Geoff Nicholson - Street Sleeper

‘The tabloids all want to do your story, although they all want it to be exclusive; and David Frost and Terry Wogan have both said they’ll be in touch first thing tomorrow.

‘So what shall I do? Shall I start accepting for you?’

‘No,’ said Ishmael. ‘I’m waiting for the big one.’

‘Big one?’

‘Yes, Marilyn. You and I deserve our own chat show.’

♦

‘Did you enjoy the film?’ Max asks. ‘Want to see any of it again in slow motion or freeze frame or whatever?’

‘Very weird,’ says Renata. ‘What is it about Volks-wagens?’

‘Volkswagens?’

‘The car in the film was a Volkswagen.’

‘Was it?’

‘You didn’t notice?’

‘Of course I didn’t notice. I don’t watch porn films just to look at the cars.’

‘No, I suppose most people wouldn’t,’ she says sadly.

But she would. She does. She is no longer able to walk past Beetles without noting their year and model, the variations in headlight shapes, the flat and round windscreens, the presence or absence and distribution of engine air intake slots, the design and position of rear light clusters. And these are of course only the factory variations. There is also the whole world of modification, of personalizing and customizing. Anything that can possibly be done to a car has been done to a Volkswagen — endless variety, endless transformation — somewhat like pornography and pastoral poetry.

‘Want to see another film?’ Max asks.

‘Later,’ says Renata. ‘Much later.’

♦

From being besieged in ‘Sorrento’, Ishmael and Marilyn were now besieged in the Kensington Astoria. Two days passed. Reporters camped in the lobby. There were armies of fans waiting in the street. They were still hot news.

Men belonging to arcane departments of the police force came to interview them. It was clear they didn’t for a moment believe the version of events that Ishmael had given to the media, but since Marilyn’s father was still gently raving in some private clinic, and since Ishmael was now a public figure, they seemed reluctant to bring any charges. They hadn’t worked out who had done what to whom, and they liked Ishmael’s version of events more than any other they could think up.

Marilyn had a phone call from her mother. She had been staying with ‘a friend’ when all the trouble started. She had returned to ‘Sorrento’ to find every window smashed, police still in occupation, her husband locked up and her daughter on every front page in the land. She managed to take it very well.

In the next few days Ishmael and Marilyn met producers from all the significant television companies. They arrived in a posse and lounged around the hotel suite, all brief-cases and smart but casual clothes. Ishmael had trouble telling one from another.

‘What kind of chat show are we discussing here?’ asked one of them.

‘Simple,’ said Ishmael. ‘Marilyn is in the studio with one or two newsworthy guests…’

‘But Ishmael, old mate,’ said a man with a cockney accent and a very expensive leather blouson, ‘Marilyn is very young, totally untried.’

‘That’s the deal,’ said Ishmael.

There was a grumbling acceptance of this, accompanied by the premonition that worse was to come.

‘And I am ‘our man in a Volkswagen’, ‘the man with Enlightenment’. I roam the country in a Beetle meeting eccentrics, sages, idiot savants; having insights, and sharing my inner visions with the viewers.’

‘Would you be on film?’

‘No. I’d be absolutely live. There’ll be a crew with me, hand-picked for their spiritual awareness, and they’d have to travel in Volkswagens.’

Brief-cases were snapped open, papers rattled, French cigarettes were lit.

‘And how many nights a week are we talking about?’

‘Five,’ said Ishmael.

‘And I suppose you’re talking main evening slot.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Ishmael. ‘Do you think I want to be over-exposed? No, I think late night.’

‘And how much money is this going to cost us?’

‘Ah money,’ said Ishmael. ‘It’s the root of all evil, you know. But if there are any of you who aren’t offering half a million up front then I’ll ask you kindly to leave my hotel suite.’

Nobody left.

‘Right, gentlemen. Talk to me.’

And talk they did. In the end Ishmael accepted an offer from the BBC, not because it was the highest (it wasn’t), but because he thought his mum would like that. He had been in touch with his parents, or rather they had been in touch with him, only briefly and only by phone. He had promised to buy them a detached bungalow. They said Debby was heart-broken. They said he was a heartless bastard and a bad son, and that he looked a daft sod in his leather suit. They hadn’t changed. A prophet is always without honour in the Osgathorpe family.

♦

Renata has long since completed her Volkswagen article, but the legacy is a pile of magazines containing articles on Volkswagens that Terry has given her. Some of it is dull stuff—‘D-I-Y servicing made simple’, ‘How to Cure That Flat-Four Flatspot’; but there are some issues of a magazine called Cal Vee-Dub . The title is newspeak, or she supposes illiterate-speak for ‘California Volkswagen’. They do things differently there. Cal Vee-Dub is like a girlie magazine but with salacious pictures of over-polished Beetles and over-endowed engines instead of girls. And just as girlie magazines address their readers in a heated private language, so the descriptions of California-style Beetles are written in some coded style, curiously dislocated from any world ‘out there’.

♦

Ronnie DeVoto’s ‘64 Vee-Dub is a real attention-grabber, super sano and clean to the max.

It took three years and four thousand dollars to convert a 1200cc clunker into the Looker you see today.

Brother Carl gets the credit for the trick paint-job — check out that sparkling Clementine orange and the wrap-around graphics.

The interior is decked out with buttoned naugahyde and brushed aluminum dash, while the sounds pound through a Uher 4-speaker system.

But this baby is for Go as well as Show. A Type 1 universal case is fitted with an 86mm Berg crank, Carillo 5.500 rods, 94mm Cirria pistons and barrels, and Super Flo II heads.

We like it. How about you?

Renata supposes she does. Very much. Is she obsessed? she asks herself. Is it healthy? She has even started work on a new article called ‘Fifty More Facts You Always Wanted to Know About the Volkswagen Beetle’. Her latest facts run like this:

TWENTY ITEMS THAT HAVE BEEN MADE IN THE SHAPE OF A VOLKSWAGEN BEETLE

Rings, key-rings, earrings, cakes, dice shakers, clocks, pens, ashtrays, soap dishes, belt buckles, radios, lamps, whisky bottles, pen-holders, staplers, telephones, bath mats, money boxes, paperweights, loo-roll holders.

FIFTEEN ITEMS THAT ALTHOUGH NOT SHAPED LIKE A BEETLE HAVE HAD PICTURES OF BEETLES ON THEM

Tee-shirts, sweat shirts, sweaters, underpants, blankets, lunch boxes, rulers, cushions, scarves, lamp shades, adhesive tape, tubes of glue, umbrellas, biscuit tins, postage stamps.

NINE ITEMS THAT SO FAR AS WE KNOW HAVE NEVER BEEN MADE IN THE SHAPE OF A BEETLE, THOUGH WE SEE NO REASON WHY NOT

Beds, wigs, electric guitars, fly papers, cameras, vacuum cleaners, umbrella stands, massage gloves, frisbees (although we admit that the Beetle shape might impair the frisbee’s aerodynamic properties).

Perhaps this new article is getting a little baroque. And it’s not as if she didn’t have other things on her mind — lots of things. She still hasn’t phoned her mother, she still needs a manicure, and she really does need to ditch Max. However, the main thing that’s on her mind, and she doesn’t know if this is the symptom or the disease, is this guy Ishmael. It all seems to tie in — the fact that she has written about Volkswagens, the fact that she gave a lift to one of Ishmael’s ‘followers’, and more especially the fact that she expected them to get locked up when they are not only at liberty, but that Ishmael has become some sort of quasi-mystical folk hero, some symbol of something or other. He has captured, or at least hijacked, the public imagination.