Free Love and Fallout by Kathryn Simmonds Page A

tent had sagged overnight and fluttered in the chill breeze as I lay still, trying to take charge of my thoughts, both of them: what am I doing here? And, what do I do now? In the end I roused myself with a verse of ‘I want to be Free,’ by Toyah. Don’t want to be nobody’s fool , I sang as I climbed out of my sleeping bag fully clothed, Don’t want someone living my life for me , I sang, easing off my socks and putting thicker ones on, inspecting the O of my new blister in the process, I want to be free I sang, digging out the trainers from my rucksack. I’m going to turn this world inside out, I’m going to… I unzipped the tent and surveyed my new home. In the light of the October morning, things looked even worse than they had last night: it was as if someone had taken a skip and spread its contents thinly over an expanse of mud.
    Between the tents and the igloo-shaped shelters dotted around the clearing, I could see a one-wheeled bike balanced upside down on its saddle, a washing-up bowl blown loose from its mooring, and a broken straw bale moulting in yellow shreds across the grass. A banner reading WOMEN AGAINST was strung droopily between trees. Obscured by branches, the missing word could have been anything – convention, war, washing-up.
    I’d been camping with my parents once in Tenby, but our experience of the great outdoors had been tempered by the sight of other families happily adapting the norms of domesticity; mums pegging out washing, dads cooking sausages on Calor gas fires. Here there was no shower block, and there were no children playing Swingball either, although a half-deflated beach ball sat wrinkled in the mud not far away, like a strange fallen fruit. The overnight rain had calmed but the wind was still loaded with mizzle.
    I’d filled an empty squash bottle with water for the train journey and now used some of it to brush my teeth, spitting a pool of foam into the mulchy leaves beside the tent. I knew there was a food storage arrangement beside the Welsh dresser, but since I’d brought a few supplies with me, it seemed easier to scoff down a bruised banana and a packet of salt and vinegar crisps. As to the problem of emptying my bladder, well, there weren’t going to be any flushing toilets around, that was for certain, so using my Toyah force-field I navigated a path through the bracken and found a tree private enough behind which to squat, awkwardly, leaning backwards on my hands. I’d not quite finished when I glimpsed a woman wheeling a barrow in my direction. After a scramble to pull up my jeans, I recognised her as the woman I’d sat next to the night before, the one with the serious spectacles. Angela. I raised my hand in a weird half salute, still clutching my belt. She gave the slightest nod and carried on wheeling. I watched her small upright figure disappear towards the road, conscious of a damp spot on my inner thigh.
    A low cloud scudded overhead, its belly swollen with rain. What did they do when it rained? In fact, what did they do, full stop? How did demonstrating against nuclear weapons work on a day-to-day-actually-filling-in-the-hours basis? Should I go and sit at the fire where two women were toasting bread on sticks and drinking tea? That would be a start. And yet it was all quite intimidating. Behind my tent the silver birch thickened into woods. Perhaps I should explore my new environment, get a feel for the terrain.
    The trees smelled rich and damp as I walked. A chain of rusting chime bells hung from a low branch, tinkling when I rippled my index finger through them, and in the canopy a bird clapped its wings. As I moved further in, the loamy darkness became welcoming and quiet. Quiet-ish. I stopped still, listening to a faint, what was it – yes, a gnawing sound. There it was again. Could it be a squirrel? I crept towards the noise, eager for my chance to engage with nature, to appreciate the fact that I was