Love and Fallout (17 page)

‘Still, this is far more enlightening than anything I've done before,' she said firmly.

‘Even university?'

‘Much.'
The idea astonished me. ‘I went to university and met exactly the same sorts I'd been at school with. All good fun of course, but hardly a challenge.'

I thought about that, and of the things I'd learned since being at the camp: that the suffragette colours were green, white and violet; nettles contain vitamin C and taste like a worse version of spinach; scattering catnip keeps away rats, and keening is symbolic of mourning. I'd also learned there are special ponds in London where women go swimming together, that a war was going on in Nicaragua, and that wooden pallets catch brilliantly on an open fire.

‘What does your mum think of you being here?' I asked, chipping a cold drip of wax with my thumbnail.

‘Jocasta? Oh she loves it.
Loves
it. She stayed for a night during the summer – those glorious warm evenings we had – though when it came to actually sleeping without a mattress, she was quite disabled by it all. Not that she'd ever admit it of course.'

‘At least she sees why you're here.'

‘Doesn't yours?'

I thought of Mum triple cleaning the worktops. ‘She's not that interested in politics.'

A recent fragment of dream returned to me: Mum standing with her potato peeler removing Dad's post-explosion skin in long bubbly strips while he watched
Match of the Day
on a smoking television set. Since arriving at the camp my dreams had taken new and frightening turns.

Rori said her parents took opposing sides about disarmament. She was fond of her father, Corbert, but teased him for being right wing.

‘They're poles apart on almost everything. Should have divorced years ago.'

‘Why did they get married?'

‘In their youth they were both exceptionally beautiful. It all comes down to sex in the end. But she married far too young, barely twenty. Actually, my being here has been very good for Jocasta. When there was that nonsense about me in the paper, the Lady Muck stuff, she was absolutely brimming, showed the page to all her friends. Greenham has boosted her no end. She can be quite…' she thought for the word, rolling a soft drip of candle wax into a bead ‘…unstable I suppose you'd call it. She's put her heart into fundraising.'

I'd got the impression from a couple of other things Rori had said, that unstable was a euphemism.

Outside the rain stormed on, but at least the wind had stopped hurling itself so violently against the bender.

‘Do you think they have Sunday lunch inside the base?' said Rori, for whom thoughts of food were never far away. To pass time, we began planning a fantasy meal, working our way from starter to desert.

‘You know what I'd die for? A poached pear with chocolate sauce,' she declared. ‘Jocasta does them with a slug of cognac. Sprinkles them with crushed pistachios.' I'd been thinking about butterscotch Angel Delight. ‘My elder brother, Ivo, did I tell you about him?'

‘The one in the city?'

‘He's incredibly impressed by these tiny meals on enormous white plates. Nouvelle cuisine. Absurd. Last year he took us to a smart restaurant for his birthday, and my main course was nothing but a spec of cod with a dribble of nothingy sauce. Gone in two bites. And God knows what he paid for it. I blame that appalling fiancée – he hardly ever comes home since they met, and if he does it's only to show off to my father.'

That didn't make sense. ‘Doesn't your dad have a title?'

‘Oh yes, he has a title, but he doesn't have any actual
money
. Our house is practically bare floorboards upstairs. All the Nouveauxs have got the cash, haven't you noticed? Poor Dad, he'd love me to zip into a nice Laura Ashley and bag myself an aristo with a decent estate.'

We were on the cheese course, Rori scooping out the creamy insides of a Stilton, me cutting a generous wedge of Cheddar, when a head appeared. It wasn't like the heads of any of the women we knew; it was a head wearing a fawn Burberry rain hat.

‘May I come in?'

The woman didn't wait for an answer, she was already crawling inside. ‘Sorry to disturb,' she said, dragging after her a golfing umbrella and a leather bag like a beast on a leash. ‘I'm April.'

‘Here for a visit?' said Rori, as the woman rearranged the plastic sheeting to keep the weather out.

‘In a way. I'm doing a piece about the camp.' She glanced around while simultaneously trying to settle herself on her knees.

‘You're a journalist?' I asked.

‘That's right. Freelance. Smaller papers mostly. Community news. Isn't it cosy in here,' she said, as if assessing the interior of Mrs Tiggywinkle's parlour. She wore a tweedy skirt with a pair of
Wellington boots and the rain hadn't dampened the scent of her flowery perfume. I sensed Rori stiffen beside me and remembered her suspicion of journalists. But hadn't this one declared herself? April smiled.

‘Would it be all right if I asked you a few questions?' she said, opting finally for an awkward half-squat half-kneel. ‘I've been talking to some of the women at the Main gate, but I wanted to get an idea of what's happening at the smaller ones too.'

I glanced at Rori and whispered ‘OK?' She shrugged as if she didn't mind either way. I'd never met a real journalist, and soon we were chatting away easily while I gave her the lowdown on our lives and tried to raise her consciousness. I was just in the middle of telling her about our water-carrying arrangements when Jean poked her head into the bender.

‘Are you a journalist?' she asked. ‘Because we don't permit the press into our living quarters.'

‘I'm terribly sorry,' said April, looking to us.

There was no room for Jean to squeeze inside, so she remained suspended at the entrance, a disembodied head.

‘Well then…' April made as if to go, but I interjected. ‘It's pelting, Jean.'

Jean considered. ‘I suppose we could use my tepee. But this isn't the way it's normally done.' There was a hint of schoolmistress in her voice I'd never heard before.

‘That's very kind,' said April. ‘Happy to come?' I was but Rori looked doubtful. ‘I've brought coffee and chocolate digestives,' she added lightly.

There wasn't much Rori wouldn't do for a chocolate biscuit. Besides, April's presence was at least a spark of interest in an otherwise eventless wet Sunday so we crossed the puddled mud towards Jean's tepee.

The only figure visible in the thrashing rain was Di, un-pegging the WOMEN AGAINST CRUISE banner to keep it from being shredded by the wind. I called to her over the elements and she followed us.

You could get six women in Jean's tepee, which had a bristly doormat at the entrance to wipe the worst clods of wet mud from your boots. April collapsed her golf umbrella. Jean fetched mugs and spare cushions. Despite the faded mud splatters, the one she gave me was still pretty, fashioned from dark orange cloth, embroidered with an Indian elephant and dusted with pink sequins. Once upon a time it must have occupied a chair in Jean's home, a place I imagined to be walled with books.

April produced the flask of coffee. ‘It has sugar, is that all right?'

‘Brilliant,' I said. Sugar. I'd not had sugar in anything since I arrived. We didn't bother with it because it got damp quickly and crystallised into blocks.

April removed her hat, releasing a swirl of mostly dry strawberry blonde hair and smiled at us inclusively. Di smiled back, kneeling on her short legs, the rescued banner bundled beside her. I'd got used to Di's unspeaking presence; she always operated in silence, sometimes knitting silence, sometimes sitting with a placard silence, sometimes bending with a bin liner silence. That first time I'd met her by the side of the road was the longest conversation we'd had.

‘Shall I be mother?' asked April, as the mugs made their way towards her.

‘We don't have a matriarch,' I said. I felt we'd got quite friendly after our exchange earlier. ‘We're not attempting to emulate patriarchal power structures.'

I thought that was quite good, but no one apart from April laughed.
Concentrate
, I told myself.
Don't muck about
. My mug said Great Ashfield Flower Festival 1975. There was milk in the coffee too. Milk
and
sugar. April produced the promised chocolate digestives.

The rain made a muted percussive sound against the thick canvas of the tepee and April's eyes moved again towards Rori, who she'd been glancing at with interest. ‘I don't think I caught your name?'

‘Bernadette,' said Rori. That was weird. April's pen hovered before she committed the name to the pad. ‘Bernadette,' she repeated. ‘Like the saint?'

‘Exactly.'

‘Can I ask how your family feel about you being here, Bernadette?'

‘I'm not sure that's relevant,' said Jean.

‘No, I'm not sure it is,' said Rori/Bernadette.

April nodded, not in the least offended. ‘And how long have you been living at the camp, Tessa?'

I thought for a second. The days merged. Today was Sunday, but it could just as well be Wednesday. ‘Two weeks.'

‘Not long then.'

‘It feels like longer… a lot longer…'

April smiled and wrote something down.

‘I didn't mean, I mean, you know, it feels like home.' That wasn't quite true either, but it was better.

‘So you like it here?'

I thought of everything at once. Weeing in a ditch. Conversations about politics. Learning songs. The vegetables. Laughing. Being friends with Rori.

‘It's very educating.'

April seemed wary of Jean, and slightly unsure of Rori/Bernadette, so I found myself doing most of the talking, which was fine, she was very interested. Now and again she glanced over at Di, as if she might have something to contribute, but Di continued to sit quietly and listen. After we'd chatted for a while, April said, ‘I suppose for the women to be here, children and husbands might have to take a backseat. What do you feel about that?'

‘Many of us are here precisely because of our children,' said Jean. ‘There are children living with their mothers at the other gates, as you know. And men are equally able to give childcare.'

‘Some people think the women are supported by the Communists, what do you say to that? '

‘By some people, you mean the right-wing press,' said Rori with challenge in her voice.

Jean laughed. The chocolate digestives had cheered her up a bit. She said the British didn't need help to protest and she talked about the Aldermaston marches she'd been on in the 1950s.

April nodded, as if she were thinking about it.

Rori said the country was in a deep recession and we were wasting millions trying to keep up with the arms race.

‘But some people might say…'

‘What might
you
say?' Rori asked, fixing the journalist with her green eyes.

April smiled. ‘I'm simply playing devil's advocate. How would you answer the criticism that the Greenham women are well intentioned but misguided?'

Jean sighed. ‘Misguided is spending vast sums of money on weaponry which can never conceivably be used.'

She and Rori talked more about the reasons for the original march from Wales. They were both clear and articulate, but they'd had practice with public speaking, and that's what it came down to in the end, you couldn't get better if you didn't practise. I took a deep breath. This was an opportunity.

‘The thing is, April,' I said, ‘the thing is… every cruise missile can do the damage of…'

A voice came from outside the tepee. ‘Jean? Have you seen Rori?' It was unmistakably Angela. ‘Oh,' she said, surveying the scene.

‘You're very welcome to join us,' said April, turning around.

Angela took in the belted mackintosh and freshly washed hair, and though her face said
You've got a nerve
, she merely nodded and came inside.

Jean passed Angela a cushion of mustard corduroy and Angela sat down cross-legged beside Rori. When she pulled back the hood of her parka her fringe lay plastered in slicks against her forehead.

‘So,' said April, glancing down at her pad. ‘You were telling me about nuclear capability, Tessa?'

Angela's eyes settled on my face.

‘Yes. You see, the thing is a cruise missile can do the damage of twenty-nine Hiroshimas, which is massive.'

‘It is. Gosh. Twenty-nine.' April went to write it down.

‘I think it's more like nine,' said Angela quietly, wiping her glasses dry.

‘Is it? Oh. That's still a lot. Nine. Perhaps it depends which paper you read,' I laughed inappropriately.