Strip the Willow (27 page)

– Gettin a grip soonds good tae me.

– What is it ye mainly want to do?

– Get oot o the soss an sotter, Dad, said Alison. I’ve had it up tae here, ma life’s a mess. Far did ye say ma mither wis?

Lucy got tired of running history through her brain.

She heard footsteps behind her on the grass.

There were two sets.

– Come doon oot o that this instant, mither, ye’re a disgrace tae the deid!

Alison’s face was red and sweaty, her hair was all over the place.

– Alison, Alison— she said. I was scared to look round in case it was you. In case it wasn’t you, sorry. Oh, god, I’m sorry, Alison, so so sorry. You look so – stressed. Is the revolution over, it all seemed to slip away?

– Na, said Alison, the revolution’s fine. Is yir bum nae numb, sat up that tree? Ye’re perchit there like a cross atween a craw an a refugee.

– Jist noo there’s an amount o dancin that wid fear ye, said Alison, as the three of them made their way up town, hardly touching the big topics, walking side-by-side. There’s a Strip the Willow aboot a mile lang, said Alison, atween the Mercat Cross an Holburn
Junction
. They’re roon an roon like a hairy worm, dancin fester an fester tae keep the tanks oot.

Peem and Lucy looked at each other over their daughter’s head, and smiled.

– I dinna think tanks dare go near that pavementette, said Alison. There’s student blockades at aa weys in, every shity wee lane ye could think o. Hey, fit ye twa sae laughy at?

– A revolution in one street? said Lucy. I don’t know what Lenin would have said—?

– Hae tae start some place, Lenin wid hae said, said Alison. Plus Gwen’s got her camera goin. They’ve cut aff her TV link, but she’s streamin the scene on the Internet, tae keep them honest.

– Ye crack me up, said Peem, ye really do.
Every shity wee lane.

They got up Justice Street and into the Castlegate. Dancers stretched ahead of them, it must be a good few thousand, with all manner of styles and steps and shouts and colours. There didn’t seem to be an ounce of misery, no doubt hard to feel miserable when you’re so close and patterned with everybody, touching in turn, skirling and birling and moving real fast. Glistening away they were, glowing with something deeply needed, absolved from individualism at last, verging on happy you even might say.

– This maks it aa worthwhile, for me, said Alison. Kinda brings it aa hame.

Her father and mother put their arms round her waist, and the three pulled closer together so they could watch for a moment in content and peace. They could hardly spot a soul they knew, but what did it matter?

– Richt! Ready tae dive in? said Alison.

– I’ll gie it a shot, said Peem.

– C’mon, then, said Alison. Quick, afore the music finishes. Ye dance wi Mither, and I’ll grab that muckle leerup, tryin tae tuck himsel ahint a pillar like a spare prick at a countra weddin.

She went up to the bloke with the coat collar tugged high.

– Are you gey bored? she said.

He nodded.

– C’mon then, chum.

Dive indeed it had to be, into the long river of folk, which came, as though flowing over old worn stones, swirling towards them, each couple, after miles of dancing, shaking with riffs of surrendered laughter. It was a wonder they weren’t pulling bodies out, considering some of the ages. But, as long as music belted from the speakers, they all kept going.

Lucy and Peem, then Alison and Guy, joined at the bottom of the stilled pavementette, just by the Hole, and eddied their way up the lines, as the dance composed and recomposed itself. Pair after pair came birling down, proffering a hand, hooking an arm, pivoting once and surging on, with abiding sense of difference melded, and delicate sense of each other welded.

Peem hardly recognised anyone; he swung on the arms of unknown women from his native city. He did see Charlie pass on the other side, and shouted to him, something daft like
Up the flamingoes!
but it didn’t matter, Charlie didn’t hear; words were nothing to do with the dance.

Alison swung on the arms of many she knew: councillors,
janitors
, barmen, Finlay –
Hi hun
! he shouted in passing – and
crotchetty
old Walty, the Lord Provost’s dresser, plus Guy of course. From time to time she gave Guy a stronger haul on the arm, to try to stagger him, but to his credit he pulled hard back. He was either genuinely drawn into the dance, or else he was cunningly fashioning an alibi. Revolutionary situations, she guessed, were often like that, poor souls wondering which side to skulk on. Never mind: this was the best dance that could ever be for her, or that ever was, better than Cossack and Zulu and Breton and Irish, Circassian Circle and Nutcracker Suite.

Lucy saw Zander stuck in a doorway, and waved at him, but he
did seem stuck, as though struggling to master such mass activity, a shame really. While she swung with Peem, she couldn’t help feeling how light he was, how weak in the bicep. Had he ever done anything real? He was thin as a dream. Thank goodness Alison had inherited a bit of solidity from her, a bit of abiding beef. The music from the loudspeakers stopped; the dancers faltered and looked at each other—

A harsh noise at the end of the street turned swift to a clattering roar.

Then it loomed above them.

An attack helicopter.

Dancers delinked, abandoned partners, stumbled, bumped and fled for the nearest doorway. Under the hammering apparition, Lucy pulled and pushed Alison through a doorway and fell on her, covering her body. What fools they’d been, what happy-clappy fools. They lay without a breath beneath the machine. It shaded across them, its engine thudding, its rotors chopping air.

But no shots came.

– Alison—? breathed Lucy. Alison, love?

– Aye me, Mither. An we thocht it wis bad afore?

– I never knew there were so many forces.

Yet Lucy remembered the baton charges and tear gas in Paris. You went so far. You felt exalted. Then terror stripped all good
combination
. You felt exposed and loose. If you were still warm, it was only each to each, not each to other.

Gwen was one of the last to budge as the Lynx made its low passes. She was still speaking to camera as the populace melted through alleys fast. She faced the lens and checked the sky alternately. What was happening on the streets, what was aborting in the very next instant, was too fast to commentate on, although she tried.

– And now, it’s an absolute disgrace, the British Government has turned its tanks and helicopters against its own people. Well I say to you, we are not the enemy within, they are. Root these
traitors
out. Root them out, I say. Bring down this corrupt system, that looks after the useless rich like Rookie Marr and LeopCorp and turns its guns on its own people. This has gone on too long. There can be no greater task.

Then Echo TV’s volunteer cameraman said he wanted to go, while he could. She said, Go then, and to Luna, her boom assistant, she said, You too, Luna, go.

– Thank you for getting me out, said Luna.

– Get off the street, said Gwen, before they riddle you.

When she turned away, so as not to watch her brief comrades fleeing, there in the gardens below was a solitary figure.

She bounded down, two stairs at a time. The man was off his head, wielding a hoe and hacking flowers out, where it said
Sonsy Quines.

Sonsy Quines,
in all their white, pink, yellow and chocolate glamour, were being cast aside.

– Who are you? said Gwen.

– Maciek, said Maciek.

– Does it mean
madman
? said Gwen.

– It means
I am staying here,
said Maciek. I can’t run. I don’t have fast legs, and I can’t eat flowers. I will grow my vegetable here, it is less salt in the heart of the city.

– The heart of the city is empty now, said Gwen. Take one look.

– I will grow here, said Maciek, even if it is lettuce.

– I gotta go, said Gwen, I’m a marked woman.

– And beetroot of course, said Maciek. I need my plenty
beetroot
, after what we are through.

– Put that bloody hoe down, said Gwen.

He leaned it alert on a park bench.

– Hug me.

He did, so that they crushed breasts together, and pressed cheeks. He felt all gnarly.

– Goodbye, said Gwen.

– Goodbye, said Maciek. Look after yourself. You the world needs, if today it does not know it.

Before you could sort a city out, you had to clean up the source.

They got out of the city just before midnight, when the tide was full, swimming up the slackened river. Peem was the weakest link. Gwen and Pawel did strong versions of head-down freestyle, whereas Peem swam slowly, like a stick insect fond of air, on his back. It was dark enough, with plenty wind on the waters, else they might have been spotted and shot. Then it was a question of moving where it was possible to move, sometimes by brambled dyke or broken woods, or bending their backs along the river path. Bridges they avoided. Humpy stone and swinging slat bridges were choke-points, easily manned.

Gwen thought of her mother’s face: it was a real picture once she had tracked her down, sheltering with Lucy, and demanded to know where the stash of spare Semtex was likely to be, from
Calving Glaciers.

Bear in mind I’m not your wee lassie, she’d said to her mother.

Okay, said Alison.

Because we’re well past the days of the wee lassies, she had insisted.

Okay, okay, said Alison, dinna blaw ma heid aff.

Hope I’ve got better targets, Gwen had replied.

Peem thought of Iris, who had sped them on their way, stuffing the spare space in the poly-lined knapsack with provisions. She kept ramming things in, wrapped in foil or plastic or kitchen roll, or kept for the top, like cake and bananas.

Watch, Iris had warned, and eat your bananas early, or they’ll be mush. Do you want a flask?

I’m sure we’ll find water, Peem replied.

Iris squeezed his hand.

A flask for after the swim, yes, I think so, said Pawel.

Are you vegetarian? said Iris.

How do you know? said Gwen.

Your skin.

I do take fish, said Gwen.

These are herring I’ve lightly smoked, said Iris, they’ll keep a day or two. Do well all of you, she said to the three.

Thanks, Iris, said Peem, you’re a gem.

Never mind that, Iris had said. Bring me something useful when you come back. I need sphagnum moss for keeping the wounds clean. Here. And she’d given them an extra black plastic sack.

Pawel thought of Maciek, trying to tend his absurd garden, and of Lech and the other Poles, forced from their squats and penned in a makeshift camp, pending deportation. He’d show them a better way.

Further upriver they risked a hitchhike, in agricultural vehicles and delivery vans. In Braemar, when they got the length of Braemar, they did something about their lack of bicycles that didn’t involve money. They pressed pedals, moved up to Inverey, Linn of Dee, and on to Derry Lodge, seldom separating, taking turns to lead and break the wind. The Linn of Dee was roaring; the snow must be melting on the high slopes of the Cairngorms.

– We don’t want to get high too early, said Peem. They stuck instead to the very long valley of the Lairig Ghru, moving off the main path in the lee of Devil’s Point and hugging the river, past the white bones of pine revealed in the bog.

– How old are these trees? said Pawel.

– Three thousand years, said Peem.

– And how old are you, grandad? said Gwen. She didn’t say it like
Grandad
, not her style, little interest in that.

– Eleven, twenty-two, thirty-five, ninety, said Peem. Two grouse got up and gave their startled call. I don’t do age, I leave that for the young to fret about.

– We need to be on the top by dawn, said Gwen. If you guys sleep for a bit, I’ll keep watch.

– You need sleep too, said Peem. Nobody knows we’re here, none of these sods will guess we’re coming. A couple of hours will do us good.

– Yes, said Gwen. We owe ourselves that.

– Che, said Gwen, a little later. I’m thinking of Che.

But in the late afternoon sun, deep in the heather, the other two were already snoring.

When the day was well on, Lucy and Alison risked a brief walk. Despite all the developments out at sea, the oil, the gas, the wind farms, there was still haar, that sudden fog, and the haar came rolling in. All over the Links. Air from the south was flowing over winter-cold water.

They walked past UberSea, then UberEye, rehearsing missed moments and sketching small plans. Lucy had lost her phone and all her numbers. Haar swirled and rose through the pods and girders. They stopped at the white tree of the dead, where the haar hung in skeins.

Alison took her Mum’s arm, and they stood in the damp air for a bit.

– It’s jewellin the end o yir nose, Ma, said Alison.

Then the fog balled itself up, and billowed off north.

Forty yards from a tent they were – huge, dank, olive.

Strung on the wet grass, higgledy-pig, lay rolls and rolls of
razor-wire
.

– Oh, god, try them again, said Lucy.

– They’ll still be ower high.

– Love, please, give them a try—

At dawn they’d have to mount a distraction. The bottling-plant for Mountain Heart was sure to be guarded. They had one pistol, which Pawel had captured from the Town House tank.

I’ll take off my clothes, thought Gwen, and walk towards them. That’s what these fuckers like, anyway, a real good show. Pawel can get them from the back, Peem can disarm them.

They moved up in the May moonlight, well above the oldest
tree-line
, choosing dark spaces between glittering shields of snow.