Goggle-Eyes

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.

Lie down and look up at the sky. It’s such a small thing to do, but it makes such a difference. The sky looks so huge it’s absolutely astounding. You only notice when you’re flat on your back. Strolling along streets or glancing out of windows, you only get to see the thinnest rim of it. On your back, you can see it all: the vast upturned bowl that stretches miles and miles in peaceful blue, or hangs right over you in dark, bruisy colours, threatening to spill. I think that everyone in the world should stretch out quietly for a while every single day of their lives, look up at the whole sky, and be astonished.

Our minutes of silence were over, so it popped out.

‘I think that everyone should lie on their backs every day, and stare up at the sky.’

‘You must be joking!’

Goggle-eyes shuddered in horror, and reached down from where he had been standing beside a couple of police officers, preserving what was left of his suit and his dignity. He hauled Mum to her feet.

‘Kitty’s right,’ Mum agreed, brushing grit off her jeans. ‘People waste too much of their lives rushing about building new things and pulling old things down. They ought to take time to look at what’s been there for ever.’

‘An empty sky!’

‘Infinity,’ Mum corrected him. ‘Eternity.’

Well, we can’t all be closet philosophers. ‘Did you bring the sandwiches?’ I interrupted, patting the bulging pockets of Mum’s anorak. ‘I’m really hungry.’

Unfortunately, this started Jude off.

‘Me, too,’ she wailed. ‘When are we going ho-o-me?’

‘Please don’t start whining,’ Mum told her irritably. ‘You know I can’t stand it.’

Jude didn’t answer back. She never does. But, scowling, she sidled closer to Gerald Faulkner, exactly the same way she always used to move towards Dad for his support whenever Mum was ratty. And, sure enough, Gerald immediately stuck up for her, just the way Dad always did.

‘Go easy, Rosalind. It’s been a tiring day.’

Mum’s like me. She hates people even hinting she might be being a bit unreasonable.

‘For heaven’s sake!’ she snapped. ‘It hasn’t been that bad! When I was young we used to have to sit for two whole hours every Sunday in a stone cold church, bored stiff, to save our selfish little souls. Jude’s lucky! A few times a year she gets a couple of hours of fresh air to try to save the whole world’s bacon. Is that so terrible?’

There was a little Gerald Faulkner pause. I waited with interest. (It’s not that often they’re not directed at me.) Then:

‘Do you know what you are, Rosalind?’ he said. ‘You are almost unbelievably bossy.’

Jude and I caught our breath. If Dad said anything like that, the fur would fly so fast, so furious, you’d hit the floor for safety. But, then again, Dad would have said it differently. It would have come out as a sort of snarl, a terrible insult. Somehow Gerald Faulkner managed to say it in an affectionate kind of way that made you think the fact that Mum was so bossy filled him with loving admiration.

And, astonishingly, that’s the way she took it.

‘I am bossy, aren’t I?’ she said. ‘Yes, I really am bossy.’

I breathed again. (So did Jude. I heard her.)

‘You’re wasted running that hospital,’ Gerald Faulkner told Mum, as he ground the poles of my banner deep in the mud of the bank, so it would stand up by itself. ‘You ought to be running British Telecom. Or Great Britain! Or the world!’

Everyone around us, I noticed, was beginning to look rather uncomfortable now.

‘Yes. I could run the world.’ (Mum sounded keen.) ‘I’d do a really good job. I’d make an excellent dictator.’

It was embarrassing. She honestly didn’t seem to notice that half the people who overheard were reaching down for the little waterproof rucksacks that held their thermos flasks and banana yoghurts, and were edging away uneasily. Others were standing paralysed, with their mouths full of alfalfa-sprout sandwiches, watching with shocked expressions.

Goggle-eyes didn’t seem to notice, either. Or, if he did, he didn’t care.

‘You’d be ideal!’ he assured her. ‘You have the basic qualification for the job. You know for a simple fact that, to be absolutely in the right, people need do no more than come round to your views.’

‘He’s right,’ Mum told the few people who could still bear to remain in earshot. ‘He’s absolutely right!’

I made a solemn vow right there and then to change my name, and dye my hair, and join another group. Like everyone else, I started shuffling away, pretending to take a sudden interest in what was happening up at the fence where the snowballers were still grinding away ineffectually at their chosen strands of wire, and an assortment of police officers were standing by, eyeing the rainclouds ominously gathering on the horizon, and patiently waiting to make their arrests.

The snowballers kept up a constant chatter as they toiled away.

‘Could I have a go with your wire-cutters after you’ve finished?’

‘These are no good. I thought I might try yours.’

‘These? These are useless!’

One of the policewomen shifted restlessly, and looked at her watch. It was clear she was dying to get back to the station. Inspector McGee squinted up at the clouds as they rolled steadily nearer. The other officers contented themselves with exchanging meaningful glances while the snowballers hacked away at the wire. It was obvious what they were thinking. ‘Thank God this little lot aren’t defending the country!’ I know because they had exactly the same look on their faces as Goggle-eyes did, except that he, of course, had made a point of saying it aloud, several times, till even Jude got bored with hearing it, and wandered off along the line of snowballers to see who was doing the best. She came to a dead halt halfway along, behind Fish Eyes, like a supermarket shopper who has finally worked out which check-out is likely to be free first, and, sure enough, after a moment there was a rustle of excitement where she was standing.

‘Mine’s coming! I think mine’s coming! Yes!’

And, seconds later, from Grubby Green Jacket:

‘I’ve done it, too! I’m through the wire!’

The first two to succeed punched the air in triumph, and grinned. The police officers sighed, and a couple of them moved forward.

‘Off we go, then.’

‘Right-ho.’

Still smiling proudly, Fish Eyes and Grubby Green Jacket were led off towards the open doors of the blue vans. Everyone else turned their attention back to the fence.

‘Who’s next?’

‘Try the hacksaw.’

‘Press harder!’

‘Don’t press so hard!’

‘How can a strand of wire this thin turn out to be so tough?’

We cheered as, one by one, the snowballers completed their task and were led off to the police vans. Beth’s granny cheated. She let a pregnant woman in pink dungarees do all her cutting for her. All that Beth’s granny did was lay her hacksaw on the broken strand, and claim loudly and dishonestly:

‘I’ve done it! I have cut the wire!’

Graciously, Inspector McGee turned a blind eye to the deception. Pink Dungarees looked far too pregnant to spend long in a police station, and anyway, Inspector McGee knows better than to tangle with Beth’s granny. As usual, she slid her arm in his, and made him escort her personally back to the vans, carrying her comfy peace cushion. Everyone grinned as she hobbled by on his arm. She gets away with it every time. I’ve seen her forcing even the sullen and unpleasant police officers to be helpful and polite as they arrest her. Mum says it only works because she’s so old. Mum says they know she can remember back when they were truly the servants of the people, and not just the paramilitary arm of the state that they’ve become today. Being reminded of how much things have changed makes them uneasy, Mum says, so they treat her properly.

The rain clouds were rolling nearer and nearer, but the advice we shouted to each snowballer was getting better with experience, so the arrests were coming quicker now. Soon there were only three snowballers left at the fence. Flowery Headscarf from St Thomas & St James got the one good pair of wire-cutters. Delaying for only a couple of moments, smiling, while someone from her church group took a photograph, she snapped her strand through cleanly, cheered herself, and then without thinking handed the wire-cutters to the policewoman standing beside her.

‘Hey!’

The last two snowballers looked up from their strands of wire. One was the shy economist to whom, earlier in the day, Gerald Faulkner had been extolling the virtues of food mountains. The other was a student called Ben who once spent a whole bus ride to Edzell airbase trying to help Simon explain decimals to Jude.

‘Excuse me,’ the grey-haired economist said to the policewoman. ‘We need those. These are useless.’

It was the same policewoman who had been looking at her watch. Now she looked at the wire-cutters that had ended up in her hand, and said, exasperated beyond measure:

‘But I can’t give them back now!’

The economist was too shy to argue. He shrugged and turned back to the fence. But Ben didn’t give up so easily. (Anyone who can try and explain decimals to Jude can’t be a quitter.) Pushing his fingers through his hair, he tried to wheedle his way round the officer.

‘Oh, go on,’ he tempted her. ‘We’ll be here hours otherwise. This pair’s quite blunt.’

He took care to glance up at the huge purple cloud that now hung over all our heads.

You should have seen the look on the policewoman’s face. She was in torment. She glanced at her watch a second time, then back at the wire-cutters. You could tell she was kicking herself for allowing her fingers to close round the handles of the stupid things in the first place. And, to make matters worse, one or two heavy drops of cold rain splattered down, threatening all of us still standing waiting, but not those safely seated in the vans, ready to go.

‘But I can’t hand back wire-cutters accidentally in my possession so you can do criminal damage!’

‘We’re going to cut the wire, anyhow. This way we’ll just do it quicker.’

‘Much quicker,’ agreed the economist, still sawing away at the fence, getting nowhere.

The policewoman looked over at her colleague still standing behind the economist, waiting to arrest him. He wasn’t much help to her. He just stared back blankly. So she looked round for Inspector McGee. But he, of course, was still out of sight behind the vans, no doubt settling Beth’s granny on her comfy peace cushion and exchanging hairy old Scottish Ban the Bomb March reminiscences.

Ben shrugged, and turned back to the fence.

‘This will take hours,’ he threatened.

The policewoman suddenly made up her mind. With a flash of decisive thinking that Mum said later was a tribute to her training, she flipped the only good pair of wire-cutters into the grass.

‘Whoops!’ she said. ‘Dropped them!’

The economist and Ben dived together. Ben, being younger and fitter, got to them first. Swooping them up with one hand, he passed her his useless pair with the other.

‘Allow me,’ he said courteously, as though he were simply handing her back the pair she had dropped.

‘Thank you,’ she murmured.

‘And thank you.’

He swung round on the fence. I think his big mistake must have been to go at the wire as forcefully as if he still had the blunt pair he was using before. He certainly did something stupid. I’m sure if he’d been handling them properly, they’d never have slipped like that, and pinched his finger so horribly.

‘Ow! Ow-ow-OW!’

Again the wire-cutters fell in the grass. Sucking his finger, poor Ben jumped up and down, yelping with pain.

‘Ow-ee! It hurts!’

‘Let me see.’ The policewoman looked anxious.

Ben put out his hand and slowly, gingerly, extended his fingers. You could see where the wire-cutter handle had pincered his finger. On either side were the sort of drained patches of squashed skin you know are going to turn straight into massive black bruising as soon as the blood can bring itself to flow back.

‘Oh, that is nasty!’ said the policewoman.

‘Poor Ben,’ said Jude, and her eyes filled with sympathetic tears. She’s quiet, Jude is, but she’s loyal. She never forgets anyone in the ever-growing army of those who’ve helped her with her arithmetic homework.

Behind us, alerted by the howls of pain, Mum tore herself away from offering Goggle-eyes the job of grand vizier in her despotic regime, and scrambled up the bank to take a peek at the damage. Mum’s good with accidents. She’s got that perfect mix of being both calm and – well, yes, he’s quite right – almost unbelievably bossy.

‘Show me,’ she ordered him. And when he had: ‘Oh, that is nasty!’ she echoed the policewoman. (Two real professionals.)

Ben didn’t respond to these sophisticated diagnoses. The poor soul looked pale as a maggot. I think he was about to faint.

The policewoman turned to Gerald, who had been scrambling up the bank after Mum, and now stood gasping for breath at her side.

‘Would you help me get this young man to the bus before he keels over?’

She must have chosen Gerald because of what was left of his nice suit. She can’t have picked him because of his physical fitness. He was still panting heavily as he obediently took Ben’s other arm to support him.

Ben tried to shake them off.

‘I’m not going to the bus,’ he insisted. ‘I’m going in the vans. I’m being arrested.’

‘No, you’re not,’ Mum said. ‘That’s going to turn into the most unpleasant bruise. You’re going home.’

She turned to the policewoman for support, and the policewoman clinched it.

‘I wouldn’t arrest you anyway,’ she declared baldly. ‘You never even got through your bit of fence.’

You could tell everyone thought this was a bit harsh. One or two of the Quakers looked a little reproachful, and Ben was positively outraged. But Gerald and the policewoman cut short his indignant protests by leading him off firmly towards the bus. As they stumbled past me down the muddy slope, I heard Ben muttering darkly about conspiracies; but apart from gripping his arm just that little bit tighter, and speeding up, the policewoman and Gerald simply ignored him.

While the economist was still snipping gingerly at his own stubborn strand of fence wire, Mum looked round the little knot of bystanders. As usual she seemed to have completely taken over.

‘We need one more now,’ she announced. ‘A replacement for Ben. Any volunteers?’

Silence. To make the point that whoever was going to volunteer had better get a move on, a few more drops of cold rain fell. Everyone glanced at one another with those helpless little I-would-if-I-could shrugs that make it clear they have an important engagement, or their mother-in-law happens to be staying, or, just this once, their yoga class has been changed to Sunday.

‘Come on,’ cajoled Mum. ‘It’s only a couple of hours down at the station. Your court case won’t come up for weeks.’

Everyone took a sudden interest in their muddy toe-caps.

‘We need another person,’ Mum insisted. ‘This snowball is going to look pathetic if we don’t even have sixteen.’

I don’t know how they held out against her, truly I don’t. I cracked.

‘I’ll do it.’

‘Certainly not!’

Then even Jude began to look a little bit wistful. She opened her mouth once or twice, daring herself to volunteer. But even her passion for Inspector McGee couldn’t triumph over her tiredness, and the fact that her feet were cold, and the unknown territory of ‘down at the station’. And Mum would only have ignored her, anyway. So we all stood there looking terribly uncomfortable, while the last policeman carefully kept his face straight, and Mum’s eyes roved over everyone, just like Mrs Lupey’s do when she’s waiting for someone in the class to confess to some heinous crime like dropping a chocolate wrapper on the floor, or sliding the window down a micromillimetre while she’s turned her back to write something on the blackboard.

But this lot aren’t that easily intimidated. After all, if they cared all that much what people thought of them, they wouldn’t have come on the demo in the first place. So they just kept on politely inspecting the ends of their shoes, and I honestly believe that, but for what happened next, the whole business might have been wrapped up with a few more moments of stern waiting, and then Mum shrugging and breaking the silence with something like: ‘Oh, well. Fifteen. Sixteen. What’s the difference?’

But the policeman snorted.

Personally, I would have ignored it. After all, if Gerald Faulkner had been standing there, he probably would have snorted too, and just as loudly. But, let’s face it, Mum’s soft on Goggle-eyes. She wasn’t soft on the policeman.

‘Lost your tissues?’ she asked him in exactly the same tone of voice Gran uses for ‘Had your eyeful?’ And I told you already that that sounds so rude Mum’s ordered me and Jude to stop saying it, ever.

It irritated him, you could tell, her coming back at him like that. And he was pretty young. Maybe Mum’s scornful response reminded him of being scolded by his own mother for tracking mud from his regulation boots over her nice clean floors or something. Anyway, suddenly he got exactly the same sort of look all over his face as Jude gets when she’s cheesed off with Mum. And he muttered sullenly:

‘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.