by Neil Rowland
Chapter 37
This time I ride the crowd with my mixed-up daughter.
On balance I prefer to get crushed than to pose as a plastic duck in that gangster’s shooting gallery. Don’t ask me what make of gun he was aiming. I may have grown up in a rural community, but I’m not Heston. I assumed the thing worked and was loaded. I showed courage but I’m avoiding playing De Niro in The Deerhunter.
The huge chaos and noise of the festival overwhelms us, as we battle to find a path through: friction pulls at the wiring around my upper ribs and aggravates old wounds. Endless weaving, pressing and pushing through the gathering, as we try to get clear. This obviously reminds me of the music festivals Liz and I went to - later with Angie of course - although I don’t recall the experience being so raw. This one is in conflict with the police, directly against authority, and there’s a vibe of fear and anger. Maybe that’s a consequence of being in danger, an effect of paranoia, or fibrillation.
I’m giving myself a hard time again. I should take up my daughter’s advice and become a divorced househusband. There are rose bushes that have to be trimmed back. The front panel to my DS has to be taken off, the dent pushed out and then resprayed. That’s thanks to my recent trips into the countryside. No pun intended.
Angie and I can’t hear ourselves think for noise. If Jakes is making a live album out of this festival he’ll just get a concept album. Not even Floyd would have released that one. At this moment he’s more concentrated on pulling out an arrow head. But you can’t pin the blame on Cupid this time.
We meet such a variety of human faces and bodies along the way - as we retrace my steps and retake the rural ride. Rough and tough faces on the whole, etched with exhaustion and heartsickness many of them. Yet with such character and resilience; the living and breathing descendants of the great rural population of these isles; what could be described as our rich culture. Man, it’s a beautiful but endangered existence.
Angela and I try to keep to our path. Finally we emerge from the crowd, where the land has an ‘edge of festival’ look. From this point we can read our position and walk with some freedom. We develop Byronic clubfeet in traditional festival mud though.
We still have a hill to climb and a mythological feature or two, until I have rediscovered the track to my arrival point. The ancient land is playing its melody on my nerves. Recollected from boyhood, even from when Dad was still alive - those cobwebby memories. This compels a joyful response and is difficult to resist. Could Dad and I have visited this area, even though it’s lost to immediate recall?
Angie is complaining about the pass she’s come to. She’s not happy about the gruesome injury to lover boy. But he hasn’t endeared himself. She isn’t any longer lovestruck. She pulled out that particular dart.
Much to my relief my flight equipment is still behind the dry stone wall. The constellations are beginning to unfurl over our heads. I begin to consider our return journey. I may finally have left my hippie days behind me. How can I read the runes? How can we predict the energy waves?
Next up Angie notices movement in the distance; furtive change. She leads my sight to spreading dark shapes over the fields and hills. She gets herself into a tizzy trying to make me see anything. My eyesight isn’t so sharp. Police operations are an optical effect. But the force is advancing on the festival. They’re starting a star-ship ambush against travellers’ vehicles. There’s going to be an alternative Jean Paul Gaultier choreographed finale to this concert, looking at all the uniforms and boots on show.
Angela and I share looks of disbelief and horror as the ambush begins. We can only look helplessly over the scene as the law enforces. Everybody knew that the cops would turn up to collect the glasses. They were enthusiastic to do that, after the original festival convoy evaded them, with help from Jakes. They were calling in the cheque and sending around spiritual bailiffs.
As we stand there on our peak, wind riffling us in fading light, there’s nothing we can do to alter destiny. We can only visualise the destruction and mayhem going on, as windscreens smash, nuts crack, small children and their pets scatter.
“Don’t ever take a trip on violence,” I advise her. She was much too impressed by Jakes - tough guy.
I’ve had a good helping of violence lately, but it’s beginning to rust my soul. At this hour it’s too late for the cops to stop the festival from happening, as there are thousands of cheesy quavers, cream crackers, hippies and travellers over these acres of land. You’d need a large scale military operation to suppress a festival like this. That’s something you don’t want to witness in your life time.
So we drag our eyes away from the concealed violence. I try to distract Angela by asking her to help me reassemble the craft. Once she’s up there with me in the night sky, I reason, she’ll forget about that thug and all her worries.
She didn’t have the luck to watch my spectacular arrival. She was too busy with Adam at the time. The first thing she knew I had burst into the bedroom - as if summoned by the first illicit kiss. Is that the kind of paternal attention that any girl would envy? I didn’t regret interrupting their love match.
The immediate task is to reflate the dirigible, with only a single inexperienced ground crew woman. I get the charts out and understand that the wind direction is as predicted. It’s a matter of ballooning pride to take to the air again. James should have reached our prearranged location; on the assumption that he hasn’t driven my old Citroen into a ditch somewhere. I assume that Angie is going to take the bird’s eye view and accompany me. But eternal optimists always take the hardest fall.
Fire arrows into the fragile dome around my head, as I get the propane units going. Flame builds to a sustained ferocity - awesome and angry. This fire always sends a shiver along my spine. The stars appear to scatter in fright at the intensity and noise of the burning. Stephen Hawking might offer a bigger picture. At the best of times life resembles a Panavision roller coaster ride. It’s a beautiful but scary world however you care to look at it.
Angie shapes to hold open the mouth of the balloon. The poor girl isn’t used to this and she’s afraid of being roasted alive. She stands in an attitude of frozen terror as if miming a scene from the Pompeii catastrophe. She’s more afraid of this situation than when Jakes was pointing a weapon at us. Man, you can’t always try to second guess female psychology. As it turns out I’ve got even more wild guesses than Freud. Man, at least we never believed that coke was going to save our souls.
Eventually as the massive lozenge of the balloon begins to puff and fill out, Angie can duck away to the side. She gets well clear as if the globe is going to collapse back on her head. At this point I stop burning any more fuel, afraid that such fuel breathing will draw a crowd. Jakes might go searching for his runaway girlfriend, if only for revenge. I don’t want any ravers, hippies or cops to join us. We can’t take any hitchhikers tonight, not even Kerouac or Ginsberg.
The mystics claim that everything in the world must come to an end. I wouldn’t like to make any predictions.
After running through the sequence of pre-flight checks; in another parody of my prime; I complete a scissor kick back into the basket. Angie watches this move in perplexity, even without a full prognosis. She doesn’t yet take up her own position in the craft. I soon regret such bravado as I lose the tab on my heart rate. Man, I could yet land flat on my face. I feel tied to my heart as to a panicky companion.
Recomposing myself, I adjust the equipment, check logistics and anticipate flight time. Not the most favourable time or conditions to make a balloon flight. But I’ve been here before. Or so I believe. Then I urge Angela to follow me into the carrier but, though body posture is hard to call, she isn’t shaping up positively. She’s expected to fly away with me out of danger, into a positive future of university degrees and idealistic fiancés, as the western sky collapses on the horizon like a fire gutted terrace. H
er gun-toting drug dealing mistake is going to catch up with us, if she hesitates much longer, I fear.
“Come on, Angie girl! Jump in! Take off time!” I declare.
Her poigniantly hunched form is heart-breakingly unmoved. “Sorry, Dad!”
“What?”
“Sorry, I can’t come with you!”
“How are you going to get home?”
Not by hot air balloon clearly. I struggle to make out her facial expression, as her figure is increasingly obscure. Night is pouring deeply into the vales, like crude. The last burnished rays of a sunny day slant around the rim of Lime Tree Hill, resembling lasers at the finale of a Queen gig.
“I’m not going back home yet,” she tells me.
“What are you going to do then?” I cry from my wicker basket.
“There’s a festival happening this weekend,” she explains.
“Right. You telling me I have to leave you behind?”
“I’m old enough. I can take care of myself,” she affirms.
The rigging groans and creaks and pulls around me. “Jakes isn’t going to leave you alone,” I warn.
The only way I can see Angie’s facial expression now is to burn more fuel. If I do this too much I risk a premature take off, or even sending a personal message to Jakes, written in fire.
“You saw the agony he suffered,” Angela replies. “Do you expect me to run away and leave him?”
“Why not?” Good riddance to bad rubbish.
“I know how to deal with him.”
“So do I.” It was either him or my health.
“Adam is misunderstood. I like him,” she insists. “I don’t like big softies. He’s a challenge. You don’t understand him. Nobody does.”
Is that what they were doing on the couch? “I don’t have the least desire to understand that creep,” I admit.
“I care about him.”
“God help me, he pointed a gun at me,” I remind her.
“He was angry...definitely.”
“Right. Try to calm down,” I suggest. “He could start to knock you around,” I warn.
“It just won’t happen, Dad,” she claims.
“You’re brother’s been experimenting. Chasing the dragon and stuff. Did you know about this too?”
She denies it. There’s a noise to contradict me.
“You haven’t been sorting him out, have you, Ange? Doing him a few favours as every big sister does?”
“No. But they’re bound to be curious, aren’t they? It’s as I say. It’s normal at that age, isn’t it? If you try to stop ‘em they just want to experiment even more.”
“Listen to the drugs tsarina,” I comment.
“That isn’t fair, Dad!”
“Your brother’s at an awkward stage,” I tell her.
“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of ‘im!”
“Everything’s been tough on him...these last few years. He’s taken it the worst...out of all of you...maybe.”
“It was hard on all of us,” Angela tells me.
“I realise that,” I say.
“You went and hurt us, didn’t you. With those other women of yours,” she says.
“Right. I’m not going to give you my reasons for that again.”
“Not that I ever want to judge you, Dad. I couldn’t and I wouldn’t... I backed you up.”
“I never forget that, Angie. I’m grateful.”
Take off is shaping badly - delayed by our conversation. The craft is losing lift and shifting about, riffled by the air. Fuel pipes are hissing as I choke them off. The gaping mouth of the envelope pulls me into the promising void. Into the velvety, warm folds of darkness.
“Are you going back to that creep?” I wonder.
It’s a devilish type of charm he possesses. He pushes girlfriends down stairwells and fathers to the end of their wits.
Angela poses me some questions in response. “How many things in life are safe? Talking about meaningful experiences?”
“I could tell you a few,” I insist. It’s possible to attach danger to many of them.
“Adam’s got a lot of ideas. To become a promoter, open a recording studio, a men’s fashion chain,” she says. “You want him to surrender quietly? Where’d you be without your business, Dad?” she challenges me.
“I don’t know, maybe something in the music business,” I reply.
“Just being alive is dangerous, isn’t it... Do you call this a safe world?” she argues.
“Which is why we need to protect,” I argue. “It’s why we need to look after each other.”
“You’ve only got to walk around Bristol at night,” she suggests. Paranoid.
“Jakes has you in his sights, don’t make any mistake, girl. As for me I’m top of his hit list.” Thinks I’m going to sing to the police like Pavarotti. “This is Bristol, not Bogotá. Take my word for it, Angie, hard drugs knock you down. There’s no sense cosying up to him.” I grip the rigging as if surrendering.
“I can’t ignore this man,” she returns.
“Our sweet lord, I can’t believe my ears!”
She’s stood across the lumpy field. I can’t see her expression. She has a hand on the top of her head to keep the floppy hat on. Giving a great impression of the vulnerable young woman in great peril. Jakes and his henchmen are closing. How close are the railway tracks? I’m Fatty Arbuckle. In disgrace.
“Don’t you care about your life?” I call.
“That’s my affair. That’s why it’s called my life,” she formulates.
“You don’t seem happy with your life right now,” I observe.
“Why not? Why shouldn’t I be?”
“You could finish up doing time.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“One false move and they’ll bang you up.”
“No, that’s never going to happen.” Did she know more than I did?
“You Mum would have to go to Holloway jail just to visit you,” I warn. Obviously I’m not up on the location of female prisons.
There’s dark girlish laughter. “There are always drawbacks.” Drawbridges.
“You’re confident about that?”
“Pretty much.”
“And you’re wrong about your Mum. She really cares about you...”
“Is that right?” she declares in a cynical tone.
Yes, I say.
“I do have a few issues to sort out with my life,” she adds.
“Sure enough. I’m not going to be around forever you know.”
“Are you sure? It bloody feels like it.”
“Not according to the medical boffins...who experimented on me.” So is this the moment to bring her up to date with my service history?
There’s a hesitation. A breezy interregnum. “Oh well, Dad, they’re probably just trying to scare you,” she states. “I reckon that’s half the job of these medic blokes.”
“They succeeded with me,” I say.
“How do you mean? You’re not in good shape? You’re not serious?”
Sometimes we are kept in the world by the force of other people’s wishes.
“The truth can be scary,” I reply. At least I have found this recently.
Angela falls into longer reflection. I feel the cold creeping into her limbs. she doesn’t immediately react to the strange concept of paternal mortality.
“I tried to warn you, Angela. I hinted.”
“I didn’t get it then, Dad.”
But I didn’t tell her, or any of our kids, outright. This is hardly a golden moment. I’ve gone missing on the shore.
I could hear Adam Jakes taunting me: “Looks like you’ve been stitched up, granddad. Don’t go looking for our sympathy, k
now what I mean?”
“You were the one who said how disgusting I look.”
“That was only a bit of teasing,” she ticks me off.
“Sure, I realise that.”
“I expected you to get better. We did. Obviously I worry about you, Dad, and...then I can’t lie to you about your appearance...or pretend not to notice the changes.”
The flouncy hat has gone to a jaunty angle. She’s twisting bead necklaces, in parody of the love generation. Arguably my generation has gone to seed. I’m plucking the old tunes with arthritic fingers. I’m in a purple haze, sicker than Hendrix.
“I never meant to upset you, Angela,” I assure her.
I can’t read her emotions. I can only make out the Carnaby Street pastiche. Reminders of Lizzie. Pressed flowers in my books.
I wonder if Liz experiences these recollections, despite my misdemeanours, even if they arrive against her will.
“You’re not telling me you’re a goner, are you Dad?”
I remember the night I came back from London, after my second check-up in London, knowing. When I returned to the house to find Angie alone, reading in the living room for once, with a chance to explain to her. But I chose to stay secret.
“I thought you’d had an operation...and they’d put it right.” Yet she had noticed the physical and other changes and fluctuations in me.
“The hospital... My heart... They said I could... because there’s... They put in a faulty heart valve into the aorta artery,” I try to explain. “They didn’t order the proper product.” But she could tell an aorta artery from an electrical flex.
“I don’t understand, Dad.”
There’s a stunned silence as she processes the hard dope. The eternal father is failing.
