Playing for the Ashes (48 page)

What if, Mother suggested, Kenneth used Celandine Cottage as a base of operation? That would take care of his need to be in Kent. What if he renovated what needed renovating at the cottage, gardened what needed gardening, painted what needed painting, plastered what needed plastering, and otherwise made himself useful to the place? That would take care of his need to pay rent. What if he worked at the printworks when he was able and compiled bids for printing jobs on his own time? Mother would pay him for doing so, and that would take care of at least part of his money troubles. What if Jean and the children stayed in place on the Isle of Dogs—where Jean could keep her job, where the children would have their extended family as well as their mates nearby—and Kenneth brought them to the country at the weekends? That would mini-mise the disruption in their lives, keep the family together, and give the children the opportunity to romp in the fresh air. This way, if Ken didn’t have a real chance of making his way in the world of professional cricket, at least he would have tried.

Mother was Mephisto. It was her finest moment. Except that she meant well. I do believe that she truly meant well. Most people do, at heart, I think….

Chris calls out, “Livie, have a look at this,” and I scoot my chair back and cant my head to see round the galley door into the workroom. He’s finished the hutch. Felix is exploring it. He gives a hesitant hop and a sniff. Another hop.

“He needs a garden to scuff about in,” I note.

“Quite. But since we haven’t got a garden, this will have to do until his lodgings change.” Chris watches Felix hop inside and go to the water bottle where he drinks. The bottle rattles against the cage like the clicking of rail carriages against a track.

“How do they know to do that?” I ask.

“What? Drink out of a bottle?” He returns nails to their appropriate containers by size. He puts away his hammer and neatly sweeps sawdust from the workbench into a bin. “Process of observation and exploration, I should guess. He susses out the new digs, bumps into the water bottle, explores it with his nose. But he’s been in a hutch before, so he probably knows what to
fin
d inside anyway.”

We watch the rabbit, I from my chair in the galley, and Chris from his position in front of the workbench. At least Chris watches the rabbit. I watch Chris.

I say, “It’s been quiet lately, hasn’t it? Telephone hasn’t rung for days.”

He nods. We both ignore the phone call he’s received only an hour ago because we both know what I’m talking about. Not social calls, not business calls, but ARM calls. He runs his hand along the top front edge of Felix’s hutch, finds a spot that’s rough, applies sandpaper to it.

“Is there nothing in the works, then?” I ask.

“Just Wales.”

“What’s up?”

“Beagle kennels. If our unit takes them on, I’ll be gone a few days.”

“Whose decision?” I ask. “Whether to take it, that is.”

“Mine.”

“Then take it.”

He looks at me. He wraps the sandpaper round his finger. He tightens it, loosens it, examines the tube he’s created and rolls it back and forth on his palm.

“I can cope,” I say. “I’ll be fine. I’ll be perfect. Ask Max to drop by. He can walk the dogs. We’ll play cribbage afterwards.”

“We’ll see.”

“When do you have to decide?”

He replaces the sandpaper. “There’s time.”

“But the beagles…Chris, are the kennels getting ready to ship them?”

“They’re always getting ready for that.”

“Then you must—”

“We’ll see, Livie. If I don’t take it, someone else will. Don’t worry. The dogs won’t go to a lab.”

“But you’re the best of the lot. Especially with dogs. And they’ll be looking for disturbance, the kennel owners, if the puppies are getting old enough to be shipped. Someone good needs to go. The best needs to go.”

He clicks off the fluorescent light above the workbench. Felix rustles round in his hutch. Chris comes into the galley.

“Look. You don’t need to watch over me,” I say. “I hate that. It makes me feel like such a freak.”

He sits and reaches for my hand. He turns it in his. He scrutinises my palm. He bends the fingers closed. He watches me open them. We both know how I concentrate to make the movement smooth.

When my fingers are unbent, he covers my hand so that it’s completely enclosed by both of his. He says, “I’ve two new members in the unit, Livie. I’m not certain they’re ready for something like Wales. And I won’t risk the dogs to feed my ego.” His hands press mine. “That’s what it is. It has nothing to do with you. Or with this. All right?”

“New members?” I say. “You never said.” I would have known at one time. We would have talked it over.

“I must have forgotten. They’ve been with me for about six weeks now.”

“Who?”

“A chap called Paul. His sister. Amanda.”

He holds my gaze so unflinchingly that I realise she’s the one. Amanda. Her name seems to hang between us like a vapour.

I want to say, “Amanda. How pretty a name.” I want to go on breezily with, “She’s the one, isn’t she? So tell me about it. How did you fall in love? How long was it before you took her to bed?”

I want him to say, “Livie” and look uncomfortable so that I can go on with, “But aren’t you breaking a few of your rules?” as if I couldn’t be less bothered with the knowledge. I want to say, “Doesn’t the organisation forbid involvement? Isn’t that what you always said to me? And since members of a unit—not to mention members of the entire bleeding group— know only the Christian names of other members, doesn’t that put a crimp in your love affair? Or have you two exchanged more than just bodily fluids? Does she know who you are? Have the two of you made plans?”

If I say all that and say it quickly enough, I don’t have to picture the two of them together. I don’t have to wonder where they do it or how. I don’t have to think of it if I can only force myself to ask the questions and to put him on the defensive.

But I can’t. One time I would have done, but I seem to have lost the part of me that could leap from out of nowhere, snarling and trying to wound.

He’s watching me. He knows that I know. One word from me and we can have the discussion he has no doubt promised Amanda that we’ll have. “I’ll tell her about us,” he probably whispers when they’ve
fin
ished and their bodies are slick with that blend of loving each other and sweat. “I’ll tell her. I will.” He kisses her neck, her cheek, her mouth. Her leg shifts and locks round his. He says, “Amanda,” or “Mandy,” against her mouth in place of a kiss. They doze.

No. I won’t think of them like that. I won’t think of them at all. Chris has a right to his life, just as I’ve had a right to mine. And I broke enough of the organisation’s rules myself while I was an active member.

Once I proved myself physically to Chris’s satisfaction—running, climbing, jumping, sliding, slithering, and doing whatever else he commanded—I began to attend the open meetings of the educational branch of ARM. These were held in churches, schools, and community centres where antivivisectionists from half a dozen organisations pressed information upon the local citizenry. Through this means, I came to know the hows and the whats of animal research: what Boots was doing in Thurgarton, what factory farms are like, how many mongrels at Laundry Farm were alleged to be stolen pets, the neurotic behaviour of caged minks in Halifax, the number of biological suppliers who breed animals for labs. I became familiar with the moral and ethical arguments on both sides of the issue. I read what I was given. I listened to what was said.

I wanted to be part of an assault unit from the first. I’d like to claim that one look at Beans the morning he arrived at the barge was enough to win me over to the cause. But the truth is that I wanted to be part of an assault unit not because I believed so passionately in saving the animals but because of Chris. What I wanted from him. What I wanted to demonstrate about myself to him. Oh, I didn’t admit that, naturally. I told myself that I wanted to be in a unit because the activities surrounding the animals’ liberation seemed to be filled with tension, with the terror of being caught in the act, and—most importantly—with an unbelievable heady exhilaration when an assault was carried off without a hitch. I’d been off the streets for some months at this point. I felt restless, in need of a decent dose of the sort of excitement provided by the unknown, by danger and a hair’s-breadth escape from danger. Taking part in an assault seemed just the ticket.

The assault units consisted of specialists and runners. The specialists paved the way—infiltrating the target weeks in advance, filching documents, photographing the subjects, mapping out the environment, discovering alarm systems and ultimately deactivating them for the runners. The runners carried out the actual assault at night, led by a captain whose word was law.

Chris never made an error. He met with his specialists, he met with the governing core of ARM, he met with his runners. One group never saw the other. He was the liaison among us all.

My first assault with the unit took place nearly a year after Chris and I met. I wanted it sooner, but he wouldn’t allow me to short circuit the process that everyone else went through. So I worked my way up through the organisation and I kept my sights set on battering through what I believed were Chris’s defences against me. No doubt you see how ignoble I was.

My first assault was made upon a study of spinal cord injuries taking place in a red-brick university two hours from London where Chris had had a specialist in place for seven weeks. We arrived in four cars and a mini-van, and while the sentries moved forward to eliminate the security lights, the rest of us crouched in the shelter of a yew hedge and listened to Chris’s
fin
al instructions.

Our primary goal was the animals, he told us. Our secondary goal was the research. Liberate the first. Destroy the second. But only move on to the secondary goal if and when the first was achieved. Take all animals. The decision would be made later as to which of them could be kept.

“Kept?” I whispered. “Chris, aren’t we here to save them all? We aren’t going to return any of them, are we?”

He ignored me and pulled down his ski mask. The moment the security lights blinked off, he said, “Now,” and sent in the
fir
st wave of the unit: the liberators.

I can still see them, head-to-toe black fi gures moving in the darkness like dancers.

They glided across the courtyard, using the deeper shadows of the trees for protection. We lost sight of them as they bled round the side of the building. Chris held a torch beam on his watch while a girl called Karen shielded the light with her hands.

Two minutes went by. I watched the building. A pinpoint of light made an eyeblink from a ground-floor window. “They’re in,” I said.

“Now,” Chris said.

I was in the unit’s second wave: the transporters. Equipped with carriers, we dashed across the courtyard, low to the ground. By the time we reached the building, two of the windows were open. Hands reached for us, pulled us inside. It was someone’s office,
fil
led with the shapes of books, folders, a word processor and printer, graphs on the walls, charts. We slipped out of it and into a corridor. A light winked once to our left. The liberators were already in the lab.

The only sounds were our breathing, the snap of cages being opened, the weak cry of the kittens. Torches flicked on and off, just enough to verify that an animal was in a cage. The liberators shifted cats and kittens. The transporters darted back to the open window with the cardboard carriers. And the receivers—the final wave of the unit—raced silently with the carriers back to the cars and the mini-van. The entire operation was designed to take less than ten minutes.

Chris came in last. He carried the paint, the sand, and the honey. As the transporters melted back into the night, joining the receivers at the cars, he and the liberators destroyed the research. They allowed themselves two minutes among the papers, the graphs, the computers, and the files. When time was up, they slid back out the window and dashed across the courtyard. The window was closed behind them, locked as it had been before. While we waited at the edge of the courtyard—sheltered again by the hedge—the sentries materialised round the side of the building. They slipped into the deeper darkness near the trees. They moved from shadow to shadow until they rejoined us.

“Quarter of an hour,” Chris whispered. “Too slow.”

He jerked his head and we followed him between the buildings and back to the cars. The receivers had already put the animals in Chris’s mini-van and gone on their way.

“Tuesday night,” Chris said in a low voice. “Practical manoeuvres.” He climbed into the van. He peeled off his mask. I followed. We waited until the remaining cars drove off in different directions. Chris started the van. We headed southwest.

“Great, great,
great
,” I said. I leaned over. I pulled Chris towards me. I kissed him. He righted himself and kept his eyes on the road. “That was great. That was something. God! Did you see us? Did you
see
us? We were
fla
ming invincible.” I laughed and clapped my hands. “When do we do it again? Chris, answer. When do we do it again?”

He didn’t reply. He stepped down hard on the accelerator. The mini-van zoomed forward. Behind us, the cardboard carriers slid back a few inches. Several kittens mewed.

“What’re we going to do with them? Chris, answer. What’re we going to do with them? We can’t keep them all. Chris, you aren’t planning to keep them all, are you?”

He glanced at me. He looked back at the road. The lights from the dashboard made his face appear yellow. A roadsign for the M20 loomed in the headlamps. He guided the van to the left towards the motorway.