Even
though I had lived in London for almost twenty years I still carried a residual
anti-London sentiment that had returned and hardened in my single year back up
North. Even though I had known plenty of financially comfortable middle class
Leftists and still counted some of them among my friends I was intrinsically
suspicious of them too. And so I accepted Nick’s invitation but became
instantly a little guarded.
We went
out back into the beer garden where they were sitting in a little arbor they
had found for themselves at the far end of the concrete paving slabs and
benches.
This is
Carl, Nick said.
Some
general nodding. There were three of them but the leader seemed to be John,
tallish, Good to meet you man, he said, stood up, shook my hand with some sincere
eye contact. He had a full beard streaked with grey and a paunch, looked to be
wearing casual clothes that were well within his price range. A filmmaker and
activist but also, it turned out, an academic of some kind. I perched on the
end of one of the benches leaves from the low hanging branches of the trees
behind us partly obscuring my vision. The conversation seemed largely to
exclude me, a lot of talk about London about people I didn’t know and bodies
they were involved in, a lot about Labour party politics and funding and after
a few minutes of sitting sipping at my water I wondered why I was there.
So, Carl,
John said. I disliked the fact that he used my name so readily even though
there was no way he could draw me in without using it. We are making short
films on different projects that are going on up and down the country, focusing
on people's reasons for getting involved, the transformational impact,
personal, community wide and the potentials for these things to make a real
difference.
I
nodded. I already had numerous speeches on just such a subject filed away in my
head. Things i had rehearsed in imaginary interviews, symposium and meetings
where I would lay out my theories and highlight my own motivations and my
reading of the situation. I nodded and felt a little surge of excitement. I
remembered my dad standing in the kitchen late at night, washing the pots half
talking to himself, delivering a sermon to the invisible, appreciative audience
out in the garden, knowing if he had just been given the chance he would have
knocked them all for six with his brilliant arguments on Newsnight or Question
Time or Weekend World.
We have
asked Jay, Nick said. He’s the kind of person we really want to focus on.
There’s a real story there but he doesn't want to do it. Too shy, you know.
I nodded. Ah, I see.
Can you
have a word with him? You live, he paused, in the same house, right?
Right.
The lads
are just down for two more days, he said.
Alright I
said. I mean I can finish my drink first though, right? There was a little snap
of anger to my voice that immediately shifted everyone’s posture slightly and I
regretted it. Don’t reveal too much, Carl.
Yes of
course, man, John said. We just...
But Nick,
characteristically wasn’t having any of it. Let’s not waste time though, he
said. Sooner you can sort that out the sooner we can look at other options. You
have got your phone, give him a ring.
What was
I going to do? Sit there silently and insist on finishing my glass of water
first in order to prove a point, demonstrate that I wouldn’t be bossed around?
I paused for what Ithought was reasonable enough time to demonstrate that I had
weighed up the situation and was extending them some magnanimity. Alright, I’ll
give him a ring. I went and stood out the front of the pub and let his phone
ring on to the answer phone. Ring me back as soon as you can was the message I
left. Then I went back into the beer garden and resumed my seat and my glass of
water. The conversation had moved on to how hot the summer had been and from
that onto climate change but i was still wrestling with the conflicting
emotions that the short exchange had triggered in me and it was hard for me to
pay attention. I found I was watching John as the conversation went round. I
was resentful no doubt and feeling humiliated. He had his house up in London,
something modest but in a good area, his enclave in the place where things were
happening, where the smart people circulated, where people had the important
conversations. Someone mentioned refugees then someone mentioned climate
refugees, someone else the number of people drowning in the
Mediterranean.
I
suppose, John said ruefully, that we will, typically, be protected from the
worst of it. I imagine it will all happen off camera, you’ll turn on the news
and there will be some reporting on it but after a while it will just become
another one of those things.
That
will require strong borders I said.
Yes, he
said. He pursed his lips and shook his head. I could see that he was thinking
about ways in which his life could remain unchanged in its essentials, a few
solidary actions, sympathetic noises in the shade at the end of another middle
class friend’s garden or gentrified pub, his children set to inherit the
property he had spent thirty years telling everyone he met that he knew how
lucky he was to have been able to purchase, and somewhere in the background of
it all, guns, fences, barbed wire, camps, concrete floors, floating bodies,
vast swathes of humanity crouched in the burning heat eating the meagre rations
doled out by charities behind some tasteful cordon sanitaire.
Of course
our relation to the Global South will have to be re-imagined one of the others
said.We’ll have to be a bit more interventionist, I suppose.
What does
that mean? I asked. There was a lingering and obvious hostility in my voice.
Go there
I guess, make it more habitable. Big project, lot of imagination needed. Nick
said.
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