Love and Fallout (30 page)

I tried to imagine Mum going berserk on a trampoline but it just wasn't possible.

Angela still hadn't come to sit down. Now she was standing by herself, breaking up boxes. ‘Yum,' said Rori, packing another date into her mouth. There was no love lost between us, but Angela was obviously unhappy, and what was the point? It was only a song. I went over. The cardboard juddered in her hands.

‘You're missing the other acts,' I said to the back of her head. She didn't reply. Her shoulders tensed, she picked at a peel of tape and tore it violently along a seam of cardboard. ‘Look, it doesn't matter.'

‘What doesn't?' She stopped tearing.

‘You know, the song.' Now she grabbed at another strip of tape. ‘It was only a bit of fun…'

‘I don't want to discuss it,' she said, throwing another flattened box on the pile.

‘Sam's on next.' Sam had been working on a comedy routine which wasn't for the easily offended.

But Angela wouldn't turn around. ‘Could you go away?' she said, and carried on ripping.

By the time it was Sam's turn to come off, the women were stamping their boots and banging pots. There were demands for more, but like a seasoned professional, Sam had already cracked open a beer and was basking in the afterglow, surrounded by groupies. Before we had time to let the cheering die down completely and put the music back on (the woman with the record player only had three records, Leo Sayer, Songs from The Musicals, and Hits of 1980), a woman spoke up.

‘I have a poem.'

According to our running order, we'd have a short break then Deeksha was going to sing – before she'd joined The Orange People, she'd been a successful session musician. We hadn't opened the entertainment to everyone, but when the woman unfolded herself from her crate, there was nothing we could do to stop her. Besides, this was a place of equality where everyone had the right to be heard – even if her name wasn't on the bill.

The woman must have been over six feet, with large hands and a head of soft hair, the sort of hair you associated with a baby animal. She stood before us in the height-reducing stance of the very tall, her weight shifted to one hip. It occurred to me that she was about the right height for the American serviceman. The audience hushed. The woman scanned her piece of paper then dropped her arm to her side and began to recite from memory in a voice much louder than anyone expected:
You, with your weapon shaped like the penis
.

Rori looked at me with raised eyebrows.

The woman rocked as she spoke, inching towards us as we stared back, caught in her headlights. All laughter ceased. The metaphors were bold and disturbing. Menstrual blood. Vultures. Somewhere after the fifth verse, Rori took out her tobacco tin and began rolling a cigarette, whispering something about sincere feeling resulting in appalling poetry. I remembered my Tony poems and stayed quiet. She offered me her cigarette.

‘Where are your gloves?' I whispered, inhaling.

‘Lost them,' she replied, considering her red hands and nestling them into the pockets of my jacket for warmth.

We were arriving at the poem's excruciating climax, a scene of apocalypse, the earth powdered with white dust. After the final line, the tall woman continued to rock on her toes, looking to the horizon as if she could see the poem becoming smoke. The audience clapped and whoever was in charge of the record player acted swiftly because Leo Sayer came on immediately singing, ‘You make me feel like dancing.'

The party resumed its rhythm.

‘Having fun?' asked Jean, sitting on the seat which Barbel had recently vacated. She and Di were dancing together, the beads at the end of Di's cornrow plaits skipping as she moved.

‘Yes thanks.' And I was, we all were, except perhaps for Angela, who stayed on the periphery – what she needed was a book, but even Angela knew that reading wasn't acceptable party behaviour. It was the strangest but definitely one of the best parties I'd ever been to: here I was outside in the freezing cold, numbed through but among friends who cared for each other and trusted one another, not at home in Stevenage watching telly, not reading a paperback in my bedroom, or in the pub with Maggie listening to her latest list of conquests. Maggie. I nudged away the painful memory of her dangling that packet of crisps in her teeth.

After some party chatter, Jean lowered her voice and asked Rori if she'd told me about the Christmas Eve plans.

‘I wanted to pick the right moment,' said Rori.

‘What plans?' I asked.

‘I think now's as good a time as any,' said Jean. Sam and her groupies had joined the dancing and were jumping about with abandon.

‘Some of us are planning to break into the base,' said Jean.

‘To get to the missile silos,' added Rori. I pictured a wall of soldiers barely restraining their slathering Alsatians. ‘There's a double layer of fencing, but we've found a weak section.'

Jean checked me for a response. ‘But we wouldn't expect anyone to be involved who wasn't aware of the consequences.'

‘Consequences?' I shifted on the crate.

Barbel twirled holding a length of material, winding and unwinding it around herself and Di as they danced.

‘We don't know what the MoD situation is. They could charge us with offences relating to the Official Secrets Act,' said Jean.

‘We'd be arrested?'

Jean nodded. I thought about prison. Suffragettes being force-fed. Rori put her arm around me, ‘Oh Skittle, we'll all be together.'

I looked at Rori, her green eyes, like a cat's glinting in the darkness. This was it, I'd made a commitment, this is what I was here for and this was my chance to be courageous. This time I'd be properly involved, not like during the blockade when I'd ended up on the sidelines.

‘What's the plan?' I asked.

Rori grinned and squeezed me to her.

The party went on for most of the night; we stripped the willow, bobbed for apples, played anarchic musical statues, but by midnight things were winding down. Rori and I had been talking about the action as we huddled around a satellite fire we'd made for ourselves, warmed with cider and a quantity of DIY punch. She snuggled into me, resting her head on my breast. A bird clattered in the braches and was still. I was thinking about the action.

‘This will be the most serious thing I've ever done. This is something necessary, isn't it, something that really matters?'

She took my gloved hand and held it to her cheek. ‘Lovely Tessa,' she smiled, ‘best beloved.' I pulled one of her ringlet curls; it sprang back in a quick coil.

A twig snapped in the fire.

She smiled again, cradled her bare hands around my face and kissed me, very gently, and then with greater pressure, on the mouth.

Part T
hree

Gonna Lay Down my Burden

26

Meetings

‘Unfortunately,' Ron Hitchcock rolls his pen between thumb and forefinger, ‘there's nothing I can do, Mrs Perry.'

Ron is representing the council's Your Community division, but despite the fact we've met twice before, he refuses to call me by my Christian name. Deciding to hold the meeting here in our cramped office was a mistake, especially on such a hot afternoon, and while we've been talking two dark patches have blossomed in the armpits of his blue shirt. Turning on the fan will create a paperwork tornado. If only he'd at least loosen his tie.

‘Even if we had the resources to re-fund this project, I'm afraid you're not grant ready,' he says, moving his gaze to Frieda.

My heart sinks. Grant ready, like market facing and measurable outcomes, is part of the synthetic pseudo business language which gets trotted out at these meetings.

I refill his water glass. ‘But we're running smoothly,' says Frieda, edging our year-end accounts over the desk. ‘And we've had so much good feedback,' I add, gesturing to the corkboard. He's barely noticed the display we've created around the office walls. The thank-you notes, the photos of happy pensioners and school children.

‘I can see you've done good things.' He sighs and sits back with an expression of weary patience. ‘Nevertheless there was some reservation expressed about your pedagogic practice.'

Pedagogic practice? I think for a moment and recall Oak Lane, the Head of Year stalking towards me at the end of a workshop,
I thought you were going to discuss recycling
, she snapped.

‘Do you mean Oak Lane Academy?' I ask. Ron makes no comment. ‘The thing is, with older students, bright students, conversations tend to open out.' She'd reprimanded one of the kids for asking what she called an inappropriate question, and I'd let him ask it anyway.

Ron glances at his notepad. ‘As well as nuclear energy, it seems you were facilitating a debate about direct action…'

‘No, I wouldn't say facilitating.'
The power of official language. ‘There was a discussion, one of the students mentioned the coal-fired power station in Kingsnorth.'

‘And there was also reference to…' He glances at his notepad, the squiggles unreadable from upside down, ‘…nuclear missiles.'

I scroll back in my memory. Occasionally someone asks how I got involved with campaigning.

‘It's not your responsibility to lecture students about the whys and wherefores of nuclear disarmament, Mrs Perry.' A strand of hair is curled damply on his forehead and I feel a huge temptation to reach across the table and give that pink head a good hard slap. Not to hurt him, just to wake him up.

‘We carried out nearly seventy workshops last year, some were more spirited than others, but there shouldn't be a remit against debate? Not in a school.' His expression tells me that whatever suspicions he had are now confirmed. I press on, ‘We certainly wouldn't want to prejudice students in one direction or the other… our purpose is to…' I reach for a word, ‘…empower them.'

Empower. I realise the word has come to mean nothing, it's another entry on the list of jargon, the word Pippa used as she stood in the kitchen after our argument, her reason for taking part in the beauty pageant.

Ron touches a thumb to his brow. ‘These are funds from central government. We're compelled to make efficiency savings. You understand.'

A sheen of perspiration glitters his forehead. I look to Frieda.

‘We've been working very hard to develop our connections with the local community,' she says, reminding him of the community gardening scheme we've piloted. After drama school she appeared in a high-profile advert for washing-up liquid, and now she gives Ron the full beam of her Sunshine Rinse smile. I run my eyes down the pro-active verbs pencilled along the margin of my notebook: foster, harness, maximise, engage, enthuse, ready to seize on anything which might be of help.

Ron is not impervious to Frieda's smile, and his gaze lingers on her curiously, like a man in a boring shop who's found something of interest.

‘You've evidently put in a lot of energy,' he says. ‘And that's commendable.' He stops browsing and returns his eyes to me, where they settle with businesslike regard. ‘But as you know, these are challenging times. Our resources are diminished and the green market is extremely competitive.' Green market? We're not looking to produce the next generation of happy shoppers. I say nothing. He clicks his ballpoint and tucks it into the breast pocket of his shirt. ‘I'm sorry Mrs Perry, but there are other organisations tendering for similar education work.'

Frieda is making one last attempt to talk him around, but no amount of Sunshine Rinse is going to save us now. The meeting is over. That's it. Without our schools and community contract we've lost sixty percent of our funding; we've no reserves to speak of and we can't compete with charities who have actual advertising budgets. But this isn't Ron's problem and already he's buckling his briefcase.

‘Oh, Mrs Perry,' he says when we've shaken hands at the door. My heart skips: a sudden idea – he's remembered a source of revenue reserved for small environmental charities in Cambridgeshire. I give him my full attention. He smiles, a genuine smile, slightly shy. ‘I wanted to ask… it was you on that make-over programme, wasn't it?' The dream dissolves. ‘Only my wife's a big fan. She was wondering, what's Jude like in real life?'

Frieda leaves the door to the street open so a breeze can blow through, and now that its clatter won't disturb our conversation, I switch the fan up high.

‘Do you think they'd give me a part in
Me and My Girl
?' I ask.

She smiles, and I do too, because it's better than succumbing to a long despairing wail.

‘We could always get the collecting tins out,' she suggests.

We attempt a few more ideas for funding, but our hearts aren't in it. Soon Frieda will be gone, tap dancing her way around the regional theatres of Britain and I'll be sitting here scratching my head alone because there's no money to replace her. We finish off the day's work and I complete the workshop plan for the rest of the week.