Andie's Moon (5 page)

They bought sandwiches and Coke at the café; then Kris said it was time to go. “We can come back another day, if you want. It’s free, after all.” She seemed to be in a hurry, for some reason.

Out in the sunshine, they crossed Exhibition Road and a wide, traffic-filled street that bordered Hyde Park, with its avenue of trees. Hundreds of people seemed to be making their way in the same direction.

“Is it always this busy?” Andie asked Kris.

Kris laughed. “No. There’s something special happening today. Didn’t you know? The Rolling Stones are giving a free concert – and there are other bands too. We can’t miss it, not when we’re so close!”

“You knew all along? Why didn’t you
say
?”

Kris grinned. “You might not have been allowed to come.”

Well, no. Andie’s mum and dad would never have let her; Kris had guessed rightly. But now that they were here, it would be hard to resist joining the drift, just to see what was going on. They were in a green expanse of parkland, with trees and winding paths, so vast that the buildings on the north and east sides looked very far away. Beyond a boating lake, which Kris said was the Serpentine, the grass was clotted with a mass of people. Most sat or sprawled, some with picnics or cans of drink; others were dancing to the beat of music that came from a distant stage. Andie and Kris made their way through the crowd, trying to find a good vantage-point, but the figures on the stage still looked as tiny as dolls.

“We should have come earlier,” said Kris, disappointed. “We’re miles away.”

“Is that them? The Rolling Stones?”

“No! The other groups will come on first. We can wait, though – we don’t have to hurry back, do we?”

Picking their way, they found a place to sit, a very long way from the stage. Every tree had people massed beneath its branches, seeking shade. Andie squinted in the strong sunlight, gazing at the scene in front of her. She liked the Rolling Stones – especially, perhaps, because Mum tutted at them and thought them disgraceful – though she preferred the Beatles, especially George.

Kris offered her a Polo mint. “You heard about Brian Jones drowning in his swimming pool? He’d already left the Stones, but all the same I wondered if they’d go ahead and play today. It was only three days ago.”

Andie nodded. Last week, while they’d been packing at home, she’d found Prune red-eyed and sniffy in her bedroom, listening to the radio. Prune wasn’t, as far as Andie knew, a particular fan of the Stones, but for the next twenty-four hours she behaved as if she’d been Brian Jones’s most devoted follower. His photograph now filled the space only recently vacated by Paul McCartney on Prune’s bedroom wall. Paul McCartney had been taken down in disgrace, having behaved to Prune with unforgivable treachery by marrying Linda Eastman.

At last, to great excitement from the crowd, the Rolling Stones were announced. Tiny figures came onto the stage; Andie strained her eyes to make them out. She had never before seen a real famous person, and now here was Mick Jagger – it must be him – tiny as a distant fairy, and dressed like one, in a white dress with frills, over white trousers.

“Is that really him?” she whispered to Kris. She had the sense that if she blinked, or didn’t believe hard enough, he’d disappear, like Tinkerbell.

“Course!”

Taking the microphone, the figure who was Mick Jagger said something Andie couldn’t hear. The audience fell silent while he read from a book.

“A poem for Brian,” Kris whispered. “It’s so sad.”

Mick Jagger opened a box and released a flutter of white that dispersed into the air. It’s like that myth about Pandora’s box, Andie thought – except that Pandora released badness. What came out of this box was white butterflies. Wouldn’t they be bewildered? Where would they go, in all this space? She knew she ought to be sad for Brian Jones, for drowning, but instead she could only think: there’s Mick Jagger. I’m looking at him in
real life
. The dazzle of fame made it hard to believe that a starry person like Mick Jagger walked about in the same world as everyone else, breathed the same air, but there he
was,
on the stage.

The mood had changed. The respectful hush that had settled over the crowd was now an expectant pause. Moments later, the volume was turned up and the drums began to pound a heavy, intoxicating rhythm. People began to sway and cheer and wave their arms to the music as the band launched into songs Andie knew: “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”, “Midnight Rambler”, “Street Fighting Man”. The last butterflies flickered and vanished like snowflakes in the sun. A passenger aircraft flew overhead; a naked toddler stamped his feet on the grass and shrieked with laughter; Mick Jagger’s voice rose and fell.

A crowd, while it stayed together, was a living thing, with its own mood, its own ways of behaving. Although Andie didn’t know anyone here except Kris, it felt like being in an enormous team, or a club – people who had chosen, just for this afternoon, to link themselves through the hum of expectation, the music and the sunshine, the smell of warm grass and the festival atmosphere. Andie had never felt anything like it before. She thought: I’m listening to the Rolling Stones, in Hyde Park with my new friend Kris. She couldn’t make it seem quite real.

When it was all over, and the last whoops and applause had faded, people began to get to their feet, looking surprised – realizing where they were, then gathering their belongings ready to walk across the park and wonder about buses or tube trains back to normal life.

“I don’t feel like going home yet,” Kris told Andie. “Let’s walk over to the lake. We can get ice cream there.”

It was the kind of long summer evening that made for lingering. Kris and Andie walked through the dispersing crowd to the Serpentine, and bought raspberry-ripple cornets at the stand there. Then Kris wanted to walk home rather than bothering with a bus, and took Andie on a complicated route avoiding all the main roads, instead taking quiet side streets and alleyways. Sometimes she stopped to show Andie an interesting little shop or recording studio, or an art gallery owned by someone Patrick knew.

“Are you allowed to go wherever you want?” Andie asked, rather envious.

Kris shrugged. “Pretty much. I know my way around, and Marilyn trusts me.”

It took an age to reach Chelsea Walk. By the time the back of the houses came into view, Andie was tired and thirsty. And she knew that there would be trouble the minute she got in.

Chapter Six

Grounded

Andie and Kris parted at the side gate, and Andie went upstairs, hoping that for some reason her parents had stayed out later than they’d intended. But as soon as she’d turned her key in the lock, she was met by a hail of questions.

“Where’ve you been? What made you so late?” Mum was hot and flustered. “Why didn’t you phone? You must have known we’d be worried!”

“Andie, you really should have rung, if you were going to be as late as this.” Dad was less agitated, but still annoyed. “There must have been phones at the Science Museum.”

They were all standing in the hallway. Andie pushed past to the kitchen, to fetch a glass of water.

“We didn’t spend all day there – only this morning. We’ve been in Hyde Park. I couldn’t phone from there. There was this concert – you know, a free concert, with, er, lots of different groups? And Kris wanted to go, and it was free, and—”

“What – you haven’t been
there
? It was on the news. You haven’t been to see the
Rolling Stones
?” Mum made the words sound despicable. “Andrea, whatever got into you? You know I’d never have let you!”

“What’s wrong with it?” Andie felt herself putting on what Mum called her
young madam
voice. “There were hundreds of other people. Anyone could go – we just sat on the grass and listened. It’s this big park.”

“I know what Hyde Park is, Andrea. But a pop concert! The Rolling Stones! Who knows what you might have come across? Drug-taking…LSD or whatever they call it…flower people and all kinds of carry-on I don’t even want to think about –”

“Mu-um! Honestly,
you
could have been there, with Dad – you wouldn’t have seen anything wrong – and anyway, there were lots of police—”

“Well, that just proves it!” said Mum in triumph. “The police were there for a reason! On the lookout for drug dealers and pickpockets and the like, I don’t doubt. And you two young girls on your own, in the middle of all that! Anything could have happened!”

“But it didn’t!” Andie humphed. “We just listened like everyone else, and came home. We’re not little kids. Kris is
thirteen –”

“Yes, and I think it was unwise of me to let you go out with her. We hardly know her, and she’s obviously got no idea of what’s appropriate. You’ve hardly begun to find your way around, and that’s the first place she takes you! And saying you were going to the Science Museum? I suppose you planned this yesterday, the two of you? You lied to me?”

“Come on now, Maureen!” Dad tried. “There’s no need to accuse Andie of telling lies.”

“Anyway, I
didn’t
lie! We
did
go to the Science Museum, and I didn’t
know
Kris wanted to go to Hyde Park!”

Mum didn’t look convinced. “All the same, I’m not happy about this. Not happy at all.” She rummaged in the cupboard for plates. “Could you go and call Prue, please? She’s in the garden, with Sushila. Tell her I’ve made sandwiches.”

Andie went. From experience, she knew that the best thing was to let Mum calm down, then try to pretend nothing had happened. After all, nothing
had.

The garden behind the house was bigger than the one at home, and was shared by all three flats. “It’s a bit overgrown, especially at the back,” Patrick had said last night, “but I like it that way. And it’s great for the kids.”

“Kids!” Kris had mocked
.
“
What
kids?”

It was cool out there now, with dusk not far off. Andie had been surprised to find that there were gardens in London, and she liked this private jungly place far more than the begonias and lobelia Dad planted alongside the front path at home. Nothing here was neat. The high brick walls on three sides were clad in honeysuckle and ivy. Straggly roses breathed out their scent; the grass was rough and uncut, and an area at the back was thick with currant and gooseberry bushes, and a herb bed. Nearer the house stood a tall tree – black walnut, Patrick said it was – with a swing hung by ropes from one of its branches. Kiddish or not, Andie would have tried out the swing to see how high she could fly, if it hadn’t already been occupied by Sushila. Sushila wasn’t swinging, just idly swaying. Her sandals scuffed the bare earth where other feet had worn away the grass. Prune was sprawled on the ground, a cardigan slung round her shoulders.

“Well,
I
would,” Prune was saying, as Andie approached.

“I would what?”

Prune looked round, annoyed at Andie for butting in; Sushila smiled and said hello.

“
What
would you do?” Andie repeated.

Prune sighed; she propped herself up, leaning back on both arms. “Since you ask, we were in the King’s Road when someone came up to us. Well, up to Sushila. She was from a…a model agency. Andromeda, it’s called. She wants Sushila to go and have some photos taken.” She gave Andie a tight smile.

“Oh!” Andie swivelled round to look at Sushila. “And will you?”

“Course not. It’s probably just a trick,” Sushila said. “They’d take the photos and charge me a fortune for them, and that’s the last I’d ever hear.”

“You could at least
ring
them.” Prune’s voice was thick with envy. “Just to ask.”

“But I don’t want to be a model,” Sushila told her, swinging gently. “I want to be a doctor.”

Prune didn’t answer, but plucked a stem of grass and champed at it.

Andie guessed how it had been: this model agency person homing straight in on Sushila, ignoring poor old Prune. Sushila looked gorgeous enough, just as she was, with messy hair and no make-up, to be on the front cover of
Honey –
you just couldn’t help looking at her flawless milky-coffee skin, her dark eyes and the way her smile lit up her face. Isn’t that just typical, Andie thought, the way things get dished out? Sushila was not only beautiful, not only brainy enough to want to be a doctor, but – it seemed – nice as well, not at all conceited. Prune was just, well, ordinary. No matter how hard she tried with hair straighteners and foundation and mascara, she’d never look as good as Sushila, even when Sushila did nothing at all. Maybe Prune thought she’d be infected by Sushila’s glamour if she hung around with her.

“Did you have a good time, Andie?” Sushila asked.

“Er, yes. Kris and I went to see the Stones in the park.”

“Oh! So did we.”

Andie looked at her, then at Prune. “
You
went?” She wondered whether Prune would get an earful from Mum, too, when she went in.

“Couldn’t miss something like that, could we? Wasn’t it fab? Wasn’t it just out of this world? And so
sad,
the poem for Brian, the butterflies…” Prune gave a tearful smile.