Ian Sansom - The Delegates' Choice aka The Book Stops Here

'I see.'

'We were going to meet them here. You've not seen it?'

'No. No. I don't think so,' said Lancelot. 'But I could check with the other stewards, if you'd like?'

'Right, well, that'd be great actually,' said Israel. 'And this is where all the travellers meet, is it?'

'No, young man,' said Lancelot, 'oh, no, no, no, no, no. These'-he emphasised the word 'these' as though indicating his own wayward offspring-'these are mostly tourists.' He lowered his voice. 'To be honest with you, they're only here for Fatboy Slim.'

'Oh? Really? Is Fatboy Slim playing?' said Israel.

'No!' Lancelot laughed, as if this were the funniest thing he'd heard in a long time. 'He was on a few years ago-and very good, actually, I should say, though I'm more of a Steely Dan man myself-but now of course everybody expects a rave when they come. This is your first time, I presume?'

'Yes,' said Israel.

'And last,' said Ted.

'Henge virgins,' mused Lancelot, stroking his beard. 'I remember when I was a Henge virgin myself. Seventy-four,' he mused. 'Nineteen seventy-four.'

'Anyway, I'm sorry I missed Fatboy Slim,' said Israel.

'There were rumours this year that Snoop Dogg was going to play,' said the steward. 'I ask you!'

'Snoop Dogg!' Israel laughed. 'As if!'

Ted looked perplexed.

'A lot of your old-style New Agers,' continued the steward, 'they go up past Amesbury there, into the hills.'

'Ah, that'd be where our friends are then, I would have thought,' said Israel. 'Do you think, Ted?'

Ted shrugged.

'Do you still want me to check with the stewards for you?' asked the man.

'No, it's all right, thanks, erm, Lancelot,' said Israel. 'I think our friends'll probably be with the other…people. But thanks anyway.'

'Peace,' said the man.

'Off,' said Ted, as they got into the car. 'Lancelot! What sort of a name is that supposed to be? Lancelot? And Fat Boy Jim?'

'Slim. You've Come a Long Way, Baby?'

'Aye. And the Soup Dog?'

'Snoop Dogg,' said Israel. 'He's a rapper. Doggystyle? D'you not know it?'

'Israel. Let's just find the van and get home, can we?' said Ted. 'Because, I'm telling ye, everyone in this country's on the loonie soup, as far as I can tell. The whole blinkin' lot of ye…'

It took them even longer driving away from Stonehenge than driving towards it-diversions, single-lane traffic-but eventually they made it back onto the open roads and into the country.

'So?' said Israel. 'We are looking for-'

'Hippies,' said Ted. 'Gypsies. Troublemakers. Thugs. And ruffians.'

'Right. All of the above?'

'And rappers,' added Ted. 'Find one, we'll find ' em all. All together like Brown's cows.'

Which indeed they were, whatever it meant. Over on the other side of Amesbury, as dusk was turning to dark and they'd almost finished listening to the Da Vinci Code audiobook all the way through for the umpteenth time ('This bit, in the film, with Tom Hanks, is brilliant,' said Ted again and again), they saw lights in the distance; not house or street lights, but what appeared to be fiery streaks and haloes shooting down the hillsides.

'What the hell's going on over there?' said Ted.

Israel peered through the windscreen. 'Well, from a distance it looks to me like it's people burning tyre wheels and rolling them down the hill.'

'That's what I thought,' said Ted. 'But why in God's name would anyone do that?'

'No idea. Some sort of pagan ritual?'

'Burning car tyres?'

'Well, maybe a sort of…reinterpretation of some…pagan ritual.'

'Aye. That'll be our lot then.'

Israel parked the Mini carefully in a lay-by and then they clambered over a stile and began walking down across a field towards the tyre burners.

It was dark now, but still warm, and there was the sound of birdsong, and suddenly, here, just for a moment-a tiny moment; just a half even, maybe, or a quarter-in a field somewhere in England, for the first time since being back, Israel felt, for a piece of a moment, at home.

He felt overcome by the intensity of his own existence, and yet at the same time completely disembodied from it, as though he were observing his own experience. He thought for a moment of Robert Browning, and of Robert Bridges, and Thomas Hardy, and Ray Davies, and T. E. Lawrence, and Tim Henman, and of hedgerows, and cricket, and is there honey still for tea? He did not think, for a moment, of Gloria. He felt idyllic.

He decided not to mention this to Ted.

'Get down!' said Ted suddenly, as they approached a hedge. 'Down on yer hunkers.'

'Mywhatters?'

'Hunkers. Quick! Down. Get down! Quick!'

Israel did not get down on his hunkers quick enough, so Ted pushed him down flat into the damp mud.

'Ted!'

'Sshh!'

'What? Why?' whispered Israel. 'Have they seen us?'

'Look. There,' whispered Ted.

'Where?'

'Ahint the hedge there.'

'A hint?'

'Aye.'

Israel looked ahint the hedge there.

It wasn't the travellers.

It was a long line of policemen, wearing dark blue boiler suits. And protective helmets. And carrying shields. Shoulder to shoulder. In total silence. And behind them, just over the hedge, piled up, were shovels and picks and spades.

'Oh, shit!' said Israel. 'I don't like the look of this, Ted! What are the police doing here?'

'The same thing we're doing here,' whispered Ted. 'Come on, we need to get out of here,' and so they wriggled along on their bellies beside the hedge, as quietly as they could, away from the police, taking a much longer, snaking, circuitous route through fields of wheat towards the travellers and their burning tyres.

Eventually, having successfully evaded the police, and down towards the bottom of the hill, safely hidden in among some trees, they were close enough to observe.

'Travellers in their natural environment,' whispered Israel, putting on his best David-Attenborough-observing-the-gorillas voice.

'Sshh!' said Ted.

Men and women, stripped to the waist, were leaping over fires. Someone was playing bongos, and people were dancing barefoot, and there were jugglers, and fire-eaters, and people were being tattooed, and there was a child dancing around in a luminous skeleton suit, while other people lay around on the ground, wrapped in rugs, passing bottles and joints. And there, among them, sprawled out, were Stones and Bree, locked in-'Sweet Jesus!' said Ted-an intimate embrace. And behind them, parked at the top of the hill, among the camper vans, old coaches, horseboxes and ambulances, was the mobile library, resplendent, glowing in the firelight, in all its repainted glory, its Eye of Horus keeping watch over the proceedings.

'Got 'em!' said Ted.

'Keep your voice down!' said Israel.

'The dirty lying thieving bastards!' continued Ted. 'Look at 'em. Totally scunnered, the lot of them. Bloody bunch of scoots.'

'So what do we do now?' said Israel.

'We're going to wait here until they're all well away from the van,' said Ted.

'And then what?'

'We're going to steal her back.'

'Steal her?' whispered Israel. 'That's-'

'How else d'ye think we're going to get her?'

'Well, couldn't we just go and talk to them first?' said Israel. 'And then we could maybe talk to the police, and explain what's happened and-'

'It'll all be happy ever after?' said Ted.

'I'm sure the police would help us.'

'Aye, well, I've never met a policeman before who wanted to help me, and I very much doubt I'm going to meet one now.'

'Well, I don't know about that,' said Israel, 'the police can be'-and then he recalled a number of recent incidents in Tumdrum, including his being accused of robbery and the kidnap of Mr Dixon, of Dixon and Pickering's department store, for example-'a little unpredictable,' he admitted. 'But stealing the van back is quite a risky strategy, isn't it?'