by Anne Fine
‘Oh, thanks,’ Mum said, taking two stuck together. ‘I’m absolutely starving.’
Goggle-eyes fastidiously prised the smallest one he could find away from its sticky companions.
‘How nice,’ he said. ‘And how very unusual. Wheatgerm petits fours!’
You could tell from the look Beth gave him that she knew perfectly well he was being sarcastic. But just at that moment the bus began to slow. Everyone straightened up to look ahead over the seats in front. It seemed that we were coming up behind some vast great trailer with huge flashing WIDE LOAD signs, and a motorcycle escort.
‘Look at the size of that!’ breathed Beth. ‘What is it?’ Suddenly a thought struck her. ‘I bet I can guess what it is,’ she said excitedly. ‘The nuclear convoys have to use this road.’ She craned her head to see better. ‘I bet it’s one of them. It’s absolutely massive. Yes, I bet this is part of a nuclear convoy.’
Responding to signalling from the motorcycle escort, our bus was pulling out now, and drawing abreast of the wide load. Everyone had heard what Beth was saying. They all peered curiously out of the windows.
‘Yes, indeed,’ Gerald Faulkner spoke into the sudden silence as we saw the load clearly for the first time. ‘A lovely three-bedroomed nuclear missile with calor gas kitchen.’
Beth flushed. Her mouth shut like a trap. As the immense mobile home on its trailer slipped away behind, she snapped the lid shut on her wholemeal cracker box, and took off down the bus so fast she didn’t offer one to Jude or me. I had to climb over Jude to go and fetch ours.
‘Who is that fellow with your mother?’ Beth asked. (She was still scarlet.)
I took a deep breath.
‘He’s my mum’s cousin,’ I lied. ‘Over from Perth.’ She shrugged, appeased. Friends are one thing, relations are another. No one can blame their mates for flesh and blood.
‘How long is he staying with you?’ she asked, pressing an extra wholemeal cracker in my hand for sympathy.
‘Too long,’ I said. ‘Mum’s very patient, though.’
‘Too patient,’ Beth said, and moved on down the bus, excusing Mum to everyone she passed. ‘He’s some relation, it seems. Poor Rosie simply can’t get rid of him. At her wits’ end!’
Everyone nodded. They were all filled with sympathy. Even the ones at the back who couldn’t see Goggle-eyes sneering had heard his loud snort of contempt when Josie sailed into the descant during ‘Oh, Little Town of Sellafield’. They all knew how we were suffering.
I went back to my seat. As I clambered over her, Jude offered me one of the Asterix books Mum bought her for the trip. (Jude is still bribed to come along, but Mum says I’m now old enough to do my civic duty without that.) It turned out to be one I hadn’t read. And though Beth’s home-made wholemeal crackers didn’t taste too brilliant, reading and prising the sesame seeds out from between my teeth did help to pass the time till we arrived.
It was a pretty isolated place, where we stopped. I’ve been there several times. Apart from the miles of fencing, you can’t see a thing. The base itself is in a dip behind thick woods. It didn’t look as bleak as usual. For once the sun was glinting on the waters of the firth, and it wasn’t misty. You could see bracken turning brown on the hills, and the heather was in flower.
Goggle-eyes clearly didn’t like the look of the place much.
‘I don’t fancy reclaiming that lot,’ he said, peering over Mum out of the window. ‘It looks pretty boggy.’
He glanced out the other side.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘Reinforcements.’
Three dark blue vans were waiting in the lay-by.
‘Don’t be so silly, Gerald,’ Mum said. ‘That’s the police.’
‘Police?’ He was astonished. ‘How come they’re here before you even start?’
‘They always arrive first,’ Mum said, pulling on her anorak and zipping it up. ‘They’re more efficient than we are. If we say ten o’clock, they’re here at ten o’clock, even if we don’t turn up till eleven.’
‘You tell the police your plans?’
Mum stared at Goggle-eyes as if he’d just asked her whether she believed in fairies.
‘Of course we tell them our plans,’ she said. ‘There are dozens of nuclear installations in Scotland. If we waited for the police to find us without help, we’d be here weeks.’
Raising her eyes to heaven, she propelled him into the gangway.
We all piled off the bus, the smokers sighing with relief and fishing desperately in their jacket pockets. Beth strolled across to the police vans to find whoever was in charge, and all the rest of us followed the driver around to the back of the bus, to get our stuff out of the luggage compartment.
I reached in for my banner. Goggle-eyes, being a gentleman, stretched over to take it from me as soon as he realized how long and unwieldy the poles were. But he didn’t know that you have to keep the sheeting wrapped tightly if there’s any wind at all. He let it loosen and, as the poles swung apart, it billowed open in the middle.
‘What’s this?’ he said.
‘It’s just a banner,’ I said modestly.
It isn’t ‘just a banner’ at all. It took me and Gran two whole weeks to make it, and it’s one of the best. We have dozens of cardboard posters and home-made signs, but my banner’s special. The only ones to touch it in the group are Beth’s lovely quilted Dove of Peace, and the large fraying rainbow that we share with Greenpeace.
Mine is the biggest by far. Three metres wide and one high, you need two to carry it, marching abreast. It’s hard to hold in strong winds – your hands ache terribly. But it’s so striking that it’s always worth it. I’ll tell you what it’s like. The sheet is white, and right across the top is painted in black letters:
HOW TO DESTROY A WORLD
Right in the middle there’s a plain white square, with one tiny black dot sitting all alone inside it. Then the whole of the rest of the banner is black dots – thousands and thousands of them – like the most frightful measles.
Prising one of the poles out of his hand, I moved backwards so that the banner unfurled, foot by foot. The wind whipped it taut, and Goggle-eyes saw the whole thing properly for the first time.
‘What is it?’ he asked again.
‘It’s my firepower banner.’
‘Firepower?’
‘That’s right.’ I pointed to the white space in the centre, to explain. ‘That little dot there, all by itself in the middle, represents all of the firepower used in the whole of the Second World War.’
‘All of it? Every side?’
‘All of it,’ I said. ‘From every country that was fighting. Three megatons of firepower.’
‘And all the rest?’
He waved his hand over the acres of measles.
‘That’s all the firepower in the nuclear weapons on the planet today.’
‘Dear gods!’
Poor Goggle-eyes looked a bit shattered.
‘How many dots are there?’ he asked after a moment. (That’s everybody’s next question.)
‘Six thousand,’ I told him. ‘Exactly. Gran helped me get it absolutely right. That’s eighteen thousand megatons of firepower.’
He whistled through his teeth.
‘Six thousand Second World Wars,’ he said slowly.
‘That’s right.’
Leave them to think, Mum says. Leave things to sink in at their own good speed. I stood holding my pole against the tug of the wind, and watched his eyes moving slowly over the banner. You can’t just look at it. There are so many dots they swarm and jump. You get a headache if you stare too long. Gran and I ought to know. We made it, and it nearly killed us.
Sure enough, after a moment he blinked and narrowed his eyes. But they kept moving over it.
‘I’m going to roll it up again,’ I said after a bit. ‘Till we get going.’
He watched me twist my pole until, foot by foot, the banner swallowed itself up. Then he stepped forward and took it from me.
Raising my eyes to heaven, I followed him.
Round the front of the bus, everyone was milling about impatiently.
‘We really ought to get moving,’ Josie was saying. ‘Snowballing can take hours.’
‘Snowballing?’ Mum looked confused. ‘I thought we were reclaiming hills.’
‘We were,’ said Josie. ‘Till Beth changed the plan last night. Now it seems we’re snowballing instead.’
A look of deep mystification settled on Gerald Faulkner’s face. He stared up at the clear October skies, and you could tell exactly what he was thinking: How can you snowball on a day like this? He turned to Mum for an explanation, but she was already busy complaining to Josie:
‘This snowballing is news to me. You can’t expect people to turn up and snowball out of the blue!’
‘Indeed, no.’ Gerald Faulkner supported Mum to the hilt. ‘No throwing snowballs on a day like this. Fat chance.’
Everyone stared at him, including Mum. Now she, too, shook her head in disbelief and glanced up. You could tell exactly what she was thinking as well. What is he talking about? How can you throw snowballs when there is no snow?
It was Josie who enlightened Gerald Faulkner.
‘Not that sort of snowball,’ she told him. ‘The other sort.’
‘What other sort?’
‘Haven’t you even heard?’ She sighed. ‘Groups like ours are snowballing all over the country. Two people cut a fence, and the police arrest them. Next time it’s four who do it. Then eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four –’ She broke off. (I know from when she was group treasurer that mental arithmetic isn’t her strong point.) ‘And so on,’ she finished up lamely. ‘More and more people, snowballing.’
‘But what’s the point?’ asked Goggle-eyes.
Everyone stared at him worse, if you see what I mean. If I hadn’t been so busy pretending that he was nothing whatsoever to do with me, I’d have sunk my head into my hands out of pure shame.
‘What do you mean, what’s the point?’ asked poor Josie.
Goggle-eyes spread his hands.
‘Why do you bother?’
Now it was Josie’s turn to be utterly baffled.
‘Why do we bother to do anything?’ she asked. ‘Why do we reclaim hills and hand over petitions? Why do we march and hold silent candlelight vigils? Why do we write to politicians and wear our badges and send letters to the newspapers?’
She stopped and looked at Mum impatiently as if to say: ‘Honestly, Rosie! You brought this awful person. You explain.’
Mum tapped him on the shoulder.
‘Gerald –’
He didn’t notice. He was still persecuting Josie.
‘But what’s the point of getting yourselves arrested?’
‘Listen,’ said Josie. ‘There are millions who think the way we do. Millions. People of all sorts. And this way the police and the courts and the newspapers get to see that we’re not all the sorts of loonies and layabouts that can be safely ignored. They get to see growing numbers of sensible citizens who object to these places. And from our statements in court, they get to hear why.’
‘Then what?’
‘You pay the fine. Or maybe you refuse on principle.’
‘And go to jail.’
‘Better than going to the lions,’ said Mum. ‘People have done that for their beliefs before now.’
Gerald Faulkner fell silent. He looked around at all of us, staring back at him, and you could tell he thought that, apart from Jude who was still immersed in Asterix, we were all totally barmy. It was a bit of a relief when Beth came back.
As soon as I noticed who was following her over, I nudged Jude in the ribs. Unwillingly, she lifted her eyes.
‘What?’
‘Look.’
Jude looked. Her eyes lit up, and she closed the book for the first time since we arrived at the bus stop. Marching towards us was Inspector McGee, and she adores him. She’s had a passion for him ever since we decorated the fence with flowers one Easter, and when she handed him a daffodil, he ate it. (I saw him. He ate the whole thing. He kept his face straight – well, straight as you can when you’re munching a daffy – and he ate it right down to the bottom of the stalk. Now, of course, he is one of Jude’s heroes.)
‘Hello again,’ he said. He looked around for people he recognized, and when he noticed Jude, he winked. She went bright pink, and wriggled with pleasure. ‘You’ve picked a better day for it this time,’ he said.
He was dead right. Last time we had a demonstration on his patch, it sleeted in our faces all day long. We were all wretched, his officers were snarly and uncooperative, and the bus was even later than usual coming to pick us up. That was the day I distinctly overheard Mum telling Beth she’d sell her soul for a bomb to fall out of the sky and put us all out of our misery. (After a hot bath, of course, she flatly denied it.)
‘Right, then,’ said Inspector McGee, rubbing his hands. ‘Who wants to be arrested today?’
He gave Jude a mock-hopeful look, and she shook her head, going all bashful on him, and sidling out of sight behind Gerald Faulkner’s legs. There was a little bit of last-minute fussing, and then the snowballers stepped forward. Inspector McGee ran his eyes over them. You could tell he thought Beth’s granny was far too old for this sort of thing, and the two sixth-formers from St Serf’s were far too young. But he said nothing.
‘Sixteen,’ Beth said proudly. ‘Twice as many as last time!’
He wasn’t frightfully impressed. He’d brought more officers than that himself.
‘To me, it’s just twice the paperwork.’ He turned to the waiting snowballers and went all businesslike.
‘Now this is a brand-new fence,’ he warned. ‘No going mad with the wire-cutters. Only one strand each.’
He turned to everybody else.
‘I’m told the rest of you are just dying quietly.’
This time Mum managed to step on Goggle-eyes’ foot to shut him up before he even got his mouth open. She’d had enough of his embarrassing questions.
‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘The rest of us are just dying quietly.’
Jude prodded Goggle-eyes.
‘You’ll ruin your suit,’ she warned him amiably. ‘Simon told Mum that just lying down and dying once turned his best jacket into a gritty rag.’
‘Lying down?’ Along with this sudden enlightenment came pure horror. Goggle-eyes glanced at the waterlogged potholes all over the lay-by. ‘I’m not lying down!’
‘Not here,’ Jude comforted him. ‘Outside the main gates.’
Goggle-eyes groaned. He groaned so deeply and sincerely that if I hadn’t been standing there bubbling with anticipation, longing for him to ruin his best suit, I’d have felt sorry for him.
Mum sensed his gathering rebelliousness.
‘Come on,’ she said to everyone. ‘Let’s get moving. If we die quickly and they don’t hang about at the fence, we could be home by tea-time.’
‘I’ll second that,’ said Inspector McGee. ‘My lot have got as cold as stones in the vans, waiting for you lot.’
Everyone started shuffling into place, raising cardboard signs and unfurling banners. Mum usually offers to hold one end of mine, but she was taken up apologizing to Inspector McGee about the fact that, after all our promises last time, we’d been so late again. Jude, of course, trailed after the two of them like a besotted lamb. So when Gerald Faulkner sighed and reached out for the other pole, I let him take it. I thought, to be fair, that it was nice of him to offer, considering he’s against practically everything the banner stands for. (Not that he needed to worry that anyone would see him. Apart from a few passing cars, and sheep watching curiously from the other side of the road, there was no one about. They don’t shove these nuclear bases where you’re going to see them, you know. They’ve got more
sense than that. They might make you nervous.)
Just as we set off, a car full of servicemen spun round the corner. Leaning out of his window, the driver jeered loudly, and, as the car came past, deliberately steered the wheels through pools of rainwater on the side of the road, sending wet sheets of filth up in our faces.
‘For God’s sake!’
Goggle-eyes stared down at his sodden, splattered suit. His eyes narrowed, and there was one of his dangerous pauses. Then he swung round in time to see the back of the servicemen’s car disappear round the next bend.
Well, you can’t pick a fight with the armed forces, can you? Of course not. So he picked on us. Glowering at me, he waved his free hand to indicate the raggletaggle procession ahead.
‘You realize,’ he snarled, ‘that all these people would be far better off living under some form of dictatorship. They might no longer feel obliged to go round asserting their democratic rights!’
I lifted my side of the banner higher. It was his own fault. He should have taken Mum’s advice, and worn an anorak and kicker boots.
‘In a dictatorship,’ I told him proudly, ‘all these people would probably already be dead.’
And so, in perfect step if not in perfect accord, we followed everyone along the road towards the main gate of the submarine base.
Sighing, the police heaved themselves out of their vans and followed us.
6
It’s not as easy as you might think to get arrested. For one thing, there’s never enough wire-cutters to go round.
‘Who was supposed to bring the other pair?’
‘That group from Muirglen. They said they’d meet the snowballers at the police station, and provide transport home.’
‘What use is that? How will we ever get to the police station if we can’t cut the wire?’
‘This pair’s completely blunt!’
‘So are these!’
I blocked my ears against the bickering at the fence, stretched out and stared up at the sky. When we do one of our die-ins, I let myself go all limp until the tarmac no longer feels gritty and hard under my body. I lie and watch the clouds go scudding overhead, and try to forget that other people are packed around me like sardines, some grumbling they’ve fetched up in a puddle, some lost in thought, some coming out with those baffling snatches of conversation you always hear when you’re close to strangers. Then, at a signal from whoever is organizing us, we quieten down to deathly and foreboding silence. However many times you’ve been a part of it, it still feels strange. Suddenly, with everyone lying there pretending, just for a few minutes, that the worst has actually happened – it’s too late now – it’s all over – the world seems larger, somehow, and more serious and more precious. And the police walkie-talkies suddenly sound so cheap and tinny and unimportant that some of the officers stare ahead in real embarrassment as the stupid chirruping pours from their jacket pockets.