John’s death hit me surprisingly hard, considering I only met him the once. He was the only person I had come across to date who saw teaching me as a piece of fun rather than a solemn duty. The road was for everyone — he excluded no one from the festival. And hadn’t he danced his last dance with Mum? Unless he gave his wife a twirl every time he came in the front door, which admittedly seemed quite likely.
I thought I had better phone Granny at once to tell her about the setback in our plans. Harshly her voice intoned, ‘Halnaker 226. Good morning.’ A formal politeness that would deter even the most presumptuous of tradesmen. She pronounced the exchange name in the local way, as Hannukah, like the Jewish festival.
I put as much drama and emotion as I could muster into my voice. All that came down the line from Tangmere was silence — a silence that tingled with icicles. Finally, standing in her hallway where the phone was, Granny formed syllables. She sent them as electrical impulses down the wire. The heavy receiver at my ear in Bourne End reassembled those little pulsing packages as ‘How … very … inconvenient!’ At that moment I disliked Granny intensely and redoubled my grieving over poor John Griffiths.
I asked God to make sure that John Griffiths had plenty of roads and plenty of cars with unlimited fuel in Heaven, and above all an endless supply of hopelessly disabled pupils, who would benefit from the chance of becoming expert drivers under his care. I felt sad that no one else in my disabled country was marking the passing of this hero, whose heart was so big that in the end it choked him.
The red Mini, with the number plate OHM 962F, arrived in May, on the 11th. It was Peter’s birthday, but he was unresentful of any eclipse suffered by his special day. He thrilled along to my thrill. Dad pushed the driving seat as far forward as it would go. Then he fetched cushions. Since the roads on the Abbotsbrook Estate were technically private, I was able to drive a few feet that first day. When the engine stalled I felt relief. I was afraid my heart too would burst from sheer joy, and I would go the way of my master in driving. Death I didn’t mind, but I wanted the bits of paper in the proper order — driving licence first. Death certificate later.
After that, of course, it was hard slog. Mirror-Signal-Mirror-Manœuvre: M-S-M-M. What it spells is neck-ache.
The substitute John Griffiths found for me by the BSM was called Colin Chivers. He was no substitute in any real sense. Obviously I was looking for an excuse to take against him from the first, out of loyalty to that dancing-master of the road (not that I ever so much as sat in a car with him), John Griffiths. I didn’t have to wait long to be estranged. It wasn’t the length of his hair which bothered me, falling onto the collar of his shirt, nor the shirt itself, which had a floral pattern, though both were noted by Mum with muted alarm. It was when I was installed in the car, with the seat in the most forward position possible, the concertina of cushions behind my back, my built-up shoes on terms of distant acquaintance with the pedals, and Colin Chivers said, ‘I realise that you have certain physical difficulties, but I’m going to treat you just the same way as everyone else.’ Oh really? What a hypocrite. No one else got that little speech, did they? He was already treating me differently, in the very act of announcing the opposite.
I grant him his good points. When he saw the difficulty I had actually gripping the steering wheel, he arranged for a sensible alteration to the controls of the car. He installed a dolly, a sort of twirly knob for me to grip clamped to the steering wheel, which spared me the struggle of undertaking vigorous arm movements in a plane that was hostile to them.
After that bit of modification, Colin didn’t have a lot to teach me of what I wanted, which was confidence rather than mere technique. His attitude was consistenly downbeat rather than inspirational. One of the first things he said was, ‘I never forget that we are putting you in charge of a deadly weapon — I suggest you never forget it either.’ Another time he said, ‘That’s amazing! Take a look at the cow in that field,’ and then gave me a good old scolding when I did. I had taken my eyes off the road, in obedience to Granny’s advice (never pass up an opportunity to inspect your surroundings — the major cause of driving accidents is boredom) but in violation of the Highway Code. I would have to wait until I was a qualified driver before I could risk enjoying ‘the privilege of the view’.
When Granny’s cheque ran out (its depletion helped along by the bill for the dolly) I assented cheerfully enough to Dad’s suggestion that he should take over teaching duties. I wasn’t going to re-apply to the fountainhead of cash, even though I was authorised to do so. Granny was still in my bad books for her coldness and I was sending her at least partway to Coventry (to Bicester or even Banbury) — not that she was likely to notice. Dad had reasons of his own for not wanting to deal with the tyrant of Tangmere.
Meanwhile the Wrigley was sold. The cheque was sent to Granny, perhaps with a cubic millimetre of self-righteousness sharing the envelope with it, though it made sense for her to absorb the proceeds since she had funded it in the first place. There was no point in having two motorised vehicles at my disposal. Enough is enough.
Finally my test date arrived. August the 8th, 1968. Red car, red-letter day. My examiner was a woman who made no eye-contact with me at any point, which certainly made it easier for me to read the name on her clipboard unobtrusively — Cynthia Davies. She looked the way I would have imagined librarians to look — distant, disapproving — if I had never known Mrs [Sophia] Pavey. I had discovered Mrs Pavey’s first name, which I loved, but I wouldn’t have used it in a million years. I didn’t say it, but I mentally supplied it in square brackets.
I’d not met a Cynthia before, and if she had seemed willing to talk, inside the tiny car, I would have asked about that lovely moony name. Turning a blind eye may have been all part of her professional technique, but it was very disconcerting just the same. She was so remote in her manner that I took it for granted that she was going to fail me. My three-point turn seemed to take for ever. The seasons changed while I was wrestling that manœuvre into submission. There was marked precession of the equinoxes.
Later on in the test, while I was doing some straightforward if despondent driving, I heard an odd sound, like a slow puncture. I wondered if a tyre was going flat, and what would happen if it did, in the middle of my driving test. Would the whole farrago be cancelled, so that I had to wait for another appointment, or would I end up reciting instructions from John Griffiths’ book on car maintenance while Cynthia got busy with the jack, or hung back conscientiously to let me solicit passers-by?
Cub Scout access to the road
Of course it wasn’t a puncture at all. The sound resolved into an articulate hiss: ‘sssssSSSTOP!’ Cynthia Davies was telling me to make an emergency stop — to stop without warning — by giving me plenty of warning. A Galapagos tortoise would have given less notice of a pounce. Space probes have been launched with a shorter countdown. Even so my reactions were slow and my braking was spongy. I resigned myself to more lessons in suffering from Dad. The harvest called a driving licence would require more of the rain called tears. I couldn’t even claim that I had been discriminated against. Cynthia had been more than fair, she had leant over backwards, and still I had fallen short of the required standard.
She still didn’t look at me at the end of the test, and when she said, ‘Congratulations, Mr Cromer’ and told me that I’d passed, it was in a very neutral tone. I didn’t feel any immediate triumph. She kept her eyes to herself as she passed across my pink slip. There was still no acknowledgement that she’d seen me in the first place. But then she came round to my side of the car, opened the door and shook my hand very gently, as gently as if I was royalty, and there seemed to be a smile hidden in her face somewhere, near her ears perhaps. Then I made contact at last with my own latent elation.