Geoff Nicholson - Street Sleeper

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.’