13

Fallout

Atomic by Donna McLean

Annabel was damp, cold, frightened and bruised all over.  She’d hitched a lift in a van, it had felt like the last ride out of there, and been tossed about like a stick, nothing to sit on but a pile of empty sacks. 

Janet looked past her as if she was going to produce Bridget from the dark. “Is she with you?”

“Who is this?” snapped Ray.

Janet put a hand on his arm.  “She’s from school.  Is she with you?”

“You can see perfectly well she’s not with her.  Why would she be with her?  What have you done with her?”

“We’ve lost Bridget.” said Janet.

“I’ve lost Bridget,” said Annabel at the same time.  “What I mean is, I’m sure she’s fine.  There’s plenty there who’ll look after her and Kate’s waited behind with Peggy and really, it’s the safest place on earth, if you think about it, apart from the bombs. Not that they’ve arrived yet, but the military,” she was getting off the point.

She’d been rehearsing what she was going to say on the whole bumpy ride to Kingston where she’d jumped out and caught the train.  Kate had given her the address.  It wasn’t far from her own flat where Reepicheep and Prince Caspian were waiting in their little cage, where supper was in the cupboard, where a hot bath was only the flick of a switch away, but the faces of Bridget’s parents were putting her off. 

“There were so many women, more than anyone expected, and the girls, I think they must have got caught up in it, all the excitement, I know I did, you should have seen it Mrs Reynolds, Janet, may I call you that?”  She’d never called her that before.  The teachers and the dinner ladies kept their worlds apart.  “It was so good of you to let her come, and she won’t have gone far, what I mean is, she’ll be at one of the camps, and there’s food and a bed and it’s perfectly safe, only of course you’ll be worried.  I didn’t know she’d get so excited by it.  Of course, I hoped, but kids, you never know, do you, and your Bridget, she’d always been so quiet…”  She trailed off. 

Bridget’s parents stared at her. 

“What bombs?” said Janet.

“Now look here,” said Ray.  “I don’t know who you are or what you’re on about but if you know where our Bridget is you’re going to say tout suite and none of this mumbling about women and I don’t know what.  Where is she?”

“I just said.  She’s at Greenham.  You signed the note.”  Annabel tried to remember where she’d put it, dug her hand into her back pocket, hoping it was there.  Had Bridget given it to her? It was all a blur. “May I come in?” She was desperate for a pee.

“I did nothing of the sort,” thundered Ray.

“She’s Bridget’s teacher from school, Ray.  Her art teacher.  Remember?  She said she was taking her on an art trip.  You said she couldn’t go.  He said she couldn’t go.  You did say that love, didn’t you?  You said she couldn’t go.”  Janet shifted her sentences between Ray and Annabel, small beside her husband, he took up most of the space. 

“I most certainly did.”

“But you signed the note.”  There’d been so much singing on the bus.  She was sure Bridget had shown it to her.  She shifted her weight onto her other leg and concentrated on the moment that would surely come when they’d realise they were all standing in the freezing cold with the front door open, when they’d remember that the best thing was a nice warm cup of tea and a use of the Reynolds’ bathroom.

“What note?  I signed no note.  Janet?”  He shouted his wife’s name as if she was down the hall and not right beside him.  “What note, Janet?”

“The one for the art trip, Ray.  You said she couldn’t go into London, it wasn’t safe.”

Ray Reynolds dug about in his own pockets, forgetting he’d worn his other trousers yesterday, the note Bridget had handed him that he’d hardly looked at, stuffed in without a moment’s consideration. 

“Would you mind if I came in?  I need -.”

“It didn’t say anything about Greenham,” said Janet who had read it.

“Do you mean to say those women at RAF Greenham Common?”  said Ray.

“I really do need to use the loo,” said Annabel.

They let her in, Janet showed her upstairs to the bathroom they all had to use now since Ray had filled the downstairs toilet with more toilet roll a family would use in a lifetime.  There was no lock on the door.  Annabel hoped the little boy who’d poked his head out of the kitchen and followed her upstairs wouldn’t come in.  Multicoloured toothbrushes encrusted with old paste, bath toys in a white plastic bucket, towels falling out of an airing cupboard, a spider plant on the windowsill and a pile of comics on the side, corners peeling.  Green tiles, a bottle of Nivea toner and cleanser, a pair of tweezers and a little toy knight rearing on a white horse.

Annabel hitched up her skirt and peed gratefully, like she’d never needed it more.  It was Kate who’d said she’d better stay and keep looking, and Annabel should go.  They’d both been worried, of course, but it hadn’t felt dangerous even though the light had faded and night had come and the torches had been lit and no one’s faces were clear anymore.  The camp had taken on the guise of a beautiful amorphous female beast caked in mud and cold and song and firelight, nothing bad could happen there; Annabel had been loath to leave.  But she was Bridget’s teacher, it had been her idea, so she’d agreed, gone back to the registration tent one more time, learnt that they’d counted over thirty-thousand women. No wonder Bridget had got lost. 

Thirty thousand brilliant women, the safest crowd on earth surrounding a base built to birth a bomb out of an earthen concrete womb, no womb any one of those women would ever allow.  She’d felt joyous, full of heart, she’d cried and she’d laughed and she’d imagined Bridget to be safe even as she’d hitched a ride and bumped from Newbury to Kingston in the back of a van, even damp and bruised.  But in the bright light of the Reynolds’ upstairs bathroom, a spider plant and spot creams, a dripping tap and a cupboard spilling towels, Annabel got the sense that family life had been disrupted.  She bit her lip.

credit: archive of Wendy Moorhouse