Doctor Who_ Rags - Mick Lewis [84]
The singer shrieked once, like a night-hidden fox. Then he leant closer to the mike.
‘Welcome to the village of the damned,’ he snarled, and the band began to play.
One last time.
200
Chapter Eighteen
‘I say we rush them, Sarge.’
Yates glanced up from his RT as he heard the corporal’s words.
She was standing next to Sergeant Benton, and her eyes were hard and determined.
Benton shrugged in response, unaware he was being watched by his superior. Yates waited for some more definitive reply from the sergeant. None came. He closed the connection on his RT
unit, dismissing the irritation the scene had left him with, and strolled over to where the Brigadier was studying a brief that had just been couriered to him from Whitehall.
‘Trouble, sir?’
The Brigadier looked up.‘Hmm?’
‘New orders?’
‘No. same orders, unfortunately. In duplicate.For me to sign and return ASAP.seems the RT isn’t good enough. They want me to be in possession of hard evidence in case of recriminations.’
‘I don’t understand, sir.’
‘No, Yates,’ the Brigadier said, folding the brief away inside his jacket pocket. ‘Neither do I.’
He glanced over at the restless ranks of travellers who were now actively beginning to taunt the soldiers protecting the stones. A few bottles were hurled and though no injuries had been sustained so far it was only a matter of time. The soldiers were becoming restless too, increasingly nervous and angry.
‘Whitehall wants me to maintain our defensive position.’ the Brigadier said gloomily, his fist clenching on his swagger stick.
‘Surely that’s wise, sir?’ said Yates with a puzzled expression.
The Brigadier turned to him and his eyes were small and hard, emphasising the sharpness of his tone. ‘Wise,Yates? How the devil can doing nothing in the face of such hostility possibly be deemed "wise"?’
Yates looked at his feet, taken aback. Then he remembered the 201
reason he had approached his superior officer. ‘We really should try to get Jo out of Cirbury,sir.’
‘Yes,Yates,’ snapped the Brigadier, obviously irritated at the note of reproach, however accidental, in the captain’s voice. ‘I’m fully aware of my responsibilities towards Miss Grant.’
Then why don’t you act on them? Yates felt like answering, but contained himself. It really wasn’t like the Brigadier to procrastinate over something as important as this. Perhaps he just had too much on his plate. After all, he seemed to need all his resources here. Still, if Yates volunteered to head for Cirbury by himself, or maybe with just a few soldiers as back-up, he might be able to free Jo from the obviously malign influence under which she had fallen.
‘Sir?’
Yates and the Brigadier turned to face Corporal Robinson, who was obviously agitated.
‘Yes, what is it, Corporal?’ the Brigadier inquired before Yates could say anything.
‘The boys want to take them on, sir. There’s a bad feeling brewing.’
Yates was speechless. What the deuce was a corporal doing voicing such concerns to UNIT’S commanding officer, for God’s sake? Was discipline slipping to such a disastrous degree? He waited for the Brigadier’s reprisal. Again, as with Benton, it was not forthcoming.
‘They’re a bad lot, sir, these hippies,’ continued the corporal, brushing a lock of sweaty blonde hair away from her forehead.
Her eyes were stark with prejudice. ‘The boys want to wade in, good and proper. There’s a lot of hatred.’
‘Indeed,’ was all the Brigadier said, hands clasped behind his back as he stared past the bitter-eyed corporal to the cordon of UNIT soldiers ringing the monument. The sun was going down fast.
‘I know what they mean, sir.’ Robinson hadn’t finished yet; she was just beginning to warm to her theme of hate. ‘My parents died
202
in a car crash caused by their sort.’ She gestured towards the group of travellers taunting the picket. ‘Stoned to their eyeballs, they were. Bloody, filthy hippies... They shouldn’t be free to do this, sin. They shouldn’t be free...’
Yates waited, dumbstruck by this extraordinary display of emotion and