Mary Lee Settle

Celebration

1986. Hutchinson, 1987.

The full moon flooded Regent's Park and made shadows under the trees like some false day. At the most exotic of the Nash terraces, the one said to have been inspired by Mrs. Fitzsimmons but named for Lady Hester Stanhope, two shadows jumped down into an empty areaway. They forced open a window that had not been opened in years into a long-disused kitchen...Fifty people, including four small children and a baby, crossed it silently into the house

It is 1969 and the house being squatted is part of a fictional terrace that has been deserted since the war. The event quickly makes the headlines and Teresa Cerrutti, an American anthropologist staying at a flat in Primrose Hill, goes down there one evening, hoping to talk to them.

Six stories up among the pinnacles above the classic roof facade, behind the balustrade of rain-streaked gods and nymphs and satyrs, a line of dirty London putti stood in the rain and chanted to the sky over Regent's Park, "No. No. No. We won't go"...In the distance, the roofscapes of Stanhope Terrace and the London Mosque made an eastern sky vista of roofs, pinnacles and domes. Night lights and car lights made the gold dome and the rain puddles gleam

Once inside she discovers that the original 'peaceful hippy' occupation is now dominated by a hardline anarchist group with a very different agenda, and is glad to make her escape.

It had been raining again a little, only enough to make the pavements shine. There was faint mist from the lake in the park...It gentled the shapes of the towered terraces and blurred the street lamps as if she had lost some precision of sight