Chapter 20
That evening, Willow and Garry went to see her accountant. He reviewed the business account, now noting that the income would stop, and that she would be paid as a director. After the company taxes had been paid, as well as the wedding and design office upgrades, the WR Holdings had a balance of just over eighteen million.
They organised a new company, GWR, to receive all the future income, with the two of them being paid a monthly amount from that. It was seeded with three million from WR Holdings, and another three million from Garry’s account, which was his personal one. Willow asked the accountant to pay her salary into her personal account, which now stood at just over eight hundred thousand, and to change the name to Randall. He was to organise the tax on that one as a personal account, and work out the tax owing, now she was a taxpayer. That evening, they emailed Rufus with the news of a combined account and said that the account details would follow.
By the end of the week, she had received her new passport by registered post, and the accountant had them in to sign the paperwork. They were now joint directors of their own company, with the first purchase being the house in Marlow, having received the paperwork from the agent. It had worked out well, with the keys to be handed over on Willow’s birthday, now just a month away. They had the accountant transfer two million to the agent’s trust account to seal the deal, signed the papers and returned them to him by courier.
That weekend was a repeat of the one before, only changes being that it was at the Luton football ground, the hotel was the Premier Inn in the city centre, and the audiences, for each of the three nights, were twice the size. This time, there were seats for twenty-five thousand, with another ten thousand standing as general admission. What that created was a lively atmosphere with a lot of dancing among the standing crowd.
By this time, the music scribes had worked overtime to do their reviews and associated stories. The demand for the following shows were good, and the expectations for the rest of the tour were rosy.
The Monday morning was another new week at school, and the first day of May. School was usual, up to lunch, when someone spoke about the next shows. Willow remembered Harvey Horton. So rang the Birmingham box office, buying a pair of tickets for the Saturday evening. Digging the note from her bag, she asked for them to be couriered to Bristol, with a note to say, ‘Courtesy of Willow Rose’. She was given the total cost and paid for it with her card.
The next two weekends were in Leicester and Birmingham, both about the same capacity as Luton. The sun was up for longer, by now, with sunset just before nine thirty, but the show was still good with the lighting. Both venues were close enough to have the locals go home each night, with the stars staying in hotels.
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On the Sunday, after the Birmingham show, Harvey Horton and his wife were driving home and talking about the fantastic weekend they had enjoyed, from the hotel they had booked into, to the show that had them bouncing in their seats. They had bought the program, seeing the articles about the stars, and seeing Willow’s impressive back catalogue, including all the classical albums. They noted that she was listed as the artistic director for the show, which raised her in their esteem. Harvey knew that she would never have done all these things had she still been studying at Clifton. Little did he know how right he was.
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After Birmingham, it was the last week of the first half of the term. The following weekend was Willow’s seventeenth birthday and the day that they would go down to Marlow and take control of the house. During the week, they called the agent to get a time, and to ask him if the previous owners had used a gardening service or a security service. They had used a gardening service, so they rang to organise for the service to continue, giving the GWR company as the owner. As for security, Willow asked Sebastian about companies in that area and was given a note with the contact details of a good one. They rang that company and organised for them to install a new system on the last few days of the month, with Garry staying at the house to oversee the work. They also called his insurance company to start the coverage on the house.
In the last week before the holidays, Willow and the rest of the fifth year did mock exams, to give them the idea of what waited for them at the end of term. School ended on the Friday, and Saturday saw them in Ashley’s Range Rover, going south to get the keys. The address had been put into the GPS and, when they turned off the road and through the gates, Wendy gasped.
“That’s not a house, kids. That’s a mansion!”
They met the agent, gave him a bank cheque for the residue of the payment, signed the paperwork and shook his hand before he got into his car to leave. They opened up to see that very little had been left. They wandered through the empty rooms, with Wendy beginning to see why they had purchased the house. Like Willow, she loved the back patio with the southern aspect.
“You’re going to have fun furnishing this mansion. Five beds will be needed.”
“Just four, Mum. The room under the roof is going to be our combined office and music room. We’ll come down next weekend to get enough in so that Garry can be here to oversee the security company. We’ll buy the things on Thursday and get them couriered for delivery Friday. After that, we can take our time, ordering things on-line with Garry coming down to open up. By the time we get back from America, there’ll only be odds and ends to get before we move in.”
When they locked up, Willow gave Ashley the address for Royal Holloway. It took them down to the junction to the M4, then to a very complicated junction which set them on the M25, which would take them to Heathrow. Passing the airport, they turned off onto the A30, which crossed the river and then looped around under the highway to become the Egham Bypass, which took them directly to Royal Holloway.
From there, Willow directed Ashley around the lesser roads, which led them to the Great Fosters Hotel, where she had booked a table for four for lunch. After they had been seated and ordered drinks, she smiled.
“This is where Hugh gave me that first certificate of appreciation, Dad. You had better get used to this, as I think that he’s well-known here.”
They had a long lunch, toasting Willow for her birthday. The chef came out and made himself known, recognising Willow and congratulating her on the latest albums, which he loved. When he discovered that it was a birthday lunch, he called for a bottle of champagne to be opened and joined them to toast her again. When she told him that it was Garry’s birthday on Friday, and that he was the bass player in Toxic Rocks, there was another toast and the need for selfies.
Willow was behind the wheel when they left, having only sipped at the drinks. Both Ashley and Wendy were considered marginal when it came to driving, and Garry sat beside her in the front. She retraced the route back to Marlow, and then kept on the M40 going north. At home, she emailed her driving instructor to organise a few lessons in the early part of the following weeks, in the evening, and for him to make an appointment for the test when he thought she was ready.
She had an email from Gina, with birthday greetings, and a date in June for the marriage, with a note that it needed to be rushed. Willow answered with birthday wishes for the Monday, and apologised that she couldn’t be at the wedding, as she would be on stage in Manchester that evening.
On Sunday, the couple looked at furniture stores, on-line, and chose the beds and bedroom suites. They ordered what they wanted and asked for delivery on the Friday. With lounge and kitchen furnishings, they wanted to try things out before buying.
On Monday, Garry drove them to the Penfold Trading Estate, an industrial area close to Watford. There, he stopped outside an industrial building.
“This is where we perfected the last tour. It’s not soundproofed, but the surrounding places are noisy enough not to notice us. I see that the rest are here. Come on in and we’ll get the American tour into shape.”
When they went in, they found the four wives with ear defenders on their necks. Mac welcomed them to ‘the Blast Furnace’ and sat them on chairs before they started playing.
“This tour is going to be different in some ways from our past tours. We will be playing sixteen venues in the ten weeks, mainly two a week, with the better places being on the weekend. Where it does deviate is that we’ll play four shows in New York, and four shows in Boston the week after, before flying home from there. We will be playing a total of forty-two shows. The contract gives us four million, US, for the band for each show, with the promoter covering all our travel and accommodation. That amount equates at three million pounds, so the tour will give us a hundred and twenty-six million. There may be other contracts signed for advertisements or promotions.”
He took a sip of water and smiled.
“Each share, paid after we get back, is twenty-one million pounds, less our esteemed manager’s cut, so seventeen point eight five. Now, our wives have decided to join us, so it will be a close-knit group of us, so no hanky-panky. They have argued that you, Willow, be allowed to do some of your own songs, in the old way, if you want. I have a list that they want you to look at. We have three days here to create a three-hour show. We have already got the nearly two hours that we recorded, so just need to add another hour or so. The last six songs will be our greatest hits.”
“I would rather that we do my stuff in a Rocks way, Mac. The band has been able to play soft rock in our show, so it shouldn’t be a problem to do my songs that way. I suppose that the main question is whether we do them as a duet, or if I do them solo. Solo would be all right for a couple, but no more than that.”
“I was hoping that you’d say that. They will fit the new sound, even as laid-back as they will be. OK, let’s get going to sort this out.”
They went to the bank of amplifiers, the drum kit and what looked like a new organ. They had a PA with feed-back speakers to hear themselves. Over the course of the day, they worked through the songs that they had recorded, plus the six greatest hits, which Willow didn’t do a lot with. The next day, they worked on her songs, in a Rocks way, which had the wives nodding along. On the Wednesday, they decided on an order of play, with Mac’s wife typing into her computer, and then printing out ten sets of lists. The band then played the entire show twice.
Before they left, Mac told them that he was going to book the studio to record the whole show, with video, on the Saturday before they leave, with the cheque ceremony happening on the Sunday, in Coventry, in front of TV cameras. For Willow, that would be a very busy week, but she now thrived on the pressure.
On Thursday, they drove down to London, visiting a bedding store and buying up new sheets and pillows for the new beds. They had booked a night at the Danesfield House Hotel and Spa, and celebrated Garry’s birthday, on Friday, with an early morning workout without leaving their room. They checked out and went up the road to the new house, opening up and seeing that the garden was trimmed. There was a card wedged in the doorjamb, from the gardening service, which Willow put on the kitchen island. They went through the house, taking measurements, until the truck with the bedroom suites arrived.
Once the beds and other items were in place, they unloaded the car and made them up, putting the extras in the linen cupboard. Then, they went to another furniture store and chose settees, easy chairs, a kitchen set, and then went to an electrical outlet to get a couple of big TV’s and a party-sized sound system. There were some that could be delivered the next day, but the rest would be after the Bank Holiday on the Monday.
They celebrated Garry’s birthday a second time, in their own bed, in their own bedroom, in their own house. For both of them, it was a moment they would cherish, their true beginning as the family Randall. On the Saturday, everything that could be delivered was in the house by lunch, so they went out in the afternoon, returning with a car full of new computer equipment. They each had a large screen, with a fully loaded computer tower, and a printer/scanner. These were taken up to the top bedroom and left for later installation. Garry would be going to buy flat-pack desks and storage cabinets, to put together when he was alone in the house. They went back to Rising Lane on the Sunday, and Garry left to go back to Marlow on the Monday.
On Tuesday, it was the start of the last part of Willow’s time at the Blue Coat. She was starting to feel sad at leaving but knew that her future would be full of more learning and more music. She knew that the time would pass quickly, with the last show being only two weeks before they flew to America.
On the Friday morning, she had her bag and outfit to take with her. The school group were allowed to finish early to be taken to Nottingham, and the Premier Inn, Nottingham South. Garry was already there and took her bag to their room. As they changed, he told her about his week, so far.
“I’ve touched up the odd bits of paintwork, erected our desks and storage on the office, and set up the new computers, all with the new software under the GWR company details. The security have installed the cameras and a new security system, all monitored. I can view both the inside and outside cameras by phone.”
“That’s great, darling. What was it like, being in the house for that time?”
“It was wonderful, knowing that what I was doing was for us. The aircraft noise was a bit loud at night, depending on the wind direction, so I’m investigating extra soundproofing in the roof. Many of the windows are triple glazed, and I’ll look at those that aren’t.”
They all went to the venue and did the show, followed by the next, on Saturday, with the last on Sunday. On Monday morning, Garry was taken back to Rising Lane, while Willow joined the others in the coach to go to school. On the way, Vivienne sat next to her.
“Interesting weekend, my friend. Ken and I shared a room, and it was wonderful.”
“Congratulations, Viv. You’ll make a good couple, both off and on stage.”
The following week was similar, but the venue was now in Derby, and the hotel was the Premier Inn, Derby City Centre. Willow was now taking more driving lessons, in the evenings, and her test was set up for the Saturday they were playing in Coventry.
The next week, they were in Manchester, and staying at the Premier Inn, City Centre West. The Saturday show was sent out on the club website, to all the other countries. This was the biggest crowd of the tour, with seventy-five thousand a night. It was while they were at Manchester, the opposition put forward a ‘no confidence’ motion in the house, which was passed. The Prime Minister announced that there would be an election, in a month, in the second week of July.
The schoolwork had started to be revision and tests, so the early Fridays and late Mondays weren’t a great problem. The Coventry weekend had them all taken to the Britannia to stay, to keep them all together. The three shows were as good as they could be, with the Saturday show being televised live. On the Saturday morning, Willow took her driving test and passed.
The last show was in Liverpool, and the coach took them there on Friday, after lunch. The three shows were full, with sixty thousand a night. The final show, on the Sunday night, was a joyous occasion, with many happy that they had been part of it, but sad that the excitement was over. The last line-up on the stage had everyone waving to the audience and a lot of hugs and kisses. In the weeks that they had worked together, the whole group had become friends, with Mac promising Howard that they would be making an album with the orchestra.
The following two weeks had Willow taking her exams, with a lot of time off. On the Saturday, after Liverpool, she joined Garry and the Rocks in the studio, to make a complete recording of the American show, with video for a DVD that could be used in advertising while they were there. Willow had a copy to give to her parents, to watch while she was away.
On the Sunday, they all met at the big function room at the Coventry Football Club, for the handing over of the cheque. It was a big affair, with lunch and the handing over. The whole group of performers were there, along with the Bishop and his group, the Head and a lot of teachers and school board members.
The result of the tour surprised Willow. It had grossed just under a hundred and sixty-three million. With the costs taken, the percentage for the venues, and the performers payments, the Salvation Army received a token cheque for a hundred and thirteen million and seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds to share out to their offices in the nine municipalities. On top of that, they found out that the live show from Coventry had a phone-in banner across the screen, and that there had been over two million pledged.
There were a lot of the media there, and the rest of the afternoon was taken up with interviews and discussions. The Army officials went around to all the performers, thanking them for their involvement. The Head went around hugging all of the students, including the tech team.
She spent some time with Garry and Willow, telling her that there was a movement among the members of the Coventry Council to award her the keys to the city, seeing that she had been the driving force behind the two charity shows, but it would be later in the year, should it happen.
Willow had four more exams that week and was able to stand with her father on the Thursday at the various booths that he was able to visit during the day. That day, the thirteenth, wasn’t lucky for the current Prime Minister, and Ashley found himself part of the new government that evening, in the Kenilworth Sports and Social Club, where they had set up an after-election party.
Willow didn’t need to be at the school on the last day, but she dressed nicely and went in, with Garry, to thank the teachers and say farewell to her friends. The orchestra members, who were there, all gave her a hug and a thank you, now each having received the five hundred and forty thousand pounds that they had earned during the charity tour. That evening, the family had a meal in the Punchbowl, and had a hugging and kissing session, before Willow and Garry left, both cars loaded with their clothes and Willows computers and the two-tier keyboard set-up and accessories. Garry had her car model to work on.
They drove down to Marlow, and into the house, now looking more like a home. They unloaded the cars and put together suitcases for the tour. Both had been measured and the stage outfits would be supplied by an American company. They spent a wonderful night, and were awake, bright and early, to start the tour.
When they arrived at Heathrow, by Uber, they were directed to the first-class departure lounge, where Rufus met them to take them through. They sat for a while, before they were joined by the rest of the band and the wives, as well as the sound and lighting crew. They were all taken down to an airport coach and driven out to their chartered aircraft. It had ‘Toxic Rocks on Tour’ on the side, with the names of the band members listed, with Willow Rose as the organist. They went on board and the crew got ready to leave. They had to wait for a little while to get a take-off slot, but were soon in the air, for a nine-hour direct flight to Charlotte, the venue for the first two shows of the tour.
They took off at eleven, and the captain advised them that they would be landing at three, local time. The plane was nothing like anything Willow had been in. The seats they used for take-off and landings were like armchairs. Behind them was a big lounge, with reclining chairs, and behind that was a dining table with swivel chairs. The toilets were full-size, and there was sleeping quarters towards the rear. The crew had flown with the Rocks before, and everyone was very friendly.
Willow sat with the wives for a few hours, really getting to know each other, while the boys played poker for matchsticks. The stewardess brought out tea, coffee, or something stronger as requested. About three hours after they took off, they all sat at the dining table and had a good meal, better than any other airline meal that Willow had ever eaten.
When they landed, it was just after three in the afternoon. There was quite a crowd waiting for them, and there was a lot of noise when the door was opened. They were parked away from the terminal and used a stairway that was wheeled up to the door. Everyone who left the plane was cheered, especially the older band members, but there was noise for Garry and Willow when they appeared. There was a small fleet of limos waiting for them. Rufus had collected their passports and would deal with the immigration, while customs would look through the plane. They were taken to the Hilton Charlotte Centre City and checked in. They were sitting in the lounge when Rufus arrived with their stamped passports and the luggage in a van. They followed their luggage up to their rooms and freshened up. Tonight, they were having dinner in the hotel, and would be joined by the promoter and selected media.
The dinner was interesting. The reporters had done their research, and knew that Garry and Willow were married, had both attended the Blue Coat school, and had both been in successful bands, with charting albums, in their mid-teens. One of the reporters, quieter spoken than the others, waited until the general clamour had quietened down, and they were drinking coffees or something stronger.
“Miss Willow. I was told that you had considerable experience with church organs. Is that right?”
“It is sir. I was the regular organist at St. Marys, in Stoneleigh, where Garry and I were married. I also played the organ for three months in Coventry Cathedral, alternating with my friend, Gina Summer.”
“You also have albums recorded in the Kings College, Cambridge, as well as the York Minster?”
“That’s correct.”
“I have been asked to ask you if you would play the organ at St. Peters Catholic Church, here in Charlotte, tomorrow, for either the nine ‘o’clock mass or the one at eleven-thirty.”
“I would be happy to, as long as I was told how the mass works. I’ve always played in Anglican churches. There’s also the matter of what we have organised as a band for tomorrow.”
The promoter spoke up.
“We’ve set up a half a day at the Speedway, where you’ll be playing. We’ve got a NASCAR experience for you. If you do the mass at nine, you’ll have plenty of time to get a couple of laps in before we start setting out seating on the straight. The stage has been erected in pit lane.”
The wives were smiling and one grinned.
“She’ll be there for nine, if you send vehicles for the five of us. Our husbands aren’t very religious and would be happier racing around your track.”
“All right, ma-am. There’ll be a stretch out front at eight-thirty.”
They had a long day, so the band went off to bed. Garry and Willow stayed awake a little while longer but slept well after that. There was a wake-up call at seven, and Willow had a shower and dressed in a full skirt and top. Garry was snoring again when she took her bag and left the room. She joined the wives for breakfast, and they were outside when the stretch limo arrived. They were taken to the church, which was a cheerful shade of red brick. Inside, they were welcomed by the Bishop, who explained the events of the mass and the times she should be playing. She was shown the way up to the organ, which was quite beautiful. A volunteer was allocated to help her, and she started playing Bach as the church filled.
As far as it went, it wasn’t that much different from Coventry, but with more walking around and incense in a ball. The volunteer told her when to play and made sure that she had the right music in front of her. After an hour, she was playing Bach again as the church emptied. The lad told her that she could stop playing and leave, also telling her that he was looking forward to seeing her, on Monday night, at the speedway.
She surprised him by thanking him for his help and giving him a hug, then went down to join the wives to be taken to the speedway. There, they were driven onto the infield and the pit lane. The guys were all dressed in racing gear and laughing at how scared they had been as the driver drifted into the corners at two hundred miles an hour. Willow decided that she had gone fast enough, for her, and wouldn’t take the drive. Instead, she went up the stairs to look at the stage. It was much the same as the ones in England, but with a bigger roof. She looked out and saw the blocks of seats on the other side of the track and guessed that they would be playing to about twenty thousand on Monday night. The amps were as they had used in Watford, and the keyboard was the same.
Marianne Gregory © 2025