Geoff Nicholson - Street Sleeper

‘Probably a couple of Brighton wide-boys who feel like picking on drunks,’ Fat Les said. ‘Are you ready for trouble?’

‘I could live without it,’ Ishmael replied.

‘Yeah, but you could live better with it.’

♦

Bill Bernbach knows it isn’t going to be easy to sell the Volkswagen in America.

Voluptuous metal, silvered trim, enough room to have an orgy on the back seat — this is what the public thinks it wants. Bill Bernbach is about to change all that. The public never know what they want until somebody tells them.

Bernbach tells them that this car is eccentric, ornery, a lemon. ‘It’s ugly but it gets you there.’ He makes owning a Volkswagen an act of protest against the excesses of Detroit, against vulgarity, greed and conspicuous consumption.

He tells them that Volkswagen is the car of the nonconformist. And in America there are millions of non-conformists, all waiting for a product they can buy that will confirm their individuality. Millions.

♦

The jeep came round again. It approached along the straight sea-front road, and then it stopped, perhaps fifty yards away. The headlights were turned off. Ishmael still hoped he was mistaken. He hoped it was neither wide-boys, nor Marilyn’s father. Couldn’t it just be a couple out for a late night look at the sea? He couldn’t see the faces of the people in the jeep, but it did look like a man and a woman. Was it Marilyn’s mother and father, the old team back together, united by a shared desire to hit him some more?

The driver’s and passenger’s doors opened simultaneously. Ishmael was ready. Fat Les was eager. A man and woman stepped from the jeep; on the passenger’s side Davey, on the driver’s side Marilyn.

‘Stone the bleedin’ crows,’ said Fat Les.

Ishmael had to agree.

‘Nice diversion,’ said Davey.

‘What?’

‘The Molotov cocktails — a really good tactic. With all that mayhem going on I could crash about inside the house, make all the noise I wanted, and Marilyn’s old man wasn’t going to notice. I had to break down the door to get Marilyn out of her bedroom, but apart from that it was easy.’

‘We stole the jeep — though it wasn’t really stealing, Marilyn knew where the keys were. The only trouble we had was keeping up with you two. But once we saw that you were heading for Brighton that was easy too. We knew we’d find you.’

‘It’s so good to have you here,’ Ishmael said to Marilyn.

‘Looks like it was meant to be,’ Marilyn replied.

‘Are you sure you weren’t followed?’ Fat Les asked.

‘You seem to have done a reasonable job of immobilizing half the motor transport in Crockenfield,’ Marilyn said.

Davey said, ‘And her Dad’s not going anywhere in his Roller until he’s got the sugar out of his petrol tank.’

They celebrated with a few more cans of Colt 45. Taking everything into account it had been a successful quest. It hadn’t gone exactly according to plan, but Ishmael had, by however indirect a method, achieved everything he had set out to.

‘And what do we do now?’ Davey asked.

At first he appeared to be putting the question in general, to everyone, but then Ishmael realized he was only addressing him.

‘I don’t know,’ Ishmael said. ‘What should we do now, Les?’

‘Don’t look at me,’ Fat Les said. ‘How should I know?

You tell us. After all, you’re our leader.’

♦

Bernbach decides that the Volkswagen shall be an East Coast car, a snob car, a holier than thou car. The man who owns a Volkswagen is above all this bullshit whereby you measure a man’s cock by the size of his car, the size of his ego and his salary.

A year is supposed to be a long time in American automobile production, too long a time for a manufacturer to go without making a few styling changes, each year demanding a new model. Bill Bernbach is going to change that.

A full-page newspaper ad shows a man and his Volkswagen. The man is lean and young and he is not smiling. He doesn’t look like a professional model. He isn’t supposed to. His name is Michael Kennedy. He looks like he could be a college professor, an aeronautics engineer, even one of a new breed of hard-edged stand-up comedians. The suit is tight. The tie is thin. He’s even wearing glasses.

The caption tells us that the Volkswagen he’s leaning against is made up from a 1947 body, a ‘55 chassis, engine and doors, ‘56 seats, ‘58 bumpers, ‘61 tail lights, a ‘62 fender, a ‘63 front end, and a ‘65 transmission.

Yes, the Volkswagen is the same, year in year out. Something constant in a world of planned obsolescence.

The campaign tells us that high volume can be consistent with high quality, that cultural enhancement need not be elitist; though Hitler, of course, got there first with both these thoughts.

The Volkswagen is the hero of the advertising campaign.

♦

A leader? Ishmael? He who had never done more than supervise one part-time member of staff at the library. He didn’t want to be in charge of anyone’s life but his own.

He didn’t mind being able to exert a little influence now and again, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to lead anyone. So he said that everybody should get some sleep. This seemed a nicely modest first piece of leadership. Fat Les and Davey slept in the Beetle. Ishmael tried to sleep with Marilyn in the jeep. Sleep would not come. The front seats were too hard and the benches in the back were too narrow. So they had to talk to each other.

‘Alone at last,’ said Ishmael.

‘I wish we were in some cheap motel,’ Marilyn said. ‘I wish we had some shoplifted smoked salmon and champagne, and that I was showing you my tattoo.’

It sounded all right to Ishmael.

‘How do you want to die, Ishmael?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. I’m still trying to work out how to live. I don’t think about it.’

‘I think about it,’ she said. ‘I see my body thrown through the windscreen of a speeding car. They pull me from the wreckage, the jugular vein is severed but the face remains serene, the make-up; is still perfect.

‘I see myself slumped over a table in a waterfront bar. The body is ageing but it’s still appealing enough in tight black lace and fishnet. The face is wrinkled, but the eyes are as sensual and as beckoning as ever. There is an empty brandy bottle on the table. The regulars see me unconscious, ‘That’s Marilyn for you,’ they say with affection. ‘Dead drunk again.’ But then one of them touches my skin, as pale and cold as porcelain, and finds that I am just dead.

‘I see a hotel room, very modern, very dark. The curtains are drawn, the television is showing Pandora’s Box . The bed is tangled in an aftermath of passion. My beautiful corpse lies at an angle across the bed, in a posture that is at once impossible and yet impossibly provocative. My hair cascades over my face. One red high heel is still on, my red silk camisole seems perfect but for the one small bullet hole.

‘That’s the way I see it.’

‘I just want to die wise,’ said Ishmael, but he was more than half asleep.

♦

A television commercial. The funeral motorcade of Maxwell E. Staveley, whose will is being read out in voice-over. He leaves his wife a calender, his sons fifty dollars each in dimes, his business partner nothing. But nephew Harold who has oft times said, ‘Gee, Uncle Max, it sure pays to own a Volkswagen,’ gets the entire fortune of one hundred billion dollars.

Virtue rewarded — the American way.

♦

Next morning the four of them had breakfast together in a sea-front café. Ishmael found it a difficult meal to begin with. The others were still keen for Ishmael to do some leadership. But once he put his mind to it it wasn’t so very hard. He decided that Fat Les should teach Davey everything he knew about Volkswagens. He realized this might take years but they could start by rebuilding Enlightenment.