A WOMAN is delivered by a doctor of a baby; fish or furniture is
delivered to you in a van; but of a car you take delivery. It is ready
born, ready to be weaned. You have only to go there and take delivery.
In a long quiet hall the new cars were echeloned up, awaiting owners.
There must have been thirty or forty, all of them four-seater open
models with their hoods up, black with red upholstery, and the flat
caps of their radiators made a straight silver line down the hall. A
tester in brown overalls jumped into a car and drove it from the line.
The sharp high note of the new engine beat against the roof. The
mechanic swung around the pillars of the place and left the car revving
in short bursts by the office. There were forms to be signed, equipment
to be checked, all very calmly with a little casual conversation about
the weather, rate of production, about anything but cars and this car.
Then it was mine. I asked the way to Wallingford, and said 'Thanks;
thanks very much; thank you' not listening to the answer. I drove it in
third gear from the works, down Abingdon High Street and into the
country somewhere. At the first signpost I turned left into a lane,
clipped down the hand brake, switched off the motor and got out and
looked at it.
It was a long narrow deep lying car, underslung front and rear so that
it looked built up from the ground it stood on; a cat could just about
crawl in underneath without singeing its fur on the exhaust piping. It
was a small car, built down from a model that had won fame on the race
track. But I saw at once that it had the dignity and the sizelessness
of great works of art. Like the Mauretania, the Parthenon, or one of
the Great Western 'Castle' locomotives, its line and proportions were
so good that one could tell its size only by comparison. It did not
feel like a small car or a big car, it did not look like one. It looked
a dignified and lonely work of art. I went right away and sat on a gate
and contemplated it.
The next step was to examine the car from all angles as a film producer
might prowl round a star-to-be for photogenic pitfalls. Yes, like many
a lovely woman, it had its ugly angle--a three-quarter rear view where
it looked suddenly shorn off, front-heavy. For a moment it seemed as if
I had made a horrible error, as if I loved a mean ungraceful woman;
then I moved a couple of inches forward and the car was again
beautiful. It was all right, its character was sweet and noble. The
best and loveliest women have just one movement or mood where it is
better not to know them.
But if they have some moods or movements that are better forgotten,
they have also a look, a sudden turn of the head, the surprise of a
smile that in a flash contains their whole lovable nature. So too had
my car. As the six-cylinder double carburettored engine drove it
forward, it had a way of shrugging the long bonnet from the radiator
cap up along in a quiver to the windscreen; it shrugged, then settled
down to the grey road, where it ran so low and steady that a child
could have held the steering wheel and at the bends and corners it went
round with the road, the road and the car and I all going round
together and coming out straight again in one rhythm.
But not at first; for we were not yet wedded. I got in again and held
the wheel in a number of ways, explored the controls, pressed buttons,
turned switches. I was at the wheel of a strange and powerful
machinery. I could make it go and I could make it do things; but I had
no feeling as yet how it preferred to run and climb and corner. I just
drove along the motor.
On the windscreen was pasted a paper instruction not to exceed forty
m.p.h. for the first thousand miles running. This was one reason why I
took delivery from the works in person. I did not want some bored
mechanic to let out the new engine and probably ruin its future
sweetness and crispness. Purring along at thirty miles an hour seemed
an insult to such a motor; but it had compensations. For the first time
for many years I saw England. I saw the beauties of the English
countryside in mid-May. I saw petrol palaces, advertisements for the
French Riviera, and the back of one overtaking car after another. I
obtained a front view of a few bicycles and a woman and children
watching a man in a bowler hat trying to change his offside front wheel
without losing an important part of his anatomy to the passing traffic.
It was now approaching lunch time, so I turned off the Reading road and
went down a steep lane to the Thames and there in the yard of the
Beetle and Wedge hotel I parked the car for the first time among its
fledged fellows. I hoped it would be remarked upon and professional
motorists would be stalking round it in my absence and peering at the
gears and dashboard. But there seemed no one. At any other time,
particularly if I were in a hurry or had some life's problem to solve
in silence, I could have depended on meeting in the bar a man who would
describe in detail a motor run from London to Llandudno, his average
speed (allowing for stops), petrol, oil, and beer consumption and what
did I think of the new fluid flywheel? On the one occasion when I
should have astonished such a man by my sympathy and interest he was
not present. No one was present. Life never loses its sense of the
ridiculous even if the livers do at moments. I sipped sherry which I
did not want and do not like in the hope that the barman would start a
conversation, about anything, Irish sweepstakes, the decline or
increase of drunkenness--I would have conversed about absolutely
anything with my whole intelligence, for my whole heart was with my
car. But he was a non-conversing barman. It was very sad. I was in a
mood to invite the plainest woman to lunch, tea or dinner or make
friends with bores and bounders. The day, strung up tight with
anticipation, threatened to snap. I had lunch alone in a corner of the
restaurant where it so chanced there was a mirror facing me. In the
mirror I could scarcely help observing the cars in the courtyard.
What pleasure and relief to climb into my new car again! All of a new
world with new innumerable roads and hills and valleys lay under the
shining bonnet. And this time as I slumped down in the driving seat and
threw in the gear I felt that I knew it. I knew my car. I let the wheel
spin as I reversed on the gravel; I swung it up the lane. I had the
feel of what it would do and what it wanted. This was to be the
companion and the thread through the next three years of ragged aimless
living. With my head full of lovely emptiness I drove to London.
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