Geoff Nicholson - Street Sleeper

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.