Street Sleeper

Nine

Ishmael and Marilyn and Fat Les and Davey stayed at the commune. Ishmael did his best to contribute to commune life but it’s hard to fit in when people insist on treating you like a messiah.

It didn’t worry him, though, since he was heavily concerned with the fine detail of The Plan, as, at one time or another, were most of the other members of the commune. Otherwise they ate, sulked, took drugs and went to work just like ordinary people.

John the Hippy was much as he had been when Ishmael had met him before except he had been using Marilyn’s father’s American Express card to modest but good effect. He now wore a pair of hand-tooled cowboy boots, a quartz wrist watch, a silk shirt in flame red, and he carried a top of the range Sony Walkman.

Eric was the name of the tie-wearer who had eventually told Ishmael how to get to Fat Les’s. Eric didn’t get spectacularly less sullen in the time it took to put The Plan into effect and Ishmael learned that he had a career in computers, all of which confirmed his opinion that Eric might not be the man for the big occasion.

The Norton twins, by contrast, looked very handy lads to have on your side. They were probably two very different and very individual boys, but they didn’t seem to be. In fact, Ishmael coyld never tell one from the other. You might have called them Hell’s Angels, certainly they were bikers. They rode big British motorcycles — Nortons, although Ishmael never discovered whether they were actually called Norton or whether that was just a nickname because of the bikes they rode.

They had pot-bellies, beards and long hair and were not the most approachable of people. They didn’t seem to do much except ride their bikes, drink beer, and show their contempt for a pleasingly catholic variety of things — the police, ‘straight’ society, personal cleanliness, the family, drivers of MGs, newspapers and television.

Ishmael sort of liked them.

Tina was the tiny blonde woman who had been so glad to see Ishmael return. She looked about thirteen but could have been forty. Whatever her actual age, she had the distinct air of a runaway. She was very worshipful to Ishmael and he couldn’t help wondering if she liked oral sex.

Caroline was the woman with the nose stud who had talked of being lost. She was very lean, usually carrying some kind of vegetable. Ishmael might once have thought that she had grown it herself organically, but now he assumed it must have been bought at the nearest hypermarket.

‘Are you still lost?’ he asked her.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if I know anything anymore.’

Mary was the artist. Every commune has to have at least one. She was interested in what you might call natural imagery. Her paintings usually featured the sea and the moon, mountains and suns and deserts, not that they looked like any deserts or mountains or seas that you’d ever actually come across, so Ishmael assumed they had to be symbolic.

He could see there would be a role for her in The Plan.

Harold was sixty. He looked like a derelict bank manager who had dropped out, and that was exactly what he was. He’d taken early retirement and decided to become a hippy. He wasn’t all that much of a hippy. In fact he was another tie-wearer. Sometimes he even wore a suit, but if he did he was sure to subvert the effect by also wearing sandals or hiking boots.

Despite or because of his banking background Harold thought The Plan was a real winner.

There were others who came and went — a white-haired woman who cut everybody’s hair, a pair of teenage punkettes, a Rastafarian in jogging gear who played the harmonica, a couple of used-car salesmen, a female plumber with hair to her waist. They were a chequered crew, but they all saw the good sense of The Plan, and they all loved Ishmael and would follow him anywhere.

♦

Dawn breaks on the morning of 12 September 1974. It is New Year’s Day according to the Ethiopian calendar and in the abandoned Imperial Palace Haile Selassie I listens to the throb of truck engines and the rumble of tank tracks as these vehicles pull into the palace grounds.

It has been a long time coming, this revolution, this deposal by the Provisional Government.

The Emperor receives three battle-dressed soldiers in one of the palace’s less opulent chambers. One of the soldiers reads the act of dethronement, citing despotism, corruption and old age. The soldiers are calm. Their charges are restrained. The ceremony is bloodless.

Haile Selassie is led from the palace and assured that he will be conveyed to a safe place. He is accustomed to being driven in limousines, at the sight of which loyal subjects throw themselves to the ground, but today there is to be no such pomp.

In the driveway is a green Volkswagen Beetle, its engine running, an officer at the wheel. The officer leans over, shoves open the passenger door and tilts the front passenger seat forward so that the Emperor can get in the back.

Until now Haile Selassie has behaved with quiet resignation but this is too much.

‘So it has come to this,’ he protests. ‘Is this really how I am to make my exit? Can you be serious?’ The final indignity.

♦

Money is the problem. Haile Selassiedied leaving perhaps a hundred million dollars locked in Swiss bank accounts. It is there still. Sometimes money can be come by very easily, all you need do is find a wallet or shit on a glass table. There is money for nothing. There is money for which you work your balls off. Ishmael worked hard at the library. Of course he knew it wasn’t hard work like mining, or labouring on a building site, but to get up every morning and go to a job he hated — that was hard. And the money was nothing. The Plan required money. It had to be stolen.

♦

When the war ends Nina still considers herself a young woman, and a few years’ deprivation has whipped her body to an erotic leanness it never had in the thirties. She even has high cheekbones these days; and dark eyes, and lips and nails the colour of blood. Dressed in tight black lace she sits at a scratched Steinway and sings ‘These Foolish Things’.

♦

A lonely, one-man-operated, twenty-four-hour self-service petrol station. A Volkswagen camper pulled into the forecourt and Ishmael got out. He filled the petrol tank. The camper was from the commune and full of people. They looked as though they were on their way back from a party. There was a festive atmosphere and fancy dress and party hats were in evidence. Ishmael went into the office to pay and to engage the cashier in friendly conversation.

Ishmael knew that the people who work as petrol station cashiers these days are either teenage boys or ageing men who have seen better days. In another economic climate they would have respected, steady jobs. They would have futures. But now there’s a recession and they settle for what they can get. Sometimes they even have to pretend to like it.

This time there was a solid family man behind the counter. In another life he might have been a cheery milkman, but tonight he wasn’t cheery and it probably wasn’t just tonight.

‘How are you?’ Ishmael asked.

‘So-so.’

‘Nice night, eh?’

‘Depends what you’re doing.’

‘What would you rather be doing?’

‘Sleeping. At home. With the wife.’

‘Night shifts must be hard.’

‘You should try it.’

Ishmael looked around the office as if he were about to compliment the man on what a nice place he had here, but he didn’t. He said, ‘Do you know what the French word for petrol is?’

‘Is this a quiz?’

‘Essence. Pretty essential if you see what I mean.’

He didn’t see what Ishmael meant. Ishmael laughed. The cashier didn’t.

Ishmael said, ‘Do you ever look into your heart and ask what’s most essential to you?’

‘No.’

‘You should. Try to work out what things are worth living for, and what things are worth dying for.’

This produced a smile on the face of the cashier. People do sometimes smile when they start to get frightened.

‘I’ll bet you get some crazy people in here,’ Ishmael said.

‘Not until tonight.’

‘Not until tonight,’ Ishmael smiled. ‘So how much do I owe you?’

The cashier smiled, this time with relief, thinking that Ishmael was getting down to paying, getting down to business, and in a sense he was right. Ishmael was getting down to business.

‘Eighteen pounds,’ he said.

‘Did you say eighteen?

He repeated, ‘Eighteen.’

‘Anyone would think I’d got money to burn.’

Ishmael laughed again.

He said, ‘How long would a man like yourself have to work before he earned eighteen pounds?’

‘About six hours, on a night shift.’

‘That’s a long time.’

‘You’re making it seem longer all the time.’

Fat Les and Davey and Marilyn and Eric and Tina then entered the office. Davey had shaved his head and was bare-chested except for some chains and a few streaks of oil. He looked dangerous. They all started examining the motor accessories, the key rings, the tins of oil and de-icer. Eric helped himself to a Mars Bar and handed out packets of cashew nuts and chewing gum.

‘Have you ever been robbed?’ Tina asked.

‘Not until tonight,’ the cashier replied.

‘I could see you were an intelligent man,’ said Ishmael.

Davey stood over the cashier, Fat Les emptied the till and Ishmael made a short speech.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and he did sound genuinely sorry. ‘We’re only stealing this money because we need it and because it’s in a good cause. We mean no harm, but we’ll smash your brains out if you get in the way of The Plan. I’m sorry you’ve got such a rotten job and I’m sure you’ve got enough problems without my adding to them, but these are hard times for all of us. Personally, I don’t see any political solution to human misery, all that seems a bit simplistic — I mean when you didn’t have a job you probably thought a job would solve all your problems, but now you’ve got a job and you know it hasn’t. Still, that’s just a personal view. However, I do know that there are ways out. There are some roads that give smoother rides than others, and take you nearer to where you want to go. I found my road and I believe that it’s within all of us to find it. And remember that a pocketful of truth is worth all the bulging cash registers on earth.’

Fat Les shut him up. Tina planted a kiss on the cashier’s cheek, and the robbers piled into the camper and returned to Fox’s Farm.

The Plan continued in this way. Two or three petrol stations a night, picked at random and all distant from each other, was enough to finance The Plan, though there was little left over for frills. Sometimes the cashiers were less philosophical than others but they were fortunate in not meeting any heroes. Ishmael supposed that heroes were reluctant to accept jobs in petrol stations.

♦

What foolish things is Nina reminded of? Prostitution that became increasingly heavyweight as the war went on. When you will sell your soul for a pair of nylons, what price the body? And then the Yanks arrived — revaluation.

She supposes she’s a survivor, perhaps even a winner. In England Richard Huntingdon has had a second highly-praised book of poems published. They speak of love in sufficiently ambiguous terms to be acceptable to most sexual preferences. Nina’s so-so English will not enable her to determine whether there is some trace of herself somewhere in the poems, but she feels that surely there must be.

In Buchenwald Peter Baldung has shot himself in the head, but inexpertly, the bullet has done some damage but not enough and he is now in hospital with only enough brain left to allow feelings of intense well-being. Another winner.

Most foolish thing of all, Nina still has her Volkswagen savers’ card. She even managed to fill it. With the revalued Deutsch Mark her savings would be paltry enough, but imagine her anger and frustration when she learns that the 280 million Marks belonging to the savers were lodged in the German Labour Front’s Bank in Berlin, and that the bank has suddenly found itself in ‘East’ Berlin and that the Russians have taken the money as reparations. Now would that have happened with the British?

Nina has difficulty knowing on whom to vent her anger. On Hitler? On the Nazi Party? On Russia? She feels her anger will not make much of an impression there.

But how about the newly constituted Volkswagen company? How about Herr Nordhoff?

♦

Sunday lunchtime at the Castle Hotel, Crockenfield. Huddled in a corner, in a cloud of pipe and cigar smoke, talking urgently in hushed voices, are Marilyn’s father and half a dozen of the Crockenfield Blazers. Normally they position themselves expansively at the bar, order doubles and exchange anecdotes that confirm their rugged, mannish, world view. But today some shared hurt has made them introverted and hushed. A plaque on the pub wall above their heads reads ‘You are a stranger here but once’.

♦

Money, freedom, power, the old trinity — the power and freedom to buy friendship, status, sex, to jump queues, to buy the ‘better’ things in life. If you’ve got it…

What did Ishmael spend his stolen money on? The basics. He bought Volkswagen performance parts, modified engines, paint, old wrecks of Beetles that needed complete restoration, welding equipment, bullet-proof glass.

Fat Les set up a kingdom in exile in the outbuildings of Fox’s Farm. He could be found there most hours of the day or night, welding and tuning, stripping down and rebuilding, modifying and reconditioning.

♦

Rupert says, ‘It’s not just the money, though God knows Range Rovers don’t come cheap, it’s the thought of being beaten by a rabble, a few oiks, yahoos. That’s what really hurts.’

‘There were more than a few. There were twenty or thirty at least.’

‘And we weren’t beaten exactly. We gave as good as we got. We ran them out of the valley after all.’

‘Don’t talk rot, Colin. They left when they heard the police sirens. We were thrashed. We were trounced and piddled on.’

‘So they must have had military training — probably a bunch of renegade ex-marines.’

♦

In October 1948 K-d-f savers formed an association to battle with the reconstituted Volkswagen company over the reclamation of their lost contributions. It would be thirteen years and a few days before the legalities were settled by the German Supreme Court. Savers who still held their completed cards could receive six hundred Deutsch Marks off the price of ‘a new Volkswagen saloon (about £50), or they could take a hundred Deutsch Marks in cash.

Nina takes the money and buys a few bottles of wine. Tonight she is seeing her new boyfriend who works in the construction business. They will drink a bottle or two and go driving in his Opel Kadett.

♦

Every day Davey would go out shopping and return with heavy-duty shock absorbers, fan shrouds, oil coolers, forged crankshafts, state of the art performance heads, ductile iron rocker arms, titanium racing valves, sidewinder exhausts, unswept extractors, manifolds, sway bars, roll bars, and chain-link steering wheels. It was money well spent.

♦

‘If nothing else, I hope it teaches that wife of yours to keep the back door locked in future.’

Marilyn’s father has been staring into his malt whisky. He has been silent till now, though not subdued, more possessed of an unearthly calm. He has been savouring the memory of his one-man attack on Fat Les’s kingdom.

Now he says, ‘I don’t know whether she’ll learn or not. For some people it may already be too late. But for those of us with eyes to see, it all gives a pretty clear picture of the state of things.’

‘Sorry, not sure I’m quite with you.’

‘Those who aren’t with me are against me. It’s a beginning, only a beginning. There are forces abroad in this great country of ours, they go by many names — the working class, the unions, the media, blacks, feminists, anarchists, militants, Jews…’

‘Oh come off it, some of my best friends…’

‘Well perhaps not Jews then, but certainly the rest; they’re on the move, they’re at battle stations and we’re their target — the solid middle class, the decent folk, the entrepreneurs, the backbone of England.’

‘Thank God we’ve at least got the students under control these days.’

Marilyn’s father continues, ‘They want us. They want to spit on us, to crap on everything we stand for. It’s time to get fit, to arm ourselves morally and physically. There’ll be fighting in the street, rivers of blood I shouldn’t wonder. There’ll be winners and losers. I know which side I intend to be on.’

‘Well, I suppose you ought to know.’

‘Yes I did. I do. So, are you with me or are you against me?’

They all agree that they are provisionally with him.

‘All I can say,’ says Robin, ‘is that I’d like another crack at them, whoever they are.’

‘I’ll say.’

‘Hear, hear.’

‘I’ll drink to that.’

They all agree that they’ll drink to that.

‘I think there’d be a very different outcome if it ever came to a rematch.’

‘There will be a rematch,’ says Marilyn’s father. There will come a time. I feel it. I know it. And I’ll be ready.’

‘Rather.’

‘I’ll say.’

They agree that they’ll be ready. Shooting practice and keep-fit sessions are arranged, along with cross-country running, weight training, and research into survival techniques. Pipes are filled and relit. Another round of drinks is ordered. They decide they need something a bit stronger this time.

♦

And then, one day, The Plan was ready to sweep into its final phase. That was when Ishmael made his fateful phone call to Marilyn’s father.

‘Be gentle with him,’ Marilyn said. ‘But not too gentle.’

Ishmael made the call.

♦

In August 1955 Heinz Nordhoff holds a jamboree to celebrate the production of the one millionth Beetle. Journalists arriving at the Wolfsburg factory receive a dupliacted copy of his speech. It runs to twenty sides and concludes: ‘Hard work and determination has always been the strong point of the Germans, for we enjoy working if we know for what purpose, and I should think that everyone who has lived through the last fifteen catastrophic years really does know for what purpose.’

‘Oh really?’ thinks Ivan Hirst.

♦

The last time Ishmael had seen Marilyn’s father he had been standing in the drive of ‘Sorrento’, wearing a dressing-gown and Wellingtons, carrying a shotgun and surrounded by walls of flaming petrol. How strange to think that Ishmael had once hoped to ‘communicate’ with him, and how much stranger to think he was now about to do it by telephone.

The phone rang for a long time before Marilyn’s father answered.

‘Yes?’ he said at last, his voice sounding distant and high-pitched.

‘Hello,’ Ishmael said.

‘Who is that?’

‘I think you know who this is.’

‘No I don’t. Stop playing silly buggers.’

‘Call me Ishmael,’ said Ishmael deliberately.

There was a chilled silence at the other end of the line.

Marilyn’s father said, ‘I knew you’d be in touch eventually. I’ve been preparing myself.’

Ishmael said, ‘I don’t think you’ll be prepared enough.’

Marilyn’s father said, ‘How prepared do I have to be to deal with vermin?’

Ishmael said, ‘If you think you’re dealing with vermin then you’ve already lost.’

‘I don’t lose.’

‘This time you do.’

They went on like this for a while longer, talking like villains in a comic strip, both believing themselves to be the good guy, occasionally laughing harshly, or bitterly as the situation demanded. It was a bit stilted.

‘And what of Marilyn?’ her father asked at last. ‘Is she with you?’

‘Yes she’s here,’ Ishmdel said. ‘She’s fine.’

‘Wasn’t that all you wanted? Didn’t you ought to be satisfied?’

‘No,’ Ishmael snapped. The game has changed. It’s no longer a game. The stakes are higher, and they’re no longer material. Now they’re spiritual.’

‘I know that,’ Marilyn’s father said.

Ishmael said, ‘We want to meet you, all of you, all the Crockenfield Blazers. We want to be at the centre of the cyclone. We want to be at the heart of the cancer, to be face to face with the heart of darkness. We are many and our hearts are clean. We are coming to pluck out the disease. We will arrive soon. We come with the best possible intentions — to destroy you.’

‘We are ready,’ said Marilyn’s father. ‘Now and for ever.’

The phone went dead.

‘He got the message,’ Ishmael said.

♦

Saturday 16 June 1973, Malcolm Buchanan ‘drives’ his Beetle from the Isle of Man to England. He knows that the Beetle is famous for being waterproof and airtight, that it pays to open the window before trying to close the door, but this is a special sea-going version. Malcolm manages to travel thirty-two miles in just over seven hours, though he runs out of fuel just four hundred yards from the Cumberland coast. Now there’s an existential image for you — a man alone, drifting across the sea, powerless to control his fate, in a floating Volkswagen Beetle. The car at last drifts ashore at St Bees Head. Malcolm tells the press he did it all for charity.

♦

The Plan swept into its final mobile phase. Four Beetles stood outside Fox’s Farm, but these were not ordinary Beetles. Fat Les and Davey had performed a transformation or two.

The windscreens were bullet-proof, the cars had monstrous all-terrain tyres, bumpers made out of steel tubing, hub-caps featuring Boadicea-style spikes, engines so big they burst from their compartments. Sheets of ugly, tattered metal had been welded on here and there as protective shields. They were ugly, deformed and dangerous. Mary had painted them with symbols — mandalas, eyes in pyramids, crescents, pentacles, yin and yang signs, swastikas — holy symbols.

And there was a fifth Beetle. It was Enlightenment and it was changed. Every inch of it was now black. Every piece of chrome had been removed. Bumpers, door handles, wheel centres, exhaust pipes, were all matt black. The headlights had black covers. The windows were smoked glass. Enlightenment sat low and vicious on fat tyres.

Ishmael sat inside, Marilyn beside him. It felt like home.

Fat Les drove the first of the other Beetles, Davey another, the Norton twins another, and Harold the former bank manager the fourth. Other members of the commune were scattered among the passenger seats, front and rear. They wore scraps of leather and animal skins. Their bodies and faces were painted, some heads were shaved. They carried axes and picks, claw hammers, slingshots and Bowie knives.

They looked quite decorative.

Five engines burst into violent life. Ishmael led the grim procession out from Fox’s Farm, out on to the roads, God’s own country.

♦

At his home in Yorkshire, nearly forty years after his time at Wolfsburg, Ivan Hirst straightens his cravat, lights his pipe, buttons his cardigan, and dusts his collection of model Beetles. It is probably the world’s best collection and contains just four items.

He had the idea of a promotional toy or paperweight in the shape of the car as early as 1946, thus he was surely the first to confirm the Volkswagen’s status as objet d’art. The first attempt at casting in aluminium was very crude and Hirst found it unacceptable — today it looks like a bar of soap in the shape of a Beetle, a bar that has been used several times. The second attempt was far more successful — wheels, doors and windows are clearly described in the aluminium. He kept an example of each of these two states of model on his desk until he left Wolfsburg in 1949.

♦

It was an easy journey. They drove in stately procession with Ishmael at the head. They drove with due care and attention. They obeyed speed limits. They signalled clearly and in good time. They had consideration for other road users. They did not want to draw attention to themselves.

Two hours later they approached Crockenfield. They were ready. They drove along Hawk’s Lane. They looked for ambushes. They looked for Range Rovers. They saw nothing.

Then they saw ‘Sorrento’. They sounded their horns — five notes that refused to harmonize. They saw the wagon wheel gates. The gates were open. Ishmael slowed Enlightenment down to a crawl and drove into the grounds. The four other Beetles followed. They were ready for traps. They were ready to fight. They were as ready as they ever would be, but they found nothing.

There were no cars parked in front of the house. There was nobody at any of the windows. There was no servant woman telling them they couldn’t park there.

They parked. They sat. They waited. They kept their engines running and their horns blaring. It seemed silly after a while. Ishmael turned off his engine. He stopped sounding his horn. He wound down his smoked window.

‘Supposing they held a war and nobody came,’ said Marilyn.

Ishmael opened his door. He stepped out. His torn blue leather creaked in the warm, still afternoon. He felt scared, yet he felt ready. He had three days’ growth of beard. He looked the part.

He walked to the front door and rang the bell. Nobody answered. He wasn’t surprised. He turned the door handle. It wasn’t locked.

He looked back at the other Beetles. Doors were now opening, people were getting out. Marilyn and John the Hippy and Fat Les walked towards the house.

‘It’s got to be a trap hasn’t it?’ said John the Hippy.

Ishmael still didn’t know. They entered the house. It was still and silent and nicely furnished. In the sitting room Marilyn asked whether anyone would like a drink from her father’s cocktail cabinet. They declined.

They searched the house. It was empty. It was ghostly, like a show house, inhuman and unlived-in. They sat in the kitchen. They felt uncomfortable. Other road warriors entered — Davey and Harold the former bank manager and Tina and Eric the tie-wearer and Caroline with the nose-stud and Mary the artist. They made cups of coffee. They tried to make themselves at home. They were not sure whether they were experiencing victory or defeat.

Should they loot and destroy the house? Should they just go home? Where was home for Ishmael now?

‘We could set up a squat, I suppose,’ said Eric the tie-wearer.

‘It reminds me of one time I went to Margate,’ said Fat Les. ‘The fuzz had got the whole place carved up. We never even got a look at the rockers. I didn’t have a decent bit of bother all weekend.’

♦

Ivan Hirst also owns a unique model of a Beetle-based Reichspost truck, and a one-tenth scale saloon, just like one Adolf Hitler is photographed holding, but this one comes from Heinz Nordhoff. Nordhoff would gladly have given Hirst an actual Beetle cabriolet, but Hirst’s military position prevented him from accepting.

So Hirst has his models to dust, his spoils of war. They are a better way of remembering than most. They speak of creation and of rebuilding. History resides in them as much as in scars, in tattooed skins, in ruined lives and cities, in documentary photographs that need constant reinterpretation.

Today Ivan Hirst drives a BMW.

♦

The Norton twins were standing outside the back door, keeping the garden watched. Suddenly they moved very quickly and entered the house. Ishmael looked out of the kitchen window. There were ten or a dozen men in tweeds, advancing through the herbaceous borders with shotguns.

Suddenly there was a knock on the front door.

‘Do we answer it?’ Tina asked.

‘Of course we do,’ Ishmael said. ‘It’s quite usual for opposing war lords to hurl a few insults at each other prior to the fray.’

He went to the front door. Harold the former bank manager opened the door for him. He was ready for a confrontation with Marilyn’s father, with the devil himself if it came to that. But even so he was surprised to find a uniformed police constable on the doorstep.

‘Hello sir,’ the policeman said. ‘My name’s Constable Peterson and I just happened to be passing when I couldn’t help noticing those rather unusual motors parked outside. We’re having a little bit of a campaign in Crockenfield right now and unless I’m very much mistaken each of those cars is failing to display a valid tax disc. I trust you do have tax, sir, and I’d also be very much obliged to see your driver’s licence and a current MOT certificate, sir.’

Ishmael was unsure whether this was a real police constable or whether this was some elaborate ruse by Marilyn’s father. Either way Ishmael wanted to be rid of the pest.

‘Go away,’ Ishmael said gently.

‘I beg your pardon, sir?’

‘Go away please or you may get hurt.’

‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.’

‘Then hear this. We are on a mission. Forces of good and evil are here in confrontation. Darkness and light will here collide. I don’t think this is a police matter.’

‘With respect, sir, I think you’d better let me be the judge of that. I suppose you have proof that you actually own those cars?’

‘Listen, little man,’ Ishmael said. ‘You are out of your depth. Be warned.’

‘I think I’d better step inside and ask you a few questions, sir.’

At that moment a volley of shots was fired from the rear of the house. The windows in the kitchen shattered with a good deal of sound and fury.

‘Be gone,’ Ishmael commanded the policeman.

Constable Peterson ran away at some speed. As he did so he almost bumped into two Crockenfield Blazers who were advancing on the house from the direction of the front gate. All three were mutually shocked. One of the Blazers dropped his shotgun and the constable accelerated his exit.

His parting remark was, ‘I’ll be back and I won’t be on my own.’

Ishmael had to agree with Clausewitz about war being like a fog, certainly he remained vague about what happened in the next ten minutes. But he knew for certain at the end of that time that there was not a pane of glass left in any of the windows of ‘Sorrento’, all of them having been shot out by Marilyn’s father and his chums, and the whole crew of them were occupying the grounds looking frantic and drunk on blood lust. In the same time the whole of Hawk’s Lane that ran in front of ‘Sorrento’ became blocked by police cars, motorcycles, fire engines, ambulances and sightseers. Ishmael couldn’t help thinking that things weren’t quite going to plan — The Plan.

♦

There is a photograph of Ferdinand Porsche taken by his nephew and secretary Ghislane Kaes some time after his release by the French. It shows Porsche leaning on the door of a Beetle parked at a gravel roadside in the Grossglockner, Karnten, in Porsche’s native Austria.

There are mountains in the distance. There is a sharp drop from the edge of the road, down to what could be water, though in the photograph it appears jet black.

Porsche could be staring away to the distant mountains, he could be looking at something on the water beyond the edge of the photograph; but it appears to us now that his stare is unfocused, and that his posture shows weariness, not relaxation. Other eyes could interpret the photograph as that of a man on holiday standing beside a new car of which he is very proud, but our eyes interpret it as a defeated man staring at nothing.

This interpretation can, of course, also be interpreted.

♦

And so it was that Ishmael and his followers found themselves besieged in Marilyn’s father’s house, surrounded by a large number of Crockenfield Blazers who were in their turn surrounded by ever increasing numbers of police.

Harold the former bank manager suggested that they make a foolhardy charge at the Blazers and go out in a blooming of fey glory, but he didn’t get any support. Even Ishmael thought it was too symbolic by half.

A plain-clothes police officer stood at the gates to ‘Sorrento’ and made a more or less inaudible speech about this all being madness and they’d all regret it later, and everything could be smoothed out over beer and sandwiches with a little common sense.

The moment he finished there was a shot or two fired in his general direction and Fat Les lobbed an empty gin bottle at him through a smashed upper window.

Then Marilyn’s father spoke. He was glassy-eyed and unsteady on his feet, and he spoke from behind a rhododendron bush, though with, Ishmael would have been the first to admit, an undeniable authority. He denounced the police, the state, youth, Ishmael, the two-party system, the courts, the internal combustion engine, and finally women. His final remark was that unless the police kept their distance there would be a terrible blood-bath and he’d slaughter everyone.

Obviously, Ishmael couldn’t let such an opportunity slip by. He stood at an upstairs window and bawled out a few generalizations about natural law, life and death, the road, and transcendent love.

It was well received by his followers who naturally then turned to him for guidance in their hour of need.

‘I’m all for a bit of a confrontation,’ Fat Les said. ‘But I can’t see much percentage in slugging it out with these Blazers if we then have to take on the pigs.’

Ishmael looked deep into himself. He felt tired. He felt old. He felt a long way from home and as though he’d lost all his maps. It was not, to begin again, what he had expected. He remembered how much he abhorred violence, and suddenly, like the protagonist of a thriller who gets a second bump on the head and wakes saying, ‘Who am I? Where am I? How did I get myself into this mess?’, he had his best idea yet.

He said, ‘I think I’ll hold a press conference.’

‘Why a press conference?’ Marilyn answered.

‘Because the tv camera is mightier than the sword, and we don’t have any swords, and because I think I’ll be rather good at it.’

‘You think so?’

‘Yes. I have an easy and winning manner. I say what I mean, I don’t get tongue-tied, and people listen. I mean I convinced all you lot.’

‘Yeah,’ said Eric the tie-wearer, sullenly. ‘You know, rather than a confrontation with the devil himself I might be prepared to settle for getting out of this unscathed, unarrested, and sloping off down the pub.’

Typical.

‘And will they want to interview you anyway?’ asked Davey. ‘I mean, we’re not exactly national news, are we?’

‘I think we are,’ Marilyn said. ‘You see, what I haven’t told any of you is that my father, as well as being insensitive, brutal and slightly insane — he’s also a Conservative MP.’

You could have heard a pin drop if it hadn’t been for the police sirens and the occasional random shot. Les was the first to speak.

‘You mean we kidnapped a politician’s daughter, fire-bombed him, and then took over his house.’

‘Yes,’ said Marilyn.

‘Why the fuck didn’t you tell us?’ Fat Les shrieked.

‘If I’d told you you wouldn’t have gone along with Ishmael’s plan.’

‘Too bloody right.’

‘Then I wouldn’t have any material for my novel.’

‘We’ll have the fucking army after us.’

‘I should think so,’ said Marilyn.

‘I think we’re more than a match for the army,’ said Harold.

‘Oh shut up, you old prat,’ said Fat Les.

‘Hey,’ said John the Hippy. ‘This is getting heavy.’

‘Bollocks,’ said the Norton twins as one man.

‘How about that,’ said Davey. ‘Fancy me getting my leg over with an MP’s wife.’

‘WHAT?’

‘When I got Marilyn out, well I couldn’t find her room at first. I finished up in the missus’s bedroom and she wouldn’t let me go till I’d given her one. She seemed well pleased.’

‘Oh sweet Jesus Christ,’ said Fat Les.

‘Please don’t worry,’ said Ishmael. ‘I can talk us out of this.’