Corduroy Mansions

93. Crop Circles

Terence Moongrove drove Berthea back from the sacred dance in his newly acquired Porsche.

‘This is a very noisy car,’ Berthea observed. ‘And it is also rather low. It would be very difficult to get into it if one had arthritis.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Terence. ‘The engine is deliberately noisy. Mr Marchbanks told me that it is something they do on purpose. And as for its being low, that is just the way it is. It has something to do with making it possible to creep up behind people on the road and give them a fright when you overtake them.’

Berthea gave her brother a withering look but said nothing. Homo ludens, she thought - man at play. And while she would normally apply any observation about man in general to women as well - particularly in the case of the term Homo sapiens - in this case by homo she meant vir rather than femina. No woman, she imagined, would find creeping up behind someone in a Porsche fun. It was just not something a woman would ever do. Indeed, when she came to think of it, most women looked at cars as functional machines and judged them accordingly. Cars got one from A to B - that was the point of them. Certainly it was nice to have a car that did this in comfort, and it was also nice to have a car that looked appealing, but that was about the extent of female interest in cars. Men, it seemed to Berthea, never grew out of their boyhood fascination with cars; there was an unbroken line of psychological continuity between the toy cars that boys played with and the real machines they later acquired as men. Puer ludens, she thought, and immediately congratulated herself on the term. She could use it, perhaps, as the title of a paper. ‘Puer Ludens: Men As Boys’. That was rather nice.

Already the paper was being shaped in her mind. She would postulate a hypothetical mature man - the man who confronts the world in a rational, non-exploitative way; the man who treats others with consideration and is not constantly jockeying for position in relation to other men. And then she would investigate how the vestiges of boyhood prevent most men from reaching this plateau, this resolution.

Terence dropped Berthea at the house. ‘I think I shall go for a little drive,’ he said. ‘I need to get used to the gears.’

‘Be careful,’ said Berthea, and she repeated the advice under her breath as she watched her brother disappear down the drive, the Porsche’s throaty roar becoming fainter.

Terence drove slowly down the road. His foot was barely touching the accelerator and yet the car’s engine seemed ready to run away with him. But this was not the place to test the car’s performance - he would find a larger road for that, one where he could start overtaking. He had never been able to overtake anybody in the Morris Traveller and the thought of flashing past other drivers at speed rather appealed to him, particularly if he surprised them. I have so much overtaking to make up, he thought.

After a few minutes, Terence found himself on the very edge of town. The open road lay ahead, and the traffic, he noticed, was moving faster. He eased his foot down on the accelerator and the car shot forward. He glanced at the speedometer - the needle had edged up to sixty and his foot was barely on the pedal. He pressed it down a bit further. Seventy now. Was that the speed limit, or was it one hundred and seventy? He could not remember - it had all been so hypothetical with the Morris Traveller.

He looked in the rear-view mirror. There was a car behind him, a car that looked remarkably like his own: another Porsche. That’s nice, thought Terence. Two Porsches out for a run together. He looked in the mirror again and recognised the face of the driver: Monty Bismarck. So that was his new Porsche; it looked very smart, Terence had to admit. He waved, and Monty Bismarck waved back. How nice for him to see me in his old car, thought Terence.

He decided to go a little bit faster, and pressed his foot down sharply. The car responded immediately, surging ahead as the powerful engine showed its form. The sudden increase in speed alarmed Terence, and he took his foot off the accelerator and applied it to the brake. Behind him, Monty Bismarck, seeing the brake lights glow red, himself braked sharply. This prompt action avoided a collision between the two cars, but it meant that Monty had to watch powerlessly as Terence’s car, although now travelling much more slowly, left the road and shot through a hedgerow and into a field of ripening wheat.

When his car went off the road, Terence’s first response was to close his eyes. But he quickly reopened them once he found himself in the field, with the car obediently continuing its journey, although at a slower pace. He was relieved that the consequences of the accident were so slight; all he would have to do, it seemed to him, was to drive round in a circle and he could then make his way out through the hole that he had created when he went through the hedge.

Terence described a complete circle in the field of wheat, arriving back at his point of entry. There he found Monty Bismarck standing beside his own Porsche, anxious to check on his welfare.

‘You OK, Mr Moongrove?’ Monty called out as Terence drew to a halt.

‘Perfectly all right, thanks, Monty!’ Terence replied. ‘This is a jolly good car, you know.’

‘Can’t beat them, Mr Moongrove. But you need to be careful.’

Terence assured Monty that he would be. He switched off the engine and got out of the car to stretch his legs. Then he saw it.

‘My goodness,’ he said, pointing to the field behind him. ‘A crop circle. See that, Monty?’