I returned in the gathering dusk of that winter evening past the east portal of the tunnel and along the towing-path. The water looked black and was very still under the shadow of the trees. Though I would assure the reader that I am not a credulous man, I have to admit that I felt disinclined to stop and look about me, but hurried on, keeping as far as possible from the water’s edge, and must confess to a feeling of profound relief when I reached the lower level below the top lock.
New Corner
THE BLIGHS WERE LATE as usual, and practice day was nearly over when their familiar old Vauxhall with its loaded trailer rumbled into the paddock.
It was the first meeting of the 1938 season at the famous Highbury Hill, and promised to be the best of a long series, for the enthusiastic organisers, the Mercia Motor Club, had been preparing for the event as never before. Not only had they managed to secure an international date for the first time, but they had improved the hill out of all recognition, widening, re-surfacing and constructing one entirely new section of road. These efforts had been justly rewarded by what was probably the finest entry list that a speed hill climb in this country had ever produced.
Germany had sent over one of her Grand Prix Rheinwagens—a 3-litre, 16-cylinder, rear-engined job—to be handled by no less a person than Von Eberstraum himself. France had entered her most successful driver, Camille, with Monsieur Rene Lefevre’s latest masterpiece, a double-cam straight-eight of conventional design—somewhat untried, but a joy to the eye, like all Rene’s cars. Most noteworthy of all, Italy was to be represented by her veteran ‘Maestro’, Emilio Volanti, driving a marque which had not been associated with his name for some time, a 3-litre Maturati, the first Italian car seriously to challenge German speed supremacy.
The British reply to this formidable Continental opposition was provided by the works team of B.R.C.’s, and a host of sprint ‘specials’. The former were smaller than their Continental rivals, but the course suited them and, with the exception of the new section, their drivers had the advantage of knowing the hill intimately.
The ‘specials’ were, as always, an unknown quantity. Some, on their day, were quite capable of matching the performance of the Grand Prix cars over such a short course, while others might merely provide comic relief by emitting remarkably irregular noises and bestrewing the course with intimate parts of their machinery.
There was no doubt about it, the stage was set for a record meeting. No wonder Mr Nelson, the genial little secretary and moving spirit of the M.M.C., had felt excited and pleased with himself that morning when he had watched lorries bearing names famous on all the circuits of Europe come rolling into his paddock.
Brothers Peter and John lost no time in unloading the Bligh Special from its trailer.
‘If you go and rout out the Scrutineer,’ said Peter, as they man-handled the Special into its bay, ‘I’ll go and talk nicely to Nelson and see if I can’t wangle one run before dark.’
John had barely finished unloading from the tonneau of the Vauxhall, the cans of dope, the tools and all the other paraphernalia that accompanies the sprint car, when Peter came back at the double.
‘It’s Okay,’ he called. ‘But we shall have to hurry; Nelson’s sending over the Scrutineer. Meantime, we’ve got to go for a walk, blast it! All drivers have got to go over the new section on foot and report to the timing-box that they’ve done so before they’re allowed a run.’ He paused, peering round the paddock. ‘I wonder where those silly asses can have got to? I told them to keep a look-out for us,’ he complained.
‘Maybe they’ve got fed up with waiting and gone off to the Crown,’ John hazarded.
‘I’ll half break their silly necks if they have,’ Peter swore. ‘No, there they are snooping around the Maturati. Oi!’ he bellowed. ‘Mike! George!’
Two tall, untidy figures detached themselves from the curious group about the Italian car and came towards them at a jog-trot.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ shouted one as soon as he came within earshot. ‘We’d just given you up—thought you must have thrown the trailer away again on the way, so we were just going to make for the local tap-house.’
‘Never mind about that now,’ Peter silenced him. ‘Your thirst will improve with keeping. The great thing at the moment is to get a practice run before dark. John and I have got to walk over the new bit of the course, so if you’d like to make yourself really useful for a change, you can get her ready and warmed up while we’re away. That’s the dope-can, the one with the white top. It’s all ready mixed. The soft plugs are in, but you’d better have a look at them before you try a start. When she’s just about sizzling, put in the R2s, they’re in that yellow box. Oh, and another thing,’ he added, ‘the Scrutineer is on his way, so none of your rudery or he may take a poor view of John’s idea of independent suspension.’
‘As you say, Chief,’ Mike replied with mock humility, and pulled his forelock. Yet he took his coat off and set to work with a will, ably assisted by the quiet George, while the others set off up the course.
Whereas the old road wound its way up through the wood in a series of zigzag curves, thus gaining height on an easy gradient, the new section left the old at the first of these corners, and cut straight and steeply up the hill-side for a distance of 300 yards to a single left-handed turn. This was followed by another straight on a slightly easier gradient, which ran parallel with the flank of the hill until it rejoined the old course, at what had previously been the very slow Creek Hairpin.
Peter and John stood on the apex of the new corner, surveying it with critical and practised eyes.
‘There’s no doubt about it, this is a great improvement,’ John decided. ‘It’ll make the course much faster and more interesting, too. This “swerve” reminds me of the first bend of the “esse” at Shelsley; same gradient up to it, I should think, same curvature and camber, and the same bank on the outside, too, for the unwary to clout.
‘Of course, it’s difficult to judge just how steep that approach is, so that one can’t tell exactly where the cut-off point will be, but I should say it will be just about opposite those stones there.’
He pointed to two great boulders that stood like monoliths, one on each side of the road. Peter nodded.
‘I think you’re right,’ he agreed. ‘It looks straightforward enough and yet—oh, I don’t know—there’s something I don’t like about it, but exactly what it is I couldn’t tell you. Phew!’ he exclaimed and laughed shortly, ‘what a stink! Old socks and rotten eggs aren’t in it. Something must have died here a long time ago I should think.’
‘That’s funny,’ said John, sniffing. ‘I don’t notice it. Anyway, we’d better get down, it seems to be getting dark all of a sudden under these trees, so unless we hurry we shan’t have enough light for a run.’
When they got back to the paddock practically everyone had packed up for the night, but the faithful Mike and his shadow George had the Special ready and only awaiting a push to the line. Peter wriggled his way into the narrow bucket-seat in front of the two potent ‘Vee’ twin engines and the others pushed.
Letting in the clutch he was greeted with the deafening staccato bark of four open exhausts belching blue flame and a reek of dope and castor-oil. For a few moments the air about the timing-box was filled with an intensity of urgent sound that literally stung the ear-drums to painful protest, while Peter tightened his body-belt, pulled down his goggles and exchanged a last shouted word or two with John.
Then at a nodded signal Mike released the plungers of the two oil-pumps and stepped back, the note of the engines rose even more fiercely, and the next instant the car was snaking out of sight in a series of power slides, leaving in its wake two long, black streaks of pungent burnt rubber from the tyres.
‘A bit too much loud pedal there,’ Mike commented.
Although invisible to him, John could follow Peter’s progress by the noise that now resounded through the wood and echoed about the surrounding hills. Now
he had cut-out and changed down for the first corner into the wood—a sharp one that—now he was round and accelerating away for all he was worth up the steep straight to the new corner; he was through to second, now into third—that was a surprise, he had not expected that Peter would get into third. Now he had cut-out for the new corner.
John waited expectantly for a renewed burst of sound, but no sound came. He must have crashed. Then, after what seemed an age of suspense, but must in reality have been but a second or two, he heard the sound of one engine come to life and continue over the top of the hill. John heaved a sigh of relief and walked round to meet the car at the foot of the return road; anyway, Peter and the Special were still in one piece.
Peter came coasting back in a fine fury, consigning with great fluency the M.M.C., the hill, the local inhabitants, and the new corner to a particularly lurid hell. John gave him a few moments in which to simmer down before he dared to enquire what had happened.
‘What happened?’ Peter exploded with renewed fury. ‘Well, I was going a treat, as you probably heard. Pulling third on the straight, too, when just as I came into the new corner some suicidal idiot came flapping out at me waving his arms plumb in the middle of the road. It meant that I had to brake and alter course right in the middle of the corner, and it was no fault of his that I didn’t pile up the whole outfit. As it was, I just touched the bank on the outside, shot across the road, went up on the grass on the inside and eventually managed to get back on to the road again. By that time one engine had cut out; still, I think the car’s all right. We shall have to get up bright and early and get in a couple of runs tomorrow morning, that’s all, there’s not enough light in the wood for another run now.’
When the Blighs eventually arrived at the Crown in Winchford where they had arranged to stay, they found Mr Nelson leaning on the bar, chatting to Camille and Butt, the number one B.R.C. driver. He looked up and smiled as they came in.
‘Well, how did you get on, Bligh?’ he enquired.
Peter grinned ruefully.
‘Oh, all right, thanks, as far as it went, which wasn’t very far, I’m afraid.’
‘You’re not going to tell me you had trouble on the new corner, are you?’ Mr Nelson implored. ‘Everyone seems to have been in difficulties there. I’ve heard nothing but complaints about it all day. The surface, the camber, the light—nothing seems to be right about it. It’s pretty disheartening for me after so much work. Even Volanti said he had a nasty moment there, although he put up an excellent time. Three people have hit the bank, fortunately without serious damage, and several others had their engines die quite unaccountably when they came to open up after the corner.’ Mr Nelson looked quite downcast.
‘Oh, no,’ Peter hastened to assure him. ‘I’ve got no complaint to make against the corner itself, but just as I came into it some fool popped out from nowhere right into the middle of the road, waving his arms like a lunatic. Result was, I had a very busy time indeed, and while I was motoring about on the grass and dodging trees I lost one engine.’
Poor conscientious Mr Nelson looked more harassed than ever and swore under his breath.
‘I’m most frightfully sorry to hear about this, Bligh,’ he apologised. ‘I can’t think who can have done such a crazy thing. When you went up, the marshals had just come down and reported to me that there were no spectators left on the hill, and only Arthur Day was still up there, hanging on in the top timing-box until you had made your run. Tell me, what did this idiot look like?’
Peter thought for a moment before replying.
‘Well,’ he explained, ‘the light was pretty poor under the trees there by the time I went up, and anyway you can’t notice much detail when you’re “dicing”, but he seemed a tall, thin bloke wearing something white. It looked like an overall coat, or it may have been a very light-coloured mackintosh.
‘The odd thing that struck me, now I come to think of it, was that he didn’t seem to have the coat on properly—his arms through the sleeves I mean—but slung round his shoulders, so that it looked like—well—more like a surplice than anything else.’
He laughed.
‘I’m not trying to suggest, though, that it may have been the local padre in his war-paint or anything like that. Just as I got the car back on to the road,’ he went on, ‘I had a quick look round, but he must have made a lightning getaway, for I couldn’t see a sign of him. Anyway,’ Peter concluded, ‘I’m not worrying, it was my own fault for turning up so late. What’ll you have to drink?’ he asked.
The conversation became general and the usual topics that are raised on the eve of a speed event were discussed at length. Talk was of blowers and blower pressures, of gear ratios, suspension and braking systems and of twin rear wheels versus single.
Mr Nelson played his part nobly in this discussion, for he was secretly a prey to a vague feeling of uneasiness, a dim sense of foreboding, which began to get the upper hand later, when he found himself alone in his room for the night. That confounded new corner seemed to be at the bottom of everything, he reflected; what an unlucky job it had been from start to finish! A constant worry. At one time he had seriously doubted whether the road would ever be ready in time, they had had such a long chapter of accidents and irritating annoyances.
In the first place, the local wiseacres had been even more pig-headed and obstinate than usual, and had not only refused to help the work of the club in any way, but had actually seemed bent on putting obstacles in their path. None of the local contractors could be persuaded to take on the job, and he had been compelled to employ a London firm at much greater expense. All this because of some archaic superstition about a ring of old stones through which the road would pass.
To begin with, some foolish practical joker, presumably one of the villagers, kept moving the surveyor’s pegs and sights overnight, and once they had even been collected together and burnt. Next, a large oak-tree they were felling, thanks to an unexpected and violent gust of wind on an otherwise calm day, fell unexpectedly in the wrong direction. It trapped the foreman, seriously injuring him, while several of the men had narrow escapes.
The mechanical navvy broke down repeatedly, until finally a subsidence occurred beneath it, and it required days of digging and the erection of shear-legs before it could be extricated. Just when the excavations were nearly at an end, and they were preparing to lay the foundations of the road, a spring had been struck, which made the whole hillside a hopeless quagmire of mud.
Then the trouble began among the workmen. Several of them fell victims to a peculiar and singularly unpleasant complaint, from which two had subsequently died, and the remainder had become restless and uneasy, saying there was no luck on the job. No doubt local talk was responsible.
Seeing the work was so behind time, he had tried to persuade the contractor to put on a night shift, offering to provide them with flares, but the men had resolutely refused to work after sundown. It was only by the dogged persistence of Mr Nelson himself that the road had been completed in time for the event, and it was with a sense of personal triumph that he had opened the course to competitors.
When beset by all these difficulties, he had actually begun to wonder at times whether there might not, after all, be some truth in local superstitions, but when the new road was at last finished and he toured up it at the wheel of his blue saloon Le Fevre, this disturbing thought had been forgotten. Now, the unfortunate mishaps in practice and particularly Bligh’s story had recalled his past uneasiness.
He recollected how he had dismissed impatiently the workmen’s talk of something or someone flitting about among the trees; never seen in broad daylight, but only after sundown, often glimpsed in the corner of the eye, but never directly seen. Strange, too, that both workmen and drivers had complained of the unpleasant stench that occasionally seemed to hang about the corner.
In an attempt to put a stop to these disquieting and unprofitable thoughts, Mr Nelson decided to indulge in his favourite relaxation of read
ing in bed. After a while the book slipped from his hand on to the coverlet and he fell into an uneasy sleep, which brought with it a very vivid and disturbing dream.
He was sitting in his favourite position in the lower timing-box at Longbury. It was evidently late in the day, for the light seemed subdued. Through the window he could see the Rheinwagen on the starting-line with Von Eberstraum at the wheel. For no apparent reason this perfectly normal spectacle seemed to inspire him with dreadful uneasiness. He felt as though he was the unwilling witness of some sinister sequence of events which he was quite powerless to interrupt.
He saw the starter place the contact shoe before the front wheel of the car, and as he did so a voice said quite clearly and distinctly, ‘He’s out for blood.’
Then the Rheinwagen made its anticipated meteoric get-away. Mr Nelson realised that he had the head-phones on, and listened anxiously for the reassuring voice of Arthur Day to announce the time. It did not come.
Instead his head became filled with a distant but penetrating reverberation of sound. It was like nothing he had ever heard before, but it most closely resembled the far-off booming of a great gong. Then a thin, high voice began to intone in a tongue that was unintelligible, and yet somehow indescribably menacing. Finally, and seemingly much nearer at hand, someone screamed.
At this point Mr Nelson awoke with the scream still ringing in his ears, to find himself bathed in perspiration, despite the fact that he had kicked most of the bedclothes on to the floor. Disinclined to court further sleep that night, and feeling wretchedly ill at ease, he propped himself upright with his pillows and resigned himself to read his novel, with as much concentration as he could muster, for the rest of the night.
A brilliant spring morning without a cloud in the sky did much to dispel Mr Nelson’s gloomy fears and to make amends for his wretched night. He felt inclined to attribute his nightmare to over-indulgence in the Crown’s excellent Stilton at dinner the previous evening.
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