Then – 22nd September
‘Carol didn’t do anything special, you know,’ Molly said, as they leaned into the steep climb of Ripon Road, moving in single file because the pavement was lined with bins waiting to be taken in by residents not yet home from work. ‘Did you get in touch with Brenda?’
‘I’m still trying,’ Ella said. ‘She’s a councillor, she must get loads of requests for interviews. And it’s not like my PhD is that important.’
‘I think she’ll be happy to talk to you.’ Molly stopped to let a kid on a bike whizz past them down the hill. ‘She made something of herself after the strikes. That’s the kind of story you want. Miner’s wife turned political player. Still fighting for her people. That’s impressive, right?’
Was Molly jealous of her interest in Carol’s campaigning? Ella wondered. Was that why she was trying to deflect her attention away on to other targets?
Carol and Molly had been friends since the mid-eighties and on the handful of occasions Ella had seen them together she might have taken them for sisters. There was a bond there, unmistakably strong, the kind forged in adversity. And from what she already knew of the time they’d spent at Greenham Common together, she imagined they’d shared some long dark nights, couldn’t have many secrets left from one another.
That kind of bond was sometimes as much hate as love.
My generation didn’t invent the frenemy, she thought. We learned it from our mothers, and even a committed feminist like Molly wasn’t immune, it seemed.
If Molly had been involved with Women Against Pit Closures, Ella would have gladly accepted her input. But she’d spent the miners’ strike taking photographs only the left-wing press would buy, because her reputation blacklisted her everywhere else. She’d given money, but that wasn’t a story.
‘Make sure you tell Brenda I said to get in touch.’ Molly glanced back over her shoulder. ‘And make sure she knows about your run-in with the riot police. She saw enough of her friends beaten up; it’ll be a good icebreaker. That’s the key with interviews. You’ve got to establish a rapport right from the off.’
Ella sighed quietly, wondering if Molly realised how patronising she was being.
Most of the summer had been taken up with interviews. Eight weeks of establishing a rapport with women who hadn’t wanted to talk to her to begin with. Who opened their doors to her already deeply suspicious.
Yes, Molly had got the doors to open, but the rest Ella had done for herself.
And she was proud of that.
Molly stopped outside a white stucco terrace with flaking black railings and a palm tree poking up from the yard of the garden flat, fairy lights wrapped around its scaly trunk. It was a touch of whimsy Ella struggled to accept from the hard-faced, hard-talking woman she’d met before. The sash window was up, letting out the smell of dope smoke and Patti Smith’s plaintive voice, a song Ella could sing by heart.
Carol opened the door in denim shorts and a man’s shirt, her dark-blonde hair piled into a rough bun.
‘Get yourselves in here,’ she said, smiling broadly. ‘Dinner’s been ready half an hour.’
Ella could smell a complex mix of spices coming from the kitchen, heavy on the ginger and cinnamon, the earthy base note of cumin, deep and vaguely animal.
Carol showed them into the living room, where a low, dark-wood coffee table had been set for three with mismatched crockery and cutlery, scatter cushions on the floor for chairs.
It was like the common room in a student house. Shambolically furnished, a battered sofa and two different armchairs, all shrouded in clashing throws and cushions. The purple walls were covered in posters for foreign films and framed press cuttings. There was no TV, but the space in the corner where it would have usually sat was filled by a bulky turntable, housed in teak, and an extensive vinyl collection.
‘You’ve got such a lovely place, Carol.’
‘It’s not much, but. . .’ She shrugged. ‘I’m lucky to have it.’
Ella almost said how homely it felt, but she knew it might sound condescending, even though it was genuinely felt. Carol’s house was homely. Immediately welcoming in a way few houses Ella had been in were. She’d hoped her studio flat might come to feel like this in time, but it kept defying her attempts at nesting. Despite the rugs she bought and the carefully chosen bedding and the washed-linen curtains she’d been delighted to find in a local charity shop one afternoon, it felt wrong in some vague way. You couldn’t fake atmosphere, she realised. It was something you accrued rather than conjured.
She knew no place of hers would feel like this while she was living such an uncertain and transient life.
Molly offered to help with serving up and the pair of them went into the kitchen together, already laughing, but soon they were talking in hushed voices that Ella couldn’t make out, even when she was close to the open door. She gave up and took her seat at the table, thinking how unbelievable it was that she’d made it here, into Carol’s home and, hopefully, her confidence.
She was a tough woman to get close to, but maybe she was wise to be that way.
Ella thought of Dylan. She’d let him get too close, even though she knew his motives ran counter to her best interests. Soon she’d have to do something about that.
He was like her unhomely studio flat – frustratingly close to being right for her, but there was something lacking in him, just like there was something lacking in the flat. Both withheld part of themselves from her.
Maybe that was where Dylan’s appeal lay, though, she thought. Through school and university she’d been out with the nice boys, the quiet ones – Jack, who taught her how to play backgammon and asked permission before committing each escalating act of sexual intimacy; Nicholas, who campaigned for the Green Party on the weekends and only read female authors; Christian, who left her when he found out she smoked weed. They were sweet and safe and boring.
They didn’t test her like Dylan did and some part of Ella realised that their relationship was really a contest being played to undefined rules with only the scoring system agreed upon.
And she would not lose to him.
Molly came in with bottles of beer in one hand and naan breads in the other, beginning a relay as she and Carol brought in lots of small dishes: chickpeas and dhals, and two different vegetarian curries, spiced tofu and chutneys and finally a large bowl of white rice studded with split green cardamom pods and finished with crisply fried onions.
‘Wow.’ Ella clapped. ‘This is amazing. Where did you learn to cook like this?’
‘Not my mother,’ Carol said, opening their beers with the handle of her fork. ‘She thought chicken Bisto was dangerously exotic.’
‘My mum’s not much of a cook either,’ Ella said. ‘Wall-to-wall ready meals.’
It was a lie but a forgivable one, she thought. She wanted Carol to like her and, as she discovered in the early days of her friendship with Molly, pretending her mother was defective in some way helped build that initial bond with older women.
They ate quickly, conversation coming in snatches, talking with their mouths full, laughing and joking, Carol telling a story about some man who’d come into the Waitrose where she worked and demanded to see the manager because they didn’t have English radishes even though they were in season. It amazed Ella that she worked there. Everybody had to work somewhere, of course, but she couldn’t square Carol’s non-curricular activities with serving Woolwich’s well-heeled with quinoa and burrata every day.
An hour later they were still sitting on the floor, picking over the cold dishes, Molly and Carol opening their third beers, joints lit, Malian blues playing low on the turntable, all twang and holler.
‘Did you talk to Rita?’ Carol asked, dipping a scrap of bread into the remaining tarka dhal.
‘Back in June, I went up to York to see her.’
Ella remembered the pebbledash semi, the smell of plug-in air fresheners and photos of her great-grandchildren on the mantelpiece. All so achingly normal until she started talking.
‘She’s moved, then,’ Carol said. ‘How’s she doing?’
‘Still going strong.’ Ella sipped her beer. ‘She’s got arthritis and diabetes and high blood pressure, but she’s still campaigning. Anti-fracking, now.’
‘They need good people on that.’
‘Have you been involved?’
Carol gave her a sly look. ‘I’m being kept in the loop.’
‘Wouldn’t it be best to start fighting before it gets bad?’ Ella asked.
Carol leaned over the table, scooped up a few chickpeas on her fork. ‘Some people do the talking, others do the action.’
Ella reached into her bag and brought out her phone. ‘I think we’re starting to get into stuff I’m going to want to use. Do you mind?’
‘No.’ Carol fixed her with a hard look. ‘But when I say off the record I mean it’s off the fucking record. Okay?’
‘Of course,’ Ella said quickly. She started the recording, identified herself and Carol, gave the time and date. ‘How do you think they should be approaching the fracking?’
‘That’s not for your PhD,’ Carol said with a smile.
‘No,’ she conceded, with a smile of her own. ‘That’s just for me. I’m looking for all the good advice I can get right now.’
‘About direct action?’
‘Ella’s doing just fine raising awareness at Castle Rise,’ Molly said.
She’d gathered a few more cushions together and was lying out flat on the floor, occasionally exhaling a thin line of smoke. Ella had almost forgotten she was there.
‘Raising awareness is all well and good, but it only gets you so far,’ Carol said. ‘Eventually you have to fully commit if you want to make positive changes. Anything else is just self-aggrandisement.’
‘That’s not fair.’ Molly straightened up. ‘Ella’s doing good work. There are people who have got much better deals for their flats than they could have dreamed of because of what she’s done.’
‘So you think hitting the developers in the wallets counts as an attack?’ Carol asked, ignoring Molly, attention fixed fully on Ella. ‘Their wallets are huge.’
‘Maybe we could do more,’ she conceded, cowed by the force of Carol’s words.
‘Of course you could. Once you start making it about the money, you’re playing on their pitch. It’s not a protest any more, it’s a negotiation! You get ten or fifteen grand more for someone and feel like that’s a success. It’s not. The bastards you’re fighting probably spend fifteen grand on a pair of cufflinks.’
‘What do you suggest, then?’ Ella said.
‘You need to not care about money. You’ll never win that way.’ Carol stabbed her fork across the table. ‘You have to go further.’
‘How?’
‘Creative disruption,’ Carol said. ‘Reputation damage. It’s too late now for Castle Rise. You need to look forwards.’
‘I’m still there,’ Molly reminded her. ‘Just under half of the residents are still hanging in. We’re making life very tough for those fuckers.’
‘You’ll be done in six months.’ Carol plucked the joint from Molly’s fingers. ‘Sorry, love, but one bad winter. . .’
Ella slumped back against the sofa, drew her knees up to her chin. ‘Then why bother fighting?’
‘Because fighting empowers other people to do the same and maybe they do win.’ Carol’s face lit up. ‘The miners’ strike failed. But it mobilised a generation of women who’d been told they were good for nothing but getting fucked and keeping house. If Thatcher hadn’t come for us, I’d still be stuck in Ollerton, being told how worthless I was on a daily basis by a man who could barely write his own name. Thatcher was a cu—’
‘Carol,’ Molly said in a warning tone. ‘That’s a word that hates women.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Well, she was one. But she radicalised working-class women in a way nobody in the feminist movement had even wanted to before then.’
Carol took a deep drag and held it in for a few seconds before she exhaled.
‘That’s why your PhD’s important. You look at everything that’s written about the miners’ strike: us women are barely present. Yeah, alright, they’ll talk about the food parcels and keeping the home fires burning. But we were in the thick of it.’
Ella waited, fighting the urge to prompt her, knowing she didn’t need to.
‘And from that we get to Greenham and Molesworth, Faslane; it all springs from a losing battle in the coalfields. Women who never thought they had any fight in them being led into action and discovering what they were made of.’
‘You keep saying “they”. Like you weren’t there.’
‘This “me” wasn’t,’ Carol said hotly. ‘I wasn’t this me until Greenham. Maybe not even then. It’s been a long time, Ella. You get hardened in stages. The really tough stuff takes some working up to.’
‘How tough are we talking?’
‘Off the record.’
Ella hit stop, but the recorder in her pocket was still running. She’d told herself it was a back-up when she slipped it in there, but she knew, deep down that this might happen.
‘I’m not giving you dates or times or locations.’
‘We’re off the record,’ Ella reminded her, trying to ignore the twinge of guilt she felt.
‘I don’t care.’ Carol started to roll another joint. ‘Creative disruption, that’s what we’re talking about, right? You do it quietly; you don’t go looking for headlines. You hit them in a way that they can’t really tell whether it’s an accident or an attack.’
‘What good does that do?’ Ella asked.
‘It slows down their business, it damages morale. You do anything to have a destabilising effect on their operations.’ Carol licked the edge of the cigarette paper. ‘Think guerrilla warfare.’
Ella nodded. Just the words ‘guerrilla warfare’ sent a thrill through her.
‘So, what we did was we made it look like an accident. Broke in to the main electrical contractor’s office. Started a fire that looked like the result of faulty wiring – because you might as well have some fun. Wrecked the whole place.’ Carol grinned, lit her joint and inhaled deeply. ‘Records gone for good. Payroll, contracts, insurances, contact details, tax details, the whole shebang.’
She laughed, her hand on her chest, like it was the heist of the century.
Ella noticed that Molly wasn’t laughing, appeared to have completely removed herself from the conversation now, staring up blank-eyed at the ceiling.
‘Nothing moved on that site for two months. Bosses couldn’t bring in another firm because it was a locked-down deal. Company couldn’t discharge their responsibilities.’
‘They must have been insured,’ Ella said and immediately regretted it, as Carol scowled at her.
‘That isn’t the point. We hit their reputation by forcing them to miss their targets and exposing how unfit they were to conduct business. Nobody would give them another contract. Six months later they were bankrupt.’
It was traceable, Ella thought. If she wanted to, she could probably find out whether this story was true or just showing off. It would take time and expertise she wasn’t sure she had, but it would be worth it to know whether Carol was the serious prospect she was claiming to be or, like Molly said, nothing special.
In her gut, Ella knew it was true. But her gut wasn’t enough.
‘You did all that on your own?’
‘Me and my young blood,’ she said, and giggled. The weed was getting to her now. She took another deep hit. ‘He’s got some skills, this boy.’
‘Do I know him?’
Another laugh. ‘Oh, Ella, hon, you and him move in very different circles. By the time someone like you knows him, he’s finished.’
‘You think he’d help us at Castle Rise?’
‘We don’t need that kind of help,’ Molly said.
She was listening, after all. Ella had thought it would make Carol more talkative to have a former partner in crime there. Now she realised Molly was dangerously close to being the unwelcome voice of conscience in the room and that only made her more determined to get into Carol’s inner circle. If Molly didn’t want her there, then it must be a worthwhile place to reach.
‘You’d like him if you met him,’ Carol said to her and the regret in her tone made Ella suspect this was a continuation of an older conversation between them. ‘He reminds me of you, Mol. Back in the day. He’s got that same fire in his belly.’
‘He’s a bad influence on you,’ she said.
Carol laughed, nodding. ‘But it keeps me young.’
Another line of smoke was all the answer Molly gave.
‘I’d like to meet him some time,’ Ella said, as casually as she could.
‘Quinn doesn’t just play with anyone.’ Carol’s shoulders dropped into a conspiratorial hunch. ‘He—’
She broke off to pick up a piece of spice-stained tofu from Ella’s plate and put it into her mouth, chewed it for longer than necessary, eyes unblinking, fixed on a point to the left of Ella’s shoulder.
‘Why are you doing this?’ Carol asked, cocking her head to one side so sharply that Ella heard her neck crick. ‘What did Mummy and Daddy do that was so bad you had to rebel like this?’
‘It’s got nothing to do with them,’ Ella snapped.
‘Very defensive.’
‘Leave her alone,’ Molly said, voice a vague blur.
‘No. She wants my story: I get hers.’
‘Carol.’ Firmer. ‘Stop it.’
‘Oh, it’s bad, then?’ Carol’s eyes glinted. ‘Come on, all girls together, you can tell me.’
‘You walked away from your family,’ Ella said fiercely. ‘You didn’t let them define you; why should I always be judged by what my father did?’
Carol put her hands up, ash flaking on to her forearm, but she was too focused on holding Ella’s gaze to feel the burn or notice the tremble in Ella’s fingers when she reached for her beer, needing a quick hit to calm her down.
‘Your father’s a bastard,’ Carol said, grinning lopsidedly. ‘They all are. But I think we’re going to put you to the test, Ella. See if you’re still Daddy’s little princess or your own woman.’