39

Fallout

Atomic by Donna McLean

She took a tea towel from the draining board and ran outside, grabbed Paul by the arm to stop him rolling in it.  A good wipe produced his face looking sorry for itself; Simon fetched a bucket. 

“With any luck it’ll rain again,” she said to the other mothers who held their glasses of white wine close to their chests.  Simon threw water over the remains of Paul’s stomach, watery chocolate spew washed across the trampoline and dripped between the hinges. 

Kate followed Janet to the front door.

“You don’t have to go.  Don’t go.  Bridget’s fine.  I mean, I’m sure she’s fine.  I’m taking Maureen back on Tuesday, when the car pound opens, we’ve got to get her car.  I told Simon, where’s your bloody good Samaritan now?  And Maureen’s my friend, I’ll have anyone I bloody well want to stay, it’s my house, too, not mine of course, they wouldn’t have my name on the bloody deeds would they, I should have stood up to him then, I should have made sure I had something.  Don’t go, Janet.  We’ve got nut loaf coming.  If you want me to take a message to her, I’ll be there on Tuesday whether Simon likes it or not, he didn’t see, he wasn’t there, he’d have done the same thing if he’d seen what they did to Maureen’s car, dragging her out of there, it had all her possessions in it.”

She left Kate still talking.  She got Paul home by dragging him up the street, the rest of his easter egg haul left on the Hilperton’s lawn.  She got him in a bath and left him splashing and got out her address book and dialled her sister’s number, but her sister wasn’t home.  She tried her younger brother who was making a name for himself in music, but he was out too.  There was no point in worrying her parents; they’d moved to Spain as soon as her younger brother had moved out. 

She tried her older brother who should have protected her from marrying a man like Ray only he’d been off in his army training and hadn’t been there to notice she was marrying a man twice her age who liked dressing up in women’s clothing and had a thing for soldiers. 

Her older brother had got shot in Ireland and left with the shakes and lived not far away, shaking his way through community service for drunk and disorderly, he’d made a clean sheet of it lately, he was training to help ex-service men find their way back.  He volunteered at The Samaritans.

“Bill?”

“That you, Janey?”

“Can you take Paul?”

“What’s up?”

“I need my hands free.”

“Is it Bridget?”

Something like that she’d said, putting him off.  She packed her son a little bag and got him dressed and on the bus, swinging his legs beside her, delivered him to his uncle Bill’s with promises she’d not forget the cat.  She said it might be a few days, till the end of the week at most.  When she got home, Ray still wasn’t there.

She packed her own bag.  She put on Bridget’s wellies that she’d taken and brought back.  She finished off the cheese spread in sandwiches, she made a fresh thermos of tea and wrapped the lemon drizzle she’d made for Sunday tea in a dishcloth, put it in with the sandwiches.  At Surbiton station she waited for the train to Newbury, and at the other end, Janet got a taxi.  She wasn’t doing that walk again, not in Bridget’s wellies.  When she said, Greenham Common, the taxi driver gave a look she didn’t thank him for.

“It’s a fiver.”

The cheek of it.  She waved a note at him and got in. 

“One of them, are you?”  Old eyes screwing out of sagging face framed by the rear-view mirror.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  She hoped he was going the right way.

“Heseltine’s right.  Shoot the lot of you.  That’d give you something to complain about.”

“You don’t mind the fare.”

“Man’s got to live.”  Screwy eyes in the mirror.  He swung into a roundabout narrowly missing another car.   “Trouble with you lot is you think you understand the world.  You want to get home where you belong.  Leave it to the men.” 

“Is that so.”  Janet straightened herself, her hand on the door.

“You can’t go interfering in things you don’t understand.”

“You’re for the bomb, then, are you.”

“For it?  I’d press the button myself given half the chance.  Blow the Russians sky high.  Like we did those Japs.  That’d shut them up.”

“Not got any family?”

“Two boys, two girls.”

“You don’t mind blowing them sky high?”

“That’s my point.  You women believe what you’re told.  You got to use your brain,” he jabbed a stubby finger against his temple. 

They stopped at traffic lights.  Janet had the urge to make a run for it but he lurched away before she could open the door.

“Those Russians are running scared. Reagan knows.  My sister’s mad about him.  That’s where you want to be, not getting in the way with all these lesbians.  You want to be home mooning over Ronnie Reagan.  Leave it to the men.”  He squinted at her.  She wished he’d keep his eyes on the road.  “I expect your husband’s one of them pansies.  Let’s you walk all over him.  I told my wife, step one foot outside that door and I’ll give you women’s lib.  You women have got ideas in your head.  You want to remember who pays the bills.”  He swung another corner forcing Janet against the door.

“Boom,” he spread all ten fingers on the wheel, “and we can all get on with our lives.”

“You’ll enjoy living in a fallout shelter will you?”

Screwy eyes.  Janet looked away. 

The camp at Yellow Gate sprawled toward the road. Janet tried the door.

“The state of it.” He pulled up by a patch of grass. Janet’s door sprang open to the yank of her hands.

Reams of wool tied along the fence, banners flapping in the soggy breeze, tarpaulin drooping from sticks, chairs gathered round a smoking fire, the backs of women huddled against spring weather, scarves tied around faces, the sun threatening to shine. 

She didn’t know who to approach, they all looked the same, an assorted mass of unbrushed hair and faces shiny with air and matted with woodsmoke.  She felt too clean.  A couple of policemen stood near the gate.  She approached the fire.  There was a meeting in progress.  One woman was talking.

“I don’t see why I should have to ask you if I need a bit of baccy or some weed.  You buy wine, why shouldn’t I have what I want?”

“Cannabis is illegal,” said a woman with a clipboard on her knee.  She was sitting on an upturned crate.

“This camp is illegal!  Those bombs are illegal, stealing Greenham Common is illegal.”

“But we have to keep the press onside and getting caught with drugs isn’t helping.”

“I tell you what’s not helping, spending donations on plane tickets to America when I’ve got a ruddy great hole in my boots.  The press’ve already made their minds up about us, we’re a bunch of dirty, stinking lesbians.  They’re not interested in the truth, they never have been and they never will be.  We could go about in wimples and they’d still call us unholy.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” said a woman beside her, jotting it down in her notebook. 

A laugh rippled round the fire while the woman who wanted weed, carried on.  “You sue the Americans if you want but this is about non-violent direct action here at Greenham Common, people who donate to us are donating to actions, to helping us stay here.  When we had the bucket, we just passed it around and took what we needed and it was fair and no one was judging what we bought. Now it’s in a bank account and you think it’s alright to buy wine for Yellow gate but not cans of lager for us.  Just because you do the banking it doesn’t mean you get to say what matters.  No one put you in charge.  You don’t get to say what sort of law breaking is good law breaking and what sort is bad and I’m sick of being judged when all I need is a pair of boots and a bit of time out with my mates like you have with your bloody white wine.”

“You’ll get your pair of boots,” replied the woman with the clipboard.  She wrote in one of the columns. 

“Excuse me,” said Janet.

“And my baccy.”

“I’m looking for my daughter.”

“And my weed.”

Janet went over to the policemen.

“Excuse me.”

The policemen eyed her.

“I’m looking for my daughter.”

“What’s she look like?” said one.  The other one laughed. 

Janet went back to the fire. 

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