It wasn’t a great day to be wearing a top hat.
And ‘Not a Good Day to Wear a Top Hat’ did indeed appear as my catchline. Set the style — observant, amused, keen not to overestimate the significance of events.
Mark coaxed Emily along to Shaftesbury Avenue and scolded his mind into focus. He was fine by the time a dark knot of angsty figures ran and yelled down the pre-emptively cleared road.
If I was a serious anarchist bent on mayhem I wouldn’t dress in black and — oh, grow up — wave a fucking flag.
Police, also dressed in black, moved in sharply around the outskirts of the group and then closed. Emily seemed fascinated by the flag-waver, a skinny twenty-something with a Jesus face.
He wanted somebody to beat him up. Is that what she wanted in a man, that he should suffer? Would she have wanted to beat me?
I would have let her.
I would have begged.
The Met tested their day’s waters, locking into solid ranks. Mark found the whole situation both weirdly childish and horribly serious. It worried him.
I knew the day was going to turn at some point and eat us up. It was going to be bad.
He clasped Emily’s arm like an indulgent father squiring his activist daughter.
The solitary time I did that, played that card.
And the police cordon parted, let them through, then dissolved altogether with a carefully presented unconcern. The anarchists bolted off wildly as they might have been expected to. Mark thought their triumph unwise. He kissed the top of Emily’s head to cheer himself. Her hair smelled of hotel shampoo.
And of nothing.
‘Can we now?’ Emily pliant — even daughterly — letting him take charge in a whole new way. ‘Can we march?’
My hand around hers, around what was given completely.
She looked at me.
Someone shouting through a loudhailer, and mild chaos waiting for us to join it, but we were a couple. We were really there.
‘Yes, babe.’ And Mark anxious that he shouldn’t cry and also uneasy and too ragged to identify exactly why. ‘We’ll do it now and we’ll get all afternoon together.’ He slipped his hold to her waist and squeezed. ‘But I’ll have to make notes and be. . and then I’ll need to work, flat-out work. I should have sketched some bits down yesterday. It’s okay, though. And I’m glad I’m here, and I’m glad I’m with you and it’s a good idea.’
Stepping out from the pavement and into the road — that moment — I’d forgotten what it was like.
Hello.
This is me in the world that’s different.
This is everyone else.
And this is us.
We are us.
Real.
It wasn’t hard to lean against her and be carried, to be shaken loose into enjoying it. She’d point out good bits: a kid in a pushchair with his own hand-made sign, a bunch of blokes in amazing hats playing concertinas. He did the same: the Writers’ Guild placards — typographical humour — an old lady near the entrance to Hyde Park who was holding this kind of essay up under her chin; it was unfurled to the ground, as long as herself. It said what her name was and that she was from Tower Hamlets and not happy with the government — who was happy with government? — and Mark didn’t read the rest.
Mark had liked the energy: the cardboard tank that pumped out reggae, and he and Emily heading on while all the rage burned by them and insisted on producing a variety of elation and music and
Muzzy fellow-feeling. A consoling fantasy of change.
They all wanted an afternoon stroll to have built Utopia by Monday.
Emily pulled him into the park and there it was as he’d expected — the forward momentum pooled and sank, there was litter and dirty clothes and Quakers eating shredded vegetables out of Tupperware containers. He was no longer uplifted and it was chilly and he’d have been wiser to keep their room on for another day and look out of the fucking window — cosy and with Emily — take a nap and then knock out the story as required.
And he was exhausted suddenly, overwhelmed and achy, and then he went wrong.
I made her unhappy.
She wanted me to sit on the grubby turf with her, take in the scene, listen while the converted doggedly tried to convert the converted.
But I’d done that before.
When I was her age.
I’d already disappointed myself back then and didn’t intend to again.
So I disappointed her.
Worse.
He’d been — to a minor degree — short with her. She was laughing and lying on the grass, wriggling like a puppy, playing a game that he didn’t have time for.
‘Emily! I have to work. For God’s sake!’
I’d never shouted at her.
Older man in a bourgeois overcoat, screaming at a sweet, sweet girl, killing her smile.
I couldn’t seem to bring it back right after that and I tried.
I did.
‘No, Emily, sweetheart. I’m all messed up. I messed up. I promise. Forget what I said. I’ll stay here. If you want me to. I’ll do whatever you want.’ His clumsy, pathetic gestures wagging and losing themselves in the air ahead of him. ‘Baby. I’m sorry. I really am. .’ He wanted to cry for her, but couldn’t and knew his face was somehow outwith his control and frightening to her. She fluttered to her feet, harm apparent everywhere, and started out for the road without him. He didn’t try to touch her in case he did more harm.
And the brothers and sisters might have pitched in and stopped me if I laid hands on her — nothing more judgemental than a revolutionary. They despised me.
But I beat them to it.
‘Let me, please let me be with you.’ Remembering he’d said this as he slipped the key card into the lock of their first hotel room. It was a revelation — how abject he had sounded. ‘Emily.’ Not as abject as today. ‘Christ, please.’ The fracture in his voice presumably what slowed her and let him reach and hold and find and kiss her better, surely better.
The comrades approved. Solidarity giving rise to love.
Love.
Which was what you would battle to save, and Mark didn’t love the unfriendly world, or impractical ideas, or people, he loved Emily. He had marched for Emily and she had made it beautiful for him and he should let go and appreciate that.
And I did. I partly marched again and partly strolled with her back west until the demonstrators coalesced into a stolid mass: rumours and shifting and then cheers.
I stood with everybody else, I stood with Emily — got to keep Emily — got to keep Emily safe — and I watched a bunch of arseholes climbing the front of Fortnum’s and I cheered.
They were up there with coloured chalk for scrawling and a painted bed sheet for unfurling — more cheers — and I wouldn’t have put it past them to stage some agitprop on the shop’s canopy instead of simply swanning about while the staff peered out through the windows, amused and curious.
There were rumours — correct — of others storming the entrance.
Storming a tea room.