♦
The police wanted Ishmael and Marilyn to help them with their inquiries. Ishmael and Marilyn wanted to sleep.
‘We were the victims of this siege you know,’ Marilyn said. ‘You’re treating us like criminals.’
A man with a sharp suit and haircut said, ‘No we aren’t, madam. We just hope you’ll be able to clear up one or two matters for us.’
‘Any objections if we go to a motel?’
‘None at all, madam, so long as we know which one.’
Ishmael said, ‘I’ve had it with motels, this time I’m going first class.’
‘Really, sir?’
‘Really. If anybody wants us we’ll be at the Kensington Astoria.’
He’d heard the name on a radio programme. They took Davey as their chauffeur. At first Ishmael felt uneasy about letting anyone but himself drive Enlightenment, but now that he was going first class it seemed appropriate.
‘What are you going to do when you get to the hotel?’ Davey asked.
‘I’m going to wait for offers,’ Ishmael said.
♦
‘Pornography is like pastoral poetry,’ says Max. ‘It must fulfil certain inviolable conditions. The rules are set. The requirements are rigid. To be inventive within that strait-jacket of form is the mark of the true genius.’
Renata sips her drink and doesn’t say anything. She has heard Max’s opinions on other occasions, knows them well, and feels that they result from too many years spent in the seminar room.
♦
They arrived at the Kensington Astoria. Ishmael asked for a suite of rooms for himself and Marilyn, and a single room for Davey. The hotel was happy to oblige. They knew who their guests were. They were celebrities. They’d been on television. Nobody asked whether they had money. Nobody told them how much anything cost. The hotel staff just said what an honour it was to meet Ishmael.
The suite of rooms was a bit ostentatious for Ishmael’s tastes. Everything was cream coloured and had mouldings. Ishmael headed for the bedroom.
‘No, Marilyn,’ he said, ‘you can’t be with me now. I need to be alone. You stay out of the bedroom and answer the phone. Tell them all I’m in conference but I’m prepared to consider all offers.’
He closed the bedroom door behind him, stretched out on the king-size bed and fell deep asleep.
When he awoke it was dark. From the sitting room of the suite he could hear a television, and Marilyn talking on the phone. He entered the room. There was mess everywhere. Marilyn was sitting on the floor amid an undergrowth of newspapers, letters, flowers, telexes, wine bottles, two video recorders and a number of telephones, two of which were ringing.
‘The phones have been jammed all day,’ Marilyn said. ‘They all want you, Ishmael. It looks like you’re a star.’
‘Who wants me? And what for?’
‘So far you’ve been offered radio spots on ‘Start the Week’ and ‘Any Questions’. They want you to read your favourite Bible passage on some Sunday religious tv programme. Radio One wants you to play your ten favourite singles of all time. You can be a guest on ‘Breakfast Time’, ‘Celebrity Squares’, ‘Call My Bluff’ and ‘Blankety Blank’.
‘The Observer wants to discuss your being guest motoring editor. You’ve been invited to address the Volkswagen Owners’ Club of Great Britain — small time, perhaps, but probably worthwhile. The Sunday Times wants to do a Life in the Day and the Sunday Express wants you for their Things I Wish I’d Known at Eighteen. Oh and the TV Times would like you to take over their problem page.
‘Then there are the people who are prepared to pay just for the pleasure of interviewing you. In the last half hour alone I’ve spoken to Woman’s Own, Penthouse, Fast Lane, the Church Times and the New Musical Express.
‘You can open supermarkets, endorse products, test-drive any car in the world, meet anyone you want to meet, have free tickets to anything, and you can have all the sponsorship anyone could possibly hope for.
‘The tabloids all want to do your story, although they all want it to be exclusive; and David Frost and Terry Wogan have both said they’ll be in touch first thing tomorrow.
‘So what shall I do? Shall I start accepting for you?’
‘No,’ said Ishmael. ‘I’m waiting for the big one.’
‘Big one?’
‘Yes, Marilyn. You and I deserve our own chat show.’
♦
‘Did you enjoy the film?’ Max asks. ‘Want to see any of it again in slow motion or freeze frame or whatever?’
‘Very weird,’ says Renata. ‘What is it about Volks-wagens?’
‘Volkswagens?’
‘The car in the film was a Volkswagen.’
‘Was it?’
‘You didn’t notice?’
‘Of course I didn’t notice. I don’t watch porn films just to look at the cars.’
‘No, I suppose most people wouldn’t,’ she says sadly.
But she would. She does. She is no longer able to walk past Beetles without noting their year and model, the variations in headlight shapes, the flat and round windscreens, the presence or absence and distribution of engine air intake slots, the design and position of rear light clusters. And these are of course only the factory variations. There is also the whole world of modification, of personalizing and customizing. Anything that can possibly be done to a car has been done to a Volkswagen — endless variety, endless transformation — somewhat like pornography and pastoral poetry.
‘Want to see another film?’ Max asks.
‘Later,’ says Renata. ‘Much later.’
♦
From being besieged in ‘Sorrento’, Ishmael and Marilyn were now besieged in the Kensington Astoria. Two days passed. Reporters camped in the lobby. There were armies of fans waiting in the street. They were still hot news.
Men belonging to arcane departments of the police force came to interview them. It was clear they didn’t for a moment believe the version of events that Ishmael had given to the media, but since Marilyn’s father was still gently raving in some private clinic, and since Ishmael was now a public figure, they seemed reluctant to bring any charges. They hadn’t worked out who had done what to whom, and they liked Ishmael’s version of events more than any other they could think up.
Marilyn had a phone call from her mother. She had been staying with ‘a friend’ when all the trouble started. She had returned to ‘Sorrento’ to find every window smashed, police still in occupation, her husband locked up and her daughter on every front page in the land. She managed to take it very well.
In the next few days Ishmael and Marilyn met producers from all the significant television companies. They arrived in a posse and lounged around the hotel suite, all brief-cases and smart but casual clothes. Ishmael had trouble telling one from another.
‘What kind of chat show are we discussing here?’ asked one of them.
‘Simple,’ said Ishmael. ‘Marilyn is in the studio with one or two newsworthy guests…’
‘But Ishmael, old mate,’ said a man with a cockney accent and a very expensive leather blouson, ‘Marilyn is very young, totally untried.’
‘That’s the deal,’ said Ishmael.
There was a grumbling acceptance of this, accompanied by the premonition that worse was to come.
‘And I am ‘our man in a Volkswagen’, ‘the man with Enlightenment’. I roam the country in a Beetle meeting eccentrics, sages, idiot savants; having insights, and sharing my inner visions with the viewers.’
‘Would you be on film?’
‘No. I’d be absolutely live. There’ll be a crew with me, hand-picked for their spiritual awareness, and they’d have to travel in Volkswagens.’
Brief-cases were snapped open, papers rattled, French cigarettes were lit.