The Four of Us (9 page)

She wondered if Kiki, Artemis and Primmie were listening to Miss Fothergill's biased presentation of Charles I as a martyr, and doubted it. Kiki certainly had too much on her mind and Artemis wasn't much cop at history at the best of times. As for Primmie … Primmie would be trying to pay attention, but she'd be feeling too much anguish on Kiki's behalf to be able to write a grade A essay afterwards.

She doodled on the cover of her rough book, wondering whether or not to tell her mother about Kiki's predicament. Unlike her friends'mothers, who, for differing reasons, would most certainly not be helpful, her own mother was fairly unshockable. It came of her being a university lecturer and, like Kiki's parents, being relatively young. Whereas Primmie's mum was in her fifties and Artemis's mother was in her forties, her own mother, like Kiki's, was only thirty-eight. In fact, Primmie's remark about parties to raise money for the Viet Cong was in reference to a party her mother had thrown and which dozens of her mother's left-wing, politically active friends had attended.

So … Perhaps her mother would know of a clinic where Kiki could go for an abortion without her having to be referred by her family doctor. There were supposedly going to be loads of such clinics very soon, when the new abortion law really swung into action.

‘Charles was also an innovator in the arts,' Miss Fothergill was saying, continuing her eulogy. ‘He was a connoisseur of pictures and architecture and of the Baroque culture, of which his court was then the most elaborate expression.'

A tiny ball of paper, thrown from the row behind her, landed on her desk. Miss Fothergill, becoming excited by Charles's patronage of Rubens and Van Dyck, was oblivious.

The note read:
If Cromwell hadn't chopped the boring old fart's head off, I'd have done it for him!
It was from Kiki.

Geraldine grinned and put the note in her pencil case. Somehow, some way, she and Artemis and Primmie would sort things out for Kiki, and if the solution was going to cost a lot of money then Ty would jolly well have to stump up – even if it meant his having to sell his Harley in order to do so.

By Sunday morning, she still hadn't spoken to her mother, who had been at a conference all week and was desperately trying to get back from it in time for the demo. Resolving to speak to her that evening, no matter what, and wearing trainers, a denim jacket and jeans, a pair of wool gloves tucked in a back pocket, she set off for Charing Cross station, where she was meeting up with Artemis and Primmie before going on to the rally in Trafalgar Square. Well aware of what probably lay ahead, the gloves were for any barricades the police might have put up outside the embassy and that, along with other demonstrators, she had every intention of pulling down.

On the train from Chislehurst to Charing Cross she had plenty to think about, for not only had she not yet spoken to her mother, she hadn't spoken to Francis, either.

This was because she didn't know where Francis was.

‘He's been rusticated,' her Uncle Piers had snapped when, failing to get him on the phone at his university lodgings, she'd telephoned to see if he was at home for some reason. ‘He was caught smoking cannabis. Where he is now I've no idea. If he gets in touch with you, Geraldine, let me know.'

She'd said she would, knowing that if, when she saw Francis, he asked her not to tell his father where he was, she wouldn't. That she would see him she didn't have a minute's doubt. He, and a convoy of his friends, would most certainly be at the demo.

She also had Primmie's attitude to Kiki's pregnancy to consider. In the six years the four of them had been friends they had never fallen out – not seriously that is – over anything. Now, however, Primmie was adamant that Kiki shouldn't have an abortion, but should have the baby and then, if she didn't want to keep it, should give it up for adoption. Fortunately, she hadn't said this to Kiki yet, but it was only a matter of time.

Geraldine chewed the corner of her lip. The thing was, even if Kiki wanted to have the baby, how could she? Her mother was in no condition to stand by her and help her through the months of pregnancy. Now in a drying-out clinic there was, for the first time according to Kiki, a real chance that her mother was going to master her alcohol addiction. If, because of her pregnancy, her mother hit the bottle again, Kiki would never forgive herself.

The train rumbled into Charing Cross and she jumped off it alongside a whole clutch of fellow passengers carrying anti-war placards and posters.

Artemis and Primmie were waiting for her as arranged beneath the station clock – and so was Kiki, armed with a Viet Cong flag.

‘I thought coming to the rally would take my mind off things,' she said, her face pale and strained. ‘I take it you haven't talked to your mother yet?'

‘No. She gets back some time today.' Not wanting to create a situation where Primmie might be tempted to tell Kiki exactly how she felt about things, she turned her attention to Artemis, who was, as usual, wrongly dressed for the occasion.

‘It's a
demo
, Artemis,' she said exasperatedly, ‘not a wedding.'

Everyone, even Primmie, regarded Artemis's plum suede mini-skirted suit and matching high-heeled boots in despair.

‘I still wanted to be nicely dressed,' Artemis said defensively.

‘Aren't you freezing?' Primmie was very sensibly protected against the brisk March breeze in a windproof jacket and jeans.

‘No.' Artemis shivered slightly. ‘Now are you three going to spend all day criticizing what I'm wearing, or are we going to Trafalgar Square?'

‘We're going to Trafalgar Square.'

As Geraldine led the way, she couldn't help wondering if Artemis had dressed to the nines because she was hoping to run into Francis. Not that she was frightened that Francis might fall for Artemis if he were chased hard enough, because she wasn't. Blue-eyed blondes simply weren't his type. Her concern about Artemis's obvious crush on Francis was that up to now she'd never told Artemis – or Kiki and Primmie – that she and Francis intended marrying when she was twenty-one When she did make her announcement – and it would have to be pretty soon, because it was a secret that was growing harder and harder to keep – she didn't want Artemis feeling that by making a play for Francis she'd made a fool of herself.

‘America
out
! America
out
! America
out
!'

The chanting from the square was deafening.

‘I told you it was going to be big,' she shouted as they pushed and shoved in order to keep moving forward.

‘Now I know why people bring placards,' Primmie gasped as a placard-carrying student jostled past her. ‘It's so they can use them to push people out of the way.'

Once in the packed square, under her direction and with Kiki's help, they achieved the near impossible. Although Landseer's four lions were already crowded and draped with demonstrators, they managed not only to scramble up one of the plinths but also to squeeze a way on to the lion itself.

‘America
out
! America
out
! America
out
!' Kiki shouted triumphantly at full belt, her face still unnaturally pale beneath the sizzling red of her hair.

Only Artemis didn't join in with the spirit of the occasion, and that was because her high-heeled boots and straight suede mini-skirt had meant she'd been unable to do much scrambling and had had to suffer the indignity of being heaved and hauled like a sack of potatoes up on to the lion's freezing cold and slippery bronze back.

Having secured herself a bird's-eye view, Geraldine began scouring the sea of heads.

‘How many people do you think are here, Geraldine?' Primmie shouted across to her over the roar of chanting, her eyes bright with zeal, her cheeks wind-stung and rosy.

‘I don't know,' she shouted back. ‘Seventy thousand, eighty thousand. Too many for me to be able to see where Francis is.'

The chanting died down, placards and Viet Cong flags continuing to wave as Vanessa Redgrave walked to the front of the speakers' platform and launched into a passionate denunciation of United States military involvement in the Vietnam war.

For once, Geraldine didn't hang on her every word. Where was Francis? Why hadn't he phoned her to let her know about his having being rusticated? What if he'd no intention of sitting out his rustication at home in Sussex? What if he decided to do some travelling instead? It had become the in thing to go to San Francisco, the city of love and peace and psychedelic drugs and, knowing how furious his father would be at his having been sent down, he might very well have decided to sit things out in San Francisco for a few weeks.

As Vanessa Redgrave's speech came to an end and the enormous crowd began moving out of the square en route to the American Embassy, Geraldine helped Kiki and Primmie lower Artemis back to ground level, a frown furrowing her brow.

Francis was impulsive to the point of fecklessness. It was one of the reasons her Uncle Piers had always been so pleased about Francis wanting to spend time with her. ‘You're steadiness will rub off on him, Geraldine,' he would say, his arm round her shoulders. ‘You're the sister he needs and hasn't got.'

Nearly always when Francis did something stupid he would tell her. When he was nine and she was six and the fire he'd started in a nearby wood whilst playing a war game had got out of hand, she'd been the one he'd run to and told. And she, level headed and sensible as always, had climbed on to a chair to reach the phone and had rung for the fire brigade.

‘Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh!'
Kiki and Artemis and Primmie were chanting as, with arms linked, they marched in the middle of a procession of thousands towards Grosvenor Square.

Though the crush of the crowd meant they were wedged like sardines, Geraldine was mentally miles away.

When Francis had been twelve and had made himself violently ill after raiding their grandfather's drinks cabinet and experimenting with a mixture of cointreau and crèmé de menthe, she was the one who had taken the blame, saying it had been her idea and that she'd been trying to make a drink that was a pretty colour and that Francis had drunk it only to keep her happy.

And when she had been fifteen and Francis eighteen and he had taken his father's Lamborghini without permission, running it into one of the trees on the family estate, she had said that she had been the one at the wheel. It had been then, when he‘d swung her round and round and hugged her half to death out of gratitude, that things had taken on a new dimension between them.

Suddenly they hadn't been just hugging as they'd always hugged. Suddenly they'd been kissing and touching and rolling round on the floor in a way that had nothing remotely cousinly about it.

From then on, the plan had been that when she was eighteen they would tell everyone that they were in love and that when she was twenty-one they would get married. Nowhere in the plan had Francis haring off alone been mentioned.

‘I think things are going to get tricky!' Kiki shouted across to her as they entered the square. ‘Have you seen how many police there are? The embassy's surrounded.'

‘And we're going to storm it!' a bearded, duffle-coated figure marching nearby them yelled informatively as their section of the crowd launched into a thunderous rendering of ‘We Shall Overcome'. ‘We're going to give the bastards something to think about!'

Geraldine swung her head towards him. In his hands was a homemade battering ram. Swiftly she looked to her left and her right. Nearly everyone, apart from themselves, was carrying something that could be used to help break through the police cordon.

‘You OK, Prim?' she asked, her adrenalin rush touched by a flicker of anxiety.

‘Course I'm OK.' Primmie had seen too many photographs of women and children killed or horribly injured as a result of US air attacks to be deterred at the thought of storming the embassy.

Police were now blocking off access to the side streets and Geraldine realized that even if they'd wanted to opt out they couldn't. The crowd was one of scores of thousands – possibly a hundred thousand. It was the biggest – and angriest – anti-war demo in London ever. And they were smack bang in the middle of it.

‘America out!'
she shouted with such force her throat hurt.
‘America out! America out!'

Fighting with police was taking place on the fringes of the crowd and in the area in front of the cordon. Paint cans were being thrown, splattering against the embassy's massive granite-grey façade. The gardens round it were being invaded, daffodils in their hundreds crushed and broken beneath an army of trampling feet.

‘Keep close together!' Geraldine shouted as Artemis stumbled. ‘If we get separated we'll never find each other again!'

A concerted roar went up as, under a hail of stones, part of the police cordon wavered and then collapsed. For a hysterical moment Geraldine thought they were actually going to do it; actually going to storm the embassy and make a statement to end all statements against America's presence in Vietnam.

‘I can't breathe!' Artemis was gasping, buffeted relentlessly forwards by the force of the crush and then, before Geraldine could shout at her not to panic, another roar went up: ‘The Cossacks are coming!'

As mounted police began riding into the core of the rally, trying to break it up, and police on foot hurtled in with truncheons raised, Geraldine's common sense kicked in.

‘We've got to get out of this!' she yelled, but only Primmie heard her.

Artemis and Kiki were now yards away, trapped in the centre of a group armed with missiles that the police were struggling to reach. The fighting now was wide-scale. Police as well as demonstrators were hitting out bloody faced. Feet away from her a kaftan-clad youth was wrestled to the ground to be handcuffed and hauled, kicking and struggling, to one of the scores of Black Marias crowding the side streets. Ambulance sirens were wailing as the number of injured grew.