The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [172]
‘They set fire to Mum’s van, didn’t they?’ I ask.
John nods. ‘Meg tried to go over there but I grabbed her arm and wouldn’t let go. The doors were open. I could see the bunks, pillows still dented, covers half pulled up, your old Ted lying on the quilt next to a pair of your shorts. The guy jumped out of the back of the van, a metal can in his hand. He tossed a lighted rag inside and everything caught at once with a whoosh. Then the guys with the sledgehammers got fed up of battering Biro’s Citron into scrap metal and went for Mick’s van, where you were.’
Keir, first in, had wriggled along the bench seat towards the steering-wheel, and I threw myself face down on the cracked brown plastic upholstery. On thy belly…The van was parked with its nose towards the woodland, away from the clearing. We couldn’t see what was happening, but from all the shouting I knew it was something bad. There was a crash, glass breaking. Maybe this was what Rissole meant, about Christians hating pagans.
‘Indy,’ said Keir, his face all crumpled. ‘Where’s Dad?’ He never called him Dad, always Mick, so he had to have been frightened.
‘John’s with him,’ I said. ‘John’s been a soldier. He’s got a power animal.’
‘Better be a fucking tiger, then,’ said Keir, trying for brave. He was clutching my hand, his fingernails digging into my palm.
‘Course it’s a fucking tiger.’ Better not let on it was only a big rabbit. ‘But, anyway, I’m going to lock the doors.’ I sat up, and risked a look out of the side window. Mum and John were standing by the fire. Someone else was there, in front of them, and I couldn’t see what was happening. ‘I can see your dad,’ I lied. ‘He’s with John and Mum.’ I pushed down the button to lock the door, then squirmed back along the seat and locked my side too. ‘Maybe we should stay down. Mum wants us to hide.’
Keir slid down, almost under the steering-wheel. I lay along the bench seat, my nose full of the sweaty, farty smell of the cracked plastic. There was a flat whump, like someone had kicked a soggy football, and the glass on the passenger side shone with orange light, tipping Keir’s blond hair with red-gold.
‘What’s happening?’ Not being able to see was really frightening. I couldn’t remember the Battle of the Beanfield, when the police had attacked the Peace Convoy, but Mum had told me about helicopters overhead and policemen with shields and sticks, and John punching one of them and ending up flat on the ground with three of them kicking him.
Keir shuffled upright to peer out of the side window. The glow from outside reflected his face onto the windscreen, a crumpled autumn leaf, golden brown and orange. I thought he was probably crying.
Then the windscreen exploded.
‘When the guy with the sledgehammer went for Mick’s van, your mother and I forgot we were looking down the barrels of a shotgun. Soon as I moved, I got the rifle butt in my face, but Meg managed to duck under his arm, and was at the van before anyone could stop her, pulling on the door handle and screaming her head off that there were kids in there.’
‘We’d locked the doors,’ I say. ‘I thought that was what she wanted us to do.’
‘She was terrified the pyromaniac bastard was chucking petrol in the back already, though he was nowhere near. The bloke with the sledgehammer was in a trance–couldn’t work out how this fury had got past the shotgun, which right then was being jabbed handle end into my stomach. At the back of the van, the other shotgun’s screaming On yer feet, at Mick and Biro. Get up, you cunts. Then Keir’s little face appears over the lip of the windscreen, tears rolling down his face and shouting for his dad…’
* * *
Mum’s yelling and there’s glass all over the place, can feel it in my hair, it’s on the seat and