Mum thought it better to take this as a joke.
‘There’s a bit of a walk over some Ministry of Defence land when we get there,’ she explained. ‘We’re planning to reclaim the hills.’
‘Are we, indeed?’ From the expression on his face it was perfectly clear that, to Gerald Faulkner, reclaiming hills meant, at the very least, cutting holes in expensive razor-wire fences, overwhelming the military police in an act of mass trespass, and rushing, shrieking and whooping, down on unguarded stockpiles of nuclear warheads. I caught Mum’s eye. Mistake! Mistake! I flashed at her in family semaphore. Quick. Send him home before the bus comes and it’s all too late.
Mum got the message.
‘Gerald,’ she said gently. ‘Are you sure that you want to bother to come with us today? You wouldn’t be just as happy at home with your feet up, reading the papers?’
‘I’d be happier,’ he said, looking round meaningfully at our straggling group of early morning yawners. ‘Much happier.’
‘Well, then –’
‘No,’ he insisted, shaking his head firmly and dashing all my hopes of a nice day. ‘I’ve said I’m coming with you, and I’m coming.’
I couldn’t help asking him the question.
‘But why?’
He stared.
‘Well, for the pleasure of your company, of course.’
I was mystified.
‘But you have the pleasure of our company practically every day,’ I reminded him. ‘It’s mad to want an extra day of it.’
‘I don’t see that,’ he said equably, taking my arm. ‘Surely wanting an extra day of your company is no madder than wanting your company at all.’
When someone’s in that mood, there’s no point arguing. So I didn’t, even when the huge bus that had been hired finally showed up, and he climbed on and plonked himself down in the seat beside Mum without even asking Jude or me whether we minded. Jude didn’t, as it happened. She was quite happy to slip in the seat behind without arguing. I didn’t argue either. But I did mind.
I took the window seat – Jude wasn’t bothered. I could see the reflection of the side of Mum’s face in the glass, and if I leaned sideways I could watch Goggle-eyes through the gap between the seats. After a while the bus driver insisted that, even if we had been expecting more people, we really ought to go or we’d never get there. The smokers ground out their last fags and climbed aboard, wheezing and coughing. And I saw Goggle-eyes looking pointedly at his watch. Personally I thought the fact that we were only twenty minutes late leaving robbed his snide little gesture of a lot of its punch; but he wasn’t to know that we’re usually later.
The bus rolled through the fields and villages, and gradually everybody stopped yawning and flicking through their Sunday newspapers, and started to chat. Somehow you didn’t get the feeling that Goggle-eyes was putting himself out to make friends. I overheard him telling the shy agrarian economist who used to work for Oxfam: ‘Personally, I’m all in favour of food mountains’; and when Beth Roberts’s small son tugged at his newspaper to see the cartoon, he said quite unnecessarily loudly and clearly: ‘Do you mind if I finish reading it before you recycle it?’ He sneered visibly through the sing-song Josie organized, not even joining in the easy choruses like ‘Take the Toys from the Boys’, and ‘What Shall We Do with the Nuclear Waste?’ All in all he was a total pain, and I could tell that practically everybody who took the time to be friendly when they were passing up or down the bus finished up by assuming that he must be some police nark.
It seemed a very long ride. He spent a lot of it tormenting Mum.
‘How come so few people ended up coming today, Rosalind?’
It was true that the bus was half empty. I heard the caution in Mum’s voice as she replied: ‘Sometimes the phone tree doesn’t work too well.’
‘Phone tree?’
Oh, you could hear glee gathering in his voice. He knew that he was on a winner here. And so did Mum.
‘It’s how we send last-minute messages,’ she admitted. ‘Each of us knows the numbers of two others, and each of them phones two more, on and on. When it works well, the message branches out quickly.’ Her voice trailed off. It hadn’t worked too well this time, that was obvious. More like a blasted phone stump than a phone tree.
‘I see,’ said Goggle-eyes. There was one of those dangerous little pauses of his before he added provocatively: ‘A sort of urban bush telegraph?’
Mum turned her head away and gazed out of the window. Her reflection was so blurred that I couldn’t make out her expression. Was she trying not to lose her temper? Or was she trying not to laugh? I couldn’t tell. But I know how I felt. I felt like reaching over the back of his seat and pulling hanks of his thin silvery hair out of his boiled baby pink skull, and yelling at him that he could sneer all he liked at our warm anoraks and buses that leave late, and makeshift ways of passing messages; but unlike the Ministry of Defence we didn’t have eighteen billion pounds a year of taxpayers’ money to keep our organization running like clockwork.
What was the point, though? You never get anywhere trying to explain things to someone like Gerald Faulkner. Mum says, ‘Just save your breath to cool your porridge.’ When people sneer at what we think and what we do, she only smiles.
‘Don’t let them bother you,’ she used to tell me whenever I got mad. ‘That’s the way History goes. All change takes time. Everyone who ever tried to change anything important got sneered at by those who wanted things left the same. Look at the people who fought for the end of slavery! “Meddlers! Ignoramuses! Troublemakers!” Look at the women who fought for their right to the vote! “Pushy hoydens! Vandals! Disgraces to their sex!” All it proves is that we’re getting somewhere.’
‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘Where?’
(I was feeling really grumpy and dispirited that day, I remember.)
‘Listen,’ she said. ‘The problem is when the people in power don’t even notice you. It’s only when you get strong that they start sneering and calling you foolish and misguided. That’s the first step. Then more and more people come round to your way of thinking, and you get stronger and stronger. They get more worried. You can always tell. That’s when they start to call you dangerous as well as foolish, and try to encourage everyone who isn’t on your side yet to come out of the woodwork and sneer at you too.’
‘Well, it’s not very pleasant!’
‘No. It’s not pleasant. But it has always happened that way, and it always will.’
‘Then what?’ (I mean, nobody likes to think that they’re in for a lifetime of sneering.)
‘Then you win, of course,’ she said. ‘Why would they bother to make fun of your woolly hats and muddy boots if they could polish off your arguments?’ She grinned. She was terribly cheerful about it. ‘I’ll tell you one thing I learned from studying History, Kitty. As soon as you see your opponents are reduced to insulting you personally, you know you’re on the way to victory.’
That’s what my mother said. That’s what she told me, and I trust her. That’s why I managed to keep my bum fair and square on the seat, and not jump up and down shrieking at Goggle-eyes, and pulling the hair out of his head in handfuls. I’m well brought up, I am. I’ve got self-control.
Which is a lot more than you can say for him. Let me tell you what happened when Beth Roberts started wandering down the bus gangway, offering her box of home-made wholemeal crackers left and right, to everyone.
‘Oh, thanks,’ Mum said, taking two stuck together. ‘I’m absolutely starving.’