That short stay at the pub cost me the best part of five quid, so I was glad to get out of it and back on the road, even though thick clouds were belting across the woods and steeples and it was starting to rain. June regretted not having got a lift in Gilbert Blaskin’s Jaguar as she huddled in the back expecting the worst, but Bill and I felt quite cheerful at such a mild attack of weather. I felt a bit drunk, with a rubber face, and steel arms broken in six places, but once we got going it didn’t seem much of a disadvantage. In fact we were all so tight that the car went better than before. The only letdown was when I nerved myself at last to switch on the windscreen wipers. They both shot sideways out of the car’s path and were never seen again. Bill made me stop while he crawled around in the wet for a long search, promising he’d be able to fix them back. ‘You know,’ he said, buttoning his saturated coat when he got in beside me, ‘I’m beginning to think that this vehicle isn’t roadworthy.’
‘Don’t be pessimistic,’ I said, when it started like a dream. Rain drummed down. I was driving on the ocean bed, and expected to see herrings and goldfish making boggle-faces at me. In spite of being drunk I was afraid to go faster than thirty miles an hour, and even twenty at times, so that lorry drivers hooted and cursed as they swung out to overtake. I was sweating with the work of it, a fanatical stare of concentration baking my stomach as we jogged along. By some incredible scissor-feat of the body, Bill managed to transfer himself into the back without knocking my driving arm, murmuring that he was going to make a party of it. June was nervous, but joined me and Bill in smoking a Whiff so that, what with their frequent swigs of whisky, the place stank worse than a pub on Saturday night. I suddenly realized that their lives were in my hands, so my stone-cold soberness came back quicker than it would normally have done.
I passed the map over my shoulder to Bill and asked him to find out where we were, but he laughed, wound down the window, and threw it outside. It must have opened and got laid by the wind across some unlucky bastard’s windscreen, because the scream of two or three hooters broke into me. I didn’t mind that so much, but when Bill tried to get the window back up it wouldn’t come, and gusts of rain ran around the inside of the car and sprayed us all. He and June (I could see them in my mirror) had their arms around each other, and started to sing ‘Oh it ain’t gonna rain no more, no more’. I wanted to get back there and throttle them, but couldn’t see out of the car behind me and so was afraid to pull up in case a lorry trampled us all to death. Apart from my wonky brakes, oil and water made the road as slippery as a frozen lake. Rain made it so dark that cars coming by had their headlights on, but I couldn’t do the same because I didn’t have any lights left. I thought of getting into a lay-by and stopping this mad journey, but I didn’t want to hear Bill’s scorn that I was yellow and had no guts. As long as they were happy I didn’t mind going on. June had the goodness of heart to light a cigar for me now and again, to lean over and put it like a kiss between my lips.
The rain eased down and normal daylight came back. This seemed to depress those in the back, so they dozed for a few miles. I pulled in and wiped the windscreen with a sheet of newspaper. Now I could see again. A bit of sun shone on their angel faces, and I felt I was driving the Lazaretto express as I got nearer to London. My recent fling with tender Miss Bolsover seemed years away, and my concern at having left Claudine in the lurch had turned into mild curiosity when I wondered what she’d do now I had well and truly gone.
I felt myself falling towards the middle of the road, though it was obvious to my senses, lost in sentimental recollection, that I was still in the car. Bill woke with a great shout, and June screamed, as a noise of scraping metal seemed about to cleft the car in twain, and dig all our graves before we could slump into them. An overtaking van braked and swerved, got safely by, and went on without stopping to see what peril we were in. My head hit the windscreen but did not break it. I applied all my skill to stop the car. The front right wheel had fallen off, we discovered, on getting out.
Bill scratched his head. ‘That’s rough. Are you a member of the AA?’
‘You know I’m bloody-well not.’
‘It’s not so obvious,’ he retorted. ‘Your badge might have fallen off. Everything else has. I can’t imagine when this car last had a service. The next one will be a church service.’
‘You’re too bloody funny. What are we going to do now?’
‘Get the wheel back on, then continue our journey. The first thing is to find it.’ This was done in a few minutes, and while June was stationed to warn other cars of our obstruction, Bill got tools from the boot and lifted the car up. All the nuts had vanished from the wheel, so he took a nut from the other three to fix on the erring one. The thread of the bolts was a bit raddled, but he did not consider this to be dangerous. In less than half an hour we climbed back in and set off. ‘That was a close call,’ he said, tilting his head to get the full benefit of the whisky bottle.
I laughed hysterically. ‘You can say that again.’
‘The wheels are all right now. I suppose the roof will blow off next time.’
‘I don’t think so,’ I reassured him. The wheel had buckled slightly when it flew off, so it wasn’t easy to steer. Sometimes I had to use all my strength to keep the car on the proper side of the road. Nothing had gone right on this trip, I brooded, fighting for my life and dreading another phase of rain. The sky in front was dark enough to promise it. When Bill came out of his drunken doze I asked if he knew a garage in London where I might have my car repaired.
‘Get rid of it.’
‘How much do you think I’d make if I sold it?’
‘At a rough guess,’ he said, ‘fifty bob.’
‘You’re cracked,’ I told him, feeling that my sense of humour was no longer to be trusted.
Bill slung the empty whisky bottle through the open window. ‘Take my advice. Abandon it at the first Tube station we come to. Park it somewhere, and finish your journey by public transport. You can always go back for it at a later date, if you’re still hankering for a final ride of death.’
‘I’m coming to the conclusion that I definitely don’t like the way you talk,’ I said. ‘It’s not that I mind pessimism as a line of patter, but with you it’s pure malice. What’s more you try to pass it off as humour, and that’s the dirtiest trick of all.’
‘I’m only trying to keep your spirits up.’
‘The car goes better when you stay quiet,’ I said, pressing the horn at a van too close in overtaking, and finding as I spoke that Fate must have cut its throat while I wasn’t looking.
‘Do you want to drive for a while?’
‘Not me,’ he said quickly. ‘It knows you best. A machine is human enough to know its own master, and you’re it, in this special case. Might kick me in the guts if I have a go.’
‘Can you drive?’ I asked June.
‘Yes, but you have to ride this one, and I’ve left my saddle at home.’ So, clapped-out as I was, I was on my own, and had to stick it out, which I began to think might be possible since we were only twenty miles from the middle of London. As the afternoon grew dim beyond Hertford, I knew I’d just about get there before I was called on to use my non-existent lighting system. Orange sodiums already canopied the road at intervals, though it wasn’t officially lighting-up time. It turned dark blue and smoky, as if snow were going to pour down. I felt cut off from where I’d come from, and where I was going to (wherever that was), and also from Bill and June who appeared to be snogging in the back. I was more on my own than I’d ever been, fighting my lone and maybe losing fight to keep the car going and on the road. It didn’t feel good being the one person between my friends and injury. All that stuff was so much crap, I thought, about responsibility bringing out the best in people. Certainly, one slip and we’d have been under the wheels of an articulated dragon coming in the opposite direction.