Doctor Who_ Rags - Mick Lewis [35]
that his men should not engage with ‘the hippies’ in any shape or form, and that all provocation was to be ignored. Strangely enough, there hadn’t been too much of that, but perhaps that was down to the Brigadier’s other directive: that the UNIT force keep a discreet distance from the rear of the shambolic convoy.
The convoy entered Bristol, and brought the city centre to a standstill. Chaos ensued as local constabulary tried to herd the rusting collection of vehicles away from bottleneck situations and the Brigadier barked orders at them over his RT to let the travellers go where they willed, just as long as it wasn’t out of Bristol again - another expressed desire of the PM. Where they willed, apparently, was south of the river. Totterdown.
Totterdown was a district of Bristol that had been levelled by a Second World War blitzkrieg and never quite managed to heal its bomb-site scars; it was an eccentric wasteland bounded by brightly coloured houses tilted against the steep hill on which the district was built.
The convoy led UNIT up Bath Road, one of the main routes skirting Totterdown, and then, to the Brigadier’s delight, turned right into Amos Vale cemetery. There was only one way out of this immense Victorian burial ground, he was informed; and that was the gateway through which the travellers had entered. He promptly issued orders to the local constabulary to seal off Bath Road to civilian traffic, and the convoy was successfully contained. The PM, if maybe not the damned Doctor, would be suitably satisfied.
‘It’s funny,’ Nick said as they pulled up beside the imposing crematorium chapel, constructed along the lines of a classical Greek temple,’but no one seems particularly bothered about Rod.
Nobody’s really mentioned him since he disappeared.’ He shot an accusatory glance at Sin, who was sitting cross-legged on her seat, demurely smoking a joint.
She looked at him and shrugged. I don’t give a shit.
Thanks, Sin. I used to love you. Still do, you sap.
88
Nick hurriedly turned his back on that thought and glared at Jimmy, who was leaning over the driver seat looking guiltily at him.
‘He bummed out,’ the driver offered: The tour must’ve freaked him.’
‘Nothing freaked Rod. He didn’t have the imagination.’
‘Well, he’s gone.’ This piece of far-searching philosophy was from Jo, who had become rather friendly with Sin since Glastonbury. Rather too friendly in Nick’s mind; she even seemed to have adopted Sin’s unhealthy (in Nick’s eyes, if not in the eyes of any other member of the convoy) infatuation with the band and the tour. Nick knew why he was staying with this mission, and it hurt him to admit it. He couldn’t leave Sin.
He stared glumly out of the window at the massive overgrown cemetery that climbed the hill above them. It was more of a wood bristling with elaborate tombs that ranged from simple crosses and unadorned headstones to baroque sepulchres and fantastic crypts hidden amongst almost impenetrable undergrowth. The convoy was pulling up in the small car park beside the Garden of Rest. A few headstones tilted with the impact of clumsy manoeuvring, and some vases cracked under desecrating wheels.
The cattle truck took out an obelisk with a brittle crunch and rolled to a standstill. Soon the gates were shut behind all the vehicles and the convoy became an encampment once more.
The bums watched the travellers arrive with befuddled amusement. They squatted around a dead fire at the top of the cemetery near where the pedestrian gate led out on to Hawthorne Street. They laughed raucously and spat and pissed themselves and did other things that bums do because they are blasted out of their minds and don’t care, because life has left them precious little to care about, even if they could remember how to. Six of them in all: Moggy, fat and bewildered, proclaiming to anyone who’d listen - and that was nobody - that all he’d ever wanted out of life was a laugh; Cliff, wasted and only in his late 89
thirties, the stain of his own piss ripe upon him; Lionel, big-boned