Mapping Dykes

Hannah Levene

And this is unreal country.
It can be very sinister sometimes.
I don’t know many people who will walk through the fens at night.
I don’t know why.
It may be because of the dykes. (160)

This is a play, and these are the characters. A bunch of dykes.

Car Dyke – a greasy mechanic in mechanics clothes
Cnut Dyke – a dyke who acts just like King Cnut
Hodge Dyke – Old Hodge
Head Dyke - that’s me, Head Dyke. Not Head Dyke like the leader dyke but like the dyke that’s always in her head
Rippingale Running Dyke – whoosh it’s Rippingale Running Dyke and she’s fucking running
Foss Dyke – a dyke named Foss enters on a dyke walk which is like a dyke march but for old dykes to meet out on the fens.                   

Foss: Hey Hodge.

Hodge: Hey Foss, what’s happening?

Foss: What is happening Hodge, I mean really.

Hodge: Oh hey Head. [Head Dyke enters]

Foss: Hey Head what’s happening? I mean really, what’s happening?

Whilst the men work alone at machines the women still go out in gangs. And the dykes? Here they are! It’s early spring. The Fenlands are pinked and yellowed now with broom and nearly heathers and Hodge has just come in from Gislea, that’s you know wink wink nudge nudge that place behind that green door, the fens best shared secret.

Car Dyke’s a Baptist from rebellious stock like all of them like everyone here and if everyone is a rebel here, then who is??? Car says “Do not confuse alienation with loneliness! The menfolk are alienated and alienation is a direct result of capitalism.” Car had met Fisher at the pub over the Suffolk border now that’s not so alienated is it? but in pubs Car passes as a man for womenfolk can’t go pub. They meet on the land for not only does landwork almost unsex a woman, but it generates a further very pregnant social mischief Ah, to landwork!

Where we may be unsexed.
Pregnant only with social mischief!
What labour to bear.
And all the time to tend to it. 

Hodge shrugs WHOOSH there goes Rippingdale Running Dyke. Hodge’s wearing rough old work clothes padded out with newspaper against the wind she’s whistling Flintstones we’re the Flintstones we’re the modern stone age family – in fens lore the dyke is an interesting character: there at the very moment one landscape became another. “There?” Foss is affronted “we were that what bloody changed it!” True, true, the dykes nod, cattling through the fenlands. Dykes turned the fen from wetland to dry land but a fen is not really wet or dry but bothland. Because where ever dykes go they make bothlands.      

Head Dyke: “This really is the pits...” Collective eye-roll Head dyke is somewhat of a downer, all the dykes are downers, dug for that very purpose. “Not so! We were constructed to raise the land!” There goes Car who’s right of course that the dykes made the land rise as the water level fell and still there were eels, eels, eels, always eels. The rebellious spirit morphs through time. It expands to fill the void. Whatever it is and whoever you are fuck u I mean it fuck u. I get it, the dykes shrug. I get it all. Come unsexed women to the land to bear mischief ay ay! Up and rowdy now, gleaning potash ale from the gutters of the pubs they don’t want to go in anyway, the carpet smells like piss and all the men are ugly. Fuck u yeah fuck u too u fucking fuck. It’s organising, though, that turns bellies full of mischief into unionised and rebellious babes. Car and Fisher scribble on beer mats ways of summoning some super dyke to drain the water all the way to everywhere —to raise the land! Car toasts, glass half full of gleaned vodka made of sugar beet, drunk like bees and flies and hawkmoths get to be.

“Ah here’s little Peaty Clay!” “How goes it Peat?” “It isn’t the countryside that makes my life a living fucking hell it is capitalism” says a dyke called Peat. Peat had told Mary Chamberlain how the forces of capital kept local families in the type of abject poverty where the milk comes from the cow already turned. Yoghurt the only culture. The squire curds and welfare state whey. We knew only breeding and trying not to starve, that was our culture, a culture of inventive cookery and ways to stay hidden to hares and the men that thought they owned them. We built stilts to walk with alienated sad clowns all of us disfigured in our tiny clown car feet in whatever shoes we could find life completely focused on not dying, clown makeup packed on to show the neighbours we’re smiling because any weakness gleaned would be too tempting a sign that we could, you know, just all lie down and die. Jesus Christ Peat! Peat could keep talking and talking about how when you think about it this world’s as foul as could be, a living hell not even a big sky can make light of. But Chamberlain hadn’t kept Peat’s part in.

What do the other dykes think? The dyke in charge is Cnut. Let’s hear from her. The others love it when Cnut shows up because she is full of pomp and fun like a mayday parade. Her clothes are not padded with newspaper but with the discarded garlands of past May Queens. She says: though the alms houses and few austere brick-built artisans’ homes testify to the benevolence of the squire. The small, prefabricated council estate on the edge of the village testifies to the benevolence of the welfare state!” To the benevolence of the welfare state! They raise their glasses which are actually their square workers hands cupped and dunked into the fen water which tastes like tiger feet.  

Foss being generally friendly and prone to gathering went along to the weekly woman’s meeting – The Women’s Fellowship – on a Tuesday afternoon. That’s a straight devotional meeting but it does cater for ladies of all denominations and many of no denomination and so being interested in ladies of all denominations and being of no particular denomination (or was it of all denominations?) themself, Foss went along. And at the end all the ladies said see u next Tuesday! And See Next You Tuesday, said Cnut.

Here comes another dyke in a funny old hat. An old man-woman – morphrodite or, to the dykes: Morphroditey, Deity of Dykeland, most honoured guest, and, amongst friends: Old Hat. Hullo Old Hat says Foss, won’t u tell us about Philadelphia again? And Old Hat says: I went away to America and I went to Philadelphia and when I come back I had a house built in the village and I called it Philadelphia. I went to work somewhere, to service, and there was a robbery at this house and I was accused of taking the money. But they never found it. I did time for it. And when I came out of jail, I’d hid all the money in a tree and got it again. I brought the money home and built this house. This Philadelphia. Says Old Hat and “This Philadelphia!” the fen echoes back.

They walk and walk across the land, slurping eel liquor as if it’s oysters. Car’s saying: “And Rose compared their politics to bread – the Tories were for the little loaf, and the liberals were for the big loaf” “for the big loaf!” they all toast hands raise gleaned wine tipping. Car’s saying voting was for a man named Coates, and he said “you know what you have got to do, you have got to vote for Coates” the other chaps said “but I don’t want coats, I want blankets!” and they laugh and laugh. But Little Peaty Clay is getting border and borderer, can’t there be some fun up in the village? There’s nothing to do here but grow up. Big girls at eleven with boyfriends and cigarettes. How’s about we find a sweaty gay bar called The Pits? Start a lesbian social club called Clunch? Seed word of a rave hosted in the grey light of a February fen on a dark moon as far from payday as possible in the dank shrinking peat of strangled tides and call it...and call it...and call it...STARK (STARK)– RAVING (RAVING) – MAD (MAAAAD)? Old Hat is embarrassed that the youngen’s want fun. She is embarrassed that the young want anything at all.  

The dyke walk continues out, out across the fen they grow drunker and rowdier and rowdier still. Hodge is reciting old poems askew, the ones they all know, their voice carries across the flat and lands as if it were next to you:

There’s only one lady bell-ringer / You can tell’er from er shoulder span / You can tell ‘er from ‘er forearms muscley / You can tell ‘er from ‘er calloused hands / Oh but aint that all the women here? / All the mother’s wives and girls? / Well maybe all the women here / Are fit to ring the bells!

.                                             Hurrah!

No there are only two lady bell-ringers in all the fenlands miles / You can tell them from their hair bright and brassy / You can tell them from their polished smiles / Oh but aint that all the women here? / All the girls and wives and mothers? / Oy! We aint the bell-ringing ladies / We’re the bell-ringing lady’s brothers!  

HA-HA!        

OH THERE’S only THREE! Lady bell-ringers / Enough to make a chord / They meet up Sunday mornings to summon all the broads / Soon we’ll need a bell for all them / All the mother’s, wives and girls / When they get to see the fun they’d have / Ringing out the bells!!

.                           Hurrah            Hurrah!
.                                Ha ha!      JEERS and CHEERING IMAGINING BELLS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  

They walk out to the unshifting horizon outlined by steam escaping their pockets of hot potatoes keeping their hands warm and from afar you can just hear Car Dyke telling the end of a well-told joke. And the bartender says to the outsider: you can’t just barge in here! and the outsider says: but how else?