Geoff Nicholson - Still life with Volkswagens

“One day you’ll have to tell me all about it.”

Butcher shrugs non-committally.

“So, no problems at all?” says Phelan.

“Well I don’t know,” says Butcher. “I think we could be just pissing in the wind here.”

“How’s that?”

“I mean okay, so we can cause a bit of aggro. We can even get into a full blown rumble. But there’s thousands of these New Age buggers. There’s no way we can kick the shit out of all of them.”

“Of course not,” Phelan agrees.

“So what are we doing here?”

Phelan smiles. This is precisely the question he wanted Butcher to ask.

“Physical violence is all very well,” says Phelan, “but it’s far from being the only type.”

Butcher is confused by this notion and looks to Phelan for an explanation. The explanation is forthcoming, and as it unfolds, as Phelan reveals his latest plan for mayhem, Butcher gets a really good, evil feeling. When he has finished explaining, Phelan opens his briefcase to reveal endless bags full of anonymous white pills, the pharmaceutical medium by which his plan will be realised.

Butcher smiles and the briefcase is handed over. Butcher spends the rest of the afternoon distributing the white pills. Some people accept them readily enough as free samples, as though Butcher was some Owsley de nos jours. Others will only accept them when Butcher asks for money, believing they only get what they pay for. Butcher smiles a lot, acts friendly, assures them all that it’s very good stuff. He tells them it’s acid or Ecstasy or amphetamine depending on what they appear to want to hear. Other pills are crushed and the powder gets secretly dropped into batches of fruit juice, into pulse and bean salads, and in one case into a large tank that connects to a tap from which people are drawing drinking water. It is a long, hard afternoon’s work, and Butcher prefers not to delegate, but before long he sees, with great satisfaction, that a lively trade has started in the drugs. Somebody even offers to sell him some.

A couple of the tablets eventually get to Davey via a barefoot hippie with tiger stripes painted on his face, who assures him that this is the very highest quality Ecstasy. Davey has spent most of the day in a vain search for consciousness-changing chemicals and he doesn’t need asking twice. He eagerly swallows a couple of the tablets and waits for astounding results.

As the warm, sunny afternoon fades, and as Planetary Cliff pumps up the volume of the music, many members of the various tribes begin to feel a strange, unfamiliar edginess that has very little to do with loss of ego or the formation of a group mind.

Barry spends a long and not unenjoyable day at the Bug Mecca. He becomes engrossed in the many pristine Beetles on display. He becomes fascinated by the range of products and services that are available for Beetles. He enjoys the atmosphere. He finds it friendly and good-natured. There is a feeling that nothing bad will happen here, and he is reassured by the fact that he sees no sign of Charles Lederer.

Zak does not enjoy the day nearly as much as he had hoped to. He parks his metallic turquoise and peppermint green Beetle with the suicide doors in a conspicuous place and stands leaning against it in a cool but heroic pose, and winks at women as they go past, trying to engage them in chat. It doesn’t work. The only people who want to talk to him are other young, male Volkswagen enthusiasts. Zak doesn’t want to be unfriendly but that’s not what he’s here for. He thinks things are getting completely silly when some nine-and-a-half-year-old kid tells him this is his favourite car in the whole Bug Mecca.

“If you were ten years older and of a different sex I’d offer to take you for a ride,” says Zak.

The Kid says, “That won’t be necessary.”

Zak decides to circulate, that’ll be the way to meet girls. But even that doesn’t work. A lot of the girls are only there because their boyfriends are, and after an hour or so of being snubbed by girls and glared at by boyfriends, he decides to go back to his car and go home.

In fact he can do neither. At that very moment his Beetle is being driven along the A64, away from Filey, by the Ferrous Kid. He drives responsibly and really rather well for a nine and a half year old, and he has every intention of returning it undamaged to its rightful owner when he’s finished with it. But that won’t be possible either. Zak has had enough of Volkswagens for the time being. He leaves Bug Mecca, goes to the Gathering of the Tribes, and when someone offers him some drugs he takes them willingly enough. Getting totally zonked feels like the best way of dealing with this rotten day out.

♦

At the end of the afternoon Barry returns to the marquee belonging to Fat Volkz Inc. Les is there looking overworked and a good deal the worse for drink, but he welcomes Barry like a long lost pal. Barry explains that he can’t get back into the caravan site and Les assures him that if the worst comes to the worst, he can always kip down in the marquee. Les also plies him with drink and Barry accepts readily enough. He is starting to feel quite merry, and when Les suggests that they go and check out what’s going on at the Gathering of the Tribes it doesn’t seem like such a bad idea at all.

They walk there. It’s almost dark now. At the edge of the field Fat Les spots one of the neo-Nazi Volkswagens but he chooses to ignore it. Barry, however, can’t believe his eyes. He wants to go over and investigate it but Les restrains him.

“Is somebody making replicas of Enlightenment?” he asks.

“Yeah, me.”

“How come?”

“I’ll tell you when I’m drunk enough.”

That isn’t a good enough answer for Barry but they press on into the crowd. The music is loud and the beat is rapid and all around them people are dancing. They are a strange lot. Whatever tribe they belong to it’s clearly one that doesn’t include Fat Les and Barry Osgathorpe. The dancers are wild-eyed and frenetic. They’re certainly into the rhythm but they don’t exactly look as though they’re having a good time. Les and Barry press on. They feel out of place, as though they’re moving through a madhouse, a freak show.

When fires start at the perimeter of the field they, like many others, assume this is all part of the show. At first it looks like a series of harmless camp fires, but as time passes the fires start to spread and combine, and before long there’s a continuous band of flame encircling the whole field. Barry can see this is going to make it hard to leave but at the moment he has no desire to leave at all. He isn’t enjoying himself exactly but the spectacle around him is extremely compelling. One or two women are now dancing topless and he has never been averse to seeing topless women dancing. Fat Les passes a bottle of whisky back and forth and although they are now feeling drunk and a little out of it, they are clearly feeling out of it in a very different way from the rest of the crowd.

Skinheads move through the crush, kicking and punching people as they go, but many of the victims are in so trance-like a state they hardly notice. Unseen by most of the crowd, half a dozen skinheads pull Planetary Cliff from his position on stage from where he operates the sound system. He disappears in a rapid and efficient flurry of fists and cherry red leather and the skinheads take over the music. At first there isn’t much of a change in the sound but gradually the beat gets faster and harder and it is overlayed with the sounds of machine gun fire, explosions, and clips of the voice of Adolf Hitler.

This has a gradual but increasingly dramatic effect on the dancers. If they were wild before, they now become positively possessed. A disturbance starts not far from where Barry and Les are standing. A young man is dancing with more than usual verve. He is naked and his body is covered in thick, chocolate-coloured mud. He is jerking his limbs and swirling around with a manic, not to say self-destructive, energy. His sense of rhythm is uncertain and his movements are uncoordinated, but there’s a kind of deranged grandeur to his hyperactivity. The crowd parts to let him through and suddenly he is shaking and thrashing just a few inches away from Fat Les and Barry. They make eye-contact and Barry and Les see that the dancer is Davey, a much-changed old face from a long time ago. In the circumstances nobody quite knows what to say, then Davey yells, “Are you here?”