Geoff Nicholson - Still life with Volkswagens

“What don’t you know?”

“Well, for a start, where was Carlton Bax’s locked room?”

“There was no locked room, Barry,” she says with exaggerated patience. That was the point. Quite a Zen thing, really, Barry. I thought you might have appreciated that. The locked room was in the mind of the beholder. Carlton Bax knew that certain people wanted to get their hands on his prize exhibit and they believed, because Bax had made them believe, that the Hitler Volkswagen must be in the locked room. Therefore they were searching for that room, searching for something that didn’t exist. It was a good scam. Meanwhile the Beetle in question was sitting quite happily in Mrs Lederer’s bedroom. He gave it her ostensibly as a present, but in fact for safe keeping. The last place anyone would think of looking. Not even Marilyn knew it was there.”

He prefers not to think about Marilyn. It only brings him pain. In fact, when he gets right down to it, he realises that she has never really brought him anything else. He tries-not to think about her and Carlton Bax, not to dwell on the fact that they’re probably together right now, probably in a suite in some swanky hotel, between the sheets, having a long celebratory sex session, all hot mouths and swelling parts. He feels ill, and it definitely isn’t fear of flying. Like she said, sex is a funny business.

“And what about Butcher?” he asks. “Did he really rape you?”

“Ah well, Butcher is an interesting case. Right from the beginning I knew there was something different about him, but I wasn’t sure what. Eventually I worked it out. The difference is, he’s gay. Phelan sent a gay boy to do a man’s job, and Butcher didn’t want any part of it. He set me free, told me to make myself scarce, then he and the rest of his gang went off to the Gathering of the Tribes. That was fine by me. Left alone, knowing that Phelan was away too, I was able to go back to the bunker and release Carlton Bax and Marilyn, and then we went to Cheryl Bronte and told her the whole story. It took a while, but she finally believed us. Then we piled into her car and headed for the Gathering of the Tribes to exact our retribution on friend Phelan. But in a sense we got there too late. You’d already done the job for us.”

“I’ll bet Carlton Bax is pretty pissed off. The non-existent locked room business may have been very clever but he still lost his whole collection one way or another.”

The thought gives him considerable pleasure.

“Well, maybe Marilyn can afford to buy him some new toys,” says Renata. “She’s been offered her own television show. ‘Marilyn After Midnight’. It’s not prime time but it’s a start. In fact things are looking up for the whole family. I gather Marilyn’s mother and father are having a trial reconciliation. And I hear that old man Lederer’s about to be given his own newspaper column — the voice of reason type thing.”

Barry shakes his head. He wants to say again that he can’t believe it, but these days he can believe just about anything.

“I bet Fat Les is pretty pissed off too,” he says.

“Why do you say that?”

“Well he’s going to end up in jail isn’t he, given the number of Volkswagens he blew up.”

“Very probably, but I don’t think the sentence will be all that long, and in any case, a little spell inside probably won’t do him too much harm. You know, I think Les is one of those people who has a need to be punished. He feels guilty. He knows he’s done wrong. He wants to pay his debt to society.”

“Spare me the pop psychology,” says Barry, sharply.

“Okay, I’ll save it for my readers.”

“And what about Phelan? Is he going to go to jail?”

“Who knows? It’s my experience that people like Phelan don’t go to jail. It doesn’t agree with them.”

“But wasn’t that the whole point? Isn’t that why you were trying to expose him?”

“I was trying to get a story, not be an avenging angel, but I certainly slowed him down a little.”

“He deserves worse’than slowing down.”

“Come on Barry, don’t be naive.”

“I just don’t understand why he isn’t rotting in a cell somewhere.”

“Could it be that he has a special relationship with the police?”

“With Cheryl Bronte?”

She nods.

“Maybe your next expose should be of her.”

“Maybe it should, but as it happens, I’ve been employed to be your ghost writer.”

The plane is full now. The doors are being closed. The overhead storage lockers are being slammed shut.

“I’ve never been to America,” says Barry.

“I know that.”

“I’ve never been out of England.”

“It’s time you did.”

“I find it all incredibly scary.”

“It’s brave of you to admit it.”

“Really?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be there to protect you.”

Barry looks at her carefully to see whether she’s mocking him. She doesn’t seem to be. She really seems to mean it. Barry feels better already.

“You know Barry, this could be the start of a beautiful friendship.”

“Really?”

“I’ve told you. I do what I have to do to get a story, but some of the things I do for myself.”

She squeezes his knee in a gesture of unfathomable ambiguity. Barry thinks he might as well enjoy it.

It is now that part of the pre-flight charade when the cabin crew wave their arms in the direction of the emergency exits and demonstrate how to strap on a life jacket. It only adds to Barry’s anxiety. He watches but he doesn’t really see. They look like mime artists. Then he notices that one of the air stewardesses looks oddly familiar. The hair and the uniform are unfamiliar but as she shows the correct way to inflate a life jacket by blowing down a small, transparent, plastic tube, Barry realises it’s Debby. She was as good as her word. She’s found a way to travel. Barry sinks down in his seat, puts a hand over his face, and pretends to be fascinated by the in flight magazine.

Much, much later the plane touches down. Barry and Debby have managed to spend the whole flight without admitting to each other’s existence. Not a glance, not a word, not a gesture has been exchanged. Renata has found all this screamingly funny and she has been very tempted to interview Debby to get extra background.

Renata and Barry go through passport control and although a huge, sandy-haired official with a walrus moustache gives him a hard time and says he looks like a mass murderer in his passport photograph, they are soon out of the airport and collecting their rental car from one of the lots. The light is harsh and glaring. Everything looks bright and hard, and Barry feels as though he’s on another planet.

“Sorry we can’t rent a Volkswagen Beetle,” says Renata. “The rental fleets don’t use them.”

Again he checks to see whether or not Renata is sending him up, but again she seems to be sincere. They take charge of a Ford Thunderbird and he can immediately see its advantages, its solidity, its comfort, the sense of sitting in someone’s office. It is not at all what he’s used to, but Renata looks perfectly at home with the power steering and the automatic gearbox and she sails the car out of the lot into the easy swell of American traffic.

Almost immediately they pass a small workshop selling secondhand tyres and hubcaps, and Barry sees his first American Beetle parked outside it. The car too looks very at home here, basking in the California sunshine; a candy purple convertible with Porsche alloy rims and lavender upholstery. Barry and Renata are soon on the freeway, heading towards a superior motel that Renata just happens to know. Barry is still not sure what the sleeping arrangements are going to be and he’s far too polite to ask. Renata drives swiftly, and she has the radio on, and consequently they have no idea that moments after they pass the purple convertible it blows up in a geyser of flame and, like many before it, is reduced to a tangle of blackened, burning wreckage.