On the way here I saw a lot of parked Volkswagens, I counted them and noted the pattern.
The streets.
The Volkswagen stands at the crossroads of history.
As do we all.
7 a.m. I am sitting in a pub called the Green Man — fertility. The beer tastes like urine.
The carpet.
The seats.
The juke box.
I’d like to hear some music from the road, from the spheres. The juke box is playing ‘On the Blanket on the Ground’.
Things are getting jagged again.
Lads at the bar. Low-lifes. Smart, casual clothes. Always a bad sign. They’re beautiful in their own way, but it is not my way. It is not the WAY.
The juke box has started playing ‘My Way’.
I try to read their minds, their faces. It isn’t hard. Their minds are full of bad chemicals. One day they’re going to die. Why not today?
8 a.m. Still in the Green Man.
The effects seem to be wearing off. The beer glasses above the bar reflect light — it’s just FANTASTIC.
I felt like taking my clothes off and standing naked so that the drinkers in the pub could see me as I really AM. Marilyn talked me out of it.
9 a.m. The beach again.
I am naked but my clothes are not far away.
Marilyn and I have just made love on a blanket on the shingle. Pebbles. Waves. EVERYTHING MOVED. It would. It has to. Oneness. Making love to a Goddess.
10 a.m. Back at the boarding house.
More or less back to normal, except for being very sensitive to noise from outside.
Who’s making the noise? The Crockenfield Blazers?
I wish I could sleep, but every time I close my eyes there’s an abyss. ABYSS. The window rattles. There are dark shapes just outside my field of vision.
The vibrations.
The wallpaper.
The fucking insects.
And do I trust Marilyn? After all, she is her father’s daughter. She carries the genetic code. She is also, of course, a Goddess.
From the street the sound of a Volkswagen. You can hear the state of the engine, the condition of the valves, the exhaust, whether it’s a man or woman driving, his or her age, the state of mind, the state of the driver’s soul.
Don’t get too near the soul. That’s where the insects live.
Nobody move.
Nobody say anything.
Get those insects out of here.
Beetles. Yes. Significant. Yes. Get it?
11.30 a.m. Marilyn is trying to help me ‘mellow out’. She’s given me red wine, orange juice and vitamin C tablets.
Or so she says.
Somebody fill that abyss will you?
Blood oranges, a breeding ground for maggots, dead dogs, bad souls. Welcome back to ‘Sorrento’.
Nobody touch that light switch.
My flesh itches. Hair growing where it didn’t grow before. Not hairs but legs. Spiders inside the skin, their legs sticking out through the pores.
Who’s got the ray gun?
Who’s got the nuclear device?
Let’s blast those suckers.
They’re going to have to die. Every one of them. All of us in the end, but some of them first. It’s only a gesture but it’s a start.
It’s obvious.
Marilyn’s father knew what he was talking about. He would. He’s got his contacts. The time for talk is past. There are to be no prisoners. No surrender.
The slugs in the library. The velour tracksuit.
Kill the fuckers. Starting now.
Don’t think I can write any more just at the moment…
The record continues,
I wanna be free
Don’t need no more deception
I wanna clean-living girl
With no social infection
I wanna Ford Capri
That’s got fuel injection.
Renata takes the record off before the fuzzed guitar solo cuts in. If they have ever written ‘em like that before she suspects they won’t be writing ‘em like that very much longer. She turns the television on. There is a young black reporter standing in front of a wrecked car in a rural setting. The car could be a Range Rover. The reporter looks ill at ease, like someone only acting the part of a reporter, someone who has been hopelessly miscast.
He says, ‘The sleepy village of Crockenfield was literally rocked last night. This house’ (there is a shot of a large detached house with grounds) ‘called ‘Sorrento’ and owned by Mr Andrew Lederer was fire-bombed, cars such as the one behind me were set alight, there was a chase, shots were fired. Why?
‘The attack was apparently motiveless, nothing was stolen and in the end nobody was hurt, although that in itself seems miraculous. And the only clue is that the attackers left the village in a supercharged Volkswagen Beetle.
‘More curious still, I’ve spent most of the day here in Crockenfield and haven’t been able to find anyone prepared to talk about the episode.
‘Mr Lederer says he is too busy to speak to the media and claims it was merely youthful high spirits on the part of some of his daughter’s friends.
‘Where is his daughter by the way? And how is it that his attractive blonde wife managed to sleep through the entire episode?
‘Here is Constable William Peterson…’
A tense young Constable speaks direct to camera.
‘We heard shots, an explosion or two, and then we saw this Volkswagen leaving the scene at a hundred and twenty miles per hour. Basically we’re baffled.’
Renata feels it would not take very much to basically baffle Constable Peterson. The reporter appears on screen again.
He says, ‘Who fired those shots? Is there some strange vendetta that stalks the village of Crockenfield? Is there a political motive? And just who is hiding what from whom?
‘This is Dudley Johnson, Kent at Six, Crockenfield.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ says Renata.
♦
Later, Ishmael would be told that it can sometimes take years to recover from a particularly bad trip. In his own case he was unable to leave the boarding house for a few days. Marilyn was a tower of strength. She sat with him a lot, stroked his head, brought him food, and tried to talk him back to normality.
♦
Renata tries to remember more about her hitch-hiker. She recalls the leather jacket, the ghetto-blaster, and some talk of a friend who was mad on Beetles, then a lot of nonsense about a damsel in distress. If she were a real newshound, a real pro, she would be on the phone, in her car, solving the mystery, getting the story, getting a scoop, getting on in her career. If she were even a decent, concerned citizen she would phone the police and give a description of her hitch-hiker.
What she actually does is take a piece of paper from her bureau and scrawl on it:
FACT: The sleepy village of Crockenfield was rocked earlier this month when the home of Mr Andrew Lederer was mysteriously fire-bombed. Police were baffled. The only clue was that the attackers were driving a hot Volkswagen Beetle.
What the hell? She was never claiming to be Norman Mailer. She goes into her bathroom, turns on the immersion heater and decides to leave the phone call to her mother until another day. She decides she needs something stronger to drink than apple juice. She looks at what she has just written.
‘Only another twenty-nine facts to go,’ she says contentedly.
♦
Marilyn had done a marvellous job of reasoning with the landlady of the boarding house. She explained Ishmael’s loud behaviour, his screams, his breaking of the bathroom mirror, and his loudly proclaimed threats to blow up Brighton with his psychic powers, by saying that he had been in the Falklands and had a close friend blown up by an Argentinian mine. She knew the Falklands didn’t have the same cachet as Vietnam but nobody could have mistaken Ishmael for an American vet.
The landlady was pacified at least for a few days. Then Ishmael developed the habit of waking at three in the morning and screaming ‘Kill the parasites’. The landlady put up with it for three nights, and the intensity of his screams was considerably lower by the third night, but then she threw them, very politely, out.