Chapter 15: Flying High

January 1970, age 14

Double dating didn’t end up being as bad as I’d feared. Peter had been going out with Jacqueline since the OHMSS premiere, so we became a foursome. Ellie and Jacqueline together worried me a little as they seemed to feed off each other’s wildness, but we kept our next few dates on pretty safe ground. Ellie wanted to go back to the penthouse — that wasn’t happening so I lied, saying I’d got in trouble for using it last time.

The thing that I took away from the meeting with Dan and Ewan, the thing that really troubled me, was the impact of security on my life. I had become used to having a bodyguard. I had even become immune to the eyes watching me from shadows whenever I was out in public. But discovering the vast scale of my protective operation was scary. I thought it was completely over the top, but I wasn’t about to bet my life on it. And I was fairly sure it would get worse still once I formally took charge of the company.

Those thoughts percolated over a week or so, leading to an idea that I put to Ewan one afternoon.

“I want to go backpacking around Europe this summer.”

I think he just about shit himself. It was good that I hadn’t picked a moment when he was driving.

“Are you out of your mind?!”

“More than usual, you mean? Answer me this: lots of kids go travelling for their gap year before uni, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And my security isn’t gonna get any smaller as I get more and more visible, is it?”

“No.”

“So how likely is it that I could do a gap year travelling after I turn eighteen and have the company to run?”

“Okay, not very.”

“So if I want to see the world without it being from the inside of a bullet-proof car, when would be the best time to do that?”

“About five years ago, before anyone knew that you were loaded!”

I always got a little tetchy whenever Dan used this technique of tactical questioning against me, so I understood Ewan’s annoyance.

“Try and see my side for a minute, please. I’m just starting to realise how big a deal my security is. And some of the things I’m planning for the company will be newsworthy, so we may have paparazzi to contend with too. I just want a chance to do something that normal kids do before it’s too late. You can understand that, can’t you?”

Ewan studied me for a few moments. “Dan’s going to have a fit.”

I gave him a wry smile. “Why do you think I’m talking to you.”

“I can’t promise anything”, Ewan said. “Here’s what I suggest. First, decide on a rough route. Get a map and figure out where you’re going and how you’re going to get there. Will you travel by train, or bus, or plane? Will you stay in hotels, or youth hostels, or camp sites? Are there particular things you want to do or visit? Also, is it smart to return to school for your O-Level year exhausted after travelling all summer? What if you just did four weeks, then end up at the villa in Italy for weeks five and six? Figure all that out, get a basic itinerary on paper, and I’ll figure out the security. Then, and only then, we put it to Dan.”

Thus was born Operation Backpack.

Peter had his fifteenth birthday party in January, which was a typically provocative Hawaiian themed disco. Everyone was expected to wear skimpy costumes despite it being January and bloody freezing outside. Still, it was a lot of fun, and the indoor hall was suitably warm.

On the business front, the time was approaching for a big acquisition. The famous book publisher Penguin was in serious financial trouble and, to make things worse, their founding boss had cancer: a double-whammy that left the company floundering. Cue Dan. He went in and proposed a merger with our Longman publishing house, to form the largest fiction publisher in the UK. The publisher Pearson was also interested, but we had the foreknowledge to get in first.

In February, construction finally began on the company’s new Cambridge campus. Less happily, our London theme park project was still locked in an eternal battle for planning permission. It was time to start playing dirty. Parliament was in the fourth year of a possible five-year term, but we knew there would be an early general election that summer. So we took out full page adverts in seven national newspapers, staggered one each day over a week, to highlight that thousands of new jobs were being blocked by bureaucrats with no sense of fun. All it took was a few ads portraying the Labour government as anti-business and anti-jobs, and suddenly Dan had an invitation to Westminster to meet with a Minister.

A bill was quickly nodded through parliament to overrule the local council, essentially giving us carte blanche. A little bit of money and Marvel Parks London got a bright and shiny green light. Democracy is a beautiful thing.

By that time the design work for the park was well advanced. It would consist of four zones. The Movie Zone would be the biggest, with film-themed rides and a studio tour (which meant building a working studio there as an extension of our Shepperton facilities). James Bond would feature prominently in that zone. Then there was the Superhero Zone, themed around Marvel Comics characters, and a Land of Wonder themed around characters from children’s books. Last would be the Royal Zone, with an actual-size replica of Buckingham Palace as the centrepiece. Inside the shell facade would be various indoor rides (dodgems in the Throne Room anyone?), which wouldn’t be subject to the capricious British weather. There would be mock-soldiers marching about in their grand red uniforms and tall bearskins (with real looking guns that were actually water pistols to squirt people at random). And there would be a military band for the ‘changing of the guard’ (playing military marches which would suddenly break into pop and rock songs for the solemn soldiers to do silly dances).

We had pulled together designers and engineers from across the world to make our rides unique and record-breaking. We would only have three coasters at the opening, but there was space for plenty more. The initial three would include the world’s first double loop, the first vertical drop and the first inverted coaster with hanging seats. The park was going to be groundbreaking and ahead of its time, helped of course by a little future knowledge.

By February half-term I had produced an outline plan for the summer. Ewan had taken me shopping for maps, guide books and so on which proved an invaluable resource. As far as possible, I wanted to do things as a regular backpacker would. So not being chauffeur driven and treated as a VIP. The good news was that continental Europe had an excellent rail network, and trains were okay from a security point of view. Ferries too. Buses, not so much.

When our annual ski trip arrived, I was glad to get away for the week. Not just to get away from school, but from Ellie. After six of our weekly double-dates, the two of us were clearly in very different places. I had been enjoying the social experience of dating, with my self-confidence growing and my ‘technique with girls’ improving. Peter was my role model in that respect, as he always seemed completely at ease, charming and funny in a way that Jacqueline clearly found compelling. The problem was that Ellie never seemed satisfied with that. Ever the wild one, she was back to being pushy, which increasingly meant pushing towards sex.

It may seem completely implausible for a teenage boy to be putting the brakes on the sexual side of a relationship, but that’s how it was, and not just because of Dan and Ewan’s warning. My boundaries had been pushed a long way very quickly back when we played strip revision, and our first date where I went all dominant on her was a big step forward too. The problem was that I’d kind of scared myself, and by this point, my head was firmly ruling my hormones. There was still the occasional dalliance, usually quick and discrete and not pushing beyond what we’d done before. Ellie wasn’t very satisfied with that, and the imbalance between our expectations was a little uncomfortable.

Quite the opposite was my relationship with my uncle, which by February half-term had found a comfortable level of normality. Once he stopped either being an arsehole at one extreme or trying too hard to be nice at the other, I found that somewhere in the middle was actually a half decent guy. I won’t say that we became friends overnight, but I was steadily moving towards not hating him. He came skiing with us and proved to be utterly hilarious in how bad he was! He took it in good humour and refused to give up. He never did graduate from the nursery slopes, though.

Caity and I didn’t usually bring friends with us on our ski holidays, except for Harry who was family. This time, my eleven-year-old sister decided it was monumentally unfair that I’d been allowed to take Harry with me last year. So she should be allowed two friends with her this year to balance things out. Mrs O’Keef sided with her (I will never understand girl logic), and Mrs O was a force to be reckoned with in our household, so Caity got her way. Even Dan was cautious of taking on Mrs O!

So Caity got to invite two friends, which I didn’t object to as such. The problem was that she invited the twins. That meant Caity’s best friend Susan, and Susan’s twin brother Simon. This was the same little shit that had escorted Caity to the film premiere last Christmas. The same little shit that she had fancied for a while. Perhaps if we sent him on one of the black runs, he might accidentally break both his legs. Accidentally.

Simon was sharing a room with Harry and me, so as soon as we were alone, I went psycho-brother on him. “Just so you know, if I find that any part of you has come in contact with any part of my sister this holiday, you’ll be bidding farewell to your testicles. Got it?!”

He just laughed at me. Little sod laughed at me. Not the response I was going for. Perhaps I needed to introduce him to Bruce Lupson. Or maybe he didn’t understand what testicles were. I backed him against the wall as menacingly as I could.

“Hey, alright, I got it”, he said, raising his hands in surrender. “No tonguing till we get back home.” He had a cheeky look on his face, and I worried that he was serious. “If I’ve got to avoid all the hotties, does that mean I can hang out with you guys?”, he asked hopefully.

I walked into that one, but at least if he was with us, I could keep an eye on him. In fact, it turned out that he spent more time that week with us than he did with the girls, much to my little sister’s annoyance. I also couldn’t help but like the kid despite wanting to hate him. He was just an all-round nice guy, and I grudgingly accepted why Caity liked him. Of course, when I discovered that the little shit was a better skier than me, I went back to planning his demise.

On our second day, Simon commented that there was a group of guys who seemed to be stalking us. I had to quietly explain to him that Caity and I never went anywhere without bodyguards. Not even the ski slopes.

When Dan asked me what I’d like for my birthday that year, my reply was simple: “Permission to go backpacking around Europe this summer”. I knew as soon as I’d asked it that Ewan had got there first, as there was no explosion or even surprise.