Doctor Who_ Rags - Mick Lewis [85]
The Brigadier’s mouth was set in a stern line. It was Benton who intervened, but even his voice carried no conviction. ‘That’ll do, Robinson.’
From beyond the monument the chanting intensified as the falling sun threw golden spears of light across the impartial sarsons.
Jo could feel it; she knew Sin and Jimmy must be able to feel it too. The whole village could surely sense the vibrations. The vibe.The vibe that had been trembling through them all ever since that first incredible gig back in Princetown, which seemed like years ago now - a lifetime ago. But now it was stronger, thrumming towards some peak, orchestrated by the wild playing of the band.
‘It’s the ley lines,’ Jimmy shouted next to her.
She turned to him, startled. ‘What do you mean?’ she shouted back.
He shrugged, still watching the cavorting band.’Dunno. But it is.’
Ley lines Jo tried to concentrate on the idea, thrown rather off guard by guttersnipe Jimmy’s sudden flash of erudition. She knew Cirbury and Stonehenge were reputed to be ley-line nexuses, but what did that have to do with Dartmoor, and the band? She had very little understanding of what a ley line was.
She imagined the Doctor lecturing her, and the need to know suddenly vanished and hate returned. Memories of all the patronisation, all the condescension, returned in force, stoked by the vicious riffs of the guitarist. Her heart beat in time with the drums and her fists clenched.
203
You’re a reasonably intelligent young woman, Jo.
Did you fail Latin as well as science?
Stir your stumps, Jo.
BASTARD!!
If he were here now she would reduce him to soddin’ stumps.
The constant humiliation and put-downs. She should have been carefree and happy, finding a nice exciting bloke to spend her days with, not chaperoned through time and space by a supercilious old fop in a box.
Sin closed her eyes and the music took her. She felt hornier than she’d ever felt in her life, and it had nothing to do with mere sex.
This urge went beyond the body. She pictured herself dancing with the great god Pan in some secret glade deep, deep in the darkest wood. A stream chuckled magically in the background and wood pigeons cooed and badgers nodded at her as she danced with the cloven-hoofed one. And now He took her in his arms and smiled a wicked smile and the horns curved back into the tangled bramble-hair and the eyes, oh my God, the eyes...
such fierce beauty she had never beheld. And then she opened her eyes as the music lulled, and the first thing she saw was Nick’s body, still slumped against a stone behind the band, picked out by a spot of moonlight. She quickly closed her eyes again and waited for the music to come for her.
Jimmy was dreaming of school. Only this time, when the teacher belittled him for his poor understanding of percentages and fractions and ordered him to stand outside the classroom for catapulting paper balls at the rest of the class, instead of sheepishly doing as he was told, instead of taking it - he stood up and climbed on the desk so that all the kids could see him, and faced down the teacher with a snarl that he was only beginning to learn how to use at fifteen years of age. ‘Hey, Mr Fryer: kiss this,’
he called, swivelling his backside towards the man. Then, as the teacher’s face flamed with red rage and he bore down on this 204
rebel of rebels, the classroom door burst open and in came Jimmy’s gang. All paper tatters and worn leather, dyed punk hair and ferocious boots; and the girls he’d always fancied and who never spoke to him normally could see that he had the coolest, meanest mates as the gang ripped the clothes from old Fryer and displayed his minuscule member for them all to laugh at before pounding him senseless, trashing the class and burning the school. Jimmy was striding through the smoking corridors with his new gang, and the girls were the only ones allowed out of the inferno