by Joan Smith
It was after eleven when Here dropped Loretta off in the road next to the wooden gates that led to Keeper’s Cottage. Closing them behind her, Loretta looked across to her right and saw that no lights were visible in Baldwin’s; perhaps everyone had gone to bed. She skirted round her car, felt in the pocket of her jeans, and drew out the key. As she put it into the lock, she thought she heard a noise from inside the cottage. She waited a second, then, when it wasn’t repeated, turned the key and felt inside for the light switch. As she stepped into the kitchen, she heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps overhead; she froze, looked round for the phone, and remembered there wasn’t one. Panic seized her: the feet were now clattering downstairs without any attempt at concealment, the intruder would be upon her in seconds – Loretta threw back her head and screamed at the top of her voice. She went on doing so as she heard the door in the bathroom fly open, and footsteps pound across the garden; there was a confusion of voices, someone calling her name, then Clara was beside her in the kitchen.
‘Loretta! Are you hurt? Loretta! Get her a drink, someone! There’s brandy in the house. Come on, Loretta, it’s all right now, you’re safe!’
Loretta clung to Clara for a moment, then allowed herself to be guided to a chair. She bent forward, arms clasped to her chest, while her terrified sobs subsided. A glass was pushed into her hand, and she looked up to find Peggy studying her anxiously. At that moment Jeremy appeared in the kitchen, out of breath and holding his stomach as though he had a stitch.
‘Bastards got away,’ he gasped, stumbling forward and pulling out a chair. ‘Lost them in the trees.’ He shook his head despairingly. ‘Hopeless. Is that brandy?’
Loretta passed the glass across, and Jeremy finished it. Quite suddenly, she took in what he’d said.
‘There was more than – there were two –?’
‘I saw two,’ Jeremy confirmed, wiping his face with a handkerchief. ‘Christ, you look terrible. Has somebody phoned for a doctor?’
This question was directed at Clara. Loretta started to get to her feet, protesting that she would be all right in a moment.
‘It’s just the shock. Please don’t –’
‘I’m not surprised.’ Clara patted Loretta on the shoulder, soothing her as she would a child with a grazed knee. ‘Can you remember what happened?’
‘Oh yes. But there isn’t much to tell. It all happened so quickly.’ Loretta described her return to the cottage, her tears starting to flow as she reached the point where she heard footsteps upstairs.
‘And then we heard you screaming blue murder and came rushing over,’ Clara finished for her. ‘Did either of you ring the police?’ She looked from Jeremy to Peggy, who shook their heads. ‘Well, one of you had better. What’s been taken?’
As Jeremy left the cottage, Loretta got up and began to look around.
‘It all looks much the same in here,’ she said slowly, registering that her Japanese radio and cassette player was still on the kitchen table. ‘I suppose I ought to look upstairs?’ She didn’t relish the prospect, even with Clara and Peggy for company. A friend had been burgled in London a month before and had come home to find everything from broken whisky bottles to human excreta littering her bedroom. Her nervousness apparently transmitted itself to Peggy, who gave her an understanding look.
‘I’ll go,’ she said, heading for the door into the bathroom. Loretta and Clara waited in silence until they heard Peggy coming down the stairs; she came back into the room, shrugging her shoulders.
‘Seems all right to me,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t look like anything’s been taken. It isn’t a mess, if you wanna have a look.’
Loretta did, and saw that the girl was right; the room was surprisingly undisturbed. The intruders hadn’t even bothered to take either of her suitcases, which she hadn’t had time fully to unpack.
Shortly after this two policemen arrived and insisted on taking brief statements from them, expressing their disappointment that no one had got a good look at the burglars as they fled across the garden. Jeremy, when pressed, became irritable.
‘It is dark out there, in case you hadn’t noticed,’ he pointed out. ‘I was more concerned with trying to catch up with them than to take in where they do their shopping.’
‘There’s been a spate of break-ins round here lately,’ Clara said accusingly. ‘There was one at the Etterbekes’ place in the village the other week, and someone got into Mrs Cullen’s while she was away in Florida. This could be the same people – you must have some idea who they are.’
‘If they were burglars, ma’am,’ said the older of the two policemen. ‘Did anyone know there was a young woman staying here on her own?’
‘Well, of course, I told several people Loretta was moving in, there didn’t seem to be any reason to keep it a secret – Good God, you’re not suggesting –’
‘There was a very nasty rape over in Crockham last month,’ the man said, looking from Clara to Loretta. ‘We have to keep our minds open ... according to the young lady here, it doesn’t look as though they’ve nicked anything. Either they hadn’t had time, or they were after something else. Just as well you screamed, miss. Sex crimes are on the increase in this area. Either way, you want to get a locksmith to look the place over while you’re getting that door fixed.’ He gestured towards the bathroom, where the door had been crudely forced.
His words struck deep into Loretta, producing a vivid picture of what might have happened if the inhabitants of Baldwin’s had not responded to her cries. She gasped, turned an anguished face to Clara, and once again burst into tears.
Chapter 3
Loretta woke to bright sunshine and an unfamiliar room; it took her a moment to recognize it as Imo’s bedroom, in which she had been installed the previous evening after the break-in at the cottage. She sat up in bed, wondering if the furniture, including a pretty wash-stand in one corner, had been chosen by Imo or Clara. Her watch, sitting on a small table next to the bed, showed the time as nearly eleven o’clock.
Climbing gingerly out of bed, Loretta became aware of an unaccustomed ache in her inner thighs – the result, presumably, of yesterday’s horse ride. She slipped on the dressing-gown – not hers – which was hanging on the back of the door, and went downstairs. Clara was sitting at the kitchen table, a cup of coffee in one hand and that morning’s Guardian in the other.
‘Just look at this, Loretta,’ she demanded without preamble. ‘Have you ever heard such nonsense? Coffee?’ she added abruptly, as Loretta took the paper from her.
‘Don’t worry, Clara, I’ll make some tea in a second.’ She drew out a chair and lowered herself as she did so.
The paper was folded open at an inside page, and it took Loretta a moment to find what she was supposed to be reading. Then she spotted it, a story headlined ‘MP SEEKS ADDED PROTECTION FOR US BASES’:
A Conservative MP last night pressed the government to support a new bill designed to give added protection to American bases in Britain.
Mr Colin Kendall-Cole, whose constituency includes the Dunstow base in east Oxfordshire, has drawn up a bill which would give the American authorities the right of veto over land use within 500 yards of the perimeter fence of any US base in England and Wales.
Mr Kendall-Cole denied that the aim of the measure was to get rid of peace camps outside US bases, saying his main concern was possible terrorist action in the light of recent threats from Libya. Five F1-11 bombers from Dunstow took part in the raid on Tripoli last month in which many people were killed and injured.
‘The difficulty the Americans face is that, while the people who join these peace camps may be well-meaning, they are in fact doing the enemy’s work for him,’ Mr Kendall-Cole said last night. Their presence outside bases like Greenham Common and Dunstow is a threat to morale, not to mention public health, and may even be providing cover for Spetsnaz agents who are passing vital information back to the Russians.’
Spetsnaz agents are the Russian equivalent of the SAS, an
d there have been allegations in the past that they have infiltrated peace camps in Britain, particularly the women’s camp at Greenham. These allegations have never been proved.
Referring to the attack on the Dunstow peace camp on Friday night, when masked men are alleged to have pulled down tents and set fire to a caravan, Mr Kendall-Cole said: ‘I am naturally concerned for the safety of the women in this particular camp. I know that feelings are running high locally, since many of my constituents are actually employed at the base. These women need protecting from themselves but, because they happen to be on private land, nothing can be done. My bill will protect both our NATO allies and the misguided women who seek to disrupt their work.’
Mr Kendall-Cole is seeking a meeting with the government’s business managers at the earliest opportunity. Without their support his bill, entitled the NATO Bases (Enhanced Security) Bill, would stand no chance of making its way on to the statute books.
Last night a spokesman at the London office of the Greenham women condemned Mr Kendall-Cole’s action as ‘vindictive and irrelevant’. ‘You can’t legislate peace camps out of existence,’ she said.
Loretta put down the paper and found Clara pouring her a cup of tea.
‘I shall have to have another word with Colin,’ Clara said grimly. ‘What does he think he’s talking about? Spetsnaz agents indeed! It just shows what a madhouse the Commons is. Until he got elected in, um, 1979, he was a perfectly ordinary country solicitor. And now he’s seeing Russian spies everywhere. He’s angling for a job in the next reshuffle, that’s what all this is about. He more or less admitted it when I first spoke to him about this business. But honestly, this is too much! A lot of innocent women get attacked and all he can think of is looking after the base!’
Loretta agreed the MP’s action was illogical. But she couldn’t help regarding it as fairly predictable, and doubted whether Clara’s protest would have any effect, even if she had known Kendall-Cole for years.
‘Goodness, Loretta, how rude of me,’ Clara said suddenly. ‘I haven’t even asked how you are after that dreadful thing last night. Did you manage to sleep?’
‘Like a log,’ Loretta admitted. ‘I can’t imagine what came over me, weeping all over you like that.’
‘It’s hardly surprising, after what that idiot policeman said.’ Clara refilled her cup with coffee. ‘All that nonsense about rape being on the increase. Anyone would think the Viking hordes were sweeping across Oxfordshire. If you want my opinion, he was just trying to draw attention away from all these burglaries. It’s obviously the same people, and the police are embarrassed because they still don’t seem to have a clue. In either sense,’ she added, smiling briefly. The only place round here where violent crime is on the increase is that bloody base. But the police don’t seem to care what happens to the peace camp.’
‘Gosh,’ said Loretta, a new idea striking her. ‘D’you think the break-in had something to do with the peace camp? With the letters and phone calls, I mean?’
Clara sighed. ‘It did cross my mind. But somehow I can’t see a connection. If it was the same people who threw the paint, you’d have expected more damage. Clothes thrown around, that sort of thing.’
‘But maybe I interrupted them, like the police said.’
‘Even so, I’d have expected them to have done something downstairs – more paint, slogans sprayed on the wall, that sort of thing. It wouldn’t have taken long. No, I still think it was an attempted burglary. Lucky you came back when you did.’
Loretta wasn’t so sure. ‘Actually, it’s made me a bit nervous about staying there ...’ she began.
‘Heavens, Loretta, there’s no need!’ Clara seemed surprised. ‘I rang the locksmith first thing this morning and he’s over there now. He’s putting locks on the windows as well, you’ll have nothing to worry about tonight. Look, whoever they were, they know now that we’re keeping an eye on the cottage. You’ve got to be practical about these things.’
Clara’s robust common sense made Loretta feel rather wimpish. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ she said, making a mental note to double-check every lock and fastening before retiring to bed that night.
‘Where’s Peggy?’ she asked, changing the subject.
Clara frowned. ‘She insisted on going back to the camp when she got up. I wanted to keep her here another day or two, but she wouldn’t hear of it. I admire her determination, of course. But I think I’ll go up there this afternoon just to make sure she’s all right. Want to come?’
Loretta had heard so much about the Dunstow peace camp that she readily agreed. They arranged that Loretta would come over to Baldwin’s around two, and she went back upstairs to change before returning to Keeper’s Cottage to inspect the locksmith’s handiwork.
‘Something extraordinary’s just happened,’ Clara said as they set off in her car that afternoon. ‘A complete stranger knocked on the door and said he’d like to buy the house.’
‘Is it for sale?’ Loretta asked, startled.
‘Good God, no. Baldwin’s is about the last thing in the world I’d part with, even if I needed the money, which I frankly don’t. That’s what’s so odd about it. He said he was in the area on business and just happened to be driving past. I told him I’d no intention of selling – my family’s been here since the turn of the century – and he was so crestfallen I found myself inviting him in. He couldn’t have been more complimentary about it, he kept going on about how much Rose, that’s his wife apparently, would like it. They’ve been looking in this area for ages, he said. So I made him a cup of tea and sent him on his way. But he insisted on leaving his card in case I ever change my mind. Don’t you think that’s strange?’
Loretta agreed that it was; not so much because she’d never heard of such a thing before as because Baldwin’s, with its forbidding frontage, didn’t strike her as the sort of house with which anyone would fall in love at first sight.
‘What was he like?’ she asked, feeling uneasy. Although there was no obvious link between the harmless incident Clara had just described and all the other things that had happened at the house in recent days, she found it hard to dismiss this latest event as mere coincidence. But what was the connection?
‘Perfectly charming,’ Clara said, answering Loretta’s question. ‘Late forties, public-school accent, didn’t say precisely what his job was but I gathered he was in the City. The number on his card was genuine, by the way, I did check.’ She glanced sideways at Loretta as though she had read her mind. ‘The woman who answered put me through to his secretary, and she knew all about his trip up here. So – where does that leave us?’
‘But why–’
‘This is the turning,’ Clara interrupted, signalling right. The camp’s just up here on the left. I’ll leave the car here. There was a lot of rain a couple of weeks and it’s still rather muddy.’
She parked the car at the side of the tarmac road which led up to a gate in the perimeter fence. In front of them a sign bore the name ‘RAF Dunstow’, and gave dire warnings about contravening the Official Secrets Act. Someone had painted over the word ‘RAF’ with the letters ‘USAF’. A bored sentry in a box just inside the gate pretended not to see them. To their left was a belt of trees, and a track running along the side of the fence. Loretta followed Clara along the track, which was rutted by the passage of vehicles. To her right, the high wire fence had been topped with coils of the razor wire she recognized from Greenham. A hundred or so yards inside the base, huge arched structures made of concrete blotted out the light; it took Loretta a moment to recognize them as aircraft hangars, smaller than the Cruise missile silos she had seen elewhere but, to her eyes, just as sinister.
‘Hideous, aren’t they?’ said Clara, turning to address Loretta over her shoulder. ‘Hello, it’s me,’ she called, suddenly leaving the track and moving into a clearing in the trees to their left. At the far side an old coach had been parked, its shape and condition suggesting it was at least twenty years old. Half a dozen tents h
ad been pitched in front of it and, in the centre of the clearing, a group of women were sitting round a pit from which a thin column of smoke drifted steadily upwards. The women were drinking from mugs, and odd pieces of clothing had been hung out to dry on a makeshift washing-line between two trees. From the branches of another tree was suspended a torn sheet which had been painted with the slogan: Take the toys from the boys.
Loretta was nervous. Her visits to the women’s peace camp at Greenham Common had always coincided with major demonstrations, and she didn’t know how these women would react to the arrival of a stranger on a quiet Monday afternoon. Especially after Friday night, she thought, spotting a caravan further into the trees; the area around the door was smoke-blackened, and she remembered someone saying that the attackers had attempted to set fire to it.
‘Want some tea?’ A middle-aged woman stood up, beckoning Clara and Loretta over to the ancient vinyl sofa on which she’d been sitting. Several other women glanced up at the visitors and nodded greetings. Their attitude was neither friendly nor unfriendly, Loretta thought; it was as if their minds just happened to be on other things. One was writing a letter on airmail paper, Loretta noticed, accepting the offer of a seat. Another was knitting a jumper in purple and green, presumably because they were suffragette colours.
‘Oh, er, no thanks.’ She realized that the middle-aged woman had repeated her question about tea.
Clara joined her on the sofa, also refusing refreshment. ‘How’s things?’ she asked.
‘Could be worse,’ said the woman, who had a soft Edinburgh accent. ‘Hetty and Ulrike were thrown out of the caff place on the main road this morning – the manager says we upset the other customers. Tender plants, lorry drivers.’ She shrugged. ‘Thanks for bringing the commodes, by the way. I’ve asked everyone not to go to use them alone at night, and we bought some good strong torches this morning. We had a good post, nearly thirty pounds in donations.’