by Ian Sansom
'Yes,' said Israel.
'And last,' said Ted.
'Henge virgins,' mused Lancelot, stroking his beard. 'I remember when I was a Henge virgin myself. Seventy-four,' he mused. 'Nineteen seventy-four.'
'Anyway, I'm sorry I missed Fatboy Slim,' said Israel.
'There were rumours this year that Snoop Dogg was going to play,' said the steward. 'I ask you!'
'Snoop Dogg!' Israel laughed. 'As if!'
Ted looked perplexed.
'A lot of your old-style New Agers,' continued the steward, 'they go up past Amesbury there, into the hills.'
'Ah, that'd be where our friends are then, I would have thought,' said Israel. 'Do you think, Ted?'
Ted shrugged.
'Do you still want me to check with the stewards for you?' asked the man.
'No, it's all right, thanks, erm, Lancelot,' said Israel. 'I think our friends'll probably be with the other…people. But thanks anyway.'
'Peace,' said the man.
'Off,' said Ted, as they got into the car. 'Lancelot! What sort of a name is that supposed to be? Lancelot? And Fat Boy Jim?'
'Slim. You've Come a Long Way, Baby?'
'Aye. And the Soup Dog?'
'Snoop Dogg,' said Israel. 'He's a rapper. Doggystyle? D'you not know it?'
'Israel. Let's just find the van and get home, can we?' said Ted. 'Because, I'm telling ye, everyone in this country's on the loonie soup, as far as I can tell. The whole blinkin' lot of ye…'
It took them even longer driving away from Stonehenge than driving towards it—diversions, single-lane traffic—but eventually they made it back onto the open roads and into the country.
'So?' said Israel. 'We are looking for—'
'Hippies,' said Ted. 'Gypsies. Troublemakers. Thugs. And ruffians.'
'Right. All of the above?'
'And rappers,' added Ted. 'Find one, we'll find 'em all. All together like Brown's cows.'
Which indeed they were, whatever it meant. Over on the other side of Amesbury, as dusk was turning to dark and they'd almost finished listening to the Da Vinci Code audiobook all the way through for the umpteenth time ('This bit, in the film, with Tom Hanks, is brilliant,' said Ted again and again), they saw lights in the distance; not house or street lights, but what appeared to be fiery streaks and haloes shooting down the hillsides.
'What the hell's going on over there?' said Ted.
Israel peered through the windscreen. 'Well, from a distance it looks to me like it's people burning tyre wheels and rolling them down the hill.'
'That's what I thought,' said Ted. 'But why in God's name would anyone do that?'
'No idea. Some sort of pagan ritual?'
'Burning car tyres?'
'Well, maybe a sort of…reinterpretation of some…pagan ritual.'
'Aye. That'll be our lot then.'
Israel parked the Mini carefully in a lay-by and then they clambered over a stile and began walking down across a field towards the tyre burners.
It was dark now, but still warm, and there was the sound of birdsong, and suddenly, here, just for a moment—a tiny moment; just a half even, maybe, or a quarter—in a field somewhere in England, for the first time since being back, Israel felt, for a piece of a moment, at home.
He felt overcome by the intensity of his own existence, and yet at the same time completely disembodied from it, as though he were observing his own experience. He thought for a moment of Robert Browning, and of Robert Bridges, and Thomas Hardy, and Ray Davies, and T. E. Lawrence, and Tim Henman, and of hedgerows, and cricket, and is there honey still for tea? He did not think, for a moment, of Gloria. He felt idyllic.
He decided not to mention this to Ted.
'Get down!' said Ted suddenly, as they approached a hedge. 'Down on yer hunkers.'
'Mywhatters?'
'Hunkers. Quick! Down. Get down! Quick!'
Israel did not get down on his hunkers quick enough, so Ted pushed him down flat into the damp mud.
'Ted!'
'Sshh!'
'What? Why?' whispered Israel. 'Have they seen us?'
'Look. There,' whispered Ted.
'Where?'
'Ahint the hedge there.'
'A hint?'
'Aye.'
Israel looked ahint the hedge there.
It wasn't the travellers.
It was a long line of policemen, wearing dark blue boiler suits. And protective helmets. And carrying shields. Shoulder to shoulder. In total silence. And behind them, just over the hedge, piled up, were shovels and picks and spades.
'Oh, shit!' said Israel. 'I don't like the look of this, Ted! What are the police doing here?'
'The same thing we're doing here,' whispered Ted. 'Come on, we need to get out of here,' and so they wriggled along on their bellies beside the hedge, as quietly as they could, away from the police, taking a much longer, snaking, circuitous route through fields of wheat towards the travellers and their burning tyres.
Eventually, having successfully evaded the police, and down towards the bottom of the hill, safely hidden in among some trees, they were close enough to observe.
'Travellers in their natural environment,' whispered Israel, putting on his best David-Attenborough-observing-the-gorillas voice.
'Sshh!' said Ted.
Men and women, stripped to the waist, were leaping over fires. Someone was playing bongos, and people were dancing barefoot, and there were jugglers, and fire-eaters, and people were being tattooed, and there was a child dancing around in a luminous skeleton suit, while other people lay around on the ground, wrapped in rugs, passing bottles and joints. And there, among them, sprawled out, were Stones and Bree, locked in—'Sweet Jesus!' said Ted—an intimate embrace. And behind them, parked at the top of the hill, among the camper vans, old coaches, horseboxes and ambulances, was the mobile library, resplendent, glowing in the firelight, in all its repainted glory, its Eye of Horus keeping watch over the proceedings.
'Got 'em!' said Ted.
'Keep your voice down!' said Israel.
'The dirty lying thieving bastards!' continued Ted. 'Look at 'em. Totally scunnered, the lot of them. Bloody bunch of scoots.'
'So what do we do now?' said Israel.
'We're going to wait here until they're all well away from the van,' said Ted.
'And then what?'
'We're going to steal her back.'
'Steal her?' whispered Israel. 'That's—'
'How else d'ye think we're going to get her?'
'Well, couldn't we just go and talk to them first?' said Israel. 'And then we could maybe talk to the police, and explain what's happened and—'
'It'll all be happy ever after?' said Ted.
'I'm sure the police would help us.'
'Aye, well, I've never met a policeman before who wanted to help me, and I very much doubt I'm going to meet one now.'
'Well, I don't know about that,' said Israel, 'the police can be'—and then he recalled a number of recent incidents in Tumdrum, including his being accused of robbery and the kidnap of Mr Dixon, of Dixon and Pickering's department store, for example—'a little unpredictable,' he admitted. 'But stealing the van back is quite a risky strategy, isn't it?'
'A risky strategy?' said Ted. 'It's justice, ye eejit. What is it you people say?'
'Which people?'
'You.'
'Vegetarian Jewish librarians from north London?'
'Ach, no! "An eye for an eye."'
'"A tooth for a tooth"?'
'Aye.'
'"A hand for a hand"?'
'Exactly.'
'"A foot for a foot"?'
'There you are.'
'Exodus, you mean?'
'Rebritution,' said Ted.
'Retribution,' corrected Israel.
'That's right,' said Ted. 'That's what you lot believe, isn't it?'
'Your use of the term "you lot" is not entirely helpful, I must say,' whispered Israel. 'And I think you'll find that in Jewish law, in fact—'
'Ach, well, all I mean is, they stole the van from us, and so we're perfectly entitled to steal her back.'
'Well, that may sound perfectly reasonable,' said Israel, mouthing the words rather than speaking them, 'but I hardly think it would stand up as an argument in a court of law.'
'We're not in a court of law, you eejit! In case you hadn't noticed, we're in a bloody field in the middle of bloody nowhere!'
'Yes, that's right,' whispered Israel, 'and how would you suggest we go about getting the van back, seeing as the obvious obstacles in our way in this bloody field in the middle of bloody nowhere include several hundred travellers, and at least the same number of riot police? Huh?'
'I don't rightly know at the moment,' said Ted. 'I'm thinking. First thing we need to do is lure them away from the van.'
'Well, that's not difficult, is it?' said Israel. 'Four fifty-eight a.m.'
'What?'
'Is the time of sunrise, didn't the steward say? They'll all be up and worshipping the sun then, or something. That'll certainly distract them.'
'Brilliant,' said Ted, patting Israel hard on the back—too hard. Israel almost fell over. 'Brilliant! Ye know what, that's the only sensible thing you've said all day.'
'Thank you,' gasped Israel.
'That'll do us rightly. So all we need to do is keep watch, wait for them to start the auld slaughtering of the sheep and the goats—'
'I don't think they slaughter sheep and goats on the solstice, Ted.'
'Or whatever it is they do, and then we slip in and take the van. We'll take it in turns to keep watch. Right. You bed down there. I'll take the first shift.'
'Bed down where?'
'There.' Ted pointed at the ground.
'On the ground?'
'Aye.'
'I'm not sleeping there.'
'Well, unless you brought a wee blow-up feather bed with you, that'll be exactly where you're sleeping.'
'Couldn't I go back to the car?'
'Of course you can't go back to the car,' said Ted.
'Why not?'
'Because we're on reconnaissance. We've got to keep a lookout.'
* * *
'Well met by moonlight!' came a voice then, and suddenly, from out of nowhere, Israel's mother was squatting down among the trees with them. She was wearing a highly visible bright red Gore-Tex jacket—which matched, worryingly, the colour of her lipstick—and a pair of long brown boots, with heels, with velvet trousers tucked into the top.
'Jesus Christ, woman!' gasped Ted. 'You scared the crap out of me there!'
'Sorry, boys,' she whispered.
'Mother! What are you doing here?'
'I could hardly let you two handle it yourselves, could I?'
'How did you get here?'
'Ari gave me a lift down. In his Mercedes,' she added significantly.
'But how did you find us?'
'You said Stonehenge. Travellers. It's not that difficult, is it? We used to do an annual treasure hunt for the PTA when you were at school. Do you remember? That was much more difficult. People used to get lost on Hampstead Heath. They're not exactly hidden away here, are they? So, what's the crack?'
'You're an abstrakerous old so-and-so when you want to be, aren't ye, Mrs Armstrong?' said Ted admiringly.
'Am I?'
'Ye are.'
'Is that a bad thing?'
'I didn't say that.'
'Good.'
'All right, you two,' said Israel. 'Enough already. They're up to something else there now.'
The travellers seemed to be preparing for some kind of ritual involving poles and sticks.
'It's quite a nice little setup they've got there, actually, isn't it?' whispered Israel's mother.
'Bloody headers,' said Ted.
'What are they doing?' asked Israel. 'Is it some sort of pagan ritual?'
'It looks to me like they're preparing to do limbo dancing,' said Israel's mother.
'Ah!' said Israel. 'You're right.'
'They're all on drugs, sure,' said Ted.
'How can you tell?' said Israel's mother. 'I've often wondered.'
'Aye, well…I have spent a bit of time smoking dope meself, like.'
'Really?' said Israel's mother.
'Aye.'
'What?' said Israel.
'I am surprised to hear that,' said Israel's mother. 'Man like yourself, Ted.'
'Well.'
'And when you say a bit of time, you mean what? Days? Weeks?'
'Years, actually.'
'Years?'
'Aye. In Australia.'
'What the hell were you doing smoking dope in Australia for years?' said Israel.
'Better than painkillers,' said Ted, gazing off into the distance. 'Sometimes a man needs to forget.'
'Right.'
'I'd lost the run of meself entirely,' said Ted.
'I did smoke a funny cigarette once,' said Israel's mother. 'At a party, it was. In Crouch End, I think. Somewhere like that.'
'All right, let's not get into a game of truth or dare here, Mother, shall we, please.'
'You are a dark horse, Ted,' said Israel's mother, snuggling up close to him in the dark.
'Oh God. I'm going to have a lie down here,' said Israel. 'You two keep quiet, all right? Wake me up when something interesting happens.'
Israel's sleep, when it came—muddy, twiggy, to the sound of Ted and his mother whispering and distant bongos—was utterly wretched.
First, he dreamt he was wandering through the streets of Tumdrum with a seven-flamed candelabrum, with people trying to blow it out. Then he dreamt he was outside a locked door, and there were people inside, laughing. And then he dreamt of Gloria.
Vivid, terrible dreams of Gloria. He was somewhere waiting for her. He called out to her, but just as he caught her she reached the front door of their flat. He grabbed her by the arm and swung her around. And it wasn't her. It was another woman. And she stood still, this other woman, terrified, looking at him. It wasn't Gloria. She had her mobile phone raised to her mouth. And she started to scream at him. 'I'm so sorry,' he was saying, in his dream. 'I thought you were…' The woman was yelling at him. 'I'm calling the police,' she was screaming. He was running through the streets.
* * *
They were not pleasant dreams.
He woke with Ted poking him sharply in the ribs. His throat was parched. He was sweating and shivering. His body hurt all over.
'Wake up! This is us!' said Ted.
'This was me,' said Israel, wiping away dry mud from his face.
Even though he was awake, what happened next seemed to take place in dream time rather than in reality: the whole thing was complete chaos, lit by a weird, looming blue and pink dawn light.
'This is like a film by Peter Greenaway,' he mumbled.
'Peter O'Toole,' said Ted. 'Zulu Dawn.'
'Mary Poppins,' said Israel's mother. 'The bit at the fair.'
The travellers had formed themselves into a series of concentric circles. They stood holding hands in silence. Some kind of totem had been erected in the middle of the field, with brightly coloured ribbons pinned to it. They began circling the totem, chanting. They closed their eyes. The chanting grew louder. The sun was rising.
'What are they saying?' whispered Israel's mother.
'I couldn't care less,' said Ted. 'But I reckon this is our chance. Come on. Israel, any trouble, anyone approaches ye, ye land a quick right under the ribcage, and then a left behind the right ear, and they'll go down.'
'What?'
'A wee short un under the ribcage and then a left round the butt of the ear!'
'I'm not punching anybody,' said Israel.
'Well, let them punch you then. See how you like that,' said Israel's mother.
They stepped quickly from the cover of the trees, and Ted began shambling up alongside the hedge, Israel's mother following, up the hill, towards the van.
'Ted!' gasped Israel, behind him. 'Wait!'
'Com
e on, Fatboy Slim,' said Ted. 'Let's go.'
Somehow, stumbling, hugging the hedge, they made it to the van without being seen by the travellers, who remained absorbed in worship.
Ted had the keys. They clambered inside.
'Home!' said Ted.
'Hello, van,' said Israel.
'So this is the van?' said Israel's mother. 'It's quite cosy, isn't it?'
'Ah!' said Ted, opening up the glove compartment. 'Me Sudoku. Good.'
'Now what?' said Israel.
* * *
At that moment the sun rose decisively above the treetops, yellow light flooding the scene before them—the travellers circling and chanting—and the sound of the chanting was joined by the sound of distant drumming.
'What's that?' said Israel.
'I don't know.'
Israel ran to the back of the van and peered out.
It was the police, advancing in a line, banging their riot shields.
'Shit! Ted! I don't like the look of this, Ted.'
'What?'
'It's the police! I think the police are on to us, Ted.'
'They're not on to us. They're after these crazies. Just stay calm, we'll be fine.'
As Ted spoke, the police began beating on the sides of the vans with their truncheons.
'Ted!' said Israel's mother, who seemed frightened for the first time. 'This isn't good, Ted.'
'Sshh! Just stay down. We need to pick our moment.'
'For what?' said Israel. 'Ted? Pick our moment for what?'
The police had reached the mobile library and began banging on its sides—the sound like earth being piled upon a coffin—and then they passed on by, and then, when he could safely see the backs of the police officers moving down the hill towards the travellers, Ted turned on the ignition, slammed the van into reverse, and in one movement managed to pull the van out of its tight spot and started gunning up across the field.
'Oh shit!' said Israel. 'Ted! What are you doing?'
'We're going home!' said Ted.
'Yee-ha!' said Israel's mother.
'Ted! Stop!'
'I'm not stopping!'
'This is fun!' cried Israel's mother.
'Look! Stop! I'm serious! Stop! Up ahead there. There's a ditch! The police have dug a ditch! That's why they had all the—'
'We'll be fine,' said Ted.
