A Drive in the Motor Car

The weather was exceptionally mild that Christmas holiday, and one morning the whole family got ready to go for their first drive in the first motor car they 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 the narrator's twelve-years-older-than-him half sister, the "ancient sister," now aged twenty-one. She had received only 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 formal driving test — you were your own judge of competence, and as soon as you felt ready to go, off you jolly well went.

As the family climbed into the car, their excitement was so intense they could hardly bear it. "How fast will it go?" they cried out. "It'll do sixty!" the ancient sister answered confidently, though her tone should have scared them to death — but it didn't. Up front sat three people: the driver, the half-brother (aged eighteen), and one sister (aged twelve). In the back seat sat the mother (aged forty), two small sisters (aged eight and five), and the narrator himself, aged nine. The car had one very special feature rarely seen today: a second windscreen fitted in the back, solely to keep the breeze off the faces of the back-seat passengers when the hood was down.

Quivering with fear and joy, the family watched 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? Do you know where the brakes are?" they shouted nervously. "Be quiet!" snapped the ancient sister. "I've got to concentrate!" Down the drive they went and out into the village of Llandaff itself. There were very few vehicles on the roads in those days, so the danger of colliding with anything was fairly remote — so long as you kept the car on the road. The driver pressed the rubber bulb of the horn every time they passed a human being, whether it was the butcher-boy on his bicycle or a pedestrian on the pavement. Soon they were entering open countryside of green fields and high hedges, and the ancient sister turned round, grinning, to boast that she had proven her doubters wrong.

"Go faster! Go on! Make her go faster! We're only doing fifteen miles an hour!" the children shouted and taunted, spurred on by the shouts. The engine roared and the speedometer needle crept up to twenty, then thirty, then thirty-five — probably faster than anyone had ever gone before in that car. The rear wheels locked and swung wildly into a fierce sideways skid as the driver, faced with a sharp bend she had never met before, shouted "Help!" and slammed on the brakes. With a crunch of mudguards and metal, the car went crashing through the front hedge. Glass flew in all directions, the windscreen and back passengers were catapulted out onto the bonnet and the road, and the narrator himself was flung clean out of the car, landing at least one small sister's length into the middle of the road.

Miraculously, nobody was hurt very much except the narrator, who had a small gash on his nose. His mother grabbed a handkerchief from her purse and held it firmly in place. A cottage was found further down the road, and from its telephone the family was driven, hustled and trembling, all the way to Dr Dunbar's surgery on Cathedral Road, Cardiff — the once-magnificent automobile now battered from the crash. There, a mask soaked in chloroform and ether was held over the boy's face, and circles of black began to spin around a deep, soft hole until he drifted into sleep. When he woke almost eight hours later, huge strips of sticking plaster were strapped across his mended nose. Dr Dunbar turned and lifted a corner of the pillow, revealing a beautiful golden sovereign with the head of King George V upon it. "That's for being brave," he said. "I'm proud of you," said his mother, smiling. Then the boy was led back to the car, and the family crawled the two miles home to Llandaff.