Canvey Island (24 page)

When it came to my turn, and I was accused of invasion, assault and giving false evidence, the women stuck their fingers in their ears and started ululating so the charges could not be heard.

‘This is the law of the land,' the magistrate announced.

I told him that no person should have to live under laws to which she has not personally given her express consent.

The women cheered.

‘I ask you to be silent or you will go down for contempt.'

‘We believe in the sovereignty of the people,' I said.

The judge replied, ‘I have one sovereign and I am grateful to say that it is not you. You are faced with three charges. How do you plead?'

‘I do not need to plead.'

‘I think you will find that you do. I repeat that I would rather not have to add the charge of contempt.'

‘I'm not going to beg. I have done nothing wrong.'

‘That is for the court to decide.'

‘I know in my heart that anything I have done I have done out of love for my fellow woman, and even, dare I say it, for my fellow man. Such is my love for humanity I have even done it for you.'

The police gave evidence, told the magistrate that I had trespassed on to MOD land, obstructed vehicles, kicked a police officer and given a false name: Emily Wilding Davidson.

‘Wasn't that the woman who threw herself under the king's horse?'

I was almost impressed that the judge knew. ‘I understand that you have been a teacher,' he said, ‘and I imagine that one day you might like to return to your profession. I will therefore be lenient. We ask you to enter into recognisance and to keep the Queen's peace for the next twelve months for the sum of twenty-five pounds. Are you willing to accept?'

‘What do you mean, “keep the peace”? That is what I have been doing.'

‘The law must be upheld,' said the magistrate.

‘Surely, I am the one keeping the peace: not you.'

My friends began to sing ‘Give Peace a Chance'.

‘I understand that to be a refusal.'

‘I'll keep the peace but I will use my own definition.'

I was on a roll, performing more to my friends than answering the questions put to me, and I believed I was invincible. But then I heard a voice interrupting me.

‘I will pay her fine, your honour.'

‘And who are you?'

‘Her husband.'

‘Then I pity you,' said the magistrate.

The women began booing.

‘He will not pay the fine,' I said. ‘I will not let him. I'd rather be
in prison.' I turned to Martin. ‘If you pay then the money goes to the Ministry of Defence.'

‘I have already written the cheque.'

‘Shame,' sang the women. ‘Shame on you, shame on you.'

‘I've collected Lucy and we're taking you home,' said Martin.

‘Shame,' continued the women. ‘Shame on you, shame on you.'

‘I assume you still believe in a democracy. Even if you want to stay it's two votes to one.'

‘Don't do this to me, Martin. I thought you understood.'

‘I have to do this.'

‘We say no,' shouted the women, ‘we say no.'

But Martin was adamant. ‘We're leaving. Our family. Together.'

I was so tired.

‘Lucy's already in the car.'

I started to follow my husband.

‘Come back, Claire,' Abby called out. ‘We love you. We need you.'

Driving out of the car park, I could hear Kate singing:

Show me the country where bombs had to fall,
Show me the ruins of buildings once so tall,
And I'll show you a young land with so many reasons why
There but for fortune, go you or go I …

As soon as Martin had gone, I couldn't do anything. I smoked and drank and stared at the walls. Then I wrote down everything we had done in my notebook: where we had walked, what we had eaten, and how we had made love. I wondered if I could keep repeating those days in my head until Martin came back so that I would not have to live in the real world at all. I kept going over what he had said. When I stood up it was only to move across the room and sit down again. I had the record player on continual repeat so there was endless Billie Holiday.

When I did manage to go out I found that all the music in the pubs and supermarkets on the island was aimed directly at me. It was always the Communards singing ‘Don't Leave Me This Way' or ‘Never Can Say Goodbye'. I kept thinking of the questions that needed answering. How could Martin have made love to me that morning already knowing that he had to leave? Perhaps that was why it was so tender. But in that case why did he need to go? Why couldn't he stay? His wife had left him and got herself into this mess.

If I could at least have talked to him everything would have been easier to bear but I didn't even know his address. I tried Directory Enquiries but his wife was a teacher and so they'd obviously gone ex-directory. Bitch.

I couldn't wander round Brighton hoping to bump into him. But that's what he had done to me. All right, he had asked Ade, but he had staked me out like a private detective. If he needed me so much and he was happy when we were together, I didn't see
why he had to go at all. He could just have sent his wife some money.

I tried to pretend that he hadn't really gone, and he would be back at any minute. He would sort things out at home and return. How could he leave me twice? He couldn't be that heartless.

When we got home, Martin bundled us out of the car and said that he would unpack everything. ‘You both need good long baths.'

I could see that it was going to be difficult to be the three of us again. I could hear Martin being especially nice to Lucy, running her bath, leaving presents in her bedroom, and making sure it was warm. His blatant bribery made me even angrier.

‘Let me know,' he called, ‘when you'd like to ask me about how I am, whether I still have a job, and how I've been coping without you. My life is as nothing compared to your great project, but it does, in its small insignificant way, have a bearing on how we decide to bring up our child.'

‘Oh fuck off, you pompous prig,' I said. ‘Just fuck off.'

‘Don't you tell me to fuck off. I saved you from prison. I've looked after you. And now I'm going to look after our daughter. Which is a damn sight more than you've been doing.'

I had never seen him so irritable or aggressive. ‘She's happy. She's fulfilled. She's alive. She has seen what matters in the world.'

‘She should be at school. I should have thought a teacher like you would have appreciated that.'

‘Of course I know that.'

‘Daddy!' Lucy called. ‘I'm ready to get out now.'

‘Coming!'

‘I'll do the supper then,' I said.

‘I've left some things out. It's ready.'

‘Good. Then I'll have a bath myself.'

Hot water. Space. My own towels. I was amazed by the affluence
of our home: the size of the bath, the waste of water, taps left running. There was so much food and so much stuff in the cupboards. I could see that Lucy was happy to be back in her bedroom, talking with her My Little Ponies, brushing their hair and arranging their dream castle. I remembered her saying when she was feeling tired and upset that she just wanted normal parents.
Well
, I thought,
here is our chance to be normal again
.

Later that night, when we were in bed, I said I was sorry for the things I'd said, and how I'd let Martin down, and how I would try to be better at everything and that I did love him.

‘Even if I am a fucking pompous prig?'

‘Yes, even if you are a pompous prig.'

I couldn't get used to the idea of being in my own bed. ‘I'm sorry,' I said. ‘I'm sorry if my going away has made it hard for you.'

‘It's all right,' he said but I couldn't tell what he was thinking.

‘Is something wrong?'

‘No,' he said. ‘Nothing's wrong.'

‘Tell me.'

‘No. It's nothing.'

‘Then look at me,' I said. ‘It's too dark.'

‘Tell me.'

‘I missed you, that's all. It's so long since we've been together.'

‘It doesn't feel right?'

‘I'm not used to it.'

‘We need time, Martin.'

‘I'd forgotten how, I don't know, ordinary it felt, to lie here beside you.'

‘Ordinary? That doesn't sound very exciting.'

‘Perhaps we've had enough excitement.'

‘We've been through so much, Martin. Let's not try to force it. Think of all that's happened and how much we mean to each other. I couldn't have done any of this without you.'

‘You could.'

‘No. I'm not sure if I could,' I said. ‘I'm not sure if I could do anything without you.'

Of course I couldn't phone him when I wanted. In fact, I couldn't phone him at all, and so I was always waiting. Even when we did get to talk, it was impossible to speak about what really mattered. I couldn't see his face, I couldn't tell what he was thinking and I didn't ever know if I was saying too much or too little.

I lived a suspended life: reading without remembering what I had read, looking without seeing, hearing without listening. Ade came round because he hadn't seen me for a while. He said I wasn't looking so good (thanks, Ade) and that I should put a stop to it all before I got hurt. I told him it was too late for that.

Then he announced that the first affair in a marriage is the one that doesn't last: people sometimes have two or three affairs before the eventual break-up, didn't I know that?

‘You want to be the last-affair girl, not the first.'

‘How do you know I'm the first?'

‘I don't. But Martin isn't the type to play away.'

‘Then what's he doing with me?'

‘You're the exception. But you want to watch it, Linda. I can't see him leaving his wife. Can you?'

‘He's got to.'

‘That doesn't mean he's going to, though, does it? He's not going to come back and live here.'

‘Why not?'

‘In Canvey? The place he ran away from?'

‘He didn't run away. Anyway, we'll find somewhere else.'

‘We were never good enough for him, Linda. We couldn't give him what he wanted …'

Everything Ade said came out harder than he meant it. ‘I think you should take a deep breath, dump him and start getting over it. It's not doing you any good, all this.'

‘I can't.'

‘That means you don't want to.'

‘You're right,' I said. ‘I think I'd rather have this and be unhappy than nothing at all. I don't ever want to feel nothing again.'

‘You're mad, you are.'

‘I know. But I don't want to be normal. I can't stand being normal. If I could just talk to him. If I could just see him then he'd know. I could talk to him and persuade him. I know I could.'

‘This isn't good.'

‘I know it isn't good. You don't have to tell me it isn't good.'

‘I don't like seeing you like this.'

‘Well, I don't like being like this.'

‘Come on,' said Ade, ‘let's go to the pub.'

Of course that was the one time Martin phoned. Masood left me a note.

Your boyfriend called. No message
.

It was Friday night; at least forty-eight hours before I could speak to him again unless he escaped the family and got to the phone box down the road.

I started to write to him, I could always send the letter to his work, but I couldn't find the words. I didn't know whether to be grateful to him for coming back in the first place or to be angry that he'd gone again. I kept drinking and smoking and scrunching up bits of paper through the night.

‘Dear Martin …' (Was that enough? Perhaps it should be ‘Darling Martin' or just ‘Darling' or ‘My Love'? But was that being too keen too soon?)

‘Dear Martin, Thank you for coming back to me …' (Too dependent.)

‘Dear Martin, I love you …' (Too raw.)

‘Dear Martin, I don't think you know how much it means to me …' (Too accusatory.)

‘Dear Martin, I miss you already …' (Too desperate.)

‘Dear Martin, I don't understand why you had to go …' (Too demanding.)

‘Dear Martin, I understand why you had to go …' (Too placatory.)

‘Dear Martin, Stay with me …' (Too honest.)

I gave up, found an old postcard and wrote: ‘
However quick the stream may be, it does not carry away the reflection of the moon
.'

I wrote the phrase ‘Linda Turner' in my sketchbook. I wrote it a second and a third time. Then I found I couldn't stop writing it.

It was Martin's birthday and Claire insisted that we came down to celebrate it with her family. She said he'd been under a lot of stress and everyone getting together would cheer them all up. Stress. Well, that's one way of putting it. I don't know how much her parents knew but Len and I had decided that as far as we were concerned we were happy to pretend that Martin hadn't had an affair, Claire hadn't been arrested, their daughter was perfectly well adjusted and everything was hunky-dory. We only hoped that the Reverend Matthew and Lady Celia took the same line.

As soon as we arrived, Lucy started to play up; well, you could expect as much after the attention she must have received at the camp. We had to obey each whim: looking at the souvenirs she'd brought back, the paintings she'd done, and watching the show she wanted to put on. It was sweet at first, even if it did involve a lot of her falling about and pretending to be dead, but after a while it appeared that she wanted some kind of audience participation. I whispered to Len that I wasn't going to start lying down and pretending I was dead in front of a cruise missile. Not before dinner, anyway.