Part Three

Free Festival

Chapter 31

I knew what to expect long before I reached any ‘alternative dance tent’. Driving out of the city I soon encountered traffic jams. A rainbow of anarchy is spreading across the land.

The first encounter with hippies is on the A39, as they follow a yellow brick road out of Bath. The whole snaking charabanc is smoking down the slow lane. That’s in the sense of thick dirty fumes from exhaust pipes, not so much Californian slang. There’s no hint of Tim Leary or Ken Kesey, spreading the word from the acid love bus. At this end of the line the cuckoo is extinct and hippies are an afterthought written in smoke.

These are the stragglers of the convoy, trying to bully and bluster their jalopies into movement. These scruffy outsiders are desperate to reach the festival before a police swoop, as if fleeing towards Kyiv after Chernobyl went up. Like a monster irradiated snail meeting a wall, my inflated French motor bumps against their rear. Not sure if it’s good or bad radiation. Angela’s got herself into an evil atmosphere. Jakes’ malevolent magic. Right now she needs a snake charmer. Not a father. Not even a concerned father. She’s a caring person irresponsible to herself. That’s how I’m trying to figure her out, fighting the lonely road.

Tempers are warming up in the sunshine, between respectable people and refuse-niks. Tax paying motorists are involved in shouting matches with drop out hippies. For sure they’re not comparing map references. I decide to put an elbow out and remain detached. But for how long may I keep a laid-back attitude?

This year the hippies have outsmarted the cops, capturing some land for the festival, after feeding them false information. A convoy has already gathered at a spiritually important site known as Old Lime Hill. According to ancient legend a Mercian magician was beheaded by Celtic warriors, after the sage was mistaken for a Viking spy. Celtic crosses at the top of Lime Hill mark the junction of lay lines that intersect three counties.

Stalled vehicles have made the route impassable. After a lot of revving and blanking, rolling car wheels into ditches, scraping chassis over bumpy ground, I forge my helter-skelter way. You’d think that my vintage car is a part of the procession. Already there’s another dent in the front side panel, which I’ll have to knock out later. The adventure encourages nostalgia about my own exploits as a young man. I think of this, dream on the festivals and concerts that we attended. For a while I sit back with one hand off the steering, enjoying my memories. The body’s engaged in a sit-down protest these days. My hair follicles are committing suicide in public. Why should I worry about gravity or the speed of flight?

What am I going to achieve by chasing Angela? I should give pause to consider my motives. She’s in danger but does she want to be rescued? By her father? Not a handsome prince or a rock singer. I’m struggling to recover, but my life already went over a cliff. Am I trying to get back to Elizabeth? Is this an attempt to put our marital mistakes behind us, like poor quality service stations along the motorway?

I can’t enjoy these reveries much longer, since I notice hippies indulging in fist fights with cops by the hedgerows. They’re taking swings at each other between truncheon blows and rolls in the hay. How much do they understand about our generation anyway? Do they know we were almost incinerated in our push-chairs? In our state of terminal decline can we be of any interest? Is there anything creative and progressive in our place? We’re in the dustbin of history; we’re the flowers of protest, dry and faded on the compost heap.

I struggle to bump and jump the car up this damn lane. Leafy shadows dance on a dusty track, unravelling over farmland ahead. Dark blue uniforms tussle with tie-dye in fields around me. Sylph maidens, with rich braided hair and smooth bare bellies, swig from jugs of cider. Machete wielding Morris Dancers are turning up in troop carriers, I fancy. This is a typical rustic scene from our West Country.

I lose tree cover as I run out at the top of the lane. I’ve avoided fights and kept my head on my shoulders. Gaining in confidence, gaining on the festival, getting back in touch with my daughter. I spot a settlement ahead, temporary structures, that must form a festival village. Soon I’ll be writing postcards and sending them back home to my mother.

Before I can find a suitable place to park - intending to continue on foot - I rattle into another battalion of Somerset and Avon coppers. My wheels are up on the bank and they see my old car ploughing a field. Consequently they pour around me from their roadblock. Some of them are carrying firearms. If I want to reach Angela I must volunteer the truth. Sharing the truth has become painful.

“Do you live around here?” the policeman asks.

“I’m here to find my daughter. To bring her home,” I explain.

The officer examines the interior features of my vehicle and considers his response. “Your daughter, do you say?”

“What’s your daughter doing around here, with these drop outs?” demands another.

“She ran away from home,” I dramatise.

A cop with sergeant stripes takes his own viewing.

“I’d say that these kids are all somebeddy’s sons or daughters,” he eventually remarks, in our lingo.

“Only one of them is my daughter,” I insist.

“Thank God none of ‘em belongs to me,” he comments. He coldly weighs me. “You took it in your head to find her, did you?”

“Haven’t your kids ever got into trouble?” I ask.

“When their father is a policeman?” he replies. “I’m asking you to turn around and leave this area. Immediately, sir. Do you hear me right? In the direction you was headed from.”

“What were you intending to do here, sir?” asks his constable.

“Put yourself in my place. Do you want me to leave her?” I plead.

The look of my car, and my attitude, is not appealing. I’m old enough to know better and I’m suspicious in this garb. But the coppers are reassured by my comparatively respectable appearance. I may qualify as a bit of a crank.

“You’re wasting our time. Police time.”

“I really have to find my girl,” I tell them.

“We can’t allow that. Turn this boat around.”

“I’ve got proper reasons to be anxious about her.”

“I wouldn’t have any fears,” the Sergeant says, chuckling.

“She’s mixed up in a bad scene,” I argue.

“All of ’em’s in trouble!” he guffaws.

“You must leave this area immediately,” warns his colleague.

The group of police is gathering tightly around me in the car, like a range of blue mountains, blocking out my view.

“I’d advise you to turn around and drive home again,” a young policeman tells me. “Between you and me there’s going to be a disturbance here today.”

Tension builds as I consider my options, unable to break my resolve to find Angie. In the background there’s a harangue between a knot of hippies and the police. The guys are bare chested, drinking and smoking, carrying supplies, like outtakes from the Woodstock festival.

Eventually I press the button to send my side-window back up. I stare contemptuously ahead, refusing to recognise my opponents, like Fonda dealing with a traffic cop. I have calculated the risks: I realise there’s little chance of breaking their lines. Silver bracelets never suited me. Not wise to play Easy Rider in this situation. They already have my name down, on record somewhere. In court they don’t accept stage names. I don’t want to get too far out.

I observe in frustration as squads of policemen advance across the land and form a cordon around the illegal gathering. I can’t leave Angela to make her own luck. How should I move from here? I’m not going to rescue Lizzie or our first child.

Our angel.

On returning to the factory I have difficulty concentrating. The Whig Wham order this year is a priority and we need to work up the job. This will not be enough to keep Corrina sweet, as a lingering bitter taste informs me.

After lunch I go out on the shop floor. Wanting distraction from mental vibrations. James Nairn jumps out of his office to round on me. He has a further shock to add to our troubles. I was beginning to relax with our company’s finances, when I was really having a smoke over a fuel dump.

“If we don’t face our problems, it’ll be the end of the road!” he warns. Always coining a phrase.

“Don’t worry,” I promise. Aiming for a friendly chat with colleagues, I attempt to palm him off.

“All of them will lose their jobs otherwise. You have to take these decisions,” he insists.

“All right, man, I’m cognisant,” I reply. “No need to rush me up to speed.”

“You can’t put this off, as if there’s no tomorrow.”

“Later.”

“You oughta know that your company is ripe for take over,” he says.

“Oh, really? Take over? Who’s going to take over this company? Not while I’m still at the controls,” I inform him. “Or afterwards.”

“At your own peril,” he warns.

This gives me pause. Over the years - decades - the company has been the object of generous offers and bids. Millions of pounds to sell up and rest my bones in a hammock for the remainder of my days. Too much money to count, even as my hands shook. Why didn’t I buy myself a mansion in the Black Hills somewhere? I don’t know if Luke will resist these temptations. He’s the son and heir.

“Did we have any new approaches, then?” I enquire.

“The company is small to medium size, with stagnating profitability...they see opportunities there!”

“This business is my life time’s passion,” I remind him, tetchily. “This was the dream of three young people.”

“Be that as it may,” he comments.

“Definitely they would like our mark, the established brand,” I conclude.

That way my name could last forever. But would I recognise myself?

James’ next warning carries a more personal note. “In the short term you will have an individual acquiring a majority share stake.”

“For real? Who could that be?” I reply. “What are you warning me about?”

“Shareholders are disgruntled by your performance,” he says.

“Is my performance the issue?” I challenge.

“They may be tempted to sell,” he persists.

“The traitors!”

“There’s a chance that somebody will get their hands on a block of shares.”

“Who has the motive to dominate this little company?” I quibble.

“Your girlfriend, that’s who,” he states.

I form a tense smile of disbelief. “My girlfriend?”

“That’s right, Mr Sheer.”

“Which one are we referring to?” I want to know.

“Ye’know, Freda. What’s her name? Freda Fardine?”

“What about her?” I retort.

“Miss Fardine...”

“Farlane,” I tell him.

“Well, that bosomy lassie... the one on the bike... she’s been purchasing shares.”

“Has she?” I remark.

“In a fury, Noah,” he warns, with emphasis.

“In a fury?”

“That’s correct. In a positive fury.”

“Then we’ve got to stop her,” I declare.

“As many shares as she can get her hands on. They’re only too glad to be rid of ‘em at the present time.”

I wince. Have we become so devalued? “After everything we’ve been through together,” I consider. But you never can predict.

“At present her stake is just below thirty per cent,” he instructs me.

“Not a controlling stake. But we can’t have too many private shareholders left can we?”

“Mrs Regina Hargreaves at fifty three York Terrace,” he informs me. “I was just talking to the lady this morning.”

“This is bloody outrageous.”

“But what are ye goin’ to do?” Nairn challenges.

“You’re the money guru, aren’t you?”

“But then you’re the boss, Noah.”

“No point arguing,” I say. “My idea has always been to bring Lukey into the business...eventually...when he graduates. As soon as he develops an interest in kites and balloons.”

James makes an ironical expression to himself.

“Does Corrina know what she’s doing? The consequences to me and my family? Putting my son’s future into danger? Taking away their inheritance. Man, we’re not exactly the Murdoch family.”

“Are your kids prepared to sell their shares?” Nairn presses.

For drugs? For porn? “I don’t know...only Angie’s old enough to sell at present.”

“If your kids agree to sell then Miss Fardene will have a majority stake,” he pronounces.

“Our sweet lord.”

“If you don’t move and take these hard decisions...to make people redundant and to reduce costs...overheads...the girl is going ta succeed!”

“She’d love to take me over,” I declare.

“Then I would have a sharp word with the lassie,” he advises.

“What happens if I should leave the scene, any time soon?”

“I don’t know,” he tells me. “We have to form a strategy.”

“I’ll tell you what happens,” I say, “this company will be handed over to the famous Farlanes!”

“What’s so famous about them?” he comments.

“She’ll never get her oil stained fingers on my company. We’ll go through those accounts again. We’ll get an accountancy firm in to help. I’ll get in touch with my solicitor,” I say, moving resolutely through the building. My heart rate climbs. My eardrums are thumping.

“She could find herself an extremely rich young woman,” James warns.

“Don’t worry,” I vow.

Nairn and I discuss Corrina’s probable moves. He vends me yet another coffee as we talk. We take refuge in my office, trying to form a plan. Fortunately I still have one. An office.

I mention my daughter’s escapades. My self-confidence has been shaken, but I’ve not yet gone completely to pieces. I want to remain on speaking terms with James. He’s as easy to shock as my mother though.

“My family’s breaking off into so many directions, I don’t know if I’m keeping them together or chasing them away,” I say, in navel gazing mode.

“Don’t fret, Noah,” he consoles.

“Maybe she’s too far gone,” I consider.

“Did you think about ballooning into the music festival?” he suggests.

“That’s a bit far out.”

“Fly over the top of them coppers. Are ye afraid they’ll shoot you down from the sky?” he chuckles.

“How many miles d’you think that will be to fly?” I consider.

“About eleven miles, from take-off point.”

My eyes narrow and my mouth contorts.

“You’ve flown that far for a cuppa tea b’fore now,” he reminds me. “Well, for a pint of beer m’be!”

“There’s no law against high spirits and balloon flights,” I remark.

“This morning we had a brisk south easterly...so presuming there’s been no shift, from the last reading, wind direction oughta be favourable.”

“Do you think? What about wind speed factor?”

“Good question. That would be fifteen knots.”

“I may find myself in New York for breakfast,” I comment.

He shrugs, looks past me, with nothing more to add. The final decision to fly rests with the pilot.

“In these conditions, tricky to reach the festival location,” I argue.

“You’re the guy with a runaway daughter.”

“How are these hippies going to react to my arrival? Landing at their festival in a hot air balloon,” I say.

He shrugs again.

“The machinery we have to buy for ourselves. It isn’t cheap or disposable, you know.”

“I don’t see why these scruffs should want to vandalise your machine. See how this balloon flight will solve the problem.”

“You’ll have to follow me on the ground. Take my car. I’ll try hard to touch down near the festival. Then Angie and I can rendezvous with you later, at an agreed grid reference.”

“There you have it, Noah,” James concludes, crossing his arms; deal done.

Chapter 32

Ashton Park is a large estate, formerly in the aristos’ hands, a stone’s throw from the Pirates’ football ground. In those good old days the aristos were involved with coal mining, forestry and commissioning designs from Inigo Jones. In these duller days the estate belongs to the council and the grounds are a favourite launch site for Bristolian balloonists. I count myself among those Bristolian balloonists.

After we park and get out to look around, James surveys weather conditions ruefully. What is the flight plan this afternoon? It’s a calm and pleasant afternoon at the moment, but the forecast isn’t encouraging. The sky already has a tortured look, at the edge of a storm, air temperature falling in relation to the setting sun. But as an experienced pilot I should be able to cope, even as the atmospherics change. The most awkward stages of a flight are take-off and landing of course. This applies as much to airline pilots as to human cannonballs, to swans lifting from and landing into lakes as it does to gliders on the end of a line or coming down in silent isolation.

I have to get up to speed. James and I waste time bickering as we debate the most favourable take-off area. Finally I go along with his suggestion of a clear patch by Church Wood. A feathery tree line offers protection from the wind. Trying not to delay further we unpack our equipment efficiently and begin to assemble rigging. I ensure that the propane tanks are securely strapped to the main frame: then I attach burner hoses. Pre-flight checks take longer with just the two of us. We spread out the massive colourful balloon envelope across rough grass, ready for inflation. We run through further safety checks with great concentration. James is a man capable of such deep concentration and focus; valuable qualities both for a finance manager and an engineer. The only conversation between us is technical, purely related to the task ahead. Personal differences and past arguments are behind us, as if we’re preparing to escape from Colditz; at times Big Pink does feel like Colditz, when there’s a lack of other prisoners. This is how we work at the factory, despite our high jinks.

James takes special care examining a deflation panel. This mechanism is a vent at the side of the envelope, that the pilot can open and close to stabilise altitude and position, by trapping or releasing the warmer air that provides lift. As I adjust the pilot burner and check fuel pressure, the envelope is already, gradually, by increments, puffing out into the atmosphere before us: Like a grumpy giant clambering back on to his feet, the material begins to move and spread. Lazily at first but with increasing vigour, the giant sock fills and inflates.

Preparing myself for the adventure, I clamber into the carriage basket at this stage. This isn’t the simple leap that it used to be for me. I have to be careful not to tear stitches or muscles - especially the master muscle. There’s enough lift in the craft to raise an edge of the basket from terra firma; to tauten guide and anchor ropes. At this moment I can feel the ‘artificial lift factor’, which is a phenomenon in which the crown of the balloon is pulled up by warmer currents above. The problem is that the balloon quickly reaches colder currents on top, which has the effect of switching off your lift. In this situation your craft hasn’t built up enough heat and lift to get up to a safe height. The danger is that the balloon will begin to pitch and fall at a hair-raising horizontal in that situation. This is a false persuasion, as the feeling of ascent comes too early. The danger is that the pilot is deceived into setting off. I’ve seen many balloons ripping through tree tops, tearing holes into materials and wallets.

Nairn and I check our flight plan and arranged references. He will track the craft along the way and zoom in on me if need be; if my flight shapes like a Brazilian free kick through thin air. I’ve burnt enough gas to warm the envelope to a full vertical. The dirigible is nudging upwards with determination. I catch the main line as James throws it towards me in the basket. Gently the wonderful bulbous contraption lifts, takes off majestically from the earth - awesome as a space ship, quiet as a dream. James gives the traditional lavish wave as a send-off; before rushing back to my car and starting off in hot pursuit. No way to recapture an errant daughter without defying the laws of gravity. Man, you need nerves like electrical cables.

Dragon fire leaps up into the void of the envelope. Storm clouds race across the horizon in front, lead-bellied as the old blues singer, resembling furious warriors in full armour. Psychedelic images are sliding and reconfiguring in front of my eyes. The fiery noise of burning gas compares to terrified amazement. You feel so perfectly - or imperfectly - alone. The gods have me in the palm of their hand. I am gripped by a fifteen knot wind, as strong as the jaws of Rachael’s bull dog when he got hold of my trousers.

I get a picture of the patchwork of fields, hills and estates. Unfortunately the craft has only found a low altitude as it scuds down a slope towards the wood. The aerostat loses shape as it pushes out warm air and takes in cold. I’m shaping up for a fiasco in the tree tops. It’s a perfect illustration of the manual’s “don’t do”s. What am I going to say to the other guys in the club, if they find out?

I think of Nairn grinding his teeth below, as he struggles with the Citroen’s unfamiliar controls. I should have enough flying experience and miles in the logbook. But here I am skimming tree tops. I could be sharing my supper with the crows this evening and offering a few titbits of my own. I hallucinate about Angela throwing herself about at the festival, while I’m pulled limb from limb by hungry buzzards. To escape that horror I burn fuel like a Texan tourist in Alaska.

As a consequence the craft surges up into the sky like a plunger on a test-your-strength machine. The earth reduces below me as if I am watching camera shots from the side of the Space Shuttle. To counter this dangerous ascent I’m forced to tug on the deflation panel. This is misleadingly called a ‘parachute’. After wasting so much propane I hope not to run out of fuel later on my return trip - assuming there’s going to be a return trip. Jim Morrison didn’t come back to reality after climbing into that final warm bath. I peer up desperately into the heavens of the balloon’s interior; feeling like a midge in the great web of the planet. Where’s the escape strategy?

While I vent warm air, that feels like steam from the pipes of a dragster, I manage to stabilise the craft. Excessive lift factor is removed as I level out at two hundred feet. We’re still in one piece, despite my pantomime efforts at a bump and tangle. I’m on my way at last - to rescue my hedonistic princess from the tower of song.

Worse luck as wind speed picks up; cross currents distorting the shape of the balloon envelope. On any normal day the pilot doesn’t hear the wind, doesn’t feel the speed, as if the world’s slipping away under your feet. This afternoon the balloon is crumpled in its trajectory - a paper streamer in a fan. Menacingly there’s a school of cumulous clouds waiting in the distance, with the impact of bored and hungry sharks. From the ground cumuli are puffs of cotton wool. In fact they’re created by vapour rising in warm air and then freezing in the middle atmosphere. If your balloon gets caught in this convection you’ll finish up a cork on a Roman fountain. But there’s nobody around to coo and point at the delightful trick. The pilot may get a kick out of the rise, but then he or she will freeze and asphyxiate in the stratosphere. After which he or she will plunge back down to earth, blue faced and bug eyed. Don’t let anyone persuade you that balloonists are wimps or eccentrics. Man, you’ve got to be like Arnie when you consider leaping a’ship; particularly if you’re an android with a dodgy component, no fault of your own.

The exhilaration of flying hasn’t diminished. Hundreds, sometimes thousands of feet above the ground, sometimes with breathing gear. Even today, buffeted and sick with worry about Angela, I get a kick out of it. The mountains of the mind are invisible. Except for that trip to Japan, which turned my mind to Sushi. It’s a big regret that I didn’t travel the world, encounter different cities and cultures. Liz and I had that hunger and curiosity, before life intervened. I could only leaf through magazines and think what could have been. Somehow that desire became lost as we grew apart. My own sense of adventure comes from flying these balloons. They keep me to my commitments. They don’t take me far away from home.

Liz can be dismissive of my sport. We used to play tennis together. At one time she was a good club player. I can still think of her stretching to the net. She never approved of my weekend vanishing tricks. She knows that I’m happiest at a thousand feet in a picnic basket. In her view it’s a way to avoid real life. That’s her critique of the sport. But then it’s my look-out. Ironically she’s the person I’m most eager to avoid these days. Not exactly the love of my life, but the alien with hostile green eyes, that she has turned in to, in contemporary times. Previously I was happy to come back down to earth, to hitch up with her again. So to speak, my clear-eyed lady of the lowlands.

High altitude was more appealing after marriage break-up. In this era Liz doesn’t care what I do. In our youth we were regarded as the stellar couple; we were watched and followed by friends and associates, even when we ended up in a domestic horror of premature nappy pins, while cooped up in a fungi box. Our love was written up in the stars until we crossed each other. This was the biggest hangover in history and nobody else was invited. She can hardly bring herself to look at me, but I’ll never see sixty. As long as she can write a deepest sympathy card. That’ll be the last bouquet I ever get from her.

Only four miles remaining to Lime Tree Hill, if James’ map references are correct. I’m out of radio communication. No sign of the French nose slugging its way along the lanes in hot pursuit. But I’ve no reason to question his lore. Checking off the charts, taking my bearings from landmarks, I find that I’m bang on target. Then again so was Apollo 13. I can’t fly too low for fear of turbulence around buildings and of the buildings themselves. You have to be foolhardy to fly today - even to get your girl out of a fix.

The festival site comes into view as I pass over the next hill. This is where I drove earlier and was turned back by the cops, with fist fights breaking out in the fields. At a lower altitude I can see the broken lines of hippie convoys. The land is rushing under my feet; my heart is in my mouth. Is that why I keep it shut these days? I force myself to keep calm. There’s an amazing incentive to keep calm. I can hear Wickham, my consultant, jabbering again, like the Old Testament God:

“Avoid situations of extreme stress. Learn to take life sedately. Don’t overtax yourself,” he urged.

Does Wickham have any ideas how to get this balloon down safely?

“Change your ways. Make sacrifices in your life style.”

Don’t enjoy my sports, stop listening to music, give up sex, abandon my roustabouts? I didn’t take any notice.

Within another mile I notice the contours of Lime Tree Hill. This ancient landmark emerges through metallic sunset hues.

The balloon is sweeping over the top of woodland in a green rush. The craft swings out lee side and finds cool currents. In this context cool does not mean hot. Man, I can’t claim to be fully in control. I’m flying by the seat of my pants. It’s like plucking guitar strings with loose teeth. I can distinguish police columns and further snarl-ups of hippie and traveller vehicles, as well as the weekenders and pleasure seekers trying to join in. In the further distance I notice the music festival itself has got underway. A screech of white noise, a shaken blanket of wiry sound, greets my ears at this height. Man, I’m serving myself up to them like Captain Ahab to Moby Dick. I peer down from my basket to see police running and waving their arms at me. The balloon and I are breaking their checkpoint. They are demanding that I come down and report to them; offering my details. They couldn’t have anticipated some guy arriving by hot air balloon. They may believe I’m a hippie crazy enough to attempt this. Now that’s what I call a love of music.

Nairn’s strategy is working like a dream. The law of lift has beaten the constabulary. I’m having a good trip so far. The big nosed car may be left far behind, so hopefully James will avoid a police interview himself; circle the festival site and find our rendezvous reference for later.

“Ahoy there coppers!” I call down. “How high’s your conviction rate? Ha, ha!”

If they notice my awesome movements, they can’t hear me. They merely stop to observe the antics of some lunatic balloonist. I’m well beyond their reach. A new dimension comes into play and leaves them baffled.

The sound of freeform noise grips my eardrums like the incisors of a Rottweiler. My phantasmal machine continues to drift and tug towards the musical tempest ahead. My feet surf over the roofs of hippy charabancs like the slippers of an Arabian prince on his magic carpet. Then, while I’m fearful of crash landing into their mobile homes, the wind drops for a spell, into a type of mid-ocean lull. This leaves the Ancient Mariner dangling in his rigging; his paranoia fully dramatized.

The young savages hail me with waves and squeals from below. I have become a major attraction. Why do people always react in this way to a balloon? Big deal, this is how I chill out in my free time. Angela must have noticed me in the sky too. Aware of commotion, she would have looked up, and realised I was coming to save her. I assume she would get away and try to reach me, so that I can lift her out of that gangster’s dubious clutches. We deliberately chose an aerostat with a bold and colourful design, so that Angie couldn’t miss me. She’s always kept us guessing. Your own imagination is most shocking. Some days you had better keep the theatre dark.

Meanwhile I continue to drift over the village, pursued by a horde of children and yapping dogs beneath. I reach for my bottle of aspirins. Not only to keep my blood from freezing. The cardiac patient more or less keeps afloat on warfarin and aspirins.

Like the hyperbole of fantasy, the huge aerostat floats over the landscape.

You can make your dreams come true, but often the nightmares take over.

My glorious balloon descends - no use burning more fuel - finding warmer faster currents. I’m uncomfortably near to the ground and, skimming at knots, a violent encounter with youth culture is imminent. These perils are confirmed when I come out into the festival area. I’m headed directly above the action, with rock groups thrashing, kids throwing themselves about in ecstasy, primal hunters fuelled by their magic mushrooms. My craft always follows the breeze and there’s nothing I can do to change direction. At one point I am no more than ten feet above their heads in the arena. Hairy is the word that comes to mind here.

They believe that my arrival is a deliberate stunt, as part of the entertainment. But I’m not the Trojan horse I’m just the matchstick man. Many of them jump up trying to touch the basket. A carpet of astonished and delighted faces unrolls beneath me, as if I am sailing on a sea and leaving a wake behind me. People raise their arms to greet my journey, as the balloon is a beautiful dream to them. I continue to peer over the side of the basket at them, up here, on Desolation Row. It isn’t necessary to drop any tabs of acid in this life.

The current moves me. I don’t crash into the stage or those stacks of speakers and bins. I pass fully over the flying hair of those four guys on stage. Long hair looks as incredible to me now as the thought of deep pockets. The band is definitely whipping up a storm, whoever they are. Finally I ebb towards the shore of this wild scene. Angela couldn’t overlook me. Ironically the festival is safer than the narcotic charms of Jakes. The guy needles me.

I need to decide on a landing point. I dampen the burner unit, cut off fuel, preparing to kiss grass. The craft is descending responsively to below tree top level. Speed increases as it sweeps down: land slants menacingly towards me. It’s coming into the area that James intended. That’s good news. But the landing isn’t.

Obviously it’s dangerous. It’s essential to pull on the ‘parachute’ at this moment, to deflate the envelope. In preparing for ground zero I get a grip on handles inside the basket, bend my knees into a strong posture. In moments the basket comes into juddering contact with the slanted field. The basket rips over on its side and drags me over the lumpy and stony earth. This isn’t a beautiful experience. I’m going to get a shock as well as cuts and bruises. I don’t want too many of these experiences. But my ticker’s still working and that’s the most important thing.

Rough landings are a typical indignity with this sport. You can understand why Lizzie preferred an armchair. I stay where I am after impact, perfectly still for a while. Check out the potential damage, deep breathing, checking on my ventricles left and right. Ballooning equipment is strewn around, as I wait for the inner mechanism to regulate. I cradle my knees against nausea, while the colourful balloon envelope deflates around me, like an enormous piece of gift wrap. So what happened to the gift? I’m completely still even while the universe continues to spin.

Staggering up, brushing myself down, there are no hippies or cops in view. Not even an irate farmer with a shotgun cocked. The craft drifted about a half mile away from the actual festival. That’s a good hiking distance for a guy in my condition. The distance will safeguard my equipment, which I quickly conceal, ready for a return journey. I can’t be too fussy about losing gear. There are more troubling issues to look at. Such as where is Angela at this time? Why isn’t she striding out to join me?

Where are you at this moment ‘Queen’ Elizabeth, when I need you most?

Chapter 33

By all appearances I’m the biggest taxpayer in the area. But I’m not the only middle-aged fossil. I look like a member of the Caravan Club on the roam for a shower block and a supermarket. The street plan of the festival has the complication of a Middle Ages town. I notice that a good portion of the citizens are in the fourth flush of life. In contrast to me they have never stopped being hippies or alternative, in terms of dress and lifestyle. They haven’t compromised ever. This wouldn’t recommend them to the affections of my former wife. I even bump into hippie grandparents. They’re busy looking after hippie grandchildren.

Not that I’m rigged out in my dress suit, you should understand. I was hip enough to dress down for this jig. Problem is that I could never dress down far enough. Definitely not, if Angela is going to recognise me, or take me seriously. No matter how disorientated, I shouldn’t lose context with fashion sense. I have to admit that I’m out of touch with the youth culture scene.

I fall back on my idea of Bob Dylan exploring the lanes and alleys of a North African coastal city. He was a solitary man in that period; he was down to his faded embroidered jeans, with a soft cotton shirt billowing in the dry and spiced air. There was a lost and confused expression as he looked back over a shoulder. Man, I can see where that feeling came from.

The festival doesn’t radiate a hostile or aggressive vibe. Despite a police cordon and intimidation around the site, there’s a peaceful and cheerful vibe. They could have suspected me of working undercover - an under-kaftan man - if anybody saw me stepping out of that balloon. Even if I am smart-casual or even bourgeois-rock ‘n’ roll, nobody hassles me around here. No one confronts me about what I am doing here. They leave me to my own cloud: which isn’t cloud nine. But can I make out where I’m going to?

There’s a rainbow of tie-dye on show; a revival of the whole show of hippie display and paraphernalia; some ironic some straight-up. I’m too hung up about Angie’s immediate safety and future to have my fortune told. Certainly I will need a clairvoyant to locate her. Elizabeth’s supernatural pretensions would fail me here.

After that I intend to burn my way out of here. Before Angie swallows more uppers and downers and gets laid by some guy as wide as the Bristol Channel. All I can say is that Daddy’s coming in with the tide. My only concern is to steer her away from danger, before Jakes gets ticked and blackens her eyes, for all his outlaw charisma and good looks.

A police helicopter clatters over our heads. This could be a response to my high jinks in the aerostat. Man, I’m just trying to find a direction home for Angie. The hope of finding her becomes more ridiculous by the moment - as distant as that helicopter. I waste limited time and energy by losing orientation. I trudge through crowds of rough humanity. I caught up with Luke in a riot, yet can’t always fall back on coincidence. There must be tens of thousands of souls about the area. I know that I don’t really belong here. I’m out of character.

But I can’t allow that girl to escape from us, even if she is some kind of artist. Rebellious daughters aren’t easy to bring back. Or should I understand that she has her own life? This concept frightens us, as it is very different to what we experienced, but should we intervene? She’s put another crack into my thermometer.

Did Angie miss my arrival? How could she? My entrance was more colourful than the national folk culture of Uzbekistan. The idea was that we were going to find each other. So what’s the big draw of that dope fiend? No sign of her here. How could there be? I have to keep some irony between me and the stage. Another rock band is going out of its collective heads on those boards. They send tidal waves of skull-splitting feedback ricocheting about the surrounding hills, to roars of approval from the audience. Man, I doubt if the wildlife shares their enthusiasm.

Hard rock, metal or thrash, isn’t Angie’s scene. Her musical tastes orient around songs and dance style: often artificial heartbeats.

da dah, da dah, da dah, da dah

When she’s at home with me she laps up Sixties and contemporary pop and rock. We coincide there. I don’t know which tribe or youth movement she belongs too in this era. I have faith she’ll keep to the edges of extremes, if not exactly completely out of danger.

There’s a big market day atmosphere at the festival; a buzzing trade in everything; food and clothes, pots and pans, face paints and body piercing, bootleg music and incense sticks: not just narcotics. This place reminds me of the West Country gypsy fairs of my childhood. That’s back on the planet Zog of course. The summer of love’s been through a hard frost since then. Don’t know if we’ll see the flowers bloom again.

Temporarily the search for my daughter is abandoned. I decide to hang out for a while, to get my head around the situation. All that stress and sport has made me hungry and I snap up two ‘veggie-burgers’ at one of the food stalls. Not sure what kind of vegetables went into this concoction - or herbs. My meal is served up by an alarming girl in a leather bra. She thinks that I’m the startling misfit. I feel no nearer to the situation between Jakes and my daughter. There’s a grungy guy selling pots of home brew from a plastic bucket in the back of his camper. A few mugs of pokey tackle help to calm me down. All great minds drink alike.

If you can get your head around it there’s plenty of good weed. I sit on a cushion on the top of a box and watch the sun set behind woods. Lime Tree Hill is crowned by a spectacular cloud formation. Like God blushing. What’s he embarrassed about? Plenty to choose from, I guess.

This ancient, resonant area of England has a mystical beauty and powerful draw. While this flaming western sky is developing I experience a strong connection to place: I go through the experience of my hazardous balloon flight. That’s where I feel most fulfilled. I can imagine myself up there still, caught by the powerful forces of those elusive elements. There’s a mystery in that, which still makes sense.

As I sieve the swampy beer I grow conscious of an observant presence. There’s a crawling sensation where the guillotine should come down. I realise that a festival-goer is studying me, although I don’t immediately turn to find out who. Anyway I’m occupied in my head, trying to ignore pictures of Angie with that fastidious thug. You’ve got to stay cool, I tell myself, because you don’t know what kind of psycho is wandering the fields.

I’m not used to attending music festivals alone, as always I’d be in company with Liz and, very soon after, Angie strapped to my back or to Lizzie’s back. It was even known for Corrina and me to camp out - albeit in relative luxury - at the Whig Wham world music weekend last summer. But there’s nothing more dismal than being solitary at a festival. Looking like Jean-Paul Sartre on a package holiday. All I can do is stare ahead, rubbing my grey stubble, running fingers through phantom floppy-fringe. Well, I’m glad that somebody’s taken an interest in my existence. Otherwise I could have melted back down into the ground like an old mushroom.

The curious bystander is a distinctive girl. I’ve been chasing after beautiful girls all my life - why pause now? She stands there watching me from the edge of the trees. Lovely as a deer, though not as shy. She’s got a whippet dog on a string, that’s all eyes and sexual organs, skinny and bent backed. Maybe the unfortunate mutt has a heart condition, though it must be a natural look. This girl’s an absolute stunner, I realise, even if she’s tortured her hair up into ratty plaits, dyed green and red. She’s decorated her face with painted circles, in the fashion of Native Americans or Stone Age People; or even Joni Mitchell escaping into the wilderness to escape fame and fortune. She has a silver ring through one nostril. So who is this warrior queen?

Her native dress is too thin for the chilly evening conditions. Really Native Americans would run for their lives. She weighs my mood and presence carefully; she tries to place me in her universe. Exactly like a deer scenting seductive danger. Then her curiosity becomes too much for her. She has to check out this peculiar beast caught in the trap.

“Looking sorry for yourself,” she declares.

My gaze back is ancient in origin. “Am I?”

“Not enjoying yourself then?”

I grin unhappily towards her. “Not especially.”

“What’s wrong with you then?”

“Feeling like one in a billion chance,” I comment. Defensively I cradle the pewter of bog water.

The girl approaches on soft feet - leading the whippet - and circles around me, amidst clouds of frozen breath. She takes in all my freakish and unexpected contours. The pooch switches his glance between her and me, a thin tongue hanging out, showing studded canines. Maybe he’s been drinking some of this beer too.

“It’s a beautiful sunset though, isn’t it,” I observe.

She follows my gaze heavenwards for a moment. “Awesome, mate.” We share a West Country twang.

“Can you tell me something?” I call.

“What’s that? What can I tell you, mate?”

“I’m just curious. Do you believe in any kind of afterlife? By any chance?”

“No chance, just this one,” she replies.

“Only asking.”

“But I completely believe in this one,” she emphasises. She takes a firmer stance.

“Right, thanks girl. Crazy idea really isn’t it.”

“Doesn’t have to be,” she says.

“Many rooms in the mansion?”

She allows herself a smile, as if the soft face is made of rock. “Why not.”

“If only there’s a spare one,” I add.

Far out thoughts. Powerful to pharaohs and medieval field-hands. Not only to contemporary computer nerds in tanks. Stonehenge wasn’t a picnic site. I don’t have a sky gazing character. I’m a sportsman, or used to be, and I recognise the world around me. We all have to battle with the forces of divine exasperation. Frank Noggins actually told me that humanity is part of a computer programme. We’re a circuit in the mind of an original creator. Reality is the consequence of a big bang in the head of that giant Geek. Frank really believes that. Right, so now he’s got his thumb on the delete key, this Geek. Mister and missus Noggins and the Geek.

We get to talk this woman and me - overcoming initial suspicion. The big music festivals gave this opportunity to interact with many people; for an exchange of contrasting thoughts and experiences. Away from the tall buildings and confined spaces, the mind can open up; dare I say ‘expand’? Even when we returned to our regular lives, to humdrum existence in conventional society, we were never quite the same. I wonder if my daughter will have similar experiences here. I couldn’t begrudge Angela that - I couldn’t deny her the chance. But, I guess, I’m just wary if she wants to open up the doors of perception.

“Yeah, I was always hanging out at the big rock festivals,” I tell her. “You know, in a younger incarnation. That was the authentic period, you know, when we turned machine guns into ploughshares.”

“What, like a youth opportunity scheme,” she retorts.

“Authority branded us a bunch of dangerous weirdoes,” I say.

“Are you a weirdo?” she wants to know.

The idea causes me thought. “We were proud to call ourselves freaks. Misfits of conventional society. Hopeless idealists,” I blab. I’ve probably got Stuart Maybridge in mind. “Sit down here next to me. We can put our heads together,” I suggest.

“I’m cool standing,” she tells me.

But it isn’t a chat up line. I’m not scheming to conjoin anything but our thoughts. “Don’t worry, that’s cool,” I assure her. “The name’s Noah.”

“Pru,” she returns.

“Great name, Pru. Excited to meet you.”

“Cool.”

“So what’s the hippie movement about in this era? Is it a lunatic fringe or merely a fashion statement?” I blurt out. Something’s happening.

“You’d better cut back on the grog,” she advises. She continues to watch me carefully. Her tender face too healthy, too ruddy from the out of doors. “Don’t we have a right to exist?” she challenges.

I shuffle on my cushioned crate. “Tolerance is essential,” I say.

“You’re tolerating us?” she wonders. She whisks back the braided hair, while adopting that firm posture. Striking looking, yet not a girl to tangle with. She reminds me of Lizzie in her youth - Amazonian.

“I don’t agree with the cops,” I assure her.

“But you’re disapproving of us,” she concludes.

“From my angle you’re trying to escape from reality.”

“Don’t you know how to enjoy yourself?” she wonders.

I furrow my pale clammy brow. “There’s nothing wrong with a few home comforts, from my...”

The girl scoffs.

“I’m just squaring up to these contemporary times,” I argue. “I can’t turn back the clock.” If only.

“My generation has the right to live how it likes,” she declares. A flush comes up through the war paint. “You’re well out of order,” she growls. The whippet turns up his eyes, nervously adoring.

“Well girl, you’re entitled to drop out of society...if that’s what you want to do.”

“There’s nothing to drop out of is there!” she argues.

“Then there’s no chance of changing things, is there?”

“Change what?” she wishes to know.

“The world, the future, society,” I reply.

“We don’t belong to society.”

“More than your hairstyle or your consumer choices. You know where I’m coming from,” I say. I take another swig of the swill. Lord knows what was in this or those burgers.

“You’re arguing to me, are you, that your generation was more political?”

True or not, I’m just trying to survive, in the current historical epoch. “We were more conscious,” I argue. Often barely.

“So what did you do to change the world?” she retorts.

“What did we do? It was more a case of what we aimed to do.”

“So you just talked about it and jumped into bed together.”

“At least we cared.” For comfort I take another slurp of radical homebrew.

“Bullshit,” she replies.

“I’ve got to admit that, you know, many of the radicals lived in suburbs.”

“You’re fucking up your image now,” she says.

“You kids are living like this, naturally, outside of conventional society,” I drawl. “Yet that isn’t a decision, a political choice...a principled choice...it’s because you don’t have any choice.”

“Bullshit. We choose to live the way we do,” she replies hotly.

My bottom tenses on the brocaded cushion. “Fair dues, girl. Straight up, it isn’t meant as a criticism.”

“There’s always been alterative people, travellers and hippies. We’re as old as the land.”

“But you’re regarded as a social problem,” I risk.

“We’re not any kind of problem. Social or otherwise.”

“Right, so you take the idea of freedom at face value?”

Pru considers the issue, shifting her elegant weight from tuft to tuft.

“I’ve never wanted to work in a factory or an office, Noah. That’s not in my nature,” she confides. “Makin’ small talk and waiting for the next tea break. And I could have had that kind of life, you know.”

“Depends on the type of office. How do you mean?” I wonder.

“I was engaged to this guy, see. More’n three years ago. It was difficult to turn him down, because he was a real sweetheart. But he had this really horrible idea. Which was, that I was gonna stay at home. It was me who would look after our kids. Yes, and I would be having them too,” she agrees. “When they came along. He was talented see. And he was going to have the fascinating career. He was going to achieve and discover. I was going to tag along and applaud. Only I wasn’t gonna do that,” she explains, puffing clouds of ice.

“You couldn’t put your trust in another human being? To bring kids into the world?” What have I been dragging on? I pull my jacket tighter around me. The shadows are long.

“I’m gonna have a tribe of kids, and they’re gonna be as free as I am,” she insists. She runs her hand up an ear of long grass, while scratching an itchy calf with her boot.

“Why does straight society hate you so much?” I consider.

“I don’t know, we just get on with it, to tell you the truth.”

“What you represent is a danger,” I say. “The danger that there could be something else out there for people...if only we had the guts to follow.”

“We don’t want to get too popular,” she says.

This could be more proof that reality is getting away from me. We’d better summon a magistrate to find out.

“They persecute you, not to mention prosecute,” I say.

“Then they can sleep peacefully at night,” Pru agrees.

“We say we believe in freedom, but when radical politicians ever get into power, what do they do? They create extra police powers and knock people around their heads,” I argue.

“Why don’t they leave everyone in peace?” she says. Frozen air billows from her delicate nostrils. Revolution is in the air.

“That’s right, leave people in peace. Live and let live.”

“This land doesn’t belong to anyone.”

“Doesn’t it?” I reply, bewildered.

“No mate, why should we be pushed off the land? I was raised on this land and it’s always belonged to everyone.”

“If only,” I say.

“If the ‘cream crackers’ lose their rights, then so does everybody else.”

“Sorry, what’s that?” I reply, leaning forward, fearing the influence.

“We’re making a stand just by being here. There’s a new type of enclosure going on in this land. Know what enclosure is?” she asks.

“’Course I do, girl. I took a minor in History.”

“If we lose our freedom then the rest of you do. Do you get me? We’re a thorn in their side. Otherwise there’s no point to any of this.” She spreads her arms to embrace the horizon, where the ashes of the sun are going out. “We might as well run about topping each other,” she continues, “stealing and robbin’, d’you see?”

“Which is exactly what’s going down,” I concur. “When my generation was young we aspired to Woodstock ideals. In this contemporary era my son aspires to being a hoodlum in downtown Los Angeles or wherever.” What did I know?

“There are millions of egos colliding, looking for the advantage, refusing to take any notice of each other,” she tells me.

It’s music to my ears. “I see where you’re coming from.”

“It’s a gi-normous fuck-up on the grandest of scales,” she concludes.

“Right. Now we have the job of repairing the damage,” I philosophise. “We’ve got to straighten out this twisted planet, before it’s too late.”

“It’s all about get rich quick, find the perfect partner. Absolutely fucking bonkers,” she offers, in her fruity tones. “They think a soul is something you sell.”

I think about the idea and like it.

“There’s no valuing people’s true spirits. It’s more about how much money we can screw out of them,” she says, animatedly.

“Right, we’re in the same place,” I say. “You and I.”

Mind expanding stuff. At least it was expanding mine. The girl and I drop into companionable thought. Sid the whippet - as he’s named - continues to shift his weight nervously between delicate toes. I get to the bottom of my brew, without finding any interpretation to the dregs and believing that Angie is lost. Lost from me at least.

Chapter 34

Prudence observes me warily at her distance. A flow of lumpen humanity passes beyond us, resembling the citizens of Blake’s London taking the poet’s advice. It isn’t hard to interpret this chick’s thought patterns - ‘so you think we are weird!’

I definitely have the smack of a worried parent, even if I could be a maverick pot-holer with a taste for radical rhetoric.

Uneasy curiosity gets the better of her. “What are you doing here anyway? For the music?” she enquires.

“Do you call that music? Aren’t I allowed to enjoy myself?” I counter. “I was one of the original hippies. I’ve got all the Dylan bootlegs,” I brag.

“This isn’t a bootleg, this is our way of life,” she insists. If she had her bow and arrow she’d run me through.

“I’ve come out here to rescue my daughter. If you want to know,” I say. “She ran off with some dodgy druggie bloke.”

“Wouldn’t that describe most of them? So how old is this daughter of yours?” Her alarm bells are synchronising.

“Does that matter? She’s still only young. In her twenties.”

“Ha, ha, that’s a laugh,” she cracks. “I thought you meant she was like twelve or something like that.”

I stare ahead, blankly disillusioned. “She’s still putting herself at risk,” I argue. “Even if you believe that twenty-something is mature.” Maybe it’s old enough to drop out of society.

“She’ll be really pleased to see you,” Pru remarks cuttingly. She tilts back her warm rosy face and treats me to a filthy cackle. She’s got a sense of humour this girl. “What a lovely surprise your little girl’s gonna have. Hello Daddy!” Her laughter goes on a long run like Art Tatum in a joyous mood.

“Right, have your fun, girl, but she scrammed to this festival, you know, and I don’t have a clue where she might be,” I bleat.

“Can’t she look after herself?” Pru tells me. Mixing satire with a statement of the obvious is devastating.

“That would depend on the company,” I say.

“Is she a hippie? your daughter?” A free spirit in common?

I consider. “No, she isn’t a hippie. She just came here to enjoy herself. There’s a rave going on.”

“She’s a cheesy quaver!”

“She’s a wotsit?” I ask.

“A cheesy quaver. A raver. Stinks of perfume and she wouldn’t be seen dead without a slap of Number 7.”

This character sketch takes some while to decipher. “No, you haven’t caught my Angie very accurately there,” I conclude.

“You said she’s not a hippie or a traveller, didn’t you?”

But my life went electric years ago and I’ve learnt to withstand audience jibes.

“Well, I’m not going to find her in this crowd,” I lament. “What hope is there?”

“Why don’t we go and find her? If you want,” Pru tells me.

My glance returns sceptically. “Just like that? That’s hardly likely,” I say.

“Trust me because I know my way around,” she insists. “Come on.”

“Oh yes? You sure about that?” Blood rushes to my extremities, as I struggle to my feet.

“Don’t worry. Follow me,” she says, waving me towards her.

“You’ve got my daughter all wrong. She’s just mixed up in her beliefs.”

“Who really understands themselves?” Pru remarks. “We just limit our potential, when we think we have.” Potential, or meaning? “We have to remain open to everything. See what’s around the next corner,” she argues. Not too many corners about this place.

“If there’s anything there to be found,” I suggest. The more you love life the greater your sense of loss.

Angela struggles to find purpose or direction to her life. Sometimes I worry if that isn’t related to her upbringing. That’s complete rubbish of course, yet this concern plays on my mind.

“So are we setting off to find this sweet little girl of yours?” Pru calls to me. “Come on, we’ll follow the trail of puppy dog tails, sugar and spice.”

Pru’s invitation couldn’t be turned down. This lost balloonist needed a festival guide. She leads me around the makeshift lanes and paths between hippie home-from-homes. She cuts a tall and striking figure in the twilight - as if it is Lizzie walking ahead of me; guiding the way, taking command. My mind should be focusing on the search for Angie - my errant daughter - but it’s wandering towards Mount Venus again, if you catch my drift.

The girl’s lithe waist becomes traced into my senses, like a lost comfort - the lost Lizzie. She’s tangled in the lush beauty of this landscape, provoking fantasies of permanence. I thought about sticking with Pru and her friends in the convoy. What if I spent the rest of my limited life-span travelling with them? Going from town to town, hedgerow to hedgerow? Super Tramp rides again.

The travelling people are tough to endure these privations. Yet they don’t have strict residential qualifications. Anybody is welcome. Life has ruined my reputation and these are tolerant people. I can pitch a tent with Pru and adopt the easy riding freedom of the open road again. What do I have to lose? More to the point, what do I have to gain?

If this has the ring of ridiculous fantasy, nothing was holding me back. I was convinced that their way of life could make me happy and forgetful. I could make this radical gesture to obliterate the question “why me?” This question came up regularly in the small hours of every night and my brain never found an answer. This question left me soaked through with terror and confusion. How many cold sweats can you get through in a single night?

For months I’ve been dicing with death - shaking under his bony grip and cruel glare - and now I prefer human company and spiritual fulfilment. You may say that I just seek escape - don’t we all? To know there’s something out there greater than we are. It’s the comfort of knowing that we’re something more than just the passengers of random chaos. You’ve got to serve somebody, in the great man’s words. If the surgeon had taken this attitude he would never have fitted the faulty heart valve to my existential pump. He sliced me open, pulled my ribs apart and inserted something alien and lethal inside me, likely to split into infinity at any second. Call me squeamish or ungrateful, but I don’t regard that as the gift of life.

Shack up with this sexy child-of-nature woman, my inner voice urged. Snuggle down under a patchwork quilt in front of an open caravan fire. Share a hearty breakfast with her on the step between an open door. Maybe she wouldn’t be freaked by my operation scars and slack muscles. What bliss that could be, I thought. She’d help me to feel young again, with the past reimbursed. This beautiful hippie girl would be my companion. She’d prompt me to drop out of society again, just shy of my forty ninth birthday.

This fantasy lasted for a few minutes, as I stumbled after her. What caused the alien to drop down to Earth? When did reality check me out? It could have been the look of our neighbours, the quality of living quarters, or the packs of dogs and uncool clothes. In truth it was Angela’s likely reaction to any decision to drop out - as well as the urgent need to find her. I couldn’t insist that she go to university, if I went to live in a gypsy caravan with a chick half my age. Man, it would be a hard sell. You can only fit so many crazy daydreams into a single lifetime.

On the other hand it was a beautiful daydream.

Pru serviced as agent provocateur. If she was sexy she was also incredibly high. At this point I saw myself as an ageing rambler, trudging back to dull suburbia. She could never guess the ideas percolating in my brain; arguably the dregs from a bygone era. Then I came out with the dumbest chat up line of the festival.

“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.

I puff myself up in front of her, trying to put her criminal into the background, as if I have some authority and can cope with the situation. “Are you going to explain yourself?” I’m fighting for my breath. I should have been prepared.

“What the hell?” she counters. She’s padded towards me on her bare feet, dressed only in a long tee-shirt and underwear. Or am I adding underwear for reassurance. But she only takes seconds to recover from the shock of my entrance. Cynicism wins out. Memory is burning bright but her secret life remains under wraps. She isn’t thrilled to see Daddy. Prudence was right. Absolutely the opposite. I crashed through the scenery before the vital act.

“What are you trying to do?” she growls.

“I’m here to take you back home. Get your things,” I suggest.

She is puzzled as she is amazed. “No, no,” she mutters, stepping back. “I’m going nowhere with you.” She shakes the goddamn bracelet for strength.

“You’re not hanging out with this sleazy lizard,” I remark.

“What gives you the right to judge him?” she retorts.

“Even if he does wear silk boxers...and a Brooks Brothers style shirt,” I add, noticing this garment over the back of the chair.

She looks genuinely puzzled by my attitude. “You’re completely out of it now, Dad!”

“Straighten out your life, while you still can,” I say.

“Why don’t you give my life back?” she says, dark eyes blazing within bruised rims.

“You’re well out of order, know what I mean,” Jakes declares.

“This has nothing to do with you, boy.”

“What do you think’s wrong with her life? What’s it to you?” Jakes wonders.

“Why don’t you concentrate on your own bloody family?” I tell him.

Jakes stretches luxuriously and shuffles slowly across the bed. I realise he’s trying to cover the sting of my comment. “There’s nothing wrong with Angie. What’s eating you, man?” he sneers, finding his feet.

“I’d suggest you keep out of this,” I tell him.

“Dad, you’re mad coming here. You shouldn’t get involved.”

“You’re my daughter. You’re getting into a bad scene. ‘Course I’m involved,” I insist.

Jakes pulls his trousers back on and pushes his feet into a pair of sneakers, without having to untie and tie the laces. “What’s so outstanding about your life, anyway, Noah?” he wonders, sauntering across the space.

“Compared to your life it’s outstanding,” I say. Looking back caution has never been a characteristic. “Your business is wrecking people’s lives and exploiting people. Don’t hassle me about personal ethics, man. On that subject you’re about as credible as a dirty bomb.”

“Look Noah, I heard your business is going down the shit hole, know what I mean? Why don’t you take a loan off me? Even better consider it an investment.”

“Over my dead body, am I going to take any dough off you,” I say.

“Why are you telling ‘em all this, Dad?” she pleads.

“Just relax Daddy-o. Why all the stress? Know what I mean?”

“She and I are just getting out of here, all right? Then you can enjoy your stress-free evening, okay? Pick up another girl at the rave and take your coke or whatever,” I suggest, dismissing him.

“You know I’m clean. Let me find you something to relax. That’s it, you need something to take away the anxiety and tension. Forget all your troubles, granddad, do you hear me?” His sly, slanted grey eyes are still shining from his sensual friction with Angie.

“You seriously trying to push your products with me? You think I’m going to get hooked up with your candy?” I say.

I’m continuing to teeter on my Sergio Leone legs.

“What I’m sayin’ Noah is like, are you getting enough?” he asks.

“Excuse me?” I reply. I’m trying to concentrate on my daughter; to persuade her to accompany me from Apocalypse Now.

“At your age. Know what I mean? In your condition,” he persists.

“Don’t worry, boy, I already have a girlfriend.” Sort of.

“What’s your taste? Little blondes? Know what I mean?” he grins.

Bridgitte Bardot - Anita Ekberg - Sophia Loren.

“Go drown in your hot tub,” I suggest.

“Come on, you angry old man, don’t play innocent. I’ve had enough news bulletins from Angie. I know what you’re about. Do you get me? Man?”

“Even Bob D was the victim of the legend makers,” I argue.

“Get out of here in good health, do you understand?” he suggests, adopting a masterful posture. “You may have been screwin’ for kicks but for us it’s just business.” He straightens the seams of his designer trousers. He trusts them.

“Stop interfering, Dad. Call quits and leave the same way.”

“Angie, how much stuff did you bring with you? Get all your things together, will you? You came here with your mates, did you?” I ask, attempting to hurry her.

“How the hell did you get here?” she wonders.

“You and I need to put our heads together,” I insist. Then considering her question more attentively, I can’t resist a chance to boast. “I dropped in to your festival by balloon. Are you saying you didn’t notice my aerostat? I caused frenzy - it was like Godzilla in New York.

“Listen to Jules Verne,” she remarks, with a snigger. There are moments when we resemble each other. Most often in a crisis it seems.

“Never mind my heroics, Angie. Let’s go home!”

Her gestures of helpless frustration are bemusing and shocking. Jakes grows edgier and restless; he bounces nervously, angrily from one sneaker to the other. “Angela? Do you want to run back home with your Daddy?” he declares, gesturing.

She rushes towards him and winds an arm around his waist. “Adam, sweetheart, I want to go to Paris as you said.”

City of romantic love and revolution in communes. “What are you planning on doing there? In Paris?” I blab. Watching them together like this I’m as stiff as one of those old aristos.

“What do you think, Daddy-o?” Then to my daughter: “We’ll see, won’t we Angie...if you’re a good girl. Know what I mean?”

“There’s no way you’re going to Paris.”

“How are you going to stop me?”

“How are you going to tell your mother? That’s more to the point.”

“She must have been in love once,” she tells me.

Jakes scoffs at my predicament. “You’re making a total arse of yourself here, Noah, know what I mean.” He holds me in a mocking twinkle. “Do you want your daughter to see you like this?”

“You’re so cool, man, aren’t you,” I say.

“You said it, know what I mean.”

“You’ve everything under control, don’t you, eh?”

“Like a fucking Swiss army watch, know what I mean,” he snarls.

“Like the powder on your table top...that I just ran my finger over and put to my lips. I may not have my taste buds back, but I’m not a bloody idiot, boy.”

“Why do you have to interfere here?” Angie objects.

The revelation makes the trendy trafficker start. Rich colour spills along his high cheeks. “Let’s not make any stupid assumption, Noah, right?”

“You’ve been spreading some of your magic, Adam?”

The handsome young face is puckered and distressed. “A lot of geezers come into this vehicle, know what I mean? Can’t always vouch for what those fuckers are up to. I’m clean, do you understand?” he insists.

Jakes cools his spine against the metal wall and observes me through narrow ancestral eyes. My daughter still has her fingers around his supple waist, either in protection or restraint.

“Save your memoirs for the prison library,” I advise.

My pulse has already been set off: blood beats at my temples harder than the amplified rhythms outside. No sign of heaven’s door when you’ve been dropped into hell.

“I don’t have to listen to a pathetic old dope-head like you,” he quips. His pronounced Adam’s Apple is bobbing emotionally.

“You’ve no right to make wild accusations against Adam,” Angie tells me. “How do you know what goes on here? There’s a lot of people coming around here, as he told you. Why should he check up if they are using?”

“You’ve already taken enough of my time, Noah,” he says.

“Are you involved with his business, Angela? You taking part in his operation?”

“We’re just seeing each other, Dad,” she argues.

“Did you encourage your brother to try smoking junk?” I challenge.

She stares at me numbly. “Don’t be so ridiculous. I don’t believe this.”

“I’m sorry Angela but I don’t believe you on this issue,” I reply. “You’re giving me some heavily negative radiation about this.”

“Are you accusing me of lying to you, Dad?” she crassly objects. She glances slyly, distrustfully at me: assumes a more protective posture towards Jakes. Man, she’s going Patty Hearst on me.

“Let’s all chill for a while, know what I mean,” Jakes declares.

He circles the room - the living space of the trailer, shall we say - like one of the trapped leopards in our zoo; abundant hair spilling about his irregularly good looks, falling over his narrow forehead and slit gaze in these moments of crisis.

“D’you know the kind of damage dope can do?” I blurt out.

“Dad! Please! Have a heart,” she implores. “What’s he like, my Dad?”

“Spare me your moral lectures, man!” he retorts sarcastically.

The wrecked lives, the smashed dreams, the broken relationships on every level. And a hard rain’s gonna fall.

He stops his prowling circle and brings his face close to mine. “All we’re doin’ is treating the side effects of this sick world,” he argues.

“You’re making them sick,” I tell him. It can never be a cure, except maybe for a guy in my position.

“Soothin’ the aches and pains of society. If these sad fucks want to fuck up their lives, that’s their choice. They can have as much shit as they want, as long as they pay. If they want to end up in the gutter I can make it comfortable for ‘em. D’you get me?”

Perhaps it’s the roaring intensity of his snarl that encourages this: I know about your boat in the closed harbour.”

“Is it your business to bring this up?” Angela asks. “What’s the matter with Adam owning a boat?”

“What about my boat?”

“More about what you do with your boat. Let’s say that I heard from a friend. A friend of a friend,” I brag. But playing private detective wasn’t a clever move. Not that I had much inside-info from Bob H. But I gave a dangerous contrary impression. I can’t handle myself anymore with this heavy handed crook.

“Did you bring the fucking plods with you? Got the drugs squad following you, Noah? Waiting to break into here or what?”

He peers nervously through a porthole, trying to find these cops amidst the throng and the woods and the dark smoky fields. The camouflage has become a threat.

“You’ve changed so much, Dad,” Angie informs me.

“What are you saying?” I return. Taking a moment to consider. “No big surprise, you know, that I may have changed a bit. My health’s taken a big fall.”

“You’re not the same bloke, Dad,” she says, gravely.

“Right, Angie. There’s been an earthquake under my feet...a few of them... and obviously I’m not the same guy...the radical experience has marked me.”

“You can’t always hide behind your health problems,” she argues.

“You call this hiding?” I say.

Her black eyes flash at me again. “Why don’t you keep out of my life?”

“That’s beginning to sound like good advice,” I admit to her.

“Leave me alone,” she insists. “You liked to talk about freedom...discovery...finding our own way. Now you come here and try to drag me back. If you’re so confident of being yourself, why do you make me into a copy? I’m not even a boy,” she reminds me. “God help my brothers. Do you understand me?”

When I try to touch her shoulder she pulls away. My intention was to reconnect, to reassure, to comfort, but she doesn’t get this. She thinks I’m trying to constrain or even to hurt her. She should know better. I’ve never hit a girl in my entire life and that includes her. Jakes can’t say that about his own personal history. In that way he considers himself a tough guy. In terms of violence he doesn’t discriminate.

Next thing we know, as Angie is backing away from me, Jakes has pulled out a gun. I have to scrunch my eyes and open them again, believing that I am hallucinating the shooter. This proves that drugs are useless. He’s pointing a weapon at me. How can I escape from this little red neck? Suddenly I’m in the movies and wish to cut the scene.

Chapter 36

This is another big Zen moment of earthly existence. The kid wants to take a shot at Pops. And if he confuses me for his real father the odds are narrow. I’ve never had the experience of anyone pulling a gun on me before. When my brother and I were growing up, certainly, the village men all owned firearms, and they would brandish them during the season. But not even my brother ever played around with a gun. So I have never looked down the barrel until now. After our father died the gun was given away with all his personal property to neighbours and friends. Jakes holds out a shot-gun, which has sawn-off style short barrels, to the side of my head. He’s got a glint in his eye like a malevolent doctor. One false step and I won’t have any mind to change. He’ll put my intellect through a liquidiser. Man, you don’t need to drop any tabs of acid in this life.

“That’s right, granddad, not feeling so clever now,” he jeers.

His quick colouring face creases and flushes again, as if the hot colours of the bonfires have leaked inside.

“C’m on boy,” I urge him. “You’re taking this too far. No need to lose your cool.” Unfortunately I can’t feign empathy with this guy. There’s an instinctive hatred between us, as between a freedom rider and a race school bigot. You can’t beat that.

“Just do as I’m telling yer, yer old bastard. Or I’ll blow your sorry arse into the third dimension, know what I mean?”

It looks as if he’s got a mechanical hand, as the bling on his fingers clinks on the gun handle and coils over the trigger; the weapon resembling a metal scorpion. Adam Jakes is a young guy living on his frazzled nerves, exhausted by deception, worn down by anxiety. He’s paying a psychological price for his illegal fortune.

“Put it down, Adam, and we’ll think no more about it,” I suggest.

“No old bastard’s ever done me any favours,” he remarks.

“Firearms don’t make you smart, mate, believe me,” I tell him.

“Keep your back against the wall... face up, granddad,” he warns, waggling the fire stick about.

“All I’ve got to say is... if your intentions to my daughter are honourable... don’t invite me to your wedding, boy,” I tell him.

“Where are the goons?” he calls to Angie. “Why aren’t those mutts back here yet? What do I fuckin’ pay ‘em for?”

“You told them to put their ugly faces into the next county. As I remember it,” Angela informs him. “You can’t expect them to be loyal, if you’re constantly insulting them.”

“Shut up, will you? Who’re you talking to, Ange? You turning into my fucking wife now, know what I mean?” Jakes snarls.

“See how your private life is gonna size up with this dude,” I say to my daughter.

You might argue that I’m already running on limited time. That I’m practically pencilled into the register of deaths. So why am I so terrified of being shot? Anyhow my heart thumps like crazy, so that a bullet could be an irrelevance.

Jakes picks up my negative vibrations. His face breaks out into a rudely triumphant grin. He could have been up against a steely guy. He’s no crime fiction psychopath - thank god it’s not as simple as that - but my fear makes him brave. My picture of terror reflects a flattering image. Hard not to be flattered by this powerful self-image.

“You’re taking this too far, Adam. I already told you Dad has a dicey ticker,” she reminds him. I don’t know what she’s been taking if anything. She isn’t exactly jumping out of her skin at the scene.

“Just get your glad rags back on, do you hear me?” he tells her.

“You don’t have to share my medical history with him,” I complain.

Angie is trying to second-guess her lover’s ideas. I’m holding up my arms as if taking the acclaim.

“You suggesting we go outside?” she asks. Rapidly she pulls on a dress over the teeshirt. “For god’s sake Adam, leave Dad alone. He can’t hurt you. He can’t damage you,” she insists.

“So why is he threatening me?” Jakes tells her. “What’s goin’ to happen to my wife and kids if I get banged up or something?”

“Listen to Scarface here,” I say, impatiently.

“Leave this to me, will you Dad?” she says sharply. There’s something of her mother in this tone. Nervously she twirls her gold bracelet around her wrist - his gift, his love token.

“I heard you was a bit of a sportsman,” Adam says to me. “Didn’t you play a bit of tennis in your youth?”

“I’ve retired from the game lately,” I inform him.

“Let’s see how your fitness is holding up,” he suggests. As if holding a tennis racquet himself - as if suggesting he’s my next opponent - Jakes is swishing the shotgun around my nose.

“They told me to lose weight and get back into shape,” I consider. “Most likely nothing so radical as you suggest.”

“This is fucking hilarious,” he says. He’s entertained and surprised by developments.

“Let him be, Adam!” she declares.

“Come on, Noah, lets see how quickly your dodgy ticker can run.”

“Don’t hurt him!” Angela warns.

The creep’s pointing a gun at me and she asks him not to hurt me.

“You keep away from my son in future,” I warn.

“Your old bastard already knows too much about us. We’ve got to be realistic Angie. We can’t let him walk away from here, straight to the Old Bill. You hear me? I might as well think up my own sentence,” he objects.

“But what if he goes and snuffs it?” she points out.

“What about it? Know what I mean? We’ve got to be cool about this. Face it, the old bastard’s got it in for me, hasn’t he?”

“You’re not worried about shooting him?”

“I’d be more worried if he walks away from here,” he says.

“For real?

“For real.”

“In that situation how would you dispose of the body?”

“Nobody gives a toss around here...what’s going on. All they want is a place to park their grotty caravans and broken down vans, know what I mean? They’re too terrified of me and those goons...and the plods are like their enemy...know what I mean?” he considers.

My Über-muscle is pumping away without too much protest. The fragile pin regulating the reservoir of my life, for the moment, is holding in place.

“That’s another brilliant plan against the cops you have, isn’t it?” Angie comments.

“What are you talking about? Which plan?” he says.

“To get yourself a stiff on the carpet,” she replies. “After that you’ll have to carry the weight outside, in front of thousands of witnesses. Do you think they’re gonna look the other way or what? They’re not so scared of you,” she tells him.

I can only hope she’s bluffing. It’s hard for me to hold my tongue during this lovers’ tiff.

“What’s your idea then, Angie? Stop giving me mouth girl. No woman talks back to me, know what I mean?” he fumes.

The clunky weapon grows heavier at the end of his arm and begins to pull on his mind.

My daughter smarts at his attitude - her chin bobs into her neck - but it isn’t enough to alienate her. “You can’t pull this one off,” she insists. “You’re taking it too far. If this becomes personal then we risk everything. You’re breaking all your own rules, Adam!”

“I can’t let this hypocritical old bastard walk away. Do you get it, Angie?”

“Then you don’t have a lot of choice, boy,” I bluff.

“Keep out of this, Dad!” She casts a desperate look.

I stare horrified, dejectedly, into her passionately outraged face - radiant and lovely as a youthful Grace Slick, though I could be biased as her father.

“Why don’t we take him out into the woods?” Jakes declares. He shakes the two hollow fingers of death at me.

Angie’s attention dashes back to her boyfriend, this druggie degenerate. “What do you mean by that? Take him out into the woods?” she asks - in drained voice.

“You’d better wise up on reality,” I suggest.

“What do you think I mean,” he tells her. “We’ll give him a good clean kill, d’you get me?” There’s a brief snaggly grin.

“Adam, this is my Dad,” she reminds him. Her hands fall and she looks wide eyed and desperately between those dark bangs.

“I didn’t think he was your fucking ex, or something like that,” he tells her.

“You believe you can blast him and get on with our relationship?” she says.

“Do you want your own life, Angie? You said he don’t understand you...or give you the time of the day. What kind of father is that anyway, do you get me?” he says.

Jakes is staring at me with one slanted eye, as a tumbled fringe conceals the other. As far as I know that’s all you need for a good aim.

“This guy makes Hannibal Lector seem a romantic,” I remark. “Just don’t expect a card this year, Angela.”

“Dad!”

“So he’s your Dad. Are you going to let that affect you?” he suggests to her, while watching me.

Angela balances miserably, intensely nervous. You can tell that her soul’s been shattered like a windscreen, to paraphrase Paul Simon.

“How can you let this creep sell dope to your own brother?” I complain.

“I’m a better mate to that lad than you are, Noah. Do you know what I mean, you useless old granddad?”

“Best keep a grip on that firestick, boy, ‘cause otherwise you’ll find roles reversed.”

“Hear that, Angie? According to this old bastard, it’s either me or him, know what I mean?” he argues.

“Adam, you can’t just shoot him and get away with it.” She’s doing her Simone Signoret impression.

“What do you think your mother’s going to say?” I declare - outraged. Clearly I’m prepared to take a gamble.

“Why don’t you stay at home, Dad? Tinker with your motor? Potter around in the garden? Like most fathers?”

“We’ll have to get him out of here,” Jakes decides.

“Just let him run away back home,” she suggests.

“How long is your luck going to hold out?” I say.

“I make my own luck, Noah,” he retorts. “I’m not superstitious.”

“The whole site is packed with these travellers and hippie people,” she warns.

“You’re losing your fucking nut, Adam,” she protests. “You want to get the police on you?”

“Listen to yourself, Angela,” I tell her. “Do I even exist?”

“Not for much longer, granddad,” he cuts back. “Anyways chances are you’ll drop dead before then.”

“Adam!” she squeals; sounding a decade younger than her actual age. Is she afraid of growing up? Even more so than her parents’ generation?

Jakes doesn’t take any more heed of her. The narrow eye concentrates on me - I can feel as it bores into me - as the bullets (or the shot) that may pierce me.

“Stop waving that thing at me,” I argue. Yet I’m running through the hots and colds as if running through a sauna on speed.

“Get the fuck out of here, you old bastard,” he snarls, and kicks me in the small of the back.

“Don’t be an idiot Dad. Do as he tells you.”

“Even Mum’s going to be shocked if one of your boyfriends blows me away,” I say.

How in hell did I stray into this nightmare gig? It’s like the Stones at Altamont, mixing up with the chapters. This could be my final roustabout.

“You’re responsible, Dad. I didn’t ask you to chase after me. Come looking for me,” she seethes. “I would have come back home tomorrow. You wouldn’t have known anything about this.”

“Are those your expectations of me? We bring you into this world just to abandon you?” I reply.

“You shouldn’t hold me back...disapprove of everything I do.”

As the hoodlum jabs me through his mobile vehicle she hovers indecisively. I’m certain that he’s killing off her feelings with that gun. This is going to be lethal to her affections. But if the guy shoots me, what do I care if they break up?

“Just give me the back of your head to aim at...know what I mean?”

“How do you intend to dispose of the body?” Angela asks ironically.

His manic eye flickers to her reluctantly. “None of these ragbags is gonna look for a corpse.”

“They don’t have to search dummy, they’re just going to find it,” she says.

“Nobody interferes in the business and threatens me.”

Angela struggles to relieve her tired astonished eyes. “But aren’t you forgetting about something else?” she asks.

“Forgetting what?” he answers - contemptuous. He takes a sprint back through his hardened mind. “Like what?”

“Like me,” Angela suggests. She opens her arms slightly towards him.

“Like what about you?” he throws back.

“What’s going to happen to me after this. If you go through with this...I know what you’re doing...I may see what you do... So do you think I’m going to watch you shoot my father and forget about it?”

Our charmless Jean Paul Belmondo gives a dry noise of amusement. Leaving my daughter in no doubt. Looking at me in panic, she knows we’re closer than she thought.

“He’s only trying to scare us,” she insists. But her trust has taken a lethal slug.

“Either he kills me in cold blood or he comes back to his senses,” I say.

Edgily Jakes adjusts his grip. He tosses the weapon about in his hand, to allow the blood to circulate back into his fingers.

“Keep your back turned to me, granddad,” he instructs. “I’m taking you out to bury your generation.”

We walk over the living space of his mobile home - or office, control centre, or other function it gives - past the dusty surfaces and bags of what looks like expensive bath salts but really isn’t so harmless.

“He doesn’t have anything against you,” Angela tells him. “He’s going right back up in his hot air balloon. You’ll never see ‘em or hear from ‘em again!”

“Let’s all get some fresh air, know what I mean?”

“Tell him Dad!”

“Tell him what?” I declare.

“That you’re not going to make any hassle with the pigs or anybody.”

“I’m not going to make any hassle,” I parrot.

Her dark emotional features crumple in frustration. Instantly she turns into an old lady. “Tell him you just want to go home and forget about everything.”

“You want me to beg for my life, with this creep?”

It’s exactly what I’m tempted to do; to get down on my pressed Levi’s.

“You want to live don’t you? You don’t want to throw your life away, do you?”

“D’you believe this two-bob con is hare-brained enough to shoot me?”

The intensity of her look impresses the gravity of our situation. Not many people are going to hear shots. You’d already think a war was going on. We’re held in a throbbing womb of rave and heavy metal. There’s nothing left but the Memphis blues again.

My James Dean pose has lost cultural significance. What are the rules for this monetised contemporary society? Put yourself ahead. Don’t let anything or anyone get in your way. A computer game existentialism.

“Your old man’s trying to buy his life,” Jakes tells her. We stand at the exit to his capsule, wondering about his next move. “He’s a crafty old bastard, know what I mean? Let him walk now and he’d go straight to the pigs.”

“Why don’t you believe us? Let him go.”

“No, Angie. I’m not going to spend years in prison. It wouldn’t be enough. I didn’t come this far with business to let your old man... to allow somebody to ruin it. My old man never gave me a chance either. Am I going to let Noah do the same to me?”

Angela turns away from him in despair. “What about all those people out there?”

“What about them?” he returns. “I don’t give a pig’s poke for all those sorry arses.”

“They might kick the shit out of you... even if they are a bunch of hippies.”

“Know anything about the American Democratic Convention of 1968?” I tell him.

“Fuck off,” he warns.

“This is my Dad.”

“Go and stand over there with your Daddy. There’s a good girl,” he orders her. He waggles the gun until she complies. “Get out of here slowly.”

Jakes picks up a sweatshirt - not a cheap one of course - which he places over his arm to conceal the shotgun. Bizarrely he finds a golf glove which he hurriedly pulls over the fingers of his right hand. Does he want to club me into the next world with a seven iron? Man, you can’t predict this guy’s intentions.

“What are you doing with that?” Angie wonders.

“Stop asking questions, will you girl? Always questions, know what I mean?”

“You know Angie’s answer if you ever pop the question,” I tell him.

“Get out of here you sleazy hypocrite,” he replies.

I feel those steel tips between my shoulder blades. “What’s the hurry?”

I negotiate the steps first. Angela gingerly follows, on her heels. She’s wearing an almost perfect replica of late hippie fashion. A leopard-skin pillbox hat can’t change its spots.

The outfit reminds her of her mother. They must have compared wardrobes. Strings of beads swing from her neck, that she grabbed with her as if for luck. The cut of clothes is too exact, as if copied from an old Vogue anthology. But there’s a resemblance. Our youth comes back to haunt me once again.

Jakes clambers back outside after us. As we three - the hunter and his prey - blink and adjust to the atmospherics, I’m surprised to see Pru still waiting. There’s not much she can do to help. I came here to save Angela, not to mix it with Jakes. Angie with her young and healthy heart.

It is hard to adapt to the open space and closing light. Such was the mood of tension developed in the confined space of the trailer. A chill wind chisels into our ears - a distant bugle call of doom. The sky isn’t out of reach to the balloonist. It’s criss-crossed with potential highways of freedom. I can easily place us up there. It’s a wish to find the safety of that poetic epiphany. Arguably I’m happiest up there. But there doesn’t seem to be an obvious take off point.

“Where are you three off to?” Prudence asks, approaching our trio. Even in her universe this is a strange assembly. What’s going on in contemporary society?

“Adam wants to go for an evening stroll,” I say.

“Pru? What do you want?” he shouts at her.

“Adam’s preparing for his trip to Paris,” I explain.

“Not any more, I’m not,” he tells me.

His nerves are exposed in the open. We’re into the migraine of a free festival. Maybe tree cover is further away than he imagined, in his rush to push me into a shallow grave.

“What the fuck are you doing with them?” Pru asks. She’s alerted by the Strangelove posture of his arm, under the shirt, with leather fingertips exposed.

“This isn’t your argument, Pru. Just keep out of my way, you unpleasant hippie bitch, and you won’t have any problem. That goes for all you head lice,” he declares. He’s referring to a gathering crowd of festival goers. They sense that something’s badly out of phase.

“You’ve got a fucking shooter on them, don’t you!”

“Out of my way, Pru. Go and trim your dirty beards, hear what I’m telling you?” he calls to the group.

The dishevelled bunch looks indignant and begins to call back.

Jakes reveals the shotgun - his deadly racquet - and scans for potential threats. More hippies and travellers are gathering to check out the fuss. There’s a feeling that Jakes is losing control. There are many off-screen distractions. Yet it’s too perilous for Angie and me to break for the trees.

“Give up your crazy ideas, Adam. Let us go!” Angie advises.

“None of these fucking skunks is gonna help you,” he tells her.

“Don’t be a total wanker, Adam!” Pru warns. There’s more West Country flavour in this than a bottle of Somerset cider brandy.

“Fuck off, Pru, you skanky little whore.”

“You’re best shot of him, Angie, didn’t I tell you,” I confide to her.

In the heat of the moment Prudence let’s her whippet go. The skinny creature is picking around nervously in the space between us - the no-man’s-land between Jakes and the hostile crowd.

“Put away the shooter. Have you lost your fucking marbles,” Pru asks.

Angela and I glance uneasily within nozzle aim. You just can’t predict.

“Keep your hole closed, do you understand?”

“They’ll throw away the key.” Pru tosses her multi-coloured braids; hands on hips thrust defiantly forward. “They won’t let you out into the prison yard.”

Jakes taunts, waving his weapon. “I’d waste the whole lot of you. All you do is sponge up the mud. You fucking paupers.”

People shout back at him, but the gun keeps them at a physical distance. Pru’s doggie has wandered right up to Jakes, oblivious to the dangers, and is sniffing at interesting odours around his priceless sneakers. Then, at the signal of a mysterious intense stimulus, the dog lifts a thin leg, secures a good straight aim, looks up at the sky and urinates prodigiously over Jakes’ label trouser leg.

After a few seconds the liquid seeps through the fabric. Jakes lowers his aim and stares at the doggie in disgust. It’s a miracle that Sid the whippet doesn’t get it between the eyes immediately.

“You dirty little fucker!”

Sid cringes guilty away, back to his caring mistress, as Jakes flaps his designer threads. In a split second a sizzling noise goes directly past my ear, practically burning the hairs of my lobe on the flight path. Like an intervention from an irritated divinity. A bolt from a crossbow, I gathered; the shaft embedded in Jakes’ left shoulder. The sawn shotgun has fallen to the muddy floor. He’s not surprisingly lost his grip. When I look at him Adam is staring rigidly ahead, a white mask, everything falling away from him. His fingers - including the right with its golfing glove - are clawing at the wooden stem of the arrow, trying to dig out the pain; only succeeding in pulling out a few of the decorative feathers.

Angela is horrified and wishes to comfort him. But I get hold of her and prevent her running back to him. He could pull that projectile from his shoulder; retrieve the weapon. His heavies are somewhere not too far away. They may return when their feelings are repaired. So I pull Angela after me and we cut through the crowd. Fortunately she sees my side and ends her resistance. We make our tracks on gossamer wings. A ragged legged William Tell has saved our skins. Or it might have been William Burroughs taking another misaim at a spouse with an apple on her head. I don’t hang around to watch the fall out. I’ve lost all curiosity.

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. Her 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, know 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.

“You don’t believe him, do you?” Jakes is speaking into her ear. “Noah’s trying a last gamble. He’s trying to get back your loyalty. He’s a crafty old bastard your Dad.”

Silence ravels with the air across empty space: it sings through the rigging and riffles the fabric of my balloon.

“The medics can’t just abandon you, Dad. Why can’t they operate on you again, or give you some better drugs?”

“There’s nothing more.”

“Why can’t it be done?” she demands.

“Everything gets to a finite, I guess.”

There’s a glint in the corner of her eye, or so I imagine. Do we understand each other at last, my daughter and I? Or is the final report on my health just another stern paternal demand? Can we get the view of my ex-wife’s solicitor? The legal one, that is.

Angela drops into silence, under a sliver of moon like a scalpel’s edge. I can’t offer her much for the future, but she’s pulling for me.

“I find you hard to work out,” she says.

“Don’t listen to that hypocritical old bastard,” Jakes argues.

“Are you looking for our sympathy?” she wonders.

“If you’re offering,” I reply.

There’s an abrupt laugh that concludes as suddenly.

I burn upwards again, ignoring the risks. I hope to catch her expression by the flare. The searing light reaches out in an arc across the fields and woodland. The fleeting intense light turns her face blank as an ancient masque.

The burner unit peters out again. The illumination falls back, so that the night looks darker, and the stars and moon weaker. I get the idea that Angela is lost to me. As lost as Lizzie.

Chapter 38

“You didn’t get an approach to sell your shares? Did you Angela?”

“Shares? What are you talking about, Dad?”

“You know, the shares in our company, that I gave you? You wouldn’t be tempted, would you? If someone offered a higher price?”

“That would depend on what they offered,” she says. “I haven’t given much thought to it. Haven’t needed to.”

“So you haven’t had anyone approach? Recently?”

“Into your company?” She is considering hard.

“Yes, that’s it. You haven’t broken into that stock already?”

“I know what the company means to you,” she insists.

“Right, dead on. So you didn’t get any phone calls from Corrina Farlane?” I come out and say. Best to level with her on the issue.

“Who is she? Never heard of her.”

“You did. She’s a girlfriend of mine.” Sort of.

“Do you mean the bumptious one on a motorbike?” Angela wonders.

“She owns a couple of bikes, yes,” I admit. “Bumptious?”

“How did she get her hooks into you anyway?” she remarks.

“Angie, my taste in women isn’t the issue.” At least she didn’t drug me up; if only because it wasn’t necessary.

“I wouldn’t speak to that bitch anyway,” she tells me.

“That’s encouraging to hear,” I crow. I can overlook the insult to Corrina as long as the company’s safe.

“What’s going to happen to your company anyway, if...”

She cares more about my health than even her own prospects. There’s nobody else in the family who so readily puts themselves last. This was touching, but it’s a form of self-harm. She could evaporate like a rock of crack. Her misjudged love affair has only encouraged the girl to be even more self-effacing.

“So have you told my brother about this? You know, the stuff about your heart valve? That your health isn’t good?”

“Not a word. But he surely guesses something. Tim went with Mum and me to the hospital. He must have a good idea, even if he’s the tiddler of the family. He’s a very perceptive kid that one,” I say.

“Good job Tim’s not in our house, isn’t it,” she says jokingly. Her silhouette shuffles before me. Then she hits a more serious vibe. “How about our mother?”

“Not in so many words,” I admit. After divorce emotions turn into volatile compounds. What’s the problem you have to deal with? You have to maintain a front of strong health, just to cope with your divorce conditions. The relationship - what was your love affair and your marriage - has suddenly gone under laboratory conditions. It would be advisable to put on a full space suit, if that was feasible.

“Mum will know that something is up,” Angela says.

“Well, she already has a good idea, don’t worry.”

“This is hardly commonplace, is it. You had these operations and you didn’t get better. Your secret will come out in the end,” she warns.

“You’re right,” I tell her. “She’ll piece it all together eventually.”

“Why didn’t you tell us? Doesn’t your family deserve to know?” she challenges me. “What is it, that stops you from trusting Mum and us?”

“I was trying to protect you,” I bleat.

“Were you thinking of giving Mum a good shock?” she wonders.

I deny ever having had that intention. Anyway she stopped being shocked years ago. Or so she told me.

“Then why did you keep the truth to yourself?” she wonders.

“Right, Angie, but we’re sharing now. You’ve always been our priority,” I remind her.

“Too much, sometimes,” she retorts.

“Your future,” I stammer. So the old guilt leaks out again, thick as blood.

“Nobody’s telling you to get into a sweat over me,” she says.

“Somebody has to.”

“Why’s that? I’m not going to be pushed around by you.”

“You let Jakes push you around, because he’s got a handsome face and a wad of notes. Is that it?”

“Mum and you can’t dictate what I do with my life. Even if it’s the only thing you can ever agree on, it seems to me. I make my own decisions, when I get up in the morning.”

“About when you get up, yes,” I comment.

“Times change,” she ripostes.

“Mum and I gave you those opportunities,” I argue.

“Like my brothers and I owe you a big favour?” she replies.

I take a draft of the cooling evening air to consider this. “We took a chance to make something of ourselves.” Now she’s making more than me.

“Your generation’s running the world now. So what are you doing with it?” she shoots. “Grandma would never agree with you.”

“Let’s leave Grandma out of this.” That would be far too complicated. “I can only answer for myself.” And Lizzie.

“It’s my right too, that’s why they call it my life.”

I stiffen in my picnic basket. “How can you be so indifferent to your future? When Mum was your age she was excited about going to Uni. Every bright girl then aspired to get a university education and a professional career.”

“You stopped being a rebel?” she says. “I don’t want to go to Uni.” Angie’s tightening her small fists and pointed jaw against me.

“Is this for real? I can’t believe my ears!” I protest.

“I’ve no wish to join that club whatsoever!”

“What kind of club?” Night clubs?

I’d guess that her boyfriend has a stake in many of the glitzy new establishments around the waterfront.

I tighten my grip on the rigging; holding on for dear life.

“Look, Angie, university is to do with sharing ideas, expanding your mind, networking and, yes, there’s nothing wrong with this girl, enjoying the parties and the clubbing.”

“I’ve heard this one before,” she complains. “The way you talk about yourself at Uni, it sounds like it was Prince was taking that degree,” she remarks.

“Which prince?” I say. “Since when do I consider myself like that!”

“Oh god, Dad.”

This reaction is puzzling to me. “You meet all kinds of interesting, hip dudes from all walks of life.”

“I already have interesting friends.”

“Oh right, yes, I met some of them!”

“If you’re so broadminded and up for it, Dad!”

I’m disillusioned. “You’ve spent too much time out, Angela. You’ve lost the learning bug.” Did she ever have it? “You talked about a gap year...then it expanded into another gap year...now it’s turning into a PhD of indolence. How much longer is this going to continue? Your Mum’s worried that you work in that café. When we talk about culture, we didn’t mean café culture,” I say.

“Better to learn the hard way. It’s a high tip place. What’s Mum complaining about now? That’s what I enjoy.”

“I can imagine the sort of tips you pick up there.”

“I read what I like, watch what I like, meet the people I get a kick out of. Do you understand?” she appeals. “You shouldn’t force your ideas on me.”

“You have to relate to society. Nobody should exist in a vacuum, do you agree? You need to consider contemporary issues and struggles. Put yourself into a wider context and understand your place in life.”

“All right, Dad. You told me to make a careful decision about university. Well, I’m letting you know...that I’ve decided not to go. The PhD has finished,” she remarks.

“This is really going to cheer your mother up,” I tell her.

“No need to begin sulking, Dad. You’re not going to force me to study. I’m sorry if Mum is going to be disappointed. I didn’t set out to hurt her.”

Where did I hear that one before?

“I’m embracing life...I’m excited about that,” our daughter informs me.

“I know all about your life now, girl. I’ve been introduced to your exciting friends in the university of life... sometimes at the end of a shotgun.”

Of course it wasn’t the first shotgun that had appeared in my life.

My girl’s a true rebel. This isn’t related to clothes, hairstyle or even jewellery, as so often rebellion is linked to identity politics, fashion statements or even a haircut. No, we have really produced the genuine article. Angela was born into adverse circumstances, although loved. She was very much loved: By youthful parents not expecting responsibility or commitment. Now she is prepared to risk everything. She’s shunning the safety of convention. I fear for her but I can’t help admiring her. She has guts. Maybe the guts that Lizzie showed.

“Right, Angie, can I ask about your plans for the future?”

“Dad, I really hate that kind of question. What do you expect? Become a secretary? A lion tamer? A pole dancer? That just shows such a numb attitude,” she argues.

“I already dismissed those ideas, Angie,” I tell her.

Does she have any plans or even dreams about her future? At this moment her life stretches ahead like a desolate beach, or even a flooded trench in the park. Man, there may not be anyone out looking for her.

She’s restless, our daughter, Angela Constance Sheer. Hankering to escape the eternal mother and father.

“I’m out on my own now, Dad.” As if she gets my thoughts and wishes to underline them.

“Should we abandon you?” I ask.

“You have to let me go.”

“Maybe in the future you’ll find the perfect pill, to make all your problems and issues disappear,” I complain.

She probably sighs and makes a face. “You always talk about life, but what about living?” she returns.

“Is that your philosophy? No thought about a career...what you’re going to work at?”

“I have to get back to the festival soon,” she warns. “My friends are going to worry. I have my friends, you see.” But she faces awkward questions, that she clears out of the way. “I don’t have any job or career in mind at present. I’m happy where I am. I’ll get in as much great music as I can this weekend,” she offers.

Not exactly music to my own ears. She’s Leaving Home - we’ve been on the side of the unfortunate parents for years now. But what’s the point in generating bad radiation? Her mother and I are consulting about her future while the Dino lives off commission.

“Maybe I’ll find something where I’m in charge,” Angela comments.

“Is that right?” She’s going to be the second female Prime Minister? Or the first feminist one, even better?

“Where I can see results? Something tangible. Something interesting and surprising. God know’s what that’s going to be,” she admits. “Let me know.”

“We’ve just got to put our heads together, Angela.”

“I don’t know, Dad, maybe something in business. I’ve been saving up some money. I’d be good at that...making deals, negotiating and stuff.”

“Really? That sounds cool. But if you’re going to succeed in business you’ve got to be focussed and hard working...around the clock...like Branson and me.”

“But let’s talk about it later. I’ve got to find my mates. They’re gonna be out of their heads by now.” With worry, she means.

“Right, I don’t want to keep you,” I say.

The balloon has begun to sag, after all this filial chatter. The skin of the envelope has lost tension and energy. I risk being grounded if we continue this conversation. I burn again to avoid such a miserable fate. Sometimes, even as an experienced pilot, I suffer sensations of vertigo. Everything spins. I allow another burn, another long tongue of flame reaching into the vault; another hiss of fiery pain. The bottom of the basket lifts from the rough grass. Air currents draw me up into the atmosphere, as if Adonis has gripped me.

“Away you go, Dad. Have a safe flight. Enjoy yourself!”

“This is your last chance to join me,” I tell her.

“No, I’m staying over.”

“So you should take care of yourself, Angela. Do you understand?”

“No need to worry.”

“You’re not running back to Jakes?”

“Only as a friend,” she tells me.

“Excellent news.” This is the best melody I’ve heard in years. I compromise on the idea of friendship.

At this point the machine is going up and there’s no means to hold back. I feel a corresponding uplifting wave pass through my heart. The ascent has always gladdened me.

Angie has presence of mind to loosen off the guide rope. I gesture for her to throw it up to me. I successfully gather. Internal pressure and temperature builds. The machine continues to rise. Angie’s wide hat resembles a flying saucer: her fingers grip the brim. The faint oval of her face turns up, as she follows my progress from below.

“See you Monday, Dad!”

“Monday morning?”

“In the café. Why not? Have some breakfast. Before you go to work.”

“You have a date!”

“See you then!”

“Great.”

Their menu isn’t ideal for my cardiac waistline, or cholesterol level. But you shouldn’t avoid a little of what you fancy.

“Keep out of trouble!” I shout down.

“Don’t worry about me!”

I’ve the powerful mystique of fire in my hands. The awesome lantern glides up, the world eases away in a hugely impressive silence. Angie offers a double-armed wave by way of send-off. She acquired this traditional gesture from a very early age.

“Keep away from that gun toting loony!”

“Bon voyage!”

I notice Angie backing away from the site, as I peer over the rim of the craft. For a short while she leans back to follow the balloon’s lift. Take off is a magnificent spectacle. Although, after the sun has set, the craft must only be noticed as a barely perceptible shape, against a slightly lighter sky.

Finally I see my daughter bounding away across the field. I distinguish the pantomime hippie hat, moon-dust flickers of arms and legs - until she vanishes. Our angel. Back to her friends, the free festival, a night of getting cheerfully stoned; and what else? With a certain exuberance of new-found freedom, I suspect.

Chapter 39

I drift at unfelt speed, at a hundred feet in altitude, tugged by a ten-knot breeze: Aiming at the coordinates agreed with Nairn and to our rendezvous spot.

Leaning over the basket, the bonfires, the stage lighting, the patchwork of illumination from the temporary settlement, slowly diminish to sight. Until everything approaches vanishing point and is sucked back into darkness.

How did I put myself into this risky flying position? Having a metaphorical shave with a slashing open razor? Why try to find a particular mistake in my life that caused this? I’ve never consciously attempted to look backwards. Try to stay mellow with experience. I’m the sum of all the mistakes or misdirection that ever occurred during my life. You can either see life as a collection of greatest hits or misses, or as a Blonde on Blonde. I’m not the guy I originally set out to be and paid insurance to become. Man, there’s no use giving a reverse peace sign to the whole shebang.

I know that it isn’t only fear of death that pushes us towards religion. It’s losing everything that we love. Even if I did have religious convictions I’d keep quiet about them. So that would make a change, you might argue.

Always plenty of time up here to think.

The Robins are playing away this Saturday. Tim and I could take in the rugby this weekend. It’s good to have him around Big Pink sometimes. Just like the old times. I really miss those fatherly satisfactions. Often I hear Elizabeth’s voice about the old haunted house, as I explained. Like a groove cut into my psyche. You get used to the sound of a woman’s voice. Man, it’s hard to train yourself out of this.

As usual I have to go into the dinosaur lair on Sunday; this time to retrieve Luke, assuming he’s going to return and hasn’t been interviewed by that oily solicitor creep. There will be tough decisions to be made at work on Monday. There are figures to torture, letters to compose, faxes to send and maybe doors to hammer. This has urgency as Corrina is trying to buy up all my ordinary shares. That girl’s never had the reputation of being a slouch. Her idea of hanging around is a paraglider. I’d like to forget about Corrina at this point of history. Recent romantic memories - or are they merely erotic? - aggravate old wounds. From the other point of view, total romantic amnesia is difficult. Her beauty often comes back to haunt me. You could say that.

Finally I let Angie into my secret. This came as a terrible shock, but it wasn’t something from an adult bookshop. She has every right to beat her retreat. We couldn’t drag her back if we tried. She’s always tugged at the baby reins; she never liked being buckled into the sling on Lizzie’s back. In these ways, your kids never change. You have to accept that. Otherwise? My last wish as a condemned man could have sounded like an order. It’s a beautiful but scary world, it’s understood. Nowadays, the young have different struggles.

I don’t know if Angie is trying to deceive me, saying she will treat Adam Jakes as just a friend. She thinks she has escaped me finally. I’m not the only parent on guard duty. Elizabeth is going to be suspicious about her highly sociable life. Lizzie’s senses have always been keener than mine. In and out of the sack.

The girl’s very dear to us - special. We don’t talk about that much, Liz and I, but we understand the reasons why. My ex-wife can’t dream about any degree award ceremony in the future. It would be better than a parole board.

Angela said that she’s interested in running a business. She didn’t specify which type. She’d like to run a company and feel the responsibility. She’s been saving up some money? I recall. What is that for? How?

The problem occupies me for many flying miles; as I skim the atmosphere between the stars and terra firma.

Then I have an idea, of that type that strikes when high in the sky. Maybe this is only another mental disturbance. I’m gazing down at the moon dusted woods and fields, when I have the thought that Angela could become the managing director of Sheer Dirigibles. She can take over when I leave. There’s a nice euphemism.

Luke’s indifferent to my kites and balloons. Angie is the eldest. I was getting primitive on primogeniture. Forgetting that eldest daughters can be born leaders. I was trying to make the girls sing backing vocals again. My own girl’s lead guitarist and vocalist. What took me so long to recognise her abilities?

When I’ve landed this machine and reconnoitred with James I’ll brief him. He’ll not be impressed by the idea of a twenty-something boss. But he’s come around to my brilliant brain wave. He’ll see this as a positive outcome and absorb the radiation. He’s a good friend, with a good business brain and financial judgement; and I offered him a similar opportunity once. Man, he’ll be excited about this smart young girl at the helm.

Angela hasn’t expressed much interest so far. The last time she tried flying a kite there was more ribbon in her hair. She’s street wise and able to think on her feet. We’ll put our heads together and discuss the idea, after she returns from the festival. No point hanging around in Mike’s café, with only a serviette tucked into her strings.

What will my former wife and living breathing woman have to say? I’m looking forward to telling her. I can already imagine Angela making revolutions in my swivelling chair.

So maybe I didn’t make a wasted journey after all. When we imagine we are in a dark and hopeless situation, we can take ourselves by surprise by finding solutions. I wouldn’t change or take anything back in my life experience. Love is the most powerful and creative force that we know. In love there’s happiness unimagined.