The Bare Necessities (Non-Profane Edition) (21 page)

“OK. What about
this, wind chimes?”

“We haven't
anywhere to hang them,” Jack moaned. “And they are not going in my
car.”

“Herbal car
fresheners?” Claire teased. “Or what about this. Tattoos and
piercings.”

Jack shook his
head, and Claire smirked. “I've always wanted my belly button
pierced.”

“Well go on then,”
Jack told her. “I'll wait.”

“I don't want to
do it on my own.”

“Well I don't want
anything pierced!”

She pursed her
lips and batted her eyelids. “For me! I thought proper rockers
loved tats and piercings? Have a tattoo.”

“Well I am not a
proper rocker then!” Claire shrugged and scowled. “Sorry, I don't
like those places. Go with Paige.” She frowned and moaned, but they
walked on, bought a drink from the bar, and Jack tried some
home-made chilli jam that caused him to splutter. “Are you annoyed
with me?” Jack asked Claire as they meandered back towards their
tent.

“No,” Claire
snapped. “Not really.”

“Then … why the
face?”

“Nothing,” she
replied and then looked at him. “OK, come in with me to have my
belly button pierced. I don't expect you to have anything done, but
come with me. Please.”

Jack snorted.
“They aren't clean.”

“It'll be fine.
Let's at least look.” Claire grabbed Jack by the arm and guided him
towards the little tattooist to have her navel pierced. Jack
watched and held onto Claire's hand as she flinched when the
piercing was made and was resolute that no part of his body was to
going to be a playground for the tattooist's talents, despite
encouragement from his band-mate.

Claire openly
admired her little metal bar that adorned her teenage body and Jack
had to admit it looked good on her before they left. “I bet Paige
wants one now,” he told her. “And I never had you down to get a
piercing.”

“If I can play the
guitar naked in front of thousands of people then I can have a bit
of my body pierced,” she replied and flashed him a smile.

* *
* * *

Claire was late
walking onto the stage, by which time the crowd were noisy and
excited. “What bloody time do you call this?” Paige asked her into
her microphone with a smile. Both of the girls were topless but
were wearing white knickers.

“I was going for a
wee,” Claire shouted back and reached for her own microphone. “Did
you go?”

“No, I just wee on
the front row,” Paige teased as the crowd giggled. “If you think
it's raining later, well sorry!” The audience at the small festival
appreciated her joke, and she clapped her hands together and looked
out over the thousand-strong audience. “Big shout out to Stroud.
This is the biggest audience we've ever played to, and we hope you
enjoy it!”

Claire looked at
her colleague and then nodded. “The organisers of the festival have
demanded that we do not perform naked,” Claire announced. “Do you
think this right or not?”

Paige held the
microphone out to the crowd as a small volley of boos came from the
festivalgoers. “Is that a yes or a no?” Paige asked and received a
deafening sound of disapproval. “We better get naked then?” Paige
replied, and all three of them took off their clothing and threw it
to one side. They saw the furious glance of the festival organisers
at the back of the crowd, but Claire just waved at them.

“We didn't go on
stage naked,” Claire shouted to them with a smile. The naked Paige
looked at Jack and Claire, and Jack started his introduction to
Don't Leave Me. The small festival soon filled, and the Bare
Necessities found themselves playing in front of a much larger
crowd as the audience swelled.

They were a late
addition to the line-up and were not on the posters advertising the
festival. Claire had managed to get them as a warm-up act on a
small stage in the mid-afternoon after a Scottish rock band had
cancelled at the last moment, but as word spread that the Internet
sensations were performing live, their admirers could not fit in
the area assigned to them.

Paige could see
the ever increasing numbers of people joining them and tried to get
a few people to strip naked; the festival was not a
clothing-optional site, but Paige promised that they would do an
encore for as long as the festival organisers would allow if a
dozen people stripped.

There was
laughter, reticence and then nervousness as the demanding girl
wandered up and down the stage, offering encouragement to various
attendees who looked undecided. “Come on,” she told a teenage girl.
“You can come and join me on stage!” The guy behind her hollered
and Paige pointed at him. “And you, sir.”

Paige managed to
get a number of people down to their underpants and the odd drunken
patron to strip naked, and she started singing again. The festival
organisers didn't object as the Bare Necessities overshot their
allotted time by more than two hours, and as the band left the
stage, Paige and her band mates received a raucous cheer.

The band got
dressed, and Jack opened the boot to his car that was parked a few
metres away. They had a couple of guys from the festival to help,
but they loaded their equipment in the car while the musicians that
followed them got set up. Paige had time for a little chat with
them and was amazed at how well known she appeared to be.

“Watch out,”
Claire muttered as two of the festival organisers strode over to
the car, slipping in the churned up earth.

“What the hell was
that?” The woman asked. “You promised us, you wouldn't be
naked.”

“We promised you,
we wouldn't go on stage naked,” Claire corrected her. “And we
didn't. And we asked our audience if it was OK to perform like that
and they said it was fine.”

The scowling woman
crossed her arms. “We should have cut you off,” she spat.

“And then you
would have had hundreds of angry people,” Jack reminded her.

“We made a promise
to the Police and you have broken that. They will be furious.”
Paige sneered in derision. “You are now banned from Stroud
Festival,” she told them. “And we will not be paying you.”

“Hang on,” Jack
told her. “We did three hours of music straight. We filled our
stage. We …”

“Get out!” She
hissed. “Or we will call the Police.”

“You haven't heard
the last of this,” Claire warned her, and the three band members
got into their car and, under the watchful eye of the organiser,
drove into the service road, and out through the back of the estate
to travel to a small hostel thirty-five miles away.

Paige was angry at
their treatment, but didn't care too much about not being paid. “It
was a massive audience,” she told them. “It shows we are
popular.”

“And if we put on
the website we were thrown out of Stroud, that'll get us
notoriety,” Claire suggested.

“We don't want
notoriety,” Paige replied. “Do we? We've enough of that.”

“No, well what
could be better than being thrown out of a festival for being
naked? That's awesome!”

Jack slowed on the
country road and go around the bend and accelerated onto the
straight when a car flashed its lights in his mirror. He ignored
it, but the car flashed its lights again and again. A blue flashing
light appeared, and Jack swore. “Might have a light out,” he moaned
and slowed his vehicle to stop in a passing place.

The Policeman got
out of the car and strode up towards Jack's vehicle. Jack opened
his window. “What's up officer?”

“Paige Simmons,
Claire Baynes, Jack Rees-Montague. I am arresting you contrary to
the Sexual Offences Act 2003. You do not have to say anything, but
it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioning
something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say
will be written down and may be used as evidence against you. Do
you understand?”

“Yeah,” Claire
muttered and looked at Paige, stunned.

“What the hell
have we done?” Paige asked but was hauled out of the car before
anything was explained to her.

1. Chapter
   XVI
   

“I need my belt,”
Jack moaned. “Keep my trousers up.”

“After what you've
been doing tonight, that should be the least of your worries.” Jack
reluctantly passed the wisecracking Sergeant his black leather belt
and Paige smirked at him. “Cell six.”

“I'll get us a
lawyer,” Jack promised the two girls as he was led away and Paige
was pushed forward.

“Name?”

“You know my
name,” Paige told him with a scowl. “I was arrested, and the office
knew my name.”

“She's an awkward
one, Sarge.”

Paige's scowl
deepened. “Perhaps I would be less awkward if I hadn't just been
arrested and have no idea why.” The desk sergeant looked back at
her and repeated his question. “Paige. Paige Simmons. Now can
someone tell me what the hell is going on? He said sexual offences,
but I ain't touched nobody.”

“Address?”

“Why? I'm not
going home, you're sticking me in a cell and I don't know why.” The
sergeant tapped the desk and Paige sighed before responding angrily
with her address.

“Date of
birth?”

“Why do you need
this? You are not going to send me a bloody birthday card. Now what
the hell is going on?” Paige asked with a snort.

“Listen missy, the
quicker we get you in, the quicker you can get out. So quit with
the bloody smart-arse comments.” Paige sneered and allowed herself
to be “booked in” and taken to a cell. She refused access to a
solicitor as she had “done nothing wrong” and had no desire to let
anyone know she had been arrested. She kicked the cell door in
anger and sat down on the thin mat in the corner of the room.

Racist and sexist
graffiti adorned the cell and she took to reading some of it before
sitting back on her mat. She looked at the door and took off her
T-shirt, shorts and underwear before putting her shoes on – the
floor did not look like she could trust it to be free of sharp
edges.

Paige waited,
thoroughly bored; why should they have been singled out for this
treatment? She had a vague idea that the festival organisers had
made a complaint, but they were on private land and could have
stopped their show when they were in the middle of their
performance. Surely, if they were that outraged they would have
done something at the time instead of waiting for hours? Surely not
paying them was a greater offence than a naked band playing without
any clothes?

Paige kicked the
wall and sat back down on the bed, thoroughly annoyed with the
state. “When are you going to let us go?” Paige shouted at the door
but got no answer.

An hour later, the
door was opened, and the custody Sergeant groaned. “Get your
clothes on, love.”

“Why? It's my
right to be naked when I want to rest.”

“And it's my right
to keep you here for 36 hours if I want to, so it's up to you. Get
dressed and we can let you go, or don't, and you can stay here. You
got five minutes.”

Paige grunted and
put her clothes back on and walked with the Sergeant to the small
“booking-in” room. Jack was threading his belt back through his
trousers, and Paige nodded. “What took you so long?”

“Had to get
dressed,” Paige replied. She saw smiles on the faces of her friends
and looked at the Sergeant.

“You are free to
go,” he told her. He shrugged and passed her some forms to sign,
including an inventory of her personal possessions. “You were on
completely private property, and … well it's not in our interests
to press charges.”

“You mean, it
won't stick.” Paige snapped and crossed her arms. “So we got
dragged ten miles here plus kept for like, three hours, and we
haven't done anything wrong.”

“We had reasonable
suspicion a crime had been committed,” the Sergeant replied with a
stoic face. “And so we are duty bound to investigate.”

“And harass,”
Claire added. “This has been ridiculous.”

“You haven't heard
the last of this,” Paige warned, and was passed a leaflet about how
to make a complaint to the Police, but she snatched her personal
effects and strode angrily out of the room.

“I told my Dad,”
he admitted. “And he said he would get a solicitor to phone the
station and have words with them. I guess that might have
frightened them a bit.”

“Really?” Claire
asked. “Wow. I didn't want to spend all night there. Look at me,
I'm shaking.” She yawned and they strode out into the Police car
park.

“Paige. Claire.
Jack. Is it true that you were arrested?” A voice asked, and they
flinched when they saw camera bulbs go off. “Have you been charged?
Will you be denying it? When is it in court? Is it true that …”

“Quick,” Jack
cried and unlocked his car. “We better get to a hotel!”

Paige smiled at
the three members of the press. “Yes, we were arrested and
released,” she said with a grin. “Flaming liberties, harassing
naturists like that. They want shooting!”

“Paige,” Claire
called. “Stop telling the press you are hacked off and let's
go!”

* *
* * *

“It stops now,”
Paul shouted and crossed his arms. He glared at Paige and Claire
listening in as their keyboardist's father strode up and down their
hotel bedroom. “Getting arrested with two tarts.”

“Oi,” Claire and
Paige cried in unison. “We are not tarts,” Paige added.

Paul crossed his arms and pointed to the naked
Paige. “Double bed, naked, do me a favour?”

“Why do people
always believe that nudity is about sex?” Paige asked Claire, but
Jack's father was not listening to her.

“Now, I have told
you to come back, and you ignored me. If you do not come back, I
shall torch your recording studio.”

“Why?” Paige asked
him. “We are famous. Our music is popular. Why do you hate us so
much?”

“Because you are
cheap scum,” Paul spat back, and Claire put her hand on Paige's
shoulder.