Street Sleeper

Five

And so it was that Ishmael continued his odyssey of crazy mixed-up youth, getting nowhere fast; racing across the heartland of England to wherever life is lived fastest, on a road that must be taken in top gear, foot flat to the floor, feeding his hunger for sensation; sensation at any price. It was better than working in a library.

And then he saw a hitch-hiker. He was young and male, about seventeen, skinny, failing to grow a moustache. Ishmael didn’t want to give anyone a lift. When you’re on a quest-cum-mercy-errand you really don’t want to be bothered with the dreary conversations you have with most hitch-hikers. Then he felt he was being uncharitable. The hitch-hiker started waving his arms wildly. Ishmael vaguely recognized him. Then the hitch-hiker jumped into the road in front of the car. This was madness but perhaps he was more trusting of Enlightenment’s brakes than he had any reason to be. Some time later, some distance away, having swerved to avoid running him down, Ishmael stopped the car. The hitch-hiker came running.

‘Ishmael,’ he shouted. ‘It’s me.’

He looked familiar. Ishmael noticed the studded leather jacket, the ghetto-blaster, the hands that, for all he knew, were deadly weapons.

‘Davey, isn’t it?’

‘You remembered.’

Ishmael nodded.

‘You’d better get in,’ he said. ‘But I warn you, I’m on a quest-cum-mercy-errand and I don’t want to be bothered with the dreary conversations you have with most hitch-hikers.’

‘Me neither, Ishmael. I’ve only got time for the really big issues.’

‘Really?’

‘Sure. You changed my life. I’ve been looking for you since you left the motorway services. Amazing stroke of luck to find you again. I’ve been hitching all over the place for the last couple of days. I turned down loads of lifts. But I knew that if I needed to find you, I would.’

‘Really?’

‘Sure. Really Zen, eh?’

‘Why did you need to find me?’

‘Because you changed my life. I could have spent the rest of my life playing computer games, doing martial-arts classes. What a waste of potential. You made me see it was a phase, a bad phase. I’m ready to move on to the next phase.’

‘That’s terrific,’ Ishmael said. ‘What’s the next phase going to be?’

‘1 thought you’d tell me.’

‘Ah.’

‘I felt sure you’d know what I ought to do with my life.’

At that point Ishmael had to negotiate a roundabout, change lanes, read a road sign, change gear and avoid a maniac on a motorcycle. Davey took his silence for wisdom and careful consideration.

‘You don’t have to tell me right now. You can think about it for a while.’

Ishmael supposed he was honoured. He supposed he was flattered. He supposed this was a form of power.

‘Well I do have one idea of my own,’ Davey said. ‘Oh, I feel silly mentioning it, but would you consider taking me on as a disciple?’

♦

Major Ivan Hirst had a pretty good sort of a war. At the age of seventeen he had become second-lieutenant in the Territorials. That was in 1934. The Battle of France saw him a major. His job with the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers was at first as an instrument specialist, but by 1944 he was responsible for all forms of military vehicle repair.

Now, in late 1945, the war over, but with what are becoming to seem like the real problems only just beginning, he knocks on the door of Colonel R.C. Radclyffe’s office at the Zonal Headquarters of the Control Commission (British Element).

‘Come in, Major Hirst. Sit down.’

♦

Jesus, thought Ishmael, this was getting serious. He wished he had a dictionary to hand so that he could look up the full implications of what ‘disciple’ meant. He had never been a fan of organized religion. He was not religious. He was not organized.

‘What would your being a disciple involve exactly?’ he asked.

‘That would be up to you. You’re the boss.’

‘Ah.’

‘But if you’d let me make one or two suggestions…’

‘Please go on.’

‘I thought I could sit next to you, you driving, me in the passenger seat, and I’d absorb wisdom while we drove. You’d talk in that way you have and I could receive instruction. Then if you wanted some petrol putting in the car, say, or the oil checked, I’d be there to do your bidding.’

When he put it like that it sounded oddly appealing.

‘Tell me about your hands,’ Ishmael said. ‘Are they really deadly weapons?’

‘Deadly, I don’t know. I did the whole course but I left without taking the exam — I wasn’t happy with the standard of teaching. It seemed to neglect the spiritual dimension. So my hands aren’t deadly but they could do somebody a nasty injury.’

Ishmael thought of Marilyn’s mother — her swift movements, her grace, her uncanny accuracy with a claw hammer. He thought of Marilyn’s father. He thought of his head making unlovely contact with a rear wing. Suddenly Davey seemed a good man to have in the team.

‘All right,’ Ishmael said. ‘Let’s give it a try. But I’d like you to remember the words of Bob Dylan: ‘Don’t follow leaders ⁄ Watch for parking meters.’

Davey let the words wash over him.

‘It doesn’t rhyme,’ he said.

♦

Colonel Radclyffe sits behind a desk that displays an orderly array of maps, one telephone, in and out trays (both full), and a small potted plant.

Radclyffe, avoiding all ceremony, says to Hirst, ‘Tell me about your work in Brussels, as second-in-command at the tank workshop.’

‘I was works manager, in charge of all forms of repair. I had the standard British military personnel plus three hundred Belgian civilians.’

Radclyffe smiles ruefully. ‘Gallant little Belgium. Hands across the sea. International co-operation. All that sort of rot, eh?’

‘You could put it that way I suppose, Colonel,’ Hirst replies flatly.

♦

In July 1958 Vie Damone was riding high in the British pop charts with ‘On the Street Where You Live’, and the Esso Gas Research Centre published a report stating that ‘Tuning into rock and roll radio stations can cost the motorist money!’ The theory is that the driver is impelled to tap his foot on the accelerator in time to the incessant beat, and so waste petrol.

In that case God alone knew what kind of effect Davey’s ghetto-blaster was having on Ishmael’s fuel consumption. Anything that could make itself heard above the engine and wind noise from Enlightenment had to be worthy of respect, and so it was they made the trip from Cambridgeshire to Kent to the fierce accompaniment of Davey’s collection of ‘road music’ tapes.

They had chart-bound sounds, golden oldies, blasts from the past — the works.

As they tooled down the Mil past Audley End they were born to be wild. As they covered the miles between Ugley Green and Fiddler’s Hamlet they tried to get it on and they thrilled to the line that described how she was built like a car, with a hubcap diamond star halo; then miles and miles of the M25 and a lot, really an awful lot of Bruce Springsteen, endless references to shock absorbers and state troopers, girls in their best dresses and some strapping of hands across engines. The Dartford Tunnel saw Johnny Guitar Watson hitting the highway, and as they neared journey’s end they asked themselves why didn’t they do it in the road.

Sometimes Ishmael had a feeling they were being followed, but he shrugged it off, thinking this was no time to get paranoid.

As and when the music allowed Ishmael explained the nature of his quest to Davey. When he’d finished he said, ‘Davey, I’ve been thinking, I really do abhor violence, you know, but I’ve decided that if that scumbag father of hers doesn’t listen to reason he’s going to have to be punished.’

‘That sounds very reasonable,’ Davey said.

Then he unzipped his jacket to show his tee-shirt. It had big red letters on the front that read ‘LET’S DO IT TO THEM BEFORE THEY DO IT TO US’.

Ishmael realized it had been a good decision to give Davey a lift.

♦

‘And you made a pretty good job of it, Hirst.’

‘I believe so, sir, yes.’

‘Pretty bloody useful experience for when you get back to civvy street, I’d say.’

‘I’m not thinking that far ahead at the moment, sir.’

‘Nor me, Hirst. Tell me, have you heard of K-d-f Stadt?’

‘No sir.’

‘Have you heard of the K-d-f wagen?’

‘The Beetle? Yes, well to the extent that I read an article in Autocar, but I don’t know more than that. Is K-d-f Stadt where they’re made?’

‘Indeed, although the town is now called Wolfsburg. Forgive me if I get a little technical; the US 102nd Infantry took Fallersleben on April 10th, they were just a few miles away from the K-d-f factory but it wasn’t on any of their maps so they had no idea that it was there. In fact, I’m sure they’d have ignored it completely if it hadn’t been for the unpleasantness.’

♦

Marilyn’s parents, and for that matter Marilyn herself, at least for the moment, although it was Ishmael’s plan to change all that, lived at ‘Sorrento’, Hawk’s Lane, ‘Crockenfield.

Crockenfield is built in a valley. There is a meandering river, a very rustic old bridge, an Elizabethan pub with a very big car-park. There is a number of old flint cottages whose doors open right on to the road, and a lot of new houses with double garages set back in long gardens. It’s a nice place. It’s well worth a visit.

Hawk’s Lane runs parallel to the river but is set halfway up the valley. Detached houses are set at intervals along the lane. They have a lot of privacy. They have commanding views.

♦

‘Unpleasantness, sir?’

‘The only way the Nazis could keep the factory running, producing military versions of the K-d-f wagen, Kubelwagens I think they called them, was by using forced labour, prisoners of war. When the SS guards woke up to the fact that they were smack in the middle of the advancing American and Russian forces, they very wisely did a bunk, deserted. The prisoners broke free, smashed everything they could smash, looted the town, ambushed trains and threatened to set fire to the whole town.’

‘Good God.’

♦

‘Sorrento’ was one of the bigger, one of the more detached houses. It was very clean, very white. It had grounds, a croquet lawn, a patio with built-in barbecue, and a small swimming pool.

The gates that met the road were open. They were white and made from two wagon wheels. The drive was steep and uphill. Ishmael drove in as quietly as he could, then turned the car around so it was pointing out of the gates if he needed to make a quick getaway. Davey turned off the music. Ishmael turned off the engine. There was no sign of a Rolls-Royce but there was a brand new Japanese jeep parked by the front door.

Ishmael and Davey remained in the car waiting for something to happen. Nothing happened.

‘Turn the stereo on again,’ Ishmael said.

Ted Nugent’s ‘Motor City Madhouse’ filled the air. Something had to happen.

A woman came from round the side of the house. She might have been a housekeeper or cook. Certainly she had ‘servant’ written all over her.

‘Turn that racket down,’ she said.

It was turned down.

‘What are you selling?’ she asked.

Ishmael laughed a short, ironical laugh.

‘I’m not selling,’ he said.

‘What happened to your car?’ the woman asked, sounding genuinely concerned.

‘I’m here for Marilyn,’ Ishmael said, getting serious.

Clouds of gloom rolled over the woman’s face.

‘Oh dear. You’re not going to cause trouble are you?’

‘No,’ said Ishmael. ‘But I’m ready for it.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘I think I’d better talk to Marilyn’s father.’

‘He’s at work, isn’t he?’

Ishmael hadn’t thought about that.

‘It’s four o’clock in the afternoon,’ she went on. ‘Why aren’t you two at work?’

‘There’s three and a half million unemployed,’ Davey snarled. ‘Or hadn’t you heard?’

‘Would you like to see Marilyn’s mother?’

Ishmael hesitated. He didn’t have much faith in his ability to reach out and touch Marilyn’s mother. He hadn’t seen in her that capacity for communication that he’d seen in her husband.

‘Can’t I just see Marilyn?’

♦

‘All of which,’ Radclyffe continues, ‘I suspect would not have bothered the Yanks one whit if they hadn’t discovered that there were thirty children of American-German engineers being held in the camps there, and God alone knew what the looters were going to do next. The 102nd Infantry moved in, shot the odd looter to show they meant business, these Yanks look after their own. The children were discovered to be all in one piece, and the next morning there were two hundred US troops with Sherman tanks occupying the place.’

♦

‘Don’t be silly,’ said the woman. ‘Marilyn’s under lock and key, had her allowance stopped.’

Ishmael’s worst fears were confirmed.

‘And can you be surprised? Running around the country dressed like a harlot. Research she calls it. I’d give her research if she was a daughter of mine.’

‘Is that Marilyn’s room at the end there?’

‘No, it’s that one there.’

The woman pointed briefly to a dormer window set high amid eaves and chimneys. It looked impregnable.

‘Here, I shouldn’t have told you that. I suppose you think you’re smart. What’s your game, anyway?’

‘I’m here for Marilyn.’

‘Let’s not go through it all again, love. You can’t see Marilyn because she’s confined to her room and you can’t see her Dad because he’s not here. I can ask the lady of the house if she’ll see you, but I don’t know that she will, and if she isn’t willing to see you I’ll have to ask you to park your Volkswagen elsewhere.’

‘Hey,’ said Davey. ‘We’re on a mercy errand. We park where we want to park.’

‘Do you? I’ll give you mercy errand.’

‘Please, please,’ Ishmael said, ‘let’s stay rational. All right, yes, I would be prepared to talk to Marilyn’s mother if she has the time, if it’s at all convenient, please.’

‘Now that’s a much nicer way of talking to people.’

‘Thank you,’ said Ishmael.

It was a mistake.

♦

‘And all I can say is, thank God the Americans got there before the Russians did. As things are Wolfsburg lies four kilometres from the border with the Russian Zone, and such are the vagaries of war, Hirst, that despite the fact that the Americans captured the place they’ve handed it over to us and now it’s in the British Zone.’

‘Sounds like a good thing, sir.’

‘Not exactly.’

‘Sir?’

♦

Marilyn’s mother received Ishmael in the library. It seemed ironic, yet appropriate. She insisted on talking to him alone. Davey had to wait in the kitchen.

She was wearing a blue velour tracksuit, high heels and a lot of gold jewellery. Her hair and face firmly in place. It wasn’t the natural look, but Ishmael supposed it was all right. She was a good-looking woman in her way. Like mother, like daughter, Ishmael mused.

She was standing in the library with a copy of The Boys from Brazil in one hand and a large glass in the other. Ishmael couldn’t tell what was in the glass but from the way she treated it it was precious, it was alcoholic, and there was plenty of it. She didn’t offer Ishmael any of it.

‘Is Ishmael your real name?’

‘It’s real enough.’

‘Marilyn’s told us so much about you. We did rather seem to get off on the wrong foot last time.’

Ishmael relived the hammer hitting him in the groin.

‘Rather.’

‘We do worry about Marilyn.’

‘You think I don’t?’

‘I suspect you do, but hardly in the same way, I feel.’

‘I think my feelings are likely to be superior to any of yours, madam.’

Marilyn’s mother dropped her glass. It smashed. Ice cubes, drink, a slice of lemon and splinters of glass bounced around on the polished wood floor.

‘Would you be an angel and pick that up for me, Ishmael?’

He didn’t see how he could refuse. He knelt and started gathering the debris.

‘You are kind,’ she said.

Then she clubbed him over the head with a soda syphon.

♦

Radclyffe says, ‘We’ve just bombed the factory into absolute buggery. But, frankly, it’s the only decent bit of vehicle plant that we British have got. Oh yes, the bloody Americans carved it up very nicely for themselves. The American Zone just happens to contain the Mercedes, the Opel and the BMW factories, while the Russian Zone also has a BMW factory and an Auto Union plant at Zwickau.

‘We’re left with a more than half-bombed factory, and a pretty half-baked prototype.’

‘I don’t think, with respect, that you’re being quite fair, sir. The prototype seems viable enough. They certainly seemed to be quite acceptable as war vehicles. Damned sturdy little beasts they are too, I’d say.’

Colonel Radclyffe allows himself a smile of gentle satisfaction.

‘I see,’ he says. ‘So you know a good deal more about these vehicles than you were prepared to admit.’

♦

Things moved rather rapidly for Ishmael, though he was in no state to be aware of the fact. He wasn’t even conscious for some of it.

He felt the blow on the back of the head and more or less passed out, though he did have certain memories of various kinds of pain being inflicted on him while he was on the floor of the library so the unconsciousness could not have been absolute. Then he was outside the house and Marilyn’s mother was attacking Enlightenment with a fierce and drunken passion. She had a sledge-hammer which she used to telling effect on every panel of the car. Pieces of chrome and glass showered from it. She had some trouble smashing the windscreen, but not too much trouble.

Ishmael saw this wrecking through a haze of concussion, and then he was bundled behind the wheel. There was much screaming along the lines of ‘Never darken my doorstep again’ and as a parting shot Marilyn’s mother called Ishmael a sexual inadequate which he thought was unnecessary and unfair.

She returned to the house and slammed the door behind her. She probably needed a drink.

♦

‘Only an interested layman’s knowledge, sir,’ says Hirst. ‘Honestly.’

‘So, Hirst, what we have is a prototype which you are obviously rather enthusiastic about and obviously think is viable, a factory as described, and a gang of crazed POWs. Though, of course, they’re ‘Displaced Persons’ now. And this is precisely where you come in.’

♦

The servant woman who had been watching the show came over to the car to speak to Ishmael. He had no need to wind down a window, Marilyn’s mother had smashed that too.

‘You really ought to be getting along now, don’t you think?’ said the woman.

Ishmael agreed.

And then he heard the tyres of a Rolls-Royce turning into the drive. It was Marilyn’s father. Ishmael was filled with remorse. If only he had waited. If only he hadn’t rushed into a quick and futile confrontation with Marilyn’s mother.

Still he was not defeated. He threw open the door of Enlightenment and crossed unsteadily to the Rolls. Marilyn’s father stepped out of his car.

‘You again,’ he said.

‘Me,’ said Ishmael.

Ishmael put out his hand. Marilyn’s father more or less shook it. Ishmael knew he had to speak, to speak eloquently and boldly, to strike a man’s heart and to change that man’s mind.

‘Sir,’ he began. ‘May I call you sir? I want from you something that is the richest prize a man can have, and yet a prize that no man can own. I speak of Marilyn. And please don’t think I want to take her away from you, at least not emotionally. She will be with you always, in your heart and mind, and you in hers, if you let her be free to find her secret self…’

Marilyn’s father wasn’t especially attentive through most of the speech. He went to the boot of his car and started to take something out of it. Ishmael felt his audience slipping away from him.

‘Sir, I want your daughter. Give me her hand. Give me her all.’

Marilyn’s father had lost interest. Ishmael had lost more than that.

It was a shotgun that Marilyn’s father had been getting from the boot of the Rolls-Royce. He loaded it. He looked about to use it. Ishmael had never faced a man with a gun before, but if he couldn’t have Marilyn, what did it matter?

‘Do your worst!’ he cried.

♦

‘Where precisely do I come in, sir?’

‘The British army will be working alongside a group of international flotsam and jetsam, some of them on the brink of madness and starvation. Your Belgian stint should stand you in good stead. Admittedly there’s not much fuel or food or raw materials, and nobody’s going to think very much the worse of you if you decide after a few months that the whole thing was a rotten idea in the first place. But, at the least, your job is to get some vehicles repaired so that our men can use them, get these DPs working, and while you’re at it see if you can’t knock together a few of these people’s cars. We’re crying out for any sort of motorized transport, and I was thinking that one of these Beetle things might make a rather agreeable staff car.

‘See any problem at all, Hirst?’

‘No, sir,’ says Hirst wearily.

‘I’ve arranged some transport for you, Hirst.’

♦

Marilyn’s father paced over to Enlightenment, opened the engine cover and emptied the contents of his shotgun into the air-cooled flat-four unit.

‘You’re the clever little sod who made off with my wallet,’ he said, as though this explained something, then he too went into the house.

‘You really will have to be going now,’ the servant lady said.

Ishmael returned to his driver’s seat and took off the handbrake. The car rolled down the slope of the drive, through the gates and on to the road. It drifted gently and unpowered for a hundred yards or more along Hawk’s Lane. As the road sloped downhill it started to gain speed. He tried to brake. There were no brakes. He wrestled with the steering, tried to pull on the handbrake, and put the car in a ditch. It seemed as good a place as any.