UNDERGRADUATE PAGE
Traffic-Jam
By T. F. HIBBETT (Christchurch, Oxford) HALF of the town was flooded. We forged along the streets in our motor-bus, wheels awash, and were able to look down through the open doors and along the passages of the houses where the water was slopping up against the walls as men and women waded out with their more precious belongings. A few more of the townspeople stood up to their knees-in muddy water, tapping out plugs of wood in the walls of their houses to allow the water inside to flow out. They did this quite unhurriedly, with a composure which showed that floods in this part of the Dordogne were all in the season's work. Further on we passed a few small boys clustered round a fire-engine with some idle porn piers who had given up their task of assisting the waters on their way back to the now subsiding river. But there were no peering crowds to eye their neighbours' misfortunes. All those who were able to do so had left this part of the town for the higher ground on the other side of the river. We discovered tlyis when we rumbled over the high-spanned bridge, and turned along -the embankment on the further side.
This was a broad street, but it was also the site of the town- market. The extra people who swarmed round the stalls had forced their owners to encroach on to the roadway, so that before long we were brought to a sharp, characteristically French halt by a large and placid Frenchwoman, who was sitting in the middle of the road protected by a variety of pink underclothing which was hanging on her stall. She stared at us unflinching in spite of an automatic and prolonged blast of the horn which our driver gave her. On the right of her stall and on the other side of the road was parked an empty van. Its driver was nowhere to be seen. But our driver was not defeated by the situation, and with a care uncommon among French drivers proceeded to edge the nose of the bus through the gap between the stall and the empty van, a space which was obviously narrower than the width of the bus.
The fat woman sat tight, and we awaited the imminent crash and tearing sound which would indicate the ruin of her stall. Instead there was the shriek of a brass horn as the snout of a petrol-tanker pushed its way into the gap from the other side of the stall. Our driver replied with what vehemence he could muster from his aged klaxon, and for a moment even the babble and cries of the marketeers were drowned in the din of two French drivers competing for attention with their horns. But it was all to no purpose; here was the perfect stalemate. As yet nobody but ourselves, a coachload of Englishmen, and the two drivers appreciated the situation. Even the old woman still stolidly sat.
Of course there was one perfectly simple way out of the impasse. Either ourselves or the tanker could back out and allow the other the doubtful honour of pushing over the old woman's stall. But chivalry forbade the destruction of a lady's property. Or perhaps the drivers were old soldiers and still heard the Marshal's famous words ringing in their ears : "us Fie passeront pas." But, whatever it was, clearly no thought of retreat entered their heads. The only action that either took was to return the dissonant blasts of the other's horn.
Finally the irritation of the tanker-driver got the better of him, and he began to shout at the shoppers for information about the driver of the van. The honourable solution apparently was to rempve the van, which was deemed to be obAructing the highway. But the shoppers who were now gathering round the old woman's stall were not helpful—" He is drinking," "He is working in the floods," "He is at the police-station." The irony of the last piece of information struck us later, when we realised that at no time during the whole sequence of events did we see a single gendarme. All we did notice just then was how the old woman came to life at last. "You won't find him in a burry," she seemed to cackle. Certainly her whole frame was shaking with mirth. She did not now appear to be quite so stupid as at first, partly because she was showing a wide and toothy grin, and partly because it was obvious that the blocked roadway was bringing her custom as more people crowded round her stall to watch.
The exchanges between the tanker-driver and the crowd became more rapid, with the old woman and our driver chip- ping in as well. We gathered that it was proposed to move the stall. But neither of the drivers would leave their vehicles, and the old woman herself appeared to be quite immovable, whatever happened to the stall, while the crowd was only too content to remain spectators. The minutes ticked by, and the talk became faster and faster. A horse and cart pulled up behind us, followed by a shining American limousine, the driver of which betrayed a different nationality by applying himself to his horn. The horse reared, scattering the crowd, and a pile of cabbages rolled into the gutter from the back of the cart. The situation was becoming exciting.
It was the tanker-driver who solved the problem. With the turmoil going on behind us, we never saw him get out of his cab, but when the noise started we saw that the inside of that long unpleasant snout on the front of the tanker was open to view. Stretching the whole length of•the bonnet at the side of the engine-casing was a gigantic shining instrument like a grossly swollen coaching-horn. Back in his cab the driver merely leaned forward, arms folded, over his steering-wheel, and the instrument shuddered with an immense noise. The cab shook; the whole tanker shook; the stall looked as if it would collapse at any moment. Every window in the bus began to vibrate, as if we were moving at top speed. And still the noise went on—and on—an irresistible blare that stunned everybody and everything. Even the horse, fractious at the modest piping of a Chicago klaxon, was petrified. Only its eyes rolled as it stared wildly into the back of the bus.
Time seemed to be suspended in a holocaust of sound blast- ing its way into the substance of one's body until every bone was a jarring screech. To speak or to act were alike impos- sible. When time is suspended one cannot do anything. In the bus we simply sat staring at the monstrous quivering horn, and at the man leaning over the wheel behind it, distorted by the vibration of the windscreen into a triumphant shimmering devil. How long we might have remained like this I do not care to think. But just for a second the devil shifted his - position and the noise stopped. It was only for the merest second, but in that moment time began again. The crowd streamed away holding its ears, the horse wheeled round and fled, toppling the remainder of the cabbages over the American car—and the old woman stood up. Then everything was gathered up once more in that all-embracing shattering roar.
But the spell was broken now. We saw the old woman push her way through festoons of underwear and sway uncertainly behind the bus. The next moment her preposterous villainy dawned on us as we saw her unlock the door of the van, struggle into the driving-seat and drive off unheard in the still- continuing blare. It was like a spider leaving the centre of her web. The tanker-driver was now our deliverer, for the noise stopped, and the way was clear. And what a resourceful deliverer ! Helpless with laughter we watched him climb down from his cab and carefully replace several yards of cotton waste in the body of that immense horn. Evidently he had had some experience of traffic-jams.
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