Doctor Who_ Rags - Mick Lewis [81]
‘Where’s Nick?’ she said, as if she had only just remembered he existed.
Sin shrugged coldly while the punk continued to nuzzle her neck. Jo turned back to the drunk.
‘Get lost, loser,’ she said and pushed him back towards the jukebox. Then she smiled at Jimmy and accepted her pint. The coldness had gone. And so had Nick’s face.
By mid-afternoon the equipment was all set up, drum kit shining amongst the buttercups and daisies, amps positioned in front of grim standing stones, the generator hunched over the lip of the grassy trench that curved around the field. The roadies tuned the instruments and barked repetitively into the microphone. Birds spiced the air with summer song and sheep wandered curiously amongst the stones, watching the bizarre undertakings. The travellers - those who weren’t still in the pub - watched too, as curious as the sheep. This was it: this was the big one. The final gig. They all knew it, and there was a little sadness tinged in with the excitement. Villagers looked on too, and felt the excitement creeping into their own complacent souls, stirring wonder and other things.
Corporal Robinson was beginning to feel the strain. She listened to the taunts and jeers from the travellers camped before the UNIT cordon on Salisbury Plain. As yet they had made no concerted effort to force the point, but it was evident they wanted access to the stone circle in time for the solstice. But that they would not get. Even if she had to shoot every soddin’ one of them herself. And she could feel the kill-lust hot within her, like the need for sex. And whenever she got that particular itch, she always had to scratch it. Same with this.
She glanced at the Brigadier who was standing next to his jeep 194
talking to Captain Yates. The young captain had recovered from his ordeal at the cemetery, a large lump on his head the sole souvenir of his treatment at the hands of the ‘scum’ he’d been trying to infiltrate. She looked around for sergeant Benton, and there he was, inspecting the tight cordon that completely encircled the monument, checking weapons and morale. A good man, Benton. One of the boys - if that didn’t seem a strange salute coming from the petite corporal. But while she respected the Brigadier for his iron resolve, equanimity and bravery, the Brig would never be a man of the people; and nor would the slightly fey Yates, come to that. Benton was a solid trooper, a man’s man, and yes, a woman’s man too. She could even fancy him, if she put her mind to it. But right now she was putting her mind to the scum a few hundred yards away, who were congregating messily on the grass in front of their filthy vehicles.
The ringleader seemed to be the large biker roadie who was leaning beside his Vincent, smoking and apparently watching her as she inspected her segment of the cordon. She felt like flipping her rifle down from her shoulder and shooting the bastard there and then.
Maybe later, if things hotted up; oh yes, maybe we can save you for later, you scruffy, dirty, long-haired bastard.
It was around six in the evening when the roadies brought the final item out of the back of the cattle truck. A flat-bedded Bedford was positioned beneath the rear doors and, with much grunting and heaving, two roadies succeeded in levering the large rock down into the smaller vehicle. The gate leading into the field of stones was thrown open and the roadies drove into the meadow, heading for the standing stones.
The Bedford bounced and careened over tussocks and through beds of buttercups before coming to a rest at a specified location between two stones, a few yards from the band’s equipment. The roadies climbed out of the truck and secured ropes to the large stone, then signalled to some nearby punks to help them.
It took ten of them to pull the hefty rock down from the 195
Bedford and drag it to the desired spot. When it was finally erected the entire field of hippies