Love and Fallout (22 page)

‘14,' I corrected quickly.

Jean went to fetch the Dettol from her teepee. Sam said what I needed was a nip of the good stuff and went to get her hipflask. I sat in the glow of the fire and made conversation with Vicky, who told me she lived in Maidenhead but didn't like its energy. She used to come to the camp with her friend Astrid, but since Astrid had been transferred to work in Bicester she'd completely changed, her aura had gone from bright green to a dirty shade of mauve.

‘I'm glad I'm able to transfer easily,' she said, making herself sound like a gaseous vapour. ‘The things I needed to learn would have been inhibited by Astrid. She was limited.'

‘What did you need to learn?'

Vicky spoke deliberately. ‘My craft.'

‘Like what, weaving? Do you make the spiders' webs in the fence?'

She shut her eyes, ‘You misunderstand.' Her baby doll voice took on an air of mystery, ‘It's powerful. I'm still an apprentice.' Hang on, did she mean
Witchcraft?
Vicky's eyes popped open again before I uttered the word. ‘I can't speak about it freely,' she said.

That was fine; my mind was still worrying away at the problem of Angela's bike. But after a silence Vicky's resolve weakened.

‘The rules that govern all life are available to be harnessed, you see?'

I nodded and she went into an involved monologue about the intricacies of the white arts while I turned over my dilemma, wondering if I'd be able to put off seeing Angela until tomorrow. First thing in the morning I could take the bike to Newbury, get it fixed, and present it to her good as new with an apology for the trouble. There were bookshops in town, I might try and pick out something she'd like, the life of a saint perhaps. The more I thought about it, the more possible it seemed. I had money in my NatWest account.

Sam and Jean returned with the whisky and Dettol. Vicky talked on about her secret coven and I was having vague thoughts about dinner when a familiar figure approached from the road, crossing the clearing towards us. Angela. I got up – better to go towards her with the bike than wait until everyone was settled and we had an audience, I'd already tasted group humiliation during the journalist's visit and didn't fancy another helping.

It was dark away from the fire, and bitterly cold as I dragged the bike.

‘Where've you been?' Angela's pale eyes flashed behind her glasses. ‘You were supposed to be back ages ago.'

‘Sorry, I had a bit of an accident. But I'm fine,' I said, although she hadn't asked.

‘What happened?' Her attention moved to the bent bike. Rori wasn't there to help explain.

‘I can fix it. I'll take it into Newbury.'

Angela regarded me. Our breath came out in white plumes. ‘You can't get it fixed just like that. It needs to be sent away. I bought it in Germany.'

I had a glimpse of her in another life, wearing a knapsack and searching Alpine towns for a collapsible bike. ‘Could you let me try?'

‘No. Please don't.' Her voice was chillier than the air. If only I'd made Rori leave the pub earlier we wouldn't have been late and Angela might have been more forgiving. ‘Can I have the key for the lock?'

‘The key. Oh yes.' Oh no. I felt the pockets of my jeans, front and back. It must have fallen out when I fell in the ditch. I checked my donkey jacket, reddening in the dark. ‘I think I must have…' I patted myself down again. ‘It probably fell in the bush…'

‘Of course,' said Angela.

‘Maybe I could…'

She looked at me disbelievingly, ‘What, pick it out?'

‘I suppose not but, but I could get you a new one.' They'd definitely have bike locks in town.

‘No,' she said, taking the bike from me, ‘I think you've done enough.'

It was only when she'd steered it squeaking towards the fireside that I remembered the candy-striped paper bag, and inside it, the new biro.

19

Curl up and Dye

At home, Maggie was always messing about with her hair. She'd had it mulberry, ash blonde, raven wing and copper. She'd had highlights, lowlights and a pixie crop. She'd had three different types of perm, one of which I'd been persuaded to do for her – which meant a fraught August afternoon in her bedroom with three dozen vicious plastic curlers, the instruction leaflet in eight different languages unfolded on the bed, and a bottle of ammonia solution that made our eyes water. The perm dropped after two weeks, but Maggie wasn't fazed. Every month she bought a magazine called ‘Your Hair' filled with dozens of photographs of models, some made-up like extras from a David Bowie video, eyes crazed with space-age make-up. Maggie could study the magazine for hours the way old men could study racing form. But she didn't always back a winner. There was the asymmetric fringe, for example. ‘Get them to do it with the lights on next time,' said her mum. Paula didn't go a bundle on what she called ‘Tarting yourself about'.

Post-Tony I couldn't be bothered with my hair, and at the camp it was enough effort just to get it washed, so most of the time it stayed under my hat, curled up like a failing creature. But during a brief spell of December sunshine, it had emerged into the light.

Barbel sat knitting something intricate using multi-coloured wool when she paused to consider me, a finger of yarn poised beside her needle. ‘Tessa, in your hair you need some fun.'

I put a hand to my head.

‘What about beads?' she suggested.

Barbel had learned to braid hair during her travels and could make expertly beaded plaits. She'd already transformed three other women, including Di, who was now walking around with a head full of grey corn rows, like a lady from Barbados.

‘We could give you a barnet like mine?' Sam suggested.

‘I don't… I'm not…'

She laughed. ‘All right Tess, I'm only yanking your chain.'

‘But she could have blonde like you?' said Barbel, laying down her knitting. ‘I think you make a special blonde, really.' Her voice was going more up and down, a sure sign of excitement.

‘You know what they say,' said Sam, ‘blondes have more fun.' Sam's idea of fun involved hurling herself at the police.

I wasn't sure. ‘You mean bleach it?'

‘Like Blondie,' said Barbel, getting off her hay bale to crouch in front of me, like an artist envisaging her new creation. ‘It will be brilliant. With your skin so fair.'

‘I've got a new box of bleach,' Sam offered.

‘But you'll need it for your Mohican,' I said.

‘No, I'm thinking of shaving it off, I've had it like this since the squat, and that was two years ago,' she said, brushing a palm along her stripe of hair. ‘Tell you what, let's do it together, you dye yours and I'll shave mine.'

I'd never had the courage to do anything drastic to my hair, but then again, I'd never had the courage to live in a community of women protesting against nuclear weapons. Next to Barbel and Sam I felt ordinary; this would be a way to align myself.

‘It change your inside when you change your outside,' said Barbel.

I pictured myself with a shock of ice-blonde hair like a militant Blondie. Maybe I could get hold of a black eyeliner too.

For the sake of privacy, we'd decamped to the patch of ground outside Sam's bender. I didn't want loopy Vicky turning up and going on about animal testing. She'd spent a lot of time picketing pharmaceutical companies and got a violent glint in her eye when she talked about scientists and what they did with their pipettes. Wearing rubber gloves, Barbel painted my head with a white cream, which smelled even stronger than perming solution. In forty minutes I'd be Blondie. But the solution had only been on for ten and a terrible burning sensation was already creeping into my scalp.

I wriggled on the garden chair.

‘It's got to hurt a little, like this you know it's working my lovely.' Barbel had picked up
my lovely
from a Bristol woman and it was a favourite endearment.

‘No pain, no gain,' said Sam. ‘Always gets you a bit. Chemicals.'

With a pair of questionable scissors, Barbel had snipped off Sam's mohican and was now engaged in shaving her head with a disposable razor so that, shorn raggedly, she resembled an Irish girl I'd seen in the newspaper, her head shaved in punishment for fraternizing with a British soldier. I fidgeted for another two minutes while the burning intensified. Generally, I was quite good with pain and not a complainer, but this was something new, dozens of molten needles were piercing my scalp. After another minute the sensation was too excruciating to bear. ‘Please,' I said, standing up. ‘It hurts, it really hurts.'

Barbel frowned, the Bic razor still in her hand. ‘Truly? It's hurting so bad?'

‘Yes. Please,' I was lurching around, ‘get it off!'

‘I haven't filled the water basin yet,' said Sam.

The acid pain flowered into one all-encompassing bloom of agony, and I couldn't wait for them to help me, I galloped frantically across the mud with my head on fire. ‘Help!' I shouted, slipping, falling onto the knee which was already scabbed from the bike ride, getting up again and running towards the main fire. ‘Help!'

Nobody was there, only two startled visitors clutching an M&S bag.

‘Are the bailiffs coming?' asked one as I charged past them towards the kitchen, scrambling for the water canister, bending over, trying to heave its mighty weight above my head. It was too awkward.

‘Help!' I called, struggling.

‘Give it here,' said a familiar voice. I stood bent over, the weight of the canister lifted as a hand guided me to a patch of clear ground and then suddenly, blessedly, the ice-cold water crashed onto my head. I squealed with pained relief.

‘Stay still,' the voice instructed. The water kept sloshing. When there was no more I touched my scalp gingerly through wet hair, afraid it would come away, and straightened up. There, regarding me with undisguised disapproval, stood Angela, the empty canister at her feet.

‘Thank you,' I said with a shiver. The shoulders of my jumper were splattered wet. She eyed me sternly and walked away without comment, leaving me stupid and sodden, fingering my tender scalp. I was still standing like that when, out of breath, Barbel arrived clutching half a bottle of R Whites lemonade which she was presumably intending to pour over my head.

‘Poor lovely,' she said, her eyes large with concern.

I could still feel the after-burn of the acid charring my skin. I reached out for the bottle and took a vivifying swig. I had new sympathy for victims of the bomb.

*

Three hours later my head was still throbbing. As it dried, my hair had turned an unusual shade of greenish orange, the scalp tightening into a bumpy planet of blisters. Jean said I needed calamine lotion, but nobody had any.

A mass of dark blue sky was overlaid with shreds of papery cloud, a collage which drifted and changed, breaking apart to let through pale gold from the vanishing sun. I'd never known how purely enormous the outdoors felt at night. I'd seen photographs of the napalm in Vietnam, the sky shivered and turned dusty yellow, but the sky recovered. It was hard to think what would happen to the sky if a nuclear missile blasted through it. This is something I might have felt moved to talk about if it weren't for the fact I was sitting at the fire beside Angela. For the last few minutes, since Di had left us to witness by the A339 with her placard, I'd been hoping someone else would turn up to diffuse the atmosphere, but no one had. Di always went at commuter time to remind the world we were here. Now and then there'd be toots of support from passing motorists, but these were countered by abuse. One regular rolled down the window of his BMW and shouted ‘Go home dykes!' or ‘Get a job!' or ‘Communists!' depending on his mood.

Angela was absorbing a paperback of indiscernible subject matter. The last time I'd asked what she was reading she'd told me it was an account of the Mau Mau uprising. I'd nodded and added Mau Mau to the list in my exercise book.

Another painful minute passed. Since the incident with the bike and the morning's capers with the bleach, I'd noticed Angela resume the coolness she'd displayed towards me when I'd first arrived.

‘I might go and write a letter,' I said, preparing to make a break for freedom. She marked her page with an Embrace the Base flyer and closed the book.

‘Have you got a minute?' Obviously I had a minute, I had thousands of them queuing up like empty buses. ‘I wanted to talk to you.'

Talk to me? Angela never wanted to talk to me. What she wanted to do was not talk to me, and she succeeded in this daily. She removed her glasses and rubbed the lenses with the cuffs of her flannel shirt. ‘I wanted to ask you…' she replaced them, ‘what you're doing here?'

I didn't understand. ‘Cruise missiles,' I said, ‘the same as you.'

But she didn't seem to have heard and continued in the same deliberate tone, ‘Because this isn't somewhere to come when you've got nowhere else.'