Movement (12 page)

On Monday, Gordon arrived alone, looking tired and tense. “Ghilly has bronchitis again. She got it last year too. Oh, hell, what a time, man. She was supposed to go up to Leeds peddling books tomorrow. It's these damn broken windows. Damn, drafty room. Impossible to heat. Damn London weather. Dampness everywhere. It took a month to get those appointments in Leeds. Poor Ghilly. We had to wait two hours at the Health Collective last night. Damn Leeds.”

Susan moved a manila envelope over her picture layouts, so Gordon wouldn't see them. “She'll be OK with a little rest. It's warm at your flat, isn't it?”

He nodded distractedly.

“And I'll go up to Leeds for you.”

He smiled, “For us, man.”

“I can leave tomorrow morning.”

“But you won't know what you're doing. You've never done it before. You don't know about discounts and delivery dates and PR on the new books.”

“I've got a whole day to learn.”

“Half a day. You really should take the five o'clock coach from Victoria tonight to make those morning appointments.”

When Susan got to Leeds, half the appointments fell through.

“A month ago?”

“Cooperative what?”

“Sorry, no time; the Penguin man is in town.”

Maybe Gordon was right. Maybe she didn't know what she was doing. Her inexperience was a failure for the whole Cooperative.

“How do you cooperate?” Finally, a friendly voice.

He was a heavy old man, with the liberal streak you expected to find in a university bookstore.

Was he being snide? Susan wondered. Who cared? He was the only person who had asked her to sit down all day. Maybe she could sell a small order, through charm or pity.

“We all work together,” she said, trying not to sound like a tired record. “We all share the soliciting, the editing, the dispatching, the publicity, the income. We all came to it with different skills.”

“And yours is?”

“I'm a journalist. Photography and reporting. Right now I'm planning pictures for a book about Dutch politics.”

“Which of these books is yours?” He seemed interested.

“Oh, none of them yet,” she said. “I've only been there a few months.”

He looked disappointed and then pensive. “I guess there's a lot of clerical work to do. It's always like that, isn't it?”

Susan was confused.

“Don't look so surprised. I worked on
Red Net
in the early days. Why do you think I took time to see you? I'll order six of each book—by consignment.”

On the coach home, she sketched her shots and the design for the cover of Wina's book. It was late, after 9:00 p.m., by the time she got up to Hemingford Road. The downstairs door of the old factory was unlocked and Susan felt at once relieved. Someone would be there. Gordon. She wanted—needed—two things from him: reassurance that Leeds was a tough town and some enthusiasm for the Dutch photos. The concrete steps were unlit. It was late. She was in a derelict building on a forgotten street in a big city, she reminded herself. The fear evaporated as quickly as it came. She just couldn't feel as scared here as she did driving down East 14th Street in Oakland during the middle of the afternoon. She sensed some diplomatic immunity against violence in Britain. “Sense, I'll give you sense,” Carol would say. But she had never felt threatened in London.

Black. The room was black except for the spotlight of a tensor lamp over Gordon's notebook. He was scribbling on a yellow pad between the calculator and the ledger. She couldn't see the orange glow of the fire filaments.

“It's freezing here,” she said, reaching down to switch on the fire. She stopped, noticing that Gordon was wearing his RAF coat. “What's this? An economy move?”

Susan wanted to make a joke about Australian radicals wearing colonial military attire, but Gordon immediately began to complain about the printer's invoice, about how no one was around to help him.

“Rita is off academicing at some language conference. Malcolm, as always, is absorbed in his prints. Wina's lover from Amsterdam is here. I've got no idea how all the IRA books are going to be distributed.”

Susan said she would help—after she set up the darkroom.

“The darkroom,” Gordon exploded. “Everybody's in this for himself. With Wina, it's for her anarchist friends. With Malcolm, it's for his prints.”

“But you're the one who's always talking about artists having respect for themselves as workers.”

“Personally,” said Gordon, “I think survival comes before the privilege of self-respect. Somebody has to do the shit-work.”

Susan's voice was lost somewhere between disappointment and anger. She walked silently toward the corridor. “OK,” she said finally, patiently, reminding herself again that revolutions take time. “I'll be here at 8:30 tomorrow to help distribute the books. But let's talk about shit and privilege at the next Coop meeting.”

Alexander's book was at the printers. Everyone was excited about it. Gordon explained to the meeting that the Zimbabwe book would make the Coop connections in the black community. The print run would be ten thousand. Large for the Coop, but, of course, far below what Alexander was used to with Longman's.

“Alexander understands our bind,” said Gordon.

It should have been a cheerful meeting, but everyone was strained and tired. Lynda worried about Gordon's unilateral decision to open a woman's bookshop.

“Unilateral decision,” Gordon repeated angrily. “How about unilateral work! I'll be happy to share the decisions—and the work.”

Rita interrupted. “Look, Gordon, we've been through this before, haven't we? We all have other jobs. I've got Malcolm and the baby to support. It was your choice to spend twenty hours a day here.”

“And what if I didn't?” he shouted.

Wina leaned forward. Susan was fascinated by Wina: the pink “Frau-Offensive” t-shirt with the Vent Vert perfume and the declassé roach clip around her neck.

“I think we're geting emotional,” Wina cleared her throat huskily. “It's not the decision, itself, Gordon. It's the way it was made. We agreed to consult on everything. Remember?”

“See if I care,” he threw up his hands. “I'll go give back the lease now. Don't listen to me. You'll see.” He pulled on his coat and strode away. “You'll see. London needs a women's bookshop.”

No one was wrong. That was the difficult part. Everyone had a right to be consulted. Together they had imagined the Cooperative, invested in it, worked for it. They should all be part of the decisions. However, they didn't have Gordon's dedication or centrifugal urgency.

Throughout the week, they held little caucuses about “the situation.” Wina and Rita resolved to spend more time at the warehouse. Ghilly separately lobbied Malcolm for sympathy, patience or whatever his gentleness might mean. She came to Susan, too. Ghilly appealed to her as someone who spent so much time at the office, who must think Gordon's decisions were sound ones. Wina and Rita asked Susan if she didn't find Ghilly and Gordon a little paternalistic.

One night Susan stayed late with Gordon to mail off a press release. He told her about all the workers who had come and gone since the Coop's beginnings three years before.

“No one wants to slog,” he said. “Teamwork. Look who stayed tonight. No one.”

“All one happy family,” said Malcolm as he opened the Cooperative meeting the next week.

“Sit down, Gordon,” Rita said gently. “You look exhausted.”

“I am tired—damn tired—of sitting through rush hour traffic on that damn 17 bus.”

“Stand, then,” said Rita. “Look, I've been thinking about the uneven distribution of work.”

“And of the decision making,” said Wina.

“Yes,” Gordon answered quickly. “Very absorbing problems. But somewhat abstract and personal compared to the distribution of the
Chile Diaries
, our rent and the printing bill.”

Wina leaned forward in a wave of Vent Vert. “May I remind you that the personal is political.”

“The economic is more political,” rasped Gordon, “if you remember a little of that dialectical materialism from your CP lover—or was he the one last week?”

“Let's not get personal,” Malcolm laughed, alone.

A reconstitution, they called it. A few compromises. “We don't live in an ideal world,” Wina said, agreeing to postpone her book until they knew the profits from the
Diaries.
I'll try to keep the big decisions for weekly meeting,” Gordon conceded. Rita admitted it would be practical for him to make a few emergency decisions by himself.

Susan left the Coop early that night, before the sulphur lights. Gordon had asked her what was wrong and she said she didn't know. She really didn't know why it was all falling apart around her. Without Wina's book, there would be no need for Susan's photographs. Not now. Not ever? Tonight she could see herself for who she was, a label licker and book packer in a cold London warehouse for 15 pounds a week. Her grandfather made 15 pounds a week and died of tuberculosis. “Temporary insanity.” Carol was right. You can fool with reality, you can romanticize only so long. Then physical parameters like sickness and death intervene.

They met again at Moishe's Cafe. Alexander asked her loving questions about the photography, her friends, the Cooperative. Susan answered briskly and was halfway through the humus before she could be honest.

“Someone isn't being cooperative,” she said nervously. Then the tears and complaints and guilt flooded out.

“What's wrong with me?” she demanded. “Why do I believe in last peace marches and cooperative Cooperatives?”

Alexander held her in his tired, watchful eyes.

“Am I crazy? Are they hypocrites?” she asked. “No, they're good people. But it's so much more complex than I imagined. Having to survive. Having to work and deal with personal problems and edit and publish and distribute and keep a good political line. Am I too young?”

“Not
too
young,” said Alexander.

“How can I go on?” The tears fell from shame and confusion. “Months have passed and they still don't want my photos. They're still arguing about the color of the labels. Gordon is still making unilateral decisions. It's not a cooperative; it's a one-man band. Maybe if we struggled … maybe.…”

“You have a choice,” he said quietly.

“Choice,” she repeated, surfacing to his voice.

“Choice about whether you want to hear the one-man band or make a harmony or go back to your own work for a while.”

She stared at him, feeling the unshed tears drain down her throat.

“This isn't the last cooperative,” he said.

She looked closer. Her anxiety abated for the moment. She noticed how weary he looked, run-down. This was her fault. She should have been taking care of Alexander. He lived in the coldest of Highgate flats and never quite learned to make a proper cup of tea.

“I bet you've run out of Vitamin C,” she said. “I got a new supply from mother. See, I've brought you a bottle. Brother Alexander, methinks you've not been taking care of yourself.”

“Do thank your gracious mother. But let's get back to the problem at hand. You have a choice about the Cooperative. What are you going to do?”

“It's not as easy as you think. I've dragged so many friends into this mess. Joan of Arc, I am, leading the troops—into a brick wall.”

“It's easier than
you
think.”

“I even got my dear Alexander involved.”

“That started before you.”

“But I pushed it. I got you to sign their contract.”

“Longman's won't do the book,” he said tiredly. “I can't flog it around at my age. Time has made my choice. Besides the galleys look fine. What have I got to lose?”

Susan wanted to stay in London until Alexander's book was finished. But the bindery was on strike which meant a six week delay. If she was going to take that magazine assignment in Morocco, she would have to go now.

When she officially quit at the Monday meeting, Rita, Ghilly, Malcolm and Lynda nodded in various degrees of resignation. Wina sighed. “It must have been like this at the Paris Commune.” Gordon was busy scratching her name off the schedule. “OK, OK, it's your choice.”

After returning from Morocco, Susan secluded herself in the darkroom for days. One afternoon, she emerged to check a reference in the British Museum reading room. As she cycled past Dillon's Bookshop, she noticed the green Cooperative Press logo. And Alexander's book.

The cover was silhouetted just as he wanted it. The book looked thicker than she had imagined. It was a tasteful display, with a photograph of Alexander and a short memorium. The entire display window was bordered in black.

Love/Love

Listen, kid. She was just gorgeous. Glamorous. Nineteen thirties chic. A pin-up type. You'll say I'm just a mortal, sexist man, but honest, she didn't mind being told she was glamourous, for all her liberated notions. Took care of herself. Had her hair done every week at Yosh. And watched her figure like—as the saying goes—like all the men did. Heh. Heh. Maybe she wore too much mascara, but it really accentuated those ebony eyes. Then there was that red, Jean Harlow mouth—1930s, honest-to-god. Her legs were made for stockings. In the summer they were tan and bare and all the more sexy.

She took care of her looks, all right. And everything else. She wasn't satisfied with just being a nurse. So she worked her way up to Supervisor. That bored her after six months. At thirty, with a great career ahead, she applied for medical school. She got in, with a scholarship, of course. A very bright girl as well as sexy. Not that you were allowed to dawdle over the latter. Like all good catches, she was hooked four or five years ago. A real super guy. Lots of money. Nice house. I mean they had
everything
together.