Skylark

by Alice O'Keeffe

Genres: City Life

Synopsis

Their ideals brought them together, but how closely should you follow your heart?
It's the mid-90s, and rebellion is in the air.
Skylark is an activist, a raver, a tree-dweller, a world-changer.

Handsome, dependable Dan appears on the scene, offering her the security she has never had. When they fall in love, she shows him a new way to live; he will never be the same.

But Dan has a secret, which Skylark must never, ever know.

A secret so powerful that its fault-lines run from their ordinary council flat right up to the highest echelons of the state.
Their story is the story of Britain's undercover police.
As Skylark comes to doubt not only Dan's commitment to their shared ideals, but his very identity, she finds herself asking: can you ever really know the person you love?

(P) 2021 Hodder & Stoughton Limited

Release date: November 18, 2021

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 288

Sample

1.

‘SO I think we’re agreed,’ said Rev, ‘that it’s high time we put on the biggest illegal street party this city has ever seen.’

Heads nodded around the circle. Skylark had counted ten. It was never many more, in those days, before the thing took off. Rev presided, perched on the stack of blue pallets they called the Throne, skinny, pale and hairless in a black boiler suit. Then the other usual suspects: Bendy Aoife, who was practising her splits on the floor; Mouse, his ankle-length dreads wound into a giant tam; Big Moll, in her flouncy floral dress and bovver boots. They were the core crew, the veterans, who had lived so entangled with one another in the tree-houses, benders and squats of the anti-roads campaigns that they could recognise each other by armpit odour alone. (Yes, they’d tried it.)

But as this Tuesday night was an open meeting, advertised in Loot and on a hand-scrawled notice pinned up in the anarchist bookshop, a few randoms had turned up, too: two old Socialist Worker-types with beards and flat caps, who had introduced themselves as Ken and Len; a keen-eyed student with braces and rainbow-striped trousers; a moody-looking guy in combats.

Rev wasn’t keen on the open-meeting idea, would have preferred to keep the world-changing group small and closed, but Skylark had insisted: This is not just about people like us!The better world has to be for everyone – it’s that, or it’s nothing.

‘We’re ready to move up a gear,’ Rev went on. ‘Having tested our tactics and techniques twice now, first in Camden Lock, then on City Road, we know how to take a street and hold it. We know, more importantly, that our parties perform their function, that they give people a glimpse of a looking-glass world, a free world …’

Ken – or was it Len? – raised his hand, exposing the worn leather patch on the elbow of his donkey jacket. ‘Excuse me, and apologies if I’ve misunderstood’ – he frowned beardily – ‘but I thought this was a meeting about a political protest. About bringing down capitalism.’

‘Oh, absolutely,’ said Rev, breezily. ‘That’s what we are all about.’

‘So,’ Ken/Len looked perturbed, concerned, ‘why are we talking about parties?’

‘A party is a portal,’ Mouse responded solemnly. ‘A flaming arrow of hope and life, fired into the heart of our dying city.’

Mouse was the world-changing group’s spiritual guru, and when he spoke, which was rarely, he struck each word powerfully, like a gong.

Silence briefly fell. Ken and Len bowed their heads together and scratched their beards.

‘To be clear: we are not about old, dull, dusty politics,’ said Rev. ‘We don’t do placards, slogan-shouting, manifestos, minutes, clauses or sub-clauses. I mean good luck with all that, if it’s your bag. We just happen to think that changing the world should be a laugh.’

‘A serious laugh,’ added Big Moll. In the camps Moll had run kitchens, magicking heaps of mouldering swede into warming nutritious soups and curries, through mud, hail and snow. Once, during a long cold winter on Dolcup Hill, all the food in the kitchen had frozen solid, and she’d spent days hacking up vegetables with a machete. There was no messing around with Moll. ‘No point lecturing people about how to change things,’ she said, blunt as a spoon. ‘We just get on and do it, and they can see for themselves.’

The rainbow-trousered student put up his hand. He looked very young, and his foot was jiggling nervously. ‘I’m Jez. I, er, went to the party on City Road,’ he said. ‘It blew me away. It was magic. Really. I’m studying sociology, and I’d really like to know a little bit more about the theoretical underpinning …’

‘Theo-what?’ said Moll. ‘It’s a party, that’s all.’

‘Oh, okay. Thank you.’ Jez seemed a little crestfallen, although his eyes still shone with eager idealism. But Ken and Len were not convinced. Len – or possibly Ken – now raised his hand. ‘So the aim of your street parties is to stop the traffic?’

‘The aim of our street parties,’ said Bendy Aoife, in her soft Irish lilt, ‘is to change the world.’ As she spoke, her body arced over her left leg in an elegant, muscular curve. Aoife was training for the circus, which was as close to a career plan as any of them had got. Gazing for a moment at her goddess-like form, at the shining cascade of her red hair, both Ken and Len seemed to forget any worries they might have had, about anything, really. ‘Cars are just a symbol,’ Aoife singsonged, arcing now to the right, ‘of everything that is wrong. They pollute, they divide people. They dominate our public space.’

Rev nodded languidly. ‘We want to take things that have been sucked into the capitalist system, repurpose them, and give them back to people. We do it with streets, I do it with junk.’ He waved his long thin hands at the room around them, which was his studio, under the arches in King’s Cross. His sculptures, his machine beasts, peeped out from the walls and the nooks and crannies: small robots made from old oil cans; a spiny pterodactyl moulded from the insides of a grand piano. This was years before he got famous, but already Rev was making art from the things people threw away.

‘It’s a plain fact,’ he went on, ‘that every road in this country has been commandeered by the car and oil industries. And people don’t even realise! They don’t question the fact that they can’t walk, or meet, or let their children play in a public place. They think this is normal … Until, that is, we put on a party, and show them what a street could be.’

Ken and Len hummed and nodded and seemed, at least temporarily, satisfied.

‘So let’s see.’ Rev jumped up with the air of a man who momentarily wished he were mainstream enough to own a flip-chart. ‘Our first action, Camden Lock – Moll, how many punters did we get there?’

‘About five hundred, give or take.’

‘And in City Road?’

‘The cops said a thousand. I’d say three,’ said Moll.

‘So,’ Rev went on, pacing to and fro, ‘with a growth trajectory like that, if we play our cards right, next time we could be looking at a crowd of – what? – ten thousand?’

Aoife inhaled a whistle. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘we’re going to need a big road.’

‘The biggest!’ cried Rev. ‘Which is where I hand over to my warrior queen, Skylark McCoy.’

Skylark stood up, smoothing her ragged ballgown over her intensely patterned leggings. Her energy was as springy and sprightly as the matted blonde hair that tumbled around her head. In her hand she held a battered black notebook, instantly recognisable to the veterans present. This same notebook, now held together with gaffer tape, had accompanied them all through years of anti-road actions, from the encampments of Oldbury to the tree-dwellings of Dolcup Hill and then to Harfield Road, the squatted east London street where they had resisted the construction of the M11.

She looked young, had something girlish and innocent about her, but aged nearly twenty-one she had done her time, and earned her stripes. Her face was open, transparent almost, and her world-changing passion shone through it, pure and clear.

She flicked to a page at the back of the notebook. ‘The plan for this summer is,’ she said, ‘to take over the motorway. The M41, in Shepherd’s Bush.’ She produced from the notebook an enlarged photocopied page of the London A–Z, a thick section of road highlighted in yellow. ‘We’ve chosen this location for a number of reasons: less than five minutes’ walk from tube and train stations, so easy to get large numbers of people into and out of. As it’s a bridge, here’ – she pointed at the map – ‘there are only two points of entry and exit, which makes it easier for us to take and hold the space. Also, it’s highly disruptive. It leads to the Westway on one side and the Holland Park roundabout on the other. It was originally supposed to be part of a ring of major roads around the whole city, until – thanks to certain vigorous campaigns – the government quietly shelved its plans.’

‘The Mecca of the car,’ remarked Mouse, with a faraway smile.

‘Quite,’ said Skylark. ‘So … what do we think? What should this party look like? What do we need? Any ideas about strategy? Let’s throw everything into the pot now, get this thing cooking.’

‘A big fat sound-system,’ said Rev.

‘Obviously.’ Skylark nodded. ‘I’ve been talking to Carl about that.’

‘A sandpit,’ suggested Moll. ‘For the kids. A giant sandpit. Right across the central reservation.’

‘Yup,’ said Skylark, jotting now in the black book. ‘Let’s look into sand.’

‘For decor I was thinking of giant fluorescent alien heads,’ said Rev. ‘And perhaps some giant fabric sunflowers.’

‘We’ll need banners,’ said Ken/Len.

‘Making the anti-capitalist nature of this event clear,’ added Len/Ken.

‘Of course,’ said Skylark. ‘That can be your area, Ken and Len. Anti-capitalist banner-making.’

Aoife, who had been in a headstand throughout this discussion, brought her feet down elegantly. ‘Maybe a dance troupe could depict the downfall of capitalism through expressive movement.’

Skylark scribbled in the book. ‘A dance troupe. Noted.’

There was a brief and thoughtful silence before Rev spoke again. ‘Our biggest problem,’ he said, ‘is transport. Obviously the last couple of times we’ve relied on Dave and Ali and their lorry. But they’ve gone off to Ireland now, return date unclear. We could hire vehicles, obviously, but it’s all money …’

He was interrupted by a soft cough. The moody guy in combats, who had until now been smoking a rollie and watching the proceedings in silence, was holding up his hand. He cleared his throat again. It struck Skylark that maybe he wasn’t so much moody as shy. ‘I might be able to help,’ he said.

He had a northern accent, buttery-soft rounded vowels. Something else struck her about him, too, a kind of familiarity. His eyes were dark, and so was his hair. He had on a neat checked shirt, short-sleeved, and she noticed in particular his arms, which were weightlifter strong. You didn’t often get arms like that on the world-changing scene: most males tended towards a scrawny vegetarian skinniness. She would have liked to spend a while looking at those arms, just taking them in.

Rev raised a hairless brow. ‘Oh?’

‘I’m Dan, by the way,’ he said, took another tug and breathed out smoke long and slow. His eyes met hers and she looked quickly – too quickly, dammit – back into the depths of her notebook.

‘And what brings you here, Dan?’

He shrugged. ‘I saw your ad in Loot, and it – intrigued me. Thought it was about time I changed the world.’

Skylark smiled at this; the others didn’t. Rev, despite the movement’s firm commitment to laughs, did not actually like to joke about this stuff. She could sense he was about to be arsey, as he sometimes was with newcomers, and she wanted to pre-empt it, not only because of the arms but also because Dan seemed not quite their usual type, not a hippie, more ordinary. They needed to make people like him feel welcome.

‘Nice to have you here, Dan,’ she said quickly. ‘You were saying you could help?’

‘Yeah. I’m pretty handy,’ he said. ‘I can lift stuff, build stuff. And if you’re in need of transport, I have a van.’

With these words the atmosphere in the room relaxed. There was no better route to Rev’s affections than ownership of a functional van. He hated having to rely on Dave and Ali, Traveller mates of Moll’s, who had a habit of lunching out at crucial moments, leaving people and tat stranded all over London. A man with a van was most certainly not to be sneezed at.

‘Well, Dan,’ said Rev, his pale lashless eyes now sending out noticeable gleams of welcome and enthusiasm, ‘the pleasure is ours.’

Later, she wouldn’t remember exactly what they’d discussed that day. As well as the logistics for the M41 action, the one destined to put their world-changing group on the map, they might have touched on the grander philosophical picture. Topics such as: whether capitalism was compatible with fundamental human dignity (hell, no), whether mainstream feminism was compatible with true feminism (debatable), whether their movement was replicating the macho patriarchal norms of capitalist society (yes, according to the three women present, and acknowledged with varying degrees of reluctance by the male members of the group), whether there was some kind of inner vibration within rave music that led its listeners inevitably towards freedom, love and harmony (yes), and whether they should make a final decision about the location of the action planned for that summer by means of consulting their shamanic spirit animals (proposed by Mouse, and left undecided).

The thing she would remember was that at the end Dan waited for her by the door. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Thanks for helping me out back there. I’m not much of a talker.’

Her face was all sunshine and birdsong. ‘That’s okay,’ she said. ‘It can be scary, I know, when you’re new.’

‘It’s not just me, then.’ He looked down, with an odd slanty smile, at her fractal-print leggings, the crushed velvet ballgown, the unlaced boots. His smile revealed gappy front teeth, which she noted and approved. She shifted her weight, suddenly self-conscious, which she wasn’t usually. ‘I’m sure I’ll get used to it,’ he added.

‘So you’re coming back?’

‘If you’ll have me.’

‘Of course.’ This came out a bit too quickly, and maddeningly, she felt red rising up her cheeks. She stepped hurriedly past him, out into the street. Turned to wave as she walked away. ‘So, see you next week. Right?’

He smiled, raised his hand, and she wondered whether he was shy, or slyly arrogant, or both. ‘Right.’

2.

IT was ironic, she thought, as the lift clanked up past floors one and two, to feel more can-do about changing the world than about changing your own life. By floor three, the buzzy positive energy of the meeting had slipped away, and something grey and stifling settled over her, like someone else’s too-big coat.

She pulled back her shoulders and stood up straighter, trying to shake it off. Fourth floor. Today might be a good day. Maybe Mikey would have been out job-hunting. Maybe he would have made some progress with the decorating. Maybe, when she opened the door, he would greet her with a cheery smile.

It wasn’t impossible.

And – five. The lift shuddered to a halt and the doors wheezed open. Everything in Heron Court was a bit knackered, a bit battered, from the graffitied stairwells to the black bins piled high with bags, from the playground with its rusting slide to the tiny caged-in football pitch, which rattled loudly with every stray ball. She had only moved in six months ago and was still getting used to this settled London life. She knew how lucky she was to get a council flat, and in Hackney, too. But she couldn’t help missing the squats and camps, the company, the space and fresh air. Even with the windows wide open, there was never enough air in the flat for her.

She lugged her blue bags of shopping down the walkway, fished her key out of her pocket and shouldered open the front door. The tins of paint were still sitting unopened in the hall. The peeling flock wallpaper was untouched, the grubby lino intact.

So much for progress with the decorating.

Mikey was in the living room, stretched out on the beanbag he had found in a skip and presented to her as a moving-in gift. His feet rested, along with three empty Stella cans and a brimful ashtray, on the cardboard box they had been using as a coffee-table. Around him a light scattering of papers, bits of baccy, roaches. The whole room was stuffy with weed; just breathing got her light-headed. She dumped the shopping bags in the kitchen, then crossed into the living room to throw open the door to the balcony. A blast of cold February air cut through the fug.

‘All right, darlin’?’ he asked blurrily.

She bent down to kiss him, tasting stale smoke. ‘Yeah. Not bad.’ She ruffled his long matted hair; he squeezed her hand. His eyes had the blank, black-hole look. She could see he hadn’t done anything but drink, smoke and watch telly since she’d left for work that morning. Frustration ballooned in her chest, but she took a deep breath and compressed it, made it small and unobtrusive. One thing she had learned was that it really wasn’t worth arguing when he was blitzed. She left him to it, went to sort out the dinner.

Hahaha hahaha.

Through the open kitchen door came the tinned laughter from the TV show Mikey was watching. It was that American sitcom, the one about the blonde woman with the square jaw.

Oh, Cybill, what shall I do? I’m so depressed, drawled a voice from the telly.

Do what I do, another replied. Deal with it head on, years later.

Hahaha. Hahaha.

‘Want some food?’ she called, getting tinned tomatoes, garlic and sardines out of the bags. She had heard that oily fish was good for a low mood.

‘If you’re making it.’ Mikey used to love cooking: in the squats and camps he’d been Moll’s sidekick in the kitchen, sneaking Scotch bonnets into the curry when she turned her back and blowing everyone’s socks off. But cooking was something else that had fallen by the wayside, since he’d gone downhill.

She had asked herself, many times: should she have seen it all coming, the weed, the booze, the blank-eye thing? Done something more to help? Been firmer, been kinder? ‘The thing about Mikey,’ Rev had said once, back in the days when they could still talk about him without arguing, ‘is that he doesn’t have back-up.’

And that was it. Plenty of people came to the world-changing life because they wanted an adventure, or didn’t like the other options. Mikey had never had other options. He had no family in the country, since his mum had retired from social work, sold her place in Birmingham and moved onto a boat somewhere in deepest France. (‘I think she wanted to get away from people,’ Mikey said. ‘Including me.’) When they had been evicted from their last squat, in Harfield Road, she and Rev and most of the squatters had been pushed straight to the top of the housing waiting lists, partly because the anti-M11 campaign had been such a shitshow that the powers-that-be were desperate to shut them up.

Mikey had been offered a flat in Brent, but for reasons that were equal parts principled and self-defeating, he had turned it down. His life, he claimed, would be lived on the road. He had been planning to head over to Ireland with a convoy, but the old Dodge 50 he’d had for years had finally packed up, and he had no cash for another vehicle. ‘Just let me stay for a bit, Sky,’ he’d said. ‘Until I get myself sorted. I’ll help you do the place up. Take care of you. You don’t want to be rattling around by yourself.’

Take care of me, she thought sadly. Right.

‘So, anyway, it was a good meeting tonight,’ she called, as she sliced garlic, heated oil. ‘Everyone’s up for this motorway action in the summer. Rev thinks it’s gonna be big.’

‘Oh, yeah?’

‘Do you think you might help out? Everyone always asks after you.’

That was a lie. People had stopped asking after Mikey, not because they didn’t care but because there was never anything new to say. Still drinking, still stoned, still a burn-out. She poured the tomatoes into the pan, closed her eyes and summoned a mental image of how he used to be.

Mikey had built the best tree-house in Dolcup Woods, three rooms, with a skylight over his bed to watch the stars. They had slept there through the bitter winter, clinging to each other for warmth. He had an unmatched knowledge of the natural world, made her strange medicinal concoctions with twigs and herbs when she got a cold, taught her to identify a tree through the taste of its leaves. He showed her how to wash using one cupful of water, and to breathe air directly from his mouth while he moved inside her at night.

Mikey, that old, beautiful Mikey, had given her – what did he give her? – a taste for freedom.

She put the dinner on two plates and carried them into the sitting room. Put them down on the cardboard box, sweeping away the cans and roaches to make space. As she sat down, something shifted in her mind: she felt she was watching the scene from above, seeing it from a different, outside perspective.

If you’ll have me.

Of course.

She saw the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, the crappy beanbag, leaking its polystyrene beans all over the lino. The cans, the rubbish, the smoke. The boyfriend so stoned he could hardly talk. She had never wanted a two-up-two-down kind of life, but there was nothing poetic about this. It felt – the word came to her with shocking clarity – squalid.

She put down her fork, took a deep breath. ‘You didn’t do any painting, then,’ she said.

‘Don’t start. Not now,’ said Mikey, with his mouth full. He turned the volume up on Cheers.

‘Okay not now, but when?’

There was a crash that sent her jumping out of her skin. He had thrown the remote at the wall. A few centimetres to the left and it would have caught her head.

‘I told you, Sky, just leave it out.’

So she did: she left it out. She stood up and walked down the hall to the bedroom because there was no point. Sat heavily on the bed. There was an envelope lying on the pillow, and she opened it, for a bit of distraction. It was a BT bill. She scanned it absently, then caught her breath.

‘Mikey?’ she called.

‘Yeah?’

‘How come we’ve got a three-hundred-pound phone bill?’

After too long, he said, ‘No idea.’

She turned the sheet over and looked at the columns of itemised calls. There was an 0800 number that came up repeatedly, almost every day. The phone hung on the bedroom wall. She picked up the receiver and dialled it. Two rings, and then a breathy woman’s voice answered.

You have dialled HotLine. The hottest chat, with the hottest girls.

Slowly, she put the receiver back into its cradle. The rage she felt was pure, a shot of adrenalin. She walked into the living room and held the phone bill in front of Mikey’s face. He batted her away.

‘You’ve been calling a sex line.’

Was she imagining it, or was there a hint of a smirk on his mouth? Her insides were cold steel.

‘You’ve been calling a sex line, on my phone, in my flat, while I’ve been out working to pay your rent.’

He shrugged. ‘Relax, woman. Just say the word, and we can call it together some time.’

His blank, heavy eyes met hers. Slowly, she screwed up the paper in her hand. ‘You can’t do this. I’m not having it, Mikey. Not with you like this. I need you to leave,’ she said.

‘You need, you need,’ he said, mocking, and then time folded in on itself as he jumped up off the sofa and grabbed her by the shoulders. He pushed her back across the room and out of the door onto the balcony. He had her up against the rail, and his hands had slipped upwards, from her shoulders to her neck. Mikey was skinny, but he was strong, all muscle. He leaned into her, squeezing out the air.

After he let her go, she stood there for a moment rubbing her neck, catching her breath.

‘What is happening?’ she breathed. ‘You could have …’

He kissed his teeth. ‘Fuck’s sake,’ he said. ‘You didn’t think I was actually going to do it, did you?’