The Unseen(95)

‘Be quiet!’ Cat says, the words seeming to arrive directly upon her tongue, without first passing through her brain.

‘Yeah, stop your mouth up!’ a man next to her says, looking down at her and grinning his approval.

‘No … you, all of you! Let her speak! Haven’t you the least common decency?’ Cat shouts.

‘Oh, Christ, here’s another one,’ the man mutters to a friend, stepping away from Cat and eyeing her coldly.

‘Let her speak!’ she shouts again, louder now. A few more people turn to look at her. The speaker struggles bravely on, but Cat can no longer hear her. There is a buzzing in her ears that has nothing to do with the jostling crowd or the rising tide of their voices. The stink of sweat and sweltering skin is everywhere. The air tastes used, soiled; commingled breath, hot vapours and sour mood. The man beside her and his friend begin to sing, linking their arms and tipping back their heads in music hall parody.

‘Put me upon an island where the girls are few; put me among the most ferocious lions at the zoo; put me in a prison and I’ll never, never fret; but for pity’s sake don’t put me near a bleedin’ suffragette!’ they carol, and fall about laughing at their own cleverness. At the mention of prison, Cat feels a black fury building in her chest, bitter as bile.

‘Shut up! Shut your mouths, you worthless whoresons!’ she spits at them.

‘Here, you want to watch that tongue of yours, slut. It’ll get you in trouble,’ the first man tells her bleakly, through tight lips. He holds his finger, thick and dirty, right up to her face, and she slaps it away. Just then, a scream from the stage causes a momentary hush to fall. The speaker is looking down in horror at her white skirts, now streaked with red juices. Someone in the crowd has pelted her with a handful of rotting tomatoes, and they cling to the fine muslin; blackened seeds and flecks of skin and pulp.

‘Good shot!’ a man shouts, to much laughter.

‘Really, I …’ The speaker falters. ‘I have every right to come here and speak to you, and speak I shall!’ she rallies, but her voice lacks the courage of her words.

Cat pushes her way through the wall of people, and as she climbs onto the platform more missiles are launched. Eggs land with soggy little crunches, and one hits Cat on her arm as she straightens up, turns to the crowd. Breathing hard, she glances at the stranger, whose face is pinched and startled. The woman’s eyes dart nervously from Cat to the crowd. Cat grabs her hand and turns full face to the crowd’s contempt.

‘Shame on you! Shame on all of you! We’re not afraid of you! You can’t just shout abuse and expect us to go away! We’re not children!’ she shouts. She ducks to one side as more festering fruit is thrown, and an empty beer bottle, sticky and brown. ‘That’s your answer, is it, when a woman speaks up for herself? Attack her! Wound her! No doubt you treat your wives and daughters the same way, since that’s the only way men can continue to impose their illegitimate domination of women!’ Her voice grows louder, hoarse with fury. The speaker hangs from her hand, astonished.

‘Our wives have better sense than to stand about in public shouting about things they know nothing of!’ one man calls up at her.

‘And how can they know anything about it? About politics, or education, or their rights, when they spend all their time in the home, addling their brains with housework and the raising of children?’ she demands.

‘And who else should do those things, then? Their menfolk?’ This to general laughter.

‘I say—’ The speaker tries to interject, but Cat squeezes her hand tighter.

‘Why the bloody hell not?’ she shouts. But this is the final straw, and more objects and insults are thrown, and Cat cannot hear her own words for the cacophony of abuse and name hurling, though she knows she is shouting because her throat aches with it, and the speaker is pulling to free her hand, which Cat will not relinquish; and somewhere behind it all she hears police whistles blowing, and then a dead rat hits her legs, stinking, its eyes filmy and its tongue a dry curl between snarling teeth, brown fur matted with filth on which flies resettle, almost at once. It smells sweet and rank and putrid, so strong that for a moment Cat falters, clamps her teeth together to keep the stench out.

‘Oh, good Lord.’ The speaker quails, the blood draining from her face. She sits down heavily, her eyes sliding out of focus, legs splayed inelegantly. A smattering of laughter comes from the crowd, and Cat grinds her teeth in fury. Kicking the rat to one side she bends down, picks up what she can of the eggs and vegetables and hurls them back at the crowd, shouting furious curses at them all the while. She aims the beer bottle at the head of a man whose eyes are streaming with mirth, forcing him to duck hurriedly. It shatters into pieces on the street behind him, and he flinches as a fragment hits his cheek, makes a tiny cut there.