Eleanor raced up to be grabbed by her grandparents. I encircled them both in a quick air-hug and let them get back to work. Tall, stooping, grey-haired, and tough as a pair of old boots, they’d seen it all before: the Peace Pledge Union, CND, the Committee of 100, Vietnam Solidarity, CND again…Today they were doing a respectable trade in a pamphlet. In between keeping half an eye on the demo and chatting to whichever of them wasn’t in full flow, I flipped through Is a Third World War Inevitable?: its cover as lurid as any peace-movement propaganda, its contents a frosty dismissal of two centuries of peace campaigns – all of which had failed to prevent (where they hadn’t actively endorsed) increasingly destructive wars.
A Scottish ASTMS banner bellied through the gateway, and as it sailed closer I saw Annette a few rows behind it. She was walking with a man whom I recognised, with a pleasant surprise, as Reid. We’d seen him a quite a few times over the past decade, kept in touch: he’d crashed out on our floor often enough when he was in London for work or politics.
I stood there under the trees while my mother talked to Eleanor and my father argued with a stray Spartacist, and watched their approach. They were deep in conversation, faces serious, eyes oblivious to the surrounding march. When they were about twenty metres away Reid, perhaps distracted by the raised voices nearby, looked aside and saw me. He touched Annette’s elbow and she saw me too, and immediately they broke ranks and hurried over.
Reid’s hair was shorter and neater than it had been the last time I’d seen him, at a Critique conference the previous year. His shirt, black jeans and Reeboks were new. His denim jacket was faded, frayed, breastplated with badges against Reagan and Thatcher, Cruise and Pershing; for the Sandinistas and Solidarnosc, and (as if that unlikely combination wasn’t enough) a red-and-gold enamel badge celebrating the 1980 Moscow Olympics. A carrier-bag flapped lightly from one hand.
‘Hi Dave. Good to see you, man.’
‘Yeah, likewise.’ He slapped my shoulder. ‘Hello, Eleanor. You’ve grown a lot.’ Eleanor gave him a smile that showed all the gaps in her milk-teeth. Her gaze kept returning to the bright rows of badges.
My father’s dispute had ended in a stand-off. The Spartacist, a scrawny lad in a knit cap and lumber-jacket, saw Reid and turned like a locking-on radar.
‘Comrade –’ he began, stepping forward and moving a bundle of papers into combat position.
‘Oh, piss off,’ Reid said, barely glancing at him. He faced my father. ‘Good afternoon, Mr Wilde. I’m David Reid. Annette and Jon have often told me about you.’
‘Martin,’ my father said. ‘And this is my wife Amy. Pleased to meet you, David.’ He grinned. ‘Jonathan tells me you’re quite bright, for a Trot.’
Reid looked at me with raised eyebrows. I shrugged and spread my hands. ‘I take no responsibility for what his warped mind makes of anything I say.’
‘Can we go to McDonalds now?’
My father smiled at Eleanor and checked his watch. ‘There’ll be a couple of comrades along shortly,’ he said. ‘What about you, David?’
Reid jiggled his carrier-bag on one finger. ‘I’ve sold most of my papers. Yeah, I’ll be OK to skive off for half an hour or so.’
‘It’ll be all boring speeches now,’ Annette said. She smiled and waved airily. ‘Fine by me.’
‘She never brings anything to demos,’ I explained.
‘Only my beautiful self.’
‘That’s enough,’ Reid and I said at the same time, and we all laughed.
We hung about for a few more minutes until my parents’ comrades – who, to my surprise, had green hair and studded nostrils – turned up. Then we ducked under the main road and through the golden arches, to find the place packed. A lot of badges and plastic bags, a lot of post-attack black.
‘Goddamn anti-Americans,’ Martin muttered as we queued. ‘Under-fed, under-employed and underfoot!’
He trotted out some variant of this at every occasion of suspected anti-Yank sentiment, and now I barely grunted at it, but Reid grinned broadly. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘They come down here, they take our seats…’
Ten minutes later we were crowded around something that wasn’t so much a table as a painstakingly exact plastic replica of one. Eleanor sat between her grandparents and kept them entertained. Annette sat on one bolt-down seat and Reid and I half-leaned, half-sat over another.
‘Annette says you’re still lecturing,’ Reid said.
‘Yeah.’ I blew on a hot fry. ‘Part-time, short-term contracts. Further education’s run like a typing pool these days.’
‘You should approve.’ Dave was eating quickly, glancing away every, now and then.
‘I would if there was some sense to it all…Just as well Annette’s got a steady job.’
‘Solid breadwinner,’ Annette said, around a mouthful.
‘Safe from everything except the animal rights nutters?’
‘That’s about it. How’re you doing yourself?’
‘Working for North British Mutual,’ Reid said. ‘Big insurance company in Edinburgh. I’m supposed to be a software engineer. It’s just like being a programmer except you do it properly.’ He leaned closer in a parody of confidentiality, and winked at my father. ‘Money for old rope.’
‘Still with the Migs, I take it?’
Reid gave a twisted smile. ‘Everybody’s in the Labour Party these days, but you know how it is. Got into working in the union. Been on the branch committee for the past year.’
My father looked suddenly alert. He’d been on his branch committee for decades.
‘God, that must be thrilling,’ I said.
For a moment Reid’s face took on a look of utter weariness.
‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘Better than Labour Party ward meetings anyway.’
‘I’ll tell you what your trouble is,’ my father said quietly. ‘You’re still doing it for the party, not for the union.’
Reid shook his head. ‘I’m for the union!’
Martin narrowed his eyes, held his gaze for a second, then returned to teasing Eleanor.
‘What’s your political activity these days?’ Reid asked, breaking an awkward silence. ‘Deep entry in the Tory Party?’
‘Very funny,’ I said. I had once spoken at a fringe meeting, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. ‘I do odd bits of work and write articles for what I consider good causes. Everything from Amnesty International to the Space Settlers’ Society, with the Libertarian Alliance somewhere in between.’ I shrugged. ‘I know – it sounds a bit…all over the place.’
‘Space and freedom, huh?’ Reid said lightly.
Across the street the demonstration was still going past. A banner with a picture of a rising rocket – a Polaris missile – caught my eye, and I think that was the moment when it all came together, when I had the vision. I saw a future where other people – infinitely different from these, infinitely like them – carried banners with other and greater rockets, chanted unfamiliar slogans I couldn’t quite make out.
‘That’s it!’ I said. ‘That’s what we need to get away from the nuclear terrorists. A space movement! Escape from the planet of the apes!’
‘That’ll be the day,’ Reid said. He examined a hunk of sesame-sprinkled roll, stuffed it in his mouth and chewed it. ‘OK folks, I gotta go.’ He smiled around the table, saw Eleanor’s covetous look at his badges and took one off and gave it to her. Jobs Not Bombs. ‘My phone-number’s still the same. See you soon, I hope.’ I caught a flicker of a look between him and Annette. His eyes, as he turned to me, were calm and friendly as ever. ‘Next time we’ll have a proper drink, right?’