Free The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell Page B

Establishment keeps such an iron grip on what’s taught in schools, specially in history. Once the workers wise up, the revolution will kick off. And, as Gil Scott-Heron tells us, it will not be televised.”
    I don’t know who the heron is, but it’s hard to think of our history teacher Mr. Simms as a cog in a vast plot to keep the workersdown. I wonder if Dad’s a bloated boss for employing Glenda. I ask, “Don’t revolutions often end up making things even worse?”
    “Fair point,” says Heidi. “Revolutions
do
attract the Napoleons, the Maos, the Pol Pots. But that’s where the Party comes in. When the British revolution kicks off, we’ll be here with our structure in place, to protect it from Fascists and hijackers.”
    The traffic inches forward; Ian’s van rumbles on.
    I ask, “D’you think the revolution’ll be soon, then?”
    “The miners’ strike could be the match in the gas tank,” says Ian. “When workers see the unions being gunned down—first with laws, then bullets—it’ll be clear that a class-based revolution isn’t some pie-in-the-sky lefty dream, but a matter of survival.”
    “Karl Marx,” says Heidi, “proved how capitalism eats itself. When it can’t feed the millions it spits out, no amount of lies or brutality will save it. Sure, the Americans will go for our jugular—they’ll want to keep their fifty-first state—and Moscow will try to grab the reins, but when the soldiers join in, as they did in 1917 in Russia, then we’ll be unstoppable.” She and Ian are so sure of everything, like Jehovah’s Witnesses. Heidi leans out to look ahead: “Police.”
    Ian mutters about Thatcher’s pigs and attack dogs, and we reach a roundabout where a lorry’s lying on its side. Bits of windscreen are scattered across the tarmac, and a policewoman’s merging three lanes of traffic into one. She looks calm and in control—not piggish or wolfish or on the lookout for a runaway teenager at all, so far as I can see.
    “Even if Thatcher doesn’t trigger the revolution this year,” Heidi turns to say, strands of her raspberry-red hair blowing in the wind, “it’s coming. In our lifetimes. You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. By the time we’re old, society’ll be run like this: ‘From each according to his or her abilities, to each according to his or her needs.’ Sure, the bosses, the liberals, the Fascists, they’ll all squeal, but you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. And speaking of eggs,” she looks at Ian, who nods, “fancy breakfast at our place? Ian cooks a five-star full English.”
    •   •   •
    H EIDI ’ S BUNGALOW ’ S SURROUNDED by fields and isn’t what I’d imagine as Kent’s HQ for a socialist revolution, with its net curtains, cushion covers, porcelain figurines, and Flower Fairies. There’s even carpet on the bathroom floor. Heidi told me it was her gran’s house before she died, but her mum and stepfather live in France somewhere so Ian and she come here most weekends to make sure squatters haven’t moved in and to distribute the magazine. Heidi shows me how to lock the bathroom from the inside and makes a joke about the Norman Bates Motel, which I pretend to get. I’ve never used a shower before—we only have a bath at the Captain Marlow—so I freeze myself and boil myself before I get the water right. Heidi has a whole shelf of shampoos, conditioners, and soaps with labels written all in foreign, but I try a bit of everything till I smell like the ground floor of a department store. When I get out, I see the ghost of letters written in last time’s steam: WHO ’ S A PRETTY BOY THEN ? Did Heidi write it for Ian? Wish I hadn’t lied ’bout my name, now; I’d really like to be friends with Heidi. I smear a bit of Woods of Windsor moisturizer on my suntanned skin, thinking how easily Heidi might have been born in a grotty Gravesend pub, and me the one who’s clever and confident and studying