Goggle-eyes Page 9

  ‘Make up your minds! Fifteen or sixteen. I can’t have you lot wasting any more of my time.’

  He put his foot right in it there.

  ‘Your time! What about mine?’ (Even if she hadn’t before, I bet she sounded like his mother now.) ‘This is your job, you know! You’re paid to do it.’ Mum shook her finger at him as if he were about three, or something. ‘I’m a lot busier than you are, you know. And my job is equally as important as yours. Not only that, but I have two children to care for, and a house to run. You’d better not tell me I’m wasting your time. I am a lot more bothered about wasting my own!’

  I must say, Inspector McGee must do a really good job of training his officers. I’d have been terribly tempted to arrest her for nagging. But maybe he realized that, if he did, we’d have the satisfaction of making up the full number we wanted. So, whether it was an admirable example of highly trained self-control, or just simple petty-minded spite, he somehow managed not to respond. He just stared straight ahead, as if he were a thousand miles away, and stone deaf.

  Mum was just on the verge of opening her big mouth to start in on him again when Gerald, back within earshot after his errand of mercy, realized what was going on. Practically throwing himself up the last few slippery feet of the bank, he caught her arm.

  ‘Now stop it, Rosalind!’ he warned. ‘It’s not the officer’s fault you’ve spent all day here.’

  ‘It’s not my fault, either,’ she responded irritably. ‘I know which I’d prefer between spending a nice quiet Sunday at home with my feet up secure in the knowledge that we had a sane defence policy’ – she waved her arms about – ‘and this!’ She could have been indicating anything: the mud or the occasional stinging splatters of rain, the unsightly fence stretching for miles in either direction or the bedraggled company. ‘Dragging around bleak military outposts, carrying rain-sodden placards and trailing my poor little toddlers behind me!’

  I ignored ‘poor little toddlers’. I took it to be what Mrs Lupey always calls ‘a rather unfortunate rhetorical flourish’. But Jude, I noticed, looked extremely hurt. Once again, she moved so close to Gerald Faulkner that she practically stuck to his mud-streaked trousers. From this safe vantage point, she glowered at Mum.

  So did the police officer. But you could tell he was determined not to be drawn into some interminable wrangle about effective ways of influencing government defence policy from the grass roots. Gritting his teeth, he only muttered:

  ‘Can we just get off now? All fifteen?’

  It wasn’t that sarcastic. I was there. I heard it. At the most, he stressed ‘fifteen’ the tiniest, tiniest bit. Mum claims he curled his lip like a pantomime villain and actually sneered it. But all the rest of us agreed later that in the circumstances of her hectoring him in front of everyone as if he personally had refitted every nuclear submarine in Britain, he’d shown quite admirable restraint.

  More than her, anyway. I know she hates sarcastic people – she’s like me – but, frankly, she must have temporarily gone unhinged to act the way she did when he said ‘fifteen’. Shaking off Gerald, she dived headlong into the grass beside the fence. Then, snatching up the good pair of wire-cutters still lying there, she forced open the handles and, before we had time to realize what she was about, with one deft wrench she snipped a strand of the fence wire.

  ‘Sixteen!’

  Everyone cheered. Well, the Quakers started it, of course, because they’re always so very nice and encouraging about everything. But everyone else joined in, even Jude. And it was only me and Gerald Faulkner who were left standing absolutely horrified, watching in silence.

  Then Mum realized what she’d done. She turned to me, as appalled as I was.

  ‘Oh, Kitty!’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry!’

  The Quakers’ clapping died away. They’re very sensitive as well.

  I put a brave face on it. There wasn’t much else I could do. The policeman was already bearing down on Mum.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I told her. ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s only a couple of hours down at the station. Your court case won’t come up for weeks.’

  Mum had the grace to blush. She turned to Jude.

  ‘Sweetheart?’

  Jude looked bewildered. I think my saying the words ‘down at the station’ had taken a bit of the gloss off the excitement of clapping along with everyone else. But even so, she hadn’t truly cottoned on that Mum had actually managed to get herself arrested.

  Gerald stepped forward, and laid a protective hand on Jude’s shoulder. He looked absolutely livid with Mum. His tone, when he spoke to her, was steely with disapproval.

  ‘I shall, of course, look after both your girls till you get back.’

  Apart from the fact that his suit was splattered and streaked all over with fresh mud, he looked and sounded just like one of those straight-laced solicitors in old Victorian serials on the telly. But Jude didn’t even seem to notice his grim tones. She just looked up at him rather gratefully when he said this, and slid her hand in his.

  Mum said rather nervously:

  ‘I won’t be long, honestly. I’ll be back before you know it.’

  The policeman took her arm.

  ‘Don’t bank on it,’ he warned. He was taking his revenge now. ‘I think we’re a little short-staffed at the station. And there are sixteen of you – twice as many as last time.’

  He meant it as a sort of threat, you could tell. But it had quite the opposite effect on Mum, of course. It cheered her up.

  ‘Sixteen!’ she said. ‘We did it!’

  There was a ragged ripple of applause, and a few tired cheers. Even the nice Quakers wanted to pack it in now, and get off home.

  ‘Come on,’ said Mum’s policeman, sensing the general mood. ‘Last one to the blue van is under arrest.’

  You should have seen the look on Gerald’s face. He didn’t think this was at all funny. Mum was led off, towards the vans. All the way there, she kept leaning back over the policeman’s arm, giving me silly orders and instructions. I was to remember to switch off the grill after I made toast. I wasn’t to leave my electric blanket on after I put out my light. There were some tins of soup on the top shelf of the pantry. Honestly, you’d think I’d never even visited our house before, let alone lived there.

  ‘For heaven’s sake!’ Gerald told Mum sharply. ‘Stop fussing, Rosalind. Kitty is perfectly capable, and I shall be there!’

  I think Inspector McGee must have sent his officers on a course for avoiding domestic violence. The young policeman swung open the door of the blue van as quickly as he could. Everyone already seated inside cheered Mum.

  ‘Sixteen!’

  ‘Well done, Rosie!’

  ‘Come on up!’

  Mum turned before clambering inside.

  ‘Thanks, Gerald,’ she said. You could tell she was desperate for him to soften and give her just one brief smile of encouragement before the van drove off. But she’d picked the wrong man.

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ he said icily as she scrambled inside. ‘Somebody has to act responsibly.’

  That got her. She stopped trawling for sympathy and support, and went all defiant.

  ‘Oh, shut up, Gerald!’ she snapped. ‘What could be more irresponsible than passively sitting back while half-baked politicians and trigger-happy generals cling to a defence policy that means every child on the planet could end up frying alive!’

  And she swung the van door closed herself – right in his face.

  I was dead proud of her. That shut him up.

  Behind us, everyone burst into song. While the last couple of officers checked the van doors and then walked round to take their own seats, we all sang to the snowballers inside. We sang ‘We Shall Overcome’, and I started crying. I always cry when we sing that. Mum says that that’s because the song is true, and we shall overcome one day. She says the song’s been sung through more than one just cause, and in the end the singers have been able to hang up their hats, and go home
satisfied. Our day will come, she says. Just be strong and patient.

  Then, as the rain began to fall in earnest, the vans drew away, splashing mud out of the potholes. Everyone except Gerald waved like mad, even after they were quite sure that no one in the vans could see any longer. They all kept singing too, but I didn’t bother. I wanted to leave. Jude was all right. She was still standing beside Gerald, holding his hand tight, and looking completely unruffled. But I didn’t feel too brilliant myself. I wasn’t worried, exactly; but I felt shaky. It’s not so nice to watch your mother being driven off by the police, especially when your dad lives a hundred miles away.

  The song was ending, but I couldn’t stop the tears. It didn’t matter, though. The rain was beating down so hard now, no one could really tell. But I turned away anyhow, just in case, and scrambled down the bank for the last time.

  Uprooting my banner, I slung the two poles together over my shoulder, and trudged off down the road on my own, towards the bus.

  Gerald was right. It had been a tiring day. And I’d had enough.

  7

  I’d only been slumped in the bus seat for a couple of minutes before he disturbed me.

  ‘Hotch up. Make room for me and Judith.’

  Make room? There had been loads of free seats on the bus when we arrived. Now there were even more, with sixteen fewer people travelling back with us. But clearly Gerald Faulkner expected me to shift across to the window, and give him my seat. I can’t say I rushed to cooperate. I opened my eyes, though.

  ‘Can’t you sit there?’ I waved towards the double seat in front.

  ‘Slide over,’ he insisted. ‘I think right now your sister probably needs both of us.’

  Only a couple of months before I would have argued. I would have responded tartly: ‘Do you? I think she probably just needs me.’ But now I didn’t. I thought about it – practically opened my mouth to snap it out – but, frankly, I didn’t really think it was true any more. Poor Jude was standing there looking wiped out. Her thumb was in her mouth (for once he wasn’t telling her to take it out again) and she was staring fixedly at me. But she was leaning against his legs, and she was still holding his hand very tightly.

  I moved across. He took my place and gathered Jude into his arms. She sprawled across him with her legs on me. It was a bit of a squash, but not uncomfortable. Jude slid her thumb out of her mouth just long enough to reach across the aisle and pick a crumpled newspaper off the seat cushion.

  ‘Read to me,’ she ordered.

  He slid his arm further around her, to open the paper. I watched with interest. He could have chosen to read to her about a massive punch-up in a public lavatory in Tottenham Court Road. Or the mysterious midnight explosion of a furniture polish factory in Wrexham. Or the woman suing a posh French restaurant because she found chunks of stewed carpet in her crème brûlée. But no, not him. He chose to read Jude the Review of the Week’s Business News.

  ‘Shares continued their steady revival with the FT-SE share index finishing the week improving 33.2 points to 1,750.2,’ he droned. ‘The FT 30 share index gained 27.3 points to 1,405.1, crossing the 1400 points line for the first time in two months. Gilts improved by up to three quarters of a million pounds…’

  She wasn’t listening, of course. She was asleep.

  He slept, too, after a bit. His head lolled back. His glasses slid a little down his nose, and he made this soft sort of rustling noise through his lips as he breathed, like papers on a desk stirred by the breeze. From time to time Jude thrashed about a bit in her sleep, but it didn’t seem to bother him. He just slid his arms more tightly round her till she settled again, murmuring something soothing in her ear, and patting whichever bit of her lay under his hand. He didn’t even bother to open his eyes. As we pulled into the main street of our home town, I realized Jude had stayed fast asleep in his arms for the whole journey. I’m not mean about old Goggle-eyes on principle, you know. Even I can give credit where it’s due, and it was due that afternoon. He can be really kind and fatherly when he tries.

  And he can be really bossy and fatherly, too. He was that way when we got back. Admittedly he’d promised Mum that he’d look after us for her, but you’d think that he actually owned us, the way he went on. He wouldn’t let us do what we usually do after a demonstration, and pick up supper from the chippie on the corner. (Mum always lets us. She says she reckons political activity may be psychologically inspiriting but it’s physically enfeebling, and she couldn’t possibly come home and cook.) Gerald dragged us bodily past Patsy’s Frying Palace, and ended up going through the kitchen with a toothcomb, looking for something ‘sensible’. That was the word he used. He turned down all Jude’s suggestions for quick and easy things to eat – ice-cream, frozen party sausage rolls, fried bananas – on the grounds that they just weren’t sensible, and sent her upstairs with a lump of cheese and an apple to keep her going while she had her bath.

  I stayed in the kitchen doorway, nibbling the chunk of cheese he’d given me, and found myself dragooned into peeling potatoes.

  ‘Can’t we have frozen chips?’

  ‘No, we can’t. It was a strenuous day, and both of you need something sensible, and then an early night.’

  ‘Can’t we stay up for Mum?’

  He paused, trimming the fat off some pork chops he’d found in the fridge.

  ‘You can,’ he told me. ‘Judith can’t.’

  He’s odd that way. He never seems to have the least trouble making decisions. Poor Mum could never say a thing like that straight out. She’d hum and haw, and try and wriggle out of it with stupid little sayings like ‘We’ll see’ and ‘Let’s wait and find out how it goes’. And if Jude started arguing that it wasn’t fair that she should be sent up to bed earlier just because she’s younger, Mum would tie herself in the most terrible knots trying to persuade her to agree, without directly bossing her.

  Bossing’s no problem for Goggle-eyes. If Jude came down and tried to argue with him, all she’d get would be: ‘Because you’re younger, that’s why.’ Or even: ‘Because I say so.’ I could have made a fuss. But, after all, he’d said I could stay up. And anyway, you only had to look at Jude to see she was exhausted. So I said nothing and just kept on grinding away at the sink, peeling the mucky spuds. And suddenly, like a reward from heaven for my self-restraint, his arm appeared at my side with one of those smashing ice-tinkling, tonic-fizzing, lemon-swirling drinks of his.

  ‘Cheers!’ he said.

  He’s absolutely right. There’s something really cheerful about these sparkling drinks he puts in your hand. Even the glasses look brighter than all the rest in the cupboard, as if he’d polished them till they glittered on a tea towel before even starting to put anything in them. And it was nice of him to go to all the trouble of making me one anyway, even though Mum wasn’t there. I knew he’d done it especially because, when I turned round, I saw he’d chosen something completely different for himself. So he had sliced the lemon and dug out the ice-cubes and fetched the tonic bottle just for me.

  ‘Cheers!’ I said. ‘Thanks very much.’ And I nearly said ‘Gerald’, except I thought he might have noticed and I might have blushed.

  Supper was fun, when we finally got round to eating it. (He sent Jude back upstairs twice before he would serve out: once for her dressing gown, and once for her furry slippers.) We didn’t have to worry, either, about keeping enough for Mum. He filled a heat-proof dish with hers, and put it in the oven to keep warm.

  ‘There,’ he said firmly. ‘Now what’s left on the table is all ours.’

  You wouldn’t believe how many spuds I ate that evening. I must have been halfway starving to death. Even Jude finished off her peas and ate two thick slices of bread and butter on top of everything else. We chewed and chewed, and it was only after half the food had disappeared that we got round to talking.

  Goggle-eyes started it.

  ‘Do you want to know what I think?’ he asked me suddenly, fork aloft.

  Norm
ally I’d have made a face that said ‘No thanks, I don’t’, even if I reluctantly murmured, ‘Yes. Tell me.’ But I was curious.

  ‘What do you think?’

  He dabbed his mouth with a napkin he’d found in the bottom of a drawerful of stuff that was going to Oxfam.

  ‘Frankly, I think all you scruff-pots give the anti-nuclear movement a really bad name.’

  Good job I had a mouthful of pork chop! He got a chance to explain before I could start yelling at him.

  ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘You people ought to dress better. You ought to change things round. Look at your mother. She goes off to work at the hospital every morning looking smart and respectable, but does she wear her little CND badge? No, she doesn’t. So no one who ever meets her during the day thinks: “What a nice, responsible woman that is. She was so kind and helpful to me. She seems like a splendid citizen, and I bet she’s a wonderful mother. But, fancy! She’s wearing one of those little CND badges. She must be a member of the anti-nuclear movement. So they can’t all be the misinformed, woolly-hatted trouble-makers and layabouts the papers often make out.”’

  I’d swallowed, but I didn’t interrupt. It seemed to me what he was saying made some sort of sense.

  ‘Then, take today,’ he went on. ‘She leaves all those smart work clothes in the wardrobe, and puts on a tatty collection of warm woollen jumble. She chooses boots that look as if they were specifically designed to kick policemen on the shins, and wears an anorak that would disgrace a tramp. And then she proudly pins on her CND badge!’

  Put like that, he did seem to have a point.

  ‘But you’ve got to stay warm,’ I argued. ‘It’s chilly work.’

  ‘You’re all prepared to suffer for your beliefs,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen you. Today was without a doubt the most tedious and boring and uncomfortable Sunday I’ve spent in years. It’s just a matter of trading off one miserable discomfort against another. You’d be a little less protected against the weather, but you’d be more protected against the sneers.’ He shook his fork at me (which wasn’t like him). ‘If you all dressed like lawyers and doctors and solicitors, you’d find yourself treated with a whole lot more respect. Besides,’ he added, ‘you could always use some of your campaign funds to buy collective thermal underwear.’