Renata stands beside her monitor screen, trying to back away from Phelan. He moves towards her, raising his hand as he approaches. He could be about to slap her, but in fact the hand comes to rest harmlessly on her shoulder. He squeezes her flesh, firmly but not harshly. In other circumstances it might seem affectionate.
“You don’t have to worry about me,” Renata says. “You don’t have to do anything about me.”
“Personally I’m not going to do anything to you at all.”
He reaches into his jacket pocket and takes out a pair of heavy duty handcuffs. He picks up Renata’s right hand and places one cuff around her wrist, gently as though it was a piece of jewellery, then locks it. He shepherds her into, the bedroom and pushes her face down onto the bed. He loops the handcuffs through the metal curves of the brass bedhead then locks in her other wrist. He gets up, walks to the bedroom door. She can hear footsteps and male voices and she turns her head to see Butcher and four other skinheads enter the room. She hasn’t seen these others before. They are Butcher’s friends, his new recruits.
“Do whatever you like to her,” says Phelan. “But make it permanent and don’t be too long about it. Remember there’s a gathering of the tribes you have to get to.”
♦
In some sense I suppose an author is all his characters. I am, I suppose, both Barry Osgathorpe and Fat Les. I am both Charles and Marilyn Lederer. I am the New Age travellers and the neo-Nazis. I ‘am’ these people to the limited extent that I need to impersonate them and live inside their heads for the amount of time it takes to write them. I become them but yet I don’t have to become like them; and this is a blessing. However, there is an important sense in which I am somewhat like Carlton Bax: I’m a Volkswagen collector.
Obviously I’m not in the Carlton Bax league. I don’t claim to be a great or even a very serious collector. I have no garage or warehouse full of classic and historic Beetles. I certainly have no locked room. In fact I don’t, own any ‘real’ Beetles at all at the moment, but my flat is littered with hundreds of toy and model Beetles, Beetle clocks, mugs, egg cups, books, magazines, a few T — shirts, that kind of stuff.
“When people ask me ‘How come?’ I usually say it all started as a joke and it subsequently got out of hand. I imply that I bought myself a couple of toy Beetles when I first owned a real Volkswagen and that it has grown from there. I say that well-meaning friends are always giving me Volkswagen stuff and that the collection has grown of its own volition without any guidance or interference from me.
This is almost entirely untrue. It’s obviously true that there was a moment when I had no model Beetles at all, and there must have been a moment when I suddenly had one or two. However, as soon as I had two or three it became entirely obvious to me that this coujd be the first step towards a vast and significant collection. This may not have been entirely rational. One or two friends have given me Beetles as presents, but I am a difficult person to buy for. Once a collection has reached a certain size the chances are that I already have the more common examples that people are able to buy for me.
From the beginning I have tried to explain and justify the collecting urge, and I tend to say that I collect Beetles, rather than, say, E type Jaguars or Morris Minors, because the Beetle has such an archetypal form. It has penetrated so many countries and cultures. It is ubiquitous and instantly recognisable. I am no great traveller but over the years I’ve been in the United States, France, Morocco, Egypt and Australia, and in every place there have been real Beetles on the roads and model Beetles for sale in the shops or at markets.
Some of the items in my collection become a form of travel souvenir. In Cairo I bought a couple of Beetles moulded out of recycled plastic, out of what looks like shredded and melted down detergent bottles. The moulds must have been too hot, so that the plastic has scorched and turned a slightly revolting shade of blue⁄brown. I remember clearly the Egyptian man who sold them to me, how he seemed to think I wanted to haggle over the price when in fact the price he’d asked was so cheap I just wanted to be sure I’d understood him correctly. They cost so little that I sometimes wish I’d bought dozens of them, taken them home and turned them into some sort of sculpture. I remember being in a gas station in Yuma, Arizona and trying to buy a couple of toy Beetles they had for sale at the counter, but they didn’t know what I was talking about when I asked to buy ‘those Beetles over there’ since they, of course, only knew them as Bugs.
Some of the models in my collection are extremely good, beautifully detailed, made by real craftsmen. Others are very crude, mass produced, designed to be thrown away. But they are all welcome. One of the thrills of these crude representations is to see just how inaccurate a model of a Beetle may be and yet still remain, recognisably, unmistakably, a Beetle. Quality is not a matter of complete indifference to me, but the essential concern is variety and diversity. And this must surely be the reason for collecting anything; a means of asserting difference in a world of mass duplication.
The twenty-odd million real Volkswagen Beetles that have been produced clearly resemble each other in all the important ways; their lines, their profile, their layout. Despite changes in engine capacity or window shape or headlight design, they have far more similarities than they have differences. A Beetle standing alone is one thing, but whenever two or three stand side by side we are able to compare and contrast, to see the different interpretations and patinas wrought upon the cars. Even if the owner doesn’t actively personalise or customise the Beetle directly, it becomes unique by virtue of dents, scrapes and resprays. This is a means by which we humanise a machine.
♦
In 1992 I was telephoned by Catherine Bennett of the Guardian who was writing an article on collecting and collectors. When the article appeared she quoted me as follows:
“I think collecting’s a weird thing, a very uncreative activity,” says Geoff Nicholson, though he has a growing heap of toy Volkswagen Beetles. “I suppose in the real world I’d quite like to collect real Volkswagens, and having models of them kind of puts you in control of a very tiny world. It sounds sort of pathetic and twisted doesn’t it?”
I think I’m prepared to stand by this. However, several things need to be said. First, I’m not sure I do want to own a collection of real Volkswagens. Owning real cars is a demanding, frustrating and expensive business. They go wrong, they need constant attention, and even when looked after properly they still deteriorate and decay. A collection of models or memorabilia doesn’t. It remains intact and, with a modicum of luck, becomes increasingly valuable. Secondly, being in control of a tiny world seems to me exactly what a novelist does so perhaps it isn’t so pathetic and twisted after all. And thirdly, it is an outrage to suggest that my Beetle collection is a ‘growing heap’. My Volkswagens are cherished, loved, kept on shelves, in boxes and display cabinets, so that my flat, it might well be said, looks like a still life with Volkswagens.
Nine. Bonfire of the Volkswagens
Mrs Lederer moves around her apartment, plumping a cushion here, making a minor adjustment to a flower arrangement there. She wants the room to look right. Somehow she knows — he’s about to arrive. She doesn’t know his name or what he will look like, but she wants to be absolutely ready for him. She hears tyres on the gravel and she looks out to see a Mercedes pulling into the drive. The car stops and a man gets out, a complete stranger, and yet there is no-mistaking him. It could only be Phelan. He looks strong and determined, eager but not hasty.