Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (2 page)

So then everyone shook hands and Lord Skrumshus gave Jeremy and Jemima each a big free box of samples of all the candies he made. The three of them hurried off back to Mumsie to tell her the good news, and straightaway the whole family hired a taxi and went to the bank to deposit the check for a thousand pounds and then—and THEN they all went off together to BUY A CAR!

Now, I don't know if you got it into your heads yet, but the Pott family wasn't a very conventional family—that is, they were all rather out of the ordinary. Even Mimsie must have been rather an adventurous sort of mother or she wouldn't have married an explorer and inventor like Commander Caractacus Pott, R.N. (Retired) who had, as they say, no visible means of support—meaning he was someone who doesn't do regular work that brings in regular money, but depends on occasional windfalls from lucky explorations or inventions.

So when it came to buying a car, they were all determined that it shouldn't be just ANY car, but something a bit different from everyone else's—not one of those black beetle sedans that looks much the same back and front so that, in the distance, you don't know if it's coming or going, but something rather special—something rather adventurous.

Well, they hunted all that afternoon and all the next day. They looked at brand-new cars and they visited the secondhand showrooms where smart salesmen offered Commander and Mrs. Pott cigarettes and Jeremy and Jemima candies just to try and tempt them to buy. But Commander Pott knew pretty well all there is to know about cars, having been an engineer officer in the Navy and being an inventor as well, and one look under the hood and one trial, listening carefully to the sound of the engine, was generally enough for him—even if he didn't notice that the speedometer had been disconnected or that the chassis was bent because of some crash whose scratches and dents the salesman had carefully painted over. (You have to be very cautious buying ANYTHING secondhand. You never know how careful the last owner has been. And anyway, whatever the thing is, if it is in good order, why does the person want to get rid of it?)

And then at the end of the second day, they came to a broken-down little garage run by a once-famous racing driver. It was really only a big tin shed with a couple of grimy gas pumps outside, and, inside, the concrete floor was slippery with oil and everywhere there were bits and pieces of old cars that the garage man had been tinkering with, really, as far as one could see, just for the fun of it.

But he was the sort of enthusiast Commander Pott always had a warm corner in his heart for. The two of them went on talking for a long time while Mimsie and Jeremy and Jemima, who were pretty tired by then, grew more and more impatient.

Suddenly they were surprised to see Commander Pott follow the garage man round to the back of his shed where there was a long, low object hidden under a tarpaulin. The garage man looked Commander Pott and the family, each one, carefully up and down and then went to one end of the tarpaulin and slowly rolled it back.

Well, I can't tell you how disappointed Mimsie and the children were. From the way the garage man had behaved, they thought there must be some splendid treasure of a car under the tarpaulin. But what did they see? A wreck—that's all. Just the remains, rusty and broken and bent, of a very long, low, four-seater open motorcar without a top and with the green paint peeling off in strips.

"Well, there she is," said the garage man sadly. "She once knew every racing track in Europe. In the old days, there wasn't a famous driver in Britain who hadn't driven her at one time or another. She's still wearing England's racing green, as you can see—that was from early in the thirties.

"She's a twelve-cylinder, eight-liter, supercharged
Paragon Panther
. They only made one of them and then the firm went broke. This is the only one in the world. Doesn't look like much, does she? I'm afraid she's due for the scrap heap. Can't afford to go on giving her living space. They're coming to tow her away next week, as a matter of fact—take her to the dump, pick her up in a big grab and drop her between one of those giant hydraulic presses. One crunch and it just squashes them into a sort of square metal biscuit. Then she'll go to a smelting works to be melted down just for the raw metal. Seems a shame, doesn't it? You can almost see from her eyes—those big Marchal racing headlights—that she knows what's in store for her. But there it is. You can see the shape she's in and it would need hundreds of pounds to get her on the road again—even supposing there was someone nowadays who could afford to run her."

Commander Pott was looking curiously excited. "Mind if I look her over?"

"Go ahead." The garage man shook his head sadly. "She'd appreciate a last look over by someone like you who knows what real quality used to be."

The whole family picked their way over and through the patches of oily ground. While Commander Pott looked under the hood, Mimsie and Jeremy and Jemima prodded the once-beautiful soft leather upholstery (moths flew out!); and looked under the carpets, front and back (beetles scuttled about!); and examined the knobs and switches and dials on the dashboard (there were dozens of them, all rusty and mildewed); and tried the big old boa-constrictor horn that worked with an India-rubber bulb. But nothing happened except that a lot of dust blew out of the end into Commander Pott's face as he bent over the engine, peering and tinkering.

The children looked at Mimsie and Mimsie looked back at them and do you know what? They didn't just dolefully shake their heads at each other. They all had the same look in their eyes. The look said, "This must once have been the most beautiful car in the world. If the engine's more or less all right, and if we all set to and scrubbed and painted and mended and polished, do you suppose we could put her back as she used to be? It wouldn't be like having just one of those black beetles that the factories turn out in hundreds and thousands and that all look alike. We'd have a real jewel of a car, something to love and cherish and look after as if it were one of the family!"

Commander Pott took his face out from under the hood. He looked at them and they looked back at him and he just turned to the garage man and said, "I'll buy her. We all love her and we'll make her as good as new. How much do you want for her?"

"Fifty pounds," said the garage man. "She wouldn't fetch much as scrap."

Commander Pott counted out the notes there and then, and said, "Thank you, and will you please have her towed along to my workshop just as soon as you can."

And do you know? There were almost tears of happiness in the garage man's eyes as he shook them all by the hand. As they climbed into their taxi to go off home, he said seriously, "Commander Pott, Mrs. Pott, Master Pott, and Miss Pott, you will never regret buying that car. She's going to give you the time of your lives. You've saved her from the scrap heap, and I'll eat my hat—if I had a hat to eat—if she doesn't repay you for what you've done today." He was still waving happily after them when they drove out of sight.

As they bowled along in their taxi, Jemima whispered to Jeremy in the front seat next to the driver, "Jeremy, did you notice something very mysterious about the old license plate that was hanging from the back of our car?"

"There was nothing mysterious about it," said Jeremy scornfully, "it was GEN ELEVEN."

"Yes," said Jemima excitedly. "GEN II. Don't you realize what that spells? 'Genii'—like magical people, sort of spirits, like that story about the Bottle Imp by Robert Louis Stevenson that Mimsie read to us once.

"Hum!" said Jeremy thoughtfully. "Hum! Hum! Hum!" and they sat silently thinking this odd coincidence over, until they got home.

Well, the next day Jeremy and Jemima had to go off to boarding school so they never saw the arrival of the new car, or rather the ruins of it, as it came bumping and crashing down the lane behind the tow truck, but Mimsie wrote and told them of how it disappeared at once into Commander Pott's workshop and how their father then locked himself inside with it and only emerged to eat and sleep.

For three months, the whole of the summer term, he worked and worked secretly on the wreck of the old
Paragon
and Mimsie said that much smoke came out of the chimney and often lights shone all night through the windows, and mysterious packages arrived from engineering factories all over England and disappeared into the workshop through the locked doors.

Mimsie wrote that their father went through periods of gloom and impatience and frenzy and triumph and dejection and delight and unhappiness and nightmares and loss of appetite, but that gradually, with the passing weeks, he became calmer and happier until, as the holidays came nearer, he was smiling and rubbing his hands. Then at last came the great day when they fetched Jeremy and Jemima from school and the whole family assembled outside the workshop while Commander Pott solemnly unlocked the doors and they all trooped in to where the twelve-cylinder, eight-liter, supercharged
Paragon Panther
stood under the bright lights.

Mimsie and Jeremy and Jemima stood and stared and stared and stared until Jemima broke the silence and said, "But she's the most beautiful car in the world!" Mimsie and Jeremy just nodded their agreement and looked at the
Paragon
with round and shining eyes.

And she
was
beautiful. Every single little thing had been put right and every detail gleamed and glinted with new paint and polished chrome down to the snarling mouth of the big boa-constrictor horn.

Slowly they walked around her and examined her inch by inch: from the rows and rows of gleaming knobs on the dashboard to the brand-new, dark-red leather upholstery; from the cream-colored collapsible roof to the fine new tires; from the glistening silver of the huge exhaust pipes snaking away from the holes in the bright green hood to the glittering license plates that said GEN II.

And silently they climbed in through the low doors that opened and shut with the most delicious clicks, and Commander Caractacus Pott sat behind the huge steering wheel with Mimsie beside him in her own bucket seat with an armrest, and Jeremy and Jemima got in the back and sank down in the big, soft, red leather cushions and rested their arms on their own armrest between them.

Then, without saying anything, Commander Pott leaned forward and pressed the big black knob of the self-starter.

At first nothing happened. There was just the soft grinding from the starter motor. Jeremy and Jemima looked at each other with round eyes. Wasn't she going to work after all?

But then Commander Pott pulled out the silver knob of the choke, to feed more gas into the carburetor, and pressed the starter again. And out of the exhaust pipes there came just these four noises—very loudly—

And there was a distinct pause between each noise, and it was like two big sneezes and two small explosions. And then there was silence.

Again Jeremy and Jemima looked at each other, now really rather worried. Had something gone wrong?

But Commander Pott just said, "She's a bit cold. Now then!" He pressed the starter again. And this time, after the first two CHITTY sneezes and the two soft BANGS, the BANGS ran on and into each other so as to make a delicious purring rumble such as neither Mimsie nor Jeremy nor Jemima had ever heard before from a piece of machinery. Commander Pott put the big car into gear and slowly they rumbled and roared out of the workshop into the sunshine and up the lane toward the highway, and the springs were soft as silk and always this delicious rumble came out behind from the huge fishtail exhausts.

When they got to the side road that joined the highway, Commander Pott pressed the big bulb of the boa-constrictor horn and it let out a deep, polite, but rather threatening roar, and then, because he wanted to show everything to the children, Commander Pott pressed the electric horn button in the middle of the wheel and the klaxon horn fired off a terrific blast of warning:

Then he steered out on to the highway and they were off on their first practice run.

Well, I can only tell you that the huge, long, gleaming green car almost flew. With a click of the big central gear lever, Commander Pott got out of first gear into second at forty miles per hour, with another click at seventy miles per hour he was in third, and as they touched ONE HUNDRED MILES AN HOUR, he put the huge car into top gear and there they were, passing the black beetle cars almost as if they were standing still.

GA—GO000—GA! went the klaxon again and again as they swept down the big, safe, double-lane highway, and the drivers of the little family sedans looked in their rear mirrors and saw the great, gleaming monster whistling toward them and drew to the side to let her go by, and all the drivers said, "COOER! See that! What is she? Smashing! !" And then the green car was past and away and they caught the hurricane howl of the big exhausts and made a note of the number, GEN II, and not one of the drivers noticed what the number really spelled. They just thought it was a nice short number to have and easy to remember.

So CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG came to the end of the highway and Commander Pott carefully swung the big car into the other lane and roared off back toward home, and Jeremy and Jemima clutched their armrest with excitement and looked over at the glittering dashboard and watched the needle of the speedometer creep back up to a hundred and stay there until they came to the turning off for home. And Commander Pott clamped on the powerful hydraulic brakes until the car was only creeping along and they turned off the highway and bumped back down their narrow lane and back in under the bright lights of the workshop. And, when Commander Pott switched off the engine, it gave one last CHITTY-CHITTY, let out a deep sigh of contentment, and was silent.

They all climbed out and Commander Pott turned to them with a gleam of triumph in his eye. "Well? What do you think of her?"

And Mimsie said, "Terrific!"

And Jeremy said, "Smashing!"