13 A drive in the motor-car

A drive in the motor-car Somehow or other I got through the first term at St Peter's, and towards the end of December my mother came over on the paddle-boat to take me and my trunk home for the Christmas holidays.

Oh the bliss and the wonder of being with the family once again after all those weeks of fierce discipline! Unless you have been to boarding– school when you are very young, it is absolutely impossible to appreciate the delights of living at home. It is almost worth going away because it's so lovely coming back. I could hardly believe that I didn't have to wash in cold water in the mornings or keep silent in the corridors, or say 'Sir' to every grown-up man I met, or use a chamber-pot in the bedroom, or get flicked with wet towels while naked in the changing-room, or eat porridge for breakfast that seemed to be full of little round lumpy grey sheep's-droppings, or walk all day long in perpetual fear of the long yellow cane that lay on top of the corner-cupboard in the Headmaster's study. The weather was exceptionally mild that Christmas holiday and one amazing morning our whole family got ready to go for our first drive in the first motor-car we had ever

owned. This new motor-car was an enormous long black French automobile called a De Dion-Bouton which had a canvas roof that folded back. The driver was to be that twelve-years-older-than-me half-sister (now aged twenty-one) who had recently had her appendix removed. She had received two full half-hour lessons in driving from the man who delivered the car, and in that enlightened year of 1925 this was considered quite sufficient. Nobody had to take a driving-test. You were your own judge of competence, and as soon as you felt you were ready to go, off you jolly well went.

As we all climbed into the car, our excitement was so intense we could hardly bear it. 'How fast will it go?' we cried out. 'Will it do fifty miles an hour?' 'It'll do sixty!' the ancient sister answered. Her tone was so confident and cocky it should have scared us to death, but it didn't. 'Oh, let's make it do sixty!' we shouted. 'Will you promise to take us up to sixty?' 'We shall probably go faster than that,' the sister announced, pulling on her driving-gloves and tying a scarf over her head in the approved driving-fashion of the period. The canvas hood had been folded back because of the mild weather, converting the car into a magnificent open tourer. Up front, there were three bodies in all, the driver behind the wheel, my half-brother (aged eighteen) and one of my sisters (aged twelve). In the back seat there were four more of us, my mother (aged forty), two small sisters (aged eight and five) and myself (aged nine). Our machine possessed one very special feature which I don't think you see on the cars of

today. This was a second windscreen in the back solely to keep the breeze off the faces of the backseat passengers when the hood was down. It had a long centre section and two little end sections that could be angled backwards to deflect the wind. We were all quivering with fear and joy as the driver let out the clutch and the great long black automobile leaned forward and stole into motion. 'Are you sure you know how to do it?' we shouted. 'Do you know where the brakes are?' 'Be quiet!' snapped the ancient sister. 'I've got to concentrate!' Down the drive we went and out into the village of Llandaff itself. Fortunately there were very few vehicles on the roads in those days. Occasionally you met a small truck or a deliveryvan and now and again a private car, but the danger of colliding with anything else was fairly remote so long as you kept the car on the road. The splendid black tourer crept slowly through the village with the driver pressing the rubber bulb of the horn every time we passed a human being, whether it was the butcher-boy on his bicycle or

just a pedestrian strolling on the pavement. Soon we were entering a countryside of green fields and high hedges with not a soul in sight. 'You didn't think I could do it, did you?' cried the ancient sister, turning round and grinning at us all. 'Now you keep your eyes on the road,' my mother said nervously. 'Go faster!' we shouted. 'Go on! Make her go faster! Put your foot down! We're only doing fifteen miles an hour!' Spurred on by our shouts and taunts, the ancient sister began to increase the speed. The engine roared and the body vibrated. The driver was clutching the steering-wheel as though it were the hair of a drowning man, and we all watched the speedometer needle creeping up to twenty, then twenty-five, then thirty. We were probably doing about thirty-five miles an hour when we came suddenly to a sharpish bend in the road. The ancient sister, never having been faced with a situation like this before, shouted 'Help!' and slammed on the brakes and swung the wheel