Canvey Island

by James Runcie

  I looked at the people around me and I heard my mother’s voice:

  There was an old woman called Nothing-at-all

  Who lived in a dwelling exceedingly small

  A man stretched his mouth to its utmost extent

  And down at one gulp house and old woman went.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said the man. ‘You saved our lives.’

  Afterwards he bought me a drink and we sat with our pints at the window of the pub. Still the rain fell, streaking the glass, each drop skittering down, leaving tadpole trails.

  ‘We’re a close family,’ the man said. ‘I don’t know how we’d cope if something bad happened to any of us. The kids, Kath, I don’t know.’

  His wife was drying the children in their camper van. Then they were going to join us. He’d decided to have a few drinks and then order a family fish and chip supper as a treat. Malcolm said he knew that’s what Kath would like.

  ‘The thing about our family,’ he went on, ‘is that we always know what everyone else wants without them saying. It’s incredible. I can even tell what my children are thinking.’

  Well, I can’t, I thought. I rarely know what Lucy thinks at all. And as for Claire …

  How was I supposed to know anything when they’d taken themselves away from me?

  I wondered what they were doing. I wanted them to come home and to love me and to understand what I had been through. I wanted Claire to sympathise with what I could not do and to be proud of what I’d actually done, at least in saving the lives of these people. I could have died and she wouldn’t have known anything about it. She didn’t even know where I was.

  I wanted her to return and tell me that she loved me. Because, for all the good she was doing at Greenham, I couldn’t help but think she was causing damage elsewhere: to Lucy, to our marriage and to our future.

  I didn’t know how much longer I could hold on without her. I decided that in the morning I would drive over and bring them both back. It was crazy that we weren’t together.

  Claire

  When the women found out I was a teacher I soon had my own little children’s class: informal school in the week and crèche at weekends. I slanted the lessons to suit the situation. We used maths to count policemen and missiles, art to make banners, and English to write letters to members of parliament. We even made trips round the perimeter fence and I talked about the geography of England and why it had to be preserved. I realised that sometimes when I talked I was using Martin’s words, adapting his thoughts, and I began to miss him all over again. I wanted him to be with us and felt guilty when so many of the other women spoke of how glad they were to be free of men. They made jokes about the smell of them, their endless exhaustion, their selfishness and laziness in bed. Some of them impersonated their former partner’s pomposity, ridiculing their sense that life was so much more difficult for them if only we women knew. We remarked how men’s clothes were such depressing colours – taupe, beige, grey, slate, mud and fawn – how they kept hoisting their belts in an attempt to show that they were losing weight; and how they leant back and swayed from side to side as they spoke, sometimes closing their eyes so that they could not be interrupted.

  I laughed with them even though I knew in my heart that Martin wasn’t like that at all.

  But Lucy and I soon made friends. There was Joyce who wanted to be one of the first women priests; Martha who had been training to be a doctor; and Kate who was also a musician. We started by staying at the Green Gate, the one nearest the silos, but then moved to the Orange Gate, because it had become the official musicians’ area and from there we organised much of the singing. Together we played ballads and folk songs of unity and protest: ‘Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream’, ‘Where Have All the Flowers Gone?’ and the Phil Ochs song ‘Do What I Have to Do’.

  The women told us what they had done so far: wedging potatoes deep into the exhausts of the trucks, bolting security gates together to hamper movement in and out, and keening repeatedly whenever large vehicles came near.

  The previous Hiroshima Day they had gathered a hundred thousand stones and placed them round the Newbury war memorial, one for each life lost to the atomic bomb. A veteran shouting, ‘Where would we be if we hadn’t fought the Japs?’ had slapped Joyce in the face. Another woman had yelled, ‘My husband died for the likes of you.’ There were even anti-peace protests in Newbury town centre, with ‘Women for Defence’ in floral skirts, carrying handbags that matched their shoes, brandishing banners saying ‘Squatters Out’ and ‘Greenham Women, you disgust us’. They looked like the local Conservative Association on a day out.

  I suggested we bought a great swathe of red material and held up a sign with it saying: ‘The blood of one family; imagine the blood of one nation.’

  My first action was a die-in at Orange Gate. I had the idea of painting outlines round our bodies, like a mass-murder scene, so that even after we had been dragged away people would think what it meant. Lucy was given one of the paint pots but she found it difficult to keep up.

  ‘It’s so hard, Mummy.’ She was painting round Julie, a woman who had already been arrested five times for causing criminal damage to the perimeter fence.

  ‘Just do one pot. Then you can lie down and I’ll paint you.’ I wanted the outline to look like a dead mother and child. I thought it would be more shocking that way.

  Lucy lay down and I told her to cup her hand to her cheek to protect it from the hard surface of the road. Then I began to paint around her. A local photographer came up to us and started taking pictures. Lucy smiled, almost posing for the camera.

  ‘Keep still,’ I hissed. ‘You’re supposed to be dead.’

  ‘But I want to look pretty even if I am dead.’

  ‘That’s our girl,’ said Julie.

  ‘Thanks,’ said the photographer. ‘You can get up now.’

  ‘We don’t want to get up,’ Julie said firmly.

  ‘No, it’s OK,’ he said. ‘I’ve finished.’

  ‘We’re not doing this for you.’

  ‘Then what are you doing it for?’

  ‘We’re doing it for the future,’ I said. ‘For all of us.’

  ‘Shame you have to drag your child into it.’

  ‘She wanted to come. Perhaps if yours came too we could get rid of the missiles and be done with it.’

  ‘I don’t have children,’ he replied. ‘But when I do I’m going to look after them properly. I’m not going to make them lie down in the middle of traffic with a bunch of bloody lesbians.’

  We decided we had to ‘increase the peace’.

  We planned to embrace the base once more, thirty-five thousand women in a human chain round the nine miles of the perimeter fence.

  We started singing and dancing in groups, forming small circles and gathering hands with all who came near. When the circles broke up or we needed a break for a cup of tea, we started to fill the fence. We wedged photographs of our children, cardboard doves and poetry inside the gaps, turning a wall of destruction into a frieze of colour. When we saw the helicopters overhead we held up shards of glass, cathedrals of light, to deflect the negative energy. We wanted to lock in the violence and surround it with healing.

  The helicopters flew low over the base. I think they were trying to blow us away from the fence, but we kept holding on to each other. Inside was the dead grey cement of aggression and destruction. Outside lay the green of summer. When the police accused us of being lesbians in need of a good man we sang back: ‘We’re here because we’re queer because we’re here because we’re queer.’

  I tied Lucy’s pale-brown hair in purple, green and white ribbons, the colours of the suffragettes, and gave her a packet of seeds wrapped in mud to throw into the base so that life might re-grow there. There were white poppies, sweet violets and lily of the valley. Lucy sat on my shoulders and lobbed the ball over the fence. We watched its soft arc against the sky and its flight downward on to the ground, the smallest gesture, a simple act of hop
e. Then one of the policemen smiled and I heard him say, ‘I wish my daughter could do that,’ and I knew that we were winning.

  It was so obvious that what we were doing was right. I couldn’t understand how anyone could be against us. All we wanted was a gentler world.

  Martin

  When I arrived the women were lighting candles and holding up signs: ‘Grannies for Peace’, ‘No Cruise’, ‘Give Peace a Chance’. There were banners that at first I thought contained bizarre spelling mistakes – ‘Womyn for Peace’, ‘Womyn for the Future’ – until I realised there were no ‘men’ in these ‘women’.

  I was surprised how close to the roadside they were camping. There was a communal area of tipis and Elsan toilet tents jostling ramshackle structures made of polythene, tarpaulin and branches. Inside the doorway of the main tent was a cauldron surrounded by orange box seats and camping chairs. Beyond stood a caravan with message boards, posters and sheets for making banners.

  Lucy was juggling with three red balls. She smiled, let them fall and ran towards me.

  ‘Have you come to take me home?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  Claire gave me a wave. Her hair was muddy with ties and ribbons and she was wearing a baggy hand-knit jumper I hadn’t seen before.

  ‘You look very settled,’ I said. ‘I am. We’re in it for the long haul.’

  ‘A bit like marriage then …’

  ‘Don’t, Martin …’

  There was a kitchen area which they called ‘open-plan’, with bread, butter and spreads for quick sandwich breaks; plastic bins with beans, muesli, tinned food and vegetables; and then a pallet with plastic water containers, a plate rack and washing bowls. Claire had organised a water rota to make sure they never ran out. If I hadn’t wanted her to come home so much I would have been proud.

  In the distance I could see a draped plastic tunnel. Inside some of the women were resting.

  ‘Do you sleep there?’ I asked.

  ‘Depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘Whether I have to be up for an action.’

  ‘Does Lucy join in?’

  ‘When she wants to. Most of the time she likes making things round our little tent. Ask her to show you. She’s good at art.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘You should see what she’s done, doves, mosaics, all kinds of things. She’s learning such a lot.’

  ‘It would be nice if we were a family again.’

  ‘We are a family, Martin. Don’t make it difficult.’

  ‘Come home,’ I said. ‘I need you. My work’s horrible and I’m lonely.’

  ‘My work’s horrible too.’

  ‘Come home then.’

  ‘When the missiles have gone.’

  ‘They’re not going to go, Claire.’

  ‘They are. This is common land. It doesn’t belong to the Ministry of Defence or the government. Wait for me, Martin, and then we can walk across it together. I’ll come if you insist. But please don’t make me resent you.’

  ‘What about Lucy?’

  ‘She’s happy. We’re coping. Trust us, Martin. We love you. It’s all right. We’re going to win.’

  The police were lining up outside the gates expecting a delivery or further action. I couldn’t help feeling they’d rather be in an office solving an impossible murder case than stuck out on a cold night in front of a group of women who were never going to give up.

  ‘Why am I so kind to you?’ I said.

  ‘Because we love each other. You can come and see us whenever you like. It’s not a prison. And we do miss you. But you know we have to do this. And you letting me be here only makes me love you more. You must know that?’

  ‘I’ll try to keep remembering then.’

  ‘Don’t try. Just remember. Please …’

  When I got home her father phoned. ‘Claire not back?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘You couldn’t persuade her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m used to Claire being a wildcard. I was one myself, although you may find that hard to believe. But I’m worried about my granddaughter. Lucy’s far too young for all this. Celia thinks so too. We can’t let Claire bully us with her idealism. Lucy’s just a child, for goodness’ sake.’

  ‘That’s why I went to fetch them.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you bring them home?’

  ‘I don’t know, Matthew. Perhaps I can’t. Perhaps I can’t control my wife like people did in the old days.’

  The only thing was to go out and get drunk, somewhere close to home so I wouldn’t have far to stagger back. I found a pub away from the seafront that was sufficiently down at heel for tourists to ignore. It was dark and filled with ship memorabilia, bits of driftwood and faded newspaper cuttings. The only concession to modernity was a blackboard in the Gents’ for the graffiti.

  I sat on a stool by the bar and asked for a pint of IPA and a double whisky chaser.

  The barman looked a bit surprised. ‘You all right, mate?’

  ‘A bad day, that’s all.’

  ‘Then you’ve come to the right place. We make this pub so crap you can’t help feeling better. Give it five minutes and you’ll think the sun shines out of your arse.’

  ‘I’ve never thought that.’

  ‘But you’ve never been here, have you?’

  I ordered some food, the largest rib-eye steak they had, with mustard and chips. At the next table a girl with a Frankie Goes to Hollywood T-shirt and blonde hair piled high on her head was getting rid of her boyfriend. ‘I’m sorry it hasn’t worked out …’ she was saying. ‘I know this has meant a lot to you, and it has to me too.’ Her companion had almost finished his pint and it didn’t look like there was going to be another. ‘I understand.’

  ‘I haven’t been good at disguising things … how I haven’t been happy … and I think you haven’t been happy either.’

  ‘I understand, I understand,’ the man replied.

  ‘So it has to be for the best …’

  ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘Really, it is. It has to be. We can’t go on like this.’

  I tried to imagine what it would be like to be these people, away from the comfort of marriage, where friendships were tested for sexual tension and where love could begin or end at any minute.

  ‘You don’t need to say this,’ said the man, trying to get out of his seat even though it was pinned between the table and the wall.

  ‘I know but I want to. You’ve been so good to me.’

  ‘I haven’t done anything.’

  ‘You have but we both have to accept that it’s over.’

  ‘Well, if that’s what you feel …’ He sat down again.

  ‘It is and I’m sorry. I wish things could have been different.’

  ‘So do I.’

  The girl rose from her chair and swung her bag over her shoulder. ‘I’m really sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I understand,’ the man repeated, looking back down at his drink. ‘It’s all right.’

  But it isn’t, I could see him thinking. No one will love me again. I’m washed up. It’s all over. Fuck you. Fuck everything that has ever happened to me. Fuck this town and this bar and this career and this day and this life.

  I wondered what I would think if I ever broke up with Claire. Would it be like that, the two of us in a pub, talking about how we had tried but there wasn’t enough love left to support us and that it would be better, yes, better for us both if we parted?

  We would not be able to look at each other, perhaps, and Claire would be pale and hollow-eyed and I would not know what to say.

  Or perhaps she would be happy. She would be relieved and confident and try not to show it. Perhaps she would have found someone else: a woman at the camp or a man with money and stability and calm; someone not so filled with some foolish ambition to save a crumbling cliff face from disaster in memory of a mother he could hardly picture any more.

  I thought
of Linda and how we had broken up all those years ago. I remembered her on the beach at Aldeburgh, dressed in black, sitting on an upturned boat while I tried to measure the tide.

  I had taken so much for granted and now I couldn’t imagine anyone else loving me as she did then. And what had I done with that love?

  Perhaps I could go back and make amends, say sorry, do something right with my life. I didn’t know. I didn’t feel certain of anything.

  I heard Linda’s voice. Come on then, I’m cold. Need you to warm me up. Let’s go back to the hotel. A bit of whisky and each other.

  I remembered how we used to lie in bed, our faces close together, cupping each other’s heads with both our hands to form a sphere so that we blocked out most of the light. We had looked at each other as intently as we could, our focus on each other’s eyes, and pretended that the whole earth was contained in the circle created by our hands.

  Linda had told me that our eyes were the seas of the world, our noses the mountains, and our mouths the dark caverns underground. If we closed our eyes and kissed then the world would disappear. We would cup our hands and build a new world, with new seas and new mountains, and it would be ours and no one would know about it. It would be like a distant, uninhabited planet, millions of years from here, contained in our heads and our hands, and lit by the moon.

  It was 1964 then, and we were seventeen.

  Linda

  Ade came round and said that Martin had phoned him to get my address and was it all right if he gave it to him?

  ‘What do you think?’ I said. ‘Bit of a surprise, isn’t it? Why does he want to come now, after all these years?’

  ‘It’s a free country,’ Ade replied.

  ‘Do you think he’s got bored of his wife?’

  ‘I don’t know. But be careful. You can do what you like, Linda, but don’t go getting yourself hurt all over again. Married men are nothing but trouble. I should know.’