by Neil Rowland
“You’re such a gorgeous girl, Pru,” I declare. Hard to believe that the daydream was this crazy, but here it was, vocalised.
“What?” she declares, stopping to face me.
“I said that...I’ve met some gorgeous chicks in my time, but you’re one of the tops.”
“Chicks? You want your head examining, don’t you?” she spits.
“If you changed your cosmetics a bit,” I say, taking in her vivid war paint. “Modelling agencies would pay a fortune to take you on.”
“You’re haking me on, mate!” she searches my drained features, aghast.
“You look like a Shrimp’ girl,” I say.
“Why are you being so fucking offensive?” she wants to know.
“Don’t be offended, my ex-wife also looked like a Shrimp’ girl.”
“Did she? You told her that? You think that helps?” she retorts.
“Why ruin your looks?”
“Do you want me to ruin yours?”
Her attitude is really puzzling to me. This is meant to be high praise. She should be flattered.
“I’m not so self-obsessed,” I tell her.
“Your sexist bullshit just makes me puke,” she complains, turning the words over like cowpats.
“Is it? Is it sexist?” I wonder, baffled.
“It’s to escape from the shackles of fucking patriarchal fucking propaganda, that’s what I’m talking about!”
“Right, sound,” I tell her, enthusiastically. “That’s well put.”
At this stage self-respect has gone back into the bar and is slumped across the counter.
“Amazing you found some sorry woman to marry you,” Pru tells me, “if that’s the best you can do. Do you really have a daughter? I’d guess you must have adopted her as a single parent or something. Compare me to a fucking shrimp and think it’s a tremendous compliment,” she sneers.
“No, you don’t quite get it,” I bleat.
“That how you treat your precious little girl? Is that why she decided to run away from home?” she wonders.
“No... Great! Yes.” This was getting weird.
At this she skips off again. Even Sid the whippet snarls his disapproval, from the end of his lead. Fortunately I’m thinking for myself again. Totally stable people don’t normally drop out of society and go live in the wilds.
Perhaps sexism has always been my Achilles heel. I should never have married Elizabeth. That is I should never have married a girl like Elizabeth. The relationship was never going to work out long term, even if she hadn’t become pregnant. Even if we were the Jules et Jim of our set, Lizzie, Stuart and me. We should have left it there. Even if I agreed with ‘women’s liberation’ as they called it then, I kept these unconscious prejudices. I went to Rupert Lloyd’s party meetings and to his ideological study groups, making wise cracks from the corners. Did I really take any notice of Lizzie’s ideas and convictions? These sound like extreme statements about our past. God knows if there’s any truth in them.
We guys made the girls sing backing vocals. They did a great job, but it was never enough for them. We prevented women from writing their own songs or playing their own instruments - with a few exceptions. Guys got worked up about the injustices of society and governments, while treating their girlfriends badly. What was wrong with us, that we treated them so meanly? Tough guys, we thought ourselves.
When girls were willing to sleep with you, this was a big change in consciousness. If by some chance they got pregnant, many of us guys were not interested any more. Lizzie would take care of everything - including the baby. This was just before the pill was widely available. But I was proved wrong about that, wasn’t I? Lucky we really loved each other - we were passionately committed to one another - and felt that we could deal with everything. Or Lizzie did.
Even during the excruciating divorce hearing I couldn’t express myself properly. I couldn’t express my feelings and opinions as I wished - adequately. I can’t identify exactly what went wrong. I generated enough bad radiation to power a submarine on an Armageddon mission. There was something wrong about my way of expressing myself; as expressed on the faces of everybody else present in the room. That’s why her greasy lawyer was admiring my guts.
Anyway she had me done and dusted before we reached court. Way before the cold fishes were slapping me about. Judgement in relationships is taboo - a big no no. Judging the person you love brings catastrophic after-shocks. When the big criticisms start it’s the beginning of the end. Divorce courts are exactly in that business. Man, suddenly judgements are all you get! After she chose to use the ultimate weapon it was impossible to forget. From that point on I knew that it was more than just a simple twist of fate. A simple twist of the knife more like.
In relation to Angie I’m aware of double standards working in me. Double agents of the unconscious.
“Why are you so desperate to find your daughter?” Pru asks.
We are striding side by side now. Not sure where we are headed.
“Where should I start? She’s hanging out with a guy who beat up his previous girlfriend.”
“Doesn’t sound any good,” she admits.
“None whatsoever.”
“Can’t she look after herself? Wouldn’t it turn out better that way?”
“Can I leave it to chance, with such a guy?”
“Do you know the bloke’s name?” she asks.
“Will it help you to know his name? You think you may know him?” I comment.
“Try me!”
“Jakes. Adam Jakes.”
“Him? I know Jakes,” she says.
“He’s running this festival,” I tell her.
“Hard to avoid in these parts!”
I return her gaze with tense inevitability.
“Right, I’d guess so.”
“He sent the pigs in the wrong direction. So this festival could happen. He set up a power generator. You know, for the music? And he spoke to the farmer bloke about using his fields.”
“The farmer doesn’t mind about this?”
“Yes, he does mind, but we asked him first.”
“Thoughtful wasn’t it. But what do you know about Jakes?” I press.
“Not so much, mate. But if he organises our festivals, I don’t ask too many questions.”
“That’s a bit cynical, isn’t it?” My turn to be critical.
“All right, mate, if you’re so worried about your sweet little girl... If she’s with Jakes then there’s reason to be worried,” Pru warns. “We’d better do summat about it hadn’t we? I don’t know anything about the bastard’s love life. I thought he’d already got a mirror. He doesn’t have much love for us hippies and travellers. He exploits us really, but we get something out of him too,” she shrugs.
“I have to get to our Angie fast,” I say.
“All right, he isn’t going anywhere fast,” she replies.
“I wouldn’t bet on that,” I comment.
Tough guy.
Chapter 35
There are bonfires circling the festival as if to ward off evil spirits. As we pick off the path I notice the trees are moving; the woods are filled with people collecting timber, caught by flickering heat and light, resembling wood sprites or scouting soldiers. Pru leads me up the next incline, from where we stop to gain the vantage, not just to get my puff back; she guides my eyes down towards the lee side, to the sight of a futuristic silver trailer, like a prop from 2001: a Space Odyssey. This caravan definitely isn’t another hippie charabanc. The whole rig is stationed to escape any sign of a dark blue uniform or the machinery of law. This capsule has a sinister metallic cast that makes me jittery.
Pru points a finger at the end of her stretched arm. “I’d reckon that’s where you’d find Adam,” she suggests.
>
“Should I expect our Angela to be keeping him company?” I speculate.
Pru and I observe the activity around the trailer; the various comings and goings. We see a pair of strong armed guys stepping out, apparently disgruntled. There are more heavy vibes going down there. A sense of danger pervades. In an angry mood the two heavies walk away, seeking other diversions. I’m happy to stick to the festival fringes, assuming there’s no agitprop.
There are thousands of youngsters bopping around in the fields to our right. They are worshipping before a massive stack of speakers, booming a massive electronic pulse, that’s affecting my own heart rate - triggering a background of physiological panic. Those kids will keep up their manic dancing until the small hours, if not to the break of dawn, stoked up by truckloads of uppers. In our youth it was amphetamines and speedballs at first. We’d be wide awake at some folk or jazz club in Bristol or London until the milkman arrived; so that often we’d buy a bottle from him. These kids have come from towns and villages far and wide to dance like this, from ordinary caring families, so why should I worry? More positive to think of my daughter enjoying herself in such a cheerful crowd of her peers. I try to identify Angie or any of her playmates. That’s an impossible task from this distance. Except that it’s unlikely she will be with them. It’s more cheerful if she’s dancing with friends but I believe she’s with Jakes. Despite here presence at the festival she doesn’t really like dancing. She prefers talking and socialising as a pastime. She can talk the back legs off a millipede. But not relating to anything crucial in her own life. She prefers discussing other people’s troubles, including her father’s. Her own life has turned into a taboo subject.
“Want to go down and take a closer look?” Pru suggests. “If you’re crazy enough to rescue your princess.”
“All right, girl, let’s go,” I resolve.
When we get down the vale I have some luck. I bump into a mate of my daughter’s, a girl called Samantha. This teen lives in the Eastville district with her three siblings and her mother. The mum drives a warehouse forklift for a shipping company. We try to make ourselves heard above the din. Then after finding the right volume I struggle to get any coherent answers out of her. This chick’s on a high and the sudden appearance of Angie’s Dad proves that anything is possible - any miracle, wizardry or horror. I’m the genie that came out of the bottle - or capsule. I gaze into the looking glass and see our generation as if the party never ended.
“Aw-right Noah!” she screams - exhilarated, astonished, happy.
“Sam, do you know where my daughter is?” I yell. Man, this is the mother of all sound systems: rigged up by Jakes.
“We’re buzzing, Noah!”
“Right. Any ideas where our Angie is?” I shout again. Percussion shreds my inner ear and thunderous bass lines rattle my skeleton. Like a nuclear war starting in my head.
“Menace? D’you know where Ange ‘as got to, mate?” She’s addressing a skinny lad in a baseball outfit, number seven, who looks frankly out of his nut. Grinning at us like a loon, eyes rolling back into his head, struggling to get any vibration out of his throat, waving a beer bottle towards us, losing any powers of speech.
“Never mind, boy!” I tell him, disconsolately.
“Dance with me Noah! C’m on!” Samantha urges.
“Not in the mood!”
“Dance!” She begins to shimmy around me, waving her arms in the air.
“Trying to find Angela. My daughter? Did you see her?” I bellow.
“Where did you see her?” Samantha shouts, puzzled.
The gap between my front teeth is bigger than her attention span. There’s no point shaking my hands and continuing our shouting match: Susan and Bob H got better communications with that lost hill tribe in New Guinea.
Pru and I exchange ironies, understanding there’s no more info on offer. I decide to hoof it towards the silver trailer, rather than to Fred and Ginger with this girl. Pru’s whippet’s still following her on a piece of string, flickering his ears in pain, with a morning-after-expression, unaware of his heroic role in events.
Our hunch is that Angie is with her drug dealing dandy. This is the moment to go trick or treating, while praying that his bouncers are looking for some doors. So I follow my companion across the boggy ground, battling to swallow my heart. There are no more Bungalow Bills to lead enquiries. But if Jakes respects other people’s rights then Norman Mailer was a legendary ballet dancer.
“You seriously going in there to find her?” Pru warns, as we approach.
“Do I have another option? If you get any brighter ideas throw the switch.”
Pru and I stop before the high-tech vehicle. It resembles something to be shot into space. That’s where I’d like to send Jakes. Sadly my daughter’s part of the experiment. Now I’m volunteering as lab monkey. Arguably that’s the right role for a guy who’s been operated and experimented on.
My legs have turned to overcooked spaghetti. No good trying to think of being Alain Delon as the samurai, or any other counter culture or rock heroes, ‘cause it doesn’t help. No brighter ideas arrive as I stand on Adam’s step, knocking on his door as the angry father. This is as smart as I can do. A heavy rap has minimal impact in this environment. I discover that the two guys were careless in leaving the mobile unlocked. Prudence decides to keep away and offers to stand guard. She’s got a wise head on those young shoulders.
“Watch yourself, Noah,” she says, shedding her toughness.
But if I refused my ex-wife’s advice, I’m not going to heed this girl. They’ll have to drag me off the world stage, as I’ll never retire gracefully to the wings.
Jakes’ rigout is swanky enough to make any gangster drool. From experience I recognise quality materials and metals, manufactured for strength and lightness. The interior is finished to high standards, with fitted extras such as carpets and leather upholstery. It’s a dream mobile for seaside holidays of the kind our family once enjoyed. We could have traded in our VW Caravanette for this beaut.
I don’t pick up any voices or movement in here. Am I fully prepared for a scene or confrontation with my daughter and her latest flame? Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans - true enough. My heart is banging like a kettle drum played by Keith Moon. What is there left to be afraid of?
My fingers drag over the surface of a fixed table. As a result I notice fine powder sticking to fingertip perspiration. But I don’t make any assumptions. I dab the granules on my lips. Then a sign goes off inside my brain - heroin. It’s a candy-coloured motel sign, I recall, flashing neon over the empty lanes of the freeway, promising refuge to the shattered traveller. This is Jakes’ game and it doesn’t come as a shock. We tried smack once I have to admit. That was after Stuart died. We didn’t become addicted. It was only an experiment in desolation. Maybe that was just our luck.
Trying dope begins as an experiment, often; but we watched people getting hooked, gradually. Then trying to kick the habit. It’s like falling in love. Fortunately not any of my close friends. So I didn’t watch them doing cold turkey. I drove straight past that motel: I refused to break my journey back home. I was afraid that if I checked in I’d never find the strength to leave. But here I am again, decades later, edging towards middle-age, getting the same bitter grainy taste. I know that Luke already called at reception. Had my daughter refused to take the key to that luxury room? Surely it would look enticingly comfortable to her, in the face of her many problems and dilemmas.
There are other substances, powders and detritus, less familiar to me. I don’t know my way around the contemporary drugs scene. I’m stuck inside the mobile with the Memphis Blues again.
It’s a given that Jakes uses this vehicle as his control centre. He’s dealing, and doing business, around the whole region, and beyond, while keeping his operation highly mobile. I hate to concede
the point, but it’s clever; cynical. It takes nerve when there’s an army of police around the site, ready to sweep in. Bob already told me about a boat moored in Bristol in the wake of Royal Naval vessels.
The trailer contains a fortune in electronic equipment. There’s a wall of sound outside, but I pick up snatches of conversation. Locating those voices, reaching a further compartment, I turn a door handle carefully, then put my whole weight against the divider. Which leads me to hurtle inside and, after staggering to keep on my feet, I notice that my daughter is within there. I see her stretched out on a bed with him. They’re more or less still dressed, but I get the idea of disturbing them at the start of a new fitting. Man, just wait until her mother gets up to speed with this one.
Angela’s first reaction is boggle-eyed amazement. She’s convinced that this is a doppelganger or a living nightmare or even an overdose. Moments after, when she realises I am not a ghost or a wraith - just my usual imitation of one - but really her Dad in Technicolor - she jumps up in a panic, bare footed, and begins to rearrange her scanty clothing.
Bristol’s young entrepreneur of the year - son of the psychotic haulier - is stretched out on his own side of the bed, hardly stirring a limb, eyeing me ironically. As if he’s used to having girls’ fathers burst into his boudoir at the fateful moment. Like it’s a sexual problem but not the most serious.
But I haven’t dropped by to expose Angie’s sex life. It was never the idea to humiliate either of them. Or myself.
When Lizzie was a similar age she considered herself a sexually liberated woman. She’d read all the classic feminist books, gone through a reading list, attended lectures and meetings. Her friends and she, including Susan Huntingdon, would share sexual secrets and discoveries. Lizzie would talk and joke nervously with them about ‘sleeping around’. In reality this was confined to regular boyfriends. Trustworthy guys like me. She was cautious if bravely outspoken. Elizabeth would be scandalised by Angie’s permissive behaviour - by the sleeping around. Let’s face it Andrea Dworkin would have been scandalised by Angie’s exploits.
