Love and Fallout (23 page)

What did that mean? Weren't we all equal? No hierarchy? I remembered what one woman had told me at the fireside, how she loved the camp for its egalitarian spirit, the freedom, the sharing, the trust.

‘Women have made sacrifices to be here,' said Angela.

‘I know that.'

‘Do you?'

‘Yes.' I had a twinge. Had she somehow got hold of my exercise book, leafed through and seen a few of the early entries about Tony? But in truth I couldn't imagine Angela doing something like that, and anyway the entries about him had dwindled. He'd be in London now, living his new life. Privately I'd imagined a few scenarios in which we'd bump into each other at a CND rally – I'd be standing on a platform making a rousing speech beside Rori and he'd come up afterwards. We'd exchange pleasantries. Can I give you a ring? He'd ask, his eyes full of longing. I'd smile and lay a hand on his arm
. I'm sorry Tony, there's too much to do.

Angela was still staring at me through her round glasses as if I might have something to add, but when nothing came she unstrapped the canvas bag at her feet and removed a newspaper.

‘What's that?' I said. But it looked horribly familiar:
The Berkshire Chronicle
.

‘Take a look.'

My heart pumped as I paged frowningly through the paper, pretending not to know what I was going to find and still hoping by some miracle it wouldn't be there. But it was. ‘TENKO WITH MUD' ran the headline in the centre pages and underneath a photograph of a journalist with the byline April McCarthy. It had been an offhand comment, a joke to lighten the mood when we'd first started talking in Rori's bender, but plastered across the centre pages it didn't seem very funny. In the newsagents I'd only glanced the headline and a quote, but now it was difficult to resist the urge to read on, even with Angela peering at me. I skimmed the print, my eyes falling on my name.

‘One such woman is Tessa, who escaped what she called an eye-wateringly boring job and a broken relationship…' Broken relationship? I didn't say that ‘…to come and live at the camp. When I ask about the conditions she described it as…' and then the Tenko remark, along with a few choice details about lavatory arrangements, the difficulty of getting water, baths and so on. Oh God. The article was mainly taken up with information I'd given her. Barely a sentence from Jean or Rori had made it in.

‘She's twisted it. When I said that thing about Tenko, it was a joke. I didn't mean, I wasn't saying…' My scalp prickled.

‘What
were
you saying?' asked Angela, who knew I had no defence.

In one of the birch trees a couple of birds began twittering an early evening conversation.

‘You won't show it to the others, will you?'

‘Why would I?' she replied in her flat voice. ‘Hardly a morale booster is it?' She blinked at me. ‘So, to repeat the question, why are you here?'

I didn't know what to say. ‘Because it's right.'

‘Right for you? Or right for everyone else who's dedicated? If we're going to achieve our objectives we need structure. Rori and myself and Jean are working out a strategy. To put it bluntly, your presence is a distraction.'

‘Who put you in charge?' My voice sounded strained, but Angela's stayed level.

‘No one put me in charge.'

‘Every woman has a right to be here.'

Angela held my eye.

‘This is a serious endeavour. We might use subversion, but we're not here for a laugh.'

‘I care about this,' I waved my hand to include the benders, the pram loaded with firewood, the Welsh dresser, the bent kettle.

‘If you really want to further our efforts you could do one simple thing.'

‘What?'

Angela blinked. ‘Go home.'

I opened my mouth to speak again but nothing came out. On the second try I found some words. ‘Is this about the bike?'

‘No.'

‘Because that was an accident.'

She sighed. ‘I understand. But it's one of the accidents that wouldn't have happened if you weren't here.
'
The fire snapped. She didn't like me being close to Rori, that was it. When she spoke again, her tone was weary. ‘You're not cut out for this. Look at yourself. You could get involved at grass roots if you wanted. But I'd advise you to know your limits. After the protest on Sunday we've got more work to do. Serious work. You're a hindrance.'

‘Hindrance?' Despite my best efforts, the word came out with a wobble.

‘Oh don't get emotional,' she said, leaning back.

‘Why not? What about those keening women, they're allowed to get emotional.'

‘There's a place for them. They're angry. We need them.'

‘Who are you to say what we need?'

‘I'm trying to put this before you so you can understand the facts.'

‘I'm not stupid, you don't need to patronise me.'

Angela met my eyes. ‘You can go crying to Rori about it if you like, but I'm not interested in schoolgirl games. I'm here for a reason.'

‘So am I.'

She took the paper from my lap and folded it into her bag.

‘Doesn't look like it.'

I got up then and walked away from the fire. Choked with frustration, I headed for the trees, glad to be alone in their cover, weaving through them until the pale outline of Rori's bath appeared. I sat down on its curved edge and took deep breaths, the enamel cold under my jeans.

If only I hadn't spouted off to that journalist. But she'd seemed so nice. I needed to calm down. Breathe. But the more I tried the harder it became. The achy lump in my throat wobbled up and down like a ballcock, forcing hot water to prickle at the rims of my eyes until finally it was spilling down my cheeks. Damn. Once it started it would be difficult to stop, I'd have to rub my eyes, which would go red and bleary and everyone would know I'd been crying, and Angela would know too. I struggled for a few minutes until Mum's voice said
Let it all out
.

The woods smelled mulchy and green and only moonlight directed me as I wandered deeper into the trees, hidden and protected in the glimmering dark. Since that first morning, when I'd staggered into them and found Rori lying in her bath, the trees were my safety, they afforded privacy and comfort, a huddle of slender giant women, always there to gather round. Were trees female? The moon was female, I knew that. The sea was female. But trees? Perhaps they were gender neutral. Angela would know. Bloody Angela. She was no angel, in fact the prospect of her arriving on a cloud, probably holding a clipboard, would be enough to finish anyone off in their hour of need. I should tell Rori what she was really like, petty and controlling, but then Rori might say something and Angela would see I'd acted like a schoolgirl by telling tales, and she'd be right.

At the camp everyone talked about peace. Since coming here I'd remembered the song we sang in junior infants with Miss McClusky, all of us joining hands and singing in our lispy voices, ‘Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.' It was a nice sentiment, but living it wasn't so easy. Peace demanded all your energy. Peace was exhausting. It's true, I'd been an idiot with the bike and the hair and the
Berkshire Chronicle
, but Angela didn't know everything, she didn't know I'd been trying. She didn't know about my exercise book, the sentences I'd lifted whole and recorded in case I needed them, ‘…no prospect of justified collateral damage… the boundaries of proportionality stretched out of all recognition.'
Things she'd said about human rights and The Fawcett Society.

The birch went all the way to the fence. I kept walking and paused as the trees became denser, taking a deep breath, preparing to turn back to the fire. But a sound stopped me. There it was again. Whispering. I took a step forwards. This time a giggle, which seemed familiar. Another step.

The branches formed a stiff web, and I strained to see into the black pool which contained the voices. Two people, one leaning against a tree, the other pressed in close. Kissing. A hand stencilled by moonlight on the bark. I moved towards another tree to see if my suspicions were correct and what I saw made me step back. The two figures entwined against the tree were shadowy but still discernable. I stood without moving, watching as the bodies twisted thigh to thigh. I edged sideways and lost my footing. ‘Shh,' said a voice, ‘did you hear something?'

‘It's nothing, come here.' A deeper voice.

‘Wait.' Silence again. I stood rigid, the breath catching in my ribs, hardly able to make sense of what I saw.

‘You're spooking yourself,' said the deep voice. ‘It's a wood, stuff lives here. Come on, less talking.'

And in a teasing voice which made me think of a movie starlet, ‘Whatever you say.'

There was no doubt it was Rori's voice. She lay down out of sight, twining a long leg around her partner, who lay on top of her and released a low anticipatory groan. Then all I could see was black.

20

Embracing the Base

A little girl sat on her mother's shoulders waving a paper dove on a stick and below her a woman played a clarinet while her friend blew a stream of bubbles through a soapy wand, sending them high into the winter afternoon. I'd never seen so many women: women laughing, women singing, women chatting, women standing staring or pinning mementos to the fence. Some of them belonged to tribes, you could tell by their clothes or banners, but others looked like the women you'd see in Stevenage on a Saturday, middle-aged women shopping with their friends and daughters. And this was only the small section of fence we could see from our crest of slope. No one knew how many had come, but rumours passed along the human chain like a current, creating new charges of excitement:
fifteen thousand
said someone,
twenty thousand
said someone else.

Maggie stood beside me eating a Marmite sandwich. I'd already finished mine. The sandwiches had been handed out, much to her delight, by two men carrying cardboard trays around their necks like ice-cream girls. I told her the men had come from the crèche tent where they'd been stationed. Along with making rounds of sandwiches and cups of tea, they were tasked with looking after the kids and assembling wax lanterns.

We had our backs to the fence. The ground was still soft. In between us and the trees was a mud path along which a constant flow of women was passing. ‘I thought there'd be more police around,' I said, trying to see if there were any beyond the curve of bodies snaking around the corner of the fence and out of sight. It was difficult to get a clear view.
The path was puddled from the sleet which had fallen overnight and during the early morning, but now the misty rain had stopped and the sky had turned its usual mid-winter, mid-afternoon grey.

‘You warm enough, Mags?'

‘Fine,' she said, popping the last wholemeal crust into her mouth.

She was wearing tight jeans, pixie boots and a long coat with a fur hood left over from her brother's Mod phase.

‘So what are we supposed to be doing?' she asked, stamping her feet for warmth and speckling the burgundy suede of her boots with mud.

‘This,' I said. ‘I think. I'm not sure. There isn't a plan exactly.'

We shuffled up to let someone pin a child's party dress to the wire. It fluttered, yellow as the skirts of a primrose. Everyone had been asked to bring something to attach, and the fence had been transformed into a chaotic exhibition of baby booties, photographs, poems, messages and art work. Without warning, someone nearby dipped her hand into a polythene bag and thrust her arm to scatter the contents over the fence and into the base.

‘Seeds?' she said, offering us the bag as if it contained crisps.

‘Don't you need to plant them?' asked Maggie.

‘Life has a way of seeing to itself,' replied the woman, chucking another handful. Maggie turned her back in a way that wasn't entirely sisterly and raised her eyebrow at me, then she plunged into the bag and flung a handful of seeds high into the air with a whoop. Most of them fell back down at her feet. She did a couple of star jumps for warmth.

‘Your jeans are too tight, that's the problem,' I told her. ‘Loose clothes trap the warm air.' I'd learned to dress in layers: a coat over a cardi over a jumper over two t-shirts over a vest. Some women didn't bother with coats because they didn't dry out if they got wet. It hadn't taken me long to start wearing the thermals Mum made me pack.

Maggie was only half listening, she nodded in the direction of a figure weaving a woollen spider's web into the fence. ‘What's she doing?'

‘It's a symbol.'
Webs, witches, Greenham was full of symbols. ‘The strength of the web, connected threads, like a network of women. They like that stuff here,' I added, to show I hadn't changed. Even if I had, a bit.

Maggie was still trying to keep warm.