A split second of song that went on without him. They stared at each other, and the lights blazed, and the music blared, and whistles came from the crowd and someone shouted, Get on with it.
Bridget caught Dawn’s sleeve. “We need to leave.”
They got caught in a thunderclap as they left the Vauxhall Tavern, and ran for the night bus, their coats over their heads. Rain streaked the upstairs windows, headlights lit a soaking world, the sound of heavy wheels through puddles. A black world outside, a building site with sleeping cranes, a tower block of rooms awake; they had the top deck to themselves.
Cerise shook her hair like a dog climbing out of a pond. It stuck up in bright blonde spikes. Her piercings glistened; silver studs and small hoops, a diamond that wasn’t real. At camp, a woman known as Metal Mary had shown them how she could put a bolt through her cheek without blood; right in front of them she’d put it to her face and pressed and they’d watched it go in, halfway she’d opened her mouth and made them feel for it inside, Bridget had refused but Dawn had done it, and after, when it had gone right in she spat it out and laughed and there was nothing on her cheek, not a mark. Metal Mary had an affinity, that’s what she said. She was pierced all over. Some women said she ought to be in care but Dawn said she was in care, that camp was care, the only place on earth you won’t be judged. That’s what Bridget wanted now as Dawn and Cerise chatted. She’d held his gaze and he’d held hers and he’d forgotten he was supposed to be singing.
They jumped off at Kennington, these names and places new to Bridget who’d only ever been to Trafalgar Square or once to the west end to see a panto at The Palladium. Every memory of her dad had changed shape. Before she’d remembered him sitting beside her looking bored and trying to control Paul who was jumping up in his seat while her mum shouted, She’s behind you. Now the new film of her understanding showed him annoyed he wasn’t on stage wearing that dress and covered in make-up, a stranger dad, a betrayer dad, a liar; a dad she didn’t know.
They took their time through the rain at the other end, what did it matter, they were already soaked through. Greenham women were used to it. They walked through darkened streets kicking cans and skirting bags of rubbish. Cerise smoked. Dawn knew the way. They stopped at a tall house with windows boarded up, an unlocked door. Dark till they creaked upstairs and found a room lit by standing lamps, electric cords trailed across floorboards, people lay on couches, someone in a sleeping bag in the corner. Bridget had never heard of squatting till Dawn and Cerise had told her.
“What, you just break into houses and live there?”
They’d been sitting round the fire at camp. Maureen was back from court. She’d stolen a bus, someone else had hot-wired it, they’d driven around the base picking up women from different gates and blaring the horn till they’d pulled over and let the police arrest them. The charges had been dropped when they couldn’t prove who’d been at the wheel.
“It’s not breaking in,” said Dawn.
“It is,” said Cerise.
“All right, it is breaking in, but they’re derelict, they’re empty, no one’s using them. There’s buildings all over London with no one in them, just sitting there while poor fuckers can’t pay their rent and get forced out on the street or into shitty hostels. We recommission them for the public good. It’s an act of resistance.”
“But it’s not legal?”
“Of course it’s not fucking legal. Can you see an authority actually doing anything for free for anyone?”
“What about benefits?”
“Fuck off Maureen.”
Maureen had laughed.
There were nods and grunts and arms raised hello. Dawn took Bridget to a room on the next floor that had an empty bed, no sheets but she gave her a blanket from downstairs. Bridget lay in the dark. She saw his face. She couldn’t stop seeing his face.
The look of surprise, the song going on without him, the droop of his shoulders in that tight white shirt, his lips that had stopped moving, jeers from the crowd but no sound between them; in that alleyway between father and daughter a silence as if all the worlds they’d shared had stopped. Her dad who’d told her to learn the fallout sirens so she’d know when to run home, her dad who’d said Summerfield Farm at RAF Molesworth was the best campsite in the world, who’d sung, We’ll Meet Again to her every night at bedtime. She wanted to take off her skin like she’d taken off the pink rabbit, leave it on the bus like she’d left it amongst brambles, collapsed, no longer hers. She slept only an hour or so. She woke thirsty and desperate to pee. She pushed on doors till she found a toilet. The flush sent clanking through the pipes, she drank from the tap, her head tipped. She found Dawn asleep on the couch downstairs.
“I want to go.”
Dawn grunted and threw an arm over her face.
Bridget shook her shoulder. “I want to go.”
“Go where?” Dawn opened one eye.
Bridget sat on her heels. She’d slept in her boots in case the others left without her or she had to run or something terrible happened like seeing her dad not be her dad at all, see him be someone else and him see her and neither of them speak.
Dawn sat up and rubbed her head. The green was washing out, her yellow jumper smelled of warmth and home and something cosy. Her feet in socks stuck out the end of the sleeping bag that had its zip undone so it was more like the slippery eiderdowns Bridget remembered from going to stay with Granny Reynolds when she was small and life was cosy and all she had to worry about was the eiderdown slipping off her in the night.
There were other people sleeping around them, someone on a big old armchair, a body in a sleeping bag in the corner, or maybe it was two bodies, it was hard to tell.
“Where’s my stuff?”
Bridget passed Dawn her bag.
“Where do you want to go?”
Bridget shrugged. “Don’t know.” There was a burning pain inside her.
“I’m staying here.” Dawn turned over and pulled the broken sleeping bag up over her shoulder.
Bridget imagined Sunday morning at home. Her mum making eggs and soldiers. Her dad getting up late and now she knew why. Her stupid mum going about her kitchen while her dad snored in their bed; how could she even sleep with him? She wouldn’t if she knew but she didn’t know, she was too stupid to know, but if she did would she know what to do with it? This piece of information, this dad who wasn’t her dad? She probably wouldn’t believe it; she’d say she’d made it up. She’d go off to her stupid church and dad would carry on being not dad right under their noses and Bridget would be the only one to see.
Only this morning he’d be waking up while her mum was downstairs with Pauly, and he’d know that Bridget knew. He’d remember that while he was prancing about and sticking out his fake tits and wobbling in high heels he’d looked down and seen his daughter staring up at him, and he’d stopped singing or miming or whatever it was he did, he’d got frozen and the song had gone on without him. He’d remember all of that. He’d remember how she’d stared, and he’d stared and for a split second the alleyway had opened up between them of camping trips and fallout shelters and singing to her when she was little, and then Bridget had broken it, she’d pushed off through the crowd without looking back. Maybe he’d lie there all day thinking about it. Maybe he wouldn’t get up when her mum went off to church, maybe he’d die trapped in that moment like at the end of Superman when General Zod is sent spinning through space forever.
Dawn flung an arm out to pat Bridget’s head like a dog, she twisted her neck, squinting. “You all right?”
Bridget nodded.
“Go back to bed. It’s early.” Dawn resumed her curl, her knees up, her back to the room.
Bridget sat on the floor and leaned against her. There was no way she could go home now. Not ever.
You made me remember General Zod's awful punishment, captured in a sheet of glass, presumably for eternity.
The next twist is whether Janet already knows. I'll keep my opinion to myself.
Wow, this definitely brings some reality into her life. I hope she can get talk to someone about it.