31

Fallout

Atomic by Donna McLean

Annabel Jenkins was lying on her sofa covered in Prince Caspian and Reepicheep when the telephone rang.  She had to tip them off her chest to answer it.  She’d been thinking about the blonde spiked woman at Greenham, so pretty it made her heart hurt.  She’d been thinking about how she’d cope if she never saw her again.  And then the telephone rang and it was Kate Hilperton telling her she was taking Janet Reynolds to Greenham, it was Bridget’s birthday, Janet had a present for her, this was their chance to redeem themselves, they really should show a united front, they should both go to support her.

She went on about women’s lib and rescuing Janet while Annabel kept her eyes on the mice who were busy making a bigger hole in the sofa arm.  She agreed just to get her off the phone but the next morning when she went down the path to Kate’s Volvo, when she went to get in the back she saw there was no Janet in the front.

Kate leaned across and opened the front passenger door. “She changed her mind,” and shrugged, threw Annabel a look that was supposed to sum up the sad little present on the back seat.

Annabel was unable to concentrate on Kate’s explanation, which took them all the way to the M3 and involved Janet’s husband, for worry that she’d not closed Reepicheep and Prince Caspian’s cage.  She always had this, the moment she shut the door she had to go back and she had done, twice, but that still wasn’t enough.  She fretted all the way to the services where Kate swung in and bought a packet of wine gums.  For some reason she felt it important she explain them rather than tossing them in the glove as any normal person would.  Who cared if they were a special treat for the twins who’d cried themselves silly not being allowed to go ice skating after all.  And no, Annabel didn’t think a packet of wine gums would spell the end for their teeth and yes, she was quite sure she wouldn’t tell Kate’s husband. 

At this point, when Kate moved on to the endless to and fro of how Simon wasn’t like most men but still, he was a man after all and who did he think he was, telling her she had duties, Annabel pretended to look for something in her bag. She didn’t want to know about a row, she didn’t care that he’d used the words, Wife and mother.  Kate put on her tape of songs and cried most of the way, not proper tears but the kind that hover behind the eyes and make you wipe your nose and people peer round the curtain of your hair and ask what’s wrong.  Only Annabel didn’t.  She said, Fine when Kate asked, And how are you?  Kate had taken the slogan, Greenham Women Everywhere to heart, as if she could do as much on the outside as the women who were there, and Annabel found herself irritated with how much she wanted to kick Kate back to her chaotic kitchen with too many children and leave the feminism to those who really lived it. 

She knew she was being unfair; Greenham women were everywhere, you could be a Greenham woman in your kitchen as much as you could at the fence, you could even be a Greenham Woman as a man, if you put your mind to it and didn’t demand the right to stay at the camps overnight, but she couldn’t shove the irritation down as she had before, look what had happened when she’d tried to cover up her unreasonable feelings; she’d gone and got herself embroiled with a woman who behaved as if they were joined at the hip, joined by taking Bridget Reynolds to Greenham. 

The whole plan had been a mistake.  She should have taken one of the coaches.  She shouldn’t have taken Bridget at all or got mixed up with a mother from school who’d got it into her head that they were part of some sisterhood that made personal questions appropriate. She didn’t want to be sidled off at the end of CND meetings while she was putting on her coat, cornered in the playground after the bell had rung, be rung up on weekends for no better reason than the excuse of discussing Peggy’s art project.  All right, she was lonely, Annabel got that, but there was no need to make it Annabel’s problem.  She hadn’t married a left-wing bore and spat out children at the rate of one a year; Kate Hilperton seemed permanently surrounded by mouths and it was no better now, spreading her life into the lives of everyone she met as if they’d all be as wild about her decisions as she was.  She reminded her of her sister. 

She spotted Bridget at the standpipe at the same time Kate did, the recognisable mass of her, a body she’d seen in school corridors that she’d wanted to straighten and let breath now breathing, now straighter even though she bent to steady a barrel under the tap, even though she’d shaved her hair.  She watched Kate hold out the present and Bridget not take it.  She walked over to the clearing looking for the blonde woman with the piercings and thought about asking for a lift to Blue gate but the car with Bridget in it had already pulled away by the time she’d given up pretending not to search while searching, by the time she’d turned to the fence and leaned against it, reminding her why she was there.  She saw Kate standing empty handed where the car had been, staring after it. 

Her conscience made her walk over to Kate.  Poor bloody woman always tearful, always trying so hard.  The apology for her middle-class plenty was permanently written in her effort to belong, to make up the distance.  She mustn’t hate her; she fitted in at Yellow gate perfectly.  She couldn’t have belonged better with all the other well meaning, middle class, do-gooders who brought crates of bread at the weekend and pretended not to mind the lesbians kissing in full sight.  Annabel wished she could kiss in full sight.  If the blonde woman should fall for Annabel as Annabel had for her then she’d kiss her in full sight for as long as Greenham remained. She’d set up camp in the clearing and kiss her all day and all night.  Pull yourself together – her mother’s voice, never far from her thoughts, made her shake her head, and shame flood her system.  It was silly.  Women that beautiful never looked at Annabel.

Kate held up her empty hands.  “I tried.  I hope she opens it.  Poor Janet.  She looked terrible.  These kids don’t understand what we go through.”

There was a row going on at the fire about monogamy, Annabel caught the tail end of it as she sat waiting for Kate who’d got stuck into a conversation about who should give an interview to a Panorama reporter who loitered nervously on the road.  Someone’s girlfriend had gone off with someone else and the jilted woman had brought it to the group for discussion, as if that could fix an angry heart; they were having a debate on whether the patriarchy was responsible for making her think she had the right to own her girlfriend’s body, her girlfriend was all for merry threesomes.  Why couldn’t Annabel be like that? But the only time her mother had ever mentioned sex was to call it, That carnal act.  And the other Annabel, the one brave enough to have sex with anyone, was still staring down into the grave of her father believing her orgasms had killed him.

She nudged a log further into the fire.  The women who lived at Greenham were a breed unto themselves as if a brand-new species had popped up in the tat and woodsmoke of a Berkshire camp, as if out of the ruins of Thatcher’s care had come forth an animal so wild it didn’t care it was wet and cold, that the food was the same, the mud endless, the rain perpetual. These women who stank of fire and sweat, who’s hair went unbrushed, whose faces disrupted the normal run of things, how a woman should look, they laughed more, shouted louder than any women she’d ever met.  She wanted to be one of them.

Kate came over to her.  “Someone’s turned up with a load of animal costumes.  They’re doing a tea party at Blue gate.  I said I’d drop them round.”

Annabel followed her to the car.  In the boot were piled fun fur costumes of a tiger and a bear, two unicorns, a giant cockerel, and a huge pink bunny, its body deflated, its head lolling on the back seat.

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