The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [167]
‘Why were we there?’ I ask. ‘Why did we go to Avebury that year, not Stonehenge?’
John sighs. ‘Because of a party. Your mother wanted to be there, nothing I could do to talk her out of it, or out of taking you along: she was being paid to dance, first time ever, by the people organizing it. Two little creeps from Clifton College she’d met in the pub in Montpelier, who had that poster of her dancing the sun up at Stonehenge on their study wall’
‘Louis?’ I have to dredge the name out of the sludge at the bottom of the crystal. ‘And…’
‘Patrick. Eighteen, hardly left school, spotted a business opportunity. Summer of Love? Summer of Money. They were running huge outdoor parties. People were paying to go, driving miles in convoys of cars from London, Bristol, dancing the whole weekend.’
Louis and Patrick were camping in a derelict farmworker’s cottage half a mile off the Ridgeway. Mum took me with her when she went to see them, soon after we arrived at Tolemac. The house was almost hidden among trees and scrub, the only sign of occupation a black VW Golf GTi parked outside, at the end of a valley littered with sarsen stones like dead sheep. The boys were sitting in what had once been the garden, on folding picnic chairs that were absurdly low for their long legs. On a table stood tall, misted glasses and a bottle of Pimms–they had mint leaves and cucumber and slices of lemon, and ice, for God’s sake: how did they produce ice in a tumbledown cottage that had no electricity? They must have had a generator because inside it was crammed with eighties hi-tech: boom boxes, an Amstrad computer with a green screen, and mobile phones hefty enough to make your arm ache when you held them to your ear. Mum left me in the garden while Louis showed her round inside. By the time they came out of the cottage again Patrick, wearing Walkman earphones, was asleep on his picnic chair, his T-shirt rucked up exposing a hairy stomach.
‘Meg,’ Louis was saying, ‘you think we’re being paranoid. But we could be stuffed if anyone finds out the location in advance.’
‘Your mother didn’t take it seriously,’ says John. ‘She didn’t understand this was the end for the free festivals, where people used to trade skills–half an hour of reiki in exchange for a bundle of perfumed candles, or servicing the engine of your van. Heroin dealers’ cars used to get burned out at the free parties. Now they were hanging round the back of the sound systems offering free samples and nobody gave a shit. Angelfeather had broken up by 1989–poor old Dan Angel was already in a mental home. But Meg thought she could go on dancing for ever, and she’d already told someone about Louis and Patrick’s rave: Mick Feather, who turned up Solstice Eve with his band of hangers-on, including Riz and a zoned-out dickhead called Biro. Mick’d taken Keir to Stonehenge, but they couldn’t get near the stones–been chased all over Salisbury Plain by police helicopters.’
Tried to break through the exclusion zone on foot, said Mick. Fuckin pig helicopter spotted us, pinned us down in a fuckin bush, couldn’t move for the fuckin downwind, and the pig cavalry came steamin over the fuckin horizon, fuckin pitched battle. Wasn’t anythin to do but fuckin run…
‘I thought it was idiotic to take a kid,’ says John. There’d been violence the year before, anarchists from Class War hurling beer bottles at the police until they got fed up and baton-charged the crowd. But Mick thought if the Establishment was getting heavy, maybe this was Keir’s last chance to experience Solstice at the stones, could be a memory that’d shape his whole life. When they couldn’t reach Stonehenge, they turned round and headed for Avebury’
Can Keir kip down in your van? Mick asked Mum. Little bastard kicks in his sleep.
‘We’ve only two bunks—’
‘He can go in with Indy’
‘He can go on the floor.’
Keir’s arrival meant I had someone to roam with