Love and Fallout (34 page)

‘I wanted to show him,' she said quickly.

‘Show who?'

She looked away. ‘My dad.'

‘What's it got to do with your dad?'

There was only the reverberation of the man banging out a drunken rhythm on a metallic surface. A policeman arrived and told the man to stop. When Angela spoke again she'd drawn her knees higher to her chin and was talking to her boots rather than me.

‘He was always in the centre, whatever the occasion you could hear him above the crowd.'

If I'd ever had any notion of her father, he'd been a version of her, bespectacled, serious, surrounded by leather-bound volumes.

‘He always made us get up when there was company, my brothers and sisters…' she paused. ‘He used to make us sing, but I couldn't do it. I'd try, but my nerves got me and my voice…' She stopped, seeming to forget I was still there. ‘
Run off to
your books,
he'd say. And they'd laugh. Good old Brendan, the centre of every party.' Her voice had gone to a whisper, her words disappearing into the cell wall along with all the other secrets it must have absorbed. ‘But he'd make me get up the next time. And the next. He enjoyed it.' The silence pulsed between us like an extra presence and I tried to imagine Angela as part of a big family, intimately connected to other people, brothers and sisters, and a father dragging her into the centre of a crowded room.

‘But surely that was years ago. It doesn't matter what he says.'

‘No. It doesn't matter.'

I shifted my sore ankle. I should have stayed silent, let her stay silent. But now he'd been hauled out, this father with his loud voice, he had to be acknowledged.

‘What does he think of you being at Greenham?'

She stared at her boots and shrugged. ‘He died in May.'

The information settled on me like a fall of snow on bare skin and I remembered what Rori had said about a bereavement.

‘I'm sorry.'

The man along the corridor was being moved, raising his voice in a less determined protest, exhausted by his previous efforts.

I shivered.

‘Have the blanket,' she said, realigning her body to its former position.

‘We could ask for another one,' I said.

She shook her head. The blanket stayed where it was, folded between us. Angela closed her eyes, returning to the images behind them – her father, the Virgin Mary, the arms race. The dull square of light sharpened briefly on the cell floor. I shut my eyes feeling worse than ever and tried to sleep.

30

Down by the Riverside

I'm supposed to meet Angela at a café beside the Royal Festival Hall, but the train is stuck on a tree-lined track outside Cambridge and we haven't moved for nearly half an hour. There's been a mumbled announcement about signal failure, apologies for any inconvenience and we're elbow to elbow because the train is only three carriages long when it should be at least four. It's warm. A woman with a home-counties hairdo fans herself with a magazine and a baby in the next compartment begins to fret. Newspapers creak and whisper as pages turn in the limited space. Why today? You don't want to keep someone waiting when you haven't seen them for nearly thirty years, especially not Angela Mullen. I picture her zipped into her parka, stirring a cappuccino and checking her watch. Of course she won't be wearing the parka anymore, but I'm finding it difficult to update her. And what are we going to talk about anyway?

The bars on my mobile are two miniature flat bricks: they quiver and are still. I can't access my messages to see if there's anything from Pippa. Since our argument I've managed one short phone conversation with her, but now she's in London visiting a friend so we've arranged to meet up later for dinner. Somehow we need to smooth things over. I gaze into a nest of brambles and remember primary school afternoons, the simple mother-daughter transactions, the presentation of a painting done in chalky poster paints, mixing a mug of hot chocolate while she talked about her friends. Somewhere around the age of fourteen she started to wander away from me and she's never come back.

A heavy man in the seat opposite is wheezing softly. He opens his briefcase and removes an inhaler, shakes it, tilts his head back and sucks in. When he exhales an after-cloud of Ventolin hovers around his mouth and nose, giving him the look of a dragon trailing smoke. He catches my eye and smiles self-consciously; I smile back and look away, reminded by Mum's voice that staring is rude.

The train eases forwards. We snap out of our stupors, glancing past each other into the trees on either side of the window which begin to inch past, trunk by trunk, before another judder brings us to a stop. The air fills with more low-level sighing.

The trees are so close I can see the twiggy branches growing from their trunks and the blades of light behind, and while I study the dark and light shapes, my thoughts creep into a familiar thicket where bodies are twisted together. I wonder what the supply teacher looks like naked.

The café is vibrant with white-aproned waiting staff, and the coffee machine gushes as they circle the tables. I texted Angela to explain the delay, and she's bound to have gone by now, but I scan the room anyway, feeling oddly exposed, my eyes passing over two elderly ladies, a blonde woman who looks French and who is holding two fingers in the air to signal the waiter, a stylish couple who might be Italian tourists, and a man in a pink shirt eating poached eggs. There's also a group of women about my age, a couple flushed with love and staring into each other's eyes, and two mothers attempting to chat while their toddlers run free. Fatigued from a dash across Hungerford Bridge, I take a seat at an outside table. It's a Tuesday, but the South Bank is alive and it's good to sit in the dappled light watching the flow of life passing by in all its variety. My phone says three missed calls, and I'm just about to ring Angela's number when there's a tap on my shoulder.

‘Tessa.'

I turn around and it takes me a moment to answer. ‘Angela?'

‘I was waving at you,' says the petite woman in the cream suit.

‘I… I thought you were French,' I reply, still confused.

‘French?' She laughs.

French? ‘Sorry. Only… I wouldn't have recognised you.' I tell my face to look normal.

‘Evidently,' she says. ‘I've a meeting around the corner, that's why I'm suited and booted.'

Her hair is still blonde, but brighter, cut into feathery layers, and the round glasses have been replaced by chic designer frames. Her skin is lightly tanned and the sprinkle of freckles on her nose give her a girlish look. She smiles and says it's great to see me, swooping forwards to kiss me continentally on both cheeks, and because I'm not quite recovered from the surprise I simply sit there offering my face rather than joining in the greeting. The only thing that remains the same is her stature: she's slim, but in her outfit she appears slender, rather than scrawny, the way I remember her from camp. I explain about the signal problems, feeling strangely incapable after all these years.

‘Never mind, you're here now,' she says, taking the seat opposite. ‘It's a pity we don't have much time.' Her northern accent is there but it's softer and inflected with something vaguely transatlantic. In my head I continue the struggle to connect her to the image I've been carrying around for nearly three decades.

‘I was looking out for a redhead.'

I shrug, uncomfortable at the memory, ‘It wasn't really me.' It took sixty-five quid and four hours in a salon to get back to normal, well, better than normal, my new hair is cut into a shiny chestnut crop.

‘You look great either way,' she says, and I return the compliment. I would like to sit her down and stare at her for a good five minutes, uninterrupted.

‘Thanks so much for coming; I wasn't sure how you'd feel getting an email out of the blue.'

‘A little surprised.'

‘Only a little?' She raises an eyebrow.

‘Quite a lot.'

‘There you were on TV, large as life. I couldn't believe it,' she says. I cringe as choice moments from the programme go shuttling through my head. ‘I always look out for
Make Me Over
when I'm home.'

‘Do you?'

‘Oh yes. Was the filming fun?'

I decide not to go into the details. ‘It was interesting.'

‘Ah,
interesting
.'

I think of myself standing in the orange trousers waving my arms and mention the drastic way they cut the final edit.

‘Can't trust the media, we should have learned that years ago,' she says.

I register the smile, natural and relaxed, a comfortable smile. She leans over the table conspiratorially and a small gold cross glints at her neck.

‘Tell me, what's Jude like in real life?'

‘A tad bonkers to tell the truth.'

‘I knew it,' she sits back with a laugh, and I join in. I am having a laugh with Angela Mullen. It's too strange. As she speaks I can't help trying to find the old Angela in her face. Yes, her eyes are the same pale blue, quick and intelligent, yet she is altogether changed. Not simply the hair and the clothes but her manner. The word that comes to mind is light. She is
lighter
.

A waitress appears and I order a tuna salad and an orange juice. Angela asks for another coffee because she's already eaten. We smile and I'm not sure who should say something first, but she speaks, an attempt to calculate how long it's been since we last saw one other. I remember clearly, the conversation, the cold bright sky, my thoughts afterwards, but I feign puzzlement until we agree on an approximate date. I ask if she comes this way much for work.

‘Now and then. Blackfriars. The Lancing and Turner building.'

‘Oh, you're in insurance?' I need to know about this new Angela, the person who has out-manoeuvred her younger self.

‘No, advertising. They're clients, I have to update them on a project.'

Advertising. Really? I feel like running onto the pavement and shouting to release some of the accumulating incredulity. ‘Sounds exciting.'

‘Can be, when we're working on a good account. This one's fairly dry. Still, have to keep the wolf from the door somehow.'

Judging by Angela's appearance this particular door must be in a smart neighbourhood. ‘I always imagined you'd become an academic,' I say. A woman surrounded by books, a woman whose purpose is to correct and instruct.

‘I was for a short while. Too many hours for too little pay. And academics are a cynical bunch.'

She considers me and something of her serious young self shows through. ‘I was intrigued by the work you're doing.'

‘They didn't show much of it on the programme.'

‘No. But I looked you up afterwards. Easy Green, isn't it?'

‘That's right.' It's slightly unnerving, the idea of being looked up by Angela. ‘To be honest I'm not sure how long we'll be able to keep afloat. Funding cuts.' I explain something of our recent problems.

‘Have you ever tried corporate sponsorship? Business likes to raise its green profile these days. Sorry, awful expression.'

‘I've had a go, though we're so small, there's not much in it for them. But I've a meeting later with a potential donor at a trust, so fingers crossed.' We talk about work and I tell her I've been in various not-for-profit organisations all my life – fundraising, communications – and when she asks more about it, I catch myself trying to make my employment history sound more dynamic than it's actually been, because communications largely relates to the churning out of various charity newsletters and reports. Eventually I manage to turn the conversation to her career. She tells me she was teaching at a college in the States when she started doing a little freelance copywriting for a friend's agency and found she enjoyed it.

‘How long were you in America?'

‘Fifteen years.'

Of course, she left Greenham to go to Seneca, the peace camp in New York State.

‘America was a revelation after England; the climate, the people, the Can Do. Funny, after all that Anti-American propaganda we spouted to find that it was so many things Britain wasn't. It felt like reaching the light – especially after a British winter. And a Greenham winter at that.'

We reminisce with grim relish.

‘Strange days,' she says to herself, twiddling a sugar sachet.

I'm not sure how to interpret this; didn't we have a cause worth fighting for? And wasn't she on the front line? She catches my expression. ‘What I mean is they were strange days for me, personally. Looking back I can see I wasn't at peace with myself about quite a few things.' Her eyes settle on a pigeon as it pecks for crumbs and I nod, hoping she'll explain, not wanting to probe. The waitress arrives with our order. Angela sips her coffee and I spear a chunk of griddled tuna steak.