‘Five minutes,’ the voice calls. ‘Five-minute warning, then the tents will be cleared.’
I lie and listen. There is a rustling and a whispering outside, movement and voices. The lit screen of my phone shows that it is just past midnight. I have been asleep for an hour, no more. After thirty-six hours of coke- and caffeine-fuelled wakefulness, I have only been allowed one hour of rest before being roused.
‘Bailiffs,’ someone says. ‘And riot police too.’
‘Peaceful, everyone, remember,’ someone else says, and the three words are taken up and repeated, echoing like a mantra. ‘Peaceful, remember, everyone. Everyone peaceful, remember. Remember, everyone, peaceful.’
‘Fuck’s sake,’ I hiss.
It’s not that I care whether or not they clear the camp – for all I care they can set it alight so that the tents crumple like microwaved crisp packets – but they could have the decency to do it in the daytime. Where were they earlier when I was scrounging for cardboard to use as a ground mat? Or when that fanny with the dreadlocks gave me that lecture about how it’s the producers who shape the music industry, not the artists? Or when my final snort of coke went missing from the pocket of the jeans I’d left inside the tent? At any of those points I’d have been glad to be evicted, forced out into the welcoming warmth of the pub or back to the hotel.
‘You’re in violation of a High Court order,’ the voice calls. ‘Move on.’
I stretch and scratch and stuff my things back into the rucksack. It only takes a moment. Outside, there is a gathering of high-vis-vested men, with policemen behind. The policemen stand impassively, watching, as the bailiffs walk from tent to tent.
‘Clear your things,’ one of them says, as I emerge.
‘Absolutely,’ I say. ‘No worries, mate, no worries.’
He peers at me, weighing my words for sarcasm. There’s none, but he’s expecting more than politeness and passivity from me. He’s expecting me to react like those off to the right, who’re dragging wooden pallets in an attempt to form a barricade, as if they’re in revolutionary France. He’ll get none of that from me, though – provided I can take my guitar and my rucksack, I’ll jettison everything and everyone else.
‘Do you not want to take your tent?’ he shouts after me, as I saunter off towards the police lines. Most folk are making for the steps up to St Paul’s, there are banners unfurling and chants starting up, but I have no interest in prolonging the protest.
‘Keep it,’ I call back. ‘Take your son camping.’
‘It’ll be thrown away…’
‘I honestly couldn’t give a fuck.’
The interview with the Guardian was yesterday morning, over by the Tent City University, with the photographer positioning me so that he could angle the lens upwards and get the black stencilled words on the white marquee roof into the shot. Emboldened by coke, I gave a lecture of my own, on the importance of music as a means of social commentary. The journalist – what was her name: Jenna? Jemima? Jeeta? – recorded each and every word of it, even when I started gurning ‘reason-rhyme-reason-rhyme-reason-rhyme’ in an endless loop that I thought bard-worthy at the time.
In any case, with the interview done, it doesn’t matter to me whether my tent is thrown into the bin-lorries lined up to the side of the bailiffs, or whether the likes of the Irish girl and Bobble-hat get carted off. And Flick? Fuck Flick, she had her chance.
Beyond the police there’s a clutch of press, awaiting developments. I briefly wonder if journalist Jemita is among them, but then remember the single shake of the head she gave when I asked if I could buy her a drink and decide she’s not worth the trouble of a search. Instead I go up to a blinking boy with a microphone. He looks like a work-experience kid, with glasses and a rash of dermatitis across his chin, but he’s got a camera pointed at him so I figure he must just be one of those presenters who’s been prematurely promoted from the kiddie shows to fill the twenty-four-hour news cycle.
‘Do you know if there are any pubs still open around here?’ I ask him.
‘It’s a Monday,’ he replies, frowning. ‘Well, Tuesday morning now…’
I nod. ‘But do you know of any pubs I could still get a drink at?’
‘Have you just come from the Occupy camp?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where are you going now, then?’
Jesus, they should have kept this clown on CBeebies. Twice I’ve asked him for the nearest pub and then he asks me where I’m going. They’ll let any simpleton loose with a press pass these days.
‘Well,’ I say, patiently, ‘I’m either going to the pub or back to the hotel.’
‘Hotel?’ he says. ‘Did you not just come from the Occupy camp, though?’
‘Yes,’ I repeat. ‘I did.’
‘And you’ll be staying in a hotel tonight?’
‘I will indeed.’
‘Can I interview you, maybe?’ He points towards the camera.
‘I doubt you could even interview fucking Peppa Pig, mate.’
‘Listen…’ I shake my head ‘… just fuck off, yeah.’
With that, I walk off and leave him staring after me. The last Tube will be leaving soon and I’m anxious to be on it, but I spin as I walk down Ludgate Hill because I’m not sure where the nearest Underground is: Mansion House, maybe, if I double back on myself? Or St Paul’s station if I loop round to avoid the police cordon? Then there’s City Thameslink, straight ahead, but I’m not certain where the Overground trains from there go or what time they run until. Come to that, where am I going to? Back to the same hotel?
Pulling the phone from my pocket, I dial Pierce. It rings. And rings.
‘Hello, Rob?’
I’m expecting his voice to be bleary, irritable after being woken from deep sleep. That’s what I want after my own rude awakening. But Price sounds excited to be up past his bedtime; he’s torch-under-the-covers, midnight-feast gleeful.
‘Why is it so quiet with you?’ he asks. ‘I’m reading a live blog about it, but I can’t find a stream of it anywhere yet. Can you see any cameras?’
‘Pierce…’ My tone is firm. ‘Does the booking at the hotel still stand, or should I go somewhere else?’
‘What?’
‘Should I go to the same hotel or somewhere else? Simple question.’
‘Where are you, buddy?’
‘Near City Thameslink.’ I’ve actually just caught sight of the station. ‘But it’s fucking closed. Fuck. Pierce, what’s the nearest Tube?’
‘Hang on – you’ve left?’
‘St Paul’s, you mean?’
‘Yes.’ He sounds panicked now, breathless. ‘Did you leave the camp?’
‘They moved everyone on, didn’t they? That was the point.’
‘And you just complied? You just fucking left?’
There’s silence for a moment. I lift the phone from my ear and consider throwing it to the kerb, watching it smash into its component parts. Only issue is, I’m essentially homeless right now and I need Prick Price to direct me to the Tube and find me a hotel. He might even need to front me a bit of cash. The business account is empty and the credit card is at its limit. Pierce will sort it, though. He’s the man who makes things happen, even if he is more cunt than concierge.
‘I left,’ I say. ‘They asked me to fuck off, so off I fucked.’
‘Listen, Rob…’ He’s trying out his serious voice. ‘This is still salvageable. I want you to turn around, go back to St Paul’s and find yourself a nice friendly camera crew. Wear your album T-shirt, hand out badges, talk about social protest. This is free fucking publicity, mate, and you’re literally walking away from it.’
I decide not to tell him about the prepubescent presenter who asked for an interview, but I also decide that I’ll not go back to the camp without some preconditions. If I’m going to risk arrest for a quid or two then I want my pro quo.
‘After that,’ I say, ‘if I do that, will you get me a hotel?’
‘It would need to be on your dime, Rob.’
‘Transfer me some more, will you?’
‘You can’t afford more than the agreed per diem. The advance needs to last you.’
‘It’s not enough, is what I’m telling you, Pierce.’
What’s the issue? The other chunk of the advance will come to me when the album’s released next month, so that should make a dent in the credit card, and then we’re into royalties and performance fees. Why would we penny-pinch now? Is it just because it’s fashionable – is that it? Fucking austerity – the word was in danger of slipping out of the dictionary until all this financial shite started, and now it’s repeated like a fucking catchphrase all across the country.
‘Tell you what,’ Pierce says, with a sigh shadowing his words, ‘go back and talk to the press, then jump in a taxi and come and stay with me. I’ll text you the address. God knows what my wife’ll say, mind you.’
‘Wife!’ I always presumed Price to be a chronic masturbator. Either that or a prostitute-prowler. I certainly didn’t expect him to be married. Not to a woman, anyway. A horse or a fucking standard-lamp, sure, but not a woman.
‘Just go back,’ he says, and hangs up.
The hi-vis-vests swarm like wasps and I buzz, because that’s how you deal with the boredom. The whole cocking enterprise is bloody boring, so bloody boring, with the police keeping us away from the clean-up and the folk up on the steps of St Paul’s standing there behind their banners that say ‘This is just the beginning’. They’re chanting or booing or cheering like a crowd at a football match, but with this resignation to it, as if they’ve already been relegated but are enjoying a final match in the big league. How would you deal with that? When Bobble-hat shows himself, on the fringes, it’s not only myself who’d feel the sting of urgency. It’s not only me who’d ask him if he has any left, if there’s any I could make use of. It’s not only me who’d lead him over to a doorway in the next street but one, out of the eyeline of the police but desperately close when you get to thinking about it, and hand him one of the advance copies of Measures Taken so that he can cut out two thin lines on the plastic. It’s not only me.
‘I’m a musician,’ I say into the camera. With cocaine pulsing, I don’t just tell my story, I fucking rewrite it. ‘From the city of riveters and welders – one of the cities of… and, in many ways, I’ve been orphaned by society, y’know, cut adrift. So I ride the rails and I tell my tales and, wherever I find people, I listen to their stories – properly listen – then my songs reflect all of those gathered experiences and ideas. They act as a book of condolence for the world as it was, or as a blueprint for the world as it could be – ha ha.
‘My debut album is out next month, and I’ve just been down this way over the past few nights to lend some credibility and celebrity – well, not celebrity, but you know – ha ha – because this is a hell of a movement that’s started down here – and off in those other countries, with the Arab Spring and the Americans and – wait, was it OK for me to say “hell”? – right, OK, hell yes! – so that’s why I’m here and then these guys show up, these ones, and – well, what are the press doing, is what I want to know – what are you doing, now, other than standing here recording it all, watching it all happen – ’
It takes a long time before they get to pulling down the wooden barricade, shaped like Noah’s Ark in the midst of a sea of onlookers, with steel drums and wooden pallets and stacks of shelves being dragged away, until the dozen or so protesters remaining stand stranded and surrounded. One by one they’re pulled down and carried off to the police vans. There are whistles and shouts of ‘shame on you’. Then there is a cheer as one of the protesters wrestles an orange-vested bailiff to the ground with him. I join in with the cheers, but stay towards the back of the crowd.
Pierce rings. ‘How’s it going?’ he asks.
‘They’re removing the last of the protesters now,’ I say.
‘But how are you getting on? I can’t see you on the live stream.’
‘I spoke to one camera crew, but…’ I pause. ‘Listen, Pierce, where are all these folk going to go – after this, I mean?’
‘Who? The Occupy lot?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Up to Finsbury Square, they’re saying on the telly. There’s some place in Islington called the School of Ideas, but that’s been cleared tonight as well. Why?’
In the pause, I think of all the protesters trudging up to Finsbury Square, being met by Flick, who’ll sit them down and question them, one by one, about their motives.
‘Why, Rob?’ Pierce repeats.
‘No reason, really,’ I say. ‘Just wondering.’
‘You going native on me, is that it?’
I shake my head, but stay silent.
‘Anyway, give out a few badges and that and then get yourself in a taxi, OK?’
‘OK,’ I say. ‘Pierce?’
‘What?’
‘What do you think of Occupy, as an idea?’
‘Crock of shit.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ I say, and hang up.
The police, in their riot gear, are eyeing the steps up to St Paul’s. They’ll be clearing those as well, someone says, and giving them a deep-clean. As they advance, the street-sweepers get to work behind them, brushing up the last of the debris from the dismantling of the camp. The police cordon around the square has relaxed now, with the attention focused on those still gathered up on the steps. As the media move forward, I take out the plastic bag of badges from the side-pocket of my rucksack. Measures Taken, they say in white against red, or #protestwithwords, in red against white. Quietly, without drawing attention to myself, I bend down and pour them out on to the ground. They will be trampled, cracked, scattered. Perhaps a journo will feel one beneath the tread of their boot and pick it up to examine it; maybe a photographer will notice one lying off on its own and think it an interesting subject; it might even be that a policeman will lift one and take it home so that he can search the internet for these odd phrases, to see if they signify a new protest group or even a militant uprising. In all likelihood, though, they will be swept up. Either from the small mound I left, or in ones and twos, they will be swept up.
Turning, I walk back towards Ludgate Hill in search of a taxi.