Geoff Nicholson - Street Sleeper

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.