‘It means quality and taste at a price you can afford.’
‘I knew that,’ said Chico.
‘Oh no you didn’t.’
‘Oh yes I did.’
‘Oh no—’
‘Excuse me,’ said Norman. ‘But Brentstock does mean quality and taste at a price you can afford. Because Brentstock is the name of Mr Doveston’s exclusive Brentford Reserve Stock Cigarettes, which will be on sale to the public for the very first time ever during the festival.’
‘I knew that too,’ said Chico.
‘Oh no you didn’t.’
‘Oh yes I did.’
‘Oh no you—’
Chico drew a gun on me and aimed it at my ribs. ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘If you say you did, then you did.’
‘So,’ said the Doveston, ‘rimming the rooster’ with his yo-yo. ‘We have the bands, we have the name. So what about the drugs?’
‘The drugs?’ I ducked as the yo-yo whirled in my direction.
‘Drugs!’ The Doveston ‘rogered the rabbit’. ‘I do not want my festival ruined by a lot of out-borough drug-pushers selling bad dope to the crowd.’
‘Damn right,’ said Chico. ‘They can buy their bad dope from us.
‘That is not what I meant. I don’t want there to be any dope at all at this festival. Do you understand?’
‘Oh yeah, right, man.’ Chico winked.
‘No,’ said the Doveston. ‘I’m deadly serious. No dope at all.’
‘But this is the Sixties, man. You’re always saying this is the Sixties.’
‘No dope,’ said the Doveston. ‘I want everyone to enjoy themselves. Norman will be organizing all the stalls, won’t you, Norman?’
‘Oh yes.’ The shopkeeper nodded. ‘The cigarette stands, the T-shirt stalls and, of course, the beer tent.’
‘And the food?’
‘All taken care of Hot dogs, ices, macrobiotic brown rice and falafel. I’ve rented out the pitches and we take a percentage on sales.’ Norman patted the top pocket of his Paisley-patterned shopcoat. ‘I have all the figures written down.’
‘Then perfect. The punters can eat and drink and rock to the music.
‘And purchase Brentstock cigarettes with the money they would otherwise be wasting on dope?’ I suggested.
‘They might.’ The Doveston performed a trick with his yo-yo that left him all but breathless. “‘Straining the greens”,’ he explained. ‘But trust me on this. There will be secret policemen mingling amongst the crowd. I don’t want people getting busted. I want this festival to run like a well-oiled—’
‘Penis?’ said Chico.
‘Machine,’ said the Doveston.
‘Curse this dyslexia.’
Brentstock did not run like a well-oiled machine, nor even a well-oiled penis. It ran, if anything, more like a painted turnip through a field of eager toothbrushes. Or at least it did for me. I can’t speak for anybody else. Most of those who actually survived it were in no fit condition to say anything to anyone for a number of weeks afterwards. Some even took vows of silence and never spoke again.
Sitting there that evening in the Doveston’s flat, none of us could possibly ever have predicted what would happen.
I’m not saying that it was all the Doveston’s fault. Some of it undoubtedly was. I will say that none of it was my fault. I am innocent of all charges.
I told the magistrate, ‘It wasn’t me.’
But did he listen?
Did he bugger!
He said that in all his long years at the bench, he had never heard of such appalling stuff and that he was having to undergo counselling to help him get over the nightmares.
Which is probably why he handed down such a heavy sentence.
But I am getting ahead of myself. Nineteen sixty-seven, the Summer of Love and Brentstock.
Ah Brentstock.
I was there, you know.
It all began on the Friday night.
12
A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fumes thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.
Brentstock, Brentstock. Get your Brentstock cigarettes, they’re luverly.
They came in their thousands. Gentle people, with flowers in their hair. They wore beads and they wore bells and they wore sandals. They also wore flares, but as these were the 1960s, they could be forgiven.
They were colourful and beautiful and the plain folk of Brentford looked on. Mothers stood upon their doorsteps, cradling their infants. Fogeys leaned on walking-sticks and sucked upon their briars. Shopkeepers came out to gawp and pussycats on window sills raised their furry heads and gazed and purred.
Old Pete lounged in the doorway of his allotment hut. ‘Pack of pansies,’ he said as he observed the arrivals. ‘They could all do with a dose of National Service.’
‘Peace and love not really your thing?’ I said.
‘Don’t get me wrong, boy. I’m all for free love.’
‘You are?’
‘Damn right. I’m fed up with having to pay for it.’
I smiled politely. ‘Well, I have to be off,’ I said. ‘I have to make sure that the stage is all set up and everything.’
‘Huh,’ sniffed Old Pete. ‘Oh, and when you see the Doveston, tell him I want those drums of chemicals moving from out of my hut. The fumes make my knees go wobbly.’
‘Drums of chemicals?’ I asked.
‘Fungicide. The stuff we used on the crop. Some American rubbish that’s all the rage in Vietnam. Can’t be having with it myself. I told the Doveston, but did he listen?’
‘Did he bugger!’
Old Pete spat into the water butt. ‘Precisely,’ he said, ‘so bugger off.’
I buggered off. I had a great deal to do. I had to make sure that the stage was OK and the lighting and the PA system. Oh yes, we’d got all that. The whole shebang. Hired it from a local prop house called Fudgepacker’s Emporium that supplied stuff to the film and TV industries. There’s not much you can’t get in Brentford, if you know where to look.
I’d had to pay for it all with my Post Office savings, but the Doveston had promised that I would be reimbursed.
I climbed up onto the stage and stared out over the hairy heads of the growing multitude. And then I did something that I’ve always wanted to do. I took hold of the nearest microphone and went ‘One two, one two’ into it.
It was something of a disappointment, really.
I turned to one of Fudgepacker’s men, who was carrying cable about. ‘This microphone isn’t switched on,’ I said.
‘Nothing’s switched on, mate. We can’t find anywhere to plug the power cables in.
It was one of those very special moments. You know the ones. The ones that separate the men from the boys, the heroes from the woosies, the captains of industry from the shovellers of— ‘Shit,’ I said, going weak at the bladder. ‘Nowhere to plug the power in.’
‘What time are you expecting the generator van?’
I smiled in a manner which I felt might inspire confidence. ‘What is a generator van?’ I enquired.
The Fudgepacker man nudged a companion. ‘Did you hear that?’ he asked.
His companion smirked. ‘Perhaps he just wants us to plug it into someone’s house.’
I used the voice of quiet authority that always gains respect from common types. ‘That is exactly what I want you to do, my good man,’ I told him. ‘I can’t be having with generator trucks. My own house backs on to the allotments, we can run the cable through the kitchen window and plug it into the socket we use for the electric kettle.’