Still life with Volkswagens

Seven. Volkswagen Descending a Staircase

Inside Carlton Bax’s gentleman’s residence, Marilyn Lederer pours herself another whisky and lemonade. It is the latest in a long series and she doesn’t expect that series to end for a while yet. The drink tastes sweet and harmless but is nevertheless numbing, though not quite as numbing as she would like. She still feels so unhappy. She feels so lost and alone and on the margins. She doesn’t see how things could possibly get any worse, and yet things are about to.

Behind the house, in a spot without street lamps, a red van draws up. An old man gets out, thanks the driver for the lift and the van drives away. It wasn’t so difficult to find this place. The magazine article gave a number of clues, but if it had taken forever he would still have got here.

The old man walks up to th& high garden wall that surrounds the property and attempts to climb it. The would-be intruder is, of course, Marilyn’s father, but he is weak and weary and the walls are designed specifically to prevent people climbing them. He investigates the walls for a long time, looking for some other means of entrance. It looks completely hopeless but then he sees something that stirs his blood, something that makes him very angry, and yet something that seems almost magically ordained.

As he watches, a black Volkswagen Beetle draws up outside the locked, wrought iron security gate of the house. It is Barry Osgathorpe in Enlightenment. Barry gets out of the car and pulls the metal knob that rings the bell next to the gate. As he does so he is watched by a security camera which transmits his image to a monitor screen in the hall of the house. Upon hearing the bell Marilyn gets up, staggers a little, and goes to inspect the screen. She feels neither optimistic nor pessimistic. By now she feels that nothing, no phone call, no sudden discovery, no unexpected arrival, can possibly make any difference to her. She sees that it’s Barry ringing the bell. Even that doesn’t particularly surprise her and it certainly doesn’t appear to promise anything. Indifferently, she presses the button that opens the gate to let him in.

Barry gets in Enlightenment and drives into the grounds, but in the brief moment before the gate automatically closes, Charles Lederer sees his chance. He makes a dash for the gate and, unseen in the darkness, just manages to slip in before it clangs shut and electronically locks itself again. He stands in the garden, breathing heavily, and decides to hide in the bushes until the time is exactly right.

Meanwhile, not so very far away, eight more or less identical Volkswagen Beetles, each of them modelled on Enlightenment, are en route to Carlton Bax’s gentleman’s residence. The eight skinhead drivers plough their fierce, lonely furrow through the mean night streets, travelling in V-formation when they can, working to a firm, well thought-out and extremely vicious plan.

Barry parks neatly outside the front door of Carlton Bax’s gentleman’s residence, although, of course, he doesn’t know it is Carlton Bax’s, Marilyn hasn’t told him that. He simply thinks that Marilyn must have some very rich friends indeed; but then that is no great surprise. He bounds out of his car, his heart fit to burst with love and enthusiasm for Marilyn. She has left the door unlocked and he takes that to be a good, welcoming sign. “Marilyn!” he calls cheerily as he enters, but there’s no reply. He goes into the living room and there she is, drunk, bare-foot, bleary-eyed, her legs splayed, her hair all messed up. She has never looked lovelier to Barry.

However, even Marilyn’s presence cannot distract him from the strangeness of this house. Even a cursory glance at the hall shows that the place is littered with Volkswagen treasures, and that seems very strange indeed. He would question her about this but she gives him no opportunity.

“Oh where have you been my blue-eyed son?” she says, being more or less incoherent by now. “Oh where have you been my darling young one?”

Barry doesn’t catch the reference, but he’s rather pleased that she’s calling him darling.

“I’ve been all over the place,” he says, “but my heart’s always been right here.”

“Oh dear. I don’t suppose you found my father?”

“No, but I found something more important.”

“What’s that?”

“I found my heart’s desire.”

“Well, that must be very nice for you.”

“It is. Because I’ve found you.”

“No you haven’t Barry. Really you haven’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“Isn’t it obvious what I mean? This house, this whole arrangement.”

Well no, it isn’t, and then Barry sees a console table at the foot of the stairs on which is a framed photograph. It shows Marilyn and some stranger, an older man, and they’re standing beside an extremely exotic looking Beetle. They’re holding hands and they’re gazing into each other’s eyes. They seem to Barry to be nauseatingly fond of each other.

“Are you trying to tell me something?” he says.

“Oh Barry, don’t be so thick.”

Barry doesn’t understand, doesn’t even want to. He can’t believe that his love is going to be spurned like this. He would like the chance to discuss this with her at greater length, to state his case, to melt her heart. However, it never happens. There are suddenly noises off; footsteps, a scrabbling, breaking glass, some coughing and grunting. Then the door to the living room is thrown open and Charles Lederer stands before them. No longer weak and weary he now looks wild and mad as hell. His hair has grown back a little but not uniformly, and its patchiness adds to his demented look. The eyes are raging, the chin is jutting forwards nobly, and there is a definite mushy drool trickling down from the corners of the mouth. Most alarming of all, he is armed with the chrome bumper from a 1952 American specification Beetle. It has all manner of sharp points and hard edges and he’s waving it around menacingly, the menace being all the greater because he is so unfocused and uncoordinated.

“Oh Dad,” says Marilyn joyously, and without thinking she runs to embrace him.

“Keep away!” he shouts and she stops in her tracks.

“But what’s wrong?” she asks.

“My daughter!” he shouts. “And my worst enemy, here together plotting against me.”

“No Dad,” says Marilyn. “Barry isn’t your enemy, and we’re not plotting against you. We’re on your side.”

He doesn’t like the sound of that at all. He thrashes the bumper savagely against the glass front of a wall cabinet containing rare tin plate Beetles. Glass splinters and pieces of dented metal spew from the cabinet. Charles Lederer wants it to be known that he means business. Marilyn and Barry get his message and edge away, but Marilyn still wants to be placatory.

“We’ve been looking for you,” she says.

“Oh really?” Charles Lederer says with unbelieving disdain.

“Well, Barry here has at any rate.”

“And now he’s found me,” snarls Lederer.

“Yes,” says Barry. “It’s quite a Zen thing really. You go on a long voyage looking for something or someone, but only after you’ve abandoned the search do you find it.”

“Shut up,” says Lederer.

“Okay,” says Barry, and he shuts up.

Charles Lederer turns towards his daughter, and asks, “Why were looking for me?”

“Because I love you Dad. I knew you were out there lost and alone and I wanted you to come home. Also I didn’t want you blowing up any more Volkswagens.”

Charles Lederer looks uncomprehending. A part of him would like to believe that his daughter still loves and cares for him, but in that case why is she standing in a room full of Volkswagen tat conspiring with his arch enemy? He circles the room, looking at all the Volkswagen memorabilia on the walls and in the glass cases, and it’s as though he’s walked into the jaws of hell.

“I never thought it would come to this,” he says. He turns towards Barry, looking positively homicidal, and lunges at him.

Barry looks desperately for a means of escape. There are some French windows that open onto the garden. They look as good a way out as any, and they start to look better and better as Charles Lederer gets closer and closer. The only problem is that they’re locked, but as Lederer gets closer still, even this problem doesn’t seem insuperable. Barry wraps his arms around his head and charges at the windows.

They burst open in a shattering of glass and splintering of wood, and Barry finds himself sprawling in a flowerbed. He is stunned by the impact, and if Charles Lederer were quick enough he could certainly beat Barry to a bloody pulp there among the geraniums, but something is preventing him. Barry looks over his shoulder into the room and sees that Marilyn is his saviour. She is gripping her father’s legs in a sort of rugby tackle.

He soon dislodges her, but the moment’s delay gives Barry some respite. In that time he manages to get to his feet, get out of the flowerbed and start running. Quite where he will run to is uncertain. As Charles Lederer knows, Carlton Bax’s house is surrounded by a high and unclimbable wall, and the wrought iron gate can only be operated electronically by someone in the house. Barry knows there’s no way out.

The grounds are dark, in places there are dense bushes, and there are several outbuildings. Barry thinks that together these might provide him with enough places to hide, at least until Charles Lederer calms down or wears himself out or until, with any luck, Marilyn summons the police. Charles Lederer realises this too. He doesn’t want to spend the whole night playing hide and seek. He just wants to get the job done, and he knows what it will take.

It is some years since he drove a car, and the idea of sitting in a Volkswagen Beetle is chillingly repellent to him, but desperate times need desperate measures, and the keys are sitting there conveniently in the ignition.

Charles Lederer grits his teeth, summons up his strength, and gets into Enlightenment. He settles himself in the driving seat, starts the engine and revs it ruthlessly. Over the far side of the garden Barry hears that familiar mechanical noise and is filled with panic. Someone is stealing his car, not just anyone, but someone who hates him and appears to wish him dead. And not least of Barry’s worries is the fact that given all the modifications done to the car, it is now something of a beast to drive. If a complete madman like Charles Lederer tries to drive it, there’s every chance he’ll wreck it completely. He has to do something, and just as Lederer hoped, he comes running out from his hiding place, running towards the car, waving his arms in a gesture of supplication and surrender. But Charles Lederer is taking no prisoners.

There is the noise of gears being stripped as the car is forced into first. The engine roars as though in pain. Enlightenment bounces on its suspension and then goes into a wheelie as Charles Lederer puts on the power, and launches the car through the air, aiming straight for Barry.

Barry dives out of the way of the advancing car. He survives. Enlightenment has missed him and clipped a nearby birch tree. Barry lies face down on the gravel drive, panting and fearful.

Charles Lederer in the meantime has brought the car to a halt and, by means of a tyre-destroying handbrake turn, spun it round so that it is ready to run over the flattened Barry. The car springs forward, a dark, dangerous mass, a black bullet with Barry’s name written all over it. Barry tries to get to his feet, starts to run, slips, finds himself on the ground again, and instinctively rolls over as rapidly as he possibly can to avoid the advancing wheels.

The front of the car misses him by millimetres and smashes instead into a stretch of garden balustrade. He gets to his feet. Lederer whips the car round, ready for another attack. There is no escape this time. Barry braces himself for the crash, ready to feel the hideous coming together of car and flesh. But perhaps his instincts are better than he knows. Having no time to leap out of the way, he relaxes, jumps, falls forwards and somehow finds himself safe and alive and adhering to the bonnet of Enlightenment.

His hands grip the wing mirrors and his feet lodge on the nerf bars that have replaced the front bumper. He resembles an oversized and decidedly misshapen mascot, a misbegotten Spirit of Ecstasy, though he feels anything but ecstatic at present.

Charles Lederer is more furious and more demented thai! ever, but now he sees a chance to destroy Barry once and for all. He hurls Enlightenment round so that it’s pointing down the drive, away from the house towards the metal security gate. He feuilds up the revs, making the engine scream, toying with the clutch pedal so that the car frets and twitches, and then he feeds in the power and the car leaps forward, eating up the drive at incredible speed heading straight for the locked gate. He allows himself a giggle as the car picks up speed and the gate looms ever larger in frost of him.

And then an odd thing happens. The car is only indies fronrthe gate and Barry has given up any hope of survival, he’s just hoping the result will be instant and final, when the gate suddenly flies open. The expected impact never comes, and Enlightenment sears out of the open gateway onto the road outside and does not stop.

Marilyn, who has helplessly watched this weird little battle, this bizarre manifestation of male conflict, from an upstairs window and not even thought of calling the police, has finally found a way to be of help. It is she who, in the nick of time, presses the electronic switch that flings open the metal gate and saves Barry. It is the least she can do. She staggers back from the window, shocked, relieved, tearful and desperatly in need of another drink. She takes a swig from the bottle straight then begins to sob uncontrollably, and she sits down in a big leather swivel chair, one of Carlton’s favourites, eventually adopting a foetal position and clutching the whisky bottle to her as a comforter.

Enlightenment roars off into the night. Charks Lederer at the wheel, Barry on the bonnet: and not long after it has gone, eight more black Volkswagens, each one a dead ringer for the departing car, arrive at Carlton Bax’s gentleman’s residence. The skinhead drivers are surprised to find the front gate open, although however secure the gate had been, it would not have delayed them long. The eight cars move into the drive, slowly, sedately, until they come to the front door of the house where they park, arranging themselves into an intricate, formal pattern which if seen from the air would be clearly visible as a swastika.

♦

Charles Lederer drives on and on, with Barry clinging to the bonnet for all he’s worth. His knuckles are white and knotted, his feet are starting to develop cramp. He looks up towards the windscreen, hoping he’ll be able to look into the face of Charles Lederer, but the smoked glass prevents that. He feels that he’s being propelled backwards into the future. His sense of time is dislocated; a minute spent on that bonnet seems like an age; nevertheless, he is aware that Charles Lederer really is driving a very long way. Perhaps he has realised that sooner or later Barry’s aching hands and feet are bound to lose their grip, then Barry will slide forwards off the car and then he’ll be finished.

But the way Lederer’s driving, it’s as if he’s forgotten all about Barry and has set off on some wild journey of his own. He is driving very swiftly if erratically, accelerating fiercely round bends, whipping through amber lights, scraping the occasional bollard or parked car as he goes, weaving dangerously in and out of traffic. But in a way Barry is pleased to see other cars. Surely, he thinks, this offers him a chance. Either the traffic will force Charles Lederer to slow down or stop in which case he can leap from the bonnet, or else a passing police patrol car might spot them, or maybe even some public-spirited motorist will see Barry’s plight and attempt to stop the car.

It’s a long time coming, by which time a great many miles have been covered and a lot of time has passed, but eventually a big white car, a BMW, begins following Enlightenment, flashing its lights and sounding its horn to persuade Charles Lederer to pull over. This, of course, does not work, so the white car starts to overtake Enlightenment and as soon as it’s past, the driver brakes hard, forcing the Volkswagen to swerve and stop in a screech of brakes and tyres.

Barry’s position doesn’t allow him to observe much of what’s going on, but he can see the white BMW has no police markings and that the driver is a woman, not that he’s giving these things a lot of thought. There are other things on his mind. The moment Charles Lederer stops Enlightenment, Barry throws himself blindly off the car and lands, rather fortuitously, on a soft grass verge. It is such a relief to be detached from the car. He feels broken and his heart is still beating as though it wants to escape from his chest, but he feels better and more secure than he has for a long time.

Charles Lederer’s drive has been brought to a halt, but that doesn’t mean he’s ready to come quietly and let bygones be bygones. Despite the presence of the other car, he throws Enlightenment into reverse and tries to back up, with a view to subsequently driving forward and running Barry over as he recovers on the verge. But fate finally smiles on Barry. Enlightenment stalls, or rather Charles Lederer stalls it. There is a moment of hesitation, in which time the female driver has swiftly sprung out of her own car, approached the Volkswagen, ripped open the driver’s door and yanked the key out of the ignition and out of Charles Lederer’s grasp. Enlightenment is immobilised. Barry is saved. It is an act that required considered bravery and presence of mind, but perhaps one would expect nothing else from Detective Inspector Cheryl Bronte.

Barry scrambles to his feet and recognises his saviour. “Thank God,” he says.

“I said I’d see you again, didn’t I Barry?”

“I believe you did!”

Cheryl Bronte takes an unwarranted pleasure in being proved right on this point, but then she turns to Charles Lederer and says, “Is this your car, sir?”

“You know it’s my car,” says Barry.

“Can’t the gentleman answer for himself?” and then she looks inside the car and sees that he can’t. Charles Lederer is slumped over the steering wheel, exhausted, spent and quite incapable of speech. So Barry says, “Don’t worry, I can explain everything.”

Cheryl Bronte looks at him with a pained expression, as though she’s far from sure that she wants to have everything explained, but Barry has an unstoppable need to tell his story, and he does so. The story takes a considerable amount of time to unfold, and only some of it is of immediate interest to Cheryl Bronte. However, she does prick up her ears when Barry tells her that the old man in the Volkswagen is Charles Lederer, ex-Member of Parliament, father of late night weathergirl Marilyn Lederer, and the man most likely to be responsible for the spate of exploding Volkswagens. However, she still needs convincing of this last proposition.

“What makes you think he’s our man?” she asks.

Barry considers the question for a while and in the end can only say, “Well, that’s what his daughter told me.”

“I wonder why she told you that.”

“Maybe because it’s true.”

“I think we’d better all go and have a word with this daughter of his,” says Cheryl Bronte.

That suits Barry very nicely. Charles Lederer is decidedly reluctant to move, but he is eventually lifted into the back seat of Cheryl Bronte’s car. They head back to Carlton Bax’s gentleman’s residence, with Charles Lederer maintaining a profound and mournful silence for the entire journey.

Charles Lederer has driven a long way and it’s some time before they arrive at the house. The metal security gate is open, but that doesn’t surprise them so very much. There’s no sign of neo-Nazi Volkswagens, but then they would have no reason to expect them. Neither is there any sign of Marilyn but it takes some time before they realise that.

Cheryl Bronte drives in through the open gate and parks. She sees the tyre tracks that have carved up the lawns and flowerbeds, then she sees the smashed French windows through which Barry made his original exit. She does not look best pleased.

“I can explain all this too,” says Barry.

“Not now,” says Cheryl Bronte. “Please not now.”

She goes to the front door, finds it open and cautiously steps inside. Barry and Charles Lederer follow her in. There is no sound in the house, and no human presence. All three of them sense that something’s terribly wrong here. They look into the first room they come to, Carlton’s study. It is in a state of chaos. Drawers have been pulled out of desks, cabinets and glass cases have been smashed, displays torn from the walls, furniture has been overturned and cushions slashed open. The room has not been so much ransacked as completely demolished. And as they move on they see that the whole house has received similar treatment; floorboards have been lifted, and in places even the wallpaper has been scraped off. Something demonically thorough and systematic has been at work.

“Do you know what’s going on here?” Barry asks.

“Do you?” Cheryl Bronte asks in return.

“Well of course not,” says Barry. “Is it a burglary, or what?”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know anything, do I?”

“I don’t know what you don’t know, Barry. But I think this was only a burglary in a very specialised sense of the word. I think whoever did this was looking for something very specific.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, but I’d be surprised if it wasn’t a Volkswagen in some shape or form.”

“And do you think they found it?”

Cheryl Bronte offers nothing but a shrug. At her side Charles Lederer looks around him at the mess and destruction of all the Volkswagen parts and models and badges, and although he still says nothing, his face looks quite satisfied by the spectacle. Then Barry panics. “What about Marilyn?” he demands. Again Cheryl Bronte says nothing so he runs madly from room to room, calling Marilyn’s name, searching for her amid the debris; but he doesn’t really expect to find her. He knows she has gone.

It is in the bathroom, where the shower has been wrenched from the wall, where tiles have been smashed and towels torn to ribbons, that he at last sees the message that tells him what he feared most. The message has been written on the wall-sized mirror in shocking pink lipstick and it says, “We took Carlton Bax. We’ve taken Marilyn Lederer. When we get what we want you can have them back.”

Barry calls to Cheryl Bronte who comes running, reads the message then nods sadly as though this is exactly what she has been expecting all along. “Who is that message addressed to?” Barry asks but by now he has learned not to expect a reply. Charles Lederer then arrives in the bathroom and having read the words begins to weep.

“You stupid old bugger,” Barry yells. “If you hadn’t spent half the night trying to kill me, we could have been here to protect Marilyn. Don’t you see, we were on the same side all along.”

Cheryl Bronte is unimpressed by this. “There’s nothing more you can do here,” she says to Barry. “Leave this to me. Just go home.”

“And what about him?”

Charles Lederer is now sobbing his heart out, shivering, shaking, making a deep bovine noise.

“Why don’t you take him with you?”

Charles Lederer opens his mouth and lets out a blood-chilling wail of epic, mythical proportions, and suddenly all the mania and the anger are stripped from him, and Barry can suddenly see him as a kind of tragic hero, as a fond and foolish father, as a flawed human being, worthy of pity and compassion, as Oedipus, as King Lear.

“Okay,” says Barry. “You’re right. I’ll take him home with me.”

♦

Some time ago now I wrote a short story about a man who believed he could do motor repairs by the laying on of hands. As you may imagine, it was an ironic sort of piece. At the time I wrote it I was living in a village in Kent about twenty miles from London. When my wife and I first moved there we decided we wouldn’t be like the other commuters, we’d try to be part of the community. So we took out a subscription to the local parish magazine. It was called Trident and it was full of births, marriages and deaths, ads for local butchers and builders, and a lot of short articles where locals described what Jesus meant to them.

I admit that as a way of participating in community life this was fairly limited, but I read the magazine avidly enough, especially the Jesus pieces which always had just the right blend of naivety, humourless sincerity and bad grammar to send a cynical agnostic like me writhing on the floor with derisive laughter. Then one day the following piece appeared:

Just over three years ago I set off for Greenbelt (a religious pop festival) with three Christians, one of whom was my cousin. On the first night in the tent the girls sat down to pray before going to sleep. One of them spoke in tongues (a spiritual language) and one gave the interpretation. It was talking about things that had and were about to happen in my life that none of them could possibly have known about, and telling me how to give my life to Jesus so he could sort out the mess I had made of it so far. On the way home the car broke down. The other three laid hands on the car and it started again.

Well, this was the long arm of coincidence and no mistake. Of course, I didn’t know what kind of car they’d been driving, and for that matter I didn’t know what drugs — if any — they’d been on, but I filed the information away and thought I might use it somehow if I ever wrote a sequel to Street Sleeper.

A couple of weeks later I drove the few miles to the nearest supermarket in Swanley, bought groceries and loaded them into my Volkswagen. The car was enjoying one of its more reliable phases, so it was quite a surprise when I turned on the ignition and absolutely nothing happened. I kept turning the key and pumping the accelerator but got absolutely no result. I got very depressed.

It was winter, late afternoon and it was getting cold and dark. I had a look at the engine and could see nothing amiss. I tried to start it again, but still nothing. I decided to call the AA. I undertook a long circular walk on which I discovered that every phone box in Swanley had been vandalised. It looked as though I’d have to ask somebody in one of the local shops if I could use their phone. I didn’t particularly want to do that but I couldn’t see any alternative. However, I thought I’d have a final attempt to start the car before I did so.

I went back to my Beetle, looked at it sadly and laid a hand on the front, nearside wing. I didn’t say ‘be thou whole’ or anything like that, but I was definitely hoping for a bit of divine intervention. But then I thought I’d raise the stakes a little. I said to myself, “Okay, if this Volkswagen now starts then there is a God. If it doesn’t there isn’t.”

I got into the car, turned the ignition key, and it started first time. Only just, and the engine wheezed and coughed a little at first, but start it most certainly did. I was genuinely and appropriately amazed.

Now, the mechanically minded among you may say that I had simply flooded the engine, and the time it took me to do a circuit of the vandalised phone boxes was time enough for the excess petrol to evaporate. I’m happy to accept that this is absolutely the case. You’ll be glad to know that I don’t really believe I can repair cars by going around and laying my hands on them. And, of course, this incident wasn’t enough to absolutely convince me of the existence of God. However, I have to admit that it was all a little bit peculiar.

It sometimes occurs to me that I should have raised the stakes higher still and asked God to prove himself by ending war, or pain or global pollution. Something tells me that proof might not have been so readily forthcoming. But that’s okay. I have always known that God moves in mysterious ways, and it seems only common sense to me that if there is a God, then he must surely be a Volkswagen enthusiast.