The horses frightened him. Dinky had got used to the shouting, the whistles and the volume of people. But when a troop of mounted police fanned out to face the demonstrators, he was scared.
This is Dinky Dutta we are talking about. Slim-hipped, coffee-coloured, nice smile, easy style.
Prize-winning student - no, former student, currently awaiting confirmation of his first class degree.
In another place, it would come summa cum laude, but Dinky’s been to a university where they don’t speak Latin. Nonetheless, a writer already (two short stories published in online magazines), one of them even reviewed. Certain to be a major writer someday, somebody said. Either that or he’s a worthless piece of crap who’s never done anything in his life and never will.
Are you a shit, sir?, he was once asked in the Gents of a posh pub off Piccadilly next door to the private view his Dad had taken him to. Probably a chat-up line, the real question being: do you take it up the arse, pretty boy? Either way, Dinky didn’t have an answer, then; doesn’t have one, now.
On this, the day of the national demonstration against debt, he wasn’t too concerned about the helmeted warriors sitting on top of the horses.
So well coordinated they might have been a dance troupe. Too smart, too choreographed to be really threatening, he thought (how little he knows).
It was the sheer, animal bulk that got to Dinky: the weight, the smell of the horses, even some distance away.
‘What are you supposed to do if they come at you?’
he asked Joe. Anarchist Joe (well, he wears black).
Joe who plays the bongos, a bit of a drongo, but really comes good when the pressure’s on.
If you’re in a tight spot, Dinky, you’ll be glad to have him around.
‘You’re not supposed to be there, that’s what’.
There’s a chuckle in Joe’s eyes. ‘If you don’t have the sense to get out of the way, you haven’t got much sense, have you?’
Enjoys breaking in the virgins, Joe does; and Dinky is his latest trophy protestor.
Yes, this is Dinky’s first time. Iraq, Student Fees, Education Cuts, while he was actually studying (sort of), he let the whole lot pass him by. Not quite the full political animal, even now. This demo’s against debt: student debt, Euro-debt, Third World debt; hence ‘Cancel the Debt: Tax the Bankers’. To be honest, Dinky isn’t that bothered about paying his graduate tax, but he likes the thought of saying he only goes on demos now he’s stopped being a student.
Counter-intuitive, or what?
Sections of the crowd are getting restless. They’ve watched themselves on the monitors round Trafalgar Square. (Indeed you haven’t been on a demo nowadays
– nobody has, until you’ve seen yourself there on the monitors.) They’ve read the tweets supporting the demo from Stephen Fry and friends. What else to do now, except some old fashioned pushing and shoving?
It’s a stand-off, but that doesn’t mean standing still. Dinky is amazed at how much (some of) the students are getting away with. Surging forward every now and then, kicking and punching, eventually pushed back by riot police (on foot). Then the police drop back leaving a gap between themselves and the protestors. There’ll be a quiet period, punctuated by gleeful monkey noises every time a bottle flies over and cracks open on the ground in front of the police line. One bottle – just the one
– got past the riot shields. It curved over, curled in and split a policeman’s visor.
Goal!
Big cheer goes up from the away fans; stunned constable steered to the rear and replaced by one of his team mates.
There’s another lull, and Joe goes into a huddle with a group of friends. Two of them come out carrying the poles of a banner which reads, ‘Front Line Theatre’. One of the pole-bearers is Dinky, who he can’t quite believe he is anything other than an onlooker. A third student is holding a large placard, declaring that this is ‘The University of Strategic Optimism’. Meanwhile, dressed in cap and gown, Joe occupies centre stage – well, he would if there was one. In front of the placard, beneath the banner, he is the pop-up vice-chancellor for a spoof uni. Through a megaphone, Joe addresses the crowd:
‘Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the University of Strategic Optimism. We at the University believe that this is the best of all possible worlds. That we are ruled by the best possible government.
That the future of our country will be tinted with gold, so long as we all believe that nothing can go wrong.’
Joe’s resolute expression and stentorian tones, are deliberately at odds with his asinine words.
Instead of politicians announcing state-sponsored nastiness in the flat voice of polite conversation – the ‘sofa politics’ we have become accustomed to, this is airy fairy nonsense delivered with Churchillian gravity. He continues in the same vein:
‘If only we have confidence in ourselves, then the benefits of wellbeing shall be ours. All we have to be depressed about, Ladies and Gentlemen, is depression itself. Thus I call upon you – nay, I implore you – to keep taking the tablets. For they have been specially made by our little helpers to be the helpmeet of your dreams.’
In widening circles around Joe, there are signs first of bemused interest, now turning to ripples of laughter. Out come the iPhones – this is becoming an event within the event. Everyone wants a picture of Joe, and he’s getting into his stride: big gestures, lugubrious eyes, cavernous red mouth and a succession of elongated syllables that seem to go on for ever.
‘At the Uuuuuuniversity of Strategic Optimismmmmmmmmmm, yooooooou’ve never had it so goooooo...!’
This last word was ever so rudely interrupted. It was going to be ‘good’ when Joe started mouthing the word. But it didn’t end up there; didn’t reach its intended destination.
Joe’s on the ground, you see, trying to protect himself. His fluttering hands suggest he doesn’t know which is worth saving – his brain or his balls. Meanwhile the blows rain down all over him.
In a subsequent inquiry, police officers will say that it was operationally essential to immobilize the protagonist prior to arrest.
And what of Joe’s friends and his new found audience? Did they pile in to protect him from a beating? One or two steamed in looking as if they meant business, but they had no means of protecting themselves against riot batons. A couple of thwacks – blow to the shoulder, here; a bloody nose, there, and they were hesitating, soon to be retreating.
Of course there were legions of people photographing the scene, many of them starting to boo in the venerable tradition of the pantomime season. But by the time they got past the ‘b’, even before the
‘oo’, the snatch squad had him away. The star of Front Line Theatre was already behind police lines, about to be bundled into a prison van.
Less than half an hour later, Joe, now without belt or boots, stood in the cells at West End Central, asking for a lawyer. All in good time, came the reply. All in good time, said the custody officer, as he walked upstairs extremely slowly.
Meanwhile Dinky was long gone. Scarpered. Dropped the banner pole straightaway and ploughed 50 yards back through the crowd, then slowed down to a leisurely stroll. The picture of innocence; quite right too, since he had done nothing wrong. More than that, he had done nothing at all.
When they came to get Joe, the other person holding the other pole at the other end of the banner, name of Siouxsie or some such, had at least attempted to poke a policeman in the eye with it. Perhaps not a wholly convincing attempt, but more than a rhetorical gesture. She tried – that’s the point, and though her brief effort was effortlessly brushed aside by a cop in full riot gear, she didn’t have to feel guilty that she’d seen her mate beaten to the ground and arrested, and done absolutely nothing to defend him.
Of course, runaway Dinky was heart-stoppingly ashamed of himself. Gripped with guilt. Hating everything about his loathsome, gutless existence.
If o
nly the ground would swallow him up in the same way that the police had engorged poor Joe. But no, he knew he didn’t really mean that. He simply wasn’t capable of feeling anything strongly enough to make him risk his neck. Obviously not, or he would have run the risk just now.
Five minutes after Joe was arrested, Dinky had already reached the edge of the crowd. There were plenty of people still coming to join the show, but he peeled himself away and went up Whitehall. Past the statues of war heroes and the Cenotaph. All these people ready and willing to die for what they believed in.
So what was wrong with him? What did everyone else have that Dinky Dutta couldn’t share in?
(14) Dangling man
An hour later, around the time Joe stopped shouting for a lawyer and sat down to wait on the blue plastic mattress in his cell, Dinky opened the front door and stepped inside the small terraced house which he shared with Rupa (paid for, it should be said, by his parents and hers). His shoulders drooped when it came home to him that there was no point in calling out to her: she’d be away, rehearsing for her next performance in the forthcoming round of the nation’s
‘most popular TV talent show’.
For want of something better to do, Dinky showered and shaved. While drying his hair he wandered from room to room. In the pile of papers on his workstation (he and Rupa had one each, facing each other across what, in a family home, would have been the ‘dining area’), he came across a copy of the last piece of work he had done for his course, complete with highly favorable comments from the assessors. In his naturally lush voice, Dinky began reading it out to himself. Not loud, but intimately, as if to a radio microphone. It was called,
‘No Face’, and this is what he read: It looks perfectly all right when I wear a mask.
When I’m wearing one, you wouldn’t know there is no face behind it. My life used to be so complicated, having to wait for masked balls and hanging around operating theatres. But now, thanks to the popularity of anti-pollution masks, especially in Asia, I can cover up any time and blend right into the crowd. Faceless in the crowd – that’s me. All it takes is a square of muslin and a piece of elastic.
When UK prime minister David Cameron toured Beijing today, I fitted in fine with the party members and the British trade delegation. Just another Chinese official. I should think he suffers from asthma: he’s got that thing on to keep the Beijing smog out of his face. Wouldn’t you agree, George?
I joined the posse at Beijing Tesco’s. Yes, the same company, and the same blue and white colour scheme you have in the UK. I stepped into line with the others. One minute I wasn’t there; next minute I was. If you had noticed me making my entrance - and nobody did - you might have thought I’d come right off the supermarket shelves.
The next bit was trickier. I had to get close enough to David Cameron to hand it to him. I thought about dressing as a soldier and lining up on parade. But that wouldn’t have helped: Chinese soldiers on ceremonial duty are not meant to move; on pain of death. Handing something to the visiting dignitary might have got me shot.
I saw my opportunity when the delegation arrived at a former temple, where Cameron was due to be photographed sitting round a table with a couple of ‘social entrepreneurs’. As the scene was being set, I pulled up an extra chair and joined them.
Now there were three of us along one side of the rectangular table, backs to the camera; plus two interpreters, in profile, one on each of the table’s short sides; and Cameron on the side opposite us, full face. (Such a pink and creamy white face. When I think back to that moment, I can’t help imagining it on a skewer, next to a row of animal carcasses).
So I sat still while my new middle class compatriots said their little their piece – one via an interpreter, the other showing an impressive command of English. When Cameron had duly replied to the others, all eyes turned to me. Thank you for giving me my cue, I thought.
I reached out across the table, extending my right arm to Cameron as if to shake hands with him. He saw me doing it and reciprocated – too polite to do anything else, despite what his security people tell him. At which point I palmed the small circle of black card into his well manicured hand. The pirates’
summons. The black spot. A call to account imbued with the weight of history; a small sign notifying the recipient of the momentous day of reckoning.
There was no date on the back, and even I don’t know when it will be. But our day will come, Mr Cameron.
Our day will come.
Not bad, Dinky is thinking. He lets himself think it again.
But not good enough. Too slight, too light. Just not enough.
He picks up his old-fashioned cigarette lighter and thumbs it. Now he’s holding his piece of writing (What is it anyway? Not a short story, not a poem; a sad case of too much genre bending), holding it over a waste basket and lighting it up. He feels something go out of him as the flame gets stronger, but he’s letting it burn anyway, until there are only a few crumbs of browned paper to drop into the basket.
Moving quickly now, he goes to the kitchen for a bottle of beer, opens it, flicks on the television and sits down to light a cigarette. He doesn’t check to see what else is on, but sticks with whatever comes up on the channel it’s already tuned to. Stays with that channel all night.
Dinky is sitting there in the dark. Stuck there, struck dumb. Dangling over the drop.
Part 2. LIfe's a pitch
(1) Rupa’s got talent