shaped, large blue spheres with, above them, straight bushy eyebrows which reminded Neil of pale and delicate caterpillars. The tenderness he felt for the child was equal to, if different from, the tenderness he felt for his mother. He could not now imagine life on the headland without either of them.
But the tap defeated him. Despite his tuggings with the wrench he couldn't get the screw to shift. Even this minor domestic task was apparently beyond his powers. He could hear Amy's derisive voice. 'You want to change the world and you can't change a washer.' After a couple of minutes he gave up the attempt, left the tool box by the cottage wall and walked to the edge of the cliff then slithered down to the beach. Crunching over the ridges of stones, he went down to the edge of the sea and almost violently wrenched off his shoes. It was thus, when the weight of anxiety about his failed ambitions, his uncertain future, became too heavy that he would find his peace, standing motionless to watch the veined curve of the poised wave, the tumult of crashing foam breaking over his feet, the wide intersecting arches washing over the smooth sand as the wave retreated to leave its tenuous lip of foam. But today even this wonder, continually repeated, failed to comfort his spirit. He gazed out to the horizon with unseeing eyes and thought about his present life, the hopelessness of the future, about Amy, about his family. Thrusting his hands in his pocket, he felt the crumpled envelope of his mother's last letter.
He knew that his parents were disappointed in him, although they never said so openly since oblique hints were just as effective: 'Mrs Reilly keeps on asking me, what is Neil doing? I don't like to say that you're living in a caravan with no proper job.' She certainly didn't like to say that he was living there with a girl. He had written to tell them about Amy since his parents constantly threatened to visit and, unlikely as this was actually to happen, the prospect had added an intolerable anxiety to his already anxiety-ridden life.
'I'm giving a temporary home to an unmarried mother in return for typing help. Don't worry, I shan't suddenly present you with a bastard grandchild.'
After the letter had been posted he had felt ashamed. The cheap attempt at humour had been too like a treacherous repudiation of Timmy whom he loved. And his mother hadn't found it either funny or reassuring. His letter had produced an almost incoherent farrago of warnings, pained reproaches and veiled references to the possible reaction of Mrs Reilly if she ever got to know. Only his two brothers surreptitiously welcomed his way of life. They hadn't made university and the difference between their comfortable life style – houses on an executive estate, en suite bathrooms, artificial coal fires in what they called the lounge, working wives, a new car every two years and timeshares in Majorca – provided both with agreeable hours of self-satisfied comparisons which he knew would always end with the same conclusion, that he ought to pull himself together, that it wasn't right, not after all the sacrifices Mum and Dad had made to send him to college, and a fine waste of money that had proved.
He had told Amy none of this but would have happily confided had she shown the least interest. But she asked no questions about his past life and told him nothing about hers. Her voice, her body, her smell were as familiar to him as his own, but essentially he knew no more about her now than when she had arrived. She refused to collect any welfare benefits, saying that she wasn't going to have DHSS snoopers visiting the caravan to see if she and Neil were sleeping together. He sympathized. He didn't want them either, but he felt that for Timmy's sake she should take what was on offer. He had given her no money but he did feed both of them, and this was difficult enough on his grant. No one visited her and no one telephoned. Occasionally she would receive a postcard, coloured views usually of London with nondescript, meaningless messages, but as far as he knew she never replied.
They had so little in common. She helped spasmodically with PANUP but he was never sure how far she was actually committed. And he knew that she found his pacifism stupid. He could recall a conversation only this morning.
'Look, if I live next door to an enemy and he has a knife, a gun and a machine gun and I've got the same, I'm not going to chuck mine before he chucks his. I'll say, OK, let the knife go, then the gun maybe, then the machine gun. Him and me at the same time. Why should I throw mine away and leave him with his?'
'But one of you has to make a start, Amy. There has to be a beginning of trust. Whether it's people or nations, we have to find the faith to open our hearts and hands and say, 'Look, I've nothing. I've only my humanity. We inhabit the same planet. The world is full of pain but we needn't add to it. There has to be an end of fear.''
She had said obstinately: 'I don't see why he should chuck his weapons once he knows I've got nothing.'
'Why should he keep them? He's got nothing to fear from you any more.'
'He'd keep them because he liked the feeling of having them and because he might like to use them some day. He'd like the power and he'd like knowing he had me where he wanted me. Honestly, Neil, you're so naive sometimes. That's how people are.'
'But we can't argue like that any more, Amy. We aren't talking about knives and guns and machine guns. We're talking about weapons neither of us could use without destroying ourselves and probably our whole planet. But it's good of you to help with PANUP when you don't sympathize.'
She had said: 'PANUP's different. And I sympathize all right. I just think that you're wasting your time writing letters, making speeches, sending out all those pamphlets. It won't do any good. You've got to fight people their way.'
'But it's done good already. All over the world ordinary people are marching, demonstrating, making their voices heard, letting the people in power know that what they want is a peaceful world for themselves and their children. Ordinary people like you.'
And then she had almost shouted at him: 'I'm not ordinary! Don't you call me ordinary! If there are ordinary people, I'm not one of them.'
'I'm sorry, Amy. I didn't mean it like that.'
'Then don't say it.'
The only cause they had in common was a refusal to eat meat. Soon after she arrived at the caravan he had said: 'I'm vegetarian but I don't expect you to be, or Timmy.' He had wondered as he spoke whether Timmy was old enough to eat meat. He had added: 'You can buy a chop occasionally in Norwich if you feel like it.'
'What you have is all right by me. Animals don't eat me, and I don't eat them.'
'And Timmy?'
'Timmy has what I give him. He's not fussy.'
Nor was he. Neil couldn't imagine a more accommodating child nor, for most of the time, a more contented one. He had found the second-hand playpen advertised on a newsagent's board in Norwich and had brought it back on the top of the van. In it Timmy would crawl for hours or pull himself up and stand precariously balancing, his napkin invariably falling about his knees. When thwarted he would rage, shutting his eyes tight, opening his mouth and holding his breath before letting out a bellow of such terrifying power that Neil half expected the whole of Lydsett to come running to see which of them was tormenting the child. Amy never smacked him but would jerk him on to her hip and dump him on her bed saying: 'Bloody awful noise.'
'Shouldn't you stay with him? Holding his breath like that, he could kill himself.'
'You daft? He won't kill himself. They never do.'
And he knew now that he wanted her, wanted her when it was obvious that she didn't want him and would never again risk rejection. On the second night at the caravan she had slid back the partition between his bed and hers and had walked quietly up to his bed and had stood gravely looking down at him. She had been completely naked. He had said: 'Look, Amy, you don't have to pay me.'
'I never pay for anything, at least not like that. But have it your own way.' After a pause she had said: 'You gay or something?'
'No, it's just that I don't like casual affairs.'
'You mean you don't like them, or you don't think you ought to have them?'
'I suppose I mean that I don't think I ought to have them.'
'You religious, then?'
'No, I'm not religious, not in the ordinary way. It's just that I think sex is too important to be casual about. You see, if we slept together and I – if I disappointed you – we might quarrel and then you'd walk out. You'd feel that you had to. You'd leave, you and Timmy.'
'So what, I walk out.'
'I wouldn't want you to do that, not because of anything I'd done.'
'Or hadn't done. OK, I expect you're right.' Another pause, and then she had added: 'You'd mind then, if I walked out?'
'Yes,' he said, 'I'd mind.'
She had turned away. 'I always do walk out in the end. No one has ever minded before.'
