Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

       The sign in lights on the platform showed that our train was approaching.  All my instincts to always do things timorously thrust at me, urging me to get up, to move towards the end of the platform. We both sat.  Waited for the train to pull in, to stop. People alighted, others boarded the train.  At the last minute, just as the doors were about to close, I grabbed his hand and we jumped on to the train.  The doors closed behind us.  We stood there looking at each other and then burst out laughing.

       ‘Ducking and diving’, we said together and went on laughing, now nearly hysterically.  Finally we sat down.

       ‘When do you think we’ll stop doing that?’  I asked.

       He didn’t have to ask what I meant.  We both knew.  The habits of nearly half our lifetimes were hard to break.  They’d been drummed into us over and over again.

       All the secret meetings back home always started with the drill, going round each member of the cell. ‘How did you get here?’ the leader would ask each of us, checking that we’d left at least half an hour ahead of time, that we’d travelled by public transport,  no matter how dangerous it was for some of us, especially the women.  That we’d checked to see that we weren’t followed, by waiting until the trains were nearly closing their doors before boarding.  That we’d been the last to alight at each destination.

       I wondered now what had kept us so obedient.  Commitment?  The good of the cause?  I can remember the one time I had bucked against the apparent senselessness of it all.

       The leadership had come to London, where the external cell - our group - was stationed.  I was five and a half months pregnant.  I knew that at some stage we would be disciplined for my pregnancy. Already I was fearful,  not knowing when the blow would fall - what form the disciplinary action would take.

       Every morning we’d rise at five or six - the two of us and the two staying with us.  We’d spend two hours - the protection of the leadership who  had to return  home,   warranted an extra hour on the road - and zigzag across London, ducking and diving for two hours, on and off trains and buses to within a mile or so of where the leaders were staying, in the street behind our flat.  The meetings  would go on until midnight and then we’d duck and dive home again.  Sometimes  it would go on until two a.m. and then we would duck and dive on foot.        

       Was it really nearly eight years ago?  I remembered  as clearly as if it were yesterday,  the first time I began to protest.  Short of sleep, desperately worried about the effects on my baby of sitting for more      than twelve hours each day in a gas-filled little room, sleeping no more than a few hours before the two  hours of ducking and diving in the morning, I finally broke down.

       We were alone at last - in the bathroom - our only refuge.   Careless of the other two being within earshot in the small flat,  I burst out, ‘They’re trying to kill the baby.  They couldn’t make me kill it like the other one.  Now they’re trying to kill it.  They’re wearing me out and not giving me enough to eat.  They want me to lose it’. I was weeping hysterically.

       He stopped brushing his teeth. I was dimly aware that this possibility had crossed his mind too.  He reached down to pluck me up from under the  bathroom sink,  where I was curled up, hugging my belly.  I knew the helplessness that he felt.  Did he, I wondered, still believe that all this was necessary?  Did he still believe the ducking and diving was necessary to protect the leaders? Here in London? In this day and age when there were far  more sophisticated ways of tracking people and finding out what they were up to, were the methods of  Victor  Serge really of any use against one of the most sophisticated security systems in the world? I finally stopped crying.  I dragged myself to bed, and through the next five weeks, I listened with him to the abuse heaped upon both of us for letting my  pregnancy proceed. I listened in disgust as the two other members of the London cell - the two who knew how close to the edge leaving home and the termination of the first pregnancy had pushed me -  joined in the accusations.

       Lack of commitment to the cause?   Who, me?   Us?   We’d left our old and sick parents, worried to death about us, virtually destitute at home, without any  indication that we were leaving for good.  Failure to obey instructions?  Who, me?  Us?   We’d come to a strange country, abandoned all hope of return to our country at the drop of a hat, aborted our first child.

       What were they going to do, I wondered tiredly?  What action could they possibly take?  It was then, I think, that I first began to realise that there was very little they could do to us.  They didn’t really have the power to hurt us or our parents.  All the threats they had used to keep us in London and obedient to the rules were empty.  Why, then, did I stay?

       I looked at him.  I knew why I stayed.  I wasn’t sure whether I would lose him if I left the organisation.  I had seen the realisation dawn on him that the methods of the organisation were wrong. I also knew the strength of his belief in their cause.  Our cause. And because neither of us knew of anyone else who would support the cause, we would stay, I knew.  Stay in spite of the crazy methods, the wanton cruelty. We would duck and dive on instruction.  We would live in poverty.  We would live in ways that our bewildered families at home could not begin to understand.  We would live these lives apart from the rest of the world.

       It was the baby who rescued me.  It was hard to duck and dive with a tiny infant.  I made excuses.  I was berated.  Every meeting started with hours of ranting and raving from ‘our leader’ about my laxity in ducking and diving, my lateness.  So I started to lie.  The baby wasn’t well.  The baby wasn’t sleeping.  Slowly, with her help, I slipped away from them.

       But he stayed.  No amount of argument on principles relating to equality of childcare responsibilities could get him out of the rituals. To them, I was no longer a comrade.  I could stay home and take care of the child. He was a comrade. He was exempt from family responsibilities.  I almost didn’t care. I had most of my life back. I had the baby. One day .... one day, I would have him back too.

       I wondered now, as I have often since those days, if he knew that my obsessive clinging to her was rooted in her saving of my sanity. I had given her life.  She had given me back my life.  And over the years, as the organisation imploded and fragmented, she gave him his back too.  Slowly, hopefully, I watched as he too began to lie to them, to slip away from them.  I thought bitterly about how hard the habits were to break, shuddering at the thought of a few weeks ago.

       We’d been showing the sister-in-law around London.  I still don’t quite know what happened.  Somehow, I held her and my little girl back until the last minute.  We boarded just before the doors closed.  I pushed them on ahead of me, and was still holding my girl’s hand, when the door closed on her arm. I still have nightmares recalling her terrified screams. How close I had come to losing my saviour, my life. So close to losing her - for how much longer would the remnants of our past life blight hers?  And ours?

       I reached for his hand.  We giggled again.   But I was aware of the bitter tinge as I asked:

       ‘Do you suppose we’ll ever stop ducking and diving?’