17

Brandy

It had rained while we’d been getting washed and the pavement was drying out in petals of damp. I was anxious to return Angela’s bike but Rori waved her hand. ‘Plenty of time for that. Let’s have a drink.’

To get to the pub we needed to cross the market square, which meant passing two women who stood behind a table draped with a banner: LAWE Abiding Citizens.

‘Keep Newbury clean. Peace women off our common,’ repeated one of them into a hand-held microphone, the sort favoured by election candidates.

‘It’s her,’ said Rori, pointing me towards the tweedy outfit and triangular rain scarf.

‘Greenham women a drain on ratepayers.’

Our experience with Keith the swimming pool manager had emboldened me, so I followed Rori towards the trestle table, determined to be the first to speak this time. Anyway this woman was the same as anyone else, I’d heard her peeing in a public toilet. She lowered the microphone and stared us down spaghetti Western style, her face stern and powdered.

‘This is victimisation,’ I said. The woman fixed her eyes on me. ‘What you’re doing is inciting hatred,’ I continued.

‘No. This is an exercise of democratic speech,’ she replied. ‘You’ll find we have public support on our side.’ Her companion nodded but remained mute.

An old man with a Tesco’s bag shuffled over to see what the fuss was about. He had the look of someone who lived on tinned soup.

‘Sir, if you’d care to sign our petition, we’re doing our best to protect the town,’ said the woman. Before she could say anything else, Rori cut in.

‘Did you know the airbase is built on common land?’ she asked him.

‘I remember a time before the War when you could walk all over, yes,’ he said.

‘Well, we want the land to be returned rightfully to the people who own it,’ said Rori, checking her coat for a leaflet.

‘Each missile costs twenty-five million pounds,’ I put in. That was a fact I’d double-checked.

‘Is that so?’ said the man. There were two gullies down his cheeks as if his face had been folded and unfolded again. When I told him my Hiroshima statistic he shook his head. ‘Terrible.’

‘Meanwhile three million are unemployed,’ said Rori.

‘And think about how little money pensioners have to live on,’ I added.

‘This is it,’ he said, warming to our theme, ‘this is it.’

Impatient now, the woman from LAWE drew herself up like crown prosecution.

‘Earlier today I witnessed these women stripped half-naked, washing themselves in the public lavatories,’ she said, pausing for emphasis. ‘Imagine it.’ The old man averted his eyes, too abashed to imagine it. ‘Public facilities. Think how one feels when confronted with such behaviour.’

‘No, well, that’s not on,’ he muttered. She held the clipboard before him.

Rori slapped an anti-nuclear leaflet on the table and we walked away.

Most of the pubs didn’t welcome Peace Women, but the landlord of The Feathers was an exception, and he’d even been known to drop by the camp in his Land Rover with a donation box. My usual drink was Bacardi and Coke, but Rori ordered brandy and soda in bulb-like glasses and we sat on barstools, sipping in the mellow light.

After reliving our experiences with Keith, Vi and the woman from LAWE, we’d been discussing plans for Embrace the Base, and then playing a game called I Have Never, which Rori knew from university. We didn’t have money for more than one drink so we were playing with pints of water. There were quite a few things Rori had done that I hadn’t. Hitchhiking. Jumping the fence at Glastonbury. Losing her virginity to a clarinet teacher. Nevertheless, the sorts of things I’d done – working for the summer in an ice-cream van, administering a home perm – seemed to delight and amuse her. When I said, ‘I have never had a strip-wash in a public toilet,’ we took a gulp of water. It was lovely stowing away under the low pub lights but time was creeping on and I reminded Rori about Angela’s bike. She waved her hand. ‘Oh forget about that, I’m having fun.’

On the other side of the bar two men waited to be served. Both had American accents, marking them out as off-duty military, and after some puzzling I recognised one as the tall serviceman I’d seen jogging near Amber gate. He seemed even taller in the low-ceilinged pub. His short blond hair was cut clean off his neck and nearly shaven at the sides. The sleeves of his cream V-neck jumper were pushed up, and underneath there was no shirt, only his chest with a few golden wires poking out. He looked like he should be called Brad, or Todd, or Chip.

I pointed him out to Rori, ‘We saw him the other week near our gate, he’d been running.’

She glanced over. He and his friend had seated themselves on high stools like ours. His skin was paler than it should have been, but no doubt it responded to sunshine: he was the sort of man who should rightfully be finished with a golden sheen.

‘They’re all the same to me,’ she said.

But he wasn’t the same as anyone. I stared. Where did you get jeans to fit when you were that tall? Perhaps he wore American jeans bought from a special shop on the base. He turned his head, directing his brown eyes towards us and I smiled in a reflex, the only natural response to beauty like his, for he was unarguably handsome. His eyes slid past me to Rori, where they lingered, but he didn’t smile at either of us.

‘They’re not supposed to even acknowledge us,’ she said. ‘They’re fed all kinds of misinformation, that we’re in league with the Russians and God knows what else. They think we wear razorblades sewn into our clothes.’

A couple of local girls, whose dirty looks I’d been trying to ignore, approached the bar, a real blonde and a dyed blonde, their hair combed and sprayed into flicked styles. The real blonde leaned on the bar as if she hardly knew the servicemen were there – the way Maggie might have done when she was pretending not to notice a man but wanted to make sure he noticed her – then she threw her head back and laughed at something her friend said. Whatever the friend had said probably wasn’t hilarious, but that wasn’t the point, the point was to make the men look up. I recognised that tactic too. The tall American swivelled on his stool and touched the real blonde on the elbow, wanting in on the joke. It was easy, that touch, an easy American gesture made by the sort of man who could catch keys one-handed or flip a cigarette from its packet straight into his mouth. It wouldn’t be long before he and his friend would be buying the girls a drink.

The dyed blonde said something to the group and they turned their eyes our way and laughed. Rori finished her brandy, nonplussed. ‘Shall we make tracks?’

I’d wanted to go straight back to camp, but Rori said there were a couple of things she needed to buy, so we agreed to meet at the bikes.

Sam had warned me to be careful of the phone boxes in Newbury, she’d heard they were monitored by the MoD, but I had no other way of reaching home and anyway it was doubtful whether my calls to Stevenage would be of much interest to them. Inside the box I caught my second urine whiff of the day, but at least the coin slots weren’t jammed. I rang Maggie first and her mum answered.

‘Are you okay there? Looking after yourself?’

‘Everything’s fine thanks, Paula.’

The radio buzzed in the background. Maggie’s mum was in a constant battle to keep hold of Radio 4, but it always slid between Radio 1 and 2 when her back was turned. I had a quick mental glimpse of their house, messier than ours with Paula in the middle of it, glasses on her head, wishing she were somewhere else.

‘You’re doing great stuff,’ said Paula, before Maggie took the receiver, swallowing a yawn.

‘Sorry. We had a lock-in last night and I’m on split shifts.’

‘Shall I call back?’

‘Don’t be daft. When are you coming home? It’s not the same without you.’

I explained I wasn’t but reminded her about Sunday’s protest. She didn’t sound too eager and mentioned something about the rota at work.

‘Anyway, you’ve got all your new friends, haven’t you.’

‘Yes, but I miss you.’

It took a little persuasion, but eventually she promised to come.

Afterwards I phoned home, listening to the burr burr, steadying the ten pence piece, my thumbnail satisfyingly clean where it had recently been ridged with dirt. A vague figure appeared on the other side of the door, shuffling from side to side then stomping his feet, more to make a point than for warmth I suspected. I turned my back on him. What was wrong with people, why couldn’t they allow other people to live without trying to martial them all the time?

Dad picked up. ‘Tessa!’ Then a shout off into the kitchen. ‘Anne, it’s Tess!’ A quick scurry while Mum picked up the extension you could never hear on properly. One of Dad’s mates had connected it without telling BT.

‘Why aren’t you at work?’ I pictured him on the sofa wearing his house trousers.

‘Taking a couple of days off.’

‘Days off?’ Dad never took time off from the yard. ‘Why?’

‘Give us your number and we’ll call you back.’

‘I can’t Dad, there’s a queue,’ I said, glancing at my watch. I had to get back to the bikes.

‘Well, they can wait can’t they.’ Also, I didn’t want Mum to ask too many awkward questions.

‘I don’t think so. Anyway, it’s only a quick call to see how you are.’

‘Never mind us, what about you? We always have the news on just in case we catch a glimpse of you sitting in a tank.’

Mum cut in. ‘Don’t be silly, Brian. Aren’t you cold at night, love? What are you eating? Me and Dad want to send you some money but we don’t know where to send it to.’ She sounded het up.

‘I’m fine, honestly.’

‘What do you do all day?’ said Dad.

‘We protest.’

‘What, all day?’ asked Mum.

‘Being here is protesting.’

‘Don’t get yourself in any trouble,’ said Mum, ‘stick with the ones who sing the songs, don’t go having any set-tos with the police will you? Why don’t you come down, love. Get a good meal inside you and have your old bed back for a couple of nights.’

I pictured my old bed, my old room with the same posters and the view of the garages.

‘How’s the tent?’ said Dad.

‘I’m living in a bender now.’

‘You what? Living with a bender?’

‘IN a, oh stop being stupid.’ I ignored him chortling at his own joke. ‘It’s a structure made from branches. You bend the branches over and cover them with plastic.’

‘Oh God.’ Mum’s voice had taken a turn for the worse, I knew she’d be following her darkest imaginings, her only child developing trench foot and setting herself up for a lifetime on benefits.

‘It’s better than a tent, they’re very warm.’

‘Like a bivouac,’ said Dad.

‘A what?’

He started explaining that they’d learned to build them in the scouts before Mum interrupted, ‘Why don’t we come to visit?’

I made a half turn and caught a shadow of the man looming outside.

‘They won’t let me in, will they?’ said Dad.

‘But I could come?’ said Mum.

‘No don’t. Please don’t.’ The pips started to go. ‘Listen, I’ve run out of coins.’

‘What did she say Brian? This phone’s hopeless.’

‘I’ve got to go, Mum,’ I shouted.

‘But we haven’t told you our news yet…’

I didn’t have time to listen to stories about next-door’s extension, I had to get back to the bike.

‘I’ll ring you next week,’ I shouted into the receiver as the line went dead.

Before I opened the door, I tucked an ‘Embrace the Base’ leaflet inside the phone book: protesting wasn’t dissimilar to what it must be like being an evangelical Christian, the sort Mum hid from if she saw them coming first. The man waiting outside had a neat goatee beard and a teacherly face. Clean but still clearly identifiable as a member of the camp, I held my nerve and looked him straight in the eye, anticipating more hostility. He took the weight of the door from me and held it open. ‘God bless you,’ he said. An unexpected warmth flowered in my chest, like the heat of brandy.

By the time we were back on the bikes, cycling freely into the dusk, I’d forgotten about the woman from LAWE and the girls in the pub, I’d even forgotten that Rori had kept me waiting for forty minutes while she finished her shopping. My thighs burned with the exertion of pedalling. It was good to be moving through the chill afternoon, clean and blessed by God, following Rori’s red bike light towards the camp. She turned around.

‘Come on Skittle, let’s see what you’re made of,’ she called, changing gear and streaking away.

Skittle! She’d named me. Thrilling inside I leaned over the handlebars, powering forwards to keep up, pedalling the puny bike with the full force of my happiness.

I didn’t hear the car until it was too late. At the sound of the horn I panicked, swerved violently to get clear, careering from the saddle into the side of the road, the bike scraping and twisting beneath me as I tumbled onto the unforgiving ground.