One Sunday after church (which he endured patiently for the sake of the family’s respectability) Daniel came down the front steps of the house and found Mr Wragge in his Sunday best, gazing at the AC with a worried look on his face.
‘Good morning, Mr Wragge. Not taking your day off?’ said Daniel.
‘I am, sir, but this car’s giving me a right headache. Can’t stop thinking about it. Just thought I’d call by and take another look.’
‘I see that Caractacus has been walking all over it,’ said Daniel.
‘I only have to polish it and the bleedin’ cat walks all over it with muddy feet,’ said Wragge. ‘I’ve had to resign myself. The family don’t seem to mind. And when you go anywhere you have to check he isn’t sitting in the back like a bloody gentleman off to the races.’
‘What’s the matter with it, then?’
‘Noises, sir. Horrible noises.’
‘What sort of noises, Mr Wragge?’
‘Clonking, sir. Specially when you start off, stop or go round corners.’
‘It sounds like the perfect excuse for a drive,’ said Daniel. ‘I’ve got an hour before lunch. Get her started and we’ll go for a spin. Can I drive?’
Mr Wragge looked doubtful. ‘Just so’s you remember it ain’t a Sopwith, sir. Long as you don’t throw her about, sir.’
‘I’ll drive very sedately, Mr Wragge. Start her up!’
Daniel heard the clonking the moment they pulled out of the drive. They set off down Court Road, he applied the brakes and there it was. They turned into North Park, and it was even worse. When Daniel braked at Footscray Road and turned right to go round behind the golf course, it was horrendous. Daniel stopped the car and it clonked again.
‘Do you think it’s safe to drive?’ he asked.
‘Well, that’s the odd thing, sir. It drives perfectly sweet, and you can’t feel nothing strange at the wheel. It’s not like she’s juddering, or wandering about the road or anything.’
They started off again and completed the circuit back past the Tarn. In the driveway of The Grampians, Daniel switched off the engine and said, ‘I think we’d better jack her up at the back and take a look. You get the jack out and I’ll go and get some overalls.’
Ten minutes later Sophie came out of the house on her way to post a letter, and saw Mr Wragge crouched down at the side of the car next to Daniel’s feet. She heard Daniel’s voice drifting out, as if he were talking to himself. ‘Nothing wrong with the propshaft. I mean, it feels perfectly solid. It couldn’t be the diff, could it?’
‘Don’t think so, sir. Diffs grind. They don’t clonk.’
‘The suspension looks absolutely fine. I see you greased the springs recently.’
‘I did, sir. I take care of her as best I know.’
Sophie interrupted. ‘Do we have a little local difficulty, oh comrades stout and true? May a mere slip of a sliver of a very slight female be of any assistance?’
Daniel emerged from beneath the car, with a long streak of heavy grease across the bridge of his nose and down one cheek.
‘Gracious,’ said Sophie, ‘your maquillage is all lopsided. You must go to the agency and get yourself a better maid.’
‘There’s a hideous clonking when you brake,’ said Daniel.
‘And when you go round corners,’ added Wragge. ‘It’s a right mystery.’
‘Whence cometh it? What is its provenance, where its domicile, where and what its dwelling?’
‘Somewhere in the back, sort of behind and below the driver and passenger.’
Sophie put her forefinger to her lip and adopted a theatrically thoughtful expression. ‘Well, enfant de la patrie, would you condescend to lift up the back seat?’
‘The back seat?’
‘Yea, verily, the back seat.’
‘As her ladyship wishes,’ said Daniel. ‘But you must know there’s no machinery under there.’
‘’Tis true,’ said Sophie. ‘Beneath a back seat dwell no cogs, gudgeon pins or big ends. The latter repose upon the seat but do not occupy the space beneath.’
Daniel reached in and pulled up the leather tabs at the back of the seat. Sophie leaned over and looked. Her hand darted down and she plucked something up.
‘Just as I ratiocinated,’ she said, holding up the golf ball, and tossing it to Daniel. ‘Toodle-oo, gentlemen of England. Must go and post an epistle. Vivat floreatque gynocracy!’
Daniel and Mr Wragge watched her go. Even from behind they could see her triumphant amusement.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Mr Wragge, drawing the syllables out.
‘I bet she put it there herself, the little minx,’ said Daniel. ‘I’ll ask Fairhead.’
‘I’ll fetch us a cup of tea from the kitchen,’ said Mr Wragge.
They drank it side by side on the step outside the boiler room. ‘Mr Wragge,’ said Daniel, ‘have you ever thought of setting up a business?’
‘Wouldn’t know how, sir. What kind of business?’
‘Well,’ said Daniel, ‘something mechanical. Cars or motorcycles. Or both. Aeroplanes if possible.’
‘I dunno, sir. Why do you ask?’
‘I have two friends in Germany. Willy and Fritzl. I captured them in 1918. They’ve started a motorcycle business in Germany. They’ve written and asked me if I’d like to go over and pitch in. It occurred to me that you would make up the numbers perfectly.’
‘You’d go to Germany, sir? After all that?’
‘It wasn’t the Germans, Mr Wragge, it was the bloody Kaiser. If His Majesty went mad and told the young men of this country to go out and conquer France, you can bet that half of us would go.’
‘Well, maybe so, sir, but you’re a gentleman. Gentlemen aren’t mechanics.’
‘I am beginning to think that I have no future as a gentleman,’ said Daniel. ‘And in any case, in business it helps if you’ve got a gentleman on board. And the sad truth is that I love machinery. If I can’t spend my life tinkering, I shall live unhappy, I know it. I was born to make things work.’
‘Well, I’m not a gentleman. We’d have to rub along, wouldn’t we?’
‘You’re a bloody good mechanic, Mr Wragge. That’s why I asked you. You’re damned useful with a spanner and you understand how everything works.’
‘Anyway, I thought you was going to Ceylon, sir.’
‘I am. I’m just making a plan B. In case it doesn’t work out. My wife…’ Daniel stood up without completing the sentence. ‘Give me your cup and saucer, Mr Wragge. I’ll take them back to the kitchen.’
‘Gentleman don’t take washing-up to the kitchen.’
‘I’m getting in practice for when I have to give it up,’ said Daniel.
As he left, Mr Wragge said, ‘Thanks for helping me find that there golf ball.’