Bridget, Cerise and Dawn stayed in a tipi at Green gate, there was nothing left at Blue. Their possessions, grabbed from bailiffs and stashed in the woods, they collected on their way back. Bridget tipped her sleeping bag out to find her birthday presents, the scarf and gloves from her mum, the joint from Cerise. Sixteen. She felt like she’d been waiting for it her whole life. Sixteen, when she could have sex, get married, smoke; she’d never dreamt it would be celebrated by breaking into an army base, that those other things would pale in comparison, that she’d smoke already, not know who to have sex with, swear off marriage forever. Her hair shaved up the sides, never washed, no bra digging into her back, she’d turned the corner of the legal age to join the army in a place of protest and camouflage, an illegal camp of woodsmoke where she belonged. She stayed awake for hours, high on adrenaline and pot and the pain in her nose where Cerise pierced it with a safety pin, the tip cleaned in fire, the blood washed in rain.
In the early hours she heard someone creep in, and in the morning Annabel told them, thin red hair, pale skin even paler, that she’d been arrested, charged with affray, and chucked out of Newbury police station at one in the morning, told to make her way back alone.
“Will you lose your job, Miss?” It was hard to connect her with the Miss Jenkins at school who wore corduroy skirts and stood on a table to water her plants which now that Bridget had seen her at Greenham she totally believed were cannabis. The Miss Jenkins from school didn’t dress up as a tiger and crawl through a hole in a fence. That one didn’t get strip searched.
“What about the others,” said Dawn, but Annabel hadn’t seen them.
They walked to the Empire café for breakfast. Annabel offered to pay.
“We should celebrate,” said Dawn. Egg yolk dripped from her fork.
“It was yesterday,” said Bridget, finishing off Cerise’s fried bread.
“Was it your birthday?” said Annabel.
They left Annabel at the cafe and hitched to London, got dropped at a petrol station and walked the last bit, across the river, Dawn and Cerise knew the way. By the time they reached the Vauxhall Tavern there was already a crowd outside. Dawn knew the woman on the door. She got them free drinks. The bar was packed like Greenham on a night out; women everywhere, pierced and revealed and wrapped and jewelled and raw.
Cheers went up and music pumped from speakers, a large brunette in taffeta evening gown, satin gloves adorned with sparkling stones, a tiara on her head stepped into a spotlight, microphone in hand and belted out, Bye, Bye Baby to shrieks and uproarious applause.
Dawn wolf whistled. Cerise disappeared into the crowd. The woman in taffeta introduced the next song in a voice deeper than her dad’s.
“He’s a man,” said Bridget.
The taffeta drag queen shook her bosoms to, Coco Cabana.
Bridget knew Kenny Everett off the telly who put on a dress and a wig and still had his beard, and everyone laughed. Her mum thought he was hilarious. She used to do an impression of him shrieking, All in the best possible taste, that had made Bridget laugh without really understanding why a man would dress up as a woman or what was funny about Kenny Everett except he kept his beard when he put on a dress and that was funny, sort of. And one time her mum got tickets to see Danny Le Rue who was much prettier than most women Bridget saw normally, and who really looked like a woman when he dressed up, but her dad had refused to go.
“She,” said Dawn. “She’s a man. Fuck, Bridget, I thought you knew everything.”
She’d made out she knew everything when she’d seen Cerise snogging another woman and Dawn had told her not to look so shocked and she’d said she wasn’t, that was ages ago, like in her first week when she’d had to pretend a lot. And Dawn had told her about her girlfriends and about coming out and how sex with women was better and she’d wanted to ask, How do you know? seeing as Dawn had never had sex with a man, but then Cerise had said, It is because she had and she never wanted it again.
Bridget hadn’t had sex with anyone, not ever, not even fingering or tongues or nothing. She hadn’t wanted it even if the boys at school had been interested in her which they weren’t. Or the girls. She didn’t know what she wanted.
Cerise reappeared and handed her a half of cider.
Bridget didn’t want to not be a lesbian if that meant being lumped in with the women in Surbiton. She wanted to be here in this sweaty club with music bouncing off the walls and women everywhere who looked like Greenham women. She stood beside Dawn.
“Can I buy you a drink?” A woman with short mousey hair, green jacket, badges, CND and SpareRib.
“Leave her alone,” said Dawn, and put her arm around Bridget.
“I’m not gay,” said Bridget. She didn’t know what she was.
A drag queen dressed entirely in leather, thighs and backside shining took the microphone and introduced the next act to cheers and stamping feet. Bridget mouthed, Toilets and Dawn pointed to a door in the corner. She pushed through the crowd as cheers went up for Major Margaret Hot Lips Houlihan, a tight US army uniform and fatigue green high heels, blonde hair in a neat bun, a hat fixed on top. She launched into, Happy Days Are Here Again as the door swung shut behind Bridget, muffling the noise.
What if she was nothing? What if she was so freakish that she didn’t fit in anywhere?
The toilets stank, the floor was wet, two women were having sex in the corner, one shoved up against the wall the other with her hand between her legs. Bridget locked herself in a cubicle and put her cider on the floor. She felt like she did before she knew anything about Greenham or lesbians, before the leaflet arrived through the door, before her dad started stockpiling. Small. Young. A freakish thing that didn’t want her body pointed out.
Before she’d got her periods she’d been allowed to be anything, wear what she wanted, only Granny Reynolds had gone on about how she should tie her hair back or wear a dress. Her mum had let her be, but since that agonising blood everyone seemed to think they had a right to a piece of her. Greenham was the first place since her periods started where no one said anything about her body apart from putting it in the way of bombs, and no one said anything about who she should fancy or what sex she should be having, no one made judgements about her at all.
A knock on the door. Dawn’s voice, “You in there, Bridget? You all right?”
She could go home for a night, she could surprise them. She could get clean clothes. She could ask for a bit of money. She wished she hadn’t given her scarf to Miss Jenkins. She could have worn it when she walked in the door so her mum would know that she didn’t mind so much that she’d sent it. It would have made her mum happy.
Dawn’s voice through the door, “I’ve got a mate who says we can sleep on her floor, if you want to go.”
Bridget flushed the toilet. She opened the door. “I was thinking I might go home for the night.”
She followed Dawn out of the toilets. The blast of the music, the heat, the noise hit them. On stage, lights blasting down on her, Hot Lips Houlihan sang, Suicide is Painless, her jacket open, white shirt stretching over tits. Bridget recognised the tune from the TV show, her mum had a crush on Hawkeye. Dawn dragged her to the front where Cerise was dancing and snogging, her arms around a woman with dreadlocks down her back.
“Bridge wants to go.”
Cerise ignored her.
“We don’t have to,” said Bridget.
They were right up the front, green stilettos, tan stockings like her mum wore, Bridget could see the hairs on the back of her hand, the hand that rested on her waist. She could see the chin beneath pats of makeup, the earlobes that drooped with the weight of clip-on pearl baubles. She could see her lipstick smudged into corners as she bent forward in a pout, she saw her wink at the crowd over one eye cloudy.
Major Houlihan’s gaze slid over Bridget.
It slid away and slid back.
“If we’re staying, I’m getting another drink,” said Dawn.
Bridget and her dad stared at each other.
Good god
Well that was a bombshell.