Geoff Nicholson - Still life with Volkswagens

It all comes flooding back like a bad Indian meal. There was a time when Ishmael looked like becoming some sort of cult leader. It was Renata who found out that he’d once appeared in a coprophiliac porn movie and that, mercifully, ended his ambitions. Fat Les hadn’t absolutely seen why you couldn’t be both a cult leader and a bit part player in a coprophiliac porn movie. After all, to the true believer all things are holy, even coprophiliac porn movies. But he still knows that he was a damned fool ever to have got involved with the little jerk Ishmael, and it still makes him both angry and embarrassed.

“No, I haven’t seen him,” says Les.

“Pity,” says Renata.

“I don’t think so.”

Les walks round to the other side of the Volkswagen and pretends to be examining the chassis for twisting or hidden damage.

“This is a real mess,” he says. “Look, why don’t I give you a good price for it and take it in part exchange on a restored one?”

“That’s not the deal,” says Renata. “That’s not what he wants.”

“Who’s he? Your boyfriend?”

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

“But you’re his sex slave, right?” says Les with a snigger.

“Did he say that?”

“Yeah he did.”

“He’s full of little ironies, isn’t he?”

Les has no idea what she means.

“Have the police been bothering you?” she asks abruptly.

“The police don’t bother me,” says Les.

“But they’ve been around, haven’t they? Asking you about Volkswagens that go bang in the night.”

“Yeah,” he says a little angrily. He really doesn’t want another conversation about exploding Volkswagens, nor about kidnapped Volkswagen collectors.

“Are you still a journalist?” he asks.

“I’m just a lady of leisure,” she replies.

“Must be nice to have a rich boyfriend.”

“It’s okay, but he’s not my boyfriend.”

Les leans against the busted Beetle. This is a job he doesn’t want at all. It feels as though he’s paying a very high price for a simple, if illegal and destructive, bit of reversing.

“It’s a pity he can’t afford to buy you a decent car,” says Les.

“He can,” she says dismissively. “But he chooses not to. He loves Volkswagen Beetles. I think he’s crazy. I think they’re crummy, overrated, overpriced.” She watched Les’s face closely to see if he reacts. He doesn’t.

She continues, “If the police happen to think you’ve been blowing up Volkswagens, well so what, I wouldn’t worry too much. But if Phelan thinks you’ve been blowing them up, then you’re in serious shit, Les.”

“And what about this Carlton Bax geezer?” says Les. “Am I supposed to have kidnapped him too? Am I supposed to shit myself if Phelan thinks I kidnapped him?”

“Oh, that’s okay, Les. He knows you didn’t kidnap him.”

♦

Another day. Barry is still sitting at the wheel of Enlightenment. He is in a meditative state, focussed but alert. He is gradually aware of another approaching presence, a woman in a long raincoat worn over a charcoal grey suit. He has no idea that she’s a policewoman, but he can tell that she thinks rather highly of herself. Putting in appearances at a caravan site is clearly some way beneath her dignity. She tries to sweep effortlessly towards Barry and his car, but the local topography of paths and lawns, picnic tables, barbecues and children’s paddling pools works against her.

When she gets to the car, she tilts her head down at Barry and says, “Good morning. I’m Detective Inspector Cheryl Bronte. Is this your car?”

“No, I’m just keeping it warm for a friend,” he says with uncharacteristic sarcasm.

She ignores this insolence.

“You wouldn’t want to lose it would you? You wouldn’t want it to explode, for instance, would you?”

“Well of course not. Although, of course, if it did, well, you know, it’s only a material object isn’t it? It wouldn’t be the end of the world, unless, of course, I happened to be inside it at the time, but you know, how likely is it to explode?”

His reply doesn’t seem to make her happy at all. “I see the tax has expired,” she says casually.

“Oh yes, years ago.”

“I suppose you do have insurance and a current MOT.”

Barry laughs. “Of course not.”

“But you do have a licence.”

“Somewhere, I’m sure.”

“I have every right to get very nasty about this,” says Detective Inspector Cheryl Bronte. “Driving a car without insurance or an MOT is a serious business.”

“I know,” he says. “But I’m not driving a car. Surely you must have noticed. I’m not driving at all.”

“So what the bloody hell are you doing?”

“Saving the world in my own small way.”

Cheryl Bronte walks round the car. There is no doubt that the tyres, exhaust and lights are in various states of illegality. What really catches and holds her attention, however, is the Green Beetle logo. She looks at it closely, as though its messily executed design might offer up some latent, secret meanings.

“Are you a neo-Nazi?” she asks Barry.

“No,” says Barry, offended.

“Are you into uniforms, jackboots, shaven heads, that sort of thing?”

“Well of course not.”

“Or maybe Nazi regalia, flags, whips, death’s heads, swastikas, the ark of the covenant.”

“Not me,” says Barry.

“Then good for you, Barry. If there’s one thing worse than a Nazi in my book, it’s a neo-Nazi. So what does this insignia of yours mean? What does GB stand for? Are you trying to invoke the greatness of Great Britain to come to the aid of some threadbare, sicko Nationalism of yours?”

Barry tries, and he’s aware that he’s not making a great fist of it, to explain the Green Beetles and their logo, and about using inactivity in the service of a better world. Cheryl Bronte listens very carefully, but Barry isn’t sure she understands a word of it.

“That’s the problem with symbols isn’t it?” she says when he’s barely halfway through his intended explanation. “They can mean just about anything you want them to mean. A union jack flying above Buckingham Palace has a rather different resonance from a union jack tattooed on some yobbo’s forehead. When Kipling uses the swastika it is a holy symbol. When it appears on the side of a Volkswagen it means something rather different, wouldn’t you say?”

“I suppose so,” says Barry.

“But you say your symbol is just another bit of half-brained conservationism.”

“Well…”

“A man sitting alone in a Volkswagen that’s going nowhere. What do you think that might symbolise?”

“I don’t know. Not everything has to be symbolic, does it?”

“Or how about an exploding Volkswagen,” Cheryl Bronte enquires. “Is that a symbol?”

“What is all this about exploding Volkswagens?” says Barry.

Cheryl Bronte suddenly looks mighty serious. She says, “Every night we lose a few more: a couple in Coventry, a handful in Middlesex, one or two in Whitley Bay. It’s making the police look very stupid.”

Barry is finding all this very confusing and he can’t see why any of it is at all relevant to him.

“There could be some bunch of neo-Nazis behind it, couldn’t there?” she continues. “Or it could be some con-servationists, couldn’t it? If cars are evil why not blow them up? Neo-Nazis, eco-freaks, they’re all much the same to me.”

Barry is about to protest bitterly about this slur on the Green lobby, but decides against it.

“But, of course,” says Cheryl Bronte, “you don’t know anything about exploding Volkswagens, do you?”

“No.”

“And you don’t know anything about the kidnapping of Carlton Bax, do you Barry?”