‘Bugger me,’ Freddo sighed. ‘I wish I was smoking what
you were smoking. I haven’t heard anything quite so trippy since 1969 … oh, hi guys! You found us then. Isn’t this the weirdest
set-up ever? Our gig here’s going to be a blast.’
Amber turned to see a smattering of the JB Roadshow – the singer, and one of the guitarists, and the drummer, or maybe it
was the keyboard player – standing beside them in the musky darkness looking totally bemused.
Everyone exchanged pleasantries, and Jem, scenting jacket potatoes, tugged at Amber’s hand and gestured impatiently towards
The Weasel and Bucket.
‘Yeah, OK,’ Lewis laughed, ruffling Jem’s hair with the same brotherly affection he’d used earlier in ruffling Amber’s. ‘The
show’s all but over. Let’s go and find the food. And there’s still time for some serious drinking.’
Freddo and the JB Roadshow residue – still looking, Amber reckoned,
very
fit for their ages in their faded denim and surfer-boy shirts – perked up considerably at this, and they all made a beeline
for the pub. It did her ego no end of good, Amber thought, being seen in the company of such a bevvy of male beauty.
The JB Roadshow members – Tiff Clayton, Clancy Tavistock and Ricky Swain, as Freddo had reintroduced them – were all very
complimentary about the village and the forthcoming Harvest Moon booking, and diplomatically polite about the strangeness
of the Plough Night celebrations.
‘I like all the old traditions myself,’ Tiff Clayton said to Amber, giving her a practised look from beneath his dyed blond
fringe as they crossed the rustic bridge. ‘Like kissing under the mistletoe and the best man getting first dibs at the bridesmaids.’
‘Don’t listen to him,’ Clancy Tavistock, who was walking just ahead of them with Freddo and Lewis, turned and grinned. ‘He’s
all talk and no action these days.’
‘Ah, maybe,’ Tiff sighed. ‘But I’ve still got my memories and my dreams.’
‘Dreams, perhaps,’ Clancy laughed over his shoulder.
‘The memories have all been embellished by age or eroded by recreational substances.’
The others laughed. Ricky Swain was walking on the other side of Amber, humming a tune, explaining scales and riffs to an
adoring Jem.
They were nice blokes, Amber thought as they crossed the road towards The Weasel and Bucket. Nice blokes, immensely talented,
and pretty damn cool.
‘This is my shout,’ Freddo said, as they forced their way through the beer-garden throng. ‘What’s everybody having?’
Despite the majority of Fiddlestickers still being out in force on the green, the usual suspects were perched at the bar.
Timmy was obviously in the kitchen cooking up a veritable storm of jacket potatoes, and Zillah, looking radiant in the rose-sprigged
dress, her hair all tousled, smiled across at them as they walked in.
‘Is it all over, then? Fiddlesticks guaranteed healthy crops for the next twelve months? I thought Goff looked a bit of a
twerp in his – oh my God …’ Zillah clutched the bar, her heart going into overdrive. Taking huge gulps of air, she tried to
steady herself, but the pub and the customers were growing dark and swirling dizzily round and round and round.
‘Zil? Zillah?’ Billy Grinley slid from his stool and ran behind the bar, rapidly followed by Dougie Patchcock. ‘Quick, Lewis!
Quick! I think your ma’s fainted!’
I Was Born Under a Wandering Star
It was Zillah’s final year at university. A year in which her tutors and her parents confidently expected her to get an upper
second, if not a first, in history. A year in which she realised she wanted to be free.
Free from studying, free from being the model student, free from being a dutiful daughter, free from doing what everyone else
wanted and expected, free from conforming, free from – oh, just free!
It made not a jot of difference how many times her friends, all diligent students, told her that once the finals were over
she could be as free as she liked. Once the finals were over, and the three years of hard work had resulted in a qualification
that would enable her to take whichever path she chose, she could let her hair down, take a year out, anything. Anything she
wanted. Only a few more months to go.
A few more months! A few more days would have been too long.
What she wanted was to be free. Now.
Dropping out was all the rage, of course. But all the dropouts from Zillah’s college seemed to have wealthy, indulgent parents
who really didn’t mind what their offspring did and who looked on university as simply three
years of socialising; or were born into inherited silver-spoon money; or had family firms which would suck them up after they’d
returned from wandering the hippie trail, turning on and discovering themselves in Marrakech or Kashmir.
Zillah’s parents had nothing. Just a bursting pride that their only daughter had made it to Oxford – a word they always spoke
in hushed and awed tones, and somewhere they’d never visited because they didn’t have a car and the train fare from their
Cornish fishing village was way, way beyond them – and was the first in the family to ever go on to further education, let
alone to one of the most prestigious universities in the world, and would probably become a school teacher.
A school teacher was the most respected of professions as far as Zillah’s parents were concerned. It was what they wanted
for her: to come back to Cornwall with her degree and teach history at one of the girls’ grammar schools in say, Truro or
Bodmin. To pass on her knowledge and education and enthusiasm to other local girls who then might have the same academic opportunity,
thanks to Zillah. It was their dream.
It had never been hers.
And now, weary of studying a subject she no longer enjoyed; exhausted from hours and hours of reading words that simply floated
through her brain; tired – oh so tired – of the academic life; mentally battered and physically shattered, Zillah wanted to
be free.
Her head was crammed with facts, her brain bursting with sifted, selected, assimilated information. Blackwells Bookshop and
the Bodlian Library became her places of daily worship. Facts, facts and more facts. The only fiction was in her weekly letter
– there was no phone at home – to her parents.
‘Give it a little break,’ her tutor advised. ‘You’ve no need to cram, Zillah. You’re an excellent student. You have a natural
intelligence, a gift for learning, a talent for
imparting all that you know. You’ll gain an extremely good degree. You’ve studied hard, worked hard ever since you arrived
– don’t burn out now. Take a couple of weeks for yourself, go home, relax …’
Zillah didn’t want to go home. If she went home she’d never return to Oxford. Never get away again. Going home wasn’t the
answer.
‘Well, have some fun, then,’ her tutor laughed. ‘Go out and party. Dance ’til dawn. Enjoy yourself. Goodness – this is the
antithesis of what I normally have to tell my students!’
But Zillah had done parties and dances and punting and Commem Balls; she’d not been overwhelmed by the hectic and varied social
life on offer in Oxford – it simply hadn’t really interested her. And after getting drunk a few times in The Eagle and Child
and The Turf Tavern and several rowdy nights where Town and Gown mixed in the sinisterly dark corridor of White’s Bar, Zillah
had resumed her studies, her essays, her total immersion in her history course.
None of it was what she wanted.
‘You haven’t been made to feel – well – unwelcome?’ her tutor enquired kindly. ‘There is an awful lot of snobbery here and
however hard we try to stamp it out …’
And Zillah said, no, her soft Cornish accent and humble background had not once been a problem. She’d found the students,
all the students, accepted her as she did them. Class, colour, creed – none of those had ever been an issue.
‘And there’s no man involved? This isn’t an affair of the heart gone wrong?’
Zillah shook her head. There was no man. There had been boys, several boys, fellow students – and they’d had fun, and exchanged
kisses and inexpert fumbles, but that was as far as it had gone. There had been no lover. Not ever. Her virginity, like her
heart, was intact.
‘Well, my dear,’ her tutor smiled gently. ‘I can only advise you to take things easy for a while, enjoy yourself, forget about
the finals.’
And Zillah had.
She would never be able to explain the blissful freedom she felt on that spring morning, leaving Oxford, everything she needed
for her new life packed into a single haversack, her hair, like her skirt, long and blowing wildly in the breeze.
Walking away, with no regrets, from everything everyone had ever wanted for her.
She told no one she was leaving; hadn’t left a note. Just tidied her room in her digs, stacked up the few belongings she couldn’t
take with her, left enough money to pay the residue of her rent, and walked away from the dreaming spires’ stifling prison.
With no idea where fate would take her, she reached the outskirts of the city and stuck out her thumb.
The first driver took her as far south as Winchester. Students hitching lifts were normal, there were few questions asked,
and no danger. Solitary drivers were simply pleased to have some company.
After Winchester, where she’d had coffee and a doughnut, Zillah hitched a further lift. In a lorry. This one took her towards
the New Forest, stopping at the Cadnam round-about.
Zillah watched the lorry drive away and lifted her face to the sun. Ahead the New Forest spread in wildly glorious green and
gold splendour, the wind-born scent of broom and ferns and mouldering pine needles, a balm. Ahead lay the future: a nebulous
future – no longer shaped by rigid timetables and other people’s expectations. A future in which she would, for the first
time, take control of her life.
Skirting the road-wide cattle grid, the ground mossy and yielding beneath her feet, Zillah walked slowly south, sticking her
thumb out as she heard vehicles approaching. The morning air was soft and warm, and for the first time in her life she felt
her spirits rise with the soaring bird song. The primal forest, organic, surrounded her, cloaking her safely, giving her a
true hippie feel of being at one with nature.
This was what she wanted. To be alone, unfettered, free to make choices, free to be herself instead of the model daughter,
the model student.
A blue transit van pulled up on the left ahead of her and the driver stuck his head out of the window.
‘Want a lift, darling? Bournemouth any good?’
Zillah nodded, gathered her skirt up and ran, pulling the passenger door open, scrambling inside.
‘Hi.’
The van was crowded with boys of her own age, seven very attractive boys, with long silky hair and long slender be-jeaned
legs and logo’d T-shirts. They all looked very tired and fairly uncomfortable, as crammed in with them were all manner of
bags and musical instruments and huge black speakers and rolls of cable.
‘Make room for her in the back,’ the driver called over his shoulder. ‘Budge up a bit.’
They budged, and Zillah, after only a fleeting moment of doubt about the wisdom of accepting this lift, and her haversack
had tumbled over the three boys in the front seat and into the back.
The boy sitting next to her, the boy with the huge dark eyes and the high-cheekbones and the sulky-beautiful mouth, smiled.‘OK?
Not too squashed? Let me help you
She fell in love with him then. There and then. At first sight.
‘No … I’m fine. Thank you … This is very kind of you.’
‘Our pleasure,’ the driver said, selecting first gear and indicating to pull away. ‘Where have you come from?’
And Zillah told them. All of it. Because she’d spent years and years of lying to everyone, especially to herself, and this
was like the best confessional in the world.
And they listened and offered no censure at the cavalier way she’d binned her glittering academic future, but said they hoped
she’d made the right choice, and congratulated
her on her decision to take control of her life. And they shared their Coke and cigarettes and chocolate with her as the New
Forest rolled by outside, the bracken a green carpet and the myriad oaks a latticed green canopy.
‘And you – you’re a rock group?’
‘Soul band, yeah,’ one of the boys in the front seat said. ‘We’ve got a rented house in Kilburn that we share, but we’re rarely
there. We’re on the road most of the time. One town after another. It’s cool.’
Zillah shook her head. She had never before known anyone who lived an itinerant life. How wonderful it must be travelling,
playing music, packing up, moving on. No set routine, no one day the same as the hundreds of others on either side.
Perfect freedom.
The beautiful boy beside her introduced the others, six of them in the band, and the driver who was Stan, their roadie, chauffeur,
general all-round good geezer.
‘And I’m Clancy Tavistock, bass guitarist. Collectively, we’re Solstice Soul.’
‘Zillah Flanagan,’ Zillah said, wondering if Clancy Tavistock could hear her heart thundering. ‘And I’m sorry – but if you’re
famous, I’ve never heard of you.’
They all laughed, the laughter drowning out Jimi Hendrix on the radio.
‘We’re quite well known on the club and festival circuit,’ Clancy said, stretching his long, long legs over the seat in front,
easing his back. ‘But the Beatles, we’re not.’
Zillah watched his unconsciously sensuous movements, aching to touch him, shocked and slightly ashamed at the intensity of
the wanting.
‘We’ve just got a record deal,’ they told her. ‘UK soul is very hot at the moment. Everyone is after white soul boys. We’re
not kidding ourselves that we’re going to be the next Ram-Jam Band – but we’ve got bookings as far ahead as the eye can see,
and we’re making decent money at last. Mind you, we’ve always had fun – money or no …’
And as they headed nearer to the south coast and the sky grew huge, silver washed in the sun, they chatted easily and Zillah
learned that they all came from London, had been in various bands since they’d been at school, been together professionally
for eighteen months.