Part 11

‘Never you mind, dearie, luck’ll turn one day. Well, now, how can we all fit in? There’s one room empty. I can sleep with our Sarah, and that leaves a bed for the gentlemen—then if the young lady wouldn’t mind coming in with me and Sarah . . .’

‘If you don’t think it rude, I think I’d sooner have the empty bed,’ said Miss Runcible, rather faintly. ‘You see,’ she added, with tact, ‘I snore so terribly.’

‘Bless you, so does our Sarah. _We_ don’t mind . . . still, if you’d _rather_ . . .’

‘Really, I think I should,’ said Miss Runcible.

‘Well then, I could put Mr Titchcock on the floor, couldn’t I?’

‘Yes,’ said Miles, ‘just you put Mr Titchcock on the floor.’

‘And if the other gentleman don’t mind going on the landing. . . . Well, we’ll manage somehow, see if we don’t.’

So they all drank some gin together in the back parlour and they woke Mr Titchcock up and made him help with the luggage and they gave him some gin, too, and he said it was all the same to him whether he slept on the floor or in bed, and he was very pleased to be of any service to any one and didn’t mind if he did have another drop just as a night-cap, as they might say; and at last they all went to bed, very tired, but fairly contented, and oh, how they were bitten by bugs all that night.

Adam had secured one of the bedrooms. He awoke early to find rain beating on the window. He looked out and saw a grey sky, some kind of factory and the canal from whose shallow waters rose little islands of scrap-iron and bottles; a derelict perambulator lay partially submerged under the opposite bank. In his room stood a chest of drawers full of horrible fragments of stuff, a washhand stand with a highly coloured basin, an empty jug and an old toothbrush. There was also a rotund female bust covered in shiny red material, and chopped off short, as in primitive martyrdoms, at neck, waist and elbows; a thing known as a dressmaker’s ‘dummy’ (there had been one of these in Adam’s home which they used to call ‘Jemima’—one day he stabbed ‘Jemima’ with a chisel and scattered stuffing over the nursery floor and was punished. A more enlightened age would have seen a complex in this action and worried accordingly. Anyway he was made to sweep up all the stuffing himself).

Adam was very thirsty, but there was a light green moss in the bottom of the water bottle that repelled him. He got into bed again and found some one’s handkerchief (presumably Mr Titchcock’s) under the pillow.

He woke again a little later to find Miss Runcible dressed in pyjamas and a fur coat sitting on his bed.

‘Darling,’ she said, ‘there’s no looking-glass in my room and no bath anywhere, and I trod on some one cold and soft asleep in the passage, and I’ve been awake all night killing bugs with drops of face lotion, and everything smells, and I feel so low I could die.’

‘For heaven’s sake let’s go away,’ said Adam.

So they woke Miles and Archie Schwert, and ten minutes later they all stole out of the ‘Royal George’ carrying their suitcases.

‘I wonder, do you think we ought to leave some money?’ asked Adam, but the others all said no.

‘Well, perhaps we ought to pay for the gin,’ said Miss Runcible.

So they left five shillings on the bar and drove away to the ‘Imperial’.

It was still very early, but every one seemed to be awake, running in and out of the lifts carrying crash-helmets and overalls. Miles’ friend, they were told, had been out before dawn, presumably at his garage. Adam met some reporters whom he used to see about the _Excess_ office. They told him that it was any one’s race, and that the place to see the fun was Headlong Corner, where there had been three deaths the year before, and it was worse this year, because they’d been putting down wet tar. It was nothing more or less than a death trap, the reporters said. Then they went away to interview some more drivers. All teams were confident of victory, they said.

Meanwhile Miss Runcible discovered an empty bathroom and came down half-an-hour later all painted up and wearing a skirt and feeling quite herself again and ready for anything. So they went in to breakfast.

The dining-room was very full indeed. There were Speed Kings of all nationalities, unimposing men mostly with small moustaches and apprehensive eyes; they were reading the forecasts in the morning papers and eating what might (and in some cases did) prove to be their last meal on earth. There were a great number of journalists making the best of an ‘out-of-town’ job; there were a troop of nondescript ‘fans’, knowledgeable young men with bright jumpers tucked inside their belted trousers, old public-school ties, check tweeds, loose mouths and scarcely discernible Cockney accents; there were R.A.C. officials and A.A. officials, and the representatives of oil firms and tyre manufacturers. There was one disconsolate family who had come to the town for the christening of a niece. (No one had warned them that there was a motor race on; their hotel bill _was_ a shock.)

‘Very better-making,’ said Miss Runcible with approval as she ate her haddock.

Scraps of highly technical conversation rose on all sides of them.

‘. . . Changed the whole engine over after they’d been scrutineered. Any one else would have been disqualified . . .’

‘. . . just cruising round at fifty . . .’

‘. . . stung by a bee just as he was taking the corner, missed the tree by inches and landed up in the Town Hall. There was a Riley coming up behind, spun round twice, climbed the bank, turned right over and caught fire . . .’

‘. . . local overheating at the valve-heads. It’s no sense putting a supercharger in that engine at all . . .’

‘Headlong Corner’s jam. All you want to do is to brake right down to forty or forty-five at the white cottage, then rev. up opposite the pub. and get straight away in second on the near side of the road. A child could do it. It’s the double bend just after the railway bridge where you’ll get the funny stuff.’

‘. . . kept flagging him down from the pits. I tell you that bunch don’t want him to win.’

‘. . . She wouldn’t tell me her name, but she said she’d meet me at the same place to-night and gave me a sprig of white heather for the car. I lost it, like a fool. She said she’d look out for it too . . .’

‘. . . Only offers a twenty pound bonus this year . . .’

‘. . . lapped at seventy-five . . .’

‘. . . Burst his gasket and blew out his cylinder heads . . .’

‘. . . Broke both arms and cracked his skull in two places . . .’

‘. . . Tailwag . . .’

‘. . . Speed-wobble . . .’

‘. . . Merc . . .’

‘. . . Mag . . .’

‘. . . crash . . .’

When they finished breakfast Miss Runcible and Adam and Archie Schwert and Miles went to the garage to look for their Speed King. They found him hard at work listening to his engine. A corner of the garage had been roped off and the floor strewn with sand as though for a boxing match.

Outside this ring clustered a group of predatory little boys with autograph albums and leaking fountain-pens, and inside, surrounded by attendants, stood the essential parts of a motor car. The engine was running and the whole machine shook with fruitless exertion. Clouds of dark smoke came from it, and a shattering roar which reverberated from concrete floor and corrugated iron roof into every corner of the building so that speech and thought became insupportable and all the senses were numbed. At frequent intervals this high and heart-breaking note was varied by sharp detonations, and it was these apparently which were causing anxiety, for at each report Miles’ friend, who clearly could not have been unduly sensitive to noise, gave a little wince and looked significantly at his head mechanic.

Apart from the obvious imperfection of its sound, the car gave the impression to an uninstructed observer of being singularly unfinished. In fact, it was obviously still under construction. It had only three wheels; the fourth being in the hands of a young man in overalls, who, in the intervals of tossing back from his eyes a curtain of yellow hair, was beating it with a hammer. It also had no seats, and another mechanic was screwing down slabs of lead ballast in the place where one would have expected to find them. It had no bonnet; that was in the hands of a sign painter, who was drawing a black number 13 in a white circle. There was a similar number on the back, and a mechanic was engaged in fixing another number board over one of the headlights. There was a mechanic, too, making a windscreen of wire gauze, and a mechanic lying flat doing something to the back axle with a tin of grate polish and a rag. Two more mechanics were helping Miles’ friend to listen to the bangs. ‘As if we couldn’t have heard them from Berkeley Square,’ said Miss Runcible.

The truth is that motor cars offer a very happy illustration of the metaphysical distinction between ‘being’ and ‘becoming’. Some cars, mere vehicles with no purpose above bare locomotion, mechanical drudges such as Lady Metroland’s Hispano Suiza, or Mrs Mouse’s Rolls Royce, or Lady Circumference’s 1912 Daimler, or the ‘general reader’s’ Austin Seven, these have definite ‘being’ just as much as their occupants. They are bought all screwed up and numbered and painted, and there they stay through various declensions of ownership, brightened now and then with a lick of paint or temporarily rejuvenated by the addition of some minor organ, but still maintaining their essential identity to the scrap heap.

Not so the _real_ cars, that become masters of men; those vital creations of metal who exist solely for their own propulsion through space, for whom their drivers, clinging precariously at the steering wheel, are as important as his stenographer to a stockbroker. These are in perpetual flux; a vortex of combining and disintegrating units; like the confluence of traffic at some spot where many roads meet, streams of mechanism come together, mingle and separate again.

Miles’ friend, even had it been possible in the uproar, seemed indisposed to talk. He waved abstractedly and went on with his listening. Presently he came across and shouted:

‘Sorry I can’t spare a moment, I’ll see you in the pits. I’ve got you some brassards.’

‘My dear, what _can_ that be?’

He handed them each a strip of white linen, terminating in tape.

‘For your arms,’ he shouted. ‘You can’t get into the pits without them.’

‘My dear, what bliss! Fancy their having pits.’

Then they tied on their brassards. Miss Runcible’s said ‘SPARE DRIVER’; Adam’s, ‘DEPOT STAFF’; Miles’ ‘SPARE MECHANIC’ and Archie’s, ‘OWNER’S REPRESENTATIVE.’

Up till now the little boys round the rope had been sceptical of the importance of Miss Runcible and her friends, but as soon as they saw these badges of rank they pressed forward with their autograph books. Archie signed them all with the utmost complaisance, and even drew a slightly unsuitable picture in one of them. Then they drove away in Archie’s car.

The race was not due to start until noon, but any indecision which they may have felt about the employment of the next few hours was settled for them by the local police, who were engaged in directing all traffic, irrespective of its particular inclinations, on the road to the course. No pains had been spared about this point of organization; several days before, the Chief Constable had issued a little route map which was to be memorized by all constables on point duty, and so well had they learned their lesson that from early that morning until late in the afternoon no vehicle approaching the town from any direction escaped being drawn into that broad circuit marked by the arrows and dotted line A-B which led to the temporary car park behind the Grand Stand. (Many doctors, thus diverted, spent an enjoyable day without apparent prejudice to their patients.)

The advance of the spectators had already assumed the form of a slow and unbroken stream. Some came on foot from the railway station, carrying sandwiches and camp stools; some on tandem bicycles; some in ‘runabouts’ or motor cycle side-car combinations, but most were in modestly priced motor cars. Their clothes and demeanour proclaimed them as belonging to the middle rank; a few brought portable wireless sets with them and other evidence of gaiety, but the general air of the procession was one of sobriety and purpose. This was no Derby day holiday-making; they had not snatched a day from the office to squander it among gipsies and roundabouts and thimble-and-pea men. They were there for the race. As they crawled along in bottom gear in a fog of exhaust gas, they discussed the technicalities of motor car design and the possibilities of bloodshed, and studied their maps of the course to pick out the most dangerous corners.

The detour planned by the Chief Constable was a long one, lined with bungalows and converted railway carriages. Banners floated over it between the telegraph posts, mostly advertising the _Morning Despatch_, which was organizing the race and paying for the victor’s trophy—a silver gilt figure of odious design, symbolizing Fame embracing Speed. (This at the moment was under careful guard in the stewards’ room, for the year before it had been stolen on the eve of the race by the official time-keeper, who pawned it for a ridiculously small sum in Manchester, and was subsequently deprived of his position and sent to gaol.) Other advertisements proclaimed the superiorities of various sorts of petrol and sparking plugs, while some said ‘£100 =for Loss of Limb. Insure To-day=.’ There was also an elderly man walking among the motor cars with a blue and white banner inscribed, ‘=Without Shedding of Blood is no Remission of Sin=’, while a smartly dressed young man was doing a brisk trade in bogus tickets for the Grand Stand.

Adam sat in the back of the car with Miles, who was clearly put out about his friend’s lack of cordiality. ‘What I can’t make out,’ he said, ‘is why we came to this beastly place at all. I suppose I ought to be thinking of something to write for the _Excess_. I _know_ this is just going to be the most dreary day we’ve ever spent.’

Adam felt inclined to agree. Suddenly he became aware that some one was trying to attract his attention.

‘There’s an awful man shouting “Hi” at you,’ said Miles. ‘My dear, _your friends_.’

Adam turned and saw not three yards away, separated from him by a young woman riding a push-bicycle in khaki shorts, her companion, who bore a knapsack on his shoulders, and a small boy selling programmes, the long-sought figure of the drunk Major. He looked sober enough this morning, dressed in a bowler hat and Burberry, and he was waving frantically to Adam from the dicky of a coupé car.

‘Hi!’ cried the drunk Major. ‘Hi! I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’

‘I’ve been looking for you,’ shouted Adam. ‘I want some money.’

‘Can’t hear—what do you want?’

‘Money.’

‘It’s no good—these infernal things make too much noise. What’s your name? Lottie had forgotten.’

‘Adam Symes.’

‘Can’t hear.’

The line of traffic, creeping forward yard by yard, had at last reached the point B on the Chief Constable’s map, where the dotted lines diverged. A policeman stood at the crossing directing the cars right and left, some to the parking place behind the Grand Stand, others to the mound above the pits. Archie turned on to the left. The drunk Major’s car accelerated and swept away to the right.

‘_I must know your name_,’ he cried. All the drivers seemed to choose this moment to sound their horns; the woman cyclist at Adam’s elbow rang her bell; the male cyclist tooted a little horn like a Paris taxi, and the programme boy yelled in his ear, ‘Official programme—map of the course—all the drivers.’

‘Adam Symes,’ he shouted desperately, but the Major threw up his hands in despair and he disappeared in the crowd.

‘_The way you pick people up . . ._’ said Miles, startled into admiration.

‘The pits’ turned out to be a line of booths, built of wood and corrugated iron immediately opposite the Grand Stand. Many of the cars had already arrived and stood at their ‘pits’, surrounded by a knot of mechanics and spectators; they seemed to be already under repair. Busy officials hurried up and down, making entries in their lists. Over their heads a vast loud speaker was relaying the music of a military band.

The Grand Stand was still fairly empty, but the rest of the course was already lined with people. It stretched up and down hill for a circle of thirteen or fourteen miles, and those who were fortunate enough to own cottages or public houses at the more dangerous corners had covered their roofs with unstable wooden forms, and were selling tickets like very expensive hot cakes. A grass-covered hill rose up sharply behind the pits. On this had been erected a hoarding where a troop of Boy Scouts were preparing to score the laps, passing the time contentedly with ginger beer, toffee, and rough-and-tumble fights. Behind the hoarding was a barbed wire fence, and behind that again a crowd of spectators and several refreshment tents. A wooden bridge, advertising the _Morning Despatch_, had been built on the road. At various points officials might be seen attempting to understand each other over a field telephone. Sometimes the band would stop and a voice would announce, ‘Will Mr So-and-So kindly report at once to the time-keeper’s office’; then the band would go on.

Miss Runcible and her party found their way to the pit numbered 13 and sat on the matchboard counter smoking and signing autograph books. An official bore down on them.

‘No smoking in the pits, please.’

‘My dear, I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t know.’

There were six open churns behind Miss Runcible, four containing petrol and two water. She threw her cigarette over her shoulder, and by a beneficent attention of Providence which was quite rare in her career it fell into the water. Had it fallen into the petrol it would probably have been all up with Miss Runcible.

Presently No. 13 appeared. Miles’ friend and his mechanic wearing overalls, crash-helmets, and goggles, jumped out, opened the bonnet and began to reconstruct it again.

‘They didn’t ought to have a No. 13 at all,’ said the mechanic. ‘It isn’t fair.’

Miss Runcible lit another cigarette.

‘No smoking in the pits, _please_,’ said the official.

‘My dear, how _awful_ of me. I quite forgot.’

(This time it fell in the mechanic’s luncheon basket and lay smouldering quietly on a leg of chicken until it had burnt itself out.)

Miles’ friend began filling up his petrol tank with the help of a very large funnel.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘You’re not allowed to hand me anything direct, but if Edwards holds up his left hand as we come past the pits, that means we shall be stopping next lap for petrol. So what you’ve got to do is to fill up a couple of cans and put them on the shelf with the funnel for Edwards to take. If Edwards holds up his right hand . . .’ elaborate instructions followed. ‘You’re in charge of the depôt,’ he said to Archie. ‘D’you think you’ve got all the signals clear? The race may depend on them, remember.’

‘What does it mean if I wave the blue flag?’

‘That you want me to stop.’

‘Why should I want you to stop?’

‘Well, you might see something wrong—leaking tank or anything like that, or the officials might want the number plate cleaned.’

‘I think perhaps I won’t do anything much about the blue flag. It seems rather too bogus for me.’

Miss Runcible lit another cigarette.

‘Will you kindly leave the pits if you wish to smoke?’ said the official.

‘What a damned rude man,’ said Miss Runcible. ‘Let’s go up to that divine tent and get a drink.’

They climbed the hill past the Boy Scouts, found a gate in the wire fence, and eventually reached the refreshment tent. Here an atmosphere of greater geniality prevailed. A profusion of men in plus-fours were having ‘quick ones’ before the start. There was no nonsense about not smoking. There was a middle-aged woman sitting on the grass with a bottle of stout and a baby.

‘Home from home,’ said Miss Runcible.

Suddenly the military band stopped and a voice said, ‘Five minutes to twelve. All drivers and mechanics on the other side of the track, please.’

There was a hush all over the course, and the refreshment tent began to empty quickly.

‘Darling, we shall miss the start.’

‘Still, a drink _would_ be nice.’

So they went into the tent.

‘Four whiskies, please,’ said Archie Schwert.

‘You’ll miss the start,’ said the barmaid.

‘What a pig that man was,’ said Miss Runcible. ‘Even if we weren’t supposed to smoke, he might at least have asked us politely.’

‘My dear, it was only you.’

‘Well, I think that made it worse.’

‘Lor’, Miss,’ said the barmaid. ‘You surely ain’t going to miss the start?’

‘It’s the one thing I want to see more than anything . . . my dear, I believe they’re off already.’

The sudden roar of sixty high-power engines rose from below. ‘They _have_ started . . . how too shaming.’ They went to the door of the tent. Part of the road was visible over the heads of the spectators, and they caught a glimpse of the cars running all jammed together like pigs being driven through a gate; one by one they shook themselves free and disappeared round the bend with a high shriek of acceleration.

‘They’ll be round again in quarter of an hour,’ said Archie. ‘Let’s have another drink.’

‘Who was ahead?’ asked the barmaid anxiously.

‘I couldn’t see for certain,’ said Miss Runcible, ‘but I’m fairly sure it was No. 13.’

‘_My!_’

The refreshment tent soon began to fill up again. The general opinion seemed to be that it was going to be a close race between No. 13 and No. 28, a red Omega car, driven by Marino, the Italian ‘ace’.

‘Dirtiest driver I ever seen,’ said one man with relish.

‘Why, over at Belfast ’e was just tipping ’em all into the ditches, just like winking.’

‘There’s one thing you _can_ be sure of. They won’t _both_ finish.’

‘It’s sheer murder the way that Marino drives—a fair treat to see ’im.’

‘He’s a one all right—a real artist and no mistake about it.’

Adam and Miss Runcible and Archie and Miles went back to their pit.

‘After all,’ said Miss Runcible, ‘the poor sweet may be wanting all sorts of things and signalling away like mad, and no one there to pay any attention to him—so discouraging.’

By this time the cars were fairly evenly spread out over the course. They flashed by intermittently with dazzling speed and a shriek; one or two drew into their pits and the drivers leapt out, trembling like leaves, to tinker with the works. One had already come to grief—a large German whose tyre had burst—punctured, some said, by a hireling of Marino’s. It had left the road and shot up a tree like a cat chased by a dog. Two little American cars had failed to start; their team worked desperately at them amid derisive comments from the crowd. Suddenly two cars appeared coming down the straight, running abreast within two feet of each other.

‘It’s No. 13,’ cried Miss Runcible, really excited at last. ‘And there’s that Italian devil just beside it. Come on, thirteen! Come on!’ she cried, dancing in the pit and waving a flag she found at hand. ‘Come on. Oh! Well done, thirteen.’

The cars were gone in a flash and succeeded by others.

‘Agatha, darling, you shouldn’t have waved the blue flag.’

‘My dear, how awful. Why not?’

‘Well, that means that he’s to stop next lap.’

‘Good God. Did I wave a blue flag?’

‘My dear, you know you did.’

‘_How_ shaming. What _am_ I to say to him?’

‘Let’s all go away before he comes back.’

‘D’you know, I think we’d better. He might be furious, mightn’t he? Let’s go to the tent and have another drink—don’t you think, or don’t you?’

So No. 13 pit was again deserted.

‘What did I say?’ said the mechanic. ‘The moment I heard we’d drawn this blinkin’ number I knew we was in for trouble.’

The first person they saw when they reached the refreshment tent was the drunk Major.

‘Your boy friend again,’ said Miles.