21st January 2022

Mary ('Call Me Dick, All My Friends Like a Dick') Barton

I don't know what I was expecting but I hardly anticipated a seventy-three year old emeritus professor of microbiology from one of the most eminent Universities on the planet (allegedly) greeting me at Cambridge station with dick jokes.

'Seriously?'

'Are you offended? A man of the theatre?'

'Hardly. The acronyms in the play you sent me may stimulate the blushes of a reclusive nun seeking refuge in the Vatican vaults but I've seen it all.'

'My colleagues called me Dick when I first came to Cambridge. It stuck.'

'As Dicks sometimes do.'

Mary, sorry Dick, had phoned me saying she had finally been sprung from jail. Since it was only overnight I don't suppose it needed to be a very powerful spring. It seems our Mary/Dick is inclined, in her own way, towards the theatrical. 

'When Plod interviewed me they asked if someone could have posted that Tweet in my name without my knowledge. I said if it was without my knowledge, how would I know?'

'Yes, well, you don't go into that profession if you have an intellect.'

'You know what their retort was? 'That's why we have to ask.' I've seen more intelligence in the aphids that demolish my broad beans in the summer.'

'You think we could go somewhere?' I said stamping my feet as if I was in the Arctic. To be fair it was barely above freezing, just past four o'clock and dark.  And there was a brisk easterly slapping on my cheeks as we stood on the station platform.

'Oh yes, how remiss of me. The Station Tavern beckons. Very modern, but a decent pint of Young's and acceptable nosh. Barely a minute's walk.' And she strode off like some sports mistress - probably Lacrosse - expecting her simpering, shivering girls to keep up with her. 

In The Station Tavern Mary held her pint of Young's Ordinary up to the light and snorted approval. 'Clear as a bell, the little darling.' I'm nothing if not unconventional but a seventy three year old woman holding a pint of real ale up to the light and extolling its virtues seemed a little incongruous, even to me. But then, as I was to discover, there was nothing congruous about Mary 'Dick' Barton who was about to put us self-proclaimed literary rebels to shame. 

'The fact that I'm a microbiologist Anthony,' she said as if reading my mind, 'does not exclude me from having more unconventional arrows to my bow.' 

She put the glass to her lips and took a first draught. 'A veritable beauty.'

I can't exactly describe Mary Barton as a little old lady, although she was small in stature. I wouldn't be far off if I suggested she looked like Grace Slick when she was seventy five. (For those of you who don't know who Grace Slick is, you don't know what you missed. Think Woodstock and White Rabbit. Although she's a good ten years older than me she rather dominated my late teen fantasies. Five finger memories came flooding back but I won't go into the intimate details lest I go all Philip Roth on you, so let's get back to Mary.) Mary had dyed platinum blonde hair and was about as raunchy as I imagined a seventy three year old could be. Ten years earlier and we might have got a room.  However that was not why I was here, so engaging in the spirit of the fictional detective  -

'Mary - '

'Dick.'

'Dick - '

'Mankind's greatest achievement. Beer. Benjamin Franklin said it was proof that God exists and wants you to be happy.'

'Apparently that's apocryphal.'

'Ah, the Apocrypha. I can tell you a few things about the Apocrypha.'

'Another time perhaps, I have to get a train back tonight.' 

'Stopped sowing your wild oats eh Anthony? Wait until you get to my age.'

Only a year to go I thought, but didn't say. Best to get this conversation on track because I am, yes, far too old to be getting last trains home. I thought my little segue was rather neat:

'I have an acquaintance who thinks mankind's greatest achievement is his - or her - capacity for self deception.' I was careful to use the female possessive pronoun. Not sure of my territory just yet. 

'I'm going to hazard a guess and say that would be Tanya Parker.'

'I - what?' I coughed and spluttered beer all over my sleeve. That was the last retort I expected. After coming up for air I managed to spit out a question: 'You know her?'

'Well, we've exchanged vicious correspondences over the years. Knew of her when she was at Cambridge, banging the women's working class drum.  Virtue signalling even back then, before it was fashionable. It cut no ice with me, I was in the WRP and burning my bra before she would have known what a pubic hair was.'

'You were in the Workers Revolutionary Party?' 

'Yes but that's another thing we'll leave for some other time shall we? Don't get me started on Vanessa and her visits to Cambridge.'

I thought only theatricals clashed with the Redgraves when it came to revolutionary politics. Clearly I was wrong. Back in the day when I considered myself extremely left wing I did battle with Corin and Vanessa and their entourage at every annual Equity meeting. Still that's twentieth century history. Right now I'm concerned that Mary is spouting a phrase Tanya probably only just uttered a few days ago for the first time. I said so.

'Well she phoned me.'

'She what?'

'She wanted to know when you were coming up to see me. She hinted that you two had made an uneasy alliance since she coined the little ditty about self-deception.'

'Erm, hang on. You knew Tanya when you were teaching - '

'Didn't know her. Knew of her.'

'But you and Pattie - '

'Oh do keep up, there's a dear.' Mary seemed to have adopted the same tone Sharon employed with me when she didn't think I was paying attention. A bit familiar since I've only  known her five minutes. 'Tanya was twenty years behind Pattie at Cambridge. Yes, that's right, I taught there forever. Funny they should hook up in the time of Covid. The biggest load of bulshit this side of the Rubicon by the way.'

'How did you know they hooked up?'

'Pattie told me, when she phoned. Christmas 2020.'

I don't know if it's age but I was finding it increasingly difficult to compute the details. Pattie had never mentioned anything of Mary to me, and I was supposed to have been her closest confidant. I needed clarity.

'Mary - '

'Dick - '

'Dick. Excuse me for being a bit dim but I'm floundering with all these connections. You taught Pattie. And Tanya.'

'I repeat, I didn't teach Tanya. I didn't know Tanya at Cambridge. I just knew of her. She had quite the reputation. I got to know her through correspondence years later when she was writing stuff I severely disagreed with in The Guardian. That's when I used to read it, before it became a garbage sheet.'

'Yes, well. Me too. Anyway - '

But there was no stopping Mary in her flow. It was like I'd lit the blue touch paper and now needed to stand back.

'Tanya get elbowed from The Guardian because she wanted to write about dodgy vaxes.'

'How do you know?'

'I told you, she phoned me. Suddenly I was an ally. Probably because of my link with Pattie. Bloody good job she left the Bill Gates Guardian - for that is what it is -  because it's a nest of bullies. There is nothing liberal about that paper now. It resembles its old self like piranha resembles river salmon. Just over a year back Suzanne Moore got rape and death threats for writing an article supporting feminism against trans ideology. What an age we live in, when you can get death threats for expressing an opinion. That's The Guardian for you.'

'Yeah, but Mary - '

'Dick. This bullying, unless it is stopped, is going to get about as nasty as the Cultural Revolution in China. People are afraid of speaking out because they're afraid of losing their job and not being able to pay their mortgage. Well sod 'em. I don't have a job to lose and they can't take my pension. All this was planned of course.'

'How do you mean planned?' I'm beginning to think I'm not as clued up as I thought I was. 

'What stops people doing things? Fear. Not being able to work, provide for their kids, lose their homes. It's deliberate, it's the most vile form of bullying and people find it acceptable. They probably even feel virtuous. Tanya's observation about mankind's greatest achievement being his capacity for self-deception is not far off the truth. These bullies make the excuse that they don't feel safe. Well, aah diddums. Pity they weren't a post war bloody baby. Who cares whether you feel safe or not, what's the virtue in safety? Although that's all bulshit anyway, because they'll drink themselves silly, smoke till they resemble a chimney and screw random strangers despite getting all sorts of venereal diseases. But that's alright, they feel safe doing that. But say the politically incorrect thing and the little darlings feel unsafe. They're not only bullies, they're liars and cowards. '

'Dick - !' I needed to get her off this roll.

'There's an epidemic of phoney righteousness going on. I'm a retired microbiologist and was an emeritus professor at one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Then I get cancelled from the bloody place because I claimed there was no evidence of a virus, which there isn't. Five hundred years earlier they would have burnt me at the stake.'

I could swear Mary's (I can't call her Dick in these pages) eyes glazed over as if she was considering a terrible justice. In an old movie this is the time she'd light a cheroot before metamorphosing into a super hero like Wonder Woman complete with cape and thigh high boots. (Though I think we should dispense with thigh high boots for someone of Mary's age. It would be about as welcome as an audience seeing me in a G string these days. Yes, I did. I wore one in 'Jericho.' Oh the shame.)

'You were cancelled?'

'Oh boy, was I? I was banned from campus for disputing the evidence of a virus suggesting the jabs weren't a vaccine but genetic therapy.' 

'Presumably you didn't get the jab.'

'Over my dead clitoris. I'm a microbiologist, I'm used to dealing with all sorts of fungus, parasites, pathogens, so I can smell a lying politician a mile off. Particularly when they're exhorting you to take a dubious and untested medical intervention.'

'Let me get this straight: Pattie phoned you the Christmas before last. Out of the blue? After donkey's years?'

'At least donkeys - '

'And in that conversation she mentioned Tanya?'

'Yes, she thought she might become an unlikely ally.'

'An ally in what?'

'How is she these days? Does she still have all the qualities of a stick insect?'

I wasn't sure how to answer that. Is this slight, seventy three year old woman making derisory comments on another woman's appearance?

'Oh come on, I'm not  talking about her physical attributes. I'm referring to other qualities. Some stick insects don't need a mate to reproduce. Tanya produced mini versions of herself all through her time at Cambridge. She had quite the school of acolytes by the time she left. More to the point, a stick insect's exceptional ability is that of camouflage. You never know where they are. That applies to Tanya. I could never figure out what side she was on. Ask yourself: is she the real deal who's crossed the floor or is she just controlled opposition.? She told me on the phone she's been pretty ill. But do we have any evidence of that?' 

Funnily enough, I don't. I've just taken her at face value because she seemed to have joined the resistance. But why would I suddenly take a journalist at face value? I never have before. 

'Tanya told me she knew about you because a fellow agent, Sharon Kozinsky, told her you'd contacted me. But she was at Cambridge when you were there. So she lied.'

'Maybe. But she might not have known me at Cambridge. I only knew of her. It's a big place. Twenty five thousand students.'

'But you exchanged correspondence when she was at The Guardian.'

'Even so, she might not have put two and two together. '

She had a point, but the prospect of Tanya being controlled opposition has thrown me. Not least  because I've never really known what controlled opposition really is or how to identify it. So right now I'm about as confused as a baby in a topless bar. I don't know which way to turn. And I'm certainly wondering what I am doing in a strange bar fifty miles from London. About time I found out by putting the direct question. 

'Mary, why did you get in touch with me?'

She glared at me over her half empty glass but didn't answer. It took me a minute to suss I had to play the game. It's odd when non-theatre people are more theatrical than theatricals. I took a deep breath:  'Dick - ' 

'That's better.'

'So why did you get in touch?' 

'When Pattie phoned me before last Christmas she said she'd met someone else who had the same childhood experiences as her. That happened to be Tanya, which was a bit of a synchronicity given they were both at Cambridge even if they were twenty years apart. Tanya doesn't know I know though.'

'Know what?'

'It's generally something I wouldn't ever disclose but since Pattie is dead - '

'You're losing me.'

'Well, to begin at the beginning…' Mary/Dick seemed to be about to launch into an explanation but instead asked:  'Who said that?'

'Who said what?'

'To begin at the beginning.'

'Dylan Thomas.'

'Wrong. He wrote it. Richard Burton said it. Call yourself a literary agent?'

I feel like I'm in an old cinema where the projectionist has mistakenly cued the third reel before the second. I have no idea anymore what Mary/Dick is getting at. Something of huge import is coming down the line, I can feel it, but I feel like I'm in a Lewis Carroll story where nothing makes much sense. Begin at the beginning, the king said,  and go on till you come to the end and then stop. Well Mary seems to have begun in the middle. 

Apropos of bugger all she suddenly said:  'I saw you wearing a G string once. It was in that rock musical "Jericho" when you'd been captured as a slave and you had that duet with that awful bloke who went on to become a Labour politician. What was his name? Tickler.  I thought you had quite a nice body but I'd swear you'd stuffed a sock down your cod piece.'

Excuse me while I squirm with embarrassment. 

'That was all theatre seemed to be in those days. One rock musical after another. And I'm watching this actor trying to imitate Robert Plant who often seemed to have a snake down his loons. Not a chance I thought. You didn't have Plant's voice.'

'Oh thanks.' 

'Oh you could sing well enough but Plant was an exception. And you could really have done without the accessory in your loins dear.'

Sometimes your history lurks, ready to assault you when you least suspect it. It was the bloody director who made me do that. Katie found it hilarious. 

'I had a knee trembler with Led Zeppelin's drum technician once you know. He stopped me before I could get to Plant's dressing room. It was the price you paid back then for crashing a gig.'

It was pretty incongruous sitting opposite a woman who nearly became Robert Plant's groupie but I wasn't here to trade sexual experiences. 'Dick! I yelled, making sure I used the correct proper noun. 'You're using diversionary tactics!' 

'Yes I am. Because it's all a ruddy great mess with nasty implications.'

'Just tell me!' What childhood experiences did Pattie and Tanya - '

She interrupted: 'Do you know a writer called Martin Spangler?'

'What? Yes, of course. A client of ours.' Knocked sideways once again.

'Pattie wanted me to meet him.'

'Why?'

'I'm an authority on certain things that Pattie wanted Martin to have the  lowdown on.'

'Such as - ?' (It must be a conspiracy of some sort if Martin was being sent to do some research. It still rankled that Pattie told me nothing of all this, but maybe she really was trying to protect me.)  

Again, Mary/Dick didn't answer me directly. 'Pattie asked me to talk to him, but then she died and he went to Denmark. And although it bothered me I didn't  know what to do. And I just let it stew and stew. And then I thought I'd better get in touch with you.'

For  a brief moment I saw the mask of the woman opposite me slip and her face display a genuine anxiety. 

'By sending me a god awful play?'

'I didn't think it was that bad. Maybe I was blinded by my fury. I wrote it after the bastards cancelled me. In actual fact I thought it was a jolly good giggle.'

'No accounting for taste.' (I said it under my breath with my head in the pub menu but she heard me.) 

'Wash your mouth out, you don't have a monopoly on what's acceptable in the theatre arts.'

True, no point in arguing. But I really didn't think the explanation held water

'Actually, the truth is: I needed to gauge your temperature. I didn't know where you stood. Whether you'd be an ally or the opposition.'

'Opposition?'

'I didn't want to end up dead Anthony.'

'Dead?'

'Like Pattie.' I was stunned into silence. Mary looked at me pityingly, as if I was some pre-pubescent naif who had stumbled upon an orgy. 'She was murdered, you do know that don't you?'

'I've never actually been certain.' 

'Well get certain. I didn't want to get involved. My husband was dead against it. He was very much pro the official narrative and didn't want me to get mixed up in anything, shall we say, threatening. But then he died in September and I thought how long do I want to live? On a planet run by evil globalists, murderers and thieves? Does staying silent make me someone who would have stood by in the Holocaust and pretended it didn't happen because I wasn't Jewish? If I wasn't prepared to stand up and be counted, why should I expect anyone else to? So I got in touch with you.' 

I think it was only then, in this Cambridge pub, that the implications of all this finally started to ferment. 'Mixed up in what'. 

'Did Pattie ever mention the film "Eyes Wide Shut" to you?'

'Yes, the night before she died. Why?' I couldn't keep the irritation out of my voice. That bloody film again. 

'That Tweet I got nicked for. Sod the Ragged Assholes. That's code. Effectively I was calling that MP up in Yorkshire a paedophile.'

'How?'

'Sod the Ragged Assholes. SRA. Over the years I'd become something of an expert. Pattie knew.'

'SRA?'

'Satanic Ritual Abuse. I got to be quite an authority. Mostly at  the behest of Pattie.'

'Why at the behest of Pattie?'

'She heard I had an interest n it and confided in me. In her first term.'

'Confided what?'

'That she was a victim of it.'

'Pattie was a victim of Satanic Ritual Abuse? When? '

'Up until she was about fourteen if I recall.'

'And so was Tanya?'

'According to Pattie.' She stared at me for what seemed like forever. I had nothing to say. I couldn't even begin to understand the implications. ‘Are you sure you want to get that train home tonight?’ she added eventually. ‘There’s lots to tell.’