Ken MacLeod - Intrusion

‘Ah!’ Enlightenment dawned on Crow’s face. ‘ That ’s what you’re worried about. I’m so sorry, I was beginning to wonder if you were some kind of Tory infiltrator!’ He laughed. ‘No, you needn’t worry about that at all. Applying this law to home working would be going too far . It’s specifically excluded from the draft bill. Here, let me show you…’

He reached inside his jacket and pulled out glasses.

‘Honestly,’ he said, half to himself, ‘you’d think the branch would have made a better fist of explaining all this to our own members.’

He slipped the glasses on. Hope could see his eyes blink rapidly. A surprised look came over his face.

‘Oh!’ he said. ‘ You’re Hope Morrison!’

‘Yes,’ said Hope. ‘Pleased to meet you, too.’

‘Why didn’t you say so in the first place?’ Crow gave a rueful laugh. ‘Mind you, if I’d known… you’ve no idea of the trouble you’ve caused me. Nearly got yourself into, too.’

‘How?’ asked Hope, taken aback.

Crow passed a hand across his eyebrows. ‘That letter you hand-delivered.’

‘What?’ Hope had that sick feeling of having done something she hadn’t known was wrong, and feeling guilty about it.

‘ Nobody hand-delivers letters. Look, you could have written to me at the Commons, written to my office, heck, you could have posted the letter to the house. If you’d looked me up, you would have seen how to book an appointment – there’s even my personal phone number.’ He tapped the earpiece of his glasses. ‘You’d have got a message, but I’d have got back to you. But hand-delivering a letter without a stamp… we have to treat that as a terrorist attempt. Like the anthrax letters, way back before you or I were born. Standing regulation – I had to call the police, and they had to scan it and analyse it. Wasted a good couple of hours.’

‘Surely a bit of common sense…’

‘Out of my hands,’ said Crow. ‘It’s the rules. It’s the law, come to that. I admit it’s a nuisance, but still…’

‘It makes you feel free, does it?’ Hope asked, tartly.

Crow grimaced. ‘Well, again… freer than being blown up or poisoned. Anyway… I have to admit I was a bit annoyed. I’m afraid that’s why I haven’t got around to replying.’

‘Don’t worry about that,’ Hope said. ‘But now that we’re here, maybe you could tell me what you think.’

‘About your problem?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well…’ Crow took a deep breath, then let his shoulders slump. ‘I don’t agree with your stance, as I understand it, but I can certainly help you with practical matters – finding legal advice, dealing with the Health Centre, that sort of thing.’

‘I’d be very grateful for that,’ said Hope. ‘But I was kind of hoping you could, I don’t know, raise the matter in the House, or something? Because all it would take would be a tiny little tweak to the law, just to make a conscientious objection something that doesn’t need to be justified in terms of belief.’

‘Can’t help you there, I’m afraid,’ Crow said. ‘Personally, I think the exemptions go far too far as it is. And we can’t be seen to pass a law just to get around a judge’s ruling; it’d be interpreted as interference with the independence of the judiciary and the family courts. It would take a complete redraft of the relevant section of the Act, and to be honest, there’s not the slightest chance of any parliamentary time being allotted for that.’

‘You could put down an Early Day Motion,’ Hope persisted. ‘It wouldn’t have to be a law or anything, just… an expression of the sense of the House, isn’t that what it’s called?’

Crow took a step back, frowning. ‘You seem to have this worked out.’

‘I’ve been reading up on parliamentary procedure.’

‘Admirable,’ said Crow, still frowning. ‘So I’m sure you understand the practicalities. There’s no chance of anything getting through before – to be blunt – the matter becomes moot as far as you’re concerned, and in any case, quite frankly, as I said I don’t agree with your objection, and I have a great deal on my plate as it is. So, practical help, as your MP, yes, of course, but otherwise, sorry, no.’

‘Why don’t you agree with it?’ Hope demanded. She rapped a thumbnail on her badge. ‘Doesn’t “Liberty” on that mean anything?’

‘Yes, it does,’ said Crow. ‘As I’ve been trying to explain. Genuine liberty, based on informed choice.’

‘What about my choice?’

‘If you want that sort of choice,’ said Crow, sounding as if he’d lost patience, ‘you can go to Russia.’

Hope stared at him, open-mouthed. ‘That’s totally uncalled for!’

‘I’m not sure it is,’ said Crow, frowning again and blinking rapidly. ‘If you look at the sources of a lot of this sort of so-called libertarian rhetoric, you’ll often find a stack of Russian money behind it. Not to mention Naxal ideological diversionary operations.’

‘Naxal?’ Hope cried, in such a dismayed tone that nearby heads turned.

Crow nodded, then took his glasses off and put them away, with a sudden self-satisfied smile. ‘In any case, I have to go. Do please contact my office for any help we can give you.’

Then, taking her by surprise, he shook her hand, smiled artificially, nodded vigorously, and turned away. He’d disappeared into the crowd, nodding and chatting and glad-handing, before she could gather her wits.

So much for that. Unexpectedly hungry for a snack, Hope wandered over to the stalls. She bought a sugar-free spun-sugar-like confection and chomped into it as she drifted down the line. At one stall she found Fingal, the guy she’d carried the banner with, in earnest conversation with Louise, the young woman who’d joined the flash mob to support her.

‘This is completely insane ,’ Louise was saying. ‘There’s no way the unions have enough power to pressurise employers to take on women rather than just declare their workplaces unsafe, so all we’re doing is just pushing women further back into the home or into small-business employment, where they don’t have any union representation at all!’

‘It’s a question of the balance of forces, innit?’ Fingal explained.

Yeah, thought Hope, you could say that.

Louise leaned forward to reply. Hope couldn’t catch her words, but from her tone it was clear she was giving Fingal a piece of her mind, giving as good as she got. Hope hadn’t the heart to get involved in the discussion. The candy floss suddenly tasted like paper. She tossed it in a bin, sucked her fingers and licked around her lips, careless of how unladylike this looked, and stomped off home.

On the second of May, Geena walked to Hayes for the first time since her interrogation. For weeks now she’d been taking the bus, to and from work. She hadn’t been able to face walking the same roads. But today the weather had cleared and she was feeling better for the day off, though she wasn’t entirely sure why. She hadn’t spent it well.

Her boyfriend Liam had worked the Bank Holiday, leaving Geena in bed. She’d dutifully trudged to the window, waved, and then retreated under the duvet. She huddled there for half the morning, dozing, until she’d really had to pee, and that was what had finally propelled her out of bed. In the bathroom she’d been overcome with weeping, and showered away most of the evidence, applying make-up to the rest. She’d then spent the best part of the day moping around the flat and shutter-shopping in Uxbridge High Street, feeling like a zombie drawn inexorably and inexplicably to a closed mall in an old movie.