Love and Fallout (26 page)

But there were strings, there were strings everywhere, surely she understood that? We were all strung together. I thought of the wool webs that were woven to annoy the authorities and tangle the police.

‘Look,' she said, ‘if I'm to live here in the open I have needs to take care of, food, warmth, shelter. Human needs. It's just sex, Tessa. Just another basic human need.'

‘But he's one of them.' I turned my head to indicate the base.

‘So? Who am I betraying, exactly?'

‘The women.'

She sighed, as if trying to explain to a slow child.

‘A woman doesn't have to be defined by her sexual relationships with a man. Don't you know that yet?'

I was attempting to translate what she was saying, like someone with only the basics of a foreign language.

‘There are women here who are political lesbians. Do you know what that means?'

I shook my head.

‘They've decided the best way for women to achieve equality is to paint men out of the picture altogether.'

I nodded.

‘So their decision to have relationships with women is a political decision.'

‘Right.'
Weird.

‘But if I'm attracted to someone, a man, should I deny myself my own sexual rights? Isn't that an anti-feminist thing to do?'

I thought about it for a second. ‘Couldn't you just do it with someone who isn't a soldier?'

‘He's in the airforce,' she corrected. ‘And I've told you, he isn't the enemy. He's a kid from the sticks who's bored and homesick and happens to have a fantastic body.'

I didn't want to hear about his body.

‘We're not in a relationship. I don't have to talk about him. For ninety-nine per cent of the time, he doesn't even exist.'

She made it sound so neat, but however she explained it, my guts told me it wasn't right.

‘What if the others found out?'

‘They won't find out. How would they find out?' She sounded testy. ‘You're not going to tell them are you?' Her voice had taken on a note of challenge, the one she'd used with the journalist.

‘No.'

‘Because it's none of their business. It's none of
your
business either really, is it? I mean, I don't know why you were creeping around in the woods spying on me.'

Her words stung. ‘I wasn't, I heard voices.'

‘And you wanted to get the full picture?'

‘No.'

‘That's very much how it sounds.' Her face had gone cold.

‘No.'

She turned back to the fence and fiddled with a length of fuse wire which secured someone's offering: cut-out newspaper photos of Ronald Regan and Margaret Thatcher with the words ‘War Criminals' felt-tipped across their foreheads. The pictures were tucked into a plastic punch pocket to keep them dry.

‘Don't tell the others, will you?' she said. ‘It's not important. It doesn't change who I am, it doesn't change how I feel about anything.'

‘But it's not right.'

She turned to me with a glint of fury in her green eyes. ‘Who are you to tell me what's right?'

I took a step back, unsteady on my feet. ‘Sorry. I just don't want you to get into trouble.'

‘Tessa, I need you to be my friend and forget about this.' Her voice softened. ‘Pretend you haven't seen anything. You're not going to get all funny about this are you, Skittle?'

‘Of course not.'

‘Good.' She came towards me and wrapped her arms around me. ‘Then let's forget all about it.' We hugged and for that moment the soldier disappeared. But afterwards, as we drew apart, I could still hear the song going around in my head,
Which side are you on?

22

Under the Weather

We held hands together, we ate together, we froze together, we got sick together. Or rather, we should have got sick together, all things being equal. But all things weren't equal. What began in the morning with a runny nose followed quickly with chills and by early evening I'd retreated to my sleeping bag. I lay there trapped in the bag, trapped in my body, unable to find a comfortable position for my aching limbs and wishing more than anything that I was at home with Mum downstairs heating soup. This wasn't the place for sick people. Sick people needed to be where clean pillows and Lucozade weren't the subject of fantasy. Every drop of moisture in me was sweating from my skin and into my clothes. My cable knit jumper grew heavier and heavier. There was no mental rest either; whenever I closed my eyes I saw Rori and the soldier, his long fingers knotting her curls. The image kept rising up until burying it was impossible, like trying to push a balloon down into water.

A fox screeched somewhere in the birches. I reached up for my torch, found a near empty bottle of water and using its last dribble swallowed the emergency paracetamols I'd stashed in my jeans.
They didn't go down in one sluice, crumbly fragments lodged half dissolving in my throat and released a sour, chemical taste. I left the torch on for comfort and tried to sleep, remembering Angela's matter of fact assessment, ‘You're not cut out for this.'

I was in enemy waters, making a new effort to save Rori from the soldier when a voice floated towards me. ‘Coming…' I croaked, trying to rid myself of the jellyfish tangled around my arm. I opened my eyes and there was Rori.

‘Not well.'
The words sounded strange, like someone speaking through a towel.

She felt my forehead with the back of her blissfully cool hand. ‘You're burning up.'

‘Got to stop,' I said. ‘Got to, Rori. Promise?'

The bender pulsed like the enormous jellyfish in my dream.

‘Stop what?' It was Jean's voice. A silver-haired angel.

‘She's delirious,' said Rori, her outline receding now. Come back. Sorry. Don't go.

‘Not right,' I told the Barbour angel before everything went black.

Something wet on my forehead. I rubbed it, touching the stuff there. Wet. Pulpy. Were my brains coming out? Oh God, they were, my brains were coming out! Darkness. A caped figure crouched down putting her fingers in my brains. I cried out.

‘Shhhh.'

‘Stop it!'

The form in the cape started talking gibberish.

‘Please don't…' I said, petrified.

‘It's an elixir, it will draw out your poisons.'

‘Vicky?' I whispered.

A kerfuffle and someone else crawling inside. ‘She doesn't need your witchy shit.' Sam's voice. A disagreement. Blackout. The soldier tangling with Rori's hair.

When I next opened my eyes a sallow light had blanched the walls of the bender. Morning? Afternoon? Rori, beside me.

‘You've been out of it, Tessa. You've been babbling.'

‘Have I? About what?'

‘Me,' she said, brushing a curl from her eyes.

‘You?'

She lowered her voice. ‘And him.'

I blinked, trying to make a path through the porridge in my head. ‘It was the fever.'

‘I know. I know that.' She sat me forward, offering a beaker of water to my mouth and I sipped. ‘But try to forget about it, okay? It's not important, it doesn't mean anything. Nothing for you to waste time on, all right?'

How could I control what my subconscious wanted to waste time on? ‘I'm sorry.'

She smoothed a strand of hair from my forehead and her tone softened. ‘Anyway, I'm not going to see him anymore, I've made up my mind, so there's nothing to worry about.' I smiled up at her. ‘When I was sick, Jocasta used to read me poetry.'

My head felt tender as a balloon. Rori traced her forefinger over my temple.

Four grey walls, and four grey towers

Overlook a space of flowers,

And the silent isle imbowers

The Lady of Shalott.

I shut my eyes, and as Rori's voice threaded mellifluously through the shadow and half shadow of the looking-glass city, I saw her with her hair spread out in wet fronds floating down to Camelot.

The next day, Sam brought me a Pot Noodle, Di brought me menthol vapour rub and Barbel bought me a posy of wild grasses and sang a Dutch song about a field mouse who finds a nutshell. Rori sat with me and left only when I'd fallen asleep. In another twenty-four hours I was well enough to sit at the fire again, wrapped in a blanket, wearing a thermal hat which one of the women used for mountaineering. Angela glanced at me vaguely when I appeared and said nothing. We ate courgette pasta for dinner, which was at least sloppy enough to swallow. But the yearning for a soft, clean bed hadn't abated.

My head felt gluey. When I closed my eyes and touched my eyeballs they felt bruised beneath the lids. While I'd been sick there hadn't been any encouraging news. A group of women from Sapphire gate had tried to get into the sentry box at the main entrance and failed. Two of them had been arrested. The weather remained bleak, grey-dark as a prison blanket and no one was having much in the way of conversation.

While Angela and I kept our dislike of each other private, tensions between Sam and Vicky had risen in full view of everyone and there'd obviously been an escalation in hostilities since the elixir incident in my bender. Trouble started again when Vicky transferred a kettle of freshly boiled water into Alan, her hot-water bottle, a bedraggled thing with a fur cover made to resemble a bear. She was nearly finished pouring when Sam came slapping through the mud.

‘What are you playing at?'

Vicky ignored her.

‘Did you put that kettle on?' said Sam.

Vicky finished pouring the last drop of hot water into Alan's belly.

Sam answered her own question. ‘No, I did. So we could have tea.'

Vicky pulled Alan closer. ‘I was cold.'

‘You were
cold
? We're all cold. Tessa's been at death's door. Do you know how long it takes to boil that kettle?'

‘Have some of this then,' said Vicky in her little girl voice, offering to transfer bear water into Sam's enamel mug.

‘Not from that thing.'

‘He's not a
thing
. And he's clean.'

Barbel intervened, ‘You know, we can't do this fighting with ourselves or we might as well go with them in there, hey?' She pointed towards the base. But Sam wasn't in the mood to keep the peace, and neither was Vicky.

‘You're always sneering,' said Vicky. ‘I can see you.'

‘With your third eye?'

Vicky turned to us. ‘You hear her, you all hear her don't you? Why do you have to mock?'

Sam ran a palm over her shaved head, ‘I don't have to, it's hard not to.'

Angela's eyes had left her book. Barbel, unable to contain her compassion for the women standing on either side of her, began singing
You can't kill the spirit
in her Dutch/English accent.

But Sam and Vicky had killed each other's spirit long ago.

‘Every night you go on and on about all your witchy shit – karma and potions and energies and we've got to sit here and listen to it. Well it's getting right on my tits.' She flapped her mug in frustration. ‘I'm here to protest about nuclear weapons, not to listen to that crap. And now I can't even make a cup of tea.'

‘Why don't I put on the kettle for us all?' Barbel suggested.

Sam wasn't diverted. ‘You shouldn't have to. And we're nearly out of water.' She turned to Vicky. ‘Not that you ever fetch it. Tessa's always at the standpipe. I stock wood. Jean cooks. Barbel plays the guitar and makes stuff. Angela organises everything… what do you
do
?' I noticed Sam hadn't mentioned Rori in the roundup, because truth be told, Rori wasn't that fond of housework, or campwork as we called it. Somehow that didn't matter because we all liked having her near, raising our spirits and dispensing hugs.

‘And when someone does put the kettle on, you pour it into that…'

Vicky wasn't having any more. She stepped forward and fixed Sam with a stare.

‘You are carrying around a lot of dark shadows.'

She extended her arms pointily in the manner of Kate Bush. Sam shook her head.

‘Here we go.'

Vicky took another step towards her. ‘I'm helping you.'

‘If you want to help me you could piss off back to your witchy friends and leave us alone.'

We were all staring at Vicky, bound up in the drama. She swept her arms in a circle and whispered in Sam's direction.

‘Don't start with your weird curses.' But Vicky had her eyes shut and was going into full
Wuthering Heights
mode. She spun and twisted, murmuring an incantation.