38

Fallout

Atomic by Donna McLean

“You sure you won’t stop?” said Kate.  “Stop and have a drink with us.”  She got another glass from the cupboard.

Kate had done as she’d planned that day in Janet’s front room, half a lager and Ray upping the price. The Hilperton’s kitchen was twice the size of Janet’s own, the dividing wall to the telly room knocked through, a large wooden table, covered in the crayon marks of children bored of lentils, took up most of the space.  Where Janet had a row of built-in cupboards, the Hilperton’s had a wooden dresser stacked with half used packets of brown food clipped with wooden pegs. Children’s paintings, cups on hooks, Kilner jars with things growing in them.  There was the smell of yeast.  Janet would be quite happy to go at the lot of it with a bin bag.  When Bridget had been small and the Hilperton’s new to the street, Janet had helped Kate out on occasion, giving Peggy and the twins tea while Kate took the others swimming.  They’d never so much as heard of a fish finger.  As for white slice, Kate had asked in that understanding tone of hers if she wouldn’t mind not giving them sandwiches as it stopped them up, and the next time she’d asked Janet to help out, Janet had said she was busy. 

“Maureen lost her car.”

“Fuckers.”  Maureen shook her head. 

“That’s what Simon should be furious about.  He thinks he can lecture me about responsibilities when the very people responsible for our safety are sending in bailiffs.  He didn’t see what they did.  All he can think about is not breaking the bloody law. I mean that’s the bloody point, isn’t it?  It’s outrageous.  And no offence Maureen, but he called you the last straw.”

“I’ve been called worse.”

“I said what’s the point if you’re just going to do as you’re told?  They want it all their own way, these men, let the girls have a flutter then back in your box.  Well I’m not having it.  I told him I’m not having it.”

“You can tell them all you like, some of them,” said Maureen.  “Charlie wasn’t like that.  Charlie would have said, Go on girl.  I can hear him now.”

Janet wasn’t convinced a woman over sixty should be saying, Fuckers, but perhaps that sort of thing was all right in Ireland.  Kate had poured her a glass of white wine that was bigger than she’d have at Christmas.  Janet picked it up and took a small sip. “Charlie’s your husband?”

“He died last year.”

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” said Janet.  She watched the garden, the children running.  She hadn’t taken off her coat.  She hadn’t taken the chair Kate had pulled out from the table for her, either. 

“He was a good man.  We had a laugh.”

“Simon hasn’t made me laugh since,” Kate paused.  “Since ever, now I come to think of it.  I don’t think he’s ever made me laugh.”

Janet thought of Ray doing his Eric Morecombe impression with his glasses and sending Bridget and Paul into peals, how he could do the trick with the paper bag and the whole breakfast routine, even catching the toast though she’d drawn a line at the grapefruits.  He could be so funny, so sweet when he wasn’t obsessing about bombs and danger and keeping them all wrapped in cotton wool.

“I used to love how serious he was about everything,” said Kate. 

Janet watched Kate’s husband offer a bowl of crisps to a short dumpy woman with a ponytail.

“We used to protest together.  It was him who gave me the bloody bolt cutters.  What did he think I was going to do with them?  Prune the bloody roses?  And why shouldn’t it be men who stay at home.  It’s them who’ve made this mess.  Men leave home for war and women leave home for peace, isn’t that what they say?  He was all, Women’s lib this and, Tories out that when it suited him, when it was all clean and contained and I was home in time to cook supper.”

Janet watched Paul tear off across the grass followed by Kate’s twins.  The Hilperton’s garden was jam packed with parents from up and down the street all sipping their white wine and drinking their beer and eating whatever dry offering Kate had cooked up.  Last time they were over there she’d served plates of brown nobly balls and a dip that looked like creamed balsa wood. 

“But what’s the good if it’s all on his terms?  If you can’t risk your liberty, you’ve no business calling yourself an activist.  We all have to stand and fight, we have to stand up together.”

“My daughter-in-law’s threatening me with the grandkids.”

“Whatever for?” said Janet.  Now Janet thought about it, she did look familiar.

“For not rotting away in County Cork.”

“They saw her on the news,” said Kate.

“My son said, I thought that painting holiday was taking a bit of time, Mam.  Stupid boy thought I’d got myself a fancy man.”

“They underestimate us,” said Kate.

“Oh he’s a gentle lad, should never have married that bitch of a wife, mind.  She said if I didn’t come home this minute I’d never see the children again, said I was making a fool of all of them, as if I cared.  But the wee ones.”

“She’s no right,” said Kate.

“Why would she take your grandchildren away?” said Janet.

“She says I should be ashamed,” said Maureen. 

“If Simon ever tried that I’d have him up in court.”  But her voice sounded thin.

“Of what?” said Janet.

“Of Greenham,” said Maureen and Kate together.

Janet sat down.  Now she remembered her.  An old woman with a brown paper bag turned into a hat on her head.  A curdled tin mug of tea, refused.  A fire that smoked more than it burned.  Bridget, wet hair, walking away.  It all felt like a long time ago.  Maureen didn’t have the hat on anymore.  Her grey hair was damp from a bath and her face clean of mud. 

“What does she think I’m going to do?  Fucking woman wants me dead in a box.”

“We’ll get your car back,” said Kate, emptying the bottle into Maureen’s glass.  The dumpy woman with the ponytail was dividing chocolate eggs between Kate’s twins as Simon gave one of them a lecture.  “He says we were lucky not to be charged.”

“Charged with what?” said Janet. 

“Causing a bloody nuisance,” said Maureen, laughing.

“Was Bridget with you?”

“It’s only natural to worry,” said Maureen.

“I think she got away,” said Kate.

“From what?” said Janet.

Kate and Maureen looked at each other.

It was only a matter of time, that’s what Ray had said. It’s only a matter of time before there’s a knock on the door. He’d said she had it coming, Bridget.  He’d said if she wanted to end up in Holloway, that’s what she’d get.  Janet had said it wasn’t what Bridget wanted, she’d said their little girl just wanted a bit of freedom, anyone could see that, but Ray went on about it as if Bridget’s crime was the worst their family suffered, as if his Saturday nights were small fry, child’s play, as if no one noticed.  He expected them all to not notice.  He expected her to condemn their daughter for taking her bit of freedom while he carried on taking his. 

Paul screamed past the back door, stains on his knees and chocolate all over his mouth.  The rain of last night had let up when Janet finally decided to haul herself out of bed and it had left the grass slippery, the paths muddy. 

She pushed her glass away.  “Do you mean to say you let her go through that fence?”  She was already feeling light-headed.

“We didn’t let her.”

“And tear about the base?”

“A giant pink bunny,” Maureen had tears in her eyes, she wiped them with her sleeve. 

“She doesn’t wear pink.  She hates pink.” 

This set Maureen off again.  Janet didn’t see what was so funny.

“She’s a child.”

“She’ll be all right.”

Janet stood up in time to see Paul spew chocolate vomit all over the Hilperton’s trampoline.