Cally Phillips' Another World is Possible
Episode Seven – MOVING ON
Genre: Drama
Swearwords: None.
Description: 1984 London – ROISIN
Swearwords: None.
Description: 1984 London – ROISIN
October 1984 and Mrs Thatcher’s still in power. Everything else has changed. Drew ran up the road home five years ago and pretty soon after that he was just another memory. His family moved to Sweden and even after trying to keep up a pen pal relationship, by 1980 he was, like all first loves, little more than a few photos and letters and some poignant memories of ‘good times’ relived through song lyrics.
The Jam have become the Style Council. Punk is dead and the New Wave is looking old hat. It’s hard not to think that Paul Weller has sold out when it seems that in Thatcher’s Britain style is everything and substance nothing. And there is Paul, mooching around smoking French cigarettes, singing French lyrics and calling his album Café Bleu. What happened to the angry young man?
Success may have mellowed Paul Weller, but there are plenty of other angry young men to take his place. Sex and drugs and rock n’ roll has changed as well. In 1984, it’s art and music and politics which holds sway.
We’re all fed up with the cynicism and the constant references to George Orwell. It’s been 1984 since 1948 and for those who understand the novel it will probably always be so. But 1984 in 1984 reaches the public consciousness, becomes fashionable and then forgotten. And 1984 lives on. We’re all doomed before we even begin.
By October 1984 a lot of other things are memories too. Holland Park, for example. It’s been a funny year. In the summer Roisin sits A levels in Art, Music and English. Mary wanted her to take a language but Roisin finds languages hard and has no incentive. No motivation like her mother had. Sure, she needs to escape but music is Roisin’s escape. She’s moved around enough in her life not to want to travel except in her mind and music takes you places without you ever leaving the room. Drew’s been gone a couple of years now but she still remembers how great it felt on that magical first ‘date’ at Evita. A whole load of doors and possibilities were opened that night which Roisin is still exploring. At least he left some kind of legacy.
Even though Roisin’s real interest is music, it’s not the kind of music that would get you taken into a music college. And no decent university will look at you with only one academic subject. So Katie Grace and Roisin agree with the Head that applying for art school will be the thing to do. They ‘agree’ on Saint Martin’s, but the agreement seems to come from different motives. Roisin knows that it’s a place where a lot of up and coming musicians hang out, she’s not that bothered about ‘art’ itself and certainly not really into ‘fashion’ which is one of the key things Saint Martin’s is renowned for. Roisin isn’t really that bothered about carrying on studying but she doesn’t know what else to do. Mary isn’t that keen on Roisin carrying on studying but Katie Grace makes sure that it’s clear that Roisin will be on a full grant so it won’t cost Mary a penny. In fact it will be like money coming in. As long as she lives at home.
It’s even more important to Roisin that she earns money. She knows she has to support herself. She’s had enough years with the financial ‘flexibility’ that has characterised Mary’s life and she wants more security for herself. Mary is constantly on the edge. And sometimes over it. More often than not over it at the moment. In and out of hospital. Rehab isn’t really fashionable yet, Thatcher’s still working on ‘care in the community’ and privatising addiction and mental health services is a work in progress. So it’s admission, sectioning, release. The ultimate vicious circle. Like prison, it’s the kind of life that more or less guarantees you’ll never get off the drugs. And the drugs have changed. Mary’s now got a heroin habit. She thinks Roisin doesn’t know, but Roisin knows. She also knows there’s no point caring because there’s nothing she can do. Only Mary can clean up her act and Mary’s beyond wanting to. Psychiatric care has become as much a part of her life as the drugs. You’d think Springfield was Butlins, the regularity with which Mary visits it.
As soon as the last exam is over, Roisin goes out and gets a job. She doesn’t really believe she’ll get into art college. Or get a grant. Who’s going to give her something for nothing? A job is the only option. And lucky to get one in these days. Or so she keeps telling herself. It’s in telesales. She hates it. But it keeps her out of the house. Or flat. Because they are no longer in The Hippy House. They are in real rented accommodation. The three of them; Roisin, Mary and Patrick, plus whoever Mary’s habit is entertaining, exist in a two bedroom flat three stories up in Battersea. South of the river. Shows you how far beyond caring Mary is. Moving there was one of the many attempts to break from the past but when the past is actually your present reality, it’s impossible to break from and Mary never quite manages it. She just finds new dealers, new drug buddies and new ways to forget past, present and future. New ways to die in the moment. And it’s not that far from Springfield. Mary prefers Springfield to The Maudsley. Don’t ask her why, though. She’s not telling.
They move to Battersea in January 1984 and while Battersea to Holland Park every day in time for first period at school is not the easiest of trips, it gives Roisin time to think. Time to see the outside world and crossing London in 1984 is all about the miner’s strike. You’d think that the miner’s strike was only in evidence ‘up North’ but every day Roisin’s bus goes past the TUC HQ and there are strikers out there picketing. Every day she is confronted with the inequalities of life and at eighteen you think about these things. Because at eighteen you are part of the inequality. Especially if you’re Roisin.
Come August and Roisin is amazed to find out that she’s on the winning side for once. She gets the grades and the place and the grant to go to Saint Martin’s Art School. A whole new life. Maybe not the one she actively chose but Roisin, like most eighteen year olds, doesn’t really know what or how you make life choices. They just happen and you go along with them.
Roisin is just glad that this means that after barely two months, the telesales job will be a thing of the past, though the money was certainly useful. Mary takes money from her grant for rent, of course, though Roisin’s never sure it’s actually going on rent. Roisin buys her own food where possible. Mary never spends money on food. Even with her commitments, Roisin still has more money than ever before. Money to spend, if not money to burn. And it all gets spent on music. She’s a decent collection of tapes now and can listen on her Walkman (yes, she even has a Walkman) wherever she goes. It makes the journey to and from work bearable. It almost makes work bearable but not quite.
She works right up till the Friday before College is due to start and doesn’t have much time to think about how life will change. Consequently, Freshers week hits her between the eyes and hits her hard. Saint Martin’s in 1984 is a wild and wonderful place. Unfortunately to Roisin some of this wild and wonderful is rather too reminiscent of life in The Hippy House to be really something she wants to buy into. But she’s getting paid to be there, so she goes every day. Takes classes. Holds back from making friends because they all seem to be fashionistas, and at this point in their lives, are busy ‘experimenting’ which of course means they’re getting into drugs. Roisin’s been there before. She’s experimenting as she has been for years with getting out of the drugs culture, while all her contemporaries are rushing headlong into it.
So Roisin buys out of Saint Martin’s almost before she’s bought into it. You might think she never really gives it a chance. It becomes part of her life by necessity but not the main part. It represents nothing she feels she actively chose or wants. She’s not really making friends amongst her fellow students as much as she is trying to build a life for herself. It’s part of the escape plan of her life.
She needs more money than the full grant will give her. Of the nearly £1000 dished out in the first term, Mary hijacks a large amount one way or another, and to keep independent Roisin finds another job, working nights in the West End. She becomes part of the great theatrical business empire. An usherette. She heard about the job from a fellow student (a girl rejoicing in the name of Karysma). Most of the students at Saint Martin’s have names like that. And attitudes to match.
Roisin finds it strange that only five years ago she went to a theatre for the first time with Katie Grace and Drew and now she’s working in one every night. She’s got a prestigious gig – Les Miserables. Being a fairly low wage, it’s easy enough to get work as an usher in the West End but the contracts are re-negotiated every time the show changes, so to get on a show that lasts is a guarantee of a steady income. And don’t the theatres know it! They run their front of house staff with a rod of iron. Getting a night off from Les Mis couldn’t be harder if you were one of the cast!
It doesn’t take long for Roisin to reach burn out. Although you wouldn’t think art college is exactly hard work, there’s a lot to learn and Roisin has to negotiate her way in from Battersea on the bus for a ten or eleven a.m. start, working through till five in the afternoon. Then it’s off to the theatre where she’s working six till eleven and then out to a late gig. She’s usually not in bed till two or three in the morning and the whole thing starts again the next day. Saturdays have matinees and Sundays are the only day of rest (if you call doing your washing in a south London launderette restful!). This lifestyle certainly doesn’t leave a lot of time for thinking and that’s just as well, because Roisin doesn’t want to think about her life at the moment. Certainly not about Mary and Patrick.
In the few hours she spends at home there is constant strife. Patrick is fourteen and constantly in trouble with the police, while Mary is constantly trying to keep out of the radar of police and social services. At the moment all talk is of Patrick being taken into care. The family is going into meltdown.
The high point of Roisin’s life is the access to gigs. There’s always something going on and as long as she can get out of the theatre early enough she can head up the road for whatever’s on at The Marquee or one of the other smaller, less fashionable venues. Getting to her old favourite, the Hammersmith Palais, is pretty hard when she doesn’t finish work till gone eleven at night. But the music is more important than the venue to Roisin, and sometimes going to the only place with a band starting at midnight means you see some incredible, under-rated talent. And meet some interesting people.
That’s how Roisin meets Jim. Well. Not exactly. She’s seen Jim around Saint Martin’s. When she first sees him she thinks he’s a lecturer there, because he’s a lot older than your average student, he’s pushing forty but he seems to be too casual even for a Saint Martin’s lecturer. It turns out he’s nothing to do with the place. Like Roisin, Jim is interested in the music output from Saint Martin’s. And possibilities. He sticks up a poster for some club or other. Roisin takes note of it. And goes there one night. It’s not exactly packed at midnight but the feel of the place is like the Beatles in the Cavern BEFORE they became the Beatles and BEFORE it became the Cavern. It’s dark, the band are giving it their all and their music has something different. Roisin’s not sure she really likes it, it’s raw in a different way than she’s used to and she’s not sure she gets the lyrics, but it’s a new experience. The band is called A Popular History of Signs. The song is October Already. And it is.
And there is Jim. Roisin thinks he spots her a moment before she spots him. And he buys her a drink. Unusual. But she accepts. And they talk, at least as much as you can over the lyrics demanding you pay attention to Lenin and the Russian Revolution. Then Roisin buys Jim a drink and they keep talking. They keep talking right the way out of the gig at two a.m. And Jim invites her home to his for a coffee. Roisin isn’t naïve. She knows when a coffee is or isn’t a coffee. But she can handle herself. Even though Jim is twice her age, he’s making her laugh. He’s making her think and most of all he’s making her forget the life she has in Battersea. So she goes back to his flat for a coffee.
Five years on from Drew, this time Roisin doesn’t get a chance to talk about Che Guevara before she makes love to Jim. Inevitably, Drew and Roisin had sex several times, in a fumbling teenage way, before he left for Sweden at the end of Fourth year. They were both coming up for sixteen. Roisin hasn’t done it since. Too many thoughts about how she doesn’t want to fall into the same traps Mary did. But it’s different with Jim. This is the real deal. Mary would take the fact that Jim has a poster of Che Guevara on the wall of his bedroom (the same as the tatty one she had on her own walls) as a sign. Roisin just enjoys it. For a while, she forgets about Mary and Che and gives herself up to Jim and the moment. In the background, on the wall, Che is the ever present constant but he can wait for now.
When she looks back on her life, Roisin can never work out whether Jim was a good or a bad influence on her. Jim is tall and lean with blond hair and is passionate about two things; music and politics. He probably was a hippy in his day but he moved on with the music. There is the odd moment where Roisin wonders whether their paths might not have crossed before, since Jim has the look of someone who might well have hung out at Agamemnon Road in the sixties. And he smokes dope. And does coke. Sometimes. But he’s discreet. And he doesn’t push it on Roisin. And she doesn’t really mind. Best not think about the past.
Jim has the most incredible record collection and an encyclopaedic knowledge of music to boot. Roisin begins to spend all her spare time there just listening to music. Studies take the back burner. She still goes out to the theatre every night to earn money, but the rest of the time, whenever she can, she hangs out at Jim’s. He gives her a key and lets her go in and out as she pleases.
Jim is a kind of record producer/talent scout/something in the music business type person as well as being something in radical politics. In other words, he’s always on the move. A sort of non-capitalist wheeler-dealer. He is the definition of cool in a subversive way. The antidote to everything 1984 seems to stand for.
Jim is working on a project called The Politics of Music. Roisin’s not sure exactly what he’s doing, but she’s happy to sit and talk with him about it. She even shares the odd spliff but it makes her sick so she only does it on rare occasions. Jim isn’t like your usual dopehead, who can’t be happy unless everyone is sharing the same experience. He’s happy for Roisin to stay clean and he never seems to be different after smoking anyway. He’s not like the druggies Roisin grew up with, that’s for sure.
The sex is good. The chat is good. For the first time since Drew, Roisin actually feels like her life is good. Despite the age difference, Roisin feels like she’s found someone who understands her. Someone who cares about her for who she is. Someone who doesn’t judge her background or her family, or her present. Coming up for nineteen, Roisin thinks she’s finally worked things out. Finally got the life she wanted. She’s certainly doing better than Mary was at nineteen. By nineteen Mary was exiled in London looking after Roisin. However she got there. Whatever happened. Whatever the true story.
Mary is back in Springfield again in November and Roisin turns up at Jim’s door one night in a bit of a state. He’s unfazed by the whole thing and suggests she just move in with him. He won’t take rent. And he suggests she gives up the theatre job. She won’t need the money if she’s not paying the rent. And it means they can go to gigs together. How about it?
How about it? Roisin doesn’t think twice. She can spend all her time with the man she loves, doing what she loves. She hands in her notice at the theatre, despite Karysma’s disapproving comments. Karysma is not quite as alternative as her name suggests and Roisin’s liaison with a man old enough to be her father is too much for most of the freshers at Saint Martin’s to bear. Roisin doesn’t care.
By December she’s hardly going to college either. She’s spending all her time with Jim, working on the Politics of Music. Doing artwork, answering phones, going to ‘meetings’ in pubs and handing out leaflets at gigs.
Paul Weller may have sold out to the Style Council but Jim introduces her to a whole new set of political musicians. The big guy is Billy Bragg, of course. Jim is working hard to get Billy to take notice of his plans for The Politics of Music. Bragg is interested but busy doing his own thing. Roisin is just amazed to be in the company of real musicians. Billy Bragg may have the worst voice since Bob Dylan but his merging of politics and music makes him an iconic figure for Roisin.
With Roisin, Jim finds a willing convert to his own brand of politics. With Jim, Roisin finds someone who actually knows something about politics. Someone who was there in the sixties. Someone who also has a Che Guevara poster. For a reason rather than as a fashion statement. She’s not going to repeat past mistakes, though. She doesn’t tell Jim that she believes that she’s Che Guevara’s love child. Not right away. But Jim seems like the kind of guy who might actually believe her. But the moment is an inevitability. So, on her birthday she decides to take a less direct approach. They lie in bed after a night to remember and she asks him, ‘Why do you have a Che Guevara poster on your wall?’
The Jam have become the Style Council. Punk is dead and the New Wave is looking old hat. It’s hard not to think that Paul Weller has sold out when it seems that in Thatcher’s Britain style is everything and substance nothing. And there is Paul, mooching around smoking French cigarettes, singing French lyrics and calling his album Café Bleu. What happened to the angry young man?
Success may have mellowed Paul Weller, but there are plenty of other angry young men to take his place. Sex and drugs and rock n’ roll has changed as well. In 1984, it’s art and music and politics which holds sway.
We’re all fed up with the cynicism and the constant references to George Orwell. It’s been 1984 since 1948 and for those who understand the novel it will probably always be so. But 1984 in 1984 reaches the public consciousness, becomes fashionable and then forgotten. And 1984 lives on. We’re all doomed before we even begin.
By October 1984 a lot of other things are memories too. Holland Park, for example. It’s been a funny year. In the summer Roisin sits A levels in Art, Music and English. Mary wanted her to take a language but Roisin finds languages hard and has no incentive. No motivation like her mother had. Sure, she needs to escape but music is Roisin’s escape. She’s moved around enough in her life not to want to travel except in her mind and music takes you places without you ever leaving the room. Drew’s been gone a couple of years now but she still remembers how great it felt on that magical first ‘date’ at Evita. A whole load of doors and possibilities were opened that night which Roisin is still exploring. At least he left some kind of legacy.
Even though Roisin’s real interest is music, it’s not the kind of music that would get you taken into a music college. And no decent university will look at you with only one academic subject. So Katie Grace and Roisin agree with the Head that applying for art school will be the thing to do. They ‘agree’ on Saint Martin’s, but the agreement seems to come from different motives. Roisin knows that it’s a place where a lot of up and coming musicians hang out, she’s not that bothered about ‘art’ itself and certainly not really into ‘fashion’ which is one of the key things Saint Martin’s is renowned for. Roisin isn’t really that bothered about carrying on studying but she doesn’t know what else to do. Mary isn’t that keen on Roisin carrying on studying but Katie Grace makes sure that it’s clear that Roisin will be on a full grant so it won’t cost Mary a penny. In fact it will be like money coming in. As long as she lives at home.
It’s even more important to Roisin that she earns money. She knows she has to support herself. She’s had enough years with the financial ‘flexibility’ that has characterised Mary’s life and she wants more security for herself. Mary is constantly on the edge. And sometimes over it. More often than not over it at the moment. In and out of hospital. Rehab isn’t really fashionable yet, Thatcher’s still working on ‘care in the community’ and privatising addiction and mental health services is a work in progress. So it’s admission, sectioning, release. The ultimate vicious circle. Like prison, it’s the kind of life that more or less guarantees you’ll never get off the drugs. And the drugs have changed. Mary’s now got a heroin habit. She thinks Roisin doesn’t know, but Roisin knows. She also knows there’s no point caring because there’s nothing she can do. Only Mary can clean up her act and Mary’s beyond wanting to. Psychiatric care has become as much a part of her life as the drugs. You’d think Springfield was Butlins, the regularity with which Mary visits it.
As soon as the last exam is over, Roisin goes out and gets a job. She doesn’t really believe she’ll get into art college. Or get a grant. Who’s going to give her something for nothing? A job is the only option. And lucky to get one in these days. Or so she keeps telling herself. It’s in telesales. She hates it. But it keeps her out of the house. Or flat. Because they are no longer in The Hippy House. They are in real rented accommodation. The three of them; Roisin, Mary and Patrick, plus whoever Mary’s habit is entertaining, exist in a two bedroom flat three stories up in Battersea. South of the river. Shows you how far beyond caring Mary is. Moving there was one of the many attempts to break from the past but when the past is actually your present reality, it’s impossible to break from and Mary never quite manages it. She just finds new dealers, new drug buddies and new ways to forget past, present and future. New ways to die in the moment. And it’s not that far from Springfield. Mary prefers Springfield to The Maudsley. Don’t ask her why, though. She’s not telling.
They move to Battersea in January 1984 and while Battersea to Holland Park every day in time for first period at school is not the easiest of trips, it gives Roisin time to think. Time to see the outside world and crossing London in 1984 is all about the miner’s strike. You’d think that the miner’s strike was only in evidence ‘up North’ but every day Roisin’s bus goes past the TUC HQ and there are strikers out there picketing. Every day she is confronted with the inequalities of life and at eighteen you think about these things. Because at eighteen you are part of the inequality. Especially if you’re Roisin.
Come August and Roisin is amazed to find out that she’s on the winning side for once. She gets the grades and the place and the grant to go to Saint Martin’s Art School. A whole new life. Maybe not the one she actively chose but Roisin, like most eighteen year olds, doesn’t really know what or how you make life choices. They just happen and you go along with them.
Roisin is just glad that this means that after barely two months, the telesales job will be a thing of the past, though the money was certainly useful. Mary takes money from her grant for rent, of course, though Roisin’s never sure it’s actually going on rent. Roisin buys her own food where possible. Mary never spends money on food. Even with her commitments, Roisin still has more money than ever before. Money to spend, if not money to burn. And it all gets spent on music. She’s a decent collection of tapes now and can listen on her Walkman (yes, she even has a Walkman) wherever she goes. It makes the journey to and from work bearable. It almost makes work bearable but not quite.
She works right up till the Friday before College is due to start and doesn’t have much time to think about how life will change. Consequently, Freshers week hits her between the eyes and hits her hard. Saint Martin’s in 1984 is a wild and wonderful place. Unfortunately to Roisin some of this wild and wonderful is rather too reminiscent of life in The Hippy House to be really something she wants to buy into. But she’s getting paid to be there, so she goes every day. Takes classes. Holds back from making friends because they all seem to be fashionistas, and at this point in their lives, are busy ‘experimenting’ which of course means they’re getting into drugs. Roisin’s been there before. She’s experimenting as she has been for years with getting out of the drugs culture, while all her contemporaries are rushing headlong into it.
So Roisin buys out of Saint Martin’s almost before she’s bought into it. You might think she never really gives it a chance. It becomes part of her life by necessity but not the main part. It represents nothing she feels she actively chose or wants. She’s not really making friends amongst her fellow students as much as she is trying to build a life for herself. It’s part of the escape plan of her life.
She needs more money than the full grant will give her. Of the nearly £1000 dished out in the first term, Mary hijacks a large amount one way or another, and to keep independent Roisin finds another job, working nights in the West End. She becomes part of the great theatrical business empire. An usherette. She heard about the job from a fellow student (a girl rejoicing in the name of Karysma). Most of the students at Saint Martin’s have names like that. And attitudes to match.
Roisin finds it strange that only five years ago she went to a theatre for the first time with Katie Grace and Drew and now she’s working in one every night. She’s got a prestigious gig – Les Miserables. Being a fairly low wage, it’s easy enough to get work as an usher in the West End but the contracts are re-negotiated every time the show changes, so to get on a show that lasts is a guarantee of a steady income. And don’t the theatres know it! They run their front of house staff with a rod of iron. Getting a night off from Les Mis couldn’t be harder if you were one of the cast!
It doesn’t take long for Roisin to reach burn out. Although you wouldn’t think art college is exactly hard work, there’s a lot to learn and Roisin has to negotiate her way in from Battersea on the bus for a ten or eleven a.m. start, working through till five in the afternoon. Then it’s off to the theatre where she’s working six till eleven and then out to a late gig. She’s usually not in bed till two or three in the morning and the whole thing starts again the next day. Saturdays have matinees and Sundays are the only day of rest (if you call doing your washing in a south London launderette restful!). This lifestyle certainly doesn’t leave a lot of time for thinking and that’s just as well, because Roisin doesn’t want to think about her life at the moment. Certainly not about Mary and Patrick.
In the few hours she spends at home there is constant strife. Patrick is fourteen and constantly in trouble with the police, while Mary is constantly trying to keep out of the radar of police and social services. At the moment all talk is of Patrick being taken into care. The family is going into meltdown.
The high point of Roisin’s life is the access to gigs. There’s always something going on and as long as she can get out of the theatre early enough she can head up the road for whatever’s on at The Marquee or one of the other smaller, less fashionable venues. Getting to her old favourite, the Hammersmith Palais, is pretty hard when she doesn’t finish work till gone eleven at night. But the music is more important than the venue to Roisin, and sometimes going to the only place with a band starting at midnight means you see some incredible, under-rated talent. And meet some interesting people.
That’s how Roisin meets Jim. Well. Not exactly. She’s seen Jim around Saint Martin’s. When she first sees him she thinks he’s a lecturer there, because he’s a lot older than your average student, he’s pushing forty but he seems to be too casual even for a Saint Martin’s lecturer. It turns out he’s nothing to do with the place. Like Roisin, Jim is interested in the music output from Saint Martin’s. And possibilities. He sticks up a poster for some club or other. Roisin takes note of it. And goes there one night. It’s not exactly packed at midnight but the feel of the place is like the Beatles in the Cavern BEFORE they became the Beatles and BEFORE it became the Cavern. It’s dark, the band are giving it their all and their music has something different. Roisin’s not sure she really likes it, it’s raw in a different way than she’s used to and she’s not sure she gets the lyrics, but it’s a new experience. The band is called A Popular History of Signs. The song is October Already. And it is.
And there is Jim. Roisin thinks he spots her a moment before she spots him. And he buys her a drink. Unusual. But she accepts. And they talk, at least as much as you can over the lyrics demanding you pay attention to Lenin and the Russian Revolution. Then Roisin buys Jim a drink and they keep talking. They keep talking right the way out of the gig at two a.m. And Jim invites her home to his for a coffee. Roisin isn’t naïve. She knows when a coffee is or isn’t a coffee. But she can handle herself. Even though Jim is twice her age, he’s making her laugh. He’s making her think and most of all he’s making her forget the life she has in Battersea. So she goes back to his flat for a coffee.
Five years on from Drew, this time Roisin doesn’t get a chance to talk about Che Guevara before she makes love to Jim. Inevitably, Drew and Roisin had sex several times, in a fumbling teenage way, before he left for Sweden at the end of Fourth year. They were both coming up for sixteen. Roisin hasn’t done it since. Too many thoughts about how she doesn’t want to fall into the same traps Mary did. But it’s different with Jim. This is the real deal. Mary would take the fact that Jim has a poster of Che Guevara on the wall of his bedroom (the same as the tatty one she had on her own walls) as a sign. Roisin just enjoys it. For a while, she forgets about Mary and Che and gives herself up to Jim and the moment. In the background, on the wall, Che is the ever present constant but he can wait for now.
When she looks back on her life, Roisin can never work out whether Jim was a good or a bad influence on her. Jim is tall and lean with blond hair and is passionate about two things; music and politics. He probably was a hippy in his day but he moved on with the music. There is the odd moment where Roisin wonders whether their paths might not have crossed before, since Jim has the look of someone who might well have hung out at Agamemnon Road in the sixties. And he smokes dope. And does coke. Sometimes. But he’s discreet. And he doesn’t push it on Roisin. And she doesn’t really mind. Best not think about the past.
Jim has the most incredible record collection and an encyclopaedic knowledge of music to boot. Roisin begins to spend all her spare time there just listening to music. Studies take the back burner. She still goes out to the theatre every night to earn money, but the rest of the time, whenever she can, she hangs out at Jim’s. He gives her a key and lets her go in and out as she pleases.
Jim is a kind of record producer/talent scout/something in the music business type person as well as being something in radical politics. In other words, he’s always on the move. A sort of non-capitalist wheeler-dealer. He is the definition of cool in a subversive way. The antidote to everything 1984 seems to stand for.
Jim is working on a project called The Politics of Music. Roisin’s not sure exactly what he’s doing, but she’s happy to sit and talk with him about it. She even shares the odd spliff but it makes her sick so she only does it on rare occasions. Jim isn’t like your usual dopehead, who can’t be happy unless everyone is sharing the same experience. He’s happy for Roisin to stay clean and he never seems to be different after smoking anyway. He’s not like the druggies Roisin grew up with, that’s for sure.
The sex is good. The chat is good. For the first time since Drew, Roisin actually feels like her life is good. Despite the age difference, Roisin feels like she’s found someone who understands her. Someone who cares about her for who she is. Someone who doesn’t judge her background or her family, or her present. Coming up for nineteen, Roisin thinks she’s finally worked things out. Finally got the life she wanted. She’s certainly doing better than Mary was at nineteen. By nineteen Mary was exiled in London looking after Roisin. However she got there. Whatever happened. Whatever the true story.
Mary is back in Springfield again in November and Roisin turns up at Jim’s door one night in a bit of a state. He’s unfazed by the whole thing and suggests she just move in with him. He won’t take rent. And he suggests she gives up the theatre job. She won’t need the money if she’s not paying the rent. And it means they can go to gigs together. How about it?
How about it? Roisin doesn’t think twice. She can spend all her time with the man she loves, doing what she loves. She hands in her notice at the theatre, despite Karysma’s disapproving comments. Karysma is not quite as alternative as her name suggests and Roisin’s liaison with a man old enough to be her father is too much for most of the freshers at Saint Martin’s to bear. Roisin doesn’t care.
By December she’s hardly going to college either. She’s spending all her time with Jim, working on the Politics of Music. Doing artwork, answering phones, going to ‘meetings’ in pubs and handing out leaflets at gigs.
Paul Weller may have sold out to the Style Council but Jim introduces her to a whole new set of political musicians. The big guy is Billy Bragg, of course. Jim is working hard to get Billy to take notice of his plans for The Politics of Music. Bragg is interested but busy doing his own thing. Roisin is just amazed to be in the company of real musicians. Billy Bragg may have the worst voice since Bob Dylan but his merging of politics and music makes him an iconic figure for Roisin.
With Roisin, Jim finds a willing convert to his own brand of politics. With Jim, Roisin finds someone who actually knows something about politics. Someone who was there in the sixties. Someone who also has a Che Guevara poster. For a reason rather than as a fashion statement. She’s not going to repeat past mistakes, though. She doesn’t tell Jim that she believes that she’s Che Guevara’s love child. Not right away. But Jim seems like the kind of guy who might actually believe her. But the moment is an inevitability. So, on her birthday she decides to take a less direct approach. They lie in bed after a night to remember and she asks him, ‘Why do you have a Che Guevara poster on your wall?’
About the Author
Cally Phillips has written fiction and drama in English and Scots, much of which is published through HoAmPresst. She also currently works as editor for Ayton Publishing Limited and runs a number of online projects, including The Galloway Raiders, which is the online hub for Scots writer S. R. Crockett. Her latest project to hit the virtual shelves is the #tobelikeche serial, which started in October 2016.
For the archive of Cally’s fiction and drama, follow this link.
For the archive of Cally’s fiction and drama, follow this link.