Chapter IV Cosima #2
He pats her on the back and then – all at once – they are at the terminal gates.
Broccoli opens his rucksack and starts handing out their fluorescent tabards, each one emblazoned on the back with orange devil horns – the group’s insignia.
The tankers are already lining up at the gates, ready to criss-cross the country with their supplies of death fuel.
River catches Cosima’s eye. He lets his gaze linger for longer than necessary and then gives the smallest smile.
She catches it. There is a leaping sensation at the back of her throat, as if she has swallowed the wind.
River turns and strides towards the terminal, taking three others and a rolled-up Oblivion Oil banner with him. As the gates creak open, the four slip through the gap and into the darkness. Soon, they’ll start climbing the tankers.
Cosima, Peatbog and Meadow begin to unfurl the second protest banner and tie it to the gateposts; Broccoli stands in the middle of the road, hands pressed together calmly. His posture is erect, defiant and his face is serious and friendly. His features exude approachability.
In the gloomy light, a tanker driver leans out of his cab and beckons Broccoli over: ‘What the fuck are you doing, mate?’
‘We’re trying to raise awareness of the climate emergency,’ Broccoli says.
The tanker driver guffaws.
‘We’re already fucking aware. You lot are all over the news.’
‘We’re glad you’ve noticed.’
‘Yeah, yeah. We’ve noticed alright. Now kindly …’ The driver makes a brushing motion with his hands, as if shooing away midges. ‘Skedaddle. We’ve got a job to do.’
The driver turns back to his steering wheel.
A pair of fluffy pink dice hang from his rear-view mirror.
His attitude is dismissive, but not yet unkind.
Cosima sits cross-legged on the cold tarmac.
Meadow follows suit. Peatbog, who has arthritis in one knee, stays standing.
They know their role is to stay silent and immovable and to leave the chat to Broccoli.
The more time they can give the four others to scale the tankers inside the terminal, the better.
‘I’m afraid we can’t do that,’ Broccoli says.
The driver winds his window back down.
‘What’s that?’
‘I said, I’m afraid we can’t get out of your way.’
‘Bollocks. Course you can. You’ve made your point. Now let us get on with it.’
Broccoli shakes his head and places his hands against the driver’s door.
A queue of lorries has now formed behind them.
At the gates, Cosima checks her watch. Enough time for River and the others to have got into position.
She squints. Some 30 feet down the line, she can just about make out the fuzzy silhouettes of River and his crew.
They are sitting on top of the cylindrical tanks.
They’ve made it. She feels a mixture of pride, relief and fear. She chews the inside of her cheek.
The driver leans one arm against the open window and sucks his teeth.
Cosima sees muscled tattoos and a flashy watch.
There is the minutest shift in atmosphere.
A fissure. It’s the moment everything slides; the moment when a wave approaching the shore does not recede but grows impossibly until it blots out the horizon.
‘Look, mate,’ the driver is saying now, each word over-enunciated as if he is speaking to a particularly slow child. ‘Everybody’s aware. We all know you think the planet is fucked.’
Broccoli shrugs. ‘Respectfully, there’s a difference between awareness and action.’
The driver winds his window back up and starts the engine. The wave topples and crashes. A blaring of horns. Shouting.
‘You fucking eco-cunts!’
‘Get out of the fucking way!’
They are used to the language, but it still hurts. Each swear word cuts through the tatty remnants of Cosima’s bravado like a rapier. On the tarmac, she tries to ignore the threat of violence pressing at her back.
‘I’m going to fucking break your neck if you don’t get down off of there!’
‘Get a proper job, you cunt!’
Now a few drivers have climbed out of their cabs and are standing in a fleshy cluster, staring up at the protestors on top of the tankers and shouting at them to come down.
As the morning light begins to break, Cosima watches as the drivers jeer and spit and heckle, shaking closed fists at River, who she can see has now hung a blanket over the side of the metal cylinder.
It is spray-painted with a peace sign and ‘Oblivion Oil – Act Now to Save Our Planet’.
‘Get that shit off my truck,’ one of the men on the ground is shouting. He’s in a grubby white T-shirt and the waistband of his trousers keeps slipping, so he has to heave them up with his hands.
The drivers clamber back into their cabs. Another engine fires up. The drivers’ rage is gathering. Cosima can taste it on her tongue. She shuts her eyes and imagines River’s face staring back at her: his frowning gaze, the single raised mole on one of his cheeks, his long, straight nose.
There are police cars now, speeding towards the terminal gates. Sirens. A jangle of noise and light. Doors slamming. The sound of police asking what’s going on, their radios leaking tinnily into the night.
Her eyes snap open. She keeps facing forward, trying to follow River’s advice to ‘go floppy’ and to ‘embody non-violence’. Her breathing is shallow. Her teeth chatter with the cold but her chest is burning hot.
‘Pineapple!’
Cosima hears the sharpness in Meadow’s voice as she calls to her. Her thoughts are muddied. Her tie is too tight around her neck. She reaches up to loosen it, then realises she isn’t wearing a tie. She isn’t in school uniform. She is—
‘Pineapple! For fuck’s sake. Hold my hand. Hold it.’
Meadow’s face is right in front of hers. The older woman grips her roughly by the shoulders. Her mouth is so close that Meadow’s spittle lands on Cosima’s lips.
‘Where’ve you gone?’ Meadow is saying, the words rapid-fire. ‘Look at me. Pineapple. Look at me. Get back here. Focus. Focus on my eyes.’
Cosima stares at her sleepily. Meadow starts to rub her hands along Cosima’s arms.
‘She’s freezing, Peatbog, freezing.’
A soft weight around Cosima’s shoulders. Peatbog has given her his anorak, which smells of apple cores and cheddar.
‘You’re OK,’ Meadow says now. ‘You’re alright. Just breathe, yeah?’
Cosima nods.
‘Oh dear,’ Peatbog says. ‘That’s not good. That’s not good at all.’
Cosima follows his gaze towards the police cars, parked up on the kerb now, sirens silent but still flickering.
Two policemen are walking towards the line of trucks, waving their hands to try and get the drivers to stop, but the trucks keep moving forwards.
A sharp tang of exhaust fumes settles in the air.
Four trucks back, she can make out River seated on one of the giant shimmering silver tubes like a triumphant knight on horseback.
The Oblivion Oil banner shivers in the wind.
The tanker jolts forward with a spark of ignition.
Cosima imagines two fluffy pink dice knocking against each other in the driver’s cab.
She imagines tattooed arms resting on the steering wheel, a white face snarling behind the windscreen.
River raises his fist aloft as the metallic beast lurches ahead.
He begins to struggle. It’s impossible for him to stay in position as the lorry judders forward.
Impossible for him to grab hold of anything other than the banner, which is loosening and folding in on itself, dragging on the ground as River fights for purchase on the tank’s slippery surface.
The truck speeds up. The banner crumples on the tarmac.
And then, River disappears from Cosima’s sightline like a breeze-blown scrap of ash.
A thudding sound, muffled as if from underwater.
Snap. Crunch. A beat of silence. Running footsteps.
Men shouting. And one voice, raised above the others.
‘FUCK. WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU DONE?’
Meadow screams. She pushes Cosima aside with such force that Cosima almost falls over.
Meadow runs, trainers slapping against tarmac, across the terminal entrance and through the metal gates, sprinting and screaming and pushing the drivers out of her way because they’ve all climbed out of their tankers now, haven’t they?
They know they’ve gone too far. Fucked up royally, haven’t they?
And now the drivers are all huddled in a group around a dark shape on the ground and one of them is crouching down, a hand outstretched, holding on to … what, exactly? A slender piece of machinery or a branch or something long and thin. Cosima can’t make it out.
‘Why must we be so ghastly to each other?’ Peatbog says.
She stares harder, as if she can convince herself that it’s not true, that it hasn’t happened.
She sees a small flash of silvery white, like tree bark, but she knows it’s not a branch or a piece of machinery at all.
The dawning light has caught on a patch of pale skin.
It’s an arm. And the shadow on the tarmac is a body.
And the driver is holding on to a wrist, trying to find a pulse.
She remembers the first time she heard River speak, in the Tipworth Community Arts Centre near her parents’ house.
Cosima had seen hand-drawn posters stuck up on lampposts advertising the meeting and had decided to pop in on a whim.
She was interested in environmental issues but it was more that she was bored and the only shops in Tipworth were full of old lady cardigans and crafting beads.