Although to some extent reassured by her acceptance of the inevitable, Paul found her personally aloof and withdrawn. But hoping this would change when the night passed off uneventfully, he concentrated on the arrangements.

  Without expert back-up from Exodus, he would have been lost, nor would anything have been possible without a hefty subsidy from Roy’s record company. But with the next Rory Craig single due for release a week after the concert, the executives at Stella Records had been looking for publicity; and because their investment was too large to be recouped by ticket sales alone, were determined to make the most of it in other ways: a special press train, there and back, with food and drink thrown in free, hand-outs stressing the ‘magic’ of an evening in the grounds of ‘a Tudor mansion never before opened to press or public’, and PR gush about ‘Rory Craig’s personal and professional association with the trend-setting Marquess of Carnforth, whose family …’

  A marketing director’s dream, with only one cloud in the sky: Paul’s decision to limit the ticket-printing to thirty thousand before having any idea of demand. How many acres was the goddam park? Well, quite a few … but with Eleanor breathing down his neck and Paul’s priority being Matthew’s film and not gate-receipts, he refused to concede. The ads in the music press should proclaim it a ticket-only event, these obtainable in town by application to x, y and z, and not at the venue. Did he have any idea how big Rory was? Then how come he didn’t realise thousands of fans weren’t going to be put off making the journey by the small print in the ads? All right, Paul had said: a ticket issue of forty thousand, twenty-five for sale in town, fifteen at the venue, but the ads still to make out tickets only available in town. More objections from Stella. Since the venue was eighty miles from London, up to twenty per cent (more if the weather was bad) might not make it, so to cut back on advance sales would be crazy. The final arrangement: thirty-five thousand for advance sale, fifteen thousand available at Delvaux, but not advertised.

  With six weeks still to go, Paul was under pressure again. With only ‘modest’ advertising, a London sell-out looked certain. No change from Paul. Cursing and groaning from Stella, and a suggestion that ‘in his own interests’ he should get more tickets printed for sale his end, unless he had a private army. The concert was ‘making a big buzz on the rock festival grapevine’. Four days later he spotted a small ad in a music weekly, succinctly stating that ‘a limited number of tickets will be sold on site’. Vehement denials of responsibility from Stella and Exodus. A journalist on another rock paper previewed the concert and mentioned the venue tickets. Obliged to provide more lavatories and food, Paul had to tell Eleanor he had been taken for a ride. ‘I wonder who did place those ads?’ was her mild response. Paul tried and failed to keep his temper. More and more she reminded him of a classical heroine foreseeing her fate and quietly preparing for it.

  Ten days left, and the post office had to lay on extra deliveries to Castle Delvaux. Mostly enquiries about tickets, but amongst them a threat against Roy’s life, dismissed by Paul as a hoax, and less specific warnings from a couple of astrology nuts who thought the organizers ought to know the moon would be in Scorpio. The rest were from girls, treating Delvaux as a convenient poste restante for ravings addressed to ‘Rory’. Since the estate office also had to deal with matters as various as accounts, staff salaries, repairs, and all estate purchases (except those accounted for by the housekeeper), Paul spent more time in the company of Major Bourne, the agent, and Miss Legge, his secretary, than he ever had before. His relations with the major, a fixture even in his father’s day, were correct but never warm, and the immense amount of extra work caused by the concert did not improve them. Miss Legge, who doubled as estate telephonist, was soon doing nothing but attend the switchboard; and the employment of a temp only marginally improved matters. It took one of the most experienced secretaries from Exodus to stem the tide. Even so, local reaction to her clothes and make-up gave Paul an indication of the culture-shock in store. While Eleanor predicted resignations, Paul was more sanguine. The perks in housing, food grown on the estate, and, in ordinary circumstances, a very easy life, were not to be so lightly thrown away – least of all by the major, who, though doing less than the managers under him, earned more than any of them.

  *

  The day dawned bright and fair, and though up at six, Paul found Eleanor had beaten him off the blocks. Shortly before half-past seven, having visited the estate office and the park, Paul found her in the Gatehouse Court, addressing the entire outside staff – maintenance men, gardeners, labourers from the home farm, even the chauffeur. Though irritated, he was also touched. She was sending them out with whistles to various strategic points in the gardens, the youngest footman and the hallboy to act as runners. (Rather as if his own security men with their radios and vastly superior numbers, were figments of his imagination.) The only tragedy, or perhaps blessing, was that Matthew, who would not arrive till nine, was not here to record this poignant survival of feudal loyalty. Later she might well have plans for putting the inside staff through fire drills, and other defensive procedures. (Delvaux folklore in the making: the young marchioness who saved the estate when her husband let in the rebels.)

  He watched her finish her address and stride over to him, in one of her oldest hacking-jackets. ‘I suppose you know there are four thousand people outside the park?’ Paul said he did know, but had been asked not to let them in until the catering and other contractors were ready for them. A lorry had split one of the main water pipes twenty minutes earlier; about half a ton of expensive equipment was still outside the backstage enclosure; and the second beer tent hadn’t been erected. Add to that three out of four of the largest lighting towers still on the ground, and the electricians having a hard enough time without being trampled on, and a case must surely exist for sticking to what was printed on the tickets: namely gates open noon?

  Eleanor listened patiently. Did he know that the four thousand had started as less than one thousand at dawn, most of whom had slept in sleeping bags? Did he also know that the police had been on the line saying that the gates would have to open the moment traffic was stopped on the Frimpton–Belstead road? Had he heard that at least four hundred fans were on their way from Frimpton station, and that the police thought there would be upwards of twenty thousand in the area by ten o’clock? Another fact he might find interesting: according to one of the security men, three-quarters of those outside had no tickets.

  Having been more concerned with progress in the park, Paul hadn’t known all this. Hearing it, he couldn’t help smiling at the sheer scale of the thing. Eleanor’s mouth opened and closed. ‘What’ll you do if … they just keep coming … all day?’

  He shrugged. ‘Pray for rain?’

  ‘There could be a quarter of a million.’

  ‘No way of keeping that number out.’ He took her hand. ‘It’ll slow down soon. Let’s take a look anyway.’

  From the top of the gatehouse they could see the road clearly. The best possible autumn weather: a slight mist dispersing in scarves of sun-haze. Seeing a moving phalanx of fans coming over the brow of the hill, bathed in golden mist, Paul was left speechless. But where was Matthew? He ought to be up here. He was about to race down to the office, when Eleanor asked him why so many people were walking. About to say, ‘Because the road’s clogged up for miles’, Paul suggested a coach might have broken down just out of sight. ‘How many kids that age have cars anyway?’ he ended brightly. He paused a moment to look down at the park.

  An extraordinary sight from above: two hundred yards beyond the peaceful geometry of the gardens, a scene of twentieth century chaos struggling towards order. The large square stage and overshadowing rig, tricked out with bat-like spots, already in position; behind it the backstage area, fenced off like a US cavalry fort, with its press tent, and large marquee ‘Performers Only – Private’. Also inside the stockade the more successful support groups’ caravans, and a whole tribe of hangers-on, roadies, gophers, groupies, wives, children, workmen, milling around like leaderless ants. Outside the sacred grove, the huge catering tents, the square boxes of the lavatories, and the temporary huts the contractors’ men had lived in for the past two days. As he watched, one of the spindly light towers teetered into an upright position not far from an ancient elm of similar height. Lorries and vans were constantly coming and going, off-loading equipment brought in through the home farm. A generator sputtered into noisy life, emitting clouds of monoxide.

  Eleanor, he noticed was looking down at the house: the quiet courts, roofs dominated by stone beasts and finials, the black and red house flag stirring on its staff above the hall. Her eyes drifted back to the densely sprinkled dots on the Frimpton road. As the generator stopped abruptly, they could hear bleating car horns, and the garbled clamour of distant voices.

  She leaned against the battlements. ‘Do you think you made it more popular by making such a fuss about limiting the tickets?’

  ‘You think that’s why I did it?’ he gasped.

  She gazed at him opaquely. ‘I gave up trying to guess things like that months ago.’ Her fatalism drained him of anger. He could say, Look down there; Roy was nothing till he met me; look, look … But he didn’t. Two tiny figures were clinging to the wrought-ironwork of the gates, inching upwards.

  ‘Before anyone gets hurt, don’t you think you should …’ She turned. Paul had already gone.

  The right decision after all, Paul thought, to have let them in an hour before time. Performances not due to start till three, but before that lunch, and wandering about the park, chatting, sharing food, sitting in the grass. Without turn-styles, it’d been hard to deal with ticket selling and checking those already bought, but security had come out on top in spite of minor scuffles and a dozen or so getting in free. Ten groups were due to play as many alternating sets as required till Roy’s appearance as dusk fell. Better then, because the wait would build up tension and the lights focus all attention on the stage, blotting out the darkening park. Just ‘Rory’, a sun-bright figure in black and gold satin, prancing into the light. While against the sky, Delvaux would begin to glow.

  At six, Roy’s helicopter would circle the park, with announcements over the public address to make sure everyone knew. Then longer intervals between the support bands’ sets, anticipatory screams, tension. But Roy dining at ease with Lord Carnforth, while Matthew filmed. (Good to intercut this with footage in the park.) Other musts for Matthew: the helicopter landing on the tennis courts, his reception, autograph signing for children of members of the staff, while the thousands waited.

  When Paul found Matthew, half-an-hour after the gates had opened, he was filming in the medical tent, questioning the doctor. Apart from faintings, and crushings, what were the problems he expected? Nothing much. What about drugs? Anything so far? Just one bad trip: LSD; a couple of amphetamine o/ds. What else might he get? The doctor shrugged. Mandrax, nembutol maybe. Usually coke and cannabis didn’t cause problems. Paul walked into shot. ‘Boy is it wild out there, fighting in the mud, gatecrashing, heroin outselling hot-dogs …’

  Outside, Matthew suggested he might be unwise to count his chickens. By inviting a wide range of bands, protest and folk-rock, along with teeny-bopper pullers, he’d got himself one hell of a mixed audience. Hippies with their gentle ‘back to nature’ cult-line, weren’t the only ones who fancied a day in the country. The Hell’s Angel/Rocker faction loved nothing better than a burn-up actually ending somewhere; they also loved nothing less than hippies. What had so far struck him, Matthew confided, was the low proportion of thirteen to fifteen year old girls, who’d set the tone of Roy’s tour and guaranteed its success.

  Shortly after two o’clock, black clouds began to roll in from the west, and, more ominous, Paul learned that about two dozen forged tickets had been presented at the gate. Since they had been professionally produced, and failed only in respect of a five, instead of six, figure coding number, the obvious implication was that many more had been printed. More bothering still: most of the holders had so far turned out to be East End leather boys, a species most unlikely to take no for an answer with good grace. Hurrying to the gates, Paul was at least able to reflect that the early morning rush had not developed into a stampede; the ticketless evidently calculating that unless able to be at the site before ten, they’d do best to spare themselves the journey. Even so, he was worried long before he caught his first glimpse of ugly confrontation. With just over forty thousand already in the park, and well over six hours till Roy was due to perform his first set, the few thousand remaining venue tickets were going to have to go a long way. If numerous, the forgeries would bring mathematical mayhem to a situation already critically stretched.

  The fights and scuffles Paul witnessed outside were vicious but produced no serious injuries (or none requiring use of any of the three ambulances on site). The police, no less alarmed than Paul by the dud tickets and what they might presage, made a handful of exemplary arrests. Peace was restored, but not without a price. The carnival atmosphere was ebbing; kids assembled to celebrate love, togetherness, and rock, had seen authority cracking down, and most of them, having no idea why, were inclined to fear the worst. Another depressant: though no rain was falling, the clouds were thickening, and the sun looked to have made its last appearance. The flimsy clothes many had set out in on a warm morning, were plainly going to give enjoyment a rough run later in the day.

  Paul left the gate just after seeing a girl screaming and writhing on the grass; rumour had it that isolated pushers were hawking acid laced with speed. But, as he was soon to realize, the occasional victim of a bad trip wasn’t going to affect the general mood of the vast crowd to anything like the extent of a griping minority, growing by the hour, that’d been forced to pay twice. In many cases the choice would now lie between eating and drinking during the concert, or keeping the cash for a coach or train ticket home. Hitching wouldn’t get everyone away.

  Relations between the hippy and rocker sections didn’t seem too bad when Paul left the park bound for the estate office, meaning to phone the lodge for up-to-date news on the current rate of arrivals. No worries were entertained about running out of printed tickets; if this happened, as looked likely, they would simply go on taking money. The one thing out of the question now would be to stick to a numbers limit add to the growing company of forged ticket holders roaming around outside the park walls. Nothing the police could do about them, Paul was told. They’d been dispersed from the gates and that was that. To let anyone in without paying had been ruled out from the start; now it would be a sure recipe for a riot by the twice-paid fraternity. And if the crowd of ticketless persons grew unmanageably large, disaster might still be averted if Roy was grabbing the audience’s attention when they were finally let in. His security chief’s guess that this moment of truth would arrive sooner, rather than later, persuaded Paul that Roy’s arrival would have to be advanced. Unhappily, efforts to contact the singer failed. All that could be said with certainty was that he would be at the Battersea heliport by a quarter to five.

  The rain started while the second support group was playing, and caused a major electrical failure, which took almost an hour to put right. Fitful drizzle increased to a regular downpour, which lasted long enough to fill the beer tents to twice their intended capacity, and to increase alcoholic consumption in proportion. Outside, a couple of weirdos had taken off their clothes and were dancing somnabulistically in the rain. A girl absent-mindedly stripped, and drifted, more than danced, between the men. One held her briefly, then the other for longer. Paul saw nothing erotic in this disconnected dream-sequence, but it seemed to infect a group of watching ton-up boys with a deadly mix of lust and contempt.

  ‘Fuckin’ freaks, really inter the universe,’ Paul heard one sneer.

  ‘Won’t get inter you,’ another shouted at the girl.

  ‘Wha’s long and cool and …

  As a generator throbbed into action, like a kick-started bike, a leather-lad lunged forward and kicked one of the naked hippies in the groin. As he doubled-up another rocker smashed him in the face with a broken billiard-cue. The victim staggered back, spitting blood, while the girl was grabbed and fumbled. Paul moved too late to stop her being shoved to the ground, and was lucky others in the crowd leapt in too.

  Laying into anything in leather, he put together three or four telling punches; one landing on a cheekbone with enough force to crack a knuckle bone in his right hand (though for several hours he thought it only bruised). A blow on the back of the head stunned him for a few seconds, but by then the fight was over; the arrival of three truncheon-swinging security men putting it beyond doubt. Paul was holding his head when he heard a girl’s voice, ‘Man, that was really cool … I mean, did they want a fight.’ He looked up and saw a pair of wet breasts and a pale vacant face. ‘Swat happens when kids start gulping reds with too much beer.’ Paul examined his hand and suggested she put her clothes on; swaying closer, she said, ‘Like we could uh really swing … cos I know when it’s gonna be a bust and when it’s gonna swing … and we’d be …’ A pink-brown nipple, bunched and wrinkled in the cold, moved in on his eyeline. Turning sharply, he saw something else thrusting his way. Closely followed by the bulky anoraks of its attendants, Matthew’s film-camera poked through an opening in the sodden crowd. Hand-held, it moved like an uncertain robot-eye, until the cameraman spotted the naked male body being eased on to a stretcher by two St John’s ambulancemen. Close by lay the ton-up boy Paul had caught with his bone-crunching hook.