Love and Fallout (6 page)

‘I've just got here,' I said, because nothing else came to mind.

She offered a half smile and said
Welcome
, barely audibly, before getting on with some more staring.

Not having a chair myself, and unsure of protocol, I set my pack down in a spirit of camaraderie and perched. We sat like that, contemplating the road for a few moments, our silence interrupted every now and then by a passing car, while I thought of something to say. The woman, who hadn't introduced herself, cradled an enamel mug, which she raised, uttering the single word ‘tea?' A Thermos balanced beside her feet.

‘Oh. No thanks.' I'd never liked tea, and a quick glance inside her mug revealed strange leaves floating around in it. Nevertheless it was nice of her to offer. She had watery blue eyes, a plump face, and an aura of wisdom.

After a bit more staring I began to talk into the silence. I told her where I lived, what I'd been doing before, why I felt compelled to come, how wonderful it would be if every woman saw it as her duty, how it was only by individuals making their voices heard that we had any hope of changing the world. I went on like this for some time. When I'd got to the end of my speech, she closed her eyes.

Well that was just rude.

The wind crackled her jacket. Ordinarily, I would have made some comment about the weather, but this woman, with her mucky fingernails and her mucky tea, appeared to be impervious to everything, including the elements. She simply sat there with her eyes closed, a serene expression on her face. Maybe she was stoned? One of Tony's friends used to get stoned all the time, in fact that's about all he ever did. Once we went to a party and by the end of the night his legs had completely stopped working; we had to sit there for ages with Echo and the Bunnymen going around and around on the turntable before we could get him to the front door.

After a minute or so I stood up, feeling stupid. ‘Better be off,' I said, as if I had some important shopping to do.

The woman opened her eyes and gave another slow smile like someone remembering a pleasant dream.

‘Which gate are you going to?' This time I noticed her Welsh accent.

‘Gate?'

‘There's more than one.'

‘Oh.'

She leaned forward and pointed, ‘You're nearest Amber. Turn down that road when you get to the trees.'

Amber? I wasn't sure what she was talking about, but thanked her anyway and set off in the direction she'd indicated. This was Berkshire, but it was all alien territory to me and I didn't have a map.

The sky separated into darks and lights and the cars began to pass more regularly as the first commuters made their way home. I looked at my watch. At Hirshman & Luck, me and Peggy would be franking letters for the last post. I tried to think about the various boring tasks I'd liberated myself from, rather than the burning sensation of my blistering heel or my rising anxiety as I turned right at a clump of trees, still following the line of wire fencing. Mum had insisted on filling a spongebag with medical supplies and I hoped she'd included plasters.

The temperature had dropped and my hands, only partially insulated in the fingerless gloves, were bunched deep in my pockets. There was no sign of the gate, only a pin-prick of orange. A fire? Perhaps someone could point me in the right direction. I left the road and crossed a stretch of muddy grass, weaving towards the light through slender trees, their trunks patterned with white bark. Phrases from a song in composition drifted towards me…
you try to tie our mouths up but we sing
. A pluck as the singer changed chords, correcting herself…
you tie our mouths up but we cry.
Her accent wasn't English.

I followed the singing towards a handful of figures gathered around a smoking fire. The young guitarist sat on a log beside another woman who was reading a newspaper with great attention, the hood of her parka pulled up. The guitarist smiled.

‘I'm looking for Amber gate, do you know where it is?' I asked. Little oddments of ribbon and bead were plaited into her hair.

‘That is here,' she said. Her that was a
dat
. She could have been Danish perhaps. Or Norwegian.

‘Oh thanks. So where's the gate?' I asked searching the dusk.

She frowned, ‘But it is here.'

‘Yes,' I said, realising it must be difficult conversing in another language, ‘but could you tell me where the entrance is please?'

‘Entrance?'

‘To the camp.'

The woman with the newspaper lowered it a fraction and blinked at me through wire-framed spectacles. ‘This
is
the camp,' she said in a pronounced northern accent. She might have been only two or three years older than me, but she spoke with the authority of someone twice my age. I glanced around, wondering if she was joking. A woman with a peroxide Mohican sat slouched in a car seat on the other side of the fire whittling a stick. Was this it? Where were all the women? Why weren't they making banners, or preparing a massive communal meal or practising a speech or something? It made no sense. Just then another figure appeared from the trees wheeling a carriage pram.

‘Hello!' she called, pushing the pram right up to the fireside and pausing when she saw me. ‘New recruit?' Springs of curly hair escaped her knitted hat. The others perked up noticeably as soon as she entered, as if the leading lady had walked onto a muddy filmset.

‘She was looking for de entrance,' said the guitarist.

‘Sorry, it's been a long journey,' I said.

The curly-haired girl smiled, bending to the pram and lifting from it an armful of wood. Even in the limited light her beauty was obvious, her face with its high cheekbones like a 1930s' film star. She squatted down and attended to the fire.

‘Take a seat, we were just about to have tea,' she said in the sort of thoroughbred English accent guaranteed to thrill Americans. There were no empty seats, only a piece of sacking folded into a rough square. Mum's voice reminded me that sitting on the cold ground gave you piles.

‘Shift up, Angela,' said the Mohican woman from her car seat.

‘Thanks,' I said, glad to have some respite from the chafing boot, yet uncomfortable about squeezing so close to Angela and her newspaper, which she'd now folded into a neat oblong. ‘Oh, that's a relief.' A rush of stars tingled pleasingly through my legs. I wanted nothing more than to take off the troublesome boot and start massaging my foot, but even if this was the outdoors, I was still very much in company.

‘Are you weary?' asked the curly-haired girl, prodding the fire.

‘I am a bit.'

‘We get women from all over,' she said. ‘Shetland. Belfast. I met someone from Malmo at Main Gate last week, imagine.'

‘There's a couple of Yanks about too,' said the Mohican woman, her voice loud and Londony. ‘Where you from?'

‘Stevenage.'

‘Stevenage?' The girl with the guitar made a quizzical face.

‘Hertfordshire,' said Angela, still fixed on her paper.

‘I'm Rori, by the way,' said the curly-haired girl, stepping back from the fire and admiring it. I wondered if I'd heard properly, but she'd already turned towards the others. ‘Who else have we got?'

The handful of women introduced themselves. Barbel was the one strumming the guitar; Sam was the one with the Mohican. I'd already worked out that the one reading the newspaper was Angela.

‘And who are you?' said Rori.

‘Oh, sorry, I'm Tessa.'

‘Well, Sorry I'm Tessa, your tea isn't far away, I'll put the kettle on.'

Putting the kettle on involved pouring water from a plastic canister into a bent teapot, which was then hung over the fire. Now it had flamed into life, the shapes around me began to take on definition. At our feet wooden pallets were arranged to make a short walkway because the ground had been churned to mud. It was black as pitch away from the fire, but I could see a length of plastic sheeting hung over a line suspended between trees, and a trestle table poked out alongside something which looked very much like a Welsh dresser.

‘Been to Greenham before?' asked Sam from her car seat.

‘No, first time.' I was still taking in what I could, aware suddenly of what I'd done. ‘It's brilliant.'

It was like being in the aftermath of a bomb. A pre-taster of the apocalypse.

‘You know it's customary to bring the tribe a gift,' said Sam, raising her voice over the discussion about who'd last seen Didcot Alan, who apparently delivered timber off-cuts. ‘We like a gift, don't we girls?' Laughter. ‘Got any booze?'

‘No, sorry.'

‘Chocolate?'

‘Um, no.' Then I remembered the packet of Bourbons Mum had given me for the train. I scrabbled in my rucksack, happy to perform a service, feeling around for the biscuits which had slid down and were pressed against the soles of my trainers. They were broken when I eventually eased them out, but nobody seemed to mind.

While we waited for the kettle to boil I tried to be perky and interesting, though it was difficult knowing what to say. Angela was still engrossed in world events beside me.

Rori snapped a biscuit in half, ‘Are you part of a women's group?'

‘Not exactly. Um, I've been in CND.' Knebworth village hall had to count for something. ‘Sort of.'

The Bourbons went round a second time.

‘Before I forget, has anyone heard about Helen's trial?' said Rori, taking two more from the packet.

Angela looked up, ‘I don't think we should go into it now.'

‘Oh sorry. Loose lips sink ships and all that.'

‘What do the loose lips do?' asked Barbel, strumming gently to herself.

Angela explained, ‘It was a government slogan during the war.'

‘The Falkland war, with the little island?'

‘No, World War II,' said Angela, pushing her spectacles up the bridge of her nose. Out of everyone she'd offered least in the way of conversation.

Barbel repeated the slogan, perhaps storing it away in a file marked Strange British Expressions, while Rori stoked the fire with a black-tipped branch, which looked to be reserved for the purpose. Specks of white flew into the black air. ‘We had some trouble a little while ago,' she said. ‘A journalist infiltrated one of the camps looking for a story, you know, Left Wing Loonies Leave Kids, Potty Peace Women in League with Kremlin, that kind of thing.'

‘They did one on Rori,' said Sam. ‘
Lady Muck
, wasn't it?' She whittled another chunk from her stick and snorted.

‘Rori's father is in the royal family,' Barbel told me in a confidential tone.

‘No he's not!'

‘But I thought he takes dinner with the Queen?'

‘He's a Viscount,' Rori muttered. At Barbel's request she explained with some awkwardness what that meant. In my mind I was transporting her from the mud to a stately home where she was dressed in a long silk evening gown rather than a red mini-kilt over leggings teamed with a fisherman's jumper.

‘Hey Tessa,' called Sam, ‘see what company you're in?'

‘No class wars tonight if you please,' said Rori.

Sam laughed. ‘All right, Aurora.'

Aurora
, the name rang in my head, gleaming from a bell tower.

‘You're not a journalist?' said Barbel.

‘Me? No!'

‘Good. You don't look like one also,' she said to herself and strummed another chord.
You try to shut my mouth, but I will sing
, she declared tunefully and without any hint of embarrassment. We watched the kettle for a long time until it eventually began wobbling to and fro with its boiling cargo. The women passed their mugs towards Rori. Despite disliking the taste of tea, I decided this wasn't the time to fuss, Sam was right, this was a new tribe and I must respect their customs.

‘Do you have a mug?' Rori asked. ‘It's just we're rather short.'

Damn, I knew I'd forget something.

‘She can use Jean's,' said Sam, ‘I'm going for a piss, I'll get it on the way back.'

‘There's no milk is there?' called Rori.

‘What do you think?' came the cheerful reply. Someone laughed.

Drinking milkless, sugarless tea from an alien mug fetched by a woman who had just been urinating in the open wasn't my idea of a joke.

‘So, you've come to live with us for a while?' asked Barbel. She could have been Swedish. ‘Or only a day or two. The visitors come, the visitors go. It gets cold. You know, it's not their fault. They have jobs of course, and kids.'

‘Me too,' I said. ‘A job, I mean. But I gave it up to come here.'

‘What was your job?' she strummed.

‘A secretary.'

‘Oh it's nice,' she said in her sing-song voice. ‘Where is this?'