In a Land of Plenty

by Tim Pears

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘we’ve got to capture the next generation’s attention or we’ll lose them for ever, to computer games and virtual reality and other moronic pursuits. All you see is what’s in front of your lens, James; you don’t see the future.’

  It was, in fact, a difficult time for Zoe. She was busier than ever, but such activity was partly to cover up the itch to be off travelling, which brief holidays no longer assuaged.

  ‘I’ve got cabin fever,’ she admitted to James. ‘I’m going crazy.’

  ‘Sell up,’ he suggested.

  ‘Maybe I should,’ she agreed.

  The most avid reader anyone knew, Zoe found she no longer read books unless they were written by Eric Newby or Freya Stark. She began to fall asleep in films, something she’d never done before, and would have vivid dreams of places she’d never seen. And when she bought a newspaper the first thing she did was to check the prices of flights to Katmandu or Caracas, and then to study the small ads placed by brave and lonely souls seeking travelling companions.

  And then the travellers suddenly came to her.

  For some years Britain had been spawning new, dispersed groups of nomadic people who joined traditional gypsies on the road: old hippies; itinerant musicians, clowns and fire-eaters; Druidic mystics; home-owners who’d gained a mortgage then lost a job and found themselves driving around the country in a ramshackle home on wheels.

  Gradually, though, they’d begun to coalesce, coming together at free festivals organized by the more enterprising among them: they’d camp on some common and spend a few days exchanging mechanical advice, battered copies of Food for Free and juggling skills. At nights they sat around bonfires singing, and smoking different weeds. And then the nomadic bands discovered that by coincidence they all shared a spiritual centre: Stonehenge, the prehistoric megalithic monument on Salisbury Plain.

  That was when the trouble started: rag-bag convoys of travellers converged on Stonehenge for the summer solstice from all corners of the country. Wherever they stopped on the way they enraged the local population with their careless dirt and their dirty freedom. The further they travelled the more their psychedelic trucks and converted ambulances broke down and overheated in the summer sunshine. They took such enforced halts less as catastrophes than as opportunities to play guitars and tambourines on the verge, while queues of fuming motorists formed behind them. It was a problem not helped by the growing bands of nomads from the media who followed in their wake.

  Not to mention the police: at first different constabularies escorted them to county borders and bade them good riddance with good humour. The Government, however, had other plans, promising to rid society of medieval brigands, just as those other threats to public decency and national security, the striking coalminers, had been seen off; often reluctant police forces were again coerced into operating under a coordinated strategy, against travellers to the Stonehenge People’s Free Festival.

  In the summer of 1985 a massive police operation deflected, diverted, blocked, turned back, impounded, arrested and, as a last resort, beat up the anarchic pilgrims, and Stonehenge was once more reclaimed for decent day-trippers and honest tourists.

  Now, a year later, the travellers were less a Sunshine Circus, as they’d called themselves, than the stragglers of a ragged army in retreat. Some hardened into the violent ruffians they’d been portrayed as, and would give the police the confrontations that had been predicted; others transferred their spiritual allegiance from Stonehenge to Glastonbury and the music festival held there; many, though, simply roamed the country as they had five years earlier, again isolated tribes, except that now their innocent optimism had been replaced by dispirited, tired cynicism.

  It was one Wednesday in the middle of June that Zoe noticed men and women with dreadlocked hair, with rings through their ears and noses, dressed in army fatigues and faded floral skirts. They walked along the pavement past the cinema followed by crocodile lines of dirty children and sprightly dogs, and walked back the other way carrying food and cans of beer.

  The next day Zoe found herself leaning on the ticket counter and staring outside, waiting for another one to enter her field of vision. Suddenly her elbows collapsed beneath her and she jumped up and ran out of the foyer.

  ‘Luna!’ Zoe cried at a woman who was making slow progress along the pavement, carrying a baby on her hips and a toddler on her shoulders while a third walked along with a hold of her skirt. ‘Luna, is it you?’

  ‘Zoe!’ the woman responded. They embraced warmly, if awkwardly on account of the infants involved in the physical equation.

  ‘Are these all yours?’ Zoe asked.

  Luna checked them over quickly. ‘Yup, all mine,’ she affirmed. ‘Were you just coming out of the cinema? What a coincidence. God, I haven’t been to a cinema in … hardly ever,’ she laughed.

  ‘It’s mine,’ Zoe told her. ‘I own it.’

  ‘You what?’ Luna gasped. ‘You own it? God, times change, Zoe.’

  Zoe’s father, Harold, and Luna’s mother had been lovers in Casablanca many years before, and the two girls – single children both – had each had a sister for six months.

  ‘I haven’t seen you for, what, fifteen years? Twenty?’ Luna guessed. ‘You look great, Zoe. Listen, you’ve got to come down and see us, we’re by that big meadow over there; meet my man, Joe the Blow.’

  ‘I’d love to,’ Zoe said. ‘Is he their father?’ she asked.

  Luna looked over her children once again. ‘Two of them,’ she ventured. ‘Yeh, the baby, and this one,’ she said, gesturing to the toddler still sitting on her shoulders, who was staring at Zoe.

  Luna and her friends had camped on the old rubbish tip, now landfilled and grassed over for a nature reserve, between the meadow and the railway line. Zoe left her usherette in charge of the cinema and went there with Luna. Twenty trucks were parked here and there, oily men tinkering with some of them; other people were gathering and chopping wood; children were helping and hindering and dogs were dozing. Joe the Blow, a short, thick-set man with an angelic face hiding behind straggly beard and knotted hair, was working with a couple of others connecting amps on a small stage that fanned out of a trailer.

  After introducing Zoe, Luna took her to their van, a Commer Walk-Through, in which another, older, child was reading.

  ‘Caz, this is Zoe,’ Luna said. ‘I knew her when we were your age. Fancy making us some tea?’

  The two women caught up with each other’s lives.

  ‘I can’t tell you what I feel, seeing you again and being here, in all this,’ Zoe said. ‘I forgot what people really smell like!’ she laughed. ‘I feel like a mixture of nostalgia and excitement. And envy, Luna.’

  ‘Don’t,’ Luna replied. ‘We had it OK for a while, but it’s become a life of endless hassle, Zoe. We used to think we’d be applauded for living a simple life, you know, recycling everything, I mean, the only bad thing we burn is petrol. And that’s because the oil companies are blocking the use of solar-powered transport. But we leave a little mess in a lay-by and people call us animals.’

  ‘People don’t think about all the shit they produce because it’s flushed out of sight, one way or another,’ Zoe agreed.

  ‘Have you seen your local pubs, and some of the shops? We only got here yesterday and they’ve already put signs up saying: NO TRAVELLERS. And the fuzz kick us around for fun now. Honest, Zoe, it’s not worth the hassle any more. What we really want is to get our travelling theatre going; that’s our dream. But it takes money. So I’ve told Joe we’ve got to look for a permanent place in the autumn. Get the kids in school and everything.’

  ‘Is he into that?’

  Luna laughed. ‘He wants to go to Portugal for the winter, he says there’s a scene down there. Mind you,’ she said approvingly, ‘he’s on another planet.’

  The night before, the strains of music and the smell of cannabis had wafted into the town, and word had got around. While shopkeepers and publicans put up b
ars, their children, after the sun went down, drifted over to what had become an impromptu, free, illegal festival. James, whose bedsit was closer to the old tip than the cinema, was among them; he went over with his camera. He spotted and joined Zoe at Luna’s campfire, leaving it sporadically to photograph faces flickering in the firelight and musicians on the stage.

  ‘You see the guy on the flute?’ Luna asked him on one of his returns. ‘He used to play with the Incredible String Band.’

  ‘Who?’ James asked.

  ‘No, really?’ asked Zoe.

  ‘Someone said so, yeh,’ Luna replied. ‘Joe reckons these guys are brilliant, but they won’t take a record deal. They’ve all been ripped off before.’

  Luna’s children slipped off to bed of their own accord, but she went to tuck them in, and came back with baked potatoes and lentil roast she handed round before disappearing again with the offer of dandelion coffee.

  James, who’d had the foresight to bring a bottle of whisky with him to the site, had plenty of swigs himself and was feeling sleepy; he didn’t want to fall asleep, though, because he wasn’t sure his camera would be there when he woke up. Music was being made around the fire now in a disorganized jamming session and James felt left out of it. He was thinking of going home, when suddenly Zoe beside him called out: ‘Hey! Robert! Come over here!’

  James jerked out of his drowsiness, glanced up and saw his brother: he wore jeans, a T-shirt and leather jacket; a bunch of keys dangled from his belt and bumped against his thigh as he approached. Then Robert saw James. He hesitated where he was, some feet away; James looked up at him, his heart thumping.

  ‘What’s up with you two?’ Zoe demanded. ‘What do you need, an introduction? Come and sit down, Robert.’ Relaxed by alcohol and nostalgia, it had slipped Zoe’s mind that the brothers hadn’t spoken to each other since James had tried to strangle Robert over ten years earlier. They’d seen each other – at Alice’s wedding, around town – but avoided conversation.

  ‘You all right?’ James asked.

  Robert nodded. ‘Yeh. OK,’ he replied in his gritty voice. ‘You?’

  ‘Fine,’ said James.

  Robert sat down on the other side of Zoe. ‘A couple of them needed parts for their trucks,’ he told her. Then they whispered something to each other; Robert felt in his pockets and gave something to Zoe, and she handed him some money. Luna came out with a tray of mugs, passed them round and sat down beside Robert. Zoe introduced him.

  ‘Another cousin?’ said Luna. ‘You didn’t tell me about them in Morocco.’ She laughed across Robert, giving him a sideways glance.

  ‘They were little kids then, you idiot,’ Zoe replied.

  ‘You want some dandelion coffee?’ Luna offered Robert. ‘Here, you can have mine.’

  ‘You’re kidding, are you?’ Robert growled. ‘Isn’t there anything stronger?’

  ‘Have the rest of this,’ said James, passing over his whisky bottle.

  ‘Ta,’ said Robert. He felt in his pockets. ‘You want some Colombian?’ he asked.

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Hash, you twat,’ Robert smirked.

  ‘Robert, won’t you ever learn any manners?’ Zoe, sandwiched between them, scolded him.

  ‘You can have an eighth if you want,’ Robert told James. ‘Twelve quid. Well, ten to you.’

  ‘I don’t think so, thanks,’ James replied. ‘Wait. What, you’re selling it?’

  Robert put the packet back in his pocket.

  ‘You’re dealing this stuff?’

  ‘Take that look off your face.’ Robert glared. ‘I had enough of that look when we were kids.’

  ‘What are you doing, Robert?’ James asked.

  ‘It’s only hash, man, I don’t do gear or smack,’ Robert said. ‘Don’t look at me like that. Zoe, tell him to stop giving me that superior shit.’

  ‘You’re dealing drugs.’ James shook his head.

  ‘Crap,’ Robert countered. ‘I buy and sell all sorts, cars, antiques, everybody knows that. This stuff should be legal anyway.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘What’s it to you, anyway?’

  ‘Oh, nothing, Robert. Nothing. Forget it.’ James stared at the embers of the fire; then looked at Zoe. She was staring into the fire as well. ‘I suppose you …’ James started to address her. ‘Is he your …?’ he tried to ask.

  Zoe kept her gaze on the glowing embers. ‘Don’t be a prig, honey,’ she said quietly. ‘It doesn’t become you.’

  ‘Hell, you’re right,’ James whispered, picking up his camera bag and getting to his feet. ‘What do I know?’ he said, and walked away across the wasteland, home through the darkness.

  Very late the next morning Zoe woke up in her flat above the cinema with the smell of woodsmoke in her hair. She showered and had a leisurely breakfast, looking through old photographs but finding none of Luna or her mother. She went downstairs at one o’clock to let the projectionist in: he was followed into the foyer by Luna, Joe the Blow and the children, and another small group behind them, all carrying whatever bags they could bear.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Zoe asked. ‘What on earth’s happened?’

  The police, they told her, had descended upon the site earlier in the morning. ‘No, it wasn’t a dawn raid, I’ll give your locals that,’ said Joe. ‘They were good-humoured throughout, the pigs.’ They’d evicted the travellers from the reserve and then stopped them again as soon as they got onto the road, and inspected their vehicles, one after the other.

  ‘They declared half of them unroadworthy,’ Joe explained, ‘and said we couldn’t drive them another yard or they’d charge us. And if we tried to park up without written permission they’d arrest us for that as well.’

  ‘What option did that leave?’ Zoe asked.

  ‘Too right,’ Joe told her. ‘None. Catch Twenty-bloody-two. They kindly offered to impound the vehicles.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘They’ve arrested our trucks and let the human beings go. Still, ours was on its last legs.’

  ‘The others,’ Luna interjected, ‘have piled into the decent vans. They’ve been escorted out of your town. But there just wasn’t room for all of us, Zoe.’

  ‘Well,’ Zoe said, ‘come upstairs, if we can all fit, and let’s have a think.’

  It had been a squash in Zoe’s flat above the cinema when James was a sole lodger, so there was no possibility of them staying there with her. She thought about asking Simon – there was plenty of room in the house on the hill – but wasn’t sure how they’d all get on with Charles.

  ‘He’s such an old fascist he’d probably call in troops to evict you,’ she said, in her tiny kitchen.

  ‘Who would?’ Luna asked. They were knocking up scrambled eggs and toast for the crowd squashed into the living-room.

  ‘Who?’ repeated Zoe. ‘Oh, no one. I was just thinking out loud.’

  ‘You know what I was thinking?’ Luna said. ‘What I’d really like to do? See a film! In your cinema. It’d be a real treat. If I can get Joe to look after the kids. What’s on? Not that I care.’

  ‘Luna,’ said Zoe, ‘you are a genius.’

  ‘I am?’

  ‘You can stay in the cinema,’ Zoe said. ‘You can sleep there. All of you. We’ll find some camp-beds or something, and you can sleep in the aisles.’

  And so it was that after months of dreaming vividly of far-off places, Zoe found herself giving shelter to a group of nomads in her cinema. During the afternoon the women and children picnicked on the meadow while the men busked in the town centre; in the evenings they crowded into Zoe’s flat, except for Luna, who happily watched Vagabonde and Year of the Quiet Sun every evening for a week. And when the last screening was over they made up a huge bed of mattresses, cushions and blankets at the front of the auditorium, and fell asleep in one big litter.

  A week was all they stayed, though. After only a couple of nights Zoe’s customers began to complain about the smells of burning leaves and patchouli. The local shopkeepers and resid
ents soon cottoned on to what was happening. Someone alerted the council, and someone else collected signatures in protest at the provision of bed and breakfast in a commercial property. Not everybody signed it, but many did.

  ‘Next thing you know there’ll be hundreds of them here.’

  ‘Parking their trucks in the residents’ parking spaces.’

  ‘She’s exploiting them, making money out of the homeless.’

  ‘She’s charging them?’

  ‘Twenty pounds each!’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Including the kids. And imagine trying to sleep in a cinema seat.’

  ‘’Course they don’t pay. Claim it off the Social.’

  ‘That means us.’

  ‘Well, you don’t feel safe, do you? I told Adrian to put a chair up against the door before he came to bed.’

  ‘I heard they can’t use a flush toilet any more. Or won’t. They go down to the canal to do their business.’

  ‘Oh, no. That’s disgusting. I have to walk my dog down there.’

  After five days an inspector from the environmental health department of the council called by and told Zoe, who didn’t deny the presence of her guests, that they’d have to leave.

  ‘But they’re my friends,’ she said.

  ‘They can’t sleep in the cinema,’ he told her. ‘It contravenes health and safety regulations, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Well, next time someone nods off in a Tarkovsky film I’ll give you a call,’ Zoe told the council man as he left.

  The travellers departed a couple of days later, watched by two bailiffs from the council. Zoe had bought them a new van – an old Black Maria, ironically, which Robert had reconditioned – and they piled into it eagerly, as if it were taking them away from prison and off on some seaside excursion. Which it probably was.

  ‘I was looking forward to watching the new programme,’ Luna said, nodding up at the plastic letters at the front of the cinema. ‘Thank you, Zoe,’ she said, embracing her friend. ‘We’ll drop by again one day,’ she promised. ‘Next time we’re passing through.’

  ‘You do that,’ Zoe told her. ‘Keep in touch.’