“My name is Dorothy Spencer.” The voice itself sounded tranced – slow, without inflection.

  “No, you are not Dorothy, you are Mary, poor Mary. Do you know the song ‘Poor Mary lies a-weeping’?”

  “Yes.”

  It must be obvious to the audience, Benson thought, that some of this has been arranged in advance. He must have put her through the song before. Once again he found himself doubting the genuineness of the proceedings. What he didn’t doubt was that he was watching one of the most riveting pieces of theatre he had ever seen in his life. Misinformed about owls Rathbone might be, unfrocked therapist, feverish smoker on landings; but tonight he was a magic man. This obscure hall, scene of innumerable humble functions – mothers’ meetings, Methodist tea-parties, bring-and-buy sales – was transformed into a place of wonder and terror.

  “I want you to stand here and wait. In a little while you will hear somebody blow a whistle. Just once. When you hear the whistle, you will go to the hatstand and you will put on the white hat. When you put the white hat on, then you are Poor Mary, then you can sing your song. When you have sung your song you will be free. You will sing your song and then you will wake up and you will be free.”

  Rathbone turned to face the audience. “I’ll let you into a secret,” he said. “In the box our friend is sitting on, there is a frog mask. We are going to see Poor Mary find her prince. I must ask you now for absolute silence. We are entering a crucial phase of the proceedings.”

  He moved towards the man who had been sitting patiently all this while on the box. Standing before him and looking down intently at his face, he began to speak, but again in a different voice, this time loud and monotonous in tone. He was telling the man to relax, to relax. But what his plans were for this man, what signal he was to make, what he was to do when he heard Poor Mary’s song, nobody there was destined to know. Someone, the caretaker perhaps, thinking it too warm inside, had opened the double door at the entrance. While Rathbone was still speaking to the man on the box, the distant sound of police sirens came from the night outside and then, from somewhere closer at hand, a long blast on a whistle. Rathbone, his back to the stage, was concentrating his powers on the man before him and talking loudly. He seemed to have heard nothing.

  The woman on the stage turned and went to the hatstand. Quite impassively she took the white hat and put it on. In this summery hat and her green anorak, holding the shiny black handbag, she looked painfully ridiculous. The audience made no sound at all. Slowly the woman began to move forward. Her mouth opened and she began to sing in a soft, rather breathless, surprisingly tuneful voice:

  “Poor Mary lies a-weeping,

  A-weeping, a-weeping …”

  Rathbone turned quickly. “Not yet,” he said sharply. As he spoke the siren sounded again, very close now, it seemed just outside in the street, a loud, maniacal whooping, terribly startling in that spell-bound hall.

  “Good God, what was that?” Anthea said.

  The woman’s singing had stopped abruptly, either at Rathbone’s command or in the shock of the clamour outside. She stood still for perhaps five seconds, then her body shuddered convulsively, she raised her head and broke into a storm of weeping, drawing her breath in long, painful gasps. Benson saw Rathbone move quickly towards her. The photographer had stood up and was taking pictures. The tranced heckler sat motionless with his hands together in prayer. One or two people in the audience were craning to see outside but most were absorbed in what was happening on the stage.

  “I think I’ll just—” Benson got up quickly. There was a sidedoor immediately opposite him. He went through it into the street and looked up and down. The street was empty but he could hear the receding sirens and from the same direction, up towards Parliament Street, a confused sound of shouts and whistles. There was a smell of burning on the air. Benson hesitated for a short while. He did not want to go back into the hall. Rathbone’s show had distressed him considerably and it was in ruins now anyway. Also, he was curious. He began to walk down the street in the direction of the sounds. His view was restricted by buildings to begin with but at the first intersection, glancing to his left, he saw a red glow of fire in the sky, wreaths of black smoke slowly unfurling against it. The noise was louder now, more confused. Two black youths ran past him, going in the same direction. They ran side by side, quite soundlessly, down the middle of the street.

  Possessed by curiosity – and against his better judgement – Benson turned left at the next corner, in the direction of the main road. He could smell the fire more strongly now, a reek of burning plastic waste and rubber. The far end of the street was blocked with uniformed figures – he saw that they were police in riot gear, saw gleams from the street lamps on visors and helmets and plastic shields. They were forming up under shouted instructions from the inspector.

  Halfway down, ignored by the police, a small knot of people had gathered on a corner. Benson approached them. “What’s going on?” he said.

  “You can’t get through,” an elderly man said. “They won’t let you through this way.”

  “We’re trying to get across to Edge Hill,” the woman beside him said. “I don’t know how they think we’re going to get home.”

  “But what’s going on, what’s happened?”

  “They’ve started fires along Parliament Street. They’ve blocked the road. The fire engines can’t get through.”

  After hesitating a moment longer, Benson turned and began to walk back the way he had come. He had no desire now to get any nearer to the shouts and fires. He too had to get over to the other side of Parliament Street somehow, if he was to regain his apartment. There wouldn’t be buses but he might find a taxi. He began to plot the route in his mind. This was Grierson Street, which ran into Lodge Lane. He could work his way round through the side streets …

  When he was near the end of the street he heard the smashing of glass. He had been closer to Lodge Lane than he thought. Turning on to it, he saw a crowd of perhaps twenty people around the smashed windows of an electrical goods shop. Men and women were emerging from the shop on to the pavement carrying things, moving off with them, away from the light.

  He had an immediate, confused sense of something travestied about these people. Then he saw that several of them had their faces partly concealed by scarves or pieces of cloth. One black youth was naked to the waist; he had taken off his tee-shirt and tied it across the lower part of his face. A middle-aged woman in a hat with a feather in it came out from the interior carrying a video recorder like a tray. She walked briskly away with it and disappeared down one of the streets on the other side. A tall black man came out hugging a television set, his eyes peering affrightedly over the top.

  With a shock of surprise he saw a man in an animal mask come out – it was Mickey Mouse; the light fell for a second or two on the blob nose, the projecting flaps of the ears. A moment later, cradling a variety of small objects in boxes, he saw a grotesque, blubbery-looking Winston Churchill. They must have broken into a shop to get them, he thought, one of the kind that sells novelties and tricks. I should go, I should get back off this street … A pop-eyed Margaret Thatcher came out, a hectic flush on her cheeks, carrying a vacuum cleaner in each hand, the flexes trailing behind her. She was followed soon after by David Owen, cadaverous, with something long in a box.

  Almost more striking than the masks was the decorous behaviour of the looters. There was almost complete silence among them; no voice was raised; no notice was taken of any oddities of appearance. They hung around the shattered window, dipped in and out, made off with their acquisitions like good citizens. He heard the sound of smashing windows further down: all along the street the shops were being looted. A man stalked past with clothes draped over him, misshapen and strange. Light from the street-lamp fell on his face: it was Neil Kinnock. Of course, he thought, the police will be fully occupied in closing off the main road, containing the riot. They’ve got their backs facing this way.

  He was about to pursue his intention and cross over when, without any warning at all the intent cluster of looters was broken, the crowd round the shop surged across the street towards him. They were joined at the edge of the pavement by another flow from his own side. A moment later he was swept back in a press of bodies. At first he tried to struggle forward against the rush. Then he saw a Black Maria come nosing slowly into the street that ran off opposite and he let himself go with the movement of the crowd. This quickened, he was obliged to break into a stumbling run. The faces around him had a sort of staring exhilaration about them. One man was laughing widely. Benson saw Woody Allen and Stalin and David Steel and Popeye. He was forced back the way he had come for a short distance, then the crowd divided and he found himself jostled forward into a narrow entry between house-backs. His heart was beating heavily. He was powerless to struggle against the tide of bodies behind and around him. He concentrated on keeping his footing. Ahead of him he saw a leaping glow of flame. There was a sound of confused shouting, then a heavy, rattling sound like a roll of drums. A moment later he was out on to broad pavement, in firelight that seemed clearer than daylight. The crowd flowed away, thinned out in this greater space.

  In the minute or so that he stood there the scene printed itself in his mind in all essential details – and for ever. He was facing towards Smithdown Road. A barricade of blazing cars blocked the street and there were fires beyond this and within it – he saw that the new branch of Barclay’s Bank was burning fiercely, the flames leaping high into the night. Houses on either side of this were alight too, and he saw the movement of flames inside the derelict International Club directly across from him. Soot and sparks showered through the air. Against this lurid light he saw figures of men, mainly young, black and white side by side, bending, running forward, leaping, retreating, in what he took in the first confused moments for a sort of dance. Then he saw the arcs of the missiles rising over the flames, saw them fall among the ranks of the police beyond the barricade. The rattling he had heard before began again – the police were striking with their batons in unison on their riot shields. As they drummed they advanced at a slow run, spread in a line across the street, straight at the volleying stones, the blazing cars. Benson saw a policeman fall and be carried back helmetless, a dark glint of blood on his face. At the barricade they divided, seeking a way through. Then he saw police on his side of the fire, saw batons rising and falling, saw the stoners giving back.

  It could only be a matter of time, he knew, before fresh contingents of police, forming behind the lines, came up the way he had come, took the enemy in the flank – and anyone here on the pavement would be the enemy. Escape along the street was impossible – the crowd was too thick. The only chance was to get back down the alley he had come by, even if it meant fighting his way. He had been forced several yards along the pavement in the first surge of the crowd. He was beginning to edge his way back when he caught sight of Alma. She was no more than a dozen yards away but it was a dozen yards in the wrong direction, nearer the police advance. The crowd there could not disperse easily. They were packed too close together. Benson began to push his way through. He was sweating profusely from exertion and from the heat of the fires. He could hear his own panting breaths. Again the fear came to him that he might faint.

  She did not see him until he was only a yard or so away, then she began at once to struggle in his direction. She shouted something.

  “What?” They were standing up close together and he had his hand under her arm.

  “My car,” she said. “I had to leave my car.”

  “Never mind the bloody car.”

  The crowd was yielding now, flowing back. The recoil of panic at the front was transmitted to them here in a slow eddying motion. Keeping a tight grip on Alma he began to shoulder his way back towards the mouth of the alley. He was aided now by the movement of the crowd and after some moments of effort they reached it, got down into it in the midst of a struggling group of others with the same idea. The coolness and darkness here, as they moved further down, was miraculous almost, better than the thickest shade on the hottest day. Benson was still audibly panting. “Christ,” he said, “I’m too old for this.”

  After that neither of them said anything much. They encountered no police and saw very few people once they had left the alley behind and started to make their way westward towards the centre. Ten minutes’ walking took them from all sound and sight of riot. The taxi they stopped wouldn’t let them in until the driver had made sure which way they wanted to go.

  “Nobody’s going across the city tonight,” he said through the heavy grid that separated him from his passengers – most Liverpool taxis were fitted with this shield now, assaults on drivers having become so frequent. “Now is the time they will do you,” he said, “now the fuzz is busy. They put me in hospital once. This is the second bonfire party in six months. It gets the city a bad name.”

  5

  Back at his apartment Benson went at once for the whisky and poured out two large ones. “What happened?” he said. “Did you get caught on the way?”

  She was standing in the middle of the living-room, white-faced but otherwise not showing much disarray. “I was late,” she said. “I was visiting some people in Toxteth. I had to leave my car. They wouldn’t move out of the way, I couldn’t get through. They were taking cars to block the streets.” She made an impatient gesture. “Not mine,” she said. “But I couldn’t get through. They were closing off the streets on the north side of Parliament Street to stop the police going in after them. I spent too much time trying to get the car out. Then I got caught in the crowd. It all happened very quickly. I couldn’t get away.”

  Benson was aware that his hands were trembling. He swallowed some more whisky. “It must have been terrible for you,” he said.

  “Terrible for me?” She was looking at him with sudden hostility. “Oh, I see, sympathy. And you, what metaphor were you in hot pursuit of? Liverpool as a war zone? A violent acceleration in the heart’s decay? It must have been disconcerting for you to be jostled by real bodies.”

  Benson took a deep breath. He was very tired. His limbs felt weak and powerless after the violent efforts he had been making. In spite of this he felt a rising fury at the perverse quarrelsomeness of the woman. “Why, I wonder,” he said, “do you have to be so bloody awful all the time? Couldn’t you take a couple of hours off?”

  She turned her head sharply aside at this, in anger he thought at first, but then he realised from her stillness and the way she kept her face averted from him that she was weeping.

  He advanced awkwardly and put his arms around her. She did not move towards him or away. At once he felt the tears start to his own eyes – tears at her tears, and her struggle not to show them, at the sense of a burden lifted, of being released from something; present anger, previous fear – he could not have said. He felt her body rigid against him and a slow shudder of weeping ran through them both, strangely climactic, like a contraction of love. Then she stepped back away from him. There were tears in her eyes but she made no attempt to wipe them away. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I suppose you were just out looking for a sign.”

  “If so, I found one,” he said. “You look exhausted. I don’t think you should go out on the streets again tonight, do you? You heard what the taxi-driver said. You are welcome to stay here if you want. You can have the bed and I’ll sleep in here.” He gestured vaguely towards the sofa.

  “I wanted to tell you something,” she said. “A story really – in return for the one you told me. Can I have some more whisky?”

  “Of course.”

  Oddly, as though this were some sort of formal interview, they both took up positions: he in the armchair, she sitting forward on the sofa.

  “Right,” Benson said. “Let’s have it.”

  “I know you don’t like me much,” she began, and this was so wide of the mark and moreover so grotesquely beside the point as almost to cast doubt on anything to follow.

  “Liking or disliking has nothing—”

  “As a matter of fact I didn’t take to you much either. You struck me as shallow and self-centred. Well you are, actually. Self-centred anyway.”

  “I don’t think I’m self-centred exactly,” Benson said. “I don’t know where my centre is, I always feel on the periphery. On the other hand, of course, I don’t deny that I am intensely—”

  “Just a minute,” she said. “You are providing a pretty convincing proof of what you are setting out to deny. I’m supposed to be telling you something, remember.”

  “Sorry, so you are. Go ahead.”

  “I was born in this city, you see. Yes, yes, I know, on the night of the break-out. In Great Mersey Street, Liverpool 5. In a bed on a landing – there was only one bedroom and I already had a brother and a sister. My mother had seven children but one of them died before I was born and another when I was three. I’ve still got a sister living here, in Toxteth, my youngest sister. I had been at her place tonight when I got caught up in that mess. Her husband’s been out of work for three years now. He’s not a bad guy but he’s given up. She’s got three kids and no money. I help them a bit but life is much the same for her as it was for our mother fifty years ago in Great Mersey Street.”

  Alma paused, drank some whisky. “Not that much different,” she said, “not when you think we’ve had forty years of the Welfare State since then. Of course Bill smokes, that’s the husband, and they rent a television set, and it’s true that the kids could have a bit more protein if they didn’t, but that’s not a choice people should have to make, people who’ve got nothing in a society where others have so much. I was the lucky one, I was good at writing essays, I got an education. But that wasn’t what I wanted to talk about. Tonight made me think of an incident in my childhood concerning my father. He worked in an abattoir as a slaughterman – he used to bring home meat for us under his jumper. He was quite illiterate but he was good at making things. He used to make plaster of paris statues of the Virgin Mary and Christ on the Cross and sell them – he made his own rubber moulds. We were Catholics, you know. Then his health began to go. He’d had a hard life and a terribly poor childhood and when his youth went his strength seemed to go with it. Of course they sacked him at the slaughterhouse. A week’s notice. I don’t know what standards they applied to the cattle but they had no time for a slaughterman with a bad chest. He had worked there for twenty years.