One summer evening when I was seventeen, around the time of my first driving test, I lifted the bonnet of our Austin 1100, my father in the kitchen at his dinner after coming in from work. I was wondering how all the parts of an engine worked after reading about it. After pouring over colourful diagrams of pistons that reciprocated so fast, of the carburettor that mixed petrol and air, and spark plugs that fired exactly on time. This complicated machine was here in our garage. I felt heat coming off the engine, that ticked as it cooled.
What are you doing? he said coming in through the side door. It’s just had a service. No need to lift the bonnet. Leave it alone. I didn’t try to explain, not expecting him to see my point of view, since he chastised me for listening to The Beatles. That was after John Lennon offended his religious beliefs, saying they were more popular than Jesus. My musical taste was on the wrong side of heaven’s gate and I wasn’t for turning.
After that, I had to be sneaky. Make sure he wasn’t around when I traced the wires from each spark plug, the four of them connected to the distributor cap. I unscrewed a spark plug another evening, hoping to see the gap where the spark jumped to ignite the fuel, to shine a torch into the hole in the dark cylinder. The spanner slipped, breaking the top off the plug. In a panic, I cycled round the town until I found a replacement in Fyfes. Then relieved to screw it into place, tighten it home with care, and more relieved when the engine kicked miraculously into life and settled into a steady note.
Anything technical, my father avoided like a disease. In his opinion, the simplest of repairs needed a trained man. Yet, I did a few fixes behind his back, most of the time dodging his rancour. A few years later, I went off to study engineering.
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His father said Tommy would take up a trade, like each of his own generation: a coach builder, cabinet maker, shoe maker, dress maker, seamstress. They were never out of work. The country relations were labourers, but we’d left that behind.
Tommy worked the family allotment. Practical enough it seemed. Moore’s garage was looking for apprentices and he would give it a try. The Second World War was still raging with its nightly blackouts. So, why not? There was some slagging at the start but he’d had money in his pocket, that meant a lot.
But something happened in those first weeks. It wasn’t good. A big mistake? Two, maybe? On one of those flashy Humbers? More likely an Austin Ten or Morris Eight. Dropped an engine from a hoist and cracked the case? Forgot to put engine oil back after a service? It cost a fortune to fix. The slagging got worse. Hold that brush tight young fella. Ya know he washes his hands in grease. Here! Catch! The foreman put him on something else. He soon left. Embarrassed to say the least.
He tried driving for a while. Then landed a job as a bread server, with Morton and Simpson’s bakery. A Comer van out on the road all day with no one to bother him. He got on well with customers with his easy chat. His bread and cakes sold well, so he stuck with it. But so too did his fear of fixing anything mechanical.
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One year into my engineering degree, I went on a summer trip around Europe with five school friends. It was a big adventure. Colin’s father gave us their car – a new Renault 12 – some said that was foolish. They had toured on the Continent and didn’t see any problems for us. It would need its first oil change at 5,000 miles. I would do it, I said, it’s straight forward.
I tasted my first Martini Rosso somewhere in the south of France. At a campsite sheltered among coastal pines. The air coming off the azure sea, a sandy heat of scented pine, dried grass and succulents. The first sip of that sweet herb-laced wine, forever carrying a promise of sophistication and camaraderie, and the sensuous Mediterranean. While the car’s cargo, our belongings, lay scattered over the backseat, on the ground and in the small tent.
The oil change came due in Luxembourg. Squeezed under the vehicle, I loosened the bung and spilled the clear oil onto the grassy campsite floor – that’s what you did then. There were a few onlookers interested in the new model Renault, and wanting to help. Then I topped up the oil, and next morning we were on our way towards Calais. Job done.
It started while I was driving. That first short squeal in lower gears. That became longer and unavoidable. I may have broken out in a sweat. It awoke the others. I kept on driving. Into a small town to stop with a long tearing screech. A Renault garage’s reply was instant – Allez! Angleterre! Allez! Our muted talk was of getting home. No more Martini Rosso.
We squealed to a crawl for finger-waving gendarmes, crossing pedestrians, traffic lights, and at last, and worst of all, into the hollow amplifying sound-box of the Dover-bound ferry. Every head turned towards us. And I was driving.
Then we sat for ten days in a campsite, walking Canterbury, while the Renault garage tried to figure out and fix the problem. The solution, a new gearbox, later located in Newcastle, finally arriving by train after a bank holiday weekend. The car’s gearbox had no oil. Gears were ceased. The cause of the leak was unknown. Renault would make a final decision in the coming weeks.
For hours we drove quietly northwards, took the Stranraer ferry, back to Ballymena and into the car’s space on the driveway of Colin’s house in Fisherwick Gardens. After a clean and a wash, the Renault 11 looked, and sounded, like it had never left. Never tasted Martini Rosso.
The final outcome? Nothing. I had drained the gearbox. Predictably, it ceased. I was embarrassed, of course. Renault covered the costs. I said nothing. And qualified two years later, with a degree in aeronautical engineering. And a few years later, Colin’s father and I laughed over the story. I only wish my own father’s experience had left him as easily. That he could have told his story and laughed about it.
End
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The Curlew's Call 