Common Murder (5 page)

“You can help me sing,” said Deborah. She leaned across the table to Lindsay, grasped her hand tightly, and kissed her. “My, but it's good to be with you, sister,” she said softly.

Before Lindsay could reply, Cara's dark blonde head and flushed cheeks suddenly appeared through the curtains. As soon as she realized
who was there, she scrambled down the ladder to hurl herself on Lindsay, hugging her fiercely before turning to Deborah. “You didn't tell me Lindsay was coming,” she reproached her.

“I didn't tell you because I wasn't sure myself and I didn't want both of us to be disappointed if she couldn't make it. Okay?”

The child nodded. “What are we having for breakfast? Have you brought bacon and eggs like you promised last time?”

“I managed to smuggle them past the vegetarian checkpoint on the way in,” Lindsay joked. “I know you're like me, Cara, you love the things that everybody tells you are bad for you.”

“You really are a reprobate, aren't you,” Deborah said, amused. “I know you like taking the piss out of all the vegetarian nonsmokers, but don't forget that a lot of us are veggies from necessity as much as choice. I love the occasional fry-up, but beans are a hell of a lot cheaper than bacon. Not everyone has the same sense of humor about it as I do.”

“Don't tell me,” Lindsay groaned. “Cordelia never stops telling me how people like me who love red meat are causing the distortion of world agriculture. Sometimes I feel personally responsible for every starving kid in the world.”

Impatient with the conversation, Cara interrupted. “Can we have breakfast, then?”

By the time they had eaten the bacon, eggs, sausages, and mushrooms that Lindsay had brought, the camp had come to life again. Women were ferrying water from the standpipe by the road in big plastic jerry cans while others cooked, repaired benders, or simply sat and talked. It was a cold, dry day with the sun struggling fitfully through a haze. Lindsay went off to see Jane and found her sitting on a crate, writing in a large exercise book. She looked tired and drawn.

“Hi, Doc. Everything fine with you?”

Jane shrugged. “So so. I think I'm getting too close to all this now. I'm getting so wrapped up in the logistics of the camp I'm forgetting why I'm here. I think I'm going to have to get away for a few days to put it back into perspective.”

“There's always a bed at our place if you need a break.” Jane nodded as Lindsay went on, “Debs says you can fill me in with the details of today's invasion plan.”

Jane outlined the intended arrangements. Nicky was leading a raiding party of a dozen women armed with bolt-cutters. They would be waiting in the woods for a signal from the lookout post that the diversion at the main gate was attracting enough attention from camp security to allow them to reach the fence and cut through the wire. What followed their entry into the base would be a matter for their own judgment but it was hoped that they'd make it to the missile silos. The diversion was timed for noon, the main attraction for fifteen minutes later.

“You should keep out of the front line,” she concluded. “Help Deborah with the singing. Keep an eye on her too. We don't want her to get arrested again. It would be just like her to get carried away and do something out of order. I imagine that a few of the local coppers know perfectly well who she is and wouldn't mind the chance to pick her up and give her a hard time. Crabtree is pretty buddy-buddy with the local police hierarchy according to Judith. Understandably enough, I suppose. So do us all a favor unless you desperately want to take on Cara full-time—keep the lid on Deborah.”

By late morning there was an air of suppressed excitement around the camp. The television crew had arrived and were shooting some interviews and stock background shots around the benders. It wasn't hard for Lindsay to suppress her journalistic instincts and avoid them. She was, after all, off duty, and since the
Clarion
had no Sunday edition, she felt no guilt about ignoring the story. She noticed Jane and a couple of other longstanding peace campers having a discreet word with the crew, which had included a couple of unmistakable gestures toward the long bunkers that dominated the skyline.

At about midday, Deborah came looking for her. Leaving Cara and three other children in the van with Josy, one of the other mothers living at the camp, they joined the steady surge of women making for the main gate. About forty women were gathered round. A group of half a dozen marched boldly up to the sentry boxes on either side of the gate and started to unwind the balls of wool they carried with them. They wove the wool around the impassive soldiers and their sentry boxes, swiftly creating a complex web. Other women moved to the gates themselves and began to weave wool strands in and out of the heavy steel mesh to seal them shut. Deborah climbed on top
of a large concrete litter bin just outside the gates and hauled Lindsay up beside her. Together they started to sing one of the songs that had grown up with the camp and soon all the women had joined in.

Inside the camp the RAF police and behind them the USAF guards came running toward the gate. On the women's side, civil police started to appear at the trot to augment the pair permanently on duty at the main gate. The film crew were busy recording it all.

It looked utterly chaotic. Then one of the women let out an excited whoop and pointed to the silos. There, silhouetted against the gray March sky, women could be seen dancing and waving. Alerted by her cries, the film crew ran off round the perimeter fence, filming all the while. Inside the wire, the military turned and raced across the scrubby grass to the bunkers constructed to house the coming missiles.

Outside the base the women calmly dispersed, to the frustration of the police who were just getting into the swing of making arrests. Lindsay, feeling as high as if she'd just smoked a couple of joints, jumped down from the litter bin and swung Deborah down into her arms. Like the other women around them they hugged each other and jumped around on the spot, then they bounced away from the fence and back toward the main road. A tall man stood at the end of the camp road. On the end of a lead was a fox-terrier. A sneer of scorn spoiled his newly healed features.

“Enjoy yourself while you can, Miss Patterson. It won't be long before I have you put some place where there won't be much to rejoice over.” His threat uttered, Crabtree marched on down the main road away from the camp. Lindsay looked in dismay at Deborah's stunned face.

“Sadistic bastard. He can't resist having a go every time he sees me,” said Deborah. “He seems to go out of his way to engineer these little encounters. But I'm not going to let him get the better of me. Not on a day like today.”

The women had gathered in the big bender that they used for meeting and talking as a group. Lindsay still couldn't get used to the way they struggled to avoid hierarchies by refusing to run their meetings according to traditional structures. Instead, they sat in a big circle and each spoke in turn, supposedly without interruption. The euphoria of the day's action was tangible. The film crew were still around, and not even the news that the dozen women who had made it to the silos had been charged with criminal damage and trespass could diminish the high that had infected everyone.

But there was a change in attitude since Lindsay had first encountered the peace women. It was noticeable that far more women were advocating stronger and more direct action against what they perceived as the forces of evil. She could see that Jane and several other women who'd been with the camp for a long time were having a struggle to impress upon others like the headstrong Nicky the need to keep all action nonviolent and to minimize the criminal element in what they did. Eventually, the meeting was adjourned without a decision till the following afternoon.

The rest of the day passed quickly for Lindsay who spent her time walking the perimeter fence and picking up on her new friendships with women like Jackie. Lindsay appreciated the different perspectives the women gave her on life in Thatcher's Britain. It was a valuable contrast with the cynical world of newspapers and the comfortably well-off life she shared with Cordelia. Jackie and her lover Willow, both from Birmingham, explained to Lindsay for the first time how good they felt at the camp because there was none of the constant pressure of racial prejudice that had made it so difficult for them to make anything of their lives at home. By the time Lindsay had eaten dinner with Cara and Deborah, she knew she had made a firm decision
to stay. By unspoken consent, Deborah took Cara off to spend the rest of the night with her best friend Christy in the bender she shared with her mother Josy. When she returned, she found Lindsay curled up in a corner with a tumbler of whisky.

“Help yourself,” said Lindsay.

Deborah sensed the tension in Lindsay. Carefully she poured herself a small drink from the bottle on the table and sat down beside her. She placed a cautious hand on her thigh. “I'm really glad to be with you again,” she said quietly. “It's been a long time since we had the chance to talk.”

Lindsay took a gulp of whisky and lit a cigarette. “I can't sleep with you,” she burst out. “I thought I could, but I can't. I'm sorry.”

Deborah hadn't forgotten the knowledge of Lindsay that six hectic months had given her. She smiled. “You haven't changed, have you? What makes you think I wanted to jump into bed with you again?” Her voice was teasing. “That old arrogance hasn't deserted you.”

Outrage chased incredulity across Lindsay's face. Then her sense of humor caught up with her and she smiled. “Touché. You never did let me get away with anything, did you?”

“Too bloody true I didn't. Give you an inch and you were always halfway to the next town. Listen, I didn't expect a night of mad, passionate lovemaking. I know your relationship with Cordelia is the big thing in your life. Just as Cara is the most important thing in my life now. I don't take risks with that, and I don't expect you to take risks with your life either.”

Lindsay looked sheepish. “I really wanted to make love with you. I thought it would help me sort out my feelings. But when you took Cara off, I suddenly felt that I was contemplating something dishonest. You know? Something that devalued what there is between you and me.”

Deborah put her arm round Lindsay's tense shoulders. “You mean, you'd have been using me to prove something to yourself about you and Cordelia?”

“Something like that. I guess I just feel confused about what's happening between me and her. It started off so well—she made me feel so special. I was happy as a pig. Okay, it was frustrating that I was living in Glasgow and she was in London. But there wasn't a week
when we didn't spend at least two nights together, often more, once I'd got a job sorted out.

“We seemed to have so much in common—we liked going to the same films, loved the theatre, liked the same books, all that stuff. She even started coming hill-walking with me, though I drew the line at going jogging with her. But it was all those things that kind of underpinned the fact that I was crazy about her and the sex was just amazing.

“Then I moved to London and it seemed like everything changed. I realized how much of her life I just hadn't been a part of. All the time she spent alone in London was filled with people I've got the square root of sod all in common with. They patronize the hell out of me because they think that being a tabloid hack is the lowest form of pond life.

“They treat me like I'm some brainless bimbo that Cordelia has picked up. And Cordelia just tells me to ignore it, they don't count. Yet she still spends great chunks of her time with them. She doesn't enjoy being with the people I work with, so she just opts out of anything I've got arranged with other hacks. And the few friends I've got outside the business go back to Oxford days; they go down well with Cordelia and her crowd, but I want more of my life than that. And it never seems the right time to talk about it.

“About once a fortnight at the moment I seriously feel like packing my bags and moving out. Then I remember all the good things about her and stay.”

Lindsay stopped abruptly and leaned over to refill her glass. She took another long drink and shivered as the spirit hit her. Deborah slowly massaged the knotted muscles at the back of her neck. “Poor Lin,” she said. “You do feel hard done by, don't you? You never did understand how compromise can be a show of strength, did you?”

Lindsay frowned. “It's not that. It just seems like me that's made all the compromises—or sacrifices, more like.”

“But she has too. Suddenly, after years of living alone, doing the one job where you really need your own space, she's got this iconoclast driving a coach and horses through her routines, coming in at all hours of the day and night, thanks to her wonderful shift patterns, and hating the people she has to be nice to in order to keep a nice high profile in the literary world. It can't be exactly easy for her either.
It seems to me that she's got the right idea—she's doing what she needs to keep herself together.”

Lindsay looked hurt. “I never thought I'd hear you taking Cordelia's side.”

“I'm not taking sides. And that reaction says it all, Lin,” Deborah said, a note of sharpness creeping into her voice. “I'm trying to make you see things from her side. Listen, I saw you when the two of you had only been together six months, and I saw you looking happier than I'd ever seen you. I love you like a sister, Lin, and I want to see you with that glow back. You're not going to get it by whingeing about Cordelia. Talk to her about it. At least you're still communicating in bed—build on that, for starters. Stop expecting her to be psychic. If she loves you, she won't throw you out just because you tell her you're not getting what you need from her.”