‘I might go to twelve pounds ten,’ I offered—I’d have gladly offered him fifty for it, but I had to avoid suspicion. ‘I expect I could buy the whole thing new for that, but I like your side-car and the way it’s fixed. My wife is a bit nervous, you see, and she’d never put the nipper in anything that didn’t look strong.’
‘It is strong,’ he said. ‘And fifteen quid would be my last word. But I can’t sell it you, because what would we do?’
He hesitated and seemed to be summing up me and the bargain. A fine, quick-witted mind he had. Most people would be far too conservative to consider changing a holiday in the middle.
‘Haven’t anything you’d like to swap?’ he asked. ‘An old car or rooms at the seaside? We’d like a bit of beach to sit on, but what with doctor’s bills and the missus so extravagant …’
He gave me a broad wink, but the missus wasn’t to be drawn.
‘He’s one for kidding!’ she informed me happily.
‘I’ve got a beach hut near Weymouth,’ I said. ‘I’ll let you have it free for a fortnight, and ten quid for the combination.’
The missus gave a squeal of joy, and was sternly frowned upon by her husband.
‘I don’t know as I want a beach hut,’ he said, ‘and it would be twelve quid. Now we’re going to Weymouth tonight. Now suppose we did a swap, could we move in right away?’
I told him he certainly could, so long as I could get there ahead of him to fix things up and have the place ready. I said I would see if there were a train.
‘Oh, ask for a lift!’ he said, as if it were the obvious way of travelling any short distance. ‘I’ll soon get you one.’
That chap must have had some private countersign to the freemasonry of the road. Myself, I never have the impudence to stop a car on a main road. Why, I don’t know. I’m always perfectly willing to give a lift if I am driving.
He let half a dozen cars go by, remarking ‘toffs!’, and then stopped one unerringly. It was a battered Morris, very much occupied by a sporty-looking gent who might have been a bookmaker or a publican. He turned out to be an employee of the County Council whose job it was to inspect the steamrollers.
‘Hey, mister! Can you give my pal a lift to Weymouth?’
‘Look sharp, then!’ answered the driver cheerily.
I arranged to meet the family at the station at seven-thirty, and got in.
He did the eight miles to Weymouth in a quarter of an hour. I explained that I was hopping on ahead to get rooms for the rest of our cycling party when they arrived, and asked him if he knew of any beach huts for rent. He said there weren’t any beach huts, and that, what was more, we should find it difficult to get rooms.
‘A wonderful season!’ he said. ‘Sleeping on the beach they were at Bank Holiday!’
This was depressing. I had evidently been rash in my offer for the family combination. I told him that I personally intended to stay some time in Weymouth, and what about a tent or a bungalow or even one of those caravans the steamroller men slept in?
That amused him like anything.
‘Ho!’ he said. ‘They’re county property, they are! They wouldn’t let you have one of them things. But I tell you what!’—he lowered his voice confidentially in the manner of the English when they are proposing a deal (it comes, I think, from the national habit of buying and selling in a public bar)—‘I know a trailer you could buy cheap, if you were thinking of buying, that is.’
He drove me to a garage kept by some in-law of his, where there was a whacking great trailer standing in the yard amid a heap of scrap-iron. It appeared home-made by some enthusiast who had forgotten, in his passion for roominess and gadgets, that it had to be towed round corners behind a car. The in-law and the steam-roller man showed me over that trailer as if they were a couple of high-powered estate agents selling a mansion. It was a little home from home, they said. And it was! It had everything for two except the bedding, and it was mine for forty quid. I accepted their price on condition that they threw in the bedding and a cot for Rodney, and towed me then and there to a camp-site. They drove me a couple of miles to the east of Weymouth where there was an open field with a dozen tents and trailers. I rented a site for six months from the landowner and told him that friends would be occupying the trailer for the moment, and that I myself hoped to get down for many weekends in the autumn. He showed no curiosity whatever; if strange beings chose to camp on his land he collected five bob a week from them in advance and never went near them again.
When we got back to the town, I had a quick drink with my saviours and vanished. It was nearly eight before I could reach the station. Pa and ma were leaning disconsolately against the railings.
‘Now then, mister,’ said my aircraft mechanic, ‘time’s money, and how about it?’
He was a little peeved at my being late. Evidently he had been thinking the luck too good to be true, and that he wouldn’t see me again.
We walked wearily out to the camp-site. The trailer was quite enchanting in the gathering dusk, and I damn near gave it to them. Well, at any rate he got his fortnight’s holiday rent-free, and I expect he managed to replace tandem and side-car for the twelve quid. I said that I should probably be back before the end of his fortnight, but that, if I was not, he should give the key to the landowner. I don’t think the trailer can be the object of any enquiry until the six months are up; and by that time I hope to be out of England.
I rode the beastly combination back to Weymouth, spilling myself into the ditch at the first left-hand corner, for it wasn’t easy to get the hang of it. Then I had a meal and, finding that the snack-bars and tea-shops were still open, filled up the side-car with a stock of biscuits and a ham, plenty of tinned foods and fruits, tobacco, and a few bottles of beer and whisky. At the third shop I entered, a dry-faced spinster gazed into my glasses long and suspiciously, and remarked:
‘’Urt your eye, ’ave you?’
I answered unctuously that it was an infliction from birth, and that I feared it was the Lord’s will to take from me the sight of the other eye. She became most sympathetic after that, but I had had my warning.
I cycled through the darkness to Dorchester, arriving there dead-beat about midnight. I picked up my kit and strapped it on the side-car. Then I pedalled a few miles north into the silence of a valley where the only moving thing was the Frome gurgling and gleaming over the pebbles. I wheeled my combination off the road and into a copse, unpacked, and slept.
The bag was delicious. In a month I had only spent half a night in bed. I slept and slept, brought up to consciousness at intervals by the stirring of leaves or insects, but seizing upon sleep again as effortlessly as pulling a blanket over one’s ears.
It was after ten when I awoke. I lay in my fleece till noon, looking up through the oak leaves to a windy sky and trying to decide whether it were less risky to travel by day or night. If by day, I should arouse no particular curiosity, but my vehicle was so odd that dozens of people would remember having seen it; if by night, anyone who saw me would talk about me for days. But between midnight and three nothing stirs in farm or village. I was prepared to gamble that nobody would see me.
I admitted to myself now where I was going. The road I meant to take was a narrow track along the downs, a remnant of the old Roman road from Dorchester to Exeter, only used by farmers’ carts. My meeting with any human being in the darkness was most improbable. Even if I were not alone on the hills, I should hear before I was heard. I remembered how in that wheat-field I had cursed the silent approach of cyclists.
My temporary camp was fairly safe, though close to a road. All day I saw no one but a most human billy-goat belonging to a herd of cows in the neighbouring field. He had a look at the side-car and ate some twigs of the bush under which it was resting. He spat them out again, regarding me ironically. He reminded me of some old whiskered countryman solemnly walking over a right-of-way which isn’t the slightest use to him, in order to keep it open. I like to see a billy-goat accompanying the dairy herd to pasture, supposedly to bring them luck or to eat the herbs that cause abortion. I think his true function has been forgotten, but there is no object in going against ancient tradition, nor reason to suppose he has no function.