Geoff Nicholson - Street Sleeper

♦

‘And if your Herr Hitler plunges Europe into war?’

‘Then, Herr Richard, I suppose it will not much matter if we have our own motorcars or not.’

‘Then I suppose, Nina, your fine motor factory, dedicated to producing cars for the people, might very easily be switched to military production, and who knows, your people’s car itself could perhaps quite easily be converted into a vehicle of war.’

♦

‘Did you see my sign outside?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Ishmael.

‘Remember what it said?’

‘Fat Les — the Vee-Dub King.’

‘Right. The King. Not Fat Les the Vee-Dub bodger, not Fat Les the Vee-Dub wanker. The King.’

‘It’s a very nice sign. Did you do it yourself?’

Fat Les stared at him, as sullen as a hippy from Fox’s Farm.

‘Let me tell you something.’

‘Please,’ said Ishmael.

‘Let me tell you what I do with Volkswagens.’

‘This is really great.’

‘Let’s say you need a new engine. You could have it rebored, turboed, hot-rodded, supercharged. I could bolt in a Porsche, or we could get really flash and put a Rover V8 up the front end. Then we’d get new carbs, heavy-duty fan and oil cooler, racing cam, performance exhaust, probably with a zoom tube. If we’re doing that lot you’re going to have to up-rate your suspension and your brakes, and put in an anti-roll bar, and you’d be daft not to do something with your wheels — slot mags, dish mags, alloys, low profiles, 135 fronts, 165 rears. I can chop it for you, channel it for you, section it, french it, louvre it, raise it or lower it, front or back. I can nose and deck it. I can give you spoilers, fins, whale tails, portholes. No problem. If you want to get really technical I can put in a cocktail cabinet in the back seat that plays ‘Born to Run’ every time you open it.’

‘Great,’ said Ishmael.

‘But you just want a new set of headlights.’

‘Yes please,’ said Ishmael.

He was very impressed by Fat Les. Of course, he hadn’t understood more than a few words that his speech had contained but it was so refreshing to meet someone so clearly involved and in love with his work.

Fat Les was sullen again. There was a long silence.

‘Just a pair of headlights,’ Ishmael said again brightly. ‘That’s all today, thank you.’

He laughed nervously. The silence continued.

‘I suppose I’d better have a look at this motor of yours then,’ Fat Les said at last.

He never did find his trousers. He walked out in his shirt and briefs and looked at Enlightenment. He gave a deep, a cosmic sigh and circled the Beetle. He looked at it from all angles, sometimes getting down on the ground and poking the chassis with his fingers, causing little showers of rust. As he continued the inspection his spirits plummeted, and by the time he’d finished it was as though he had been plunged into a well of weariness and despair. He looked at Ishmael, who was too frightened to say anything.

‘Yes, you do need new headlights.’

Ishmael nodded eagerly. He thought of telling Fat Les the whole story of how they had come to be smashed but Fat Les was not looking receptive.

‘You also need new tyres, new brake pipes and cylinders, new sills, about three hundred pounds of welding…’

He went on like this for a while. Ishmael tried to pretend that he knew what Fat Les was talking about.

‘Let’s face it, old son, you need a new car.’

‘No,’ Ishmael said very firmly. ‘This car is my vehicle. This car and I go to the end of the road together. You know, sometimes as I drive along with the wind in my hair, because of the hole in the roof, an empty road, the English countryside, the car struggling to get to sixty miles an hour, everything rattling and sounding as though it’s about to fall apart, well you might find this silly, but at times like that, this car and I feel like one.’

Fat Les was silent for a very long time. He looked at Ishmael, looked at Enlightenment, at his own car, at the ground, at the sky. He scratched his gut and said, ‘I don’t think that’s silly at all. In fact that’s about the most intelligent remark I’ve heard from a punter in years. Most of the people I have to deal with — they’re turds, tossers — they don’t care what anybody does to their cars so long as it’s cheap and fast. Philistines. No sense. No soul. You, though, I reckon you’re all right.’

Fat Les had a pair of headlights in stock and he fitted them on Enlightenment.

‘At least your headlights are legal,’ he said when he’d finished. ‘I wish I could say the same for the rest of it. I just hope the bogies don’t stop you.’

‘Bogies?’

‘Police.’

‘Yes, it’s so hard to live a life untrammelled by petty restrictions.’

‘I’ll say. And your car does make you a bit of a target. The fuzz want everybody driving around in neat little boxes, safe little family saloons with as much character as a parking ticket.’

♦

‘Ah, Richard,’ says Nina wistfully, ‘you are too intellectual, too political for me. Allow me my dreams of freedom, of speed and escape.’

‘I will allow you anything, my dear, but there are others…’

‘Then order me another bottle of vintage champagne.’ On the dance floor boys in blazers and girls with cropped hair dance, perform a dumb-show of pleasure. It is no more authentic than the bottle of ‘vintage’ champagne that is brought to the Englishman’s table, no more real than Nina’s dream of owning her own car. But in Berlin on that autumn night as goose-steps echo back and forth between the ornate, peeling stucco of tall, terraced houses, as triangles are daubed on front doors, and as shops’ windows and faces get smashed, it is all any of them have got.

♦

‘I don’t want to be safe,’ said Ishmael.

‘Good for you. On the other hand, if your master cylinder goes while you’re braking to avoid a pile-up…’

‘I suppose there’s safety and safety.’

‘I suppose there is.’

‘I’ve decided it’s time to take a few risks.’

‘I can see that,’ Fat Les said looking at Enlightenment. ‘How far do you have to get exactly?’

So of course Ishmael had to tell him the whole story. Fat Les was a great listener.

‘So you’re just going to talk to her father?’

‘Initially, yes.’

‘And when that doesn’t work?’

‘Well I abhor violence. Something will come to me.’

‘I hope it’s the kind of something that gets him in the goolies before he gets you.’

‘I’ll keep it in mind,’ Ishmael said. ‘But I still believe in the value of one human being talking to another.’

‘But does her father?’

‘I think I can make him see things my way.’

‘You’re a weird bugger, aren’t you?’

‘I’ve heard people say that sort of thing.’

He’d heard people like Debby, Marilyn, Marilyn’s mother and father, the people who used to work with him in the library, the man in the yellow cardigan, Howard with the rattan table, though who was he to talk?

Fat Les went over to his own Beetle and ran his hand over the roof. The hand was short, fat and oil-stained, but it was a loving hand.

‘This Beetle of mine has a top speed of a hundred and twenty miles per hour, nought to sixty in seven seconds,’ Fat Les said. ‘If the fuzz ever chased me, and if they ever caught me, which they couldn’t, they’d still never believe that the car was capable of the sort of speeds I do in it. That’s the advantage of going like a million dollars and looking like forty-five quid.’

‘Appearance and reality,’ said Ishmael.

‘Your car looks like a ten-bob postal order that’s gone past its expiry date.’

Ishmael shrugged.