More About Boy(29)

Not a cottage or a person was in sight, let alone a telephone. Some kind of bird started twittering in a tree farther down the road, otherwise all was silent.

My mother was bending over me in the rear seat and saying, ‘Lean back and keep your head still.’ To the ancient sister she said, ‘Can you get this thing going again?’

The sister pressed the starter and to everyone’s surprise, the engine fired.

‘Back it out of the hedge,’ my mother said. ‘And hurry.’

The sister had trouble finding reverse gear. The cogs were grinding against one another with a fearful noise of tearing metal.





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The Dahl family moved away from Cumberland Lodge in Llandaff in 1927. They stayed for a few weeks at ‘17, The Park’, in Golders Green, north-west London, while Mrs Dahl was finding a house that would be right for her large family. She settled on this one – a house called ‘Oakwood’ in Heath Road, Bexley. Now the journey to school in Derbyshire was over 100 miles from home!



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‘I’ve never actually driven it backwards,’ she admitted at last.

Everyone with the exception of the driver, my mother and me was out of the car and standing on the road. The noise of gear-wheels grinding against each other was terrible. It sounded as though a lawn-mower was being driven over hard rocks. The ancient sister was using bad words and going crimson in the face, but then my brother leaned his head over the driver’s door and said, ‘Don’t you have to put your foot on the clutch?’

The harassed driver depressed the clutch-pedal and the gears meshed and one second later the great black beast leapt backwards out of the hedge and careered across the road into the hedge on the other side.



‘Try to keep cool,’ my mother said. ‘Go forward slowly.’

At last the shattered motor-car was driven out of the second hedge and stood sideways across the road, blocking the highway. A man with a horse and cart now appeared on the scene and the man dismounted from his cart and walked across to our car and leaned over the rear door. He had a big drooping moustache and he wore a small black bowler-hat.

‘You’re in a fair old mess ’ere, ain’t you?’ he said to my mother.

‘Can you drive a motor-car?’ my mother asked him.

‘Nope,’ he said. ‘And you’re blockin’ up the ’ole road. I’ve got a thousand fresh-laid heggs in this cart and I want to get ’em to market before noon.’

‘Get out of the way,’ my mother told him. ‘Can’t you see there’s a child in here who’s badly injured?’

‘One thousand fresh-laid heggs,’ the man repeated, staring straight at my mother’s hand and the blood-soaked handkerchief and the blood running down her wrist. ‘And if I don’t get ’em to market by noon today I won’t be able to sell ’em till next week. Then they won’t be fresh-laid any more, will they? I’ll be stuck with one thousand stale ole heggs that nobody wants.’

‘I hope they all go rotten,’ my mother said. ‘Now back that cart out of our way this instant!’ And to the children standing on the road she cried out, ‘Jump back into the car! We’re going to the doctor!’

‘There’s glass all over the seats!’ they shouted.

‘Never mind the glass!’ my mother said. ‘We’ve got to get this boy to the doctor fast!’

The passengers crawled back into the car. The man with the horse and cart backed off to a safe distance. The ancient sister managed to straighten the vehicle and get it pointed in the right direction, and then at last the once magnificent automobile tottered down the highway and headed for Dr Dunbar’s surgery in Cathedral Road, Cardiff.

‘I’ve never driven in a city,’ the ancient and trembling sister announced.

‘You are about to do so,’ my mother said. ‘Keep going.’

Proceeding at no more than four miles an hour all the way, we finally made it to Dr Dunbar’s house. I was hustled out of the car and in through the front door with my mother still holding the bloodstained handkerchief firmly over my wobbling nose.

‘Good heavens!’ cried Dr Dunbar. ‘It’s been cut clean off!’

‘It hurts,’ I moaned.

‘He can’t go round without a nose for the rest of his life!’ the doctor said to my mother.

‘It looks as though he may have to,’ my mother said.

‘Nonsense!’ the doctor told her. ‘I shall sew it on again.’

‘Can you do that?’ my mother asked him.

‘I can try,’ he answered. ‘I shall tape it on tight for now and I’ll be up at your house with my assistant within the hour.’