Geoff Nicholson - Still life with Volkswagens

“Well,” says Barry thoughtfully, “I suppose you could always get a job.”

Planetary Cliff looks at him fiercely and then breaks out laughing. The others round the fire join in. Barry isn’t at all sure what they’re laughing at, but at least the laughter feels quite friendly.

Planetary Cliff is still laughing as he says, “I know what you mean. People call me a dole scrounger, right? But I don’t scrounge. I do valuable work. I do a bit of fruit picking, a bit of scrap metal dealing, a bit of soft drug pushing. It’s a living, isn’t it? How about you?”

“Well,” says Barry, and he isn’t at all sure how this is going to be received, “I’m a librarian by trade.”

This information is received with a second outburst of mirth. Barry still doesn’t see what’s so funny, but he feels it’s necessary to add, “I know I don’t look much like one.”

“That’s right,” Planetary Cliff starts again. “People look at me and they say, oh yes he’s an ex-hippie, he’s a middle — class drop out, he’s one of the homeless, and all right, to a certain extent that’s true, I was middle class, I was a hippie, I am sort of homeless, but the thing is, you can’t just look at people and make assumptions, can you?”

“Well,” says Barry, “I think it might be fair to assume from looking at you that you’re not a merchant banker or a barrister or a gynaecologist.”

“Well I wouldn’t want to be any of those things would I?”

“I assume not,” says Barry.

“And people say we’re dirty, and all right, we are dirty. But so what? You’d be dirty too if you lived in a campsite on the edge of a forest with no running water.”

“They do say cleanliness is next to Godliness.”

“Well, let God try living in a campsite on the edge of a forest with no running water. How would he keep clean then? ”

Barry is aware that after a night in the back of Enlightenment he probably doesn’t look his very best, but compared to his breakfast companions he looks positively spick and span. “Well,” he says, “God could always check into a travel lodge for the night and have a good scrub down.”

This is apparently the most hilarious thing he has said yet. Several of the travellers choke on their breakfast they find it so funny.

A skinny girl with a lot of tangled red hair and a jewel stuck in the middle of her forehead says to him, “You’re like one of those what you call its, aren’t you? One of those idiot savants.”

“I might be a savant,” Barry replies, “but I do my best not to be an idiot.”

They find that funny too, but something in the tone of their laughter tells him that they also find it wise and true.

“You like music?” Planetary Cliff asks him.

Barry is still well aware of the music issuing from the bus and he says, “Some of it.”

“The way I see it,” says Planetary Cliff, “the world is impelled by the Universal Sound, which is like emitted by the Original Being, and you know, it’s proliferating towards material expression, but at the same time it’s withdrawing towards chaos and noise.”

“Well, I’m very fond of Fleetwood Mac,” says Barry, and this completely brings the house down.

“Look Ishmael,” says Planetary Cliff between waves of laughter, “why don’t you join us? We need someone like you, someone with a good sense of humour. It’s good to have that when you’re travelling. We’ll soon be moving on. There’s a big shindig called the Gathering of the Tribes, sort of a New Age rave, going to happen up in Yorkshire at the end of the summer. We’re on our way there. Why don’t you come with us?”

The skinny red-haired girl smiles at Barry imploringly. He imagines there’s probably a lot of free love to be had amid the New Age travellers, certainly if the number of children is anything to go by, but no, that isn’t what he came on the road to find.

“It’s a kind offer,” he says, “but I have to say no. You see, I’m on a quest.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“In that case we understand. You have to follow your own impetus.”

“That’s right,” says Barry. “Also, I really dislike your music, your breakfast’s really not very good and I don’t like being laughed at all the time.”

♦

Fat Les starts to work. He works long into the night, every night. He strips down and reassembles. He reconditions and tunes up. He modifies and customises, spot welds and resprays. This is the biggest job he’s tackled in a long while and it hasn’t been easy. Getting eight donor vehicles of the required standard took some ingenuity in itself. But they’re lined up in the workshop now, coming ever nearer to completion, being rapidly improved and changed, being made mechanically special and visually wicked. He is smoothing out the wrinkles, the differences, making all eight of them as identical as possible, giving them extra performance, extra pizzazz, making them better than Ferdinand Porsche and Adolf Hitler ever dreamed they could be.

As he works he plays Wagner, and indeed there are times when he feels like a strange, dwarfish creature who is forging something mythical and magical. But more often it just feels like hard work, work that is made harder because Les refuses to let any of his underlings work on these cars. The work goes on in secret behind closed doors. This is his project and he won’t delegate this one.

Phelan proves to be a surprisingly easy employer. He is demanding but he doesn’t interfere. He tells Les what’s required and lets him get on with it. This job is not ‘on the house’. Phelan pays in advance and pays a premium.

It amuses Les that Butcher’s inspiration came from seeing a car that could only be Enlightenment. That vehicle was his masterpiece and none of these current eight machines will be nearly as special as that one. But if Butcher has seen it on the road then Ishmael must be in action again. Fat Les knows that must mean something but he isn’t sure what.

He thinks of the time when he was, briefly, on the road with Barry and he thinks of the speed, the excitement, the rumbles, the scrapes, the battles, the feeling of being an outlaw, of being completely out there; wild and dangerous and very alive. It all makes him feel very old. Fat Old Les. He wouldn’t want to be the person he was back then: and yet he knows that person wouldn’t have worked for someone like Phelan.

Les doesn’t like Nazis, whether they’re the old fashioned variety or whether they style themselves as neo. But work is work, money is money, he does have a business to run, and technology is neutral, surely. He balked a little at having to paint swastikas, iron crosses, death’s heads and SS flashes on the doors and bonnets of the Beetles, but that’s what it took to keep the customer satisfied.

Les works on using all the hours God sends. He is a man inspired, a man possessed. He puts in the hours, puts in a major effort, and eventually a time comes when all eight cars are ready, a shorter time than anybody but Les might have imagined.

He calls Phelan the moment the job is done, and although it is three in the morning, Phelan immediately comes to see the finished cars. He arrives wearing an all-encompassing black leather trench coat, a pair of jack boots and, as far as Les can tell, nothing else.

The eight Volkswagen Beetles sit in the workshop looking poised, dormant, dangerous. The black lacquered paint jobs reflect the strip lighting overhead, bending and distorting the bands of white light. Phelan surveys the scene. He is too sophisticated, too controlled, to allow himself a simple smile of pleasure, but nevertheless it is obvious that he’s delighted by what he sees. In fact he is strangely moved.

“With vehicles like these,” he says to Les, “a man might conquer the world.”