It will be a big day for the Gathering of the Tribes too. There will be any number of workshops and seminars on Tai Chi and water divining and on how to spot a spiritual vortex. There will be chanting and meditation. There will be demonstrations of tattooing, massage and reflexology. All good stuff. But it is hoped that at some point the tribes will not only gather, but actually merge, so that there will be a loss of self, to be replaced by a feeling of oneness, a blending into the group mind. To this end Planetary Cliff will be playing some extremely loud music and everyone will dance and take a lot of drugs; just as Davey dreamed. However, since these activities will take place throughout a long, sleepless night, things are a little slow to get moving in the New Age field; everyone is resting up for the rigours ahead.
Fat Les is up bright and early. A lot of potential customers will need to be chatted up in the course of the day and he has to be ready for them. He has to appear civil, friendly, welcoming, enthusiastic. None of this will be easy for him, so he takes his first big drink of the day at a little after nine-thirty.
Barry wakes early enough too; not surprising, given the level of comfort to be found sleeping on the back seat of Enlightenment. He gets up, goes across to the shower block and ablutes. There’s a perfectly good shower unit in his own caravan but he doesn’t want to risk waking Charles Lederer. He knows the old guy is hardly likely to sleep solidly for the whole of the next two days but Barry intends to spend the afternoon and evening with him in the caravan, talking about life and death and other Zen topics, and thereby ensuring that he doesn’t see the hordes of Volkswagens. With this in mind he plans an early visit to Fat Les, so that with any luck he’ll be back before Lederer even stirs. Nevertheless, just to make sure, he locks the door of his caravan before departing.
He goes on foot to the Bug Mecca, since there is already a traffic jam forming along the roads surrounding the caravan site. He comes to the entrance gate and pays the exorbitant entrance fee. He wanders between the rows of parked Volkswagens and the trade stands for a good spell before he finds Fat Les. He sees the Fat Volkz marquee and as he enters he sees Les holding court with a group of enthusiasts. He comes up behind him and says loudly, “I’ve got a Volkswagen I’d like you to take a look at.”
Fat Les turns to see who’s talking to him, and when he sees it’s Barry, he turns back in disgust.
“It’s Enlightenment,” Barry persists. “It needs some attention.”
“Yeah?” sneers Les. “Take it to your approved dealer.”
“Please,” says Barry. “Why this hostility?”
“If you don’t know…”
“Please tell me. Please express your anger. Get it off your chest.”
Les doesn’t need asking twice.
“You let me down, you bastard. I asked you for help. I asked you to help clear my name. I asked you to find Charles bloody Lederer, and you wouldn’t.”
“But I would. I did.”
“What?”
“I looked for Charles Lederer. I found him. I caught him.”
“Did you hand him over to Cheryl Bronte?”
“No, he’s locked up in my caravan.”
“Are you serious about this?” Les asks. “You’re not just winding me up?”
“I’m serious,” says Barry. “He’s at the caravan site not two hundred yards from here. Of course the old guy swears he never blew up any Volkswagens but I must say I don’t believe him.”
“I may have misjudged you,” says Fat Les. “Have a drink.”
Fat Les gets rid of his customers and Barry tells him about the various adventures he’s had while finding Charles Lederer, although he omits the stuff about Marilyn apparently being in love with someone else, and he tells him about the damage that was inflicted on Enlightenment. Fat Les is sorry to hear about the damage but he’s confident that Fat Volkz Inc can make it as good as new. In fact he’s come up with one or two new modifications that he thinks might fit very nicely into the existing structure of the car. Barry is thrilled. They’re soon talking like the friends they once were. They begin to reminisce, to discuss the old times and this takes them several hours.
It is mid-morning when Phelan arrives in the nearby village and starts chatting to the local inhabitants. Has there been any trouble yet? Have there been fights, robberies, drugs and sex? When people tell him there haven’t, he begins to wonder whether his boys have been slacking. Outside the caravan site he encounters the Ferrous Kid.
“Have you seen signs of trouble?” he asks.
“No,” says the Kid.
“Don’t worry, there’ll be trouble soon enough.”
“Will there?” asks the kid. “All the ones I’ve met have been peaceable enough.”
“Well that’s precisely the problem, isn’t it? People aren’t always what they seem?”
“You mean that you might really be a hippie in disguise?”
“I mean,” he says sternly, “that people may look like good solid Englishmen but they turn out to be cosmopolitan riff raff. Someone ought to teach them a lesson.”
“What are you?” the Kid asks.
“I’m sorry?”
“Well I thought you must be a journalist or something, but you don’t ask eno’ugh questions.”
“I’m just an interested party,” he says.
“But for all I know, given that people aren’t always what they seem, you could be cosmopolitan riff raff, couldn’t you?”
“How old are you?”
“Nine and a half.”
“Well let me assure you child, there’s nothing cosmopolitan about me,” he says proudly and makes a dignified withdrawal.
The Ferrous Kid thinks this may turn out to be one of the great weekends of his young life. He sees all these Beetles arriving, in all their myriad styles and finishes, and his heart feels big within his chest. He stands at the edge of the Bug Mecca, watching all those gorgeous Beetles, and he feels spoiled for choice. Which one will he steal first?
♦
Phelan needn’t have worried about his boys. The gang of skinheads are soon on the job of causing localised outbreaks of casual aggro. They enter the Gathering of the Tribes, split up into small groups and start creating trouble. Some of them pinch girls’ bottoms and squeeze their breasts. Some start pissing very conspicuously onto a row of tents where people are still sleeping. Others get into a fight over the price of food with the owner of a vegetarian food stall. A fortune teller’s tent gets turned over. A couple of skinheads go up to Planetary Cliff and say that if he knows what’s good for him he’ll play a lot of music by the Upsetters in the course of the day. Planetary Cliff, of course, has plenty of reasons to hate and fear skinheads, especially since they beat him up in a lay-by at the beginning of the summer, but the ones who speak to him, being new recruits, weren’t part of that attack, and besides. Cliff isn’t averse to a bit of reggae now and then, so he doesn’t argue.
The skinheads move through the crowd, knocking food and drink from people’s hands, pushing people out of the way, and if anyone protests they threaten serious violence. None of this is exactly evil, and much of it isn’t even directly confrontational. The threats so far remain just threats, and when resisted the skinheads tend to back down. They don’t want a pitched battle, not yet. But word soon gets out that they’re around and looking for trouble, and even though they’re few enough in number, they still manage to create a feeling of unease and distrust, and that is exactly as intended.
♦
And still they come. Zak arrives in the late morning in his metallic turquoise and peppermint green Beetle with the suicide doors. He’d been contemplating bringing it along to Bug Mecca with a view to selling it, but since his brush with the skinheads he feels it’s his duty to keep the car. If he got rid of it now, that would be as good as letting the neo-Nazis win. But he has a much better reason for coming. The memory of his sexual encounter with Mrs Lederer is still very vivid, and that encounter seemed to take place entirely because of the car he drives. He could handle some more encounters like that one, and if the kind of women who melt at the sight of a man in a cool Volkswagen are to be found anywhere, they are surely to be found at an event like Bug Mecca. He has high hopes for the weekend.