Guest Read online

  Cider always made him tell childhood stories. In drink, he’d tell anybody who’d listen.

  Turns out she’s not the only one it happened to. It happened in a lot of DGR groups in the early 80s. Sky said she couldn’t even look at her little boy for weeks. Bear in mind he was only about a year old when she found out. No way would she have ever knowingly got into bed with a cop, never mind have a baby with one. She said it was like being raped by the state, twice.

  Sky is working with a group of women to try and bring it all out into the open. If they can get enough together they might bring a legal case. She did say that some of the women this happened to were so traumatised by it that they left the movement altogether.

  Didn’t you tell me that your mum suddenly quit Deep Green Resistance when you were a little kid?

  His last day at camp. Flores had come to get him, clean streaks running down her face. A strong hand on his wrist. ‘I’ve had enough, Samhain.’

  She’d turned to one of the other women – a face Samhain couldn’t recall, because there were always different women there, they changed all the time – and said: ‘I’m done with this shit. For good.’

  Something she’d said often. Hundreds of times, since Samhain was tiny. ‘I’m done with this shit’ usually meant a couple of days in the yurt, playing with toys, together. He remembered the warmth of her face, round and brick-warm, glorious, in those moments when he had her all to himself. Not sharing her with all of the other women on camp, or with some job that needed doing: a padlock to be closed, or a bulldozer to lock onto. Turning brightly coloured pages. Pushing wooden trucks over the uneven ground. Smiles and cuddles. Her undivided attention. It never lasted long. A few days later she’d be opening up the tent flap and saying, ‘Come on Sam, time for the weekly consensus meet.’

  That last time, it had been different, the sobs harder and deeper, as though she were a quarry being remoulded by shifting tectonic plates.

  She’d put him into the bike trailer, gathered their few possessions into a knapsack, and cycled them both over to the nearest coach station. A long bus trip through Germany, Belgium, France, followed. He remembered her silence. Face ghostly, reflected in the bus window.

  On the other side of the Channel, Flores had abandoned the bike. Left it leaning against a railing at the station, for anybody to take.

  A week later they were living in a house, and he’d started school: a strange place, with brightly coloured stacking toys, where everything fitted onto shelves and into boxes. Things happened at certain times of day. A bell rang, and that meant you could go out onto the cold concrete for playtime. You had to sit at your table when the teacher said, choose toys when you were told to, eat lunch when the bell went – you couldn’t just leave your desk any time you liked. The other children already knew the rules, and he struggled to pick them up. Samhain sat down when he was supposed to stand, went wandering when he was meant to sit still, talked when he should have been quiet, and shouted out when he thought things were unfair. The teacher sent him out into the corridor often. He spent more time sitting outside the head’s office than he did in class. He never could get the hang of school.

  Flores got a job in a garden centre, and was always quiet. There were long periods of silence. Hours when she drank beer, and gazed out of the window, and didn’t say anything at all. Moments where she glared at Samhain with what seemed to be hate.

  Maybe your mum quitting DGR had nothing to do with any of this. She might just have got burned out. Lots of people do. Not easy living in camps all the time, going on actions, taking part in the cooking and cleaning rota. It can’t have been easy, especially not with a young kid. You’ll know more than me. Could be she got worn out and wanted an easy life. Can’t blame her for that.

  If your mum was affected by infiltration, I thought you’d probably want to know. CopWatch are doing their best to make sure it all gets out. I thought you’d rather hear it from me than read it on a blog. Didn’t think it would be right if you heard it from a stranger.

  Might be that I’m wide of the mark here. In which case I’m sorry. Ignore this message if you want, and I won’t tell anyone. Not even Jeff. Call me if you want. Mart x

  He sighed, leaning back in the chair.

  Another message came in – a postscript.

  PS. How can you call me when I’ve got your phone! Found it on the floor in the social last week. Tell me where your new squat is. I’ll drop it over. See you. Mart x

  An old lady struggled by the library door, dripping under a rain visor, shopping cart wheel caught in one corner of the mat.

  ‘Here, let me.’ Samhain pulled it loose, pushing the door open, and she darted out.

  Rain thundered, drumming the roofs of passing cars. His shoes drenched instantly, by weather which threw itself almost horizontally into his eyes.

  The water struck him over and over, every drop an insult. He was carrying the library copy of Maus in a carrier bag, and that was getting rained on too. Soaking cotton clung to his shoulders before he’d even reached the corner.

  All thoughts of restarting the electricity forgotten, Samhain started the long wet walk back to the squat.

  4.

  He dreamed. The lightless, wood-panelled hallway of the 97 Ash Grove squat. Reaching for the light switch, and nothing. Darkness whichever way. Everything was empty, the way it had been the week they’d moved in. Empty apart from Frankie’s coat, hanging over the lower bannister.

  Water dripped from the sleeves. Drip, drip, drip. Into a puddle on the hall floor.

  Samhain’s steps creaked up the stairs. Looking not for Frankie but for his mother Flores, hoping she’d be somewhere here.

  The upstairs became the second floor of the Boundary Hotel. A narrow carpeted hallway led down to a recessed window. There was a note on one of the bedroom doors, like the one he’d had on his room in Ash Grove: This is not a communal room. Knock first. People live here. He had something he wanted to ask.

  Then without knowing how, he was in the old Ash Grove living room. Wooden floor, the three mismatching chairs. Seats they’d found in bin yards, or out on pavements in the student area. Those, and the coffee table, were things they’d scavenged anywhere. Your trash is our treasure. And in that treasure, the pervasive smell of damp.

  Discarded things from which they made a life. Samhain had no money, and lived like a prince. He didn’t have to work. Other people wasted hours of their lives in jobs they hated, or got into massive debt buying things they didn’t need. Not Samhain. He was free. Living behind found fabric, in a subterranean womb of deep, mossy green. This was the place where Samhain really belonged.

  The fabric clung to the window, in the grip of thick condensation. He could hear the outside’s rain dribbling down the panes, through the sills and down onto the floor, drip, drip, drip. She was in here, somewhere, Flores. Must be.

  He called for her, and woke. In that sleep-wisping moment, remembered – Flores was on a retreat in a rural part of Wales, somewhere without a phone line or internet connection.

  There was a knock.

  Samhain levered himself into a sitting position. Freezing cold. He had fallen asleep the way he’d come in, jellyfish-wet.

  ‘Jesus dickhead, what you been doing?’ Frankie came in. ‘Having a shower with your clothes on?’

  Sitting, confused. Wet shirt clinging to the coverlet like velcro. He tried to make sense of it: a white door, the laminated sheet with a fire evacuation procedure stuck glossily on its inside. That was right – the hotel. ‘No. I went to the library.’

  ‘You don’t look right. Maybe you should get out of those wet clothes.’ Frankie pointed at the knapsack. ‘I need to get a few things done around here. Alright if I use your tools?’

  ‘Look at this place.’ Frankie was already behind the bar, manhandling the ancient spirits. ‘Old Navy Rum – Captain Morgan – Taboo... Galliano! Wonder how old this is?’ He pulled out a bottle with a swan-shaped neck.

  ‘I wouldn’t
be drinking that.’

  ‘No.’ Frankie put it down, giving it a reluctant glance. ‘Well, maybe not until you’ve had a couple of others first, anyway.’ He pushed the cap back off his head, and scratched his scalp. ‘Look at us. Living the dream, eh?’

  Plush banquettes, round tables. The windows looked out into an overgrown garden. Through mottled glass Samhain saw greenery. Coloured glass streamed cathedral-bright onto polished tops and patterned carpet: it was like drinking in paradise. They were literally living in a pub. This, right here, was the squat jackpot.

  ‘You can thank me later.’

  Frankie was getting into something beneath the bar shelves. Rustling, rifling, looking for something – anything. This was always one of the first things Frankie did when they got into a place.

  ‘For finding it? I will. You know, our mate next door reckons the woman who ran this place died. He wasn’t sure, though. Says there was a “For Sale” sign for a bit, then it blew down in a storm, and nobody came to fix it. Then after that – we came.’ Frankie stopped rifling, and emerged wearing a grin. There was a pair of sherry glasses resting between his fingers. ‘So the story, right, is that we bought it. We’re trying to refurbish the place and open it as a legitimate business. He doesn’t need to know we’re a pair of dirty punk squatters.’ He clinked the glasses together. ‘Look at these fucked up little things. What’s the point in having a drink that small?’

  ‘You moron, there’s a squat notice on the front door. He’s bound to have seen it.’

  ‘Oh, that.’ Frankie shrugged. ‘Well, he didn’t say anything about it. Anyway, we can always say there were squatters here, before us. Problem solved.’

  ‘Not bad. Hey, I got this weird message from Mart earlier.’

  ‘Sexy Mart? She still got your guitar?’ Frankie worked at one of the pumps. Settled a hand around it, and pulled. A film of dust sputtered out. ‘You should ask her to teach you a thing or two.’

  ‘I’ll teach her a thing or two.’

  ‘I bet you would. She’d never let you, though.’ More dust; Frankie coughed. ‘Christ, I thought there might be beer in this thing. You phone up about the electric?’

  ‘Not yet.’ Samhain pulled Roxy’s phone out of his pocket, and started pressing the buttons. ‘Listen to this. Mart said, she’s got a friend who had a kid by a cop.’

  ‘Fuck that.’ Years of laughter settled into the crinkles around Frankie’s eyes. That smile took Samhain directly into the heart of the very best of times. A disastrous tour around Austria and Hungary in the back of a van whose engine ran mostly on old tights, and the crossed fingers of everybody in it. Sleeping in the back of the van, doors open, and waking to the silence of the mountains, seeing hundreds of empty miles of distance in either direction. The sun, the air, seeing civilisation down there in the valley, and being too high up and too hungover to call down to it. And laughing. Always, ever, no matter how much it hurt, always laughing. ‘Never be able to relax, would you? Little fucker probably came out with a badge and number already attached. No offence to its mother, like. But still.’

  ‘She didn’t know he was a pig. She thought he was an activist, like her. Turns out he was an undercover cop.’

  ‘Christ. Like the McDonald’s two?’

  ‘One of them was a cop?’

  ‘No, idiot! So they were fighting this libel action, right? That McDonald’s had brought against them for handing out these leaflets telling people not to eat the burgers, right? Their support group were helping with the case – legal support, moral support, bringing them food and baby clothes and what have you. Anyway, turns out – one of their support group “friends” was an undercover cop, and one of the other support group “friends” was a snitch for McDonald’s.’

  ‘No way!’

  ‘Seriously, there were more undercover cops in their group than there were genuine activists. Ugh.’ Frankie drank old whisky from a dusty tumbler. ‘Thought everybody knew that. Anyway – never know how many of those traits are genetic, do you? Take you, for example – wearing patchwork skirts and gurning at festivals. Part hippy. Just like your Mum.’

  There was a sound like the old tour van trying to start. Mid-pitched squeal and whirr, something turning, catching on a stuck hose. ‘What is that?’ Frankie looked down, puzzled, beneath his feet. ‘I start something by trying to work that pump?’ He stamped on the floor as though trying to put out a small fire.

  ‘If you’ve fucked this squat already...’

  ‘I haven’t, I swear, I haven’t. Probably just old pipes. Nothing to worry about.’ Frankie stopped for a moment. ‘No harm to the mother, like, but I couldn’t live with a kid who was half-cop. Always be watching your back, wouldn’t you? In case it snitched. “Hello, is that Crimestoppers? My Daddy’s come home from a war protest talking about how he’d like to assassinate Bush.” You’d probably end up in Guantanamo Bay.’

  The whisky was thick, slurry coloured. ‘Anyway, reckon I’d have to give a kid like that up for adoption. Now do me a favour, clart, would you? Go up and get changed. You look like you’re about to drop nearly to death.’

  5.

  He wrote:

  I know it wasn’t your fault and I don’t blame you but you should have told me. Some time when I was little. About him being in the police. Boys should know about their Dads, even if they don’t know them.

  I’ve got all sorts of questions now and you’re not here to answer them. That time when–

  The banging in the basement had stopped, and now there was somebody knocking at the front door. A heavy, blooming thunder rumbled right the way through the house.

  ‘Hello?’

  Looking out of the top window, Samhain couldn’t see much – just the top of a bald head, shining, with filaments of silver either side. The neighbour. Night was falling now, and who knows what the guy wanted.

  He decided to leave it to Frankie to sort out.

  –I asked Panzo whether he was my Dad. Because he was always around, taking me out somewhere. Panzo was the one who got me clothes. It was Panzo who got me my library card. He was sometimes around more than you were. But when I asked, you said, ‘No, he’s not your Dad, and he never will be.’

  The thing is he used to get me ready for school sometimes, when you were ill. I kept hoping you’d change your mind, about him being my Dad. There was a boy in my class who got a new Dad and afterwards he was always saying Stephen this, and Stephen that, because his new Dad got him a Mutant Turtles jumper and new trainers, and always remembered his birthday in the way his first Dad hadn’t. It was like he grew six inches when his Mum married Stephen.

  Anyway I didn’t dare keep bringing it up because of that time–

  He stopped, scribbled the line out.

  Right at the bottom edge of the page, no paper left to write on, not that the letter had gone in the direction he meant it to.

  Samhain got up, and went into the hallway. There was still no power: he felt his way onto the stairs by keeping one finger against the wall.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ David’s voice was floating up the stairs. ‘You’ll not be short on customers – the Evanses never were. What are you planning on doing in here? Will you keep it all the same, or put in new carpets? My son-in-law was telling me the other day, that a lot of the bars don’t have carpet now – just bare boards – all varnished up and polished... that’s the fashion now, he says, though I suppose you’ll have your own ideas.’

  ‘We don’t know yet,’ Frankie was saying. ‘We’ll have to see what condition the floor is underneath, won’t we, Sam?’ He turned, winking.

  David peered down the hallway, his hands clasped. ‘Every time I’ve looked at this place, I’ve thought, what a shame it is for a beautiful old building like that to lie empty. It’s a crime, really it is.’ He glanced back at the doorway, where the squat notice flapped in the breeze. ‘When a group of young lads like yourselves could move in and make a living in it.’ This last part sounded like a question.

  Franki
e slapped a hand against his head. ‘Samhain, why don’t you show David around?’

  ‘Oh!’ The neighbour took a step in. ‘I don’t mean to intrude. I can see you’re busy.’ But his face had lit up, and he was already half into the hallway.

  Samhain’s torch was upstairs, in the front pocket of his rucksack. Going back up to get it seemed more trouble than it was worth; instead, he pulled Roxy’s phone out of his pocket, and used the screen as a dim blue torch.

  The glow of light showed glasses, mirrors. A stamp-sized electronic square moving across dusty bottles of whisky and gin. ‘This is the bar,’ he said.

  ‘Bigger than it looks, isn’t it?’ A seasickening blue lay on the crest of David’s cheeks. ‘I mean, from the outside. You’d never guess there was all this in here.’

  ‘I’ll show you upstairs. Mind your step.’

  Out of the bar, and up to the tomb of the hallway.

  Frankie was around the back of the stairs, doing something with the fuse box.

  ‘Just keep a tight hold on the bannister, and you’ll be alright.’ Samhain didn’t want the old fellow falling down the stairs.

  ‘So,’ David said. ‘You live here, do you?’ His breathing had a weight to it; he sounded like a torn accordion. ‘I saw your sign.’

  ‘Hang on, David.’ They were nearly at the first landing. Samhain grabbed a chair from the nearest doorway, and quickly checked that it had four legs. ‘Sit there a minute – get your breath back.’

  ‘Oh, dear. Dear me. Dear, dear me.’ Hand right over his tank-topped heart. ‘Not so young as I used to be. Soon pass.’

  He leaned against the back wall, looking down the length of the hallway. In the end wall, a window showed constellations of stars.