L'ACCIDENT

By PAUL F. JENNINGS

I AM very glad that my first road accident was in France. The French seem to take more kindly to my car, which is a 1928 Austin 7 called UB, than do my fellow-countrymen, especially those ' in the police. Here they seem to have the idea that you must be rich to have a car, and in some way UB, which I purchased in 1938 for £8, offends them. Only last week I was followed down from Hampstead Heath by two policemen on gleaming motor-cycles, who stopped me and asked to see my licence. This was after my French accident, in which the licence-holder, which used to stick out from the headlamp in what I always thought a rather vulnerable position, was knocked off. I produced it, after some search, from among the spanners and bits of rag that I keep under the seat ; so then they said: " You seemed to have a bit of difficulty in stopping, didn't you ? " They told me to put the hand-brake on (it was on already as a matter of fact), and then they pushed UB, and of course it

. moved. A lot of cars would move if pushed downwards on a hill of I in 7.

How different it all was in France. We were on our way to Geneva. UB loves mountains, and was thubbing contentedly along a very wet road beyond Chalons-sur-Saone when it happened. The inevitable poplars along the left-hand side of the road came to an abrupt end and I was suddenly aware of an enormous lorry, enor- mous as only French lorries can be, thundering straight at us from a little road on the left. We were both doing about thirty miles an hour. I have the clearest recollection of yelling at Haro, my companion: " But we've got the right of Way." Fortunately for us the driver of the lorry appeared to realise this for he swung sharp left into our road. He skidded into a three-foot ditch, and so did we, just behind him. I can now refute the story that the whole of one's life passes before one. In the seconds orwaiting for the crash I was wondering quite calmly where the nearest R.A.C. office was, and how much it would cost to send the wreckage by rail. Then we were in the ditch, at 45 degrees. We sat there thoughtfully for a moment, and then got out. When I saw smoke coming from the engine, from the engine of faithful UB that had served me so well, I suddenly felt very indignant and righteous ; after all, we did have the right of way. What seemed like forty French soldiers clambered out of the lorry. When they saw UB they roared with laughter, and this made me feel more indignant than ever. I made up in intonation what I lacked in idiom. "C'etait votre faute! " I shouted. "Nous &ions en pleine route." Pointing at UB, I went on tragically, " II nous Taut rentrer en Angleterre avec ceci ! " I expected a fierce Gallic counter-attack, but to my surprise they only said quite mildly, " Ah, c'est vrai, 0," and in the background I was aware of the driver being given a tremendous wigging by an N.C.O. It rather

took the wind out of my sails. "Eh bien," I said crossly, "aidez-

nous la tirer de la fosse." I felt enormously proud of knowing the French for ditch, and as we all tugged lustily at UB I was already beginning to think of them as good fellows. We got UB on to the road. " Voyons si elle marche," I said. It was a great moment. I got in and pressed the self-starter. Ah, you policemen, you people in shiny black saloons, you will never know how much I love UB, what I felt when that marvellous little engine burst into life as if nothing had happened at all. The Frenchmen (there were, in fact, twenty-seven) let out a great cheer, and I knew then that we were going to enjoy this accident. I had recovered myself sufficiently by this time to remember the camera. "L'in.stinet touriste, messieurs," I explained, as I wandered about in the wet trying to get a composition in the viewfinder that would best express the tininess of UB, the vastness of the lorry on its side, and the animated conversation which Haro was already having about tea-making with one of the N.C.O.s who had noticed the great kettle in the back of the car. An examina- tion showed that the lower half of the windscreen was cracked and the nearside front wheel completely smashed, although the tyre was not even punctured. Four of the soldiers turned out to be skilled mechanics, and after an inspection of the engine they proceeded to change the wheel for us. The N.C.O.s approached us in a group and asked us if we would do them the honour of having lunch with them.

I shall remember that lunch. It was the kind that begins with an enormous omelette, reaches an entree after various preliminary saucissons, and ends with cafe cognac. It took about two hours.

While we were on our first bottles of wine, Haro, whose habit it was to enter " poet and dreamer " on the line for profession on the

forms we got at hotels, but who is really an artist, drew a cartoon of the lorry, with teeth bared, approaching a poor little UB. He was still drawing copies of this at the end, except that the moon faces on the back of the lorry now tended to include not only the

soldiers but also a woman with shield and breastplate, rather like Hermione Gingold, with a balloon saying, "A has les aristos! " We

drank toasts to the King of England, to Princess Elizabeth, to General de Gaulle, to Mr. Attlee and Mr. Churchill. I had a long political conversation with my N.C.O. I said that I thought France would never die because it had a strong peasantry, and he said that he for his part admired the English for their ability to work together.

It was still raining when we finally went outside for a group photograph to be taken. Immediately after this was done (it has come out a bit blurred) an exact replica of the first lorry drew

up to the cafe. We all went back a hundred yards up the road to where we had left the monster lying in the ditch. I have never felt

my French so taxed as when I was trying to explain that if you want to tow a lorry out of a ditch the towing lorry must be more or less on the same axis. They had the tow-rope practically at right

angles to the lorry in the ditch. The driver would rev his engine magnificently, the rope would go taut, the lorry would give a con- vulsive jerk, and then they would start all over again. They took twenty minutes to do it, and the beauty of the whole thing was that there was no crowd. Two peasants on bicycles did get off to watch us apathetically for a minute or two, but they soon went away. As a last gesture one of the soldiers drove up in UB ; they produced a length of rubber tubing and siphoned a complete tankful of red petrol into our tank. The last addresses were exchanged, and we drove off among their cheers. UB climbed some 4,000 feet of the Jura mountains in the afternoon, and dropped into a rather surprised Geneva in the evening. It was in a narrow, echoing street with tall buildings that we noticed another casualty—the silencer.

They missed that one at Hampstead.