You remembered her from the most beautiful city on earth, she’d been friends with Kate Waddington, goth girlfriend of Steve Gratton, the surly drummer from the anarcho group Prisoners of Freedom, as well as of Dawn, the soon-to-be Jehovah’s Witness wife of Chris Palmer, the former king of the mods. Then she’d gone out with Wayne Kilburn, Captain Punkwash, now a London coach driver, who had been besotted with her, sitting on the floor next to her in his room at number 4 Railway Place, smiling beatifically and stroking her calf, dreamily staring into space, although she’d later tell you oh, Wayne, no, I never really went out with him, he was just my companion. After that there had been Taff, the obnoxious middleclass punk with his trademark sideways Mohican hairdo who remembered you with a sneering cynicism from school, where his mother had been head of English, and who really must have thought he’d won the lottery when he briefly got with her. And the three of them, her, Dawn and Kate, walking down from the top of Milsom street with you to the Hat & Feather on Walcot Street one Friday night, complaining about men, but saying that you were OK, you were different, you weren’t like that at all, you were Ted Neutral, thinking that you would take this
as a compliment.
After that, you didn’t see her for a long time, you ran away to Wiltshire for love and the vegan revolution, and she went to Swansea for university, where she met Mr. Anarchy, who later befriended you once you’d run away again, this time to Hackney, and so it came to pass that the three of you got a council flat together, after Mr. Anarchy had split from his wacky French girlfriend when he’d told her that he wanted an open relationship because it was just more anarchist and free, and he’d had to move out of her place. The flat you got together was on the 20th floor of a tower block on a run-down estate that was a local hub for pirate radio and crack houses, on what would later be described by Tony Blair as a sink estate, it was hard to let and so you were only on the waiting list for about three months, it was designated as 2/3 bedroom because the larger bedroom had a wall splitting it in two that ended three quarters of the way down the room, where there was a sliding door. The previous occupant had attempted to burn himself alive and the walls were covered with soot and smoke damage that had been hastily painted over with white undercoat by the council, and you moved in, and you painted it again, and you covered the paint with old posters of punk gigs and fringe political demonstrations from recent history, all of the walls and the ceilings too, the ceiling of your own room crimson and splattered with white, because of your harebrained theory that waking to this each morning would make hangovers truly unbearable, and would thus lead to you stopping drinking so much.
She split her time between Hackney and the most beautiful city on earth, because of a boyfriend she had there, but she soon got a boyfriend in the capital too, a scrawny and taciturn manic depressive named Ian who was involved in something called the Spanner Campaign, a legal struggle concerned with a court case about gay men and consensual BDSM practices, and so you got to know her a little better during the remainder of her short time on this earth. The ceiling of your bedroom hadn’t curtailed your death drinking one bit, and there was at least one embarrassing incident that you could remember, but you managed to patch things up with her, and the last time you could recall speaking with her for any length of time had been on a day trip to Brighton in the summer of 1995. It had been something of a gift in retrospect, Mr. Anarchy had a part-time job driving for and taking care of Carlo, a man with Cerebral Palsy from Stamford Hill. This gave him access to a van, and one day, you’d all driven down to the coast: you, her, Mr. Anarchy, Carlo and his girlfriend, who one of Mr. Anarchy’s women had once mocked when she’d asked, what’s führer mean? You coming off of a heavy week-long bender, swigging from a cheap bottle of wine on the seafront, Mr. Anarchy and Carlo and his other half making their way along the promenade in their fully-equipped wheelchairs in the summer heat that wasn’t quite warm enough to be as uncomfortable and oppressive as it would routinely become in later years, after climate change had truly taken hold, something that she would miss out on; then you and her, the wine all gone, retreated to a café and talked about all and everything, both of you all smiles and amazed to be alive in this place on this day and in this little piece of peace. Yes, it had been a gift, that afternoon, that moment in time in the café with all the doors and windows flung open to let in the salty air and the sea breeze, it had been almost as if you both knew what was coming, and you would later tell a psychotherapist specializing in alcoholism and bereavement, it wasn’t as if there were things I wished that I’d said to her, I think we said everything we needed to say on that day and in that place.
And later, in September, in the September of 1995, early one weekday morning, in the hard-to-let 2/3 bedroom flat in the Hackney tower block, the knock on the door from the police. You are anarchists, you are naturally wary of the police, the working class hired by the middle class to protect the middle class form the working class, all that malarkey, and as well as a front door you have a sort of a prison door, a security gate painted red, your front door painted black, black and red, the colours of the anarcho-syndicalists in the Spanish Revolution of 1936, and Mr. Anarchy is speaking to them through it, not really wanting to let them in, and they are asking him does a Miss Emma Cray lives here? but he still doesn’t want to let them inside, what’s this about? he’s asking them, and they’re saying it might be better if we came inside, sir, and so eventually he does let them in, and they stride into the sitting room, and one of them says again, does a miss Emma Cray live here? and you say yes, and the policeman says well, she’s been in a road traffic accident this morning, and I’m afraid that she’s died. There is a silence then, a stunned silence. You wait for it to pass, and then you say, aren’t you supposed to ask people if they want to sit down before you say something like that? and the policeman mumbles something that may or not be an apology, and you look at the policewoman who’s with him but she’s only looking down at her shoes. The policewoman may or may not be WPC Sarah Skinner, who you will later meet at the inquest, who you will later learn tried desperately to revive Miss Emma Cray as she lay prone at the side of the road, at the junction of Burdett Road and Bow Common Lane to the east, reaching out for the railings after a fully-laden thirtyfive tonne tipper truck had driven over her back. The policeman says something else, something you will never be able to recall, and then the pair of them leave, the prison gate clanging behind them as they go. Fuck, says the woman who had once laughed at Carlo’s other half for not knowing what führer means, once the police have left, saying it from a futon bed on the floor of the sitting room, a duvet pulled across her chest to preserve her modesty, because Mr. Anarchy has converted one of the 2/3 bedrooms into storage space for his punk rock and anarchy merchandise business. Fuck, she says again, but Mr. Anarchy isn’t saying anything at all, and that night he will sleep with Miss Emma Cray’s favourite dress, alone.
Miss Emma Cray had been cycling to work, down Burdett road, to work in Greenwich, where a woman who once babysat her has a business importing art sculptures and curios from Southeast Asia. You are all of you proselytising cycling enthusiasts, as well as being the quickest way to get around town there’s something about cycling around a major city that chimes and dovetails neatly with the vegan anarchist revolution, and freedom, as well as its clear superiority to being stuck on a bus or in a traffic jam or in a rickety old tin can half a mile under the busy streets, and all of the other obvious environmental aspects. At the junction of Burdett Road and Bow Common Lane, on the left hand side of the road, is a combined lane for turn left and straight across, and Miss Emma Cray is sitting at the red light, waiting for it to turn to amber and then to green, so that she can get to work, she is sitting beside the fully-laden thirty five-tonne tipper truck waiting for the lights to change, and then they do, but she is going straight ahead and the fully-laden thirty five-tonne tipper truck is turning left, only she either hasn’t noticed this, or else she thinks she can get ahead of the fully-laden thirty five-tonne tipper truck, that its driver will surely notice her, but he doesn’t, he cuts across her and he drives over her and he still doesn’t notice, s passer-by has to jump up on his footplate, screaming and banging on his passenger-side window with her fist, before he applies the brakes and he comes to a dead stop, Miss Emma Cray reaching out for the railings from beneath the fully-laden thirty five-tonne tipper truck as she begins to die, as she begins to leave this world, as she begins to enter the next, whatever the fuck that might mean.
The problem is the mirrors, the problem is the blind spot, because there is a blind spot all along the side of the fully-laden thirty five-tonne tipper truck, the driver can see outside his passenger side door and he can see the rear of the truck, but he can see hardly anything at all along its length. The problem could have been remedied by the simple fitting of a smaller mirror, set at an angle at the top of the existing nearside mirror, but, as you will learn at the inquest, this is not a legal requirement: and why are these mirrors not routinely fitted? the coroner asks a police witness at the inquest, and the police witness replies, well, money, I suppose. This may or may not be the same policeman who failed to ask you whether you wanted to sit down before he delivered his devastating news, but you cannot be sure, becaus they all wear the same clothes, they are very much like anarchist punks in that respect. It’s also related during the inquest that in the pocket of Miss Emma Cray’s jacket was found a broken bottle of Rescue Remedy, which is a herbal remedy, which is a five-flower combination remedy, designed to be used during times of stress or upset, to stabilise the emotions, which Miss Emma Cray had been using to alleviate symptoms of pre-menstrual syndrome, but this was quickly dismissed, this wasn’t the cause, the cause was the mirrors, the cause was the partial ineffectiveness of the mirrors, the cause was the law. Another fact that comes out during the course of the inquest is that the fully-laden thirty five-tonne tipper truck shouldn’t have turning left onto Bow Common Lane at all, Bow Common Lane is a quiet residential street and larger vehicles aren’t supposed to use it, but they do anyway, because it makes up part of a shortcut to a landfill site in Kent. Outside the inquest, drunk at 9:30am, is a middle-aged woman who is ranting, she appears very distressed, she is possibly the witness who jumped up on to the footplate of the fully-laden thirty five-tonne tipper truck to make it stop, you are not really sure, but Mr. Anarchy has no time for her, none of you do, you are all very distressed.
The next day, the day after, you cycle down with Mr. Anarchy to the chapel of rest at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, to see her for the last time. A nurse asks if you are ready and you both nod, and you walk inside together, you see her and you are stopped in your tracks, you can’t move any further. She is on the other side of the room, it’s a very small room, she is on a cot and is covered to the shoulders with a white sheet. Her skin appears yellowed, her veins have been filled with formaldehyde or some other preserving chemical that gives her the temporary appearance of jaundice. On the wall behind her head is a large Christian cross, the dead Jew on a stick, and you look sideways at Mr. Anarchy to see whether he is tut-tutting, because Miss Emma Cray is a Buddhist, but Mr. Anarchy isn’t tut-tutting at all, he’s only staring straight ahead, in the corners of his eyes a liquid that you don’t quite recognise. Then you attempt again to step forward, to get closer to her as you are seeing her for the last time, but as you do you so your legs buckle at the knees, they go from under you, you cannot make it any further and you collapse and you start to cry, and Mr. Anarchy catches you as you fall and he spins you around and he carries you outside, where he sits you down on a low wall and neither of you say anything for some time, although time is not really passing, no, not really, time has ended now. But eventually, when the flow of your tears has begun to subside a little, Mr. Anarchy puts a hand on your shoulder and he says, well, she did it, she melted the iceman, and they said that it couldn’t be done.
Walking back through the grounds of the hospital, you run into the brother of Miss Emma Cray, along with his boyfriend, his boyfriend who heard the call, the details of the RTA at the junction of Burdett Road and Bow Common Lane on the morning of the previous day when all time stopped, because he works on the switchboard for the London Ambulance Service, fucking weird, man, he tells you, fucking fucked up. The brother of Miss Emma Cray is unable to speak, he has become physically catatonic since the events of the morning of the previous day, a situation that will continue for at least a full week. Then you and Mr. Anarchy cycle away from the Royal London Hospital, but you don’t go straight back to the Hackney tower block, no, you cycle a little way east to the site of the death of Miss Emma Cray, to the junction of Burdett Road and Bow Common Lane, where you stand in silence for some time, your hands desperately clutching the railings, staring into space, your fists squeezing the green paint of the railways so that your knuckles turn white and your circulation is almost cut off, and there are more tears, and then you do cycle back to the Hackney tower block, and it is an angry cycling, one that is both aggressive and defensive, it is a cycling style that will stay with you for some time, for years, one that says, come on then, do you think that you can fucking take me as well, you bastards? and the motor vehicles somehow know to give you a wide berth, at least for a while.
And each morning after that, you return to the junction of Burdett Road and Bow Common Lane at the same time, and you bring flowers and messages to tie to the railings. Mr. Anarchy daubs something in white spray paint onto the road as a warning to errant anduncareful motorists, you are doing a short course in desktop publishing and you find a black and white photograph of Miss Emma Cray receiving an award, and you write something appropriately poetic over the top of it and you paste it onto hardboard and you cover it with clear sticky-backed plastic to protect it from the weather, and you drill holes along its edges and you take it down to the junction of Burdett Road and Bow Common Lane and you affix it to the railings with Garden Plant Tie Wire, where it will stay for a full year, until either vandals or Tower Hamlets Council employees remove it and take it elsewhere and dispose of it. And one time, Mr. Anarchy has driven Carlo and his other half and the rest of you down there in Carlo’s van so that Carlo can see the site of Miss Emma Cray’s leaving this earthly plane, and as you are driving away again you see, standing by the side of the road, Uté Liner, another of Mr. Anarchy’s women, looking very bereft, and you stop for her. She’s walked down here from her flat on Hackney Road, wanting to see the site as well but unable to face it, and you drive her back to her flat Mr. Anarchy nods at a couple of junkies who are walking along Mile End Road and he says, look at those fuckers, how is it fair that our Emma is gone and they’re still just walking around, as if life were fair in any way, as if dispensing with them might bring Miss Emma Cray back, and then they are gone.
The funeral is a Buddhist service that takes place at Haycombe Cemetery and Crematorium in the most beautiful city on earth, but you are late and you miss the first half of it, you are urging Mr. Anarchy to hurry up but he says, it’ll be fine, we’ve got plenty of time, and you do make good time, but then, taking a shortcut off the A46 between the M4 motorway and the most beautiful city on earth, down a country lane towards Wick, you get stuck on the narrow road behind a tractor and trailer stacked with hay bales, you get stuck behind it for what feels like forever, and when you finally get to the Haycombe Cemetery and Crematorium the service has already begun. You walk in and you stand and sit at the back and you listen to a Buddhist nun describing concepts and practices you could not possibly understand, not even on another day, and afterwards, outside, you nod a cursory hello to Claire Grainger from the Smartpils, neither of you knowing quite what to say, and then you chat quietly with Matthew, the boyfriend from the most beautiful city on earth, and you tell him about your daily ritual down by the railings at the junction of Burdett Road and Bow Common Lane, wondering out loud whether it’s somehow Buddhist in and of itself in some roundabout way, and he nods, and he says that it’s nice, and he asks you how long you intend to keep doing it for, and you tell him, well, forever, I suppose, it shouldn’t end, and he says, but it has to, Ted, it’s sad but it has to, and then you leave and you drive to the A4 trunk road, intending to take in a detour, to Avebury in Wiltshire, for the stones and for Miss Emma Cray, and there are more tears and you all clutch one another, and then darkness falls and you are out of there.
On the first Friday of every month, in the capital, there is an ad-hoc cycling demonstration to temporarily reclaim the streets and imagine a world without cars. It has no rules and no set route, everyone meets outside the National Theatre down by the river, at Waterloo, and off you go, it’s anarchy in practice, no laws and no leaders, and a couple of hundred people regularly attend. And so Mr. Anarchy makes some arrangements, he speaks with the nominal organisers, and a month or two later an increasing throng of what will eventually amount to a thousand cyclists ride from Waterloo to the junction of Burdett Road and Bow Common Lane. It’s dark when you all get there and there are a few candles and other illuminations, mostly bicycle lights, and on a given signal, one thousand bicycles are raised into the air and held there, and the unspoken sentiment bounces around your head, never again. Meaning, this should not happen again, this utter waste of such a very precious life; meaning, we shall not see her like again, Miss Emma Cray. And then one thousand cyclists, angry and otherwise, disperse into the night. Later, Mr. Anarchy is interviewed on local radio by Fi Glover, and he tells her, it’s a war out there; and it is, it really is.
After that things get quieter, incrementally and over time: nothing quite evanesces, nothing is forgotten, but you recall an interview with a famous comedian, about bereavement, in which he says that it never gets easier as such; over time, over the years, you might think about it less often, but when you do, it’s as powerful as it ever was, it’s still a gut-wrencher, and you have to stop and remember how to breathe. From time to time you think that you see her, and you read somewhere that this is not uncommon, that it’s somehow natural, as if that helps.
One time, you are waiting at the perilous junction of Rosebery Avenue and Grays Inn Road,
standing there astride your trusty old war horse, waiting for the lights to change so that you can speed ahead of the traffic that’s waiting behind you and circumnavigate the bus stop on the other side of the busy junction and survive another day, and you are so sure that it’s her, astride her own trusty old war horse, waiting for the lights to change on the other side, in the opposite lane, but when you get closer you see that it isn’t her at all, it’s a young woman on a bicycle who wears similar clothes to those she would have worn, and then she’s past you and through the lights, heading into Clerkenwell. Because she’s gone, she really is gone, Miss Emma Cray.
