Street Sleeper

Six

Ishmael slumped over the wheel. His arm rested on the horn boss. The horn didn’t work either.

His head ached. He started to cry, but that didn’t help much. Where had his eloquence been when he needed it? Come to that, where had his bloody ‘disciple’ been? There was no sign of Davey. He must have run away. Oh ye of little faith, but Ishmael couldn’t altogether blame him.

♦

A phone rings in the office of Cult Car. Terry answers it and has a conversation that Renata can’t quite hear, except to notice that Terry is saying ‘fuck’ at regular intervals. After he’s finished the call he crosses to Renata’s desk, looking authentically gloomy.

‘Got a scoop, chief?’ Renata asks.

‘The clown with the Vauxhall Velox has just wrapped it round a milk float on the way to the photo session. You’re just going to have to write me another article.’

‘My big break. Hope I don’t blow it! What on?’

‘How do I know? Three thousand words that doesn’t need much in the way of picture research.’

‘The big time.’

♦

Ishmael sat for a long time, worrying how he would explain the state of the car if he phoned for the AA. He didn’t know what was important any more.

A pale blue Beetle was approaching at great speed. As it got closer Ishmael could hear the savage tone of the modified engine, and at last he could see that Fat Les was driving.

The car did not appear to be slowing down, instead it appeared at one moment to be driving past at a dangerously high speed, the next moment it had stopped.

Les got out. He left the engine running. He looked at Ishmael and placed a fatherly hand through the broken window and on to his shoulder.

‘Are the bastards getting you down, then?’ he asked.

♦

Terry pours himself coffee. He then does a fair impersonation of a man thinking.

‘I’ve got it,’ he says. ‘Fifty Facts You Always Wanted to Know About the Volkswagen Beetle.’

‘You jest,’ Renata replies.

‘It’s got ‘winner’ written all over it.’

‘You’re only saying that because you don’t have to write it.’

♦

Fat Les drove. Ishmael didn’t know where. He supposed they were heading back to the railway arch, back to the kingdom. To the Zen pedestrian, as Ishmael supposed he now was, it was irrelevant. All places were one, and all of them rotten.

‘I was tailing you most of the way,’ Fat Les said. ‘I thought you might need some help. Think I was right. I lost you after the Dartford Tunnel, then I took a wrong turning. Finished up in Sevenoaks. Nice place. Well worth a visit.’

Ishmael didn’t say anything.

‘We’ll go back for the car tomorrow, eh? I’ll get a trailer. I can’t see anyone’s going to nick it. I didn’t think that car of yours could look any worse than it already did. I was wrong. Don’t worry, son, we’ll have it back on the road in no time. Better than new.’

His kindness only made Ishmael feel worse.

‘Remember the old thing with the hammer.’

‘Hammer?’ Ishmael asked.

‘You can have the same hammer all your life. You may have to replace the head a few times, you may have to replace the shaft a few times, but it’s still the same hammer.

‘It’s the same with cars. You take old Enlightenment back there. There’s nothing we can’t alter, nothing we can’t replace. We can strip it down to bare metal, take it apart and start again, but there’s something you don’t change.

‘Shit, I’m not even sure that people have souls, so I’m not one to judge, but there’s something about some motors, something in them — something I’d call soul. And when I saw that customized old rust bucket of yours, I saw it had a soul.’

‘That’s the nicest thing anybody’s said to me in a long time,’ said Ishmael.

♦

Renata looks at the draft of the editorial which is even now withering in her ‘pending’ tray.

‘OK, Terry, you get your Volkswagen article on two conditions. One, I don’t have to write this crappy editorial. Two, if this Lamborghini turns up, and I know there are no guarantees, but if it does, then I’m the one who gets to drive it.’

Terry pulls a face, turns away, slouches over to the other side of the office and stares out of the window, a picture of Great Russian misery. In the Cult Car office this passes for giving in gracefully.

♦

Driving with Fat Les was a real Zen experience. The Zen archer hits the target without aiming, but also without not aiming. He’s become one with the target, therefore, to miss the thing with which you are unified is not only a contradiction in terms, it is also impossible.

So, when Fat Les was driving he didn’t aim, in fact he hardly looked at the road at all. He didn’t seem to look in his mirror. He didn’t seem to pay much heed to traffic lights, or speed limits, or road markings saying ‘Slow’. He didn’t slow for corners, or junctions, or pedestrians. He juggled with a cigarette, a can of beer, a bag of salt and vinegar crisps, while at the same time trying to tune in the radio to something Wagnerian, and without letting up on the accelerator.

In an attempt to cheer up Ishmael he conducted an intense conversation about the difference in horsepower-gains various performance exhaust set-ups are likely to give, but he would break off from this at intervals and shout intense abuse at any driver who was progressing more sanely than himself.

In truth, the only time he notices other traffic is when it is in his way. His favourite advanced driving technique, when he finds a stretch of fast road, is to tuck in behind a sporty hatchback, preferably one with a few flashy accessories. He drives about eighteen inches behind the rear bumper and starts flashing his headlights madly. The other driver, feeling his virility threatened, accelerates gently thinking this is all that will be necessary, but it is not. Fat Les stays on his tail and their speeds climb, seventy-five, eighty, eighty-five. By now the driver in front realizes he is dealing with a situation not covered by the Highway Code, and he hates it. But he’s still the car in front, still thinks he will be able to burn off this Volkswagen in the end. Fat Les lets him savour this feeling by dropping back a couple of feet, then a couple of yards. The guy in front starts to think the contest is over and that he’s the winner. He relaxes just slightly, just too much. The Beetle pulls out to overtake, the engine takes on a new note. Suddenly, as though kicked in the backside by an invisible force, the Beetle shoots forward, passes the hatchback as if it is standing still. The look on Fat Les’s face is one of complete serenity. There is no strain, no effort, just the satisfied look of one who has established his rightful place on the road, ahead of everyone else.

♦

Renata’s typewriter rattles with a quiet desperation.

FIFTY FACTS YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT THE VOLKSWAGEN BEETLE

ONE: The only part of a Beetle never to have been modified in all its years of production is the rubber seal around the engine lid.

‘Now that is a thing I’ve always really wanted to know,’ Renata says to the air.

Half an hour later she is still in need of another forty-seven facts, and even more in need of a drink. It is then that Terry enters the office and calls her a witch. The Lamborghini Countach has just been delivered. Renata rushes out to it.

She straps herself in, spends a lot of time working out what is responsible for what on the dashboard, and takes to the road.

FACT: A recent American survey says that 11.5 per cent of Californian teenagers lose their virginity in a Volkswagen — over half succeeding in doing it in a cabriolet version.

FACT: The eccentric painter and stage-designer Philip Kaufmann became a recluse in 1972. Until his untimely death from carbon monoxide poisoning last year he had painted nothing but watercolours of his 1952 split-window Beetle.

All right, so she has made up these last two facts, but the imagination runs riot behind the wheel of a Lamborghini. And so what? Terry won’t read the article, the people who buy the magazine almost certainly won’t read it. What has she got to lose? Her journalist’s integrity? Her job?

♦

‘How did you learn to drive like that?’ Ishmael asked Fat Les.

‘Like what? I just drive normally.’

That’s what Ishmael liked about Les. He was instinctive. He was a primitive.

‘And I’ll tell you something else,’ Fat Les continued. ‘In thirty years of driving I’ve never had an accident. Mind you, I’ve seen plenty.’

♦

Renata finds the Lamborghini an animal to drive. It is sexy and black and desirable, but an animal. Renata doesn’t mind. She likes animals.

♦

Fat Les drove home via a scenic route. They stopped at a Little Chef for a homely, family-style meal. They chose the all-day breakfast.

Ishmael toyed with his mushrooms.

‘What do I do about Marilyn?’ he asked, not really of anyone in particular.

‘Buggered if I know,’ said Les. ‘You must really fancy this bird.’

‘I worship her,’ Ishmael said. ‘I’ve put her on a pedestal.’

‘Swipe me,’ said Les.

♦

Renata has always entertained some unsound fantasies about hitch-hikers. She knows that she is more likely to find a hitch-hiker who will rob and rape her than one who is the man of her dreams, but that’s how it is with fantasies. She picks up a youth. He is about seventeen, failing to grow a moustache, wearing a studded leather jacket and carrying a ghetto-blaster. He is not the man of her dreams but he doesn’t look like a robber or rapist either. She tells him she is a journalist.

‘That’s interesting.’

Silence.

‘How do you like the car?’ she tries again.

‘Not bad,’ Davey says. ‘Beetles are my favourite, though.’

The cockpit is cramped, not that the boy has much luggage, not any that Renata can see, just the ghetto-blaster and a carrier bag with some tapes in it. She hopes he at least has a pair of clean knickers.

‘Now there’s a coincidence,’ says Renata. ‘I don’t suppose you have forty or so facts that I’ve always wanted to know about the Volkswagen Beetle.’

‘Not really,’ he replies, taking her very seriously. ‘A friend turned me on to them, well I say friend, he’s more of a mentor really. I’m on my way to find him at the moment. If you’re a journalist you could write something about him. He’s an amazing character.’

Davey retells Ishmael’s story, from Branch Library to Nirvana, from librarian to chivalric pilgrim, the nature of the quest, the nature of the dragon, scenes of casual violence in town and country, the rescue of the fair Marilyn which must not fail.

‘Are you serious?’ Renata asks.

‘You want to interview him or not?’

‘Not. But I’d certainly be interested in doing something when you both get put behind bars.’

‘What are you trying to say?’

‘This friend of yours is obviously a fruitcake. What’s he trying to do — become the English Don Quixote, or the next Charles Manson?’

‘I think you’d better stop before you say something you regret.’

‘I’m not going to regret anything. And you’re even more stupid than you look if you fall for all that quasi-mystical bullshit. OK, you’re young and gullible, but take it from me, kid, if there’s one thing the sixties taught us it’s that the kind of thing your friend’s playing with just leads to a lot of bad business and a few blown minds.’

‘But this isn’t the sixties, you silly cow. Stop the car! You have to put up with a lot when you’re hitch-hiking but I’m not going to sit here and have my most precious beliefs spat on. Let me out at that Little Chef over there.’

♦

Ishmael looked absently through the large window. A car that was a streak of black, lacquered metal pulled up.

‘What’s that?’ he said to Fat Les.

‘Lamborghini Countach.’

The passenger door flapped open. Davey got out. He said something to the driver, the door closed, the car left. He walked into the Little Chef, sat down at Ishmael’s table, expressed no surprise at his being there and said, ‘Those Lambos, they’re some car, pity that the people who drive them are such scumbags.’

He looked at the menu. Ishmael introduced Les and Davey to each other. At first Ishmael wasn’t going to take him to task for his desertion, but as Davey sat there at the plastic table, all youthful, cocky arrogance, it all boiled up inside.

‘Where were you when I needed you?’ Ishmael spluttered.

‘I was in the kitchen.’

‘I know that. Why weren’t you where I was?’

‘I didn’t see any point in us both getting smacked about.’

Ishmael fumed.

‘While you were in the library getting coshed I was having a good look through the kitchen drawers. Here, I’ve got something for you.’

He dropped a set of keys into Ishmael’s palm.

Davey said, ‘A lot of people keep a spare set of house keys somewhere in the kitchen. Silly of them.’

♦

At first Ishmael was all for returning to ‘Sorrento’ the moment it was dark, breaking in, and freeing Marilyn.

But Fat Les advised caution. He advised going home, having eight or nine pints of bitter and getting plastered. Ishmael tried to argue, but Fat Les was the driver, and Ishmael was persuaded that he might feel more in the mood for burglary when his pains and bruises had receded slightly.

Davey occupied the rear seat as they returned to Fat Les’s arch. Davey was subdued because Fat Les wouldn’t let him play any of his tapes.

‘You can hear some real music when we get home,’ he said, meaning Wagner.

They arrived home. Les put The Flying Dutchman on his stereo, opened a few four-pint cans of beer and became a very happy man.

For a time they were all happy men, then Davey became ill. Ishmael was happier longer than Davey but then the beer just seemed to make his aches and tiredness worse. He slept on a pile of secondhand tyres. It wasn’t the worst place he’d ever slept.

♦

By the time Ivan Hirst gets to Wolfsburg he is nearly forty, but he is one of those men who has always looked nearly forty. His hair is brushed and oiled into an effect of polished blackness. He has a thick, slightly wayward moustache that perches above a mouth that for preference grips a short, straight pipe.

‘I say, Atkinson,’ Hirst says brightly. ‘Do you know why the Beetle has two tailpipes?’

Atkinson, a young lieutenant, a joiner in real life, offers, ‘Something to do with the fact that it’s air-cooled?’

Hirst smiles his boyish smile and says, ‘No, no, they’re fittings for broom handles.’

‘Sir?’

‘So that when the wretched things conk out you can stick a couple of broom handles up the tailpipes and use the blighter as a wheelbarrow.’

Hirst laughs with great satisfaction. This is one of his favourite jokes, used frequently and to great effect.

‘But surely, sir, they’re too close together.’

‘It is a joke, Atkinson.’

‘And surely, sir, with respect, that would only apply to a model with a soft top.’

‘Carry on, Atkinson.’

♦

When Ishmael woke up next morning he could see Fat Les fiddling with a brake drum from a Beetle. He could see Davey going through some martial-arts exercises. Ishmael was sorry he didn’t have some similar form of morning discipline. He wished that Marilyn was with him. He was glad that he didn’t have to go to work. He wished Enlightenment was still in one piece, but he was glad that at least he had the keys to ‘Sorrento’. It was a morning of mixed blessings.

Les had made some tea. It was vile. There was nothing to eat. They began to devise a plan.

Les would borrow a trailer from his mate down the road.

They would reclaim Enlightenment, put it on the trailer, leave car and trailer with a mate of Fat Les’s in Dartford.

They would wait until night.

Davey would black his face with boot polish. (Ishmael thought this was a bit excessive, but Davey insisted.)

They would return to ‘Sorrento’, Les would park a little way away, Davey and Ishmael would attempt to enter the house, preferably by the kitchen door, for which they had a key. Davey would then stand guard downstairs while Ishmael went to Marilyn’s room, unlocking the door with another key from the bunch. Ishmael would enter her room, there would be a short, tearful reunion, but that would have to wait until later. They would steal out, locking doors behind them so that Marilyn’s absence would not be noticed until the next day. They would return to Dartford, pick up trailer and Enlightenment and drive on to Fat Les’s railway arch.

Fat Les would patch up Enlightenment.

Ishmael and Marilyn would start a new life together. Steps 1 to 4 presented no problem.

Colonel Radclyffe has not exaggerated the deprivations and difficulties that prevail at Wolfsburg. There are all kinds of shortage, various kinds of madness. And there is also the problem of ideological purity. The whole factory workforce is having to undergo the unlovely process of ‘denazification’. Hirst has already lost a couple of his best mechanics because they retained threads of loyalty to Hitler. Among the enforced labour there are still attempts at looting, lots of petty violence and fighting, and Hirst can only partly blame them. Repatriation is starting, at least for some, for others (and there are plenty like this) there is no country that wants them. And above all, the military government can’t make up its bloody mind as to whether it might not be a lot easier for all concerned simply to dismantle the whole factory and share out its assets as reparations.

♦

Step 5 swung into action. Fat Les parked his Beetle a couple of hundred yards from the gates of ‘Sorrento’. It was well hidden by hedge and an overhanging tree.

‘Couldn’t you park a bit nearer?’ Ishmael asked.

‘Why?’

‘Two hundred yards is quite a long way to run if you’re being chased by some irate father with a shotgun.’

‘You’ll be all right,’ Fat Les said, reassuringly. ‘That’s just the sort of incentive you need. You’ll be back here like a greyhound if it comes to that. But it won’t, will it?’

‘No, no, I hope…no, of course it won’t.’

Sometimes there was no arguing with Fat Les.

It was midnight. Ishmael hoped that Marilyn’s mother and father were heavy sleepers. He and Davey got out of the car and approached ‘Sorrento’. Davey was acting nonchalant. Ishmael was trying to. He wasn’t sure he had the temperament for this kind of work. His hands were visibly shaking. The gates to the house were locked. They climbed over. Davey was cat-like. Ishmael was not.

The house was in darkness. Ishmael had hoped that Marilyn’s light might still be on. It wasn’t.

They each had a small hand-torch. They hadn’t wanted anything too bright, for fear of giving themselves away. The torches cast small pools of dirty, yellow light as Ishmael and Davey negotiated the drive. One of the pools was noticeably trembling. They rounded the house and found the kitchen door.

‘Know anything about burglar alarms?’ Davey asked.

Ishmael shook his head.

‘Me neither,’ Davey said.

Ishmael held the torch while Davey tried each of the keys in turn. None fitted. Davey held the torch while Ishmael tried. For a moment Ishmael felt blissful relief. If none of the keys fitted perhaps they could go home and try another time. Then he mentally flayed himself for his lack of purpose.

‘Know what the trouble is?’ Davey whispered.

Ishmael shook his head again.

‘The door’s not locked.’

Davey turned the handle of the kitchen door. The door opened. They went in. Davey looked around and selected a seat at the breakfast bar.

‘OK, Batman,’ he said. ‘Go get her.’

Ishmael couldn’t help thinking that Davey sometimes had a very flippant attitude for a disciple.

♦

In 1943 the Humber Company, by arrangement with the Ministry of Supply, published a detailed technical report and assessment on a modified Volkswagen captured in the Libyan desert in the aftermath of Alamein — a German Light Aid Detachment Vehicle Type VW82. The report, which took eight months to compile, eschews wartime austerity in its production. It contains sixty-four glossy, foolscap pages, clothbound like some particularly rare collectors’ edition. With patriotic obsessiveness the report details the complete dismantling of the vehicle, the weight of every component is noted, every type of metal is analysed. One is fascinated to learn that the vehicle’s actual unladen weight is 14cwt 3qr, even though the vehicle’s identification plate states that the figure is 13cwt, 1qr, 26lb.

♦

A strange house at night, in darkness. Things change their shape, their nature. A grandfather clock becomes a hooded figure, a telephone table becomes a small vicious animal, a portrait on the wall becomes the face of God or the devil.

The hallway and stairs held few horrors. They were thickly carpeted. It was easy to walk quietly. He climbed the stairs which ended in a long landing that disappeared round corners at each end. Ishmael knew that Marilyn’s room must be one floor higher than this, so around one of these corners there had to be another set of stairs leading up to Marilyn.

On the landing he could see perhaps four doors and noticed, with a sudden acute sick feeling, that light was visible round one of them.

He flattened himself against one of the walls, just the way they do in films. Then he could hear a voice behind the door. It was a woman’s voice and it was singing ‘Send in the Clowns’. It sounded like Marilyn’s mother. The singing became louder and it was obvious that she was very drunk. She didn’t have a bad voice.

Then a light appeared under one of the other doors. There were the sounds of someone getting out of bed, of moving to the door and opening it. Ishmael hid round a corner of the landing — no staircase there. The second bedroom door opened and heavy, angry footsteps marched to the first bedroom. It was Marilyn’s father. Separate bedrooms, eh? He flung open his wife’s door. They had a loud, colourful exchange in which he said she was a disgrace to motherhood and womanhood, and if she wanted to sing she should go down the pub which was where she belonged in any case. She said anybody would take to drink if they had to live with him, and then she taunted him about the size of his penis. Ishmael felt she got the better of this exchange. Marilyn’s father stormed back to his own bedroom. His door slammed. His light snapped off.

The door to Marilyn’s mother’s bedroom remained open. She slouched in the doorway in a drunken but appealing fashion. Ishmael thought he had stayed out of sight while the previous scene had been played, but now it seemed he had been wrong. She had seen him. She started speaking to him. At first he thought she must be talking to herself, but it soon became obvious she was actually speaking to him.

‘That was a close thing,’ she said. ‘You found the door I left open for you, Gerry. I’m glad you got my message. I’m glad you came. I did get your name right? It is Gerry? From the television repair shop. Don’t just stand there, silly, come in, have a drink.’

Ishmael went in.

♦

What especially interests Major Ivan Hirst about the Humber report are the ‘purely personal views’ of the chaps in the Engineering Division. ‘Looking at the general picture we do not consider that the design represents any special brilliance…and it is suggested that it is not to be regarded as an example of first-class modern design to be copied by British Industry.’

‘Well,’ thinks Hirst, ‘there was a war on, after all. I suppose it must have been good for morale to know that the enemy was driving around in vehicles ‘without any special brilliance’.’

♦

The bedroom was a soft-pornographer’s dream of heaven. The concept resembled a hall of mirrors decked out with purple, black and chrome accessories. The bed was vast and a tangle of silk and fur, and Marilyn’s mother, in order that she might contrast nicely with the rest of the room, was wearing a couple of flaps of white silk.

But Ishmael didn’t get much of a chance to look around the room, and Marilyn’s mother didn’t get much of a chance to look round him, because she reached for the dimmer-switch and the room descended into romantic dusk.

She relaxed on the bed. Ishmael tried to keep his face averted.

‘Make us a couple of drinks,’ she said.

He went to the Chinese sideboard, black and glossy, and took as much time as he could pouring two whiskies. It enabled him to keep his back to the bed.

‘When I saw you loading those heavy televisions into that van, I thought ‘I’ve got to have him’. That’s the kind of woman I am, Gerry. I take what I want, Gerry, and I want you — urgently.’

Ishmael continued taking his time with the drinks.

‘God, you are the strong silent type, aren’t you?’

Ishmael could hear her settling herself on the bed. He glanced over his shoulder and saw that she had tossed her head back into the sea of pillows, and that her eyes were closed in anticipation of some impending ecstasy. He filled her glass to the brim. He took it over to the bed and placed it in her hand. Some of the whisky spilled on to her chest.

With eyes still closed she knocked back half the drink then said, ‘Do it to me, stud. Do it now and do it hard.’

♦

Now it is 1946. It is ‘Post-war’. Why then, Hirst asks himself, does this Humber attitude persist? He has now in his possession a volume called Investigation into the Design and Performance of the Volkswagen or German People’s Car. It reprints the Humber report and compares that modified military vehicle with a side-valve Hillman Minx Mark HI, and also with a post-war Volkswagen which has recently been sent from Wolfsburg to Humber’s experimental department.

For Hirst it is like reading the school report of his first-born. At first the report seems favourable, favourable enough certainly for Sir William Rootes to arrange a visit to Wolfsburg. There are all sorts of options that Sir William might take up. He could have the rights to manufacture the Volkswagen, in Germany, in Britain, modified as he sees fit, on almost any terms he cares to name.

The visit is brief and formal, and at the end of it Sir William announces that he does not want Wolfsburg, does not want the Volkswagen, does not want any part of them, not at any price, not even as a gift, not even if you paid him.

Later the men from Ford will say much the same, and by then Hirst will have stopped being surprised. Morale is as much an issue in peace as it is in war. Of course one doesn’t fight a world war merely to decide at the end of the day that actually the Germans had one or two good ideas.

♦

Ishmael was shocked. Perhaps he shouldn’t have been. Perhaps he was not quite as liberal as he liked to think. Of course he was all for Marilyn’s mother being who and what she wanted to be. However, it still came as a bit of a stunner to be mistaken for a bit of rough by one’s prospective mother-in-law.

He did think, briefly, about doing it now and doing it hard, if for no other reason than it would keep her quiet and that she might fall asleep afterwards, but he decided against it. He’d had a rough couple of days. He was nervous as a kitten just being in the house, never mind her bedroom, so he doubted that he would be anybody’s idea of a stud. Also, he wasn’t Gerry. Also, although he knew that love and hate are often like two ponies in the same harness, he didn’t find it especially easy to have any sexual feelings for a woman who had already beaten him up twice. Also, he wondered whether it might technically be a form of incest.

Fortunately alcohol came to the rescue. Marilyn’s mother finished her drink. He gave her his own drink and that went rapidly in the same direction.

‘Come down here, damn you,’ she said. ‘I want to get a good look at you.’

She yanked him by the shoulders and he fell clumsily across the purple sheets. She gave him an uncoordinated, but deeply-felt French kiss. Ishmael felt safe enough kissing. While he was involved in that activity his face would be too close for Marilyn’s mother to focus on.

‘Oh, that’s nice,’ she moaned when they broke for breath. ‘That’s very nice.’

Then she pulled away. She held his face in her hands and looked into his eyes.

‘You’re not Gerry at all,’ she said. ‘You’re…’

And then she passed out.

It was time Ishmael had a piece of luck.

♦

Hirst realizes, and is frequently reminded, that technology is no more apolitical than art or military science. And if we find it hard enough to hate the sin but love the sinner, how can we hate the sinner yet still want to develop one of his pet projects?

One way is to assert that the Volkswagen was the product of Ferdinand Porsche, rather than of Adolf Hitler. Dr Porsche has just been made sharply aware that engineering is not an abstract or neutral activity. If, before the war, he was unaware of Hitler’s use of motorsport as propaganda for international Nazism, his sudden incarceration by the French as a war criminal must have removed the scales from his eyes.

The French, of course, do not seriously believe that Dr Porsche is a war criminal in any true sense, in fact they find his activities in the war so atrocious that they try to enlist his help in developing the Renault 4CV.

♦

Ishmael left Marilyn’s mother to her dreams, gently closed her bedroom door and went in search of the staircase to Marilyn’s room. It was not hard to find. It was short, steep and led only to one door. He searched among his keys and found the one that opened the door. He turned it. The door opened. He stepped inside.

‘Marilyn,’ he said, in a loud whisper.

He could make out a pile of clothes on the floor. He could make out the bed, and asleep in the bed, her hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm, Marilyn.

He shook her gently and placed a kiss on her cheek. Her eyes opened, registered terror, then recognition, then terror again, then they refused to commit themselves.

‘Oh, Marilyn, it’s been so long.’

‘My God, what are you doing here?’

‘I’m your knight in shining armour. I’ve come to rescue you.’

‘That’s very nice, but…’

‘You don’t need to say anything. Words are useless at times like this. It’s all right, I know what’s been happening. How could they lock you up? How patriarchal can they get?’

‘I’m sure Daddy thinks he has my best interests at heart.’

‘Do you?’

‘Well, usually.’

Marilyn turned on her bedside lamp. Ishmael could see she was naked in bed. It had never been like this with Debby.

‘How did you get in?’ Marilyn demanded. ‘How did you even know where I lived? How did you unlock my door? How are you ever going to get away with this?’

‘There’s a fast car waiting. I have friends ready to take you away from all this.’

‘Whereto?’

‘There’s a railway arch I suppose we could stay in.’

Marilyn wasn’t impressed.

‘Or, or, I’ve met some people on a commune.’

‘Now I’ve always wanted to stay on a commune. It could really help me with my novel. You haven’t asked me how my novel’s going.’

Ishmael asked how her novel was going.

‘It’s so hard, you know. Every day I have to sit down, confront the empty page and fill it. It’s so hard. It’s amazing that anybody can ever do it.’

Ishmael had been a librarian. It had ceased to amaze him a long time ago.

‘I was wondering whether it might make a screenplay,’ Marilyn continued. ‘Because it’s a very visual subject — the road, space, the land, the air. I can see it in filmic terms. The casting would be very important.’

‘Please, Marilyn, we really have to get going.’

‘Have to?’

‘There’s so much to explain and this isn’t the time or the place.’

‘Before I run into the night with some man I hardly know I want a few explanations. Or do you think I’m being unreasonable?’

Ishmael gave all the explanations he could. The most important being that he worshipped her, that he put her on a pedestal, and that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.

‘In a railway arch,’ Marilyn snorted.

‘Or a commune. Or anywhere so long as we’re together.’

‘It’s just sudden, that’s all. But I suppose it might be fun. At least until I go back to Oxford at the end of the vac. A real writer can’t afford to turn down any experience. You’re on.’

She packed a small case, put on leopardskin trousers and a dinner jacket, and they were ready to go. They would have made it too, if they hadn’t run into Gerry the television repair man.

♦

Colonel Radclyffe tells Hirst bluntly, ‘The Russians have stationed two officers and thirty men in Wolfsburg, and if the worst comes to the worst they’re quite capable of marching into the factory and waltzing off with whatever ‘reparations’ take their fancy.’

‘They wouldn’t dare,’ Hirst says.

‘Major Hirst, I don’t really think there’s anyone in England who would relish an international incident with an ally over a few presses and the odd generator.’

‘We’re not talking about a few presses and the odd generator. We’re talking about a modern, viable motor factory, perfectly capable of manufacturing high quality vehicles in bulk.’

♦

Ishmael and Marilyn were creeping along the landing in one direction when they encountered someone doing precisely the same from the opposite direction. They were soon to learn that it was Gerry, Marilyn’s mother’s bit of rough, but at that moment they saw only a towering heavily-built stranger carrying a bottle of Southern Comfort and two tumblers.

Marilyn screamed, Ishmael let out a yell, and Gerry the television repair man dropped his bottle and glasses.

The light was switched on in Marilyn’s father’s room and seconds later they were confronted by the man himself. He switched on a lot of lights and covered all three of them with a shotgun.

‘In there,’ he said.

Ishmael was back in the library.

‘You might as well take a seat,’ Marilyn’s father said. ‘You’re not going anywhere, at least not yet.’

The three captives sat in a row on a red velour settee.

‘I can explain,’ Marilyn said.

‘I can explain,’ her father bawled. ‘I have one man trying to steal my daughter. I have another attempting to have sleazy sex with my wife. The two of you break into my house…’

‘Steady on,’,Gerry said. ‘Nobody broke in. Your missus left the back door open. I can see why you’re a bit upset.’

‘A BIT UPSET! Do you know how it feels to have your territory invaded? Your own house? Your castle? Do you know how it feels to discover that your wife has become a nymphomaniac lush? To have a daughter who’d rather stay in a seedy motel with some lunatic in a Volkswagen than stay with her own father? Can you imagine how that feels?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Ishmael said. ‘I think I probably can imagine. I think I can really empathize with that.’

‘SHUT UP! SHUT UP YOU IMBECILE!’

Ishmael shut up.

‘A Volkswagen. A German car. Who won the war?’

‘We did,’ Ishmael said helpfully.

‘Did we? I could pick up the phone, call the police, tell them I’ve caught a couple of thieves. It would take them hours to get here. There’d be a hundred different forms of bureaucracy, and at the end of the day the courts would pat you on the head and tell you not to do it again. More important it would come out that I was a cuckold, that my daughter hated me, that I couldn’t even keep my own back door locked. How do you imagine that would feel?’

‘Reckon it’d be a real sickener,’ Gerry said. ‘So we’ll call it quits, eh?’

♦

Colonel Radclyffe plays his trump card.

‘Do you think, Hirst, that you know more about motor production than Sir William Rootes?’

‘In this limited field of operation, yes.’

‘By God, Hirst, I ‘like your spirit. Prove it then. Make a success of Wolfsburg. The Russians won’t have the bloody nerve to dismantle a factory operated by the British that’s producing a thousand cars a month.’

‘A thousand.’

‘You get production to that level and nobody is going to take your pet factory away from you, Hirst. I’ll see to that.’

♦

‘Quits? I don’t quit. I’m going to carry on until I win. Do you know how it is once you’re successful in this world? No, I don’t suppose you do. Once you’ve got your own business, once you’re a public figure, with your own Rolls-Royce, do you think people come up, slap you on the back and say, well done old chap? They do not. Instead the pygmies, the parasites, just try to destroy you. They try to ruin your business, take your wife, vandalize your Rolls-Royce. They try to drag you down to their stinking level, but I’m not going down to your level.’

‘Daddy, nobody’s trying to drag you down. You’re a highly respected man. You’re too good a man to be threatening people with your shotgun in the middle of the night.’

Ishmael liked this development. If they were going to emerge from ‘Sorrento’ unscathed, Marilyn was the one most likely to effect it.

‘I’ll thank you for a little respect,’ her father snapped. ‘I’ll thank you to keep quiet and speak when you’re spoken to like a decent daughter should.’

‘Don’t come the heavy father with me,’ Marilyn said, adding, ‘I’ll say what I like and I don’t need your permission, you old fart. Fuck you.’

Ishmael’s hopes drooped. He started to get fatalistic. Would he be arrested? Would he be shot? Would he live or die? It was all in the hands of fate. It was all in the hands of Marilyn’s father.

Marilyn’s father said, ‘I’m going to let you go.’

‘Well done, chief,’ Gerry said. ‘Very good decision.’

‘SHUT UP!’

Gerry shut up.

‘I’ll let you go, and I’m going to call a few friends of mine, a few other members of the Crockenfield Blazers.’

Crockenfield Blazers?

Marilyn said, ‘They’re a group of mad fascist bastards who drive Range Rovers, play at being country squires, and shoot things.’

‘Tonight they’ll just be shooting at two things,’ her father chuckled.

‘Hey, play the white man,’ said Gerry. ‘I didn’t even get as far as the bedroom door.’

‘You didn’t miss much,’ Marilyn’s father said.

Having been beyond the bedroom door Ishmael thought Gerry had probably missed a lot, but he held his tongue.

‘The Crockenfield Blazers enjoy a bit of sport, even if it is the middle of the night.’

He put down the shotgun and picked up the phone.

‘Robin, I know it’s late, I’ve caught two intruders. No, it’s not a police matter. I’m about to let them out. Phone round the others will you and we’ll give these two quite a send off. I don’t know whether we’ll kill ‘em or not, as in all hunting they have more than a sporting chance. Well then, the hunt is on.’

‘Daddy, this is absurd.’

‘Get to your room, Marilyn, and stay there. I wouldn’t want to have to shoot my own daughter.’

‘You’re insane, Daddy, genuinely insane.’

Since this assessment appeared to be perfectly correct she went to her room.

‘I’ll be there in a moment to lock you in again.’

Then he turned to Gerry the television repair man and Ishmael.

‘You’d better start running,’ he said.

They started running.

♦

Hirst rapidly learns the value of food and blankets. With these he can buy the labour and expertise of key personnel. A coal train is ‘diverted’ to fuel the power station that serves Wolfsburg. The military government is persuaded to bring to life the factories which manufacture essential Volkswagen supplies.

On 1 April 1946 Major Ivan Hirst sends a signal to Colonel R.C. Radclyffe. It reads ‘Target Achieved’.

Hirst is photographed behind the wheel of the thousandth Beetle. The production line is decked with foliage, the nearest thing they could find to bunting. Hirst has a bottle of light ale to celebrate, lights a pipe, and has to be very careful indeed not to let his men see how his eyes are watering with pride.

♦

Gerry the television repair man was gone in an instant, knocking over small items of furniture as he went.

Ishmael left the house as calmly as he could. There was no sign of Davey but he trusted that Fat Les and his fast Beetle were still where he had left them. They would have to leave without Marilyn but at least he wouldn’t be shot and they would live to fight another day.

As he climbed over the gates of ‘Sorrento’ he could already hear shots being fired. They weren’t being fired in anger, more in fun. These Crockenfield Blazers moved fast and Crockenfield was not a big village. The shots did not come from far away. Then dogs started to bark and car horns could be heard from different parts of the valley.

Part of him was surprised to find that Fat Les was still there. The way the evening had been progressing he almost expected to find nothing more than a few tyre tracks. But the car was there and Fat Les was behind the wheel, picking at something under his shirt.

‘What are those shots?’ he asked. ‘Where’s the bird? Where’s Davey? What’s happening?’

‘Marilyn’s locked in her room. God knows where Davey is and those shots belong to a bunch of nutters who are looking to shoot me and a television repair man.’

‘Explain.’

Ishmael explained rapidly.

‘What a fuck up,’ Fat Les said.

‘Thank God we’ve got a fast getaway car.’

‘This father of hers is starting to get right on my tits,’ Fat Les said thoughtfully. ‘I think it’s time that rich ponce was sorted out.’

‘Another time. Let’s live to fight another day.’

‘What’s wrong with fighting today?’

‘I think we’d lose,’ Ishmael said.

‘Not with these,’ said Fat Les, and he smiled a wicked smile.

♦

Winners and losers. After the war. The Volkswagen factory is given back to the Germans. On 1 January 1948 Heinz Nordhoff takes up the post of general manager of Volkswagenwerk. He is a former member of the Opel board, he visited America in the thirties to study marketing and mass production, and he spent the war in charge of the Opel truck factory in Brandenberg. His credentials are in order. He is as untainted by Nazism as any German industrialist is likely to be.

The factory will remain under British control until the September of the following year, but the principle is established. We fight, we win, and when the spoils of victory appear worthless we hand them back to the losers and see what they can do with them.

♦

On the back seat of Fat Les’s Beetle there was a crate containing milk bottles filled with some kind of clear liquid.

‘I haven’t been sitting here twiddling my thumbs,’ Fat Les said. ‘I thought these might come in handy.’

The smell of petrol drifted from the car.

‘Petrol bombs?’ said Ishmael. ‘I think you know what I’m going to say about violence.’

‘You make me a bit vexed sometimes, Ishmael, you really do. Some bunch of chinless wonders are trying to shoot the arse out from under you and you start getting ethical.’

Suddenly Ishmael knew Fat Les was right. He had whetted Ishmael’s almost blunted purpose.

‘Show some spirit, son.’

‘Yes,’ Ismael said.

‘Show some backbone. Show some balls.’

‘Yes,’ said Ishmael. ‘Yes indeed.’

Fat Les saw that Ishmael’s face was transformed into a mask of determined anger, a touch of heroism, a touch of madness.

‘That’s my boy,’ Fat Les said.

They drove to the gates of ‘Sorrento’. Marilyn’s father was just leaving the house. It had taken him some time to lock up Marilyn. He was walking down the drive, wearing a dressing-gown and Wellingtons, his shotgun in his hand. Of course, the moment he saw a Beetle parked at his front gate he lost control. He fired wildly and missed completely.

‘That fucker’s trying to shoot my motor,’ Fat Les said. ‘That’s strictly out of order.’

He got out of the car, hid behind a hedge, fiddled with bottles, bits of rag and a Zippo lighter, then hurled two petrol bombs over the hedge. A curve of flickering light arched through the night, hitting the drive and exploding into orange and black.

‘Well done,’ said Ishmael. ‘Can I throw the next one?’

♦

Nordhoff makes a number of extraordinary and, it will be proved, brilliant decisions. First he re-establishes contact with Ferdinand Porsche, appointing him as design consultant and paying his company a royalty on every Beetle produced. (The French had to release Porsche eventually.)

Nordhoff then decides, like Henry Ford of old, that Volkswagen will be a one-model manufacturer, and, more importantly for the cult status of the Beetle, and although he is prepared for some gentle refining of the body design, he wants to keep the old shape. Evolution, not revolution. He sees himself as a polisher of Dr Porsche’s diamond, not as a cutter.

The rest is automobile history — constant refinement but the soul remains the same, that and phenomenal production figures:

1948

19,244

1949

46,146

1950

81,979

1954

202,174

1956

333,190

These are more than just damned lies. By 1956 Germany has replaced Britain as Europe’s top motor manufacturer. The 100,000th Beetle was completed on 4 March 1950. By August 1955 the figure had reached one million. Between 1965 and 1971 the best part of 7 million Beetles had been manufactured. And in Mexico in May of 1981 there are celebrations for the production of the 20 millionth Beetle. Ivan Hirst is in attendance. He allows himself more than a light ale.

♦

Ishmael stood at the gates of ‘Sorrento’, milk bottle in hand.

‘We’re ready for you,’ he yelled. ‘There’s no need to hunt us down. We’re here.’

‘Nicely put,’ said Fat Les.

‘You lot make me sick,’ Ishmael continued. ‘You people with your Range Rovers and your credit cards. Let’s see what you’re made of.’

The petrol explosion had acted as a signal for the Crockenfield Blazers. Ishmael and Fat Les would very soon see what they were made of. Headlamps shone across the valley. Lower, by the bridge and the river, excited dogs ran and howled. Ishmael was ready. From the darkness they could suddenly see two pairs of rapidly approaching headlights. The cars were driving towards Ishmael and Fat Les, side by side, one car driving down the wrong side of the road. The lights were on full beam. Their horns were blaring. Somebody leaned out of one of the cars and fired a shotgun.

Ishmael arched backwards then flung a petrol bomb into the path of the two advancing cars. Flame erupted in the centre of the road and the two cars plunged into the hedges at the sides to avoid the explosion.

‘Feels good, doesn’t it?’ Fat Les said.

Ishmael had to agree. They got in the car.

‘Where are we going?’ Ishmael asked.

‘Not far, look ahead.’

♦

On 17 January 1949 the Holland America Line’s ship Westerdam arrives in New York. In its hold is a grey Beetle saloon, chassis number 1-090195, engine number 1-120847. It belongs to Ben Pon who has been sent to America by Nordhoff to interest dealers in becoming agents for Volkswagen in America. He can hardly stir the slightest interest.

As he circulates New York dealers, who are anticipating an explosion of affluence, of fins and chrome, a casting-off of austerity in favour of motor design that is slick, erotic and occasionally laughable, Pon must surely have thought that Sir William Rootes, and Ernest Breech of Ford who said the Beetle was ‘not worth a damn’, were being proved horribly right. If nothing else these men must have known their market. The response he gets is always the same. Who won the war? We beat the bastards fair and square, now we’re supposed to buy their cars so that they can rebuild their economy. What do they take us for? Bums?

♦

There was a Range Rover parked a little way ahead. Two men were standing beside it. One of them shouted, ‘Stop the car. Stop right where you are.’ Fat Les stopped the car. It seemed to make everyone happy.

The other man called, ‘Get out. Let’s have a look at you.’

They got out to be looked at.

‘They don’t look like very much to me,’ one of the Range Rover men said.

These two didn’t have shotguns. One had a fairly savage-looking piece of chain, the other was carrying a piece of wood about the size and shape of a cricket bat, but it was jagged with nails sticking out of it.

‘They must be the poor relations,’ Fat Les said.

The two pairs of men stood about a cricket pitch’s length apart, gunslingers at a double shoot-out.

‘We may not look like much,’ Ishmael said, ‘but you’d be surprised. You know the problem with chains and bits of wood is that you have to get close before you can use them. You’re not going to get close.’

Suddenly there were petrol bombs in Fat Les and Ishmael’s hands. They threw them. One landed on the roof of the Range Rover, the other just in front of it. The two men ran and dived for cover. It took a while for their vehicle to catch fire, but catch fire it did.

‘Had enough yet?’ Fat Les asked.

‘Not nearly enough,’ said Ishmael.

‘That’s my boy.’

Then they heard the sound of a two-tone horn. Whether it was police, fire or ambulance they didn’t know, but it was time to be going. Fat Les took the remaining bottles out of the car, dropped them in the middle of the road to form a zebra crossing of petrol and broken glass. He threw a piece of burning rag at the petrol. A sheet of flame danced satisfyingly from the tarmac. They returned to the Beetle, drove round the wreck of the Range Rover and set off again into some unimaginable future of love, revenge, class warfare and oral sex.