Geoff Nicholson - Street Sleeper

People either treat him like dirt or as if he is a mechancial genius. Either way he has a lot of very dull conversations with customers. He tries hard but it all comes down to the same old things, ‘Fill her up?’, ‘Nice car’, ‘What kind of mileage do you get?’ It’s very dull.

♦

Marilyn drove the jeep. She had to take a very indirect route to avoid going anywhere near Crockenfield. They drove via Dartford, through the tunnel. They went round the M25 and up the Mil into Cambridgeshire. They drove past the motel where Marilyn had shown Ishmael her tattoo. They went to a family restaurant just off the motorway and had a bread roll with honey while the musak played ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ and ‘The Best Things in Life are Free’.

They went within a few miles of Fox’s Farm and considered visiting the commune but they were too eager to get to Fat Les’s Vee-Dub kingdom.

In his mind’s eye Ishmael could see the railway arch, a collection of Beetles and Beetle parts, and in his mind’s ear he could hear Wagnerian opera.

The reality, however, was somewhat different.

They drove along the mud track beside the railway arches, past a mass of weeds and a few derelict bits of motorcar. And there should have been a few parked Beetles and a big cheery hand-painted sign saying ‘Fat Les — the Vee-Dub King’. But there wasn’t.

Ishmael wondered for a moment if he had given Marilyn wrong directions and they had come to the wrong place, some other railway arch. Where the kingdom should have been there was only a mass of smoking wood and charred metal. Everything was burned black. Ishmael looked into the arch and could see the wrecks of two Beetles — one Enlightenment, the other belonging to Fat Les. Everything was destroyed.

♦

Steve has a regular customer called Mr Kyle. He knows his name from his credit card. He is smooth, over-weight, with permed hair. He drives a Lotus.

‘Shall I fill her up?’ Steve asks.

Kyle grunts.

‘Four star?’

‘Well of course four star.’

‘Nice car.’

‘Just put the petrol in, son.’

Son? Steve is twenty-eight. He has a beard and the makings of a beer-gut. He knows twenty-eight is no age to be wasting his life serving petrol but when there’s a recession on and you can’t think of anything you’d rather be doing for a living, well, people think you ought to be grateful. Steve isn’t grateful exactly, but a job’s a job.

He dreams of meeting women in sports cars. He dreams they will be young, rich and delinquent.

He has hopes of one girl who buys petrol from him. She is short, wears a few articles of tight clothing and drives a Volkswagen Beetle cabriolet, the roof always down.

‘Nice car,’ he says.

‘Yeah, isn’t it?’

‘I’ve always fancied a car with a soft top.’

‘Soft top? Oh, we call them rag-tops or drop-heads.’

‘You’re American?’

‘Afraid so.’

‘That’s fantastic.’

‘What’s so fantastic?’

‘You know, American cars, freeways, Route 66. Fantastic.’

She smiles at him. He isn’t sure if it’s a real smile or just condescension. He convinces himself that it is real.

‘Say, do you know anything about cars?’

‘Yes,’ he lies.

‘Well when I brake, the car has a definite pull to the right. You know anything about that?’

‘I think you’d better go to a Volkswagen specialist. Beetles can be tricky.’

‘I guess.’

Steve spends the rest of the shift kicking himself. All right, so he didn’t know anything about the brakes on a Volkswagen, but he could have bluffed. He could have offered to give the car a test drive and see exactly how bad the problem was, then after driving around with her for half an hour he could have asked for her phone number, then he could have told her to go to a Volkswagen specialist.

♦

‘Is this really where you’ve brought me?’ Marilyn asked.

There was no sign of Fat Les or Davey. Ishmael and Marilyn went inside the arch, picking their way through the wreckage. There were charred girlie calendars, a smouldering tartan sleeping-bag. They held hands as they stood together in the ruins.

‘Who could have done this?’ Marilyn asked.

Then a voice behind them said, ‘I’ve got one or two very shrewd ideas.’

It was Fat Les. He and Davey were standing outside the arch, wearing overalls, their faces and hair black with soot.

‘It happened the night before last,’ Fat Les said. ‘I was asleep. I heard someone breaking in. I went to have a look. I got coshed. When I came round the place was on fire. They’d poured petrol everywhere and set fire to it. I could have been killed. I managed to drag Davey out. Just.’

Davey said, ‘Everything’s gone, everything. Someone’s going to have to pay for this. Someone’s going to have to be punished. Someone may even have to die.’

‘You said it,’ said Ishmael.

♦

Steve finds the business with the toilet a large and complex joke. Jerry, the garage owner, is obsessed by it. He has had a vast lock fitted to the toilet door and the keys are kept behind the till in the office. Sooner or later the keys are bound to get lost or somebody will use the toilet and then accidentally drive away without giving the keys back. But Jerry is adamant — nobody gets to use the toilet unless they’ve bought petrol, not even if their bladders are rupturing and they’ve offered to write you into their will.

Steve finds it a little small-minded, but he doesn’t need an argument with Jerry and, after all, there is an occasional grim satisfaction to be had from denying people.

Most of Steve’s job satisfaction is at this kind of level. For instance, he becomes wonderfully satisfied after being obnoxious to Kyle. Kyle always uses his credit card. Steve writes out the chit as slowly as humanly possible, looks very closely at the signature, and often phones the credit card company for authorization.

It drives Kyle insane.

One day Steve tells him his Lotus needs new tyres.

‘You’re an expert on tyres as well as everything else, are you?’ Kyle says.

‘I don’t need to be an expert to know that.’

‘Look, your job is to serve the petrol…’

That does it. That always does it. Steve turns white with barely controlled anger.

‘Don’t tell me what my fucking job is,’ he shouts. ‘Don’t ever fucking do that.’

Kyle realizes he has hit a vital spot. He shrugs his shoulders and stops telling Steve what his job is.

Steve almost begins to look forward to Kyle’s arrival, to see if he can invent some new way of being difficult. He doesn’t understand why Kyle keeps coming back, unless of course Kyle has started to enjoy the game as well.

♦

‘Do you think your father did this?’ Ishmael asked Marilyn.

‘He’s capable of anything,’ she said.

‘Seems a bit extreme…’

‘These are extreme times,’ Marilyn replied. ‘The world is an ugly and savage place. The rules have changed, perhaps there aren’t any rules any longer. Husbands War with wives, parents are set against children. Politicians are set against all of us.’

‘You said it,’ said Ishmael. ‘I’m sorry about your father but he’s going to have to pay, he’s going to have to be punished. He may even have to die.’

‘It’s the times we live in,’ said Marilyn.

They stood in the smouldering ruins. Fat Les looked sadly at his burned possessions, but his eyes were bright with rage. He looked like a fallen hero. Davey fondled a tyre iron. He looked like a young warrior. Marilyn, at least to Ishmael, looked as much like a goddess as ever. They all looked at Ishmael.

‘Follow me,’ he said.

♦

At least the American girl keeps coming back. One day after Steve has put in the petrol and she has started the engine again, Steve says, ‘That engine’s running much too fast.’