‘So, Robbie,’ David said at last. ‘You want to learn about gravity?’
Robbie nodded, and it occurred to him that this boor-joy intellectual might be able to answer a question his dad had struggled with. ‘How can the Moon’s gravity get to the Earth, but the Earth’s gravity can’t get to the Moon?’
‘What do you mean?’ asked David, as the others began trickling quietly back into the room.
‘Well, if you’re in a spaceship then you’re weightless, right? But the Moon’s gravity makes tides on Earth.’
David nodded in understanding, moving along the settee to bring himself closer to Robbie while Moira and Janet sat down again beside him. ‘That’s a very common misconception,’ he said. ‘But let’s imagine you’re inside a lift compartment and the cable snaps. While you fall downwards, everything in the lift falls at the same rate, so you feel weightless. Now suppose you’re in a capsule that’s fired through the air. Again, as the capsule falls towards the ground, you’ll be weightless. But suppose the capsule is fired so powerfully that it flies clear over the horizon, and the Earth itself curves away underneath the capsule faster than it can descend. Then you’ll fall right round the Earth, and you’ll be weightless – that’s what’s happening in an orbiting spacecraft.’
All the others remained silent while David continued his lecture, making Robbie feel as though it were he, the intended audience, who was the focus of attention. ‘When a spacecraft flies to the Moon it’s much the same kind of situation – the capsule falls in the combined gravitational field of the Earth and Moon. Every space journey is really a kind of falling. The Moon’s revolution round the Earth is actually the fall of both around their common centre of gravity. But the field isn’t the same everywhere, and the difference is what causes tides.’
Now Robbie understood. A revolution is a tide in history, and it was how you could get into space.
‘There,’ said Mrs Coyle, ‘we’ve all learned something. And we won’t have to be Mooning off to the chippie for Moira because I’ve cooked enough vegetables to feed an army.’
‘We do have such a laugh, don’t we, Anne!’ said Moira, touching the corner of her eye where the mascara was still smudged from the fun that had gone on in the kitchen.
‘Now, Robbie, it’s time for you to spaceship up to bed. And Janet, you need to go upstairs too. Say nighty-night to Moira and David, both of you.’
Janet gave Moira a kiss; Robbie wondered if he was supposed to do the same, but hovered far enough away for the moment to pass without incident. ‘Thank you for telling me about gravity,’ he said to David.
‘You’re welcome. Good night, now.’
Robbie lay in bed with the unintelligible burble of adult voices rumbling beneath him. Even in his sleep he could still smell the pipe smoke.
9
That weekend it was Halloween, but Robbie’s excitement about the prospect of dressing up was marred by news of a bomb in London. The children watched in silence as the lunchtime bulletin showed a gaping hole in the side of the Post Office Tower from which the tiny faces of police investigators peered down. Robbie hoped the crisis wouldn’t stop him being allowed out later.
‘They’re saying it’s the IRA,’ Mrs Coyle commented to her husband, who came and sat down with them.
‘That’s propaganda,’ he replied, while the camera panned across the twisted metal of the observation deck where the explosion had happened before dawn when no one was about. Robbie was sorry to see the tower in such a state; with its rocket-like shape and futuristic looks it had always been a building he longed to visit, perhaps to dine in the revolving restaurant as a grown-up astronaut in a Captain Scarlet uniform, casually gazing at the slowly swerving metropolis five hundred feet below.
Mr Coyle said, ‘It’s more likely the Angry Brigade.’
Robbie had heard of those people already – there’d been a series of bombs and fires – but he didn’t know what they were so angry about. The Post Office Tower was meant to be the communications hub of the entire country, beaming telephone signals and making sure every call went to the right place. The Coyles didn’t even have a phone but Robbie still felt grateful for the tower’s existence. Perhaps the Angry Brigade had kept getting wrong numbers.
‘Somebody from the IRA claimed responsibility,’ Mrs Coyle pointed out.
‘They could have been anybody,’ Joe protested. ‘And how do we even know they said it? What we hear on the news is whatever the government want us to think.’
Losing interest in the screen when the news moved to other items, Robbie considered the problem logically. The IRA lived in Ireland and probably couldn’t even pick up British telephone signals so why would they want to bomb a tower in London? And why set it to go off at four o’clock in the morning? He imagined a big black time bomb with digits sliding through the minutes and hours like they always did in Thunderbirds or Joe 90, and maybe you had to select a.m. or p.m., so the bombers really meant it to go off at four o’clock in the afternoon but got it wrong. The science teacher who visited, David Luss, had said there was a revolution in Northern Ireland, which sounded as exciting as the rotating restaurant Robbie would never get to visit now that the Post Office Tower was to remain closed to the public indefinitely and security was being tightened at other potential targets. But Robbie’s father didn’t like David. After the wee night, Robbie had overheard him say that he never wanted that man in the house again. Robbie supposed it was because of the pipe smoke but couldn’t be sure.
He said, ‘Dad, are we having a war with Ireland?’
Mr Coyle must have been no more interested in the next news item than Robbie was, because he began a long story about Catholics and Protestants, and how it was the Catholics that got all the worst jobs and the poorest housing and had to put up with Orange walks every year, same as came round the scheme here in Kenzie; though Robbie always enjoyed the banners and the bowler hats, the rattling drums and gleaming flutes and the swaggering fellow at the front twirling a stick in the air. It maybe wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea but it was hardly reason for blowing up a building.
‘If the British government don’t like a Catholic in Northern Ireland they can lock them up,’ Mr Coyle explained. ‘It’s called internment. There’s no trial, no charges, no evidence.’
‘That’s not fair,’ Robbie said indignantly.
‘If we were living in Northern Ireland we’d all be classed as Catholics and could be locked up.’
‘But we’re not Catholics!’
‘I was born and brought up one,’ said his father, ‘and as far as the Vatican or the government’s concerned, I still am. That makes you Catholic too.’
‘That’s daft,’ Janet said sourly, getting up to go to her room and carry on reading her Jackie in peace, but Robbie liked the thought that he was by birth part of the revolutionary underclass, like the Thals against the Daleks.
‘So is that why they think the IRA blew up the Post Office Tower?’
Mr Coyle shook his head. ‘The government want to blame the IRA so they can keep locking people up. It was the Angry Brigade done it. They’re some crowd of dropout malcontents, probably a load of druggie squatters who all went to public school and now they’re playing at being anarchists.’ Robbie imagined them competing on Top of the Form, bowled out in the final innings by an opposing but identical-looking team of future cabinet ministers. One way or another, those posh-voiced people on telly had the whole world carved up between them, so what chance did Robbie seriously have of ever being an astronaut? He definitely needed to go to Russia where they didn’t have Catholics and Protestants and no one had ever heard of Top of the Form.
‘I know why the IRA couldn’t possibly have done it,’ he declared triumphantly.
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because they claimed responsibility. Nobody’s ever going to do something bad and then straight away own up to it.’
Mr Coyle chuckled and rose from his chair to switch off the television. His wife had finished peeling the
potatoes for dinner so it was time for their walk. ‘Come and get your shoes and coat on,’ he called up to Janet.
‘Oh no,’ she moaned from the landing. ‘Do we have to?’
‘We can’t leave you here on your own.’
Half an hour later the four of them were taking the familiar riverbank path, Janet walking silently and despondently beside her mother with her hands buried in the pockets of her duffel coat while Robbie and Mr Coyle marched ahead in the cold autumnal air. Behind them, the path led past the memorial and then through the centre of Kenzie, but it was the other way Joe Coyle had opted for on this occasion, into the open countryside beyond the town’s edge, and it was by means of this abundance of choice that he had easily countered his daughter’s objections; for as well as being free to go east or west along the river there was the additional variable factor to consider of how far they should go, and whether indeed they should simply turn round after an hour’s healthy strolling and retrace their steps or else – Mr Coyle’s favoured option pursue a circular route that could take all manner of forms. Having such a wealth of opportunities within a five-mile radius, it was a wonder that anyone ever left Kenzie at all; and if Janet wasn’t happy with it then she’d just have to wait until she could grow up and find a husband and move away, then maybe she’d appreciate what she’d left behind. This waiting process was what she now appeared to be earnestly engaged in as she hid behind a hanging fringe of hair her father reckoned needed cutting or else tying back like his mother used to do.
Mr Coyle was telling Robbie how the Scots were so much better than the Irish at dealing with English persecution. ‘Take the Queen, for example. She’s called Elizabeth the Second but she’s the first we’ve ever had by that name. She’s Elizabeth the Second of England and First of Scotland, same way James the Sixth of Scotland was the First of England. And you know all about him, don’t you?’
Robbie was gazing at black crows perched on bare trees at the opposite side of the river.
‘Gunpowder plot?’ his father prompted. ‘Thing we’re celebrating in a few days’ time? Are you not doing it at school?’ Robbie had learned so many times about Guy Fawkes that there seemed little else to be said about him, but Mr Coyle’s version of history invariably differed from the authorized account. ‘King Jamie was the cause of all our troubles, going down south and forgetting where he came from. But you know, when the Queen got crowned, some Scottish protestors rubbed down coins stamped Elizabeth II to make them Elizabeth I. That’s our way: no bombs or riots, just peaceful resistance with a bit of Scots humour. Show the southerners what idiots they are.’
Evidently the Angry Brigade weren’t Scottish, then, unless you could call it a humorous touch to have left the bomb inside the ladies’ toilet, as the television had reported. Or was the joke that it was meant to be timed to explode on Bonfire Night, not Halloween? Anyway, neither had been cancelled, and that was the important thing to Robbie, who was still watching the crows which were wheeling now in the overcast sky ahead of them as they walked along the empty path. He could hear Janet’s footsteps scraping reluctantly a few paces behind.
‘Thing you’ve got to wonder,’ said Mr Coyle, ‘is what that Post Office Tower is really about. When they opened it a few year back they said it was to improve telecommunications but you only need an aerial for that, not an office building. All they parabolic dishes on the side aren’t for ordinary radio signals, they’re for microwaves.’ These, he explained, were an electromagnetic frequency far beyond the end of any radio dial, a form of energy that could even be used to warm a bowl of soup – he’d seen it on Tomorrow’s World. ‘And they’re sending these signals all over London. They must be cooking people’s heads!’
Robbie imagined the slowly poaching brains of a million daft southerners sitting at their breakfast tables; TV dad in suit and tie, mother wearing a string of pearls while serving him Kellogg’s Corn Flakes enriched with iron, and two smiling children sure to be top of the form even when all the contents of their posh skulls were hardened and congealed like overheated egg yolks.
‘They people who bombed the Tower,’ said Mr Coyle, ‘they must know what the place is really about. Inside job. So now MI5’s got the task of covering it all up, and they’ll arrest some poor Irish people for it.’ He halted and turned to check that the ladies were keeping pace. ‘No dawdling back there,’ he called to Anne and Janet, who had paused to watch something in the twitching reeds.
‘I think it’s a frog,’ Anne shouted.
‘Rat, more like,’ Joe suggested, which was enough to encourage them to keep moving. ‘Put a foot in that water and you’ll go catching Wheel’s disease.’ They all re-gathered pace, and Mr Coyle explained to his son that Wheel’s disease was something you got from rat’s urine. ‘Never used to be so many illnesses – makes you wonder where they come from.’ Then, after wondering a bit, he said, ‘There was a story in the Post or some other Tory rag about this great big radio transmitter in Russia, meant to be beaming deadly waves at us. I think they called them scalar waves some made-up name I’d never heard of. And this was supposed to be why we were getting so many flu outbreaks and wet summers and the like. But you’ve got to ask your self, what’s a more likely cause – an aerial thousands of miles away in Siberia, or one closer to home? That’s why we need to know about the Post Office Tower.’
Mr Coyle fell silent and Robbie thought about his Halloween costume. There’d been no question about it: he was to go out this evening dressed as an astronaut. Janet said she was too old for guising and would stay indoors, not even tempted out by the prospect of sweets and coins from the neighbours, but for Robbie it was a chance to show himself to the world as he really was, and nobody would laugh at him for it. He imagined himself strapped into a padded chair in the nose-cone of a fireproof Soyuz rocket, while in London his Brylcreemed adversary was counting down to lift-off at the top of the repaired Post Office Tower, a cunningly disguised missile whose launch into space would leave the city blasted.
Mr Coyle paused again, this time to take in the scenery, because the bushes lining most of the riverside path were absent here, and they could look out across green fields to the distant hills. ‘We should try going up one of them some time.’
‘No way!’ cried Janet.
‘It’d be a bit of a hike,’ Anne warned.
‘Or we could see if there’s a path takes us round the Vernon Estate. I hear it’s a nice walk.’
‘I thought the estate was private,’ said Anne.
Joe laughed. ‘Private? There’s been nobody living there for years, the house is in ruins.’ Then to Robbie he explained, ‘Place belonged to some English aristocrat family – great big fancy Victorian house you could fit half the scheme in, and it was only their holiday home, their hunting lodge. Derelict now, so there’s no reason why we shouldn’t go round some time and see how the other half used to live.’
‘You can other half it on your own,’ said Anne. ‘I’m not getting myself shot in the bahookie by some gamekeeper so you can have your right to roam or whatever you call it.’
‘I keep telling you, there’s no law of trespass in Scotland,’ Joe reminded her, and from the look on her face it was clear she needed no more reminding. ‘Why don’t we go there now?’
Anne held firm. ‘We’d all be tearing our clothes on barbed wire trying to get in. And we’re needing to be getting home before too long so I can cook the chicken. Let’s turn round and head back.’
Joe looked dejected. ‘Already?’ Robbed of the circular route he’d mentally prepared, he was like a child ordered indoors just when he was starting to enjoy himself. ‘Let’s go, then,’ he said resignedly.
That evening, as soon as it was dark, Robbie put on his spacesuit. His mother’s swimming cap had been modified with a layer of tinfoil and the addition of a microphone on a stalk, cleverly fashioned from part of a metal coat hanger. Together with rubber gloves, wellington boots and a padded winter coat and matching trousers that were the most ext
raterrestrial-looking items of clothing in the house, it made a most convincing costume, to Robbie’s eye at least, when he proudly posed in front of the long mirror in his parents’ bedroom. Mrs Coyle had carefully drawn a NASA emblem to pin on her son’s arm but he refused, saying he should wear a hammer and sickle and the letters CCCP. Robbie’s father was all for it but his mum was sceptical about the proposed insignia’s door-to-door earning potential, so they settled instead for their own national flag, the Saltire. Robbie was then ready to go into the world: a Caledonian cosmonaut.
Mr Coyle held the front door open for him, giving Robbie a view of the interstellar darkness outside. ‘Are you going to sing a song or say a poem?’ his father asked. So concerned had he been with his appearance, Robbie had forgotten about the need to perform for the neighbours who were meant to reward him; and seeing his son’s hesitation, Mr Coyle re-sealed the exit hatch.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ Robbie confessed.
‘Sing something,’ Mr Coyle suggested. ‘A good Scots song for Halloween. Do you know “The Wife of Usher’s Well”?’ Robbie had never heard of it, prompting complaints from his father about the state of schools, as well as an offer to teach it. He began chanting, ‘There lived a wife at Usher’s Well–’
‘He’s got no time for that now,’ Mrs Coyle interrupted, while Janet hovered at the top of the stairs, suppressing laughter. ‘Just tell a wee joke, Robbie.’
‘I don’t know any.’
‘He’s the joke,’ Janet called down.
‘If you’ve nothing useful to contribute then go back to your room,’ Mr Coyle instructed her.
‘What about “Roses are red, grass is green, so please help Halloween”?’ she suggested.
‘That’s rubbish,’ Robbie called back.
‘It’s the best any of us can think of,’ said Mrs Coyle. ‘So off you go exploring.’
Then the hatch opened once more and Robbie began his mission. It was cold outside, and breezy, hence his first concern was that the tinfoil might blow off his head and away down the street so he’d have to go chasing after it, but the glue and Sellotape held firm. Robbie couldn’t see any other guisers, only an elderly life form on the opposite side of the street who glanced bemusedly at him while he decided which neighbour to visit first. Going right would mean the Dunbars but he wasn’t yet mentally prepared for Sheena and Louise, so he went left instead to the Shaws. They weren’t in. It was the same at the Connors, and he moved on dejectedly, thinking of an item he’d seen on television about an American custom called trick or treat. Mr Coyle considered it hideous blackmail and quite typical of that country: if you don’t get what you want then vandalize your neighbour’s house out of revenge, same way they treated places like Cambodia. Right now, though, Robbie thought it not such a bad idea. He was sure he saw a curtain twitch in the Connors’ darkened house, and felt angry that grown people could be too mean to spare a gobstopper for a passing space explorer.
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