Love and Fallout (43 page)

She pulled at a stray branch which wasn't yet ready to bud for spring. A truck passed distantly, the sound of it scoring through our exchange. ‘I can do good work at Seneca, pass on what we've learned here.' There was no point trying to persuade her if her mind was made up. ‘My stuff's packed.'

‘Don't imagine that took long.'
We exchanged a smile. Should I hug her?

‘So.' She maintained her customary intense expression, but it didn't unnerve me anymore. ‘I'll be off.'

‘Right.'

I stayed where I was, in the bath. ‘Good luck.'

‘Thanks.' She blinked at me from behind the glasses. Then she made her way back through the trees. I watched the outline of her parka as she moved like a quick woodland creature, half in camouflage, until she disappeared.

38

An Orange Tent

We are here to raise a glass of complimentary cider to mark the festival's end. It's nine o'clock and the party is in full flow. It is a corporate event and yet somehow the tent has been transformed into a fairy grotto: the walls are draped with sheer orange cloth and strings of amber lights seed the decorations so that everything has taken on a soft sparkle.

Pete is holding a chargrilled prawn by its tail. I haven't told him about my encounter with the supply teacher and don't intend to.

‘You look lovely,' he says.

‘Me or the prawn?'

‘Both.'

My sundress is green cotton with a white daisy print and it flares out in a 1950s' swirl. I bought it on impulse from one of the stalls – it's secondhand, but in the language of Jude I prefer to think of it as vintage.

‘I can't remember the last time we were at a party,' he says casting around. There are still a variety of hats on display but fewer wellies.

‘Bill and Trudy's Christmas drinks, we always do that.'

‘Not last year. You were in Faslane. Don't you remember trying to get back, the snow?'

He's right. There was a demonstration at the Trident base. Fifteen hours on a National Express are hard to forget. But aware this conversation could taint the mood, I turn his attention to the dancers who've begun lindy-hopping beside the swing band, and together we watch as the guy rolls the girl over his back and cradles her in a catch.

We haven't spoken of it but we know this evening is important. It's our last before the return to Heston. At first I thought Pete would do anything to make things right, but then I started to feel less certain, noticing a new resignation in him, as if accepting the roles we'd been assigned for the rest of our lives: I am the time-pressed wife; he is the undervalued husband. After the awful weeks spent half talking, the hourly counselling sessions – that box of tissues planted between us – it's quite possible we could give up, decide to share our parental responsibilities and nothing else. But three nights in a tent have forced us back to each other and this morning, in the half-light, we let ourselves roll together, his mouth on my neck, then my breast, an old-new tenderness.

A waiter offers us canapés.

Pete tells me that Dom's band have changed their name again. This is a good conversation topic, it connects us: we are Dom's mum and dad waiting to stand at the back of his first gig, arms around each others' waists.

‘What is it now?'

‘Death Squad Training Camp'

‘Bit dark?'

We recount their other incarnations. Francis Bacon and the Biros was our particular favourite, but this didn't stick. There was an unsortable argument in which everyone wanted to be Francis Bacon and no one wanted to be a biro.

The party continues to fill up and judging by some of the fabulous ensembles, a man in a gold shirt and a couple wearing matching velvet suits, some of the guests are performers. While Pete finds another drink, I go on a recce to find Angela and spot her in a circle of people. She's wearing a Feel Good t-shirt and a pair of wide linen trousers similar to the ones Jude wore for the make-over show. She waves me over. This time I'm ready for the continental kiss.

‘Fab dress,' says a woman in a cowgirl hat who's introduced as Meredith Porter, one of the partners at MMP. ‘So how do you two know each other?' Meredith looks first at Angela, then at me, diamante studs glinting in her hatband.

Angela and I exchange a glance, wondering who's going to say it.

‘We were at Greenham Common together,' she says after a pause. ‘Back in the day.'

Meredith is delighted to have this information. ‘Angie, I didn't know you were at Greenham, you kept that quiet!'

‘Did I?' It's the first time I've seen her look uncomfortable since our re-acquaintance.

‘Was it all lentil stew and singing? God, did you actually
live
there Angie, in the mud? How amazing!' Her face glows.

Angela seems vaguely unsettled, but Meredith carries on, demanding full details. Other people get pulled into the conversation, including the girl beside me who works at the agency; her cheekbones are dusted with glitter and she's wearing the sort of outfit Pip would definitely approve of. Together Angela and I explain a little of what it was like to construct a bender, or de-ice a frozen standpipe or fan a dying fire back to life with a Tupperware lid. The conversation wanders amiably and returns to the festival and life in the outdoors.

‘I have to say, the pop-up yurt was a godsend,' declares Meredith, ‘I've slept so much better than last year and the kids love it.'

Pop-up yurt? I wonder if she's joking but no one else seems surprised.

‘We've completely cracked it this time,' she continues. ‘What you need is a double thickness king-sized blow-up mattress and you're away. Earplugs too, naturally. Absolutely can't stand overhearing other people's bathroom conversations first thing in the morning. Ugh.' She shudders. ‘Jules brought this amazing tea-light chandelier, adorable, and I pinned up a Bedouin throw to make it more homely. The only thing I'm
desperate
for is a hot bath.'

A man in a flowered shirt who may or may not be called Giles says, ‘What about a bathhouse, wouldn't that be a festival first?' And while the conversation courses on, an image floats towards me of that long-ago woodland bath, its exposed pipes and lime scaled interior, a lacy canopy of spring leaves.

Angela turns away from a discussion about a Mexican installation artist to speak to me. ‘Did you manage to find your friend earlier?'

‘Friend?'

‘Whoever it was you rushed after.'

‘Oh, no,' I recall the meeting in the rain, the supply teacher peering from her red hood. ‘Wasn't who I thought it was.' I can still see her in my mind's eye and that expression, an appeal to be set free. Well, we're free of each other now.

Angela nods, distracted by someone over my shoulder.

‘That's our client,' she says. ‘I'll introduce you later. And I must meet your husband.' She excuses herself and I search the crowd for Pete.

When I find him he's at the bar chatting to a striking woman with a head of auburn curls. The woman has placed her fingers to her neck, amused by something he's saying, and for a second the muscles in my stomach tighten.

‘There you are,' he says resting a hand on my arm. ‘I've just been hearing about your friend Angela's adventures in… where did you say the place was?'

‘Austin,' replies the woman in an American accent. ‘That must have been, what, twenty-five years ago. More. 1983 I think.' She's directing the information towards me, filling me in. ‘Angie was backpacking in the States and I was travelling after college, we got talking on a Greyhound bus and six weeks later we were working on a ranch. Though she couldn't actually ride a horse back then.'

‘I didn't know that.'

‘No?' says the woman taking a sip from her wine. Her gaze is cool, self-assured.

‘We've been out of touch for a long time.' I try to picture Angela whirling a lasso.

She smiles, waiting for more information. Pete steps in, ‘Sorry, this is my wife, Tessa. She and Angela were at Greenham Common together.' And before I can ask her name, the woman widens her eyes. ‘So
you're
Tessa. Of course,' she says, and she smiles her American smile with new warmth. Pete turns to pick up one of the miniature kebabs being offered around on orange trays.

‘So was Angela travelling after Seneca?' I ask.

‘After where?'

‘Seneca. The peace camp in New York State. She was going there after Greenham.'

‘Oh that's right. Yeah, I forgot about that,' she says, also reaching towards the kebabs, ‘she stayed a few days if I remember.'

Only a few days? That can't be right. Angela had gone there to become the British arm of Greenham in the USA, that was the plan; that was why she and Barbel left. But I don't have time to ask because one of her friends appears apologetically beside us.

‘Sorry Alex, can I borrow you, slight drama with the cake.'

Before I can say anything else, the American woman excuses herself, leaving me to stare after her.

‘Have you had one of these?' Pete asks.

‘Alex? Is that woman called Alex?'

He nods, sliding a curl of green pepper from the skewer.

‘Do you know what she does?'

‘Why?' he asks, licking his thumb. I repeat the question. ‘Works at the LSE, I can't remember what she teaches. Development something… what is it?'

I'm reassembling the pieces of Angela's life to make them fit. ‘I didn't know she was gay.'

‘Who?'

‘Angela.'

‘Is she?' he says, ‘No big deal is it?'

‘Of course not. But, Angela?' I think back to what she said that first time we had lunch at the South Bank, not just about her father's death, but the other things she was struggling with, and it makes perfect sense.

As I'm sorting out my thoughts Meredith reappears in her cowgirl hat along with her glittery-cheekboned young colleague, who seems to have something important to say to me.

Angela was so contained, so bound up in that parka, and then she unzipped herself and walked free.

‘…so I can't work it out, I keep thinking we've met before, I'm sure we have.' But I don't need to announce my TV identity because she suddenly snatches at the air as if snatching a gold coin. ‘
Make Me Over!
'

‘That's it!' says Meredith and before I know it, I'm being quizzed all over again, only this time it's not about midnight raids over the perimeter fence, but that burning question: what's Jude like in real life? Pete shifts from foot to foot, as if the ground had started to warm up beneath him. He can only relax when the subject moves on.

‘Funny, all the years I've known Angie I never knew she was at Greenham,' says Meredith. ‘That explains her fondness for ethical accounts, I expect.'

The glittery-cheekboned girl asks what I do these days and I mention Easy Green.

‘That sounds brilliant, it must be really…'

Rewarding?
I nearly suggest before she supplies the word herself and repeats it with emphasis,

Meredith steps nearer and declares in a stage whisper, ‘It's not as if we don't have a social conscience in our industry… half the junior staff are scurrying around volunteering with the Samaritans.'

‘Yes, but it must be fantastic to go to a party and actually be proud of what you do,' Lara insists, and five minutes later, I'm telling her about the schools workshops and somehow we're discussing nuclear fuel.

‘But we're all going nuclear aren't we,' says Meredith, readjusting her hat. ‘I thought the Greens were behind it these days?'

‘Some. But it's not necessarily the best solution…' I'm about to dip into the familiar waters of uranium mining when Pete excuses himself. I feel a tug of annoyance at his not very subtle disappearance – visiting the loos is more appealing than listening to his wife yak on about renewable energy. Everything had been going so well this evening. All the signs were there for another frolic in the tent later. But I suppose one romp in a tent does not a marriage mend.

Just then an amplified American voice comes over a microphone on the far side of the tent. ‘Ladies and Gentlemen…' The DJ softens the music. ‘We have a birthday girl among us!' calls Alex. ‘Where's Angie?' The tent ripples with movement as she's sought out.

‘I didn't know it was Angela's birthday,' I say, accompanying her through the tent.

‘Tomorrow,' she says. ‘The big five O. Wears it well, doesn't she?'

A crowd has formed around a colossal pyramid of profiteroles, and Angela is there too, flushed, one hand to her cheek as Alex starts everyone on ‘Happy Birthday' in her good loud voice. When we come to ‘Happy Birthday dear…' I'm singing ‘Angela' when everyone else is singing ‘Angie'.
After the applause, Alex puts an arm around her in a sideways hug and there are cries of
speech
.