Love and Fallout (33 page)

At our very first session Valeria asked us to say what we loved about each other. I said I loved Pete's good humour, his shaggy hair, his kindness – and other things which were difficult to explain to Valeria, or probably to him, because we don't sit down and tell our spouses why we love them, unless we are drunk perhaps, or they are teetering on death, or we've only just met them and need to quantify it to ourselves. I love, used to love, the way he let Pippa dance on his feet when she was little. I love the way his tongue pokes out of the corner of his mouth when he's slicing an onion into wafers. I love the way he – used to – put up a tent, the easy swing of the mallet as the pegs sunk down, the way he'd smooth the ground sheet and lay my sleeping bag down first, checking it for comfort. I love his fascination for old dead kings and queens, the way he'll bring their first names into conversations as if he knows them personally and understands their dilemmas. All sorts of things I love about him. Loved about him. Love about him. And more painful than the thought of him in bed with another woman is the idea of him sitting face to face with her in the corner of a dimly lit country pub – where was it they went? – holding her hand, explaining the workings of his heart.

A car passes in the road and there's the creak of a floorboard upstairs: Valeria's husband, shut in his study until the less happily married find their way home. I imagine him up there sitting on the bed in his socks, finishing a crossword, sipping a whisky, waiting until the coast is clear. Or does he have the television on a low volume? I've never met him, never even caught sight of a photograph though I've scanned the room. Then again, why would Valeria spread her family mementos about – happy days by the river, intimate holiday dinners – it would be cruel to remind us what we're missing, all of us who arrive to sit stiffly on the two-seater sofa hoping for rescue.

When we first decided to ring the bell to Valeria's house we thought it would be a gentle steer when we needed it, a way to get us back on course. Neither of us knew we could risk making things worse as we stripped back the layers and confronted each other with the sort of hurt which might better be left in a box marked Do Not Open. Pete told Valeria in the second session that he felt we were simply occupying the same space, that we were more like housemates than man and wife. Co-parents. I said we used to have projects we enjoyed together but he'd lost enthusiasm. He said I was never happy unless I had a tub to thump. I said if he looked sideways once in a while he might see there's a world outside the living room. He said if I sat down and relaxed once in a while I'd notice it had other people to solve its problems. So it went on until Valeria held up her hands and called for a halt. By then there were empty boxes everywhere. Although none of them were yet marked Supply Teacher.

Pete is telling us both, me and Valeria, about the other commitments which displease him. He mentions Heston Fields. I say that in principle I think he'd support the campaign to save the field, but he won't because I'm running it. His antagonism feels perverse.

‘It's not as if you get paid for any of this extra work,' he says.

‘Is that what irks you, that it's voluntary?'

‘No, you know it's not, but I don't understand why you go on like this.'

‘Go on?'

He sighs and leans back, ‘Sorry… you're good at what you do. She's excellent…' he tells Valeria. ‘But it's an obsession.'

Valeria asks how Pete's comments make me feel. This is a phrase she's fond of.

The rubber plant splays its shiny leaves. The plants are here to remind us of life. Renewal. Suddenly I feel weary to my bones.

‘Sorry,' I say, fighting off a yawn.

‘If you're tired why don't you do less?' he says.

‘That's not an answer.'

‘Why isn't it?'

‘Because if everyone sat back nothing would get done, I just want to get things done. I've got a duty.'

‘Duty?' He gives a dry laugh. ‘You're not the Queen. No one's waiting for you to open a hospital wing.'

‘It might be helpful for Tessa to unpack this,' Valeria says. She gives me her steady gaze. ‘…Duty, that's an interesting word.'

Is it? I don't want to do any unpacking. I want to sleep and not think. The time's nearly up and I want to get out of
Valeria's pink womb. She writes on her notepad. There's no point trying to sit here explaining ourselves to each other or ourselves to ourselves. Whatever Pete might have loved about me seems so lost that he hasn't even tried rediscovering it but has made a path through the foxgloves and marigolds to somewhere he can find a warm bed and a warm body.

‘Tessa, I know this is hard for you because you've been hurt. And Pete, you know this is hard for Tessa too, don't you?' He nods, dipping his eyes to his knees. ‘But we have to face some difficult aspects of ourselves.' Pete is a tree man, that's why I love him. Loved him. Love him. Beardy. Solid. Rooted.

‘Shall we leave it for this evening?' I say.

Valeria glances at the clock.

‘I can't excuse what I did,' Pete says. ‘But I regret it.'

‘You are trying to excuse it… you're making it sound as if I'm never at home… as if I drove you to this.' The room is too red and too warm.

‘Perhaps what Pete is feeling is that he doesn't have enough of your attention when you are with him,' says Valeria.

The shelves bear a collection of trinkets, not the sort of trinkets Mum favours, porcelain ladies and china spaniels, what she calls her knick-knacks, but postcards, a brass elephant, a carved wooden bowl. Amidst them is a glass paperweight with an indigo swirl at its centre. It always captures my attention, that inky swirl of glass, a miniature tempest forever in the act of storming. Impossible to touch. Impossible to calm.

The session ends. We make another appointment. We say goodbye to Valeria. We walk to the car in silence.

29

In the Cells

Angela sat leaning against the wall with her knees bent up in front of her, maintaining the silence. She'd buried down into her parka, both hands in the pockets, and her eyes were shut. I sat at the other end of the bench staring at the whitewashed brick, unable to reconcile what had passed, everything crashing together: the fear of scaling the fence, the elation of standing on the silos, and Rori, running without looking back.

A shaft of weak morning sunshine entered the cell through the smallest of high windows. My left ankle was puffy. I'd taken my foot out of my boot and there was no way it was going back in again, but at least the physical pain of the ankle was some distraction from the doomy music playing in my head.

There wasn't much to look at, but what there was I recognised from episodes of
Juliet Bravo
: a bench built into the wall, a folded grey blanket, a door hatch into which a policeman could push his face. In one corner of the cell stood a simple toilet without a lid. Neither of us, please God, would have to use it. If I needed to go I'd bang on the door. I glanced at Angela, her brow furrowed in concentration. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. If I'd ever imagined incarceration, and I'd tried not to, there was always a gang of friends present, we were making each other roll-ups and confounding the authorities with our good-natured solidarity. There was almost definitely singing. And in my imagination I was always with Rori.

‘What will they do with us?' My voice came loud in the chilly space.

Angela twitched. A chain of beads spilled briefly from her pocket and she tucked them back in without opening her eyes. Rosary beads. That's what she was doing. How had she managed to hide them from the police when they'd confiscated my rolling tobacco and sealed it up in a clear plastic bag?

‘They'll leave us until they've decided what to charge us with,' she said, her eyes still shut.

‘How long will that be?'

She shrugged.

‘Could it be… could it be something to do with the Official Secrets Act?'

Another shrug.

For pity's sake, we were locked up together and she was playing the plaster saint. A minute passed but she said nothing else.

‘What are we going to do?' I asked.

‘Wait.'

‘But… it's Christmas.'

‘They won't let us go yet.'

I wasn't sure what our bail conditions would be if bail was to be granted. Mum and Dad could afford to put up the money now, but it would mean telling them what had happened, and I couldn't do that – especially not on Christmas Day.
They'd been so happy after their pools win. No, if I was going to make one phone call, I wouldn't ring them, I'd phone the solicitor whose number was still inked in smudgy biro across my hand.

‘Have you been arrested before?' I asked. Angela opened her eyes and nodded.

‘What happened?'

‘The first time they cautioned me. The second time they wanted me to agree to be bound over.' She noted my blank expression. ‘It means you have to agree to keep the peace. But I refused so they took me to court.'

‘And you got off?'

‘No. I got six days.'

I didn't ask what it was like in prison. I could take a guess. Oh God. I tried to think of the suffragettes.

From the corridor came the sound of clanging as a drunk was slammed, slurring and protesting, into a cell: ‘Ope the fuckindoor,' he hollered. But the door wasn't opened and the man was left shouting into nothing and to no one. Angela closed her eyes again. Every thought I had joined a stream of desperate others until they were smashing like lemmings over a cliff. The wall wasn't much of a distraction, but it was all I had, and I began counting the whitewashed bricks. I'd got to three hundred and seventeen when a young WPC entered, her blonde hair pinned into a bun, a sprig of tinsel clipped to her lapel.

‘You girls fancy a cup of tea?'

‘Yes, please. Do you think I could have an aspirin too? It's my ankle.'

She glanced at my fat foot. ‘Can't really do that without my colleague, he's in charge of the meds box and he went home an hour ago.'

‘Surely you can give her something?' said Angela.

The WPC considered my foot. I'd swung it onto the bench to keep the blood flowing. ‘Got yourself in a right pickle, haven't you,' she said, shaking her head like a wise older sister. It was the most sympathetic thing anyone had said since our arrest.

‘How long are we going to be held?' I asked.

But the WPC didn't know. She said she was only here to offer us tea and did we want sugar. I asked for two. The door banged shut. Angela retreated into herself.

After she'd gone I couldn't remember where I'd got to with the bricks. What was the point? It was all such a mess – my attempt at activism had come to this: the pain, the cold, Rori, prison. Biting the inside of my cheek wasn't working. I tried chewing on my nails instead, but they tasted bitter from the ink the policeman had used for our fingerprints. Sod it all. I was going to have to cry. As the ache in my throat relaxed into a sob, the relief was instant. Angela opened her eyes in time to track the first tear as it skipped off the end of my chin.

‘You shouldn't have come back to the camp,' she said in a weary voice.

‘I wanted to,' I replied, juddering. ‘Anyway, it's nothing to do with you.'

Anyway came out as A-a-any-way. There'd been a time when the thought of crying in front of Angela would have been the ultimate humiliation, but what did it matter now? Nothing mattered.

‘I'm not judging you. But protest is hard. It demands sacrifice. I tried to tell you.'

Not judging? She was always judging, even if she wasn't saying anything,
especially
if she wasn't saying anything.

‘You're not perfect.'

She took off her round glasses and rubbed the lens with the hem of her flannel shirt. Without them her face dipped into shallows, like a snowman whose eyes had been stolen. ‘I never claimed to be.'

She replaced the glasses and the pale eyes reappeared, the eyes that moved so coolly around recording every detail with the precision of a surveillance camera. And then she closed them again, re-engaging with the beads in her pocket. Well that was typical, shutting out anyone who didn't come up to her standards.

‘What about Barbel's birthday?' I said, rubbing a sleeve across my glistening upper lip. I didn't want to mention the song directly, but at least I'd got her attention. Her eyes were open. ‘You make mistakes too.' Why couldn't she at least admit she was human?

There was another silence. I didn't think she'd respond but then she said, ‘I didn't want to sing.'

‘Why did you then? You could have refused.'

Because she couldn't stand the idea of me and Rori doing something together that didn't include her. I told her this.

‘No, it wasn't that.'

‘What was it then?' The man in the cell down the corridor was making more noise. ‘What?'