Fan
Fiction based on “Cathy Come Home” Directed by Loach, K. (1969)
‘Tainted
skin in a tainted system’
By Leon
Rakete
“She’s stirring up trouble” barked Betty the Lodge maitre de. “How dare
she accuse our Lodge of being unsanitary, saying it’s making her children
sick,” Betty was fierce with anger. It took Mr Wordswood the manager of Newton
Lodge in Southwark several minutes to calm Betty down. She seemed to be almost
out of breath as she stood in his office, face red with tightened hands. “There
there Mrs Somers, I know you and your
staff work very hard for our residence, providing them with the best of care,” Wordswood’s
words seemed to dissolve in the dusty office air, even his attempt to place his
left arm around Betty’s shoulders to indicate a sense of sincerity was rejected.
She pushed his arm away saying, “I’ve had enough Bob, I really mean it this
time, she’s so ungrateful, after all we’ve done for her and her pesty little hood
rats.”
That morning Cathy had approached one of the Lodge’s staff in the corridor
shortly after the breakfast duties were finished. They had run out of soap, she
had previously requested new bars over a week ago but nothing had been done
yet. “Do you expect us to keep washing our filth off in just hot water? And
what about our clothes? You know we use that soap to wash our clothes as well,”
she said with a sharp tone. Cathy had never really spoken to the staff like
this before, you usually wouldn’t get a beep out of her, but she was tired of
being treated like a slum citizen, being looked down on and frowned upon as
social failure, like it was completely her fault, as if though she wanted to
be crammed into these small lodgings and dependant on welfare.
“Mrs Somers please leave it with me” Wordswood said, “don’t let yourself
get twisted in a knot over these people its not worth it. Any way we’ve just
had a new resident arrive that you can orientate.” Wordswood ushered Betty
towards the reception room where Mrs Sima Shah was waiting with her baby. A
small thin Indian woman sat quietly gently rocking a caramel coloured baby boy.
Her skin had a rich coffee tint, she wore a tattered blue dress, heavy woollen
socks and dated shoes, everything about her seemed a little out of place, beside
her was a big black rubbish bag full of belongings.“Mrs Shah is it?” spoke
Wordswood, “Yes” she replied, gesturing her to come forward, Wordswood with a
smirk on his face said, “Please come in, don’t be shy dear you’ve come to the
write place, we’ll look after you.”
This place had changed Cathy, not having Reg around and barely hearing
from him had made her feel isolated and vulnerable, in reply she had become a
little hardened. Gone were the memories of their nice warm flat in Chelsea, she
had felt the walls of this place move in on her, and though everything in her
had sworn she was not going to be her parents her life was inevitably mirroring
theirs. As a child Cathy recalled how
her family moved frequently, in fact It seemed to be a generational cycle. Her
parents spoke of how they had moved from central London after Cathy’s
Grandparents home was destroyed in the London bombings during the war, first
to the west and then out south London as new housing settlements popped up. They
struggle to find work and were unsuccessful at getting back on their feet, so
they never really settled for very long. Now Cathy struggled with the thought
that perhaps she was the biggest failure of them all.
This place wasn’t just changing Cathy but she had noticed a change in the
other residents, they would come in optimistic even hopeful, but it wouldn’t be
too long before the sparkle would diminish, talks of the future would die down and
cynicism would settle in. Cathy in particular had noticed Sima one of the
immigrant residence starting to isolate herself. On the whole the ladies
generally didn’t mix much with her kind, some of the ladies regarded them as
‘poachers’ and blamed them for the housing shortage. Rumours had surfaced about
a staff member harassing one of the immigrant residences but due to their
second-class status in this place none of the ladies cared much.
It wasn’t till Cathy herself came across Sima in the communal bathrooms
lying prostrate on the floor in tears, Sima’s English was poor but Cathy didn’t
need to understand her language to know something was wrong, she helped her up
and back into her dorm asking her all the way what happened? All Sima would
utter was “Please no say…my baby…no where else to go.” Cathy helped her settle
into bed. Returning to her room feeling agitated and disturbed by what she saw,
Cathy cried herself to sleep that night.
Cathy woke the next day to discover the ladies talking about an Indian
woman who had being evicted in the early hours of the morning. She rushed to
Sima’s room to discover it empty. In the corridor outside the ladies were
saying Wordswood had accused her of accommodating her husband in the night and
kicked her out first light. “Rubbish!” Cathy blurted out, this was the last
straw, she ran down to Wordswood’s office bowling right past the receptionist,
cracking his door open and slamming shut behind her.
She tried to hold her composure but with tears running down her face Cathy
looked Wordswood dead in the face and said “You! It was you.” “Now, now Cathy”
Wordswood replied, “We don’t want any more trouble here today.” Seemingly
unshaken by Cathy’s accusation Wordswood rose from his desk to stand tall over
her, “You know the Lodges protocol on marital arrangements, residence know full
well our policies when deciding on coming to our residence, they agree
to them by accepting our offer of placement, Sima forced my hand by refusing to
abide by these conditions.”
Cathy couldn’t believe what she was hearing, these people were supposed
to be helping them not taking advantage of them. Starring straight past Wordswood façade of
false humility and propriety and ignoring his egotistical stance Cathy
reciprocated, “You preyed on her like a wild beast, exploiting her vulnerability,
she trusted you and you betrayed her,” pausing for a minute to consider the
implications of what Cathy knew could proceed next if she continued down this
path, she realized if Wordswood could get rid of Sima he could easly get rid of
her and her two little ones but it wasn’t right. Considering how the welfare
system wasn’t just failing them but leveraging off them, an indignation rose
inside of Cathy, with fear and trembling she looked Wordswood straight in the
eye and said “I’m not going to let you get away with this.”
Fan Fiction Commentary
With all reality TV there is a blur between what is fact and what is
fiction, and though by nature a fan fiction is purely a fictional retelling or an
addition to an existing canon, I wanted there to still be an element of truth
to this piece to show it still sat in the Reality TV genre. Therefore I spent
some time looking over reviews of “Cathy Come Home,”particuarly reading about
what the writers and producers were trying to achieve with the story, how they
weaved fact and fiction together to communicate a strong message, and the
social awareness agenda they had with the piece.
One review of the film comments on Loach’s reflection saying, “he
realised the drama raised a social issue in the context of personal tragedy but failed to outline the political causes…”
As I looked further in to the debate of what caused the housing shortage many
fingers pointed towards the Rachman administration of 1960. Rachman symbolized
exploitory landlordism and the liberalization of rent control. Further research revealed London housing in the early 30’s and 40’s
suffered greatly because demand was high from the bombing of houses in world
war 1 and the shortage of materials to rebuild. There was also a push to
relocate and establish housing outside of central London, which came to be known
as the ‘London Overspill.’ These new settlements quickly resulted in what was
recognized as the ‘London Overspill Slums,’ caused by rapid unrbanisation and
population growth, creating over crowding and unhealthy living conditions. Alongside
this large-scale immigration from Western India caused significant racial
tension. I wanted to capture some of these contributing factors and bring
awareness to them in my fanfiction.
I decided to create a hero archetype in the Cathy character, I felt the
original film left her quite powerless but in my opinion she was a strong
character and I wanted that to come through some how. I decided to establish a
Antagonist in the character Wordswood who my Hero (Cathy) would eventually have
a face off with at some stage. I wasn’t
too sure why or how this was going to occur but eventually I decided to use the
racial tension happening at the time of the issue to be the vehicle in which a
battle could take place.
We see in the first paragraph Cathy starting to cross the First
Threshold, it’s the first time we see her in conflict with the Villain, it’s at
this moment where she decides shes had enough of her circumstance and feels a
inner call to make a change. This feeling continues to build for her till she
encounters Sima in the bathroom, I would say this becomes a turning point for
her, not necessarily taking her in a new direction but escalating the call to
do something. The story from this point starts to move with some serious
momentum and pushes it towards the climax point.
You never really know exactly what part (if any) Wordswood plays in
Sima’s ordeal but I felt not to label it too much rather leave it to the reader
to interpret how they saw. For me it mirrored the injustice around the broken
welfare system, people were suffering but those responsible seemed to be hard
to pin point, and therefore change seemed to be distant and seemingly
unreachable.
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