True Adventures of the Rolling Stones (54 page)

Up there, in Joujouka, you sleep all day
—
if the flies let you,
Brion Gysin wrote.
Breakfast is goat-cheese and honey on gold bread from the outdoor oven. Musicians loll about sipping mint tea, their kif pipes and flutes. They never work in their lives so they lie about easy. The last priests of Pan cop a tithe on the crops in the lush valley below. Late in August each musician slips away up to the borders of Rif country to take his pick of the great, grassy meadows of cannabis sativa
—
enough to last him the year. Blue kif smoke drops in veils from Joujouka at nightfall. The music picks up like a current turned on. The children are singing,
“Ha, Bou Jeloud!”

“The first thing I heard was a loud banging at the door. I did not immediately become aware of what it was. A minute might have passed before I knew it was somebody very intent on entering the flat. I put on a caftan—kimono sort of thing—went to the door and looked through the spy hole.”

“What did you see?”

No one who has seen the heat poised on the other side of his door can
ever forget it. Brian closed his eyes and, as if he were at a seance, summoned up the picture, progressing from fear to a kind of fey amusement: “I remember seeing . . . three large gentlemen . . . of a sort I don't usually
see
. . . through the spy hole of my door.”

“Who did you think they were?”

“Police, perhaps, or,” he added mysteriously, “agents. I was afraid—”

“Of the police?”

“Yes, since last year I seem to have had an inborn fear of the police.”

“If it please the court,” Mr. Frisby interjected drily,
“inborn
means you've had it all your life.”

“Ah, an acquired fear,” Brian amended his statement. “I went back to the bedroom on tiptoe. I couldn't make up my mind whether to call my secretary or my solicitor. I was very worried.”

“The police have said that ten minutes passed before they came into the flat. Do you agree with this estimate?”

“I can't agree or disagree. Some time passed. Certainly long enough to dispose of anything I shouldn't have had.”

The gallery door opened and Suki Poitier, Brian's girl, came in with Tom Keylock. Suki, a blond model, very lovely in a frail, wasted sort of way, was wearing a black pantsuit and white silk blouse. A few people turned to see her. She looked back at them evenly. Tom, who had extricated the Stones from many tight places with hotel managers and other figures of authority in countries all over the world, could do nothing now to help Brian. They sat down together and listened.

Brian was saying that DS Constable had come into his bedroom and shown him a warrant to search for dangerous drugs. When TDC Prentice called, the DS had said, “Come along, Jones.” Brian thought he saw the cannabis right away, but he knew they had come to search for drugs. He had been told.

“How did you feel when they showed you the resin?”

“I couldn't believe it,” Brian said, his voice dramatically soft. “I was absolutely shattered.”

“When DS Constable asked if the wool were yours, did you say, ‘It might be'?”

“I might have said anything.”

“Was the wool yours?”

“I never had a ball of wool in me life.” Brian seemed to become more expansive when talking about his innocence. “I don't darn socks,” he went on. “I don't have a girlfriend who darns socks.”

“Later, when you were at the police station, you said that you never take cannabis because it makes you so paranoid. What did you mean?”

“That refers back to the events of last year. The effect of the drug for me was a heightening of experience that I found most unpleasant. That made me very frightened of it.”

“Were you advised what would be the consequences of breaking your probation by using drugs?”

“Yes, sir. I have taken no chances.”

“Had you the slightest knowledge that the resin was in that wool?”

“No,” Brian said, “absolutely not.”

Mr. Havers dismissed him, and court was adjourned for lunch.

David Sandison, from the public relations office that handled the Stones' affairs, came in as we started out. “What's it look like?” he asked.

“Hard to tell,” I said. “The police have Brian's looks and reputation on their side. Seaton seems remarkably open-minded.”

Sandison looked skeptical. “He was a bastard last year.”

We went downstairs with Tom and Suki. Brian and Havers were waiting. The rain had stopped, but the sky was still a dull grey. We all walked down the street to a pub called the Ship. No one ate very much, but there was some drinking done. Entering the working-class pub, Brian fluttered a hand and gasped for “Brandy!” A swarm of photographers descended. Brian threw them brave little smiles.

A shabbily dressed man and woman, who must have been in their seventies, were sitting at the corner of the bar. “Who's 'at?” the woman asked.

“ '
Im
—that Rolling Stone.”

“He don't look so smart now, do 'e?”

“He's got worries,” the man said.

None of us talked much during lunch. Finally somebody paid the bill, and we went out. The Ship was on a corner, and as we passed the narrow old cobblestone cross street I noticed its name: Stones End. While I stood there looking at the sign, the photographers passed me, walking backwards, snapping shots of Woman Detective Sergeant Wag-staff, Temporary Detective Constable Prentice, and Detective Sergeant Robin Constable as they strolled back to the courthouse, trying to look modest.

In session once more, Mr. Frisby cross-examined Brian: “Mr. Jones, you have said that when the police arrived at the flat your conscience was clear—”

“Yes, entirely.”

“—so why did you not open the door?”

“Because,” Brian said, “I saw the . . . three large gentlemen, as I mentioned before. I was afraid.”

“Why
were you afraid?” Mr. Frisby asked, his tone implying how very strange it was that any citizen should fear the police.

“Well, the events of last year,” Brian said, “and there had been so many drug raids in the Chelsea area—I was just worried, I wanted advice.”

“Surely you knew what that would be. You would have to let the
police in eventually. If you were innocent, there was nothing to fear. Yet you deliberately kept them out for as long as you could. And it's no good, you know, saying you could have got rid of anything in that time—for do not the windows of the flat open onto the King's Road, where there might have been police stationed outside, watching?”

“I expect,” Brian said, “there might be other ways to dispose of it—”

“Could one way,” Mr. Frisby asked, “have been to hide it in the wool?”

Brian shrugged. “It
could
have been.”

Mr. Frisby walked over and touched the table where he had been sitting. Then he turned and asked Brian to tell the court who, if he had not done it, put the cannabis in the bureau?

Brian said that a lot of people had come in and out while he was living in the flat, but he had no reason to suspect any one person. He had no idea how the cannabis got there, and had denied it since the cannabis had been found.

“Denied what?”

“Knowing about the cannabis.”

“You didn't say that.”

“Of course I did.”

“Your counsel has cross-examined the police officers, they said nothing about your denying it.”

“I did deny it,” Brian insisted. “I said, ‘You can't do this to me again.' ”

Mr. Frisby smiled, walked back, and touched the table. When he turned again, he asked whether Brian had ever used the bureau where the cannabis had been.

“No,” Brian said.

“And you have no explanation for its being there. The whole thing, I take it, is a complete mystery to you?”

“Yes,” Brian said thoughtfully. “A mystery.”

“And so,” said Mr. Frisby, turning a three-quarters profile toward the jury, “it must remain to us, unless we accept the only explanation that will accommodate the facts. What I am suggesting, you see, is that the cannabis was yours, that you knew it was there all along, and that you are now lying to us.”

Brian's expression as he regarded Mr. Frisby seemed to imply that under different circumstances such an accusation would inevitably result in a duel. “I am not guilty, sir,” he said quietly. “I believe that my whole conduct while the police were in the flat points to a denial.”

The only other witness for the defense was Dr. Harvey Flood, Brian's psychiatrist. Dr. Flood told Mr. Havers that he had written a glowing report on Brian's character for the United States Department of Immigration. He repeated what he had said of Brian before the Court of
Appeals: “I believe that if you put a reefer cigarette down beside this young man, he would run a mile.” But before being dismissed, he admitted to Mr. Frisby that there was no way he could be certain Brian was not still using cannabis.

Mr. Frisby touched the table once more and began his summation. He told the jury that it was impossible to look into a man's head and heart to see if he were innocent: he must be judged by his actions. And perhaps the only way to judge a man's actions would be to compare them with one's own. He doubted whether any member of the jury would be afraid to see the police at the door. Even a person with a record of arrests would have no reason to be afraid—if only he were innocent. Indeed, such a person should be particularly glad to see the police, and would say to them, “Come in, gentlemen,” and “Have a look round,” gloating a little, perhaps, because he knew that
this time
he was innocent. Is this what Brian Jones did? Quite the contrary. “He behaved like a man,” Mr. Frisby said, “caught red-handed.”

Mr. Havers, in his closing statement, contended that the cannabis the police found was not evidence of Brian's guilt, but of his innocence. It did not matter where the windows of the flat opened; Mr. Havers had not seen the flat, but he felt safe in assuming that it was equipped with a bathroom, and that in the bathroom there was a toilet. It would not have taken ten minutes, or even one, for a person to flush away a small lump of cannabis. Nobody could object to one's going to the lavatory on getting up in the morning. If Brian had known about the cannabis, he would surely have got rid of it.

Then Mr. Havers discussed the emotional complications of the case. Brian Jones, he said, was a member of a group which had met with tremendous success among teenagers, and tremendous prejudice from older people. Many of us, he continued, find pop music and the antics of pop musicians irritating and even maddening. Our own sons are wearing their hair long and down their faces, and are sporting fanciful shirts, which we sometimes find objectionable. But we must put these things out of our minds and look on the defendant as, say, Bill Jones—an ordinary young man. And we must attempt to put ourselves in a situation similar to his: What if one of our sons brought home a friend who left cannabis in the house, and later the police came and found it? What could anyone say except, “I did not know it was there.” That is what Brian Jones had said. He can do nothing more.

Mr. Havers had just completed his summation when Mick Jagger and Keith Richards came into the gallery. Everyone—spectators, counsel, jury—turned to look: it was as if the outlaws Cole and Jim Younger had walked into a court where Judge Roy Bean was trying their brother Bob. Keith was dressed in a tan suede jacket, white T-shirt, and brown leather pants with, clearly, no underwear. Mick was wearing
a long green velvet coat, a yellow scarf, and a wide-brimmed black hat. They sat down front with the schoolgirls. The one sitting next to Mick, a thin girl with a grey cloth coat and no makeup, turned to the others and her lips formed the words, “I can't
stand
it.”

Chairman Seaton watched them until Mick removed his hat, and then he began the final address to the jury. He said that the burden of proof rested not on Brian but on the police, and that their case was entirely circumstantial. No evidence of using cannabis had been found—no ashes, no cigarette ends. There was only the cannabis itself, and the jury could decide for themselves whether it might have been disposed of before the police entered. “If you think the prosecution has proved without a doubt that the defendant knew the cannabis was in his flat, you must find him guilty. Otherwise, he is innocent.”

Almost incredulous, David Sandison whispered: “Brian's going to get off.”

Mr. Seaton's summation made it very hard to expect anything else. He concluded by saying that only a person completely ignorant of the qualities of an English jury could think that a man's style of dress or hair would prevent his receiving an impartial hearing.

The court recessed while the jury went out to make its decision. Mick stood up, clapped his hat on his head, and said, “Here come de judge.”

Downstairs, Tom Keylock said, “Well, 'e just fuckin' told 'em what to do, dinne?”

“Sounded like it,” Keith said. We were all lounging around the entrance hall, Mick was surrounded by schoolgirls, and for the first time that day, no one looked worried. Since Brian's arrest, a cloud of doubt had hung over the Stones' future. Now it looked as if all the worry had been unnecessary. Everyone was confident of winning. Somebody remarked that the jury was staying out a long time. Forty-five minutes had passed before the jury came back and we went to the gallery to hear the good news. It was not long coming. The foreman was asked if the jury had arrived at a verdict. “Yes, we have, Your Honour,” he said. “We find the defendant guilty.”

The London newspapers reported that “There were gasps from the public gallery when the foreman announced the verdict.” Suki started to cry. Keith's shoulders were trembling. Brian slumped to his seat in the dock, his head in his hands.