rewritten by Harold Pinter.’

‘Interesting…It might make more sense.’ I tried to stand up. ‘I’ll see my GP on the way home.’

‘No.’ She placed a firm hand on my forehead. ‘Your wife doesn’t want you dying in the back of a cab. Besides, I need you to help us with our next project…’

I watched her stride away on a stylish heel. She had brought me home out of genuine concern for me, but already I felt that I was becoming a prisoner. I lay back in the armchair, scanning what I could see of this scruffily attractive house, so different from our formal pile in St John’s Wood, furnished by a rich man’s daughter endowed with too much good taste. I liked the faint smell of pot, garlic and outrageous perfumes. Children’s drawings were pinned to the mantelpiece, stained with wine tossed into the fireplace, but it was clear that Kay Churchill lived alone. Dust lay on the coffee table and writing desk, a nimbus that seemed like an ectoplasmic presence, a parallel world with its own memories and regrets.

A school bus moved past the window, filled with small girls in felt hats and purple blazers, the uniform of an exclusive private primary, whose fees would educate an entire East End bantustan. I was sitting somewhere in Chelsea Marina, an estate of executive housing to the south of the King’s Road and, to my mind, the heart of another kind of darkness.

Built on the site of a former gasworks, Chelsea Marina was designed for a salaried professional class keen to preserve its tribal totems – private education, a dinner-party culture, and a never-to-be-admitted distaste for the ‘lower’ orders, which included City dealers, financial consultants, record industry producers and the lumpen-intelligentsia of newspaper columnists and ad-men. All these were blackballed by the admissions committee, though most would have found Chelsea Marina too modest and well bred for their rangier tastes.

As Kay paced the hall, speaking into her phone, I wondered how she fitted into this enclave of middle-class decorum. She was telling off a luckless hospital receptionist, raising her voice to a fishwife shriek as she described my chest injuries and likely brain damage. All the while, she was watching herself admiringly in the coat-stand mirror. When she poured a tumbler of Scotch I noticed the deeply bitten nails, and the strong nose she had picked since childhood.

‘Dr Gould’s on his way.’ She sat on the arm of my chair and checked my eyes, bringing her body close to me. ‘Actually, you look better.’

‘Good. Anything to get away from that court.’ I pointed to the quiet street beyond the bay window. ‘So this is Chelsea Marina. It feels more like…’

‘Fulham? It is Fulham. “Chelsea Marina” is an estate agent’s con. Affordable housing for all those middle managers and civil servants just scraping by.’

‘And the marina?’

‘The size of a toilet and smells like it.’ She raised her head, as if catching a whiff of this noxious aroma. ‘The whole place was purpose-built for the responsible middle class, but it’s turning into a high-priced slum. No City bonuses here, no share options or company credit cards. A lot of us are really stretched. That’s why we’re waking up and doing something about it. We’re holding a series of street demos.’

‘The problem is the streets all lead to the nearest police court.’

‘We can cope with that. Remember, the police are neutral – they hate everybody. Being law-abiding has nothing to do with being a good citizen. It means not bothering the police.’

‘Sound advice.’ I caught myself breathing too deeply, and eased the air from my lungs. ‘Learn the rules, and you can get away with anything.’

‘That’s always a shock to the middle classes.’ She ran a finger through the dust on the coffee table, like a bacteriologist surprised by a new growth in a Petri dish. ‘What was going on at Olympia?’

‘Nothing…’ I waited as Kay settled herself on the settee, ready to listen to me, and realized that this strong-willed and attractive woman was lonely. I was tempted to describe my search for the Heathrow bomber, but she was a little too watchful. She had heard my statement to the magistrates, and probably assumed that I was involved in the protest movements at a more serious level. Defensively, I added: ‘A cat show – sounds trivial, but it reaches the headlines. It’s unexpected, and makes people think.’

‘Spot on.’ She nodded vigorously. ‘We need to unsettle them. It’s not enough to be sincere – they assume you’re a whining Trot or some dotty old dear. You have to stick your neck out. I’ve tried, and God knows I’ve paid the price.’

I pointed with my glass to the wall posters. ‘You’re a movie critic?’

‘I teach film studies at South Bank University. Or did.’

‘Kurosawa, Klimov, Bresson…?’

‘The last gasp. After that came entertainment.’

‘Fair enough.’ It was time to leave, but I found it difficult to rise from the chair. The whisky sealed in the pain, as long as I sat still. I scanned the titles printed on the hundreds of videos packed into the shelves behind the desk. ‘No American films?’

‘I don’t like comic strips.’

‘Film noir?’

‘Black is a very sentimental colour. You can hide any rubbish behind it. Hollywood flicks are fun, if your idea of a good time is a hamburger and a milk shake. America invented the movies so it would never need to grow up. We have angst, depression and middle-aged regret. They have Hollywood.’

‘Good for them.’ I pointed to the folders on the coffee table. ‘Script submissions?’

‘From my class. I thought they needed a day trip to reality. There’s too much jargon around – “voyeurism and the male gaze”, “castration anxieties”. Marxist theory-speak swallowing its own tail.’

‘But you cured that?’

‘I told them to take their cameras into the bedroom and make a porn film. Fucking is what they do in their spare time, so why not look at it through a camera lens? They wouldn’t learn much about sex, but they’d learn a lot about film.’

‘And that went down a treat?’

‘They loved it, but the dean of studies wasn’t impressed. I’m on suspension until they work out how to handle me.’

‘Quite a challenge.’

‘I thought so too. So, with all this time on my hands, I decided to start a revolution.’

‘A revolution?’ I tried to seem impressed. She appeared edgy and frustrated, staring at the frayed carpet like an actress deprived of her audience. The revolution, when it arrived, would at least provide a good script and some valuable parts.

‘You put on a great show this morning,’ I told her. ‘In fact, I’m surprised they found you guilty. Fining someone in holy orders…’

‘Stephen Dexter? Chelsea Marina’s resident vicar. I’m not sure if that qualifies as a holy office.’

‘So the Shepherd’s Bush protest was religious?’

‘Not for Stephen. Poor boy, he’s one of those priests who feels obliged to doubt his God. Still, it makes him useful to have around, especially on a demo.’

‘Twenty-seven pounds worth of damage? What did you do – upset a litter bin?’

‘We tore down some posters.’ She shuddered with genuine revulsion. ‘Corrupting stuff.’

‘Ungodly?’

‘In a way. Deeply seductive.’

‘At a shopping mall? What was this? A pro-vivisection reading room?’

‘A travel agency.’ She turned to face me, chin raised. ‘As it happens, we’re against the whole concept of travel.’

‘Why?’