The great black shape stood in front of Jack's bungalow where his old Austin seven should have been. Its gloss paint had faded to a grey bloom-covered matt black. Two long chrome flutes adorned its black bonnet and nearly met the flaking chromium plated radiator. They were balked by a long strip of oiled canvas, placed there originally to minimize the vibration as the chassis twisted as it fought the thirties roads. Somehow the sttl of the bonnet seemed cut too short to meet the sad lean of the radiator. It had tipped slightly forward, long ago, in a frozen survey of the ground ten feet in front.
"What is it?" I asked as John's dad came out of the front door and caught me looking at the car with an amazed admiration.
"It's a Vauxhall Canardly," he said smiling at some inner thought. "You don't want to bother about that old car yet. Come on in and I'll show you my new wallpaper. John's in the kitchen counting the paint."
It was obvious that John's dad was up to something. He always had been a joker for as long as I had known him. It hid the sadness inside him that had haunted him since his escape from Dunkirk and his long years ministering to the wounded during World War Two. Now his craggy face was alive with merriment as I warily followed him into the kitchen.
"Hello," John said.
He was crouched on the kitchen floor and was surrounded by tins of Valspar black lacquer paint. He even had one can open and was stirring the contents with a stick.
"i should keep away from him if I was you," John's dad said. "It's a good job his mother's gone to see her sister or we'd be roasted by now and then boiled in burning oil for working in the kitchen...Oh quick! Look out! He's slopped some paint on the draining board near those sausages...Toss them over here, John, before they get contaminated with cellulose thinners...Too late! They stink to high heaven! John and his father froze in tableau, each eyeing the other questioningly.
John's father sighed suddenly and tossed the sausages into the waste bin. He only just missed another open tin on the floor.
"Well?" John's dad said. "Is it too thick or what?"
"No dad. It will be fine. I've got it all thinned down to what it says on the back of the tins."
By now John was coughing on and off as the fumes from the paint caught his throat. His breath wheezed as he drew in air. Nonetheless he managed to croak out that fish and chips would now be on the menu and would I like to stay for a bite.
I was about to express my delight at this kind offer when John's dad roared. "Get all those tins of paint sealed up and douse that five bob I gave you in thinners. Otherwise that old biddy at the fish shop will think I'm mean enough to have money that's gone black with age."
Later we sat at the table in the dining room eating fish and chips with our fingers.
John's dad had mastered an elegant method of doing this. He grasped each chip at one end and carefully lifted it from the newspaper. He then held it aloft, blew on it once or twice before letting it fall into his mouth.
"Wipe your hand on your handkerchief and touch the wall," he said when his mouth suddenly emptied.
I did as I was asked and found to my horror that the wall was hot.
"What do you think of that?" John's dad was proud. "It's the latest thing. Expanded polystyrene under the paper. It'll keep this place warm all winter and keep the heat out in summer."
I was about to tell John's dad that this kind of wallpaper was a scientific marvel when John interupted.
"I don't know, wallpaper, wallpaper, wallpaper! Do none of you know that a classic car sits outside? It was made in nineteen thirty-four and I'm lucky to have it. It was mothballed all through the war. At ten quid it was a gift."
"I had noticed it." I said, as loftily as my seventeen years would allow. "I even asked your dad what sort of car it was and he told me it was a Vauxhall Canardly...A funny name for a funeral car isn't it?"
"Vauxhall Canardly? John was spluttering. Little pieces of over fried chips were thickening the enraged distance between us. "Funeral car indeed! Dad! Dad! Tell him proper like."
"I was against it at first," John's dad said. "Giving up his Austin Seven for a car like that. He only got ten bob for it too from old Smiley at the garage. That Vauxhall might be elegant, -or will be when I've put seven coats of black varnish on it, but it will cost a fortune to run. And besides it's a Vauxhall Canardly?"
"Dad! You know very well that it is a Vauxhall A type."
John had stood up and was looking towards heaven in gratitude.
"It's wonderful," John continued. "A true classic. I can get the spares from Vauxhall, now I'm apprenticed there."
"Its still a Vauxhall Canardly," John's dad said with a smile. "Goes well down hill and can 'ardly get up the other side!
In a couple of months the Vauxhall Canardly was ready. The dull black paint had gone and in its place shone a magic paint job done by brush alone. The polish was such that a man might use it as a substitute for a shaving mirror.
John's dad had excelled himself.
"Come on!" John said. "Let's go for a ride. There's a couple of birds that I want to pick up. There's one for you as well. Yours is the fat one."
"I'll bet it's that Dolly Parsons and her mate again," I said with a certain disdain that indicated that we should be more adventurous and up-market where the conquest of women were concerned.
"Anyway, why do I have to have Dolly Parsons? She's as fat as an ox and solid with it."
"You never got anywhere with her mate. You even said that she was so thin that if she stood sideways she would be marked absent. And anyway, both of us look like bean poles in a gale when we bend down to kiss either of them."
John considered this while the car's six-cylinder engine purred and eased its heavy body in a simple gentility. It was hard to believe the speedometer. It's steady needle indicated that we were doing forty miles an hour. The smell of good leather and a slight stink of petrol gave a lustre to the day.
"A classy car like this needs a thin bird in it." John stated. "I can't go around with a fat girl, not now I've got a Vauxhall A Type...Anyway, Dolly Parsons just suits that old B.S.A. three wheeler of yours. Her skirt rides up in the wind and makes you the envy of everybody."
"That may be so," I said, "but what good is that to me when I daren't take my eyes off the road when I'm driving the thing? One moment of forgetfulness looking at her baggy knickers and I'm right through someone's hedge."
"Oh, do shut up! There they are on the corner."
John slowed and drew up in style. He jumped out and opened the back door and bowed.
"Ere!" Dolly said, "if you think we're goin' spoonin' in a funeral car then you've got another fink commin'. Wot you say Maizy?"
"Too right, Dolly," Maizy said, drawing her thin body up in outrage. "They can go an' git two o' them Sunday school teachers they know ter go out wiv 'em. Johnnie can try that one wiv the big bust an' 'is mate can try that one wiv legs that go right up to 'er bum...Serve 'em both right ter see how much they can git from them!"
"They won't git nothin' in a funeral car," Dolly said, acid pouring from her mouth like the fumes over an electroplating bath. "Come on! Let's leave 'em to it. We'll go down the First an' Last. Them two old boys wiv them motor bikes might still be there."
We watched sadly as our potential conquests hurried away. We knew that just over seventeen years of age we had none of the sophistication needed to charm two Sunday school teachers into sharing a day of heavenly lust.
"No wonder your dad calls this car a Vauxhall Canardly," I said. "You can hardly get a woman with it, let alone get up hill! All we can do now is take my cousin Margaret out for a drive and she'll be mad as hell because she wasn't asked first."
"She'll only spit razor blades," John said. "She punched me in the guts last week when I told her that her figure had come on well since she was last here. I said it was like two lovely balloons."
"Funny you should tell her that," I said. "I got hit for saying much the same thing only I told her that it looked like two balloons that had gone down after a party...I think that we'd better leave her be."
"There is only one thing to do. I shall put the money Aunt Effie left me with what I can get for this wagon. I shall buy a Victor...One of those demonstrator cars that Vauxhall sell off cheap to the workers. You wait and see how many classy birds I'll get then! You never know, Vauxhall might even sell me a bird to go with it...A victor-ess."
Even then I felt sad for him. Once you stop playing with old cars then life is never quite the same.
by Richard G. Walker
All Rights Reserved
(copying, reprinting or distribution of this story, in whole or in part, is prohibited without written permission from the author.)
About the author:
Richard Walker is an English author who has had these four books published in hardback version and is now presenting his work in electronic form: Sing A Song of Stopsley, To Catch The Shadow of The Moon, The Ballad of Baggy Mag, and Vox Angelicus (The angel voices of Luton). Read about them here: ebooks