Street Sleeper

One

There is a garage in a railway arch. It is in darkness. In that darkness coils of hose hang like rubber intestines; stacks of tyres slouch like rolls of matt, black fat. The floor is stained a hundred shades of black and brown, each shade the colour of oil. Workbenches, floor and walls are jagged with body-panels, metal innards, girlie calendars and fast-food wrappers.

It’s not much but it’s home to Fat Les. A sign above the arch announces ‘Fat Les — the Vee-Dub King’. He works here. He lives here. He sleeps in a partitioned area that he calls his office. He is in his forties; fat (of course), unshaven, sweaty. His bed is a tartan sleeping-bag. He does cheap servicing, tuning and repairs of Volkswagen Beetles. He knows most of what there is to know about flat-four, air-cooled engines. He makes a living, more or less, and pumps any profits into his hobby which is playing around with flat-four, air-cooled, Volkswagen engines.

In the centre of the garage sits his own unimposing car. It is a light blue Beetle, an early seventies model. It is starting to rust badly, apparently well past its best, and its best apparently never anything special. One thing’s for certain — it’s not much to look at.

♦

In her parents’ end of terrace house in Gleadless, Barry Osgathorpe’s fiancée, Debby, said to him, ‘What are those, pet?’

‘Nerf bars,’ he replied.

There were two nerf bars sticking out of the shopping-bag he was carrying.

‘Pardon?’ said Debby.

‘They’re cast-iron, T-shaped pieces of metal used to replace the front and rear bumpers on a Volkswagen Beetle. They look really flash.’

‘I’m sorry, pet, I don’t think I’m quite with you.’

‘Look, Debby, I’ve got a confession to make. I’ve been taking driving lessons in secret, and I’ve passed my test.’

‘Well that’s very nice, but why in secret?’

‘I don’t really know.’

But he did really know.

‘And I’ve bought a car as well.’

‘Aren’t you the sly one? That’s smashing. It’ll come in ever so handy after we’re married. When can I see it? I’m sure I’ll like it.’

She was wrong.

‘It’s no good,’ Barry Osgathorpe said, ‘we shan’t ever be married because I’ve decided that I must go out ‘on the road’ and find myself.’

♦

Later he said, ‘Call me Ishmael. That’s not my real name, of course. Barry Osgathorpe is a good enough name for a librarian, which until now I have been content to be. But now I style myself a Zen Road Warrior and I feel in need of a change.

‘So call me Ishmael.’

♦

Sometimes Fat Les dreams of building a car that runs on water, on air, on grass, earth, carbon monoxide, on urine — only for his own benefit, you understand. He doesn’t want to make a million, not even a profit, more important he doesn’t want to hear the knock on the garage door, the visit of the assassin from the oil-producing country.

He has been sitting behind the wheel of his car for sometime now, sitting in silence, in readiness, preparing himself. Now he starts the engine. Headlights tunnel through the darkness. The car slides gently, steadily out of the garage and on to the street. He drives cautiously and correctly to the main roads. There is no hurry. There is nothing to prove. Not yet.

♦

It was three days since Ishmael had abandoned Debby and left home. It was getting dark. He was driving out of the services at Newport Pagnell in a customized Volkswagen Beetle — not very well customized at that — frenched headlights, a whale tail, smoked glass, nerf bars.

He sat back on the faded leopardskin seat covers and pressed down the accelerator.

And then he saw her. She was blonde. She was standing at the side of the exit ramp. She was wearing high heels, a short fur coat, a leather skirt and a tee-shirt with diamante. Her thumb was out. All his life he’d been waiting for a moment like this. He stopped the car. He opened the door.

‘Well met, fellow-traveller,’ he said.

‘How far are you going?’

‘Further.’

‘Will you see me all right for Leicester Forest East?’

He could see she was not yet in the mood for any cosmic truths. He nodded. She got in. She slammed the door. They drove off.

She was younger than she had looked. The mascara was thick and cracked, the high heels scuffed, her stockings had a ladder. The blonde hair could have been a wig.

Still, she was beautiful in her own way.

Everybody is.

‘Some motor,’ she said.

‘I call it Enlightenment,’ Ishmael replied, ‘because that’s the only vehicle worth owning. I’m looking for a Way, a Clearway, no stopping, no U-turns, no reversing. I want the headlights to pick out the Truth. That’s the only road you should think of hitching a lift on.

‘And that’s why I drive up and down the motorways, the arterial routes, the B-roads, roads where a man might lose himself, where a man might find himself. Perhaps I’m something of an outlaw, perhaps a pariah. I like to think of myself as a pilgrim. I’m trying to make a little progress.’

‘That’s nice,’ she said.

‘Of course, I wasn’t always like this. I used to be a librarian. Then one day I was doing a local author display when the scales fell from my eyes. It was what you might call a satori.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Yes. I was all set to be married and settled but something told me I was on the wrong road. Debby, my betrothed, was a bit cheesed off naturally, but you know how it is, I had to be free to journey to the centre of myself.

‘But here I am talking about myself all the time. How about you? What wisdom do you have to share with me?’

‘Eh?’

‘Well, what do you do?’

‘Me? I get into cars with strange men, then I tear my clothes…’

She made a savage rip in the diamante tee-shirt. One small, freckled breast popped out through the rip.

‘Then I threaten the driver that unless he gives me money I’ll go to the police and swear that I’ve been raped.’

♦

What is a Street Sleeper?

You pull up at a red traffic light. You are driving a black Ford Capri. The stereo pumps out eighties’ funk. You burned-off an ailing Jag at the last set of lights. You are at home behind the wheel of your car. You are safe. You are accommodated.

The lights stay red for a long, long time, and as you tap your fingers on your leather steering-wheel, as you blip your engine, you become aware of another car pulling alongside. Maybe it’s competition.

You look. It isn’t. It isn’t even worth your derision. It is a Volkswagen Beetle, an early seventies model in pate blue except where it is pitted with rust, and where the wings are bubbling with virulent corrosion.

You are well aware that there are some hot Volkswagens on the streets, cars with hot-rodded engines, fancy extractor-type exhausts, low profiles on Wolfrace slots, but this…

It is not worth a first glance. It is beneath your contempt. What kind of clown drives a car like that?

You look. You see what kind of clown. The driver is a fat, unshaven, sweaty man in his forties. His hair, an overgrown short-back-and-sides, has settled round his head like a tight, greasy cap, framing a face made ragged years ago by acne; a series of chins like deflated tyres, a loose mouth that will not stay shut.

He wears a snug, filthy shirt that clings to his fat shoulders and belly. The sleeves are pushed up above squat forearms that end in broad, spatulate hands, bitten nails, thick fingers stained with oil.

And perhaps that is the first clue, the first indication that all may not be quite what it seems. Could those be mechanic’s hands? Could they have been assembling and fitting performance accessories, adjusting clearances, greasing nipples?

The second clue, the last you will need or be allowed, as the lights turn at last to amber, is the quiet sure sound of a mighty engine, a silencer that shouts its intentions loud and clear, a rising yet calm note of awesome torque and acceleration. And even though you release the Capri’s clutch and your car starts to leap forward before the appearance of the green light, you are instantly trailing in the wake of the Beetle, in the wake of the Street Sleeper.

You are angry, not only that you are beaten at your own game, though God knows that’s bad enough, but more because you have been beaten by a player you didn’t even know was in the game, who, in that poxy little blue Beetle, certainly didn’t have any right to be in the game.

The evening is in tatters. The girl beside you refuses to sympathize, even suggests that you see the funny side. The night will end in a furious row, dredged up grievances, thrown drinks and broken lager glasses.

All of which is much as Fat Les had intended. He drives his car through dark streets that hold no threat, not even that much of a challenge these days, a heftily rebored engine, racing cam, forged pistons, and twin Webers have seen to that. He doesn’t feel smug exactly, but content that, this time at least, the underdog, the wimp in the white hat, the loser, has won.

He drives back to his railway arch, to his kingdom. A remote-controlled solenoid operates the doors. He drives in, switches off engine and lights. He drinks a lot of cheap whisky and watches snooker on television before sliding into his sleeping-bag and into chivalric dreams.

He dreams of conquest, of winning. Burning-off Ford Capris is part of it (actually, quite a large part), but is not the whole story. It is a symptom. Of social unrest? Of class hatred? Fat Les couldn’t put a name to it. But it is indicative of his desire to defeat the flash bugger, the boy-racer, the wine drinker, the one with the tasty motor that can move a bit, the one in Daddy’s BMW, the one in the car that Daddy bought him for his eighteenth birthday. It is the parading of a chip on the shoulder. It is also a way of saying do not take me for a sheep, not even for a wolf dressing down, do not take me for anything at all. Do not judge me. Fat men in old bangers need love too.

♦

When Ishmael first decided to drive off and find out who he truly was, he’d envisaged buying a VW camper with cooker, washbasin and portable toilet. It seemed simple and good. It also turned out to be expensive.

He answered a classfied ad in the Morning Telegraph. The camper had been sold before he got there, but the seller was a small-time dealer and he said he had another car which might suit Ishmael down to the ground.

It was, of course, the car that he came to call Enlightenment.

Ishmael was shown the car. It was the ugliest thing he’d ever seen. The front spoiler and rear whale tail were in grey primer. Most of the rest of the car was painted in candy red and that would have been nice enough but it had started to crack, and rust was showing in a few places. However, not all the car was painted that colour. One rear wing was black and dented, the other was bright orange, and the driver’s door was lilac with a peeling transfer of a Viking on it.

It had a sunroof without a hatch — and that was when Ishmael first started to feel an affinity with the car. How nice to sit in the driver’s seat, open to the wind and sky, open to new thoughts and experiences. Just open.

And he realized how there is beauty in ugliness, and he saw how the many colours of paintwork symbolized the rich, chequered patchwork of life.

Slowly but clearly the car spoke to him. And he spoke back.

He started the engine. It needed a few attempts but at last it sprang into life. There was a dense cloud of blue smoke from the exhaust. The dealer told him this was a good sign. Ishmael settled himself in the car. Man and machine started to communicate. A connection was made. A deal was done.

He had his mission. He had his vehicle. He had the few thousand pounds he’d drawn out of the joint account he’d opened with Debby. He paid the dealer in cash. The man kept chuckling to himself. Ishmael smiled back.

He drove away from the life he knew.

It was the first step on the road to coming home.

♦

‘Oh,’ said Ishmael. ‘Tearing your clothes and screaming rape seems like a strange calling, but who am I?’

The blonde with the freckled breast said, ‘You don’t seem to understand. That’s what I do. That’s what I’m doing now.’

Ishmael was silent.

‘You want me to give you money?’ he said at last.

‘You’ve got it.’

He was silent for a while longer.

‘Have you ever heard of the concept of karma?’

‘What?’

‘Doing bad things is going to give you terrible bother in your future lives.’

She suddenly lost her patience.

‘All right, stop the car or I’ll leap out and tell the police you threw me.’

Even though it meant disobeying the Highway Code Ishmael brought the car to a sudden halt on the hard shoulder.

‘Money isn’t the answer,’ he said.

‘For you at this moment money is the answer. Unless you give me some money you’re going to be in a lot of trouble — and soon.’

She stuck her head out of the car window and screamed. It was a piercing enough scream but Ishmael had heard louder ones from Debby, and in any case there was nobody to hear. The sound of one vocal cord screaming.

‘Let’s talk this thing through,’ Ishmael said.

She screamed again. Cars roared past. Ishmael pressed a button on the dashboard. It controlled the windows.

They slid shut with an electronic rasp. He pressed another button and both doors were now locked. There was still the gaping hole where the sunroof ought to have been but he couldn’t see her escaping through there.

Ishmael abhorred violence in all its many ugly forms, so it was with great reluctance that he now reached down under his seat and picked up a claw hammer. He held it about an inch and a half from the blonde’s nose.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

‘What are you going to do with that hammer?’

‘I’m going to use it in the service of virtue.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘So tell me what your name is.’

‘Marilyn.’

‘OK then, Marilyn, it seems to me you’re not a very good person. Oh, I don’t imagine you’re actually evil, not wicked exactly, but perhaps you haven’t had all the advantages that someone like me has enjoyed. But fortunately I’m now in a position to help you.

‘This claw hammer will serve a moral purpose. Either you behave yourself and stop demanding money with menaces from me, or you continue to do wrong in which case I hit you across the mouth with the hammer.

‘It’s sort of like the wrath of God, only more immediate.’

‘I’m an idiot,’ she said quietly to herself. ‘The moment I saw the car, obviously a nutcase.’ Then aloud. ‘All right, you win. Let me out and I won’t give you any more trouble.’

‘No, Marilyn. You and I are going to take a ride. This will be a learning experience for you.’

♦

Munich, 1922. Two children press their faces against the glass of a Benz motor showroom. Inside, vast and luxurious motorcars stand ready to be bought by the rich and ostentatious. Jacob Werlin is demonstrating the features of a sixteen-horsepower model to a Herr Weiss and his wife. Weiss is a solid, square, bespectacled citizen. He calls himself an industrialist, which is sufficiently vague to be impressive, though there is nothing vague about his very real wealth. His wife is noticeable for her accessories — a veil, a stole and a dachshund.

The children, a boy and a girl, Nina and Peter, aged six and eight, continue to stare. Werlin sees them but is not immediately concerned. Children love motorcars. Why shouldn’t they? He himself retains a boyish fascination. He owes his success as a representative for Benz to an astute combination of business skills and a youthful enthusiasm for speed, power and elegance. But what is the little girl doing? She is pulling faces, tongue out, nose squashed flat against the glass, eyes rolling in a crazed, hostile mime. And the little boy, my God, has his penis out and is peeing against the window.

Herr Werlin tries to interpose his body, to become a screen between his customers and the children. The loss of dignity he would suffer in chasing off a pair of ragged children might result in the loss of a sale.

♦

‘Put your breast away,’ Ishmael said.

‘Are you some kind of pervert?’

‘Do I look like one?’

‘You can’t always tell by looking.’

‘Actually, sex is something I haven’t got sorted out yet.’

‘You don’t say.’

‘Debby and I had a perfectly good sex life. It was very pleasant but not really spiritual. Or maybe it was spiritual, just not all that much fun.’

‘Why are you telling me this?’

‘Yes, why indeed? We’re here to sort out your problems not mine. Tell me your troubles.’

♦

In the same building as the Benz showroom is the editorial office of the Volkischer Beobachter, the newspaper of the National Socialists. Herr Hitler is often seen entering and leaving the building. Jacob Werlin finds him a nice enough chap, perhaps faintly extreme in his opinions about Jews and communists, but with his heart more or less in the right place. He drives a Benz, or rather his chaffeur does. Herr Hitler too is a motoring enthusiast, although inevitably he sees it from a rather uncompromising political perspective.

Herr Hitler now emerges from the newspaper office, sees the children at the window and delivers sharp, accurate slaps to their ears. The children run, the little boy dribbling as he goes. Herr Hitler enters the showroom.

♦

‘Well,’ said Marilyn, ‘I had a pretty bad childhood if you really want to know.’

‘Yes, I really want to know.’

‘My mother drank. She wasn’t up to the job of motherhood. She was a barmaid when she worked at all. She had sailors in a back room of the pub, on the bare lino. It wasn’t a pretty sight.’

‘You watched?’

‘I had to. We six children all slept in that back room.’

‘That’s awful.’

‘Then there was my father, when he was around, which wasn’t often. He was a jazz musician, a drummer. He did some drugs — joybanging he called it. He always said he wasn’t hooked. We knew better. He interfered with me, quite often.’

‘This is heart-rending,’ Ishmael said.

‘Of course, I married to get away from my background but it was no good. He was called Carlos. He used to beat me. I discovered on my wedding night that he was a pimp. I had to take on a couple of clients so we could afford to pay for the hotel on our honeymoon.’

‘I don’t think I can stand to hear any more.’

‘So are you surprised that I hitch lifts on motorways, tear my clothes and demand money?’

♦

‘Good afternoon, Jacob,’ Adolf Hitler says.

Jacob Werlin introduces him to the two potential customers.

‘The Benz is a fine car,’ Hitler says. ‘My friend Jacob here sold one to me, not so grand as the one you were looking at, but a fine car even so. It is efficient. It is comfortable, and it is German.’

‘It is also expensive,’ Herr Weiss says.

Hitler smiles knowingly.

‘It is luxurious,’ Jacob offers.

‘Yes,’ Hitler says, ‘it’is luxurious. At this moment in German history the motorcar is a luxury item, and I suppose that will always be one of the roles of the car, but it need not be only a rich man’s status symbol. It isn’t that in America. There Henry Ford has made motor transport easily and cheaply available to the ordinary man.’

‘You would not have me driving around in a Model T,’ Herr Weiss laughs.

‘No, I would not. But I wish there was a German car that was as cheap, as reliable and as available as a Model T. It is my opinion there will be such a car. I have one or two ideas myself.’

‘You are ambitious, Herr Hitler,’ says Weiss. ‘A politician, a newspaper man, now an automobile engineer.’

He looks straight into Hitler’s laundry-blue eyes, notices the flat, wide, mongrel face, the hair and moustache that signal some form of misplaced bohemianism. And he listens to the harsh but uninflected voice that betrays its owner’s unimpressive Austrian origins. And Herr Weiss is deeply unimpressed.

‘I have read widely,’ Hitler replies. ‘I have read recently some copies of an American newspaper called the Dearborn Independent. It is run by Mr Ford. He seems to have one or two sound ideas. I have a copy I could lend you if you are prepared to take an interest, and I suggest you should be. The leading article is entitled ‘The International Jew — the World’s Problem’.’

♦

Ishmael was moved.

‘I knew there had to be a reason,’ he said.

Marilyn was crying quietly.

‘I’m sorry to burden you with my problems,’ she said.

‘No, no, a problem shared. I’m sorry I threatened you with the hammer. It was because you obviously thought I was an easy touch. For ten years in that bloody library everyone thought I was just a wimp, just a nothing. Nobody’s ever going to think I’m an easy touch again.’

‘I don’t think you’re an easy touch. I think you’re really sweet.’

‘Oh,’ he said. Nobody had ever said anything like that to him before.

‘I don’t suppose,’ she continued, ‘you could see your way clear to lending me twenty quid or so, could you? Just to tide me over.’

‘For a fellow-traveller it would be a pleasure. It would be a duty.’

‘Thank you. I’m really grateful. They broke the mould when they made you.’

In the end he gave her twenty-five pounds and let her out at the next services. It was dark now. He watched as she walked away from the car towards the brightly lit buildings, the clatter of her high heels audible even after she had disappeared into the blur of lights.

Ishmael sat at the wheel in silence, drinking in the evening, savouring this moment of shared humanity. Then somebody in a Ford Capri sounded his air horns behind him. He was blocking the entrance to the petrol pumps.

The still moment was over. He drove on.

Do not expect to fare well. Only hope to fare forward.

♦

Herr Weiss says, ‘I am interested in buying a car, Herr Hitler. I am not interested in hearing the views of an arrogant and ill-informed young man who happens to lead an insignificant workers’ party. Jacob, I shall return another time. Perhaps.’

Jacob Werlin shuffles uneasily, attempts a bow of farewell. There is a general movement towards the door but Adolf Hitler moves fastest and blocks the exit. He begins to harangue the departing couple.

‘I am well-informed and I am well-educated. A good deal more than yourself. I have studied as an artist and I am a self-taught expert in architecture, military science and engineering. I have served the Bavarian Infantry with honour, and I tell you this: there will be a new Germany. You will see the moral, industrial and military rearmament of our country. You will see new wealth. You will see new buildings, new factories, autobahnen to link place to place and man to man, and you will see a German people’s car — an emblem of freedom, mobility and egalitarianism for the German working man. And perhaps then, Herr Weiss, you will remember this conversation, and you will know that I was right. And I shall remember you, with your foolish dog, and your more foolish wife, and you will be sorry.’

♦

At the end of 1923 Herr Weiss reads in his morning paper, and reads with great pleasure, that Adolf Hitler has been gaoled following an attempted putsch against the Weimar government.

‘The best place for him,’ he says to his wife.

Hitler is imprisoned in Schloss Landberg, but is allowed considerable freedom, receives many visitors and has access to any reading and writing materials he needs.

He particularly enjoys reading My Life and Work by Henry Ford, and he begins work on a book of his own, called My Struggle.