The occupiers got increasingly panicky about eviction. There were several predawn false alarms. Sleep deprived, tempers started to fray. Groups had formed around different houses; some wanted to strengthen their fortifications in case of an eviction attempt; others thought this would create a bad impression. As a result, when Mallory’s men did attack, some places were much better barricaded than others. There were more than a hundred bailiffs.
Only three houses held out; by the time we heard about it, the families occupying the others were already back in their hostels.
The occupiers were terrified. One by one, over the next two days, the remaining homeless families dropped out. After that very few of the activists were prepared to carry on. The moderate faction, led by the Ellises, felt that without the families, it had become meaningless. This was when the Thirteen collective decided to move to Sylvan Close. We announced that we intended to hold the last three houses, whatever happened. We would make Sylvan Close the site of an open confrontation with the State.
If I say that for me the moon landing didn’t happen, I don’t mean I believe the conspiracy theories — the studio in Burbank, the misaligned shadows, or the unaccountably waving flags — just that the spasm of technocratic pride that apparently shuddered through the television-watching world didn’t penetrate the walls of the barricaded terraced house where I spent most of that month. As Neil Armstrong fumbled his prescripted line, I was on guard duty, blearily watching the street.
Mallory’s thugs left us alone for more than a week. Early one morning I was asleep upstairs in number thirty when I heard noise outside. I poked my head out of the window and saw men in army-surplus tin hats smashing windows and pushing ladders up against walls. In the middle of the street was Mallory, a stocky man in a sheepskin coat directing operations like a general at a siege. At the end of the road stood half a dozen policemen, observing.
The house was barricaded downstairs with heavy wooden beams. We’d installed a trapdoor, which allowed us to block off the first floor. As we watched, two bailiffs started to swing a battering ram against the front door, while two more tried to get a ladder up to the bedroom window. We emptied buckets of water and cans of paint over them, pushing the ladder away with sticks and metal scaffolding poles. Angry and keyed up, they started to scrabble around for missiles to throw at us. Milk bottles and bricks came flying up. The police did nothing.
I watched the bailiffs force their way into the house next door. Leo, Alex Hill, and some others were inside. Mallory’s coat got spattered with paint and he flew into a rage, producing a cosh from his coat pocket and laying into a young guy called Milo, who must have been dragged onto the street straight out of his sleeping bag. Wearing nothing but a pair of underpants he crouched on the ground, trying to protect his head with his arms. We shouted at the police, pointing out what was happening. They ignored Mallory and arrested the other people who were being pushed or dragged out.
When our front door gave way, we scrambled upstairs and dragged weights over the trapdoor. For a while the bailiffs tried to batter their way through, without success. Then they stopped. We couldn’t understand why until we noticed little plumes of smoke rising up through the gaps in the floorboards and realized they’d lit a fire downstairs. There were eight of us trapped up there. They were shouting at us from the street, daring us to jump out of the window. We had a couple of jerry-cans full of drinking water, so we soaked rags and tied them round our faces. Pushing open the hatch to the attic, we were lifting Sean up so he could smash an escape hole in the roof when the police finally intervened. I think it was because some reporters had arrived. The fire was put out and Mallory’s thugs were forced to leave. As they got back into their bus we sang the “Bandiera Rossa.” “Avanti, popolo! Alla riscossa. .”
We’d held two of the three houses. As soon as the bailiffs left we split into teams. People were sent for building materials, others for food and water, to organize lawyers for the people who’d been arrested.
Surrounded by the debris of battle, Anna and I smoked cigarettes and brewed tea on a Primus stove.
“What do you think?” she asked me.
“I think it’s like the Alamo.”
July was a heavy, muggy month. As we waited to be attacked, it was impossible to stay inside the stuffy little houses. Anna and I
made a kind of den in one of the unoccupied buildings, a roofless upstairs room, which we swept and furnished with a mattress and some rugs. It was open to the air but completely private, a secret place where we sunbathed and smoked dope and at night, by candlelight, acted out a series of increasingly confrontational and fetishistic sexual encounters. Anna gave orders. Hit me. Come on my face. I had the sense that my levers were being pulled, that I was the subject of one of her personal experiments: an analysis of the pathways between violence and sexual arousal in the white male.
I slapped her and she thanked me. I was disturbed to discover how angry I was with her, with women, with the world. Disturbed and turned on, just as she wanted. Sex for Anna was always an assault — on comfort, on the thing in herself she was trying to eradicate. Me, I wanted to smash myself up, to get rid of structure altogether.
One evening I was standing over her as she knelt, naked, on the floor, when we noticed Claire watching us from the doorway, open-mouthed with shock. Anna’s reaction was instant. “Get out!” she screamed. As Claire fled, she hurriedly got dressed. For the first time since I’d known her, she seemed ashamed, humiliated. Claire lost no time in calling a meeting to spread the news of Anna’s hypocrisy. Oh, yes, the woman who’d forced her to cut her hair, who’d reduced her to tears by calling her a slave to patriarchy, had been groveling on her knees to a man. Organization sex. Capitalist perversion.
For me it was a disaster. It spelled the end not just of our private meetings but of all intimacy between us. It was as if Anna slammed a door shut. I’d had a glimpse of something I shouldn’t. Now she would eradicate her deviation, without interference. I felt confused, bereft.
The morning after Claire’s denunciation I went out to the end of the street in search of fresh air and time to think. To my astonishment, I found Miles Bridgeman filming the houses. “I’ve come to join up,” he told me, indicating his camera. “I’ve brought my truth machine.”
I was surprisingly glad to see him. Just then it would have been good to see anyone from the world outside Sylvan Close. Miles’s urbanity and his silly surface Chelsea cool were exactly what I needed.
He told me he wanted to document the occupation. It was, he said pompously, a historic confrontation. He asked a lot of questions. Who’d been around? Who was in favor of the new hard line? I was happy enough to chat. Besides, he’d brought a bottle of Scotch and some blues and I’d been subsisting for days on adrenalin and watery vegetable stew. As ever, Miles’s studiedly casual clothes, like his studiedly revolutionary attitude, betrayed a hint of flash that made him stand out against his surroundings. When he asked if there was enough hot water for him to take a bath, it was my pleasure to reveal there wasn’t even a functioning toilet.
The first sour note came from Sean. “Who let the spiv in?” he asked sarcastically. I told him the spiv was with me, which calmed him down until Miles took out his camera. Sean immediately threatened to smash it. “We don’t want any pig reporters in here,” he said. “No fucking observers. Are you here to take part or just watch?”
I told Miles to ignore him. The two of us sat up late, sharing his whisky and talking about what had happened in the months since we’d last seen each other. He’d been in California, filming for the BBC. He’d picked up a lot of new jargon about Gestalts and Rolfing. Ursula had been sleeping with a German bass player, but was now with a guy who worked at the zoo. The last thing I remembered was the light streaming through the window as Miles described an orgy he’d attended at some hot springs.