Love and Fallout (21 page)

‘Are you okay there? Looking after yourself?'

‘Everything's fine thanks, Paula.'

The radio buzzed in the background. Maggie's mum was in a constant battle to keep hold of Radio 4, but it always slid between Radio 1 and 2 when her back was turned. I had a quick mental glimpse of their house, messier than ours with Paula in the middle of it, glasses on her head, wishing she were somewhere else.

‘You're doing great stuff,' said Paula, before Maggie took the receiver, swallowing a yawn.

‘Sorry. We had a lock-in last night and I'm on split shifts.'

‘Shall I call back?'

‘Don't be daft. When are you coming home? It's not the same without you.'

I explained I wasn't but reminded her about Sunday's protest. She didn't sound too eager and mentioned something about the rota at work.

‘Anyway, you've got all your new friends, haven't you.'

‘Yes, but I miss you.'

It took a little persuasion, but eventually she promised to come.

Afterwards I phoned home, listening to the burr burr, steadying the ten pence piece, my thumbnail satisfyingly clean where it had recently been ridged with dirt. A vague figure appeared on the other side of the door, shuffling from side to side then stomping his feet, more to make a point than for warmth I suspected. I turned my back on him. What was wrong with people, why couldn't they allow other people to live without trying to martial them all the time?

Dad picked up. ‘Tessa!' Then a shout off into the kitchen. ‘Anne, it's Tess!' A quick scurry while Mum picked up the extension you could never hear on properly. One of Dad's mates had connected it without telling BT.

‘Why aren't you at work?' I pictured him on the sofa wearing his house trousers.

‘Taking a couple of days off.'

‘Days off?' Dad never took time off from the yard. ‘Why?'

‘Give us your number and we'll call you back.'

‘I can't Dad, there's a queue,' I said, glancing at my watch. I had to get back to the bikes.

‘Well, they can wait can't they.' Also, I didn't want Mum to ask too many awkward questions.

‘I don't think so. Anyway, it's only a quick call to see how you are.'

‘Never mind us, what about you? We always have the news on just in case we catch a glimpse of you sitting in a tank.'

Mum cut in. ‘Don't be silly, Brian. Aren't you cold at night, love? What are you eating? Me and Dad want to send you some money but we don't know where to send it to.' She sounded het up.

‘I'm fine, honestly.'

‘What do you do all day?' said Dad.

‘We protest.'

‘What, all day?' asked Mum.

‘Being here is protesting.'

‘Don't get yourself in any trouble,' said Mum, ‘stick with the ones who sing the songs, don't go having any set-tos with the police will you? Why don't you come down, love. Get a good meal inside you and have your old bed back for a couple of nights.'

I pictured my old bed, my old room with the same posters and the view of the garages.

‘How's the tent?' said Dad.

‘I'm living in a bender now.'

‘You what? Living with a bender?'

‘IN a, oh stop being stupid.' I ignored him chortling at his own joke. ‘It's a structure made from branches. You bend the branches over and cover them with plastic.'

‘Oh God.' Mum's voice had taken a turn for the worse, I knew she'd be following her darkest imaginings, her only child developing trench foot and setting herself up for a lifetime on benefits.

‘It's better than a tent, they're very warm.'

‘Like a bivouac,' said Dad.

‘A what?'

He started explaining that they'd learned to build them in the scouts before Mum interrupted, ‘Why don't we come to visit?'

I made a half turn and caught a shadow of the man looming outside.

‘They won't let me in, will they?' said Dad.

‘But I could come?' said Mum.

‘No don't. Please don't.' The pips started to go. ‘Listen, I've run out of coins.'

‘What did she say Brian? This phone's hopeless.'

‘I've got to go, Mum,' I shouted.

‘But we haven't told you our news yet…'

I didn't have time to listen to stories about next-door's extension, I had to get back to the bike.

‘I'll ring you next week,' I shouted into the receiver as the line went dead.

Before I opened the door, I tucked an ‘Embrace the Base' leaflet inside the phone book: protesting wasn't dissimilar to what it must be like being an evangelical Christian, the sort Mum hid from if she saw them coming first. The man waiting outside had a neat goatee beard and a teacherly face. Clean but still clearly identifiable as a member of the camp, I held my nerve and looked him straight in the eye, anticipating more hostility. He took the weight of the door from me and held it open. ‘God bless you,' he said. An unexpected warmth flowered in my chest, like the heat of brandy.

By the time we were back on the bikes, cycling freely into the dusk, I'd forgotten about the woman from LAWE and the girls in the pub, I'd even forgotten that Rori had kept me waiting for forty minutes while she finished her shopping. My thighs burned with the exertion of pedalling. It was good to be moving through the chill afternoon, clean and blessed by God, following Rori's red bike light towards the camp. She turned around.

‘Come on Skittle, let's see what you're made of,' she called, changing gear and streaking away.

Skittle! She'd named me. Thrilling inside I leaned over the handlebars, powering forwards to keep up, pedalling the puny bike with the full force of my happiness.

I didn't hear the car until it was too late. At the sound of the horn I panicked, swerved violently to get clear, careering from the saddle into the side of the road, the bike scraping and twisting beneath me as I tumbled onto the unforgiving ground.

18

Earache

A belt of auburn light merged into an indigo sky. The previous afternoon when we'd taken a long stroll through the birchwood and admired the sunset, Rori had quoted a poem about the evening being spread out against the sky like a patient etherised on a table. But as I walked beside the bent-wheeled bike, my bloodied knee periodically flashing through my torn jeans, I wasn't thinking about patients being etherised on tables, I was thinking
What an idiot
.

‘Mea culpa, Skittle. I shouldn't have made you race,' said Rori draping an arm around my shoulders.

‘What am I going to tell Angela?' There was no chance I'd be able to fold the bike back into shape.

‘It was an accident. She'll understand.'

I made no comment. With the thought of explaining all this to Angela my joyous mood had deflated along with the bike tyre. Better to get it over with quickly. As soon as I got back I'd find her, tell her and offer to get the bike repaired. Hopefully before Sunday when she'd ride it to mass.

Darkness had fallen by the time we reached camp, and a few figures were seated around the fire. Sam lifted a fork from her Pot Noodle in greeting, ‘All right girls?' It was okay for us to call each other girls, we were taking ownership of the word, but we shouldn't put up with it from outside. Sam said the police called us girls to reduce our status. ‘Angela's been looking for you.' My heart lurched.

A woman I'd never seen before was reclined on the log, her head resting in Jean's lap. She wore black, the hood of her cape formed a cowl and her long dark hair fanned out around her. Jean was massaging the woman's jaw.

Rori leaned into her field of vision and gave a wave. ‘Hello Vicky.'

The woman flitted her eyes weakly. ‘Is that you Rori?' When she looked up I could see she must have been at least thirty, but she spoke with the voice of a little girl.

‘I was having a bad time at Ruby gate, and then I got this terrible ear ache but I knew Jean would be able to help.'

‘What have you done to yourself?' Jean asked, nodding at my knee with its flag of torn denim. Her fingers were still working in small circles around Vicky's jaw.

‘It's only a knock,' I said. The cut stung like knives, and a warm pain had spread from my elbow to my shoulder.

‘I can feel the heat in your hands,' said Vicky, lifting her head to regard Jean, who had her half-moon specs on a chain around her neck. ‘You have a gift.'

Sam rolled her eyes and took another forkful of noodles.

‘It often needs other people to point it out. That's how I knew about mine.' She relaxed her neck again and lay back.

‘You might need some Dettol on it,' Jean said, ignoring the talk about gifts.

‘Yeah. Nasty,' said Sam. ‘Bike doesn't look too healthy either. Is that Angela's?'

‘Was,' said Rori. Sam made a
Rather you than me
, face.

‘Where is she?' I asked.

‘Don't know, she was running around a bit hectic last time I saw her,' said Sam, scraping the bottom of her pot for the last re-hydrated pea.

‘Have we got any more of those?' said Rori, meaning the Pot Noodle. She didn't seem worried by Angela or the bike.

‘Thought they didn't eat this sort of thing in Poshfordshire,' said Sam. Rori didn't react. ‘Just mucking about. They're in the kitchen box – came in a donation, they left a bag of clothes too. It's in the spare bender so you can help yourself. You might pick up another pair of keks, Tessa.'

Rori went off to get herself a Pot Noodle, but I felt queasy enough and declined.

‘Ahhh,' said Vicky from whom the spotlight had evidently been absent too long. ‘I know you can heal.'

‘I'm simply massaging the lymph glands. They're connected behind the ear. Basic physiognomy. If I had some warm olive oil that would help too.' Jean knew everything and was capable of everything – map reading, embroidery, identifying wild mushrooms, lashing beams together – she had remedies for all kinds of problems and assumed the position, whether she liked it or not, of matriarch.

‘No,' said Vicky firmly. ‘It's because you have a gift.'

Jean asked what we'd been up to in downtown Newbury, so I explained about the swimming pool, the public toilet and the woman from LAWE.

‘Honestly, it feels so much better now,' said Vicky, returning our attention to her ear. ‘It was almost as if I had an evil spirit in my head.'

‘Entertain a lot of evil spirits?' asked Sam.

‘No.'

‘So how do you know what they feel like?'

I'd never seen Sam being this confrontational with another woman. She pulled Rori's leg all the time about being posh, but it was clear Vicky really got on her nerves.

‘What sort of clothes did they deliver?' Rori asked, appearing from the darkness with her Pot Noodle.

‘Usual mish-mash. Need something special Aurora? Nice ball gown?' said Sam, with a wink.

‘What flavour's that?' I asked Rori, conscious that Sam's class war games annoyed her.

She rolled the plastic pot around enquiringly, as if she hadn't thought to check. ‘Chicken chow mein.' She studied the label a moment longer. ‘Did you know they're made in Wales?'

‘Meat is murder,' Vicky declared, her head still in Jean's lap. ‘That was the other thing at Ruby gate, they said they were vegan but there was a woman who kept buying herself frankfurters. She'd eat them straight from the tin for all the world to see. Disgusting.'

There was a pause, during which my thoughts returned to Angela's bike, and then Vicky spoke again. ‘I'd like to be a fruitarian.'

‘What does that mean?' Rori asked.

‘Nuts,' said Sam.

‘Fruit,' said Vicky, ignoring the insult. ‘I only want to eat what falls naturally.'

‘Sounds dangerous,' Jean remarked.

‘It's very pure, Jean. It's a way to avoid killing in all its forms.'

Rori prodded the fire with the poker-come-branch. Sam watched her shake the Pot Noodle and unpeel the lid. ‘How much did she put away in Newbury?' she asked me.

‘Do you want me to say?' I asked Rori, who crunched a curl of dry noodle between her fingers and laughed.

‘A girl has to eat.'

For such a slim person, her appetite was astonishing.

‘Right you are,' said Jean. ‘I think we're just about done.' But Vicky didn't stir, her eyes were shut and she lay in Jean's lap, meek as a lab rabbit.

After her Pot Noodle, Rori went off to sort through the clothing donations. I said I wouldn't mind a look too, but she insisted I rest my leg.

‘If I find any jeans, I'll grab them. What are you, a 16?'