Love and Fallout (36 page)

Angela sat at the other side of the fire with a paperback as if she'd never been away. We exchanged nods.

‘Hey, baby, we're famous!' said Bernice, thrusting a paper my way. PEACE WOMEN DANCE ON SILOS.

Another Sapphire gater who'd also been arrested gave a whoop. I recognised her from that first blockade – thin-faced with a shaven head and a rat's tail, dressed in canvas overalls, she had an animal name, what was it? I raked through until I found it. Cat.

Talk turned to solicitors and court appearances and the recounting of prison anecdotes as the Sapphire gate women constructed spliffs. Cat made the point that we'd invalidated the fence.

‘They can see we're serious. What's that fence worth? Nothing. A gang of women like us can climb straight over it.'

Sam got up to tend the soup. ‘If we had bolt cutters we could go in and out without ladders.'

She was right. The fence was only an idea, I saw that now. It had been erected in our imaginations as much as anything, and it was up to us to un-imagine it: we'd cleared the fence with ladders, why not cut a hole in it and make a door? The discussion flowed, I listened, fading in and out, my head filled with Rori. She'd been gone too long to be at the standpipe. Could she have been in town and somehow got left behind by the van.

‘Have you seen Rori about?' I asked Sam. She shrugged.

‘Rori?' said a woman from our gate. ‘She went to London to see her family.'

I let the information sink in. London? She'd returned home as if nothing had happened? No, it couldn't be true.

Jean had already excused herself and retreated to her tepee. Perhaps if I could sleep too it would calm the sudden dread feeling in my heart.

Inside my bender, buried down under a quilt, a figure lay sleeping. I whispered Rori's name in the gloom, softly at first, then more urgently. The figure twitched and moved her head above the bag. A tuft of black hair stuck out. In normal circumstances, waking a sleeping woman would be against all camp etiquette, but these weren't normal circumstances and after a shake on the shoulder the girl came to, rubbing her eyes and introduced herself as a friend of Ava's.

‘Who's Ava?'

‘Oh,' she blinked with surprise as much as fatigue, as if I couldn't possibly not know. ‘She's head of the Women's Society at UCL. She's
amazing
.'

‘Is she the one who painted the van?'

‘That's right.' She grinned, on the verge of starting up more Ava conversation.

‘I need to sleep,' I said with a sigh.

‘Oh, sorry. Course.'
The girl shuffled out and I took her place. ‘We had a late one last night,' she said, crawling to the exit with a yawn. ‘Isn't it
amazing
here. Were you on the silos?'

‘Yes,' I said, and shut my eyes before she could ask anything else.

Even with the help of the extra quilt and a nearly dry pillow, sleep wouldn't come. All I could see behind my eyelids was Rori's face. How could she have done it, abandoned us, not just me but all of us, gone running and kept running until she was home? If I didn't mean anything to her then didn't the camp mean something? After an hour I went back to the fire and sat in silence, my mood darkening with the sky.

And then, on the edge of dusk, she appeared, an outline at first, moving with that familiar swaying stride. Tired to my bones and trapped in a dialogue of righteous anger, I watched until she became distinct, dressed in a new sheepskin coat and wearing a red hat topped with a white pom-pom. It struck a wrong note, that hat, it spoke of a frivolity we'd left behind three days and a lifetime ago. In addition to her rucksack she carried two turquoise carrier bags with wine-coloured string handles. I sat with my sore ankle, nursing a mug of bitter tea. She'd seen me, I knew she'd seen me well before Barbel said, ‘Look, Tessa is here too.' Noticing I wasn't moving towards her, Rori came over and bestowed a flittery kiss on my cheek. Her hair smelled newly washed. ‘Hello,' she said, before moving away to greet the other women without another word.

‘I picked up a few bits,' she said, dipping into the turquoise bags to unpack an assortment of treats: a bottle of liqueur, a box of chocolate biscuits, a giant wedge of stilton. Barbel clapped her hands. ‘Oh and some of these,' she pulled out two boxes of Christmas crackers. ‘From my mother. Just for fun.'
The women who didn't know her watched her with the sort of admiration I'd seen many times before as she swooped down among us like a fabulous Christmas angel. At the other side of the fire, the Sapphire gaters began a song.

This was supposed to make it all right was it, this show of generosity? The song grew louder. Angela had closed her book and was talking to Rori, but I couldn't hear the conversation. She didn't even glance in my direction. Christmas crackers gave way all around with the snap of gunpowder strips and laughter, gifts and jokes spilling from their broken centres. Barbel delighted in her glittery hair clip, fixing it immediately to one of her plaits, and the woman beside her tried to start a game with a miniature deck of cards while Sam clipped on a plastic moustache and read out jokes in a music hall style, hitting an imaginary snare drum at every punchline.

My attention returned to Rori, who was now distributing gifts. Angela unwrapped a new book. Sam accepted a hat with furry earflaps to protect her shaven head from the cold. ‘It's Russian, it's called a Ushanka!' called Rori. Barbel unfolded a case for her recorder. Di shyly unravelled a new Thermos flask because her old one had been cracked by a stone from a passing motorist as she'd sat witnessing at the roadside.

Rori removed the last gift, the largest of all. If she thought she was going to buy me off like this, she was wrong, very wrong. I sat quietly, one eye on the fire.

The women had stopped singing. Sam was ladling soup.

Rori held the present to her body. ‘Has anyone seen Jean?'

But Jean was still asleep in her bender, and the gift went back in the bag.

And that was it. I remembered lying in the mud, looking up to her for help while sirens whirled around the black airbase.

‘Thirty-two of us got nicked,' Sam was saying, as she filled a bowl for Rori. ‘We should rename you Lady Luck.'

With shaky hands I took a last sip of tea.

‘Chaos wasn't it,' said Rori, accepting the bowl. ‘I hardly knew what was happening.'

She dipped a finger in the soup and tasted it.

‘You knew enough to run,' I said.

She looked directly at me then, the silly red hat protecting her curls. But I wasn't going to be silenced. She was a fake, a beautiful fake: this was a game to her. Wasting hours in a freezing cell thinking about her, not knowing what to tell Mum and Dad, willing to make a sacrifice for the sake of peace, for the sake of her. The memory swam back, standing dumbstruck in the smoky pub, Maggie with her mouth on Tony's – the way I'd left without saying a thing. But this was different.

‘It's a blur,' she said, checking Sam who was adding more liquid to the soup. Rori didn't care about the camp, she didn't care about us. She probably didn't even care about the weapons.

‘You probably had to get back to your boyfriend,' I said.

She didn't answer, but met my eyes and gave the slightest shake of her head: a warning. But she had no right to silence. Not now.

‘Boyfriend?' said Sam, slowing her ladle. ‘Have you got a boyfriend, Aurora?'

Rori said nothing but her eyes returned to me and she stood very still.

‘Why don't you tell them about him?' I said.

Alert to the strains of discord, Barbel put her arms out towards me. ‘Come, my lovely. Have some soup. Split peas. You haven't eaten.'

I shook my head. I felt a tightening at my core. My attention fell back to Rori.

‘Not as if there's anything to be ashamed of?' I said.

The rest of the women seemed to recede until there was only the two of us and the fire jumping between us.

‘No,' she said. But it wasn't an answer, it was an instruction.

I held her gaze.

‘Tessa…'

The black sky. The fire. The kiss. Prison. ‘She's been sleeping with a serviceman.'

‘What?' Sam frowned, then laughed. ‘Don't be soft.'

The women around us stirred like sheep unsettled.

‘It's got nothing to do with you,' Rori hissed to me, her eyes flaring.

‘An American,' I said.

‘A Yank!' repeated a voice. ‘She's had sex with one of them?'

‘It's a wind-up, right?' said Sam.

‘But it isn't true, Rori,' said Barbel, her face serious. ‘Really, you have not been with one of them?'

‘It's not like that,' she said.

Someone gasped. Sam stared at Rori with open disgust. Exclamations from other women, and No! from one of the Sapphire gaters.

‘What's it like then?' asked Sam, the new hat making her into someone else, a Russian stranger fierce with anger.

Rori raised her voice. ‘This is personal, it has nothing to do with…'

Cat came forwards. ‘The personal
is
political!' she cried, ‘what's more political than your body?'

Other voices. Four, five, six voices. The women around us came back into focus. They were all joining in.

‘These women have been locked up, and you've been fraternising.' It was Debbie, the woman I'd sat next to in my first blockade, wearing the same hat with the CND badge. When she said
these women
, she gestured to me.

‘Shame!' came a cry usually directed at the police. ‘Shame! Shame!'

Angela stood up. ‘Let's be calm. Please, be calm.'

But no one wanted to be calm, they wanted to rage. I raised my arm uselessly, a conductor ignored by his orchestra, unable to control the discord.

Rori stood at the edge of the group, fearful.

‘Please, listen, it doesn't mean anything,' she said.

‘Doesn't it?' said Cat. As she neared her, Rori dropped the bowl and pea soup splattered the ground.

‘No, no. Nothing.'

Di sat down on a milk crate, a black bin liner in her hand, folding herself to stillness.

Sam was furious. ‘It doesn't mean anything? Of course it does, it means everything.
Everything.
And what does this camp mean, us getting slammed up, is that a nice little upper-class game too?'

‘Don't bring class into it,' said Rori.

‘Why not?'

The visitors looked on nervously under their golfing umbrellas. I couldn't make it stop.

‘This is my home,' said Rori. Her face cracked with tears, but no one gave her comfort. She was standing at the edge of the fire now, alone. I'd seen her cry before, but then she'd let me put my arms around her.

‘Run back to Daddy,' said Cat.

Where was Jean? We needed Jean.

‘Shame! Shame!' chorused more Sapphire gate women.

‘Stop it!' I said, but not loudly enough and no one was listening.

Rori turned and walked quickly away from the fire towards the road. I went after her, calling her name, increasing my pace, my ankle throbbing. ‘Wait!' I called. ‘Where are you going?'

‘Away!'

‘Where?'

She faced me. ‘Away. What does it matter?' Her voice caught in a sob. ‘Want to send me some hate mail?'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘No you're not,' she gasped between breaths. ‘You enjoyed it. I bet you've been waiting for just the right opportunity haven't you?'

How could she not understand? ‘You left me. You ran.'

‘I can't look after you all the time.'

‘But you left me,' my voice was loud and out of control. ‘We were locked up. You didn't even wait at the camp.'

‘I went to see my mother, she's a mess at Christmas.'

From where we stood we could hear both traffic sounds and the voices of the loudest women at the fire.

‘You shouldn't have joined the action, if you were worried about being caught.'

‘How dare you tell me what I should do!' She was shouting. ‘Why should I be a good little martyr?' She threw her hands in the air, her voice choking, ‘Everything is royally fucked up because of you. Have you, in your little suburban head, any idea what you've done?' It hurt to look at her.

It was wrong, all wrong, it shouldn't be like this. ‘But you left me.'

‘You! This isn't about you.'

‘But…'
The tears were rushing down my face. ‘I thought…'

‘No you didn't, there was no thought. Why do you want to hurt me? What have I done to you?'

‘I wasn't, I didn't…' My hands fell to my sides. How could I explain to her what I couldn't explain to myself, that I loved her. We were breathing hard. ‘Why did you kiss me?' I'd said it. Finally.