Chapter 8
‘Okay, that’s settled then,’ says Rose, lying on top of her sleeping bag because it’s too hot to get inside it, ‘you can have Liam, and I’ll have Noel.’
‘That’s fine by me. Liam is way sexier. You only want Noel because he writes the songs, and you’re an intellectual snob so you think that means he’s cleverer.’
‘I have to be honest, Pops, I don’t think you could call any of Oasis clever … If I wanted clever, I’d have to go for Jarvis Cocker.’
‘Even though he’s so skinny?’
‘Even though. There was something foxy about him tonight, don’t you think? All those shapes he pulled, and the way he held the microphone? Or is that the marijuana speaking?’
‘If the marijuana is actually speaking to you,’ says Poppy, passing her sister the item under discussion, ‘then I’m going to suggest you drank some of that special mushroom tea the hippy dudes were offering us earlier.’
‘No! I didn’t, honest!’ says Rose, giggling.
Everything seems very, very funny, for some reason.
Even earlier, when there was a wasp trapped in the tent with them – and she is terrified of wasps – she couldn’t stop laughing as Poppy batted it out again with a rolled-up festival programme. Fearless wasp warrior.
‘I believe you, thousands wouldn’t …’ replies Poppy, also giggling. ‘Hey, I just had a thought. It’s a funny one.’
‘Go for it. I’m a very receptive audience right now.’
‘Okay,’ says Poppy, ‘you know how the Stone Roses were supposed to be playing, and they dropped out?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, we’re lying here smoking up a storm, and instead of the Stone Roses, we have the … Stoned Rose! Rose! Your name! You get it?’
Rose does get it, and frankly it is the most hilarious thing she has ever heard. She laughs so much she fears she might have some kind of calamitous event going on in her cerebral cortex.
It’s Poppy’s fault, she decides, with a grin. That she’s a Stoned Rose, and that she’s almost laughing herself to death. She might be two years younger, but she’s a bad influence. Leading her astray.
Rose is in her first year at Liverpool University, studying Biology, with a nice sideline in cheap lager. Poppy is at college doing her A-levels.
They don’t see as much of each other now, for obvious reasons, and this has been a glorious weekend.
They’ve watched fine bands, and eaten less fine veggie burgers, and had henna tattoos done on their hands, and witnessed one of the amateur flame-jugglers get taken away to hospital.
They’ve danced and drunk and been hoisted on random men’s shoulders and lain out in the sun, listening to the sounds of bongo drums and acid trips wafting past their ears.
It’s late now, and they’re enjoying their last night together. Even in the early hours, in their tent, they can hear the sounds of festival life going on around them: music and laughter and yet more bongos and guitars strumming and the very occasional vomit.
‘Was Andy disappointed you weren’t sharing with him?’ asks Poppy from out of the blue. Andy is Rose’s boyfriend, and he’s here too, with a gang of his friends. Poppy doesn’t have a boyfriend, just a few lads she snogs when she’s been in the Tennyson’s Arms on a Friday night.
‘I don’t think so,’ answers Rose, passing back the joint and twisting on to her side so she is facing her sister. Poppy is still long and lean and lovely, and the spots have cleared up now. She’s a bit of a babe, but doesn’t seem to realise it. Bambi’s all grown up, at least in body.
‘I think he’s happy enough with his mates,’ she adds. ‘And anyway, even if he wasn’t, so what? This is our weekend. We’ve been planning it for ages. I can see Andy whenever I want – but spending quality time with my adorable little sister is far more precious.’
Poppy laughs, and stubs the cigarette out on the lid of the little tobacco tin she carries everywhere with her.
Rose glances at it – it’s what they call ‘vintage’ these days, and the lid is decorated with a naval design.
It looks suspiciously like one that used to live in a glass cabinet back in the cottage.
‘Did you steal that from home?’ she asks, pointing at the tin.
‘Well, as it’s my home as well, technically I don’t think it would be called stealing, do you?’
‘Mum would go nuts if she could see us now … especially when she realised you had that tin …’
Poppy stretches out, her limbs so long her grubby, bare toes touch the end of the tent, and replies: ‘Nah, she wouldn’t.
Well, maybe about the tin. But she wouldn’t mind us lying here having a smoke, I don’t think.
Mum was working in show business in the Seventies, dahling, don’t you know?
She’s probably snorted cocaine off Oliver Reed’s arse!
Plus she paid for the tickets and everything – I don’t think she was under any illusions that we’d be spending the weekend behaving like nuns, do you? ’
Rose ponders this, and it takes her a few moments to drag her mind away from the image of her mum and Oliver Reed.
Is he on the list, she tries to recall? The list that her and Poppy keep, of names their mother has dropped from her more glamorous days?
She seemed to have known – and ‘known’, she suspected, could mean anything from having met on set to had lunch with to shagged in an orgy – pretty much every big-name actor of her era.
The girls know there is truth in it. When they were younger, they joined her on set in various locations, and found it all pretty boring.
To them, it was just what happened when your mum went to work, even if it sounded glamorous from the outside.
And to them, Mum was just Mum, even if she did once paint Joan Collins’s nails for her.
‘No, you’re right,’ she eventually concedes. ‘She wouldn’t mind. Actually, I kind of wish she was here, don’t you? She’d be a good laugh.’
‘Don’t tell anyone,’ replies Poppy, whispering conspiratorially, ‘but I think she might actually be here. I think she might have been one of those naked ladies with the blue-painted boobs, the ones who were doing yoga around the camp fire earlier …’
Rose bursts out laughing at the idea, and Poppy joins in. Everything really does still seem very, very funny. For some reason.
They laugh for what feels like hours, until the bongos finally go silent, and peace falls over their little patch of Glastonbury.