Doctor Who: Rags (12 page)

Willis knew he shouldn’t, but he couldn’t resist rankling the man just a little more. ‘I know why the convoy is ruffling your feathers so much, my friend: might it not be to do with the fact that whoever is behind this magical mayhem tour is organising a protest that has gone so much further than anything you and your... organ... could ever initiate with regard to shaking up the establishment?’

The line went quiet for a moment. He’d certainly scored with that comment. He smiled as he imagined the man seething with fury and wishing all kinds of working-class violence on Willis’s upper-middle-class person. He enjoyed the moment, then gave in to practicalities; he did need this wretch on his side after all.

‘Your chance will come, Mr Pole. As I said, the convoy coming to Bristol couldn’t be more opportune. What superb camouflage it will provide for you to perpetrate your great act against the monarchy. That’s if these hippies - or whatever they are - stay in the city long enough for you to use them as scapegoats... and I believe I can put pressure on certain areas to ensure that. Well, goodbye, Mr Pole. A pleasure, as always.’ Willis replaced the receiver and his smirk grew. He reached for his glass of Bollinger on the coffee table, and took a very contented sip.

The convoy entered Bristol.

It had been tailed all the way from Glastonbury by two UNIT

trucks and a jeep, the Brigadier occupying the latter. However, the Brigadier, acting on his own innate good sense - nothing at all to do with the Doctor’s disapprobation - had issued strict orders 87

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 and aggressive, his beard festooned with yesterday’s beans; Heather and Nose, the couple who drank together and were now growing old and insane together; and lastly filthy old Hedges, mad-eyed and mumbling, still retaining an Elvis quiff and the black suit he’d worn to his wedding.

These merry boys and girls were the Amos Vale alcoholics, continually grasping for their bottles like purple-faced babies at feeding time. Heather and Nose were engaged in a conversation which neither of them understood, waxing more vehement and violent with each other as they failed to get their respective meaningless points across. Moggy groped for his red wine as if clawing at his last hopes of sanity, and succeeded only in spilling it which made him roar. Lionel cuffed him, hurling obscenities in a voice husky with throat cancer. Cliff scratched at a scab on his balding head, and fresh blood seeped down over his brow. He barely noticed it, staring like a rheumy fortune-teller into the depths of his bottle; it told him nothing he didn’t already know. ‘I said to her,’ he muttered, ‘told her I didn’t want to come back...

never come back, and you know what?... Never did. Never went...

back.’ His blonde hair stood up here and there on his scalp like weeds. His nose was a blistered bulb. Hedges stared at him with gory eyes but said nothing, his mouth working drool.

‘Never missed a day’s work,’ Moggy was boasting to no one.

‘When I was... when things were... better.’ He seemed oblivious to the blow the Neanderthal Lionel had dealt him. A foul squirting noise disturbed the relative peace of the upper cemetery as Moggy voided his bowels. Nobody objected. Nobody cared. He could sleep in it, like he always did. The purple haze of meths had long since stolen any sense of propriety. Visitors to the cemetery always avoided this dead-liver colony beneath the blind, stone angel.

This was an exclusive club; meths drinkers only need apply.

But now they had something else to occupy their burnt-out minds: the commotion within the lower reaches of the cemetery 90

made even these alcohol zombies react. While Heather rocked beside the ash of the dead fire, crooning to her bottle, the others staggered to their feet and stumbled down the path to claim a better view. Maybe, in the depths of their stewed brains, some curiosity remained. Or maybe they thought they could blag some more booze.

Hippies and punks, skinheads, Rastas and rockers, all together in one organised movement. And they weren’t fighting. Something powerful indeed was happening here, Nick reflected as he sat on the wide stairs of the crematorium chapel and watched the roadies prepare yet another gig. This was the largest audience yet

- he hadn’t been able to visualise the size of the convoy until now, as more and more vehicles had been tagging on as it wound through the Southwest. Many travellers had followed the slow-moving collection of vehicles on foot, which hadn’t been a problem considering just how slowly they had progressed. Just like they had all the time in the world. And in that moment of early summer, the realisation struck Nick that for once they had.

And now this ragged army surged before the cluster of tombs the band had chosen to be their latest stage. Hippies smoked joints, punks spat and belched and swigged beer, but nobody seemed to give a toss about the cultural or musical differences that normally divided them. They were embracing a single cause -

thirty-something bikers with Led Zeppelin on their leather backs to spine-haired Vicious clones with Sham ‘69 tattoos. And Nick had never seen anything like it.

Dusk was falling. The battered generator, lugged from the cattle truck and positioned on top of a large sarcophagus, glinted in the last of the sunlight. One of the roadies carelessly slung a guitar into the overgrown grass; another denim-clad roadie leant the bass guitar a bit more delicately against a headstone, while the giant emerged from the back of the truck cradling drums. Wires were trailed through the long grass and connected to the amps roosting on tombs. The stage was set. The crowd stirred 91

impatiently. Nick sucked smoke deep into his lungs, his heart pummelling. His forebodings were momentarily gone: this was the most exciting band in the world, bar none. He’d seen the Pistols, and they had been scorching; he’d seen the Damned and their cartoon chaos; he’d seen the strutting Clash; he’d seen The Ruts before Malcom Owen bought the farm. Nothing was as powerful as this bunch.Nothing.

They were beyond being a mere band, that much was obvious.

They were hate incarnate. They were fury, revulsion, wildness, fear: everything that made your blood bump.

And here they were now.

The restlessness of the crowd ceased. Silence.

‘This is desecration... ‘ hissed Jo, standing up to get a better view over the crowd.

‘Yeah,’ agreed Jimmy. ‘Great, innit.’

Jo was suddenly pulling at Sin’s hand. ‘Come on, let’s get up the front,’ she burbled with youthful glee. Sin clasped her hand and followed willingly. Nick watched as the two girls pushed their way through the unconventional throng. For a moment - and it was just a brief moment - his doubts returned. Come back, you bitch. Can’t you see what they’re doing to you?

What they’re doing... to me?

Then he was on his feet too, Jimmy with him, as the four musicians made their way through the gravestones to collect their weapons.

At first the crowd remained silent, then it was as if there was one collective inhalation of breath, held for a fistful of electric seconds, which was released with a titanic roar as the singer took his place behind the microphone stand, gripped it tight in one fist.

Dying sunlight flared from his wraparound shades, sparked on the cymbals behind him. All four musicians were wearing tattered black overcoats like Western-style dusters over their mummer tassels. They looked more bizarre, and more threatening, than ever. The singer had a dark stetson rammed on his green punk 92

hair. Leather gloves with metal spikes adorned his hands. He coughed hoarsely into the mike and the crowd ceased their baying.

The guitarist leant against a headstone to the singer’s left, top hat askew on his head, its crown flapping in the breeze. His minstrel trousers were smeared with dark stains. The skinhead drummer lowered himself on to his stool, tombs flanking him. The bassist, taller than anyone Nick had ever seen, struck a few notes from his instrument, grinned evilly at the audience and began a threatening riff.

This was it.

This was why they followed the band.

Adrenaline terror and joyous aggression caught him up like a doll in a cyclone as the band blasted into their first number. Nick was jettisoned into hell, screaming orgasmically, his brain a pounding thing that would burst like a squeezed orange any second, his heart drilling through his chest. He was on fire, he was the coldest he’d ever felt, he had the biggest hard-on imaginable. He was in love.

He was in hate.

And the world would fall apart, and nothing mattered hut this inferno of incredible ragesound.

Nothing mattered.

Yes, this was it. This was what made it all worthwhile.

In the prosperous heart of Bristol’s financial district, the decorous wine bar the Money Tree was the place to parade your pinstripe.

Stockbrokers, insurance brokers, commodity brokers and bankers - the cream of the young Turks - honoured the extravagant drinking hole with their presence. The bar was a converted bank, its vaulted walls echoing now with cultured tones and braying laughter instead of the subdued bustle of weekday transactions. The best designer suits, the best haircuts - not too long, not too short, conservatively caught between the battling late Seventies fashions; market dealers not yet in their thirties taking time off