Geoff Nicholson - Still life with Volkswagens

“I never thought it would come to this,” he says. He turns towards Barry, looking positively homicidal, and lunges at him.

Barry looks desperately for a means of escape. There are some French windows that open onto the garden. They look as good a way out as any, and they start to look better and better as Charles Lederer gets closer and closer. The only problem is that they’re locked, but as Lederer gets closer still, even this problem doesn’t seem insuperable. Barry wraps his arms around his head and charges at the windows.

They burst open in a shattering of glass and splintering of wood, and Barry finds himself sprawling in a flowerbed. He is stunned by the impact, and if Charles Lederer were quick enough he could certainly beat Barry to a bloody pulp there among the geraniums, but something is preventing him. Barry looks over his shoulder into the room and sees that Marilyn is his saviour. She is gripping her father’s legs in a sort of rugby tackle.

He soon dislodges her, but the moment’s delay gives Barry some respite. In that time he manages to get to his feet, get out of the flowerbed and start running. Quite where he will run to is uncertain. As Charles Lederer knows, Carlton Bax’s house is surrounded by a high and unclimbable wall, and the wrought iron gate can only be operated electronically by someone in the house. Barry knows there’s no way out.

The grounds are dark, in places there are dense bushes, and there are several outbuildings. Barry thinks that together these might provide him with enough places to hide, at least until Charles Lederer calms down or wears himself out or until, with any luck, Marilyn summons the police. Charles Lederer realises this too. He doesn’t want to spend the whole night playing hide and seek. He just wants to get the job done, and he knows what it will take.

It is some years since he drove a car, and the idea of sitting in a Volkswagen Beetle is chillingly repellent to him, but desperate times need desperate measures, and the keys are sitting there conveniently in the ignition.

Charles Lederer grits his teeth, summons up his strength, and gets into Enlightenment. He settles himself in the driving seat, starts the engine and revs it ruthlessly. Over the far side of the garden Barry hears that familiar mechanical noise and is filled with panic. Someone is stealing his car, not just anyone, but someone who hates him and appears to wish him dead. And not least of Barry’s worries is the fact that given all the modifications done to the car, it is now something of a beast to drive. If a complete madman like Charles Lederer tries to drive it, there’s every chance he’ll wreck it completely. He has to do something, and just as Lederer hoped, he comes running out from his hiding place, running towards the car, waving his arms in a gesture of supplication and surrender. But Charles Lederer is taking no prisoners.

There is the noise of gears being stripped as the car is forced into first. The engine roars as though in pain. Enlightenment bounces on its suspension and then goes into a wheelie as Charles Lederer puts on the power, and launches the car through the air, aiming straight for Barry.

Barry dives out of the way of the advancing car. He survives. Enlightenment has missed him and clipped a nearby birch tree. Barry lies face down on the gravel drive, panting and fearful.

Charles Lederer in the meantime has brought the car to a halt and, by means of a tyre-destroying handbrake turn, spun it round so that it is ready to run over the flattened Barry. The car springs forward, a dark, dangerous mass, a black bullet with Barry’s name written all over it. Barry tries to get to his feet, starts to run, slips, finds himself on the ground again, and instinctively rolls over as rapidly as he possibly can to avoid the advancing wheels.

The front of the car misses him by millimetres and smashes instead into a stretch of garden balustrade. He gets to his feet. Lederer whips the car round, ready for another attack. There is no escape this time. Barry braces himself for the crash, ready to feel the hideous coming together of car and flesh. But perhaps his instincts are better than he knows. Having no time to leap out of the way, he relaxes, jumps, falls forwards and somehow finds himself safe and alive and adhering to the bonnet of Enlightenment.

His hands grip the wing mirrors and his feet lodge on the nerf bars that have replaced the front bumper. He resembles an oversized and decidedly misshapen mascot, a misbegotten Spirit of Ecstasy, though he feels anything but ecstatic at present.

Charles Lederer is more furious and more demented thai! ever, but now he sees a chance to destroy Barry once and for all. He hurls Enlightenment round so that it’s pointing down the drive, away from the house towards the metal security gate. He feuilds up the revs, making the engine scream, toying with the clutch pedal so that the car frets and twitches, and then he feeds in the power and the car leaps forward, eating up the drive at incredible speed heading straight for the locked gate. He allows himself a giggle as the car picks up speed and the gate looms ever larger in frost of him.

And then an odd thing happens. The car is only indies fronrthe gate and Barry has given up any hope of survival, he’s just hoping the result will be instant and final, when the gate suddenly flies open. The expected impact never comes, and Enlightenment sears out of the open gateway onto the road outside and does not stop.

Marilyn, who has helplessly watched this weird little battle, this bizarre manifestation of male conflict, from an upstairs window and not even thought of calling the police, has finally found a way to be of help. It is she who, in the nick of time, presses the electronic switch that flings open the metal gate and saves Barry. It is the least she can do. She staggers back from the window, shocked, relieved, tearful and desperatly in need of another drink. She takes a swig from the bottle straight then begins to sob uncontrollably, and she sits down in a big leather swivel chair, one of Carlton’s favourites, eventually adopting a foetal position and clutching the whisky bottle to her as a comforter.

Enlightenment roars off into the night. Charks Lederer at the wheel, Barry on the bonnet: and not long after it has gone, eight more black Volkswagens, each one a dead ringer for the departing car, arrive at Carlton Bax’s gentleman’s residence. The skinhead drivers are surprised to find the front gate open, although however secure the gate had been, it would not have delayed them long. The eight cars move into the drive, slowly, sedately, until they come to the front door of the house where they park, arranging themselves into an intricate, formal pattern which if seen from the air would be clearly visible as a swastika.

♦

Charles Lederer drives on and on, with Barry clinging to the bonnet for all he’s worth. His knuckles are white and knotted, his feet are starting to develop cramp. He looks up towards the windscreen, hoping he’ll be able to look into the face of Charles Lederer, but the smoked glass prevents that. He feels that he’s being propelled backwards into the future. His sense of time is dislocated; a minute spent on that bonnet seems like an age; nevertheless, he is aware that Charles Lederer really is driving a very long way. Perhaps he has realised that sooner or later Barry’s aching hands and feet are bound to lose their grip, then Barry will slide forwards off the car and then he’ll be finished.

But the way Lederer’s driving, it’s as if he’s forgotten all about Barry and has set off on some wild journey of his own. He is driving very swiftly if erratically, accelerating fiercely round bends, whipping through amber lights, scraping the occasional bollard or parked car as he goes, weaving dangerously in and out of traffic. But in a way Barry is pleased to see other cars. Surely, he thinks, this offers him a chance. Either the traffic will force Charles Lederer to slow down or stop in which case he can leap from the bonnet, or else a passing police patrol car might spot them, or maybe even some public-spirited motorist will see Barry’s plight and attempt to stop the car.