While seventy-thousand male and female bodies formed a chain link of protest from RAF Greenham Common to RAF Burghfield via the nuclear research station at Aldermaston, a bear, two unicorns, a cockerel, a tiger, and a bright pink bunny set off through the woods towards the moment in the fence where it dipped like a heart fallen over.
The brambles were thick, the mud heavy, the undergrowth dense; songbirds flew up into the higher trees, and pheasants scurried, disturbed from their winter survival.
“My tail,” shouted the tiger.
The bear doubled back to help her. She’d got it tangled in blackthorn. A small rip showed white stitching.
Bracken bent against fun-fur, heads wobbled, and paws tried to keep them straight. Their hems were caked in mud. One of the unicorns carried under its grey furry arm a brand-new pair of bolt cutters, the label still on.
“Stick it down your boot,” said the other unicorn, and helped her draw up her leg and find the top of wellie.
“Fuckin pissing shit,” said the cockerel, it’s bright red coxcomb caught in a bramble. The bunny took off on a different route and the cockerel untangled itself and followed leaving a strip of red felt pierced against leaf. A branch had ripped a hole under the bear’s arm and a yellow sweater showed through. As they neared the fence they dropped to their hands and knees. They lowered their voices. The tiger had a rucksack on its back filled with plastic cups and a thermos, a packet of McVities Digestives opened and tied with a rubber band. The unicorn crawled beside the cockerel, its rainbow horn pushed feathers of bracken out of their way. Ahead, the bear and the bunny had stopped. They crouched low and quiet as three soldiers, their legs, boots, and tips of their guns, passed by.
The tiger caught up with them. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Well don’t do it in your bloody head,” whispered the cockerel.
The bunny started laughing. The boots and guns, the tips of the nozzles like cocks gently banging against khaki calves moved on and the animals breathed. They saw the wheels of a truck, they heard an engine start, its growl grow loud and then faint as it drove away; American soldiers, guns like cocks, oblivious to six wild animals panting. The bear crawled forward. She held out a paw for the bolt cutters.
“I want to do it.” The other unicorn crawled up beside her.
Something had got inside the tiger’s head. She was shoving at the neckline trying to reach up inside.
“Just take it off,” whispered the cockerel. She shuffled to the side to let the other unicorn through.
Beyond the fence there was sunlight, a bright clear patch where there weren’t trees and moss and brambles, where they could get out of this mud. The unicorn snapped through the wire, a doorway made, the bunny pushed a section open. She tried her head. Her ears bent.
“Make it bigger,” said the cockerel.
“What’ll we do when we get in there?” whispered the bunny.
They made it big enough for the tiger’s head. She’d kept it on but taken off the rucksack and the bear shoved it after her. The unicorns dipped their noses carefully, saving their rainbow horns from being caught. The bunny’s ears bent backwards as she crawled forward on her belly, they sprang up again as she reached clear air. The cockerel brought up the rear, inching her way over soggy ground and broken wire, her elbows pulling her, her knees shoving her, her coxcomb ripped to shreds. They broke in and stood up, all six on open ground and found a place where time stopped.
A place new to Bridget and Kate and Annabel but not to Dawn, Cerise and Maureen who’d been there many times before. Bridget held her breath, taken by the sense that the air was doing the same, this space where light felt precarious as if the sun hesitated to waste itself. She breathed when she realised she wasn’t, great gulps that felt thin. There was silence, dull, broken by a bumble bee searching for pollen that used to be there, a bird that mistakenly flew where there used to be trees, an emptiness crying with mile upon mile of itself, a green and messy land tied back with tarmac and brick.
From within her pink bunny head, Bridget took in the space so guarded, so fought over, so stolen by men in uniform with guns like cocks. It was calm there as if they’d stolen that too, as if the warring on the outside was the result of fight pouring into the vacuum where peace used to be. So this is where they keep it, thought Bridget. This is where they put all the stillness that used to be out there beyond the fence in woods owned by no one, a hovering breath-held nothing undisturbed by bailiffs or sirens wailing, no police loitering, no press with their cameras or journalists with their notepads or reporters and microphones, just mile upon mile of emptiness with toy hangers breaking the horizon, a watchtower like a playhouse on stilts, military vehicles just visible the size of Pauly’s trucks, and running straight as an arrow through heath a strip of tarmac so wide she could cartwheel ten times across it, a runaway in pink turning circles on a runway in the sunshine.
“Greedy fuckers aren’t they,” said the cockerel. If they’d had eyes everywhere, if they hadn’t stolen so much, they would have seen six fun fur animals stroll into the sunshine, but nine miles of perimeter couldn’t be patrolled and as the animals emerged into open air the view was clear; the patrol in its armoured vehicle was already a dot in the distance.
The bunny spread her arms and turned in circles. “Oh my God!” She tipped her head and looked at the sky through giant bunny eyes. “It’s that easy.”
“It’s that easy,” said the bear. She’d tied a sheet around her waist which she unknotted and unfurled, letting it flap and straighten in the wind, on it in huge letters was written, ZERO OPTION. Bridget grabbed an end and together, a bear and bunny held it over their heads for the plane that flew over, the helicopter that had begun to circle.
The cockerel took a thermos and giant plastic cups from the rucksack. She poured tea, grabbing cups that tipped and tea that spilled. The tiger sidled up to the other unicorn and offered it a biscuit. They chinked plastic teacups. The bunny and the bear ran in circles, whooping and calling to the wind.
“They’ll get us arrested,” said the tiger.
“That’s the point,” said the other unicorn.
In the distance a soldier raised binoculars to a flash of pink. Vehicles set off from the watchtower, radios crackling. Sirens began to wail. The animals threw their cups in the air and set off in different directions. A bear and a unicorn went one way, a bunny and a unicorn went another and a tiger didn’t know what to do. She chased the bear and the unicorn, changed her mind, went after the other unicorn that ran with the bunny, but the bunny veered off after the bear, and the unicorn that was with her got left behind, found herself doubling back to the tiger when an army jeep came racing from the left. The cockerel ambled about picking up the plastic cups that rolled in the wind over tarmac that used to be heather. Blue lights flashed, sirens screamed, a police van lurched to a halt disgorging black uniforms who stumbled and tripped and didn’t know which way to go. A cockerel took off her head and held her hands in the air.
Bridget made it back to the fence. She’d thrown off her head so she could see. Cerise and Dawn had done the same. Her tail snagged as she crawled through the hole they’d made; it tore and was left dangling on a piece of wire. She got to her feet and ran on, stumbling over a log, crashing through brambles until Cerise and Dawn stopped and she stopped, and they stood there panting, tearing at Velcro strips. They threw their costumes into a gulley, a unicorn, a bunny and a bear deflated amongst thorns.
“Fuck,” said Bridget, laughing and panting and trying to catch her breath.
In Hampton Close her mum and dad watched an ariel shot of Greenham, a mass break in while CND formed a chain link to Burghfield. They watched helicopters fly, banners unfurl and Heseltine, safely in London, his hair lifting in the breeze, proclaim the women, Irresponsible, dangerous, and naive.
The visuals in this one just sealed the deal. Screen adaptation a must.
I like how this weekend's entries show that protest does not have to be either grim or violent.