Geoff Nicholson - Still life with Volkswagens

The Frenchman in the beret was Andy. He was right for the part, having one of those lumpy, humorous, hangdog faces. This was enough of a surprise in itself, but the commercial had a punchline to deliver. As the two men exchanged mournful glances, a car flashed past them and a caption appeared on the screen. “If only everything in life was as reliable as a Volkswagen.”

When the paperback edition of Street Sleeper was published I had the dedication ‘For Andy who gets run down’ removed.

Barry Osgathorpe is having a dream of sexual inadequacy. In this dream he is falling for a devastating seductress who is an amalgam of Helen Mirren and his old maths teacher, a surprisingly buxom old party, called Miss Cornthwaite. The scene is taking place in a large and completely deserted car showroom, and the Mirren⁄Cornthwaite character is decked out in a length of purple chiffon which seems copious enough but isn’t quite sufficient to hide her nakedness. The seduction is going rather well. Barry has stripped his own clothes off and is down to his underpants. He’s about to take those off too but no, the dream woman says she wants the pleasure of removing them herself. Her fingers scamper up and down his torso. She puts her hand into the waistband of the pants and gently lowers them for him. Down they go, down beyond his knees, down to his ankles, and she looks at his genitals and starts to laugh. It’s quite kindly at first, as if she’s having fun, but soon it becomes mocking, then vicious, and before long it turns into a kind of demonic, hysterical snarl. And now she doesn’t look at all like Helen Mirren, not even like Miss Cornthwaite, more like a snaggle-toothed, vampiric version of Queen Victoria; and he still doesn’t understand what she’s finding so damned funny.

So he looks down at his body and sees, with surprisingly little alarm at first, this being that sort of dream, that his penis has been transformed into a small, pink Volkswagen, about the size of a Dinky toy; and not even an interesting, classic kind of Beetle, but some humdrum, ordinary 1970 smodel with a 1200 engine. And he looks more carefully and sees it’s a little rusty and uncared for, and it has no tyres, and oh my God, it appears to be leaking gallons of thick, dirty black oil.

He tells himself to wake up. It’s a struggle. His sleeping mind is strangely reluctant to detach itself from these comic horrors, but at last he is awake. He finds himself alone, it being one of the nights when Debby is not staying with him. It’s the early hours of the morning but he decides to get up. He steps out of the caravan. The air is cool and the grass is wet beneath his bare feet. He has had an idea. He walks over to the side of the caravan, to the place where his Beetle resides. He slowly unfastens the ropes and buckles that keep the car cover in place. Then he takes a corner of the cover and peels it back, slowly, deliberately, with a certain reverence, until the vehicle beneath is fully revealed.

These days Barry tends to distrust people who give their cars names, but once he was happy enough to call this vehicle Enlightenment. It sits wide and low on its thick wheels and tyres. Every part of it is black. There is no chrome, no badging, no metal handles or window frames. Even the headlamps have black covers. Even the windscreen and windows are made of smoked glass. It looks mean and vicious, positively evil, and that had once been precisely the intention.

Barry tries the driver’s door. It has not been open for a while so it sticks at first, but soon he has access to the interior and he eases into the driver’s seat. He puts his hands on the wheel, his feet on the pedals, and he remains there without moving for the next six hours.

Barry sits and thinks about the person he was, a different person for sure, a character called Ishmael. Barry has heard that the American Indians say ghosts appear when someone has not been buried right. And that, he suspects, may be the case with Ishmael. He is a spectre, an undead reminder. The stories Barry tells about him to the children gathered around the steps of the caravan are tales of adventure and estrangement, but they are also ghost stories.

That ghosts are pitiable, uneasy spirits, he would not deny, but he knows they can also be monsters. Ishmael’s search for enlightenment was no mere intellectual enquiry. It was a quest steeped in violence and anger and the smell of leaded petrol. It was not merely the bad guys who got hurt. Some innocent bystanders also suffered, became his victims. But perhaps the real victim was himself.

Halfway through the morning Sam Probert, the owner of the caravan site, comes along, sees Barry, and assumes he has just got into the car and is about to drive off.

“Going somewhere nice?” he asks Barry cheerfully.

“No,” says Barry, “I’m already there.” But he knows he’s lying.

♦

A man answers the phone when Marilyn calls her mother.

She does not recognise the voice, though she certainly recognises the type: young, muscular, surly, impecunious.

“I want to speak to my mother,” Marilyn says sternly.

“Oh, right you are, love. Hang on.” There is a good deal of rustling and mumbling, and the noise of things, very possibly empty gin bottles, being knocked over, before Marilyn’s mother makes it to the phone.

“Yes, cupcake?” she enquires.

“Something strange is going on,” says Marilyn.

“How exciting.”

“No Mother. Carlton’s disappeared.”

“Carlton?”

“My boyfriend. You remember?”

“Oh yes, of course I remember, a very generous young man. He was always giving me presents. It’s a shame he’s gone because you were rather fond of him, weren’t you? You can’t trust them, can you?”

“It’s not like that, Mother. He hasn’t just gone off. He’s genuinely disappeared. He left home a week ago and he hasn’t been seen since.”

“Oh dear,” says her mother.

“And this is the really strange part, there was an explosion in his garage and one of his cars was destroyed.”

“An explosion? Oh dear.”

“Yes, I know it sounds weird. And the police have been round and they’re completely useless. They seem to think the explosion was caused by an electrical fault or some such nonsense and that Carlton’s run off with a floozy.”

“Well, that is a possibility, isn’t it?” says her mother.

“Not if you knew Carlton.”

“I see. What kind of car was it that got blown up?”

“Oh Mother, I’ve told you all this. I wish you’d listen sometimes. You know he collects Volkswagens.”

“Oh dear,” says Marilyn’s mother.

“Why do you keep saying, ‘Oh dear’?”

There is a poignant hesitation before Mrs Lederer asks, “When did you last see your father?”

“More recently than you, I’m sure. But what does that have to do with anything?”

“When?” her mother insists.

“I drove down to the hospital about a month ago. Why?”

“And how was he?”

Marilyn tries to think of a gentle, sympathetic way of putting this, but settles for, “He was barking mad, as usual.”

“Yes, I thought so when I last saw him too. So you’ll be surprised to hear that he’s been returned to the community.”

“Which community?” Marilyn asks, a hint of panic in her voice.

“You know, the community, our community, the world at large.”

“Oh dear,” says Marilyn. “Oh dear me.”

♦

That night Marilyn goes along to the television studio as usual and tries to perform her regular duties as a late night weather presenter. This is not exactly the glittering kind of media stardom that she once had in mind for herself, since her weather bulletins are broadcast well after midnight on a satellite channel, but at least it’s something. She has a small but significant reputation for being vivacious, irreverent, slightly zany. She bounces onto the screen, all primary colours and messed up hair, stands in front of a computer generated image of England and speaks in the rootless, studied, inau then tic, South London accent she reserves for her television appearances.