Winner 2020 - The Revisionist by Helen Garton

The car delivers me to the Tas Café, a single manned establishment where I buy my first drink of the day. Graham makes the best coffee anyone can from Belizean beans and it’s a short walk from here, along the Holborn Viaduct, to my office in the latest state-of-the-art government building. A single tap at my phone and the car wheezes like an old man before doing a U-turn and taking itself off to the subterranean car park. 

I know Graham’s name only because, after sharing gossip or his latest prediction about which celebrity will be next to marry, divorce, or confess to drug addiction or some other deviancy, he sings ‘you heard it through the Graham Vine.’ Apparently, the original song is an ancient one about a grapevine. He does not, and cannot ever, know my name or anything else about me. For convenience he calls me Henry, a nod to my obvious privilege: I can afford to commute to work in the City and buy a coffee more than once in a blue moon. 

Graham doesn’t look up when I enter. His attention is focused on the wall-mounted screen. Wedged among the back-to-back stories about Queen Charlotte of Scotland and England, the latest royal wedding (Princess Louise finally tired of embarrassing her grandmother by living with the celebrity fitness coach Brian Smith without benefit of marriage), and football results, Broadcast News reports on the public execution of Renée Bloom due to take place today. 

“Not before time,” says Graham. 

“Needle’s too good for her if you ask me,” a reedy voice pipes up from the corner, making me jump. How’s she here before me? Seated at an empty table wearing a shapeless black jumper, her dark woollen skirt is covered with inexpertly sewn patches and brown nylons pool around bony ankles. Her feet are adrift inside a cavernous pair of shoes. She must have arrived with Graham. Perhaps she lives with him or is visiting him at his quarters in Farringdon Underground. Family visits are allowed now, although I hear the carriages grow more cramped every day. I study her features briefly, trying to discern whether or not she might be related. Like him, she is fair-skinned and blue-eyed. Scored across her forehead and around her eyes is a mass of deep creases. Her mask is plain bright red. Graham’s mask is patterned with red skulls on a black background.

“Bloody disgrace of a – not even gonna call her a woman – thing,” says Graham. 

Fighting to stop a huge grin from spreading across my face, I manage a modest nod of agreement: Renée Bloom was a bad lot. She’d been my first case as Primary Revisionist. It hadn’t been easy, but I’d managed a good result, winning myself a promotion and generous pay rise on the back of it.

The three of us watch the recordings we’ve seen dozens of times over the last few months. The newscaster’s report starts with their own drone footage showing two police officers escorting Renée and an emaciated child of about seven out of their mid-terrace home in the Northern Region. Behind them follows a visibly distressed officer. In both arms he’s cradling a black bag – the one we all know now contained the body of a toddler.

The reporter blethers for a bit, then shows the mobile phone video that had gone viral a few weeks earlier. Within minutes, social media had spotted that it was the same woman in both recordings. In the amateur recording shown by Broadcast News with apologies for the quality, the woman everyone knows now is Renée Bloom and who looks to be in her late thirties (she’s twenty-five), is causing a commotion outside a supermarket. Crying, wailing, waving wildly with her bare, stick-thin, arms, she’s screaming at the security guard. Through her close-fitting black mask, you can hear the guard clearly say, “Sorry. You missed your slot.” 

Renée’s words are subtitled because her voice is distorted, perhaps because of her floral-patterned mask or the fact that she is screaming. 

“Bite me, fat arsed bitch! I’ve effing walked two miles, you loser slob.”  

“Not my problem, ma’am. You’ll have to wait for your next slot like anyone else.”

“I’m bigger than you!” 

Following this non sequitur, the anonymous videographer zooms in on Renée’s face. Her eyes are dull. The pink skin of her skull peeks through thin, wispy hair. The guard turns her back on her, waving on the elderly man at the front of the queue who disappears into the shop without being asked twice. The people who are standing in the line are either silent, looking down at their phones, or talking quietly into their mics – no doubt relaying the drama being played out in front of them. 

The guard half turns and speaks to the woman over her shoulder: “Imagine if we let everyone in who missed their slot. The whole system would collapse.”

“Are you kidding?  The staff are screwing the system.”  

“It’s your civic duty to attend your slot on time. Now move along, lady. You are distressing my customers,” the guard says, wheeling her massive arms in the air, motioning the queue to move along one step.

The video ends with Renée stumbling away from the shop. 

On the day the supermarket video was detected by the Security Surveillance team, my boss threw the case over to me, inviting me to take the lead. The message from the top was clear: left to go viral, the video would make our independent island nation look a dismal failure on the world stage once the details of Renée Bloom’s story became known. She’d lost her husband to Covid-91six months prior. Being a virus carrier, she’d lost her respectable job in accounting and ended up on the Dig Food for England scheme, one of the initiatives rolled out under the Work for Benefits Act. Our primary goal: nix any chance Renée Bloom might have of garnering public sympathy. 

I’d taken charge of the re-scripting – that’s my specialty. I had Beth perform it under my direction, then Tim engineered the audio revision. He layered Beth’s voice over Renée’s so that even her own family and friends couldn’t be certain it wasn’t her voice. 

Within hours, our version was circulating social media hundreds of times more than the original. When the drone footage emerged and was plastered all over the Broadcast News site, I sent Harvey out into the field to take photographs from inside Renée Bloom’s home with strategically placed bottles of vodka in one shot, rubbish strewn across the floor in another. A word from our boss in the ear of the politically ambitious Northern Police Commissioner and Renée faced charges relating to the death of her youngest child. 

“Will you be watching later?” I ask Graham. 

“If it’s not too busy in here,” he says with a wink and places a plastic cup on the counter in front of me. Its contents are very dark brown. “Milk shortage,” he says with a shrug. “Might be some in tomorrow.”

“Still fifty quid, though?” I tap on my phone to transfer the money before he answers

“Not if it were up to me, Henry, but I don’t make the rules.”  

Outside, the snap of my leather soles on the concrete pavement resounds in the crisp morning air. The streets are still quiet, with the arrival of just a scattering of more Underground residents opening up stalls, emptying bins and sweeping up rubbish. 

At the glass entrance I stand still for the body scanner, then wait for my temperature reading to display. The green light flashes, I push the door open, wipe my feet, take off my gloves and wash my hands with a generous squeeze of the antiviral gel. My pocket watch sets off the metal detector, as it always does. The security guard sighs loudly, shifts from her stool and lumbers over. I take the offending article from my waistcoat pocket and show it to her. After a cursory pat down I’m free to make my way to the lifts. The lift bell echoes into the marbled atrium, the doors slide open with a shoosh and I step inside.

 “Good morning, Revisionist,” says a disembodied voice as the doors close.

My office is on the tenth floor. I shut the door behind me, remove my mask and take a deep breath. I call up the Renée Bloom file. It’s something I feel duty bound to do before every execution that results from a case I’ve worked on. I no longer try to dredge up a nugget of truth that might serve as justification – capital punishments serve the will of the people but are never justifiable. I’ve realised that while I act out of duty to my country, these actions belong to me and it is my conscience that is stained by their consequences. To refuse to witness them is cowardly, so I stand alone in front of my computer and face the truth. 

I run the two versions of the viral footage side by side. There’s Renée, sweating and panting, late for her shopping slot. She doesn’t mention it, but we know she missed the previous two as well. The manager at the agribusiness where Renée was assigned has consistently refused workers permission to leave even five minutes before the end of their shift. It’s not an uncommon practice.

In the original version, both Renée’s voice and the guard’s are clearly audible.

“Sorry. You’ve missed your slot.”

“By three and a half minutes! Anyone leaving work to make a slot, loses their job.” 

She is desperate – not irresponsible, feckless and abusive.

“Not my problem, ma’am. You’ll have to wait for your next one like anyone else.”

“I’m begging you!”  

She’s not an unhinged weirdo. She’s a mother whose children are sick with hunger. 

“Imagine if we let everyone in who missed their slot. The whole system would collapse.”

“I have two kids. They’re starving due to the system.”

“It’s your civic duty to attend your slot. Now move along, lady. You are distressing my customers.” 

Renée steps away, her unsteady gait not due to drink, or drugs but rather hunger, fatigue and crushing defeat. Two agents arrive to put her into the back of their truck. Lighter than either of them anticipated, Renée lifts up high and fast, like a toddler between two parents. 

I turn off the screen and sit for a while. The rest of the team will be in soon and we will gather round to watch the live broadcast. Renée will be offered the chance to say some final words. She will remain silent – they all do. They’re always heavily sedated before being brought in front of the camera. And that will be that – the state-sponsored ending to the Renée Bloom story.

My screen blinks on again with the arrival of a new file. I watch the latest recording to have fallen through the holes in our online capture net. The streets are familiar – this one’s happened here in London and not far from our building. The subject’s face heaves into view. His eyes and mask are familiar. He’s on his knees, screaming at the paramedics who are standing nearby, their arms folded across their chests. They are waiting to take the old woman once he’s given up pumping her chest. They would help if he had medical insurance but that’s a luxury afforded only by the super-rich and government staff. 

I find myself humming as I set to work. I don’t know the words to the old tune that’s sprung to mind. I only know it’s a song about a grapevine.