The Tin Snail

by Cameron McAllister

  Finally, just as I was ready to give up hope, I saw them trudging across the snow to join us, Félix carrying a large stone pitcher of wine under his arm. My heart surged, but before I could say anything, Christian was suddenly thrusting glasses of champagne into everyone’s hands to celebrate the launch of our new prototype.

  To be honest, it wasn’t much to behold. In fact, it looked a lot like a cross between an old ambulance, a motorbike and a miniature pickup truck—which was exactly what it was.

  The main body was welded together from several sheets of corrugated iron—the only metal light and flexible (not to mention available) enough. The windows were made of a glass substitute called mica, brought down from Paris, which was cheaper and lighter than glass. To keep costs down, there was also no mechanism for winding the windows down. Instead the driver could open a small hatch for ventilation or hand signals.

  To further lighten the load, there was no roof. Instead, a canvas sheet had been stapled over the top to provide what I described grandly as a sun roof. Bertrand had scowled at this, thinking that it sounded like a luxury, but had eventually been persuaded.

  The final touch was the headlamp. Not two like in normal cars, but one large one perched proudly in the middle of the bonnet. This had been my father’s “master stroke,” as he saw it.

  “It looks like a cyclops,” Christian had quipped, earning a dirty look from my father.

  Only one feature had survived from my earlier lawn mower prototype: the canvas seats. It was agreed that these were a clever addition as they were light and would help soften what was bound to be a bumpy ride. Two additional hammock-style seats had duly been salvaged from the old German biplane parts in Félix’s secret lock-up.

  The big question now was: would the car pass the all-important test of crossing a plowed field with two chickens, a flagon of wine and a dozen eggs?

  I leaped forward and gave the starter handle a vigorous yank. With a splutter of black smoke, the car exploded into life, almost rattling the corrugated iron clean off its rivets. The starter handle promptly shook itself loose and landed on the ground. Undaunted, everyone broke into spontaneous applause.

  “I think you should be the first to try it,” Christian told Bertrand.

  “It would be a privilege,” he said, glowing. “But I will require a copilot.” He gave me a sidelong glance and I beamed back eagerly.

  The inside of the cab was so tiny that Bertrand almost had to double himself up to squeeze in behind the wheel; his trilby was knocked off as he crouched under the “sun roof.”

  “Hold on,” I said. I grabbed one of the corners of the canvas top and gave it a sharp tug. With a loud pop! it came away from the fasteners holding it onto the frame, and I rolled it back till Bertrand was able to stretch his bald head out through the roof. I then handed him back his trilby and he put it on again; it peeped out above the top of the car by a full ten centimeters.

  “Wait!” My father rushed forward. “Don’t forget the rest of your passengers.” And he squeezed the indignant chickens through the tiny window. One of the birds settled on my lap, but the other immediately flapped itself into a frenzy, sending Bertrand’s trilby flying again, before clambering out through the sun roof. Here it took up position in a sort of makeshift crow’s nest.

  Christian handed me his tray of eggs. “Look after them carefully,” he urged me solemnly.

  I nodded and cradled them on my lap while trying to hold on to the other chicken, which wanted to be up on the roof too. Félix carefully placed the flagon of wine on the backseat.

  “Ready?” Bertrand called out to me over the racket of the engine. I nodded uncertainly, and he eased his foot off the clutch.

  The car jolted into life, immediately tipping an egg over the edge of the tray. I managed to grab it before it broke, but lost my grip on the outraged chicken. It immediately flapped up onto the roof and perched beside the other one.

  Bertrand concentrated hard on edging the car forward, and it gradually began to build up momentum.

  At first all seemed well. But then, as the car gathered a fraction more speed, it began to groan ominously, just as the lawn mower had. Soon the corrugated iron was bending and distorting under the strain of holding itself together. The suspension was doing its job, but the superstructure was now locked into a sickening cyclical gyration, as though the car was swinging its hips from side to side in a demented rumba.

  I looked around, unnerved. “Is it supposed to do that?”

  Bertrand gripped the wheel till his knuckles went white. “Forget that. Are the eggs broken?”

  “Not yet,” I shouted back.

  “Then it can do whatever it wants.”

  He pressed the tiny accelerator pedal to the floor, and the car leaped forward with a loud backfire. The two chickens immediately abandoned ship, wisely deciding to cut their losses early.

  Bertrand tugged the steering wheel to the left, and we veered off the track toward the plowed field beyond. Suddenly I had an alarming flashback to my crash with the lawn mower, which had nearly broken Camille’s ankle.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” I asked, trying to keep the rising panic out of my voice.

  “We have to see what she’s made of, don’t we?” he boomed back, urging the little car toward the field.

  “But what if we crash again?” I called out.

  “Have a little faith!” Bertrand insisted.

  Suddenly the car hit the first rut, and I braced myself for instant self-destruction. But to my surprise, it held together far better than I’d feared. Only two eggs jumped out of the tray and broke, covering my boots with their creamy orange yolks.

  But if the front suspension coped better than expected, the rear was a different matter. The moment it hit the rut, the car grounded itself, the axle grinding against the wheel arch with a horrible crunch.

  Bertrand immediately winced as pain shot up his back. “I think I just fused two of my vertebrae,” he groaned.

  But I had become distracted by something else. A smell of burning had enveloped the car. I glanced down at my feet to see silver sparks flashing from the floor. Suddenly there was a fizz and a crack like a sodium lightbulb, and the footwell sizzled into flames.

  “We’re on fire!” I cried.

  Bertrand glanced over to see more sparks flying up from the metal chassis. “Blast!” he cursed, before slamming the brakes on. “And we were doing so well.”

  As quickly as we could, we bundled out of what was left of the car: just in time, as it turned out. The sparks ignited the canvas hammock seats, and they went up in a burst of multicolored flame.

  “Something tells me we didn’t pass the test,” I sighed as the others raced over the field toward us.

  But Bertrand was more philosophical. “A few minor adjustments. Nothing more.”

  Suddenly the tires popped with a loud hiss, and the car slumped down onto its rear end as if someone had pulled a chair out from under it.

  “A short circuit in the electrics caused a spark to ignite the magnesium in the suspension arm,” Christian announced blithely. “It can be solved easily.”

  I wasn’t entirely sure what any of this meant, but apparently the car’s maiden voyage hadn’t been a complete disaster after all, despite combusting and leaving a large scorched patch in the middle of the test track. Christian had insisted on bringing us all to Victor’s bar to toast its success. I think the real reason was to try and cheer me up. Everyone knew that today was my last day. Tomorrow I would be taking the train home to my mother—and my hated school.

  I say Christian had invited everyone, but Camille hadn’t joined us. As soon as she’d reassured herself Bertrand was unharmed after the car blew up, she made an excuse about having another errand to run and slipped away. As I watched her trudge across the field, I was convinced the real reason she was leaving was because she was disgusted with me for causing yet another crash.

  Moments later I noticed something glinting in the long grass.
Reaching down, I discovered it was a small brooch. I’d seen Camille wearing something identical once before. It was nothing elaborate—rather scuffed and worn, in fact, in the crude shape of a beetle.

  I thought about rushing after her to give it back, but before I could, Christian had wrapped an arm around me and insisted we head straight to the bar.

  With his usual flourish, Christian was now demanding another bottle of the finest champagne, but since he’d already exhausted the bar’s entire supply, Victor was heading over with a bottle of Benoît’s homemade concoction. As I stared at the dusty bottle, I couldn’t help thinking that it looked like murky pond water. I swore I even saw a tadpole swimming around in it.

  “A lot of the locals are talking about you setting off some fireworks.” Victor grinned, clearly enjoying poking fun at our car. “Are we celebrating?”

  Bertrand carefully folded the blueprints to prevent him from seeing anything too revealing. He smiled, giving away as little as possible. “Just some initial experiments…,” he said.

  “Surely you’re not still trying to make that car of yours?” Victor asked me, with a hint of a sneer. “I thought after what happened to Camille you might have seen sense.”

  I could feel my jaw tightening with dislike for him, but Papa got in first.

  “If you’re so sure it can’t be done, perhaps you’d like to put a small wager on it,” he said, icy cool.

  Victor raised a playful eyebrow. This was fighting talk indeed. “How about dinner for everyone here. The winner pays.”

  “Done,” my father replied, stretching a hand out to shake.

  “May the best man win—or should I say boy.” Victor grinned, showing his yellow teeth. With that, he wandered back to join his cronies at the bar.

  My father scowled as he watched him. “Arrogant monkey!”

  “Relax,” Bertrand soothed. “Victor is not our enemy.”

  “Then who is?” I asked, recoiling from the rancid smell of Benoît’s potion.

  “Germany, for a start,” my father grumbled into his glass.

  “We have a more immediate problem than that,” Bertrand insisted. “The suspension. Until we find a way to even out those bumps, we’re never going to win that bet of yours.”

  Christian spread the blueprints across the table again. “What we need is a suspension system where the back wheels know what the front wheels are doing.”

  “You mean you want the front wheels to talk to the back wheels?” I asked doubtfully.

  “Exactly,” Christian replied without batting an eyelid. “Somehow we need the front wheels to warn the back wheels that a bump is coming so the car doesn’t bounce so high…”

  “And how precisely will you achieve all this?” Papa asked doubtfully.

  Christian shrugged. “I haven’t the foggiest—but that never stopped us before.”

  “How long will all this take?” Bertrand asked, a little impatient now.

  “Six months, maybe a year.”

  “A year?” my father cried, clearly horrified at the idea of being trapped in this village so long.

  “Too long,” Bertrand barked. “I want this finished and in production before the Germans try to steal it.”

  “But why would they be interested in a rusty old heap of junk that blows up?” I scoffed.

  Bertrand turned and looked at me so fiercely that I shrank back into my seat.

  “I told you. Ferdinand Porsche is already developing his own people’s car. As soon as he finds out we’re trying to beat him to it, he’ll try to sabotage us—or steal our design. Believe me,” he went on somberly, “if we go to war and the Germans invade, the first people to cross the border will be storm troopers. The second will be his car engineers.”

  I gasped. “You think he knows about it already?”

  “I’m certain of it.”

  “It’s not just Porsche you have to worry about,” my father added. “If this suspension is going to be as clever as we hope, the Nazis will want to steal it for the military.”

  I felt a chill run down my spine. I glanced over my shoulder and looked at Victor, gossiping with his friends. If Porsche really did have his spies everywhere, as Bertrand suspected, was it possible that our greatest enemy was already among us?

  Either way, there wasn’t much I could do about it now. Tomorrow I would be leaving the village, probably forever. Whatever changes were made to the prototype, they would have to be made without me.

  The thought of heading back weighed heavily on me as I trudged out into the cold night air. I sulkily kicked a stone around the square until my father slipped out of the bar to join me.

  “Will you at least come back to Paris for Christmas?” I asked gloomily.

  “Of course,” he reassured me. “Now let’s get back to the house before we die of cold.”

  He turned to head across the square, but there was something I knew I needed to do before I left.

  “I’m going to call by the smithy. I want to try out some ideas for the suspension,” I announced, not altogether convincingly.

  “Don’t be too late,” my father said.

  A few moments later I approached the forge and took a deep breath. Reaching into my pocket, I felt the pin of Camille’s brooch prick my fingertip. I mustered all my courage and rapped lightly on the door. Félix glanced up, surprised to see me.

  “I wondered if I could speak to Camille,” I asked cautiously. “I think I found something of hers.”

  “She’s upstairs. But mind you don’t keep her too long,” he said gruffly. “She’s doing her schoolwork.”

  I made my way up the stairs to their apartment and knocked on the door tentatively. Getting no answer, I gently pushed it open.

  “Hello?”

  The room was empty. I was beginning to think that maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all when my eyes alighted on a small attic window. Peering through it, I spotted a hunched figure sitting on the roof.

  “Camille?”

  She spun round. “What do you want?” she said with a scowl.

  “I—I found something of yours,” I stammered. “After the test run.”

  “After the fireworks display, you mean?”

  I felt the hairs on the back of my neck bristle at her put-down. “Fine, if you don’t want it…” I turned to head back down, but she quickly stopped me.

  “I was only teasing. Show me—please.”

  I clambered up through the window and stepped out onto the roof. As I did so, I caught a glimpse of the cobbled street three floors below and my head began to swim sickeningly.

  Camille was watching me closely. “Does it scare you?” she asked. The idea seemed to amuse her.

  “No,” I lied. “What are you doing up here anyway?”

  “It’s the only place I can be alone,” she answered, before adding: “Usually.”

  I ignored her little dig and edged across the roof toward her. She wriggled over a few inches to make room, and I squeezed down beside her. Digging into my pocket for the brooch, I held it out to her.

  “My scarab beetle!” she cried. Her fingers felt warm on my palm as she took it gratefully. “Where did you find it?”

  “You must have dropped it after the test run. What is a scarab beetle, anyway?”

  “A dung beetle. The ancient Egyptians wore them as good luck charms,” she replied, pinning it back onto her cardigan. “Apparently the way they rolled up little balls of dung reminded them of the heavenly cycles. Don’t ask me why.”

  “So you wear it to bring you luck?”

  “No,” she answered matter-of-factly. “I wear it because my mother gave it to me.”

  I glanced at her, curious. It was the first time I’d heard her mention her mother. “So where is she now?” As soon as the words were out of my mouth I wished I could take them back. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to stick my nose in.”

  “It’s okay.” She shrugged. “She died when I was little. That’s why I didn’t want to lose it.”


  I nodded, and for a minute neither of us spoke.

  “So,” Camille said. “What’s the real reason you came up here? And don’t say to return my brooch. You could have handed that to anyone to give back to me.”

  For a second I was taken aback by her directness. Then I decided I would be just as direct back.

  “I wanted to say goodbye.”

  “Goodbye?” If she was faking her shock, she was doing a good job of it, because for a split second she sounded almost disappointed.

  “I have to go home to Paris tomorrow.”

  Camille frowned. “You sound like you don’t want to. I thought you’d be jumping for joy.”

  “Going back’s the last thing I want.”

  Again, she looked genuinely surprised. “You can’t honestly want to stay here?”

  “I want to see our car design through to the end.”

  “Oh, that,” she groaned. “At this rate you’re going to run out of people to break.”

  “Look, I’m sorry about your ankle,” I said, managing not to sound the least bit sorry. “But if we can make this work, it will be…well…” I caught a glimpse of her looking at me skeptically and lost my nerve. “What’s the point? You wouldn’t understand.”

  “I understand you’re obsessed with that thing. It’s like you’re trying to prove something. How much better you are because you come from the big city, no doubt.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Is that what everyone thinks? That I’m just trying to show off?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  I stared at her for a moment, then turned and looked out across the rooftops, my blood boiling.

  “Sorry,” she said sheepishly. “That came out worse than it was meant to.”

  But I wasn’t ready to forgive her so easily. Seeing that I was still sulking, she got to her feet.

  “I should go. My father will be wondering where I am—”

  “Wait,” I said. I couldn’t let her leave without explaining. “The reason I’m obsessed with the car is because I destroyed my dad’s last one. Flattened, to be precise. It could cost him his job.”