Goggle-eyes fastidiously prised the smallest one he could find away from its sticky companions.
‘How nice,’ he said. ‘And how very unusual. Wheatgerm petits fours!’
You could tell from the look Beth gave him that she knew perfectly well he was being sarcastic. But just at that moment the bus began to slow. Everyone straightened up to look ahead over the seats in front. It seemed that we were coming up behind some vast great trailer with huge flashing WIDE LOAD signs, and a motorcycle escort.
‘Look at the size of that!’ breathed Beth. ‘What is it?’ Suddenly a thought struck her. ‘I bet I can guess what it is,’ she said excitedly. ‘The nuclear convoys have to use this road.’ She craned her head to see better. ‘I bet it’s one of them. It’s absolutely massive. Yes, I bet this is part of a nuclear convoy.’
Responding to signalling from the motorcycle escort, our bus was pulling out now, and drawing abreast of the wide load. Everyone had heard what Beth was saying. They all peered curiously out of the windows.
‘Yes, indeed,’ Gerald Faulkner spoke into the sudden silence as we saw the load clearly for the first time. ‘A lovely three-bedroomed nuclear missile with calor gas kitchen.’
Beth flushed. Her mouth shut like a trap. As the immense mobile home on its trailer slipped away behind, she snapped the lid shut on her wholemeal cracker box, and took off down the bus so fast she didn’t offer one to Jude or me. I had to climb over Jude to go and fetch ours.
‘Who is that fellow with your mother?’ Beth asked. (She was still scarlet.)
I took a deep breath.
‘He’s my mum’s cousin,’ I lied. ‘Over from Perth.’ She shrugged, appeased. Friends are one thing, relations are another. No one can blame their mates for flesh and blood.
‘How long is he staying with you?’ she asked, pressing an extra wholemeal cracker in my hand for sympathy.
‘Too long,’ I said. ‘Mum’s very patient, though.’
‘Too patient,’ Beth said, and moved on down the bus, excusing Mum to everyone she passed. ‘He’s some relation, it seems. Poor Rosie simply can’t get rid of him. At her wits’ end!’
Everyone nodded. They were all filled with sympathy. Even the ones at the back who couldn’t see Goggle-eyes sneering had heard his loud snort of contempt when Josie sailed into the descant during ‘Oh, Little Town of Sellafield’. They all knew how we were suffering.
I went back to my seat. As I clambered over her, Jude offered me one of the Asterix books Mum bought her for the trip. (Jude is still bribed to come along, but Mum says I’m now old enough to do my civic duty without that.) It turned out to be one I hadn’t read. And though Beth’s home-made wholemeal crackers didn’t taste too brilliant, reading and prising the sesame seeds out from between my teeth did help to pass the time till we arrived.
It was a pretty isolated place, where we stopped. I’ve been there several times. Apart from the miles of fencing, you can’t see a thing. The base itself is in a dip behind thick woods. It didn’t look as bleak as usual. For once the sun was glinting on the waters of the firth, and it wasn’t misty. You could see bracken turning brown on the hills, and the heather was in flower.
Goggle-eyes clearly didn’t like the look of the place much.
‘I don’t fancy reclaiming that lot,’ he said, peering over Mum out of the window. ‘It looks pretty boggy.’
He glanced out the other side.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘Reinforcements.’
Three dark blue vans were waiting in the lay-by.
‘Don’t be so silly, Gerald,’ Mum said. ‘That’s the police.’
‘Police?’ He was astonished. ‘How come they’re here before you even start?’
‘They always arrive first,’ Mum said, pulling on her anorak and zipping it up. ‘They’re more efficient than we are. If we say ten o’clock, they’re here at ten o’clock, even if we don’t turn up till eleven.’
‘You tell the police your plans?’
Mum stared at Goggle-eyes as if he’d just asked her whether she believed in fairies.
‘Of course we tell them our plans,’ she said. ‘There are dozens of nuclear installations in Scotland. If we waited for the police to find us without help, we’d be here weeks.’
Raising her eyes to heaven, she propelled him into the gangway.
We all piled off the bus, the smokers sighing with relief and fishing desperately in their jacket pockets. Beth strolled across to the police vans to find whoever was in charge, and all the rest of us followed the driver around to the back of the bus, to get our stuff out of the luggage compartment.
I reached in for my banner. Goggle-eyes, being a gentleman, stretched over to take it from me as soon as he realized how long and unwieldy the poles were. But he didn’t know that you have to keep the sheeting wrapped tightly if there’s any wind at all. He let it loosen and, as the poles swung apart, it billowed open in the middle.
‘What’s this?’ he said.
‘It’s just a banner,’ I said modestly.
It isn’t ‘just a banner’ at all. It took me and Gran two whole weeks to make it, and it’s one of the best. We have dozens of cardboard posters and home-made signs, but my banner’s special. The only ones to touch it in the group are Beth’s lovely quilted Dove of Peace, and the large fraying rainbow that we share with Greenpeace.
Mine is the biggest by far. Three metres wide and one high, you need two to carry it, marching abreast. It’s hard to hold in strong winds – your hands ache terribly. But it’s so striking that it’s always worth it. I’ll tell you what it’s like. The sheet is white, and right across the top is painted in black letters:
HOW TO DESTROY A WORLD
Right in the middle there’s a plain white square, with one tiny black dot sitting all alone inside it. Then the whole of the rest of the banner is black dots – thousands and thousands of them – like the most frightful measles.
Prising one of the poles out of his hand, I moved backwards so that the banner unfurled, foot by foot. The wind whipped it taut, and Goggle-eyes saw the whole thing properly for the first time.
‘What is it?’ he asked again.
‘It’s my firepower banner.’
‘Firepower?’
‘That’s right.’ I pointed to the white space in the centre, to explain. ‘That little dot there, all by itself in the middle, represents all of the firepower used in the whole of the Second World War.’
‘All of it? Every side?’
‘All of it,’ I said. ‘From every country that was fighting. Three megatons of firepower.’
‘And all the rest?’
He waved his hand over the acres of measles.
‘That’s all the firepower in the nuclear weapons on the planet today.’
‘Dear gods!’
Poor Goggle-eyes looked a bit shattered.
‘How many dots are there?’ he asked after a moment. (That’s everybody’s next question.)
‘Six thousand,’ I told him. ‘Exactly. Gran helped me get it absolutely right. That’s eighteen thousand megatons of firepower.’
He whistled through his teeth.
‘Six thousand Second World Wars,’ he said slowly.
‘That’s right.’
Leave them to think, Mum says. Leave things to sink in at their own good speed. I stood holding my pole against the tug of the wind, and watched his eyes moving slowly over the banner. You can’t just look at it. There are so many dots they swarm and jump. You get a headache if you stare too long. Gran and I ought to know. We made it, and it nearly killed us.
Sure enough, after a moment he blinked and narrowed his eyes. But they kept moving over it.