What You Don't Know Don't . . . .

When Dad nearly died the thought that at just eighteen I’d be the head of the family filled me with fear and yet also a quirky sort of pride. 

 

Dad didn’t die thank God, or rather Doctor Noble who, when Mum called him out at two in the morning to visit Dad writhing in agony, he realised immediately it was peritonitis due to a burst ulcer on his bowel. Frantically rousing Mrs Jones next door (we didn’t have a phone) Doctor Noble called for an ambulance and rushed Dad into hospital. We found out later at that moment Dad would’ve only lasted two hours if he hadn’t gone to hospital. 

 

Back then an illness like that meant a whole string of operations to remove a section of the bowel and patch it up. They fitted him with a colostomy bag. He spent weeks and weeks on hospital until he could come home. After more procedures he returned to hospital to remove the bag and stay under observation until the surgeons were happy with their work.

 

All the while Dad was in hospital it was my job to drive Mum to St Nicks at visiting times in my eight-year old Mini I’d bought from my Aunt. On one of our visits Dad had a bit of a revelation, ‘can you take the car out for a run while I’m in here to make sure everything is OK?’

 

I nearly fell off my chair, ‘are you sure?’ I asked trying to stop an internal yehaah from popping out. Dad’s car sacred.

 

‘Yeah the battery needs to be kept charged and the brakes could seize.’

 

‘If you’re sure, Dad.’ He nodded — didn’t even say the dreaded words, be careful and don’t go mad in it.

 

I was careful at first. Dad’s Mk2 Cortina Super was barely a year old and he’d saved long and hard for it (he’d originally started saving for a Mark1). I restricted driving the thing to taking Mum to see Dad. On the way back from St Nicks one evening I commented on how nice the Cortina was to drive compared to my little squirt. ‘Why don’t you take Anne out in it, your dad won’t mind. I’ll make sure of that, Mum said.

 

‘I’m not going out with her anymore.’ I said.

 

‘Well go out with you mates then. Cheer yourself up. Have some fun.’

 

Dad’s car was quick, at least it was compared to the Mini. I loved driving it — made my mates jealous. I think I was pretty level headed, I couldn’t afford any points on my licence.  Car insurance, tax and fuel took a big chunk out of my earnings leaving me just about enough to buy a couple of halves if we went to a pub. 

 

I don’t know if it’s just me, but I’ve always found as you get used to a car’s performance the slower it seems to go. After a while Dad’s car, even though it was a 1600, nearly twice as big as the Mini’s tiny lump, it started to feel a bit pedestrian. I noticed this when I came up against a Cortina1600E at a set of lights particularly loved by racers. Can’t say it left me standing, but it was clearly much quicker. 

 

Phil, one of my mates, was pretty handy with cars. When you’re eighteen and green when it comes to vehicle maintenance a bloke like Phil is good to know, especially when you need help to replace a rotted out subframe on an MOT failed Mini. Phil knew a lot about cars, he learnt it from Pat, his older brother. We idolised Pat. He was a highly trained mechanic working for a major garage near Sevenoaks specialising in top-end sports cars and race tuning. Sometimes he got us complimentary tickets to Brands Hatch events. 

 

We didn’t see much of Pat, he had his own house, but when he was round Phil’s he always took a lot of interest in our wheels. He was a good listener and had a way of telling us about car problems without being patronising. Best of all he got to use customer’s cars he worked on.

 

On Sundays Me, Teddy and Jack regularly went to Phil’s place to watch “Danger Man” because his Mum and Dad had two televisions and we could see it “in the other room”. When the series finished and turned into, “The Prisoner,” Teddy and Jack were so pissed off with ITV they stopped coming and went straight to the pub instead, but Phil and I got addicted to it so, Sundays at Phil’s before going down the pub, continued for the two of us. 

 

One evening, when I arrived at Phil’s, after dropping Mum off after hospital, a dark blue Aston Martin DB6 had taken my normal parking spot. As I parked behind it, Pat stepped out. Deciding to play it cool, I greeted him with a simple, ‘Hi Pat, how are you doing?’

 

‘You blind, Mate?’ Phil shouted from the front door, ‘Didn’t you see the car, bloody James Bond’s here.’

 

‘Bond’s car is a five, and it’s silver,’ Pat shouted back, ‘The DB6 is better. Don’t make a fuss, Little Bruv.’

 

It turned out Pat’s TV had crashed and like us he was a Prisoner addict. Pat never drank when he had a customer’s car so after the episode finished we stayed in and inevitably got talking about cars. Pat asked about the Cortina and I told him about Dad and mentioned about how once I’d got used to the extra power it didn’t seem all that quick.

 

‘It’s got a good engine,’ Pat told me, ‘but the finish on the castings is pretty rough, wastes a lot of power. If you wanna race that engine the first thing you have to do is polish the ports.’

 

‘I can’t race Dad’s baby, I rarely take it over sixty.’

 

‘Most people don’t realise how badly finished off the engine blocks are, just polishing the ports can increase power by up to twenty-percent and ‘cos it’s more efficient the fuel consumption drops off. They wouldn’t need to anything else.’

 

Phil jumped on that straight away and somehow — I don’t know how he did it — he convinced me to have the ports polished and railroaded Pat into doing it in his home workshop for free. I left that night full of enthusiasm, by the next morning it’d faded into WTF have I agreed to?. The trouble was it was all arranged. I couldn’t back out without being a shown up as a wimp.

 

Dad worked for a branch of a large international company and in those days they actually cared about their workers. They ran a scheme for employees who were recovering from a major illness or accident to have six weeks in a convalescent home on the coast before returning to work. A taxi was due to come to whisk him off on that day. 

 

Every thing was set. The following weekend while Mum was visiting Dad in Brighton I was to take Dad’s car to Pat’s place over the weekend where he had all the gear need to do the job in his workshop. It would only take a day to remove the head and manifold, polish the ports and put everything back. The car would look exactly as before.

 

When I turned up at Pat’s I think he could see I was nervous. ‘ You sure you want to do this?’ he asked;

 

‘Course he does,’ Phil butted in, ‘he’s doing his dad a favour.’

 

Pat read me pretty well, ‘doing worry, mate I’ll do a good job and the car will be much nicer to drive.’ His calm confidence had the intended effect and I gave him the keys.

 

It took all day. Phil and I helped with holding tools and wiping things down while Pat did the “operation” Phil worked slowly and precisely it really felt like he was a surgeon and we were his theatre nurses. At 10pm the work was done and Pat fired up the engine. He let it run for a while checking for leaks and stuff before stilling it.

 

‘Come back tomorrow morning about ten, I want to let it settle overnight before we do a test drive. Phil can take you back in Sally’s Imp.’

 

Next morning dead on ten I almost leapt out of Pat’s wife’s car. ‘It’s all ready for you,’ Pat gave me the keys, ‘I took it on a good run this morning and double checked everything; She perfect much better.’ 

 

After we had a cup of tea and some of Sally’s toasted current buns I thanked Pat (and God that the car was OK) and took Phill home very carefully, ignoring his pleas to gun the car. I wanted to get used to it in my own time.

 

That afternoon when I picked Mum up from the station the Cortina felt a lot more powerful. It accelerated so smoothly and it seemed to run quieter than before. I waited a couple of days before taking the car out again, but when I did the car felt great. Gradually I built up the speed imagining I was piloting a 1600E. I was enjoyed myself — until I got overconfident. I forgot despite its power, the Cortina’s roadholding is pretty poor compared to my Mini. In fact it was pretty poor anyway, which is why the Cortina 1600E had a lotus design suspension. Thus after putting the car sideways on a, thankfully, wide and empty road I pottered home and stuck it in the garage and restricted short runs and  taking Mum shopping or to her sister’s. 

 

When Dad finally returned home he was fit and well and keen to use the car. As he didn’t go back to work until he’d been checked over by our GP Doctor Noble he had some time on his hands so he took Mum down to Ramsgate for the day, “to get used to the car again.” I was invited, but I felt a tad worried. If he noticed a big difference in the car I didn’t want to be there in case I let out the secret, Phil and Pat were sworn to keep. Besides me and Anne had got back together and we wanted the house to ourselves to cement our “re-formation.”

 

Mum and Dad got home about five with a big pack of fish and chips. While Mum and Anne were in the kitchen dividing up the catch onto plates, Dad turned to me and said, ‘What have you done to the car while I’ve been away?’

 

I nearly shit myself. Then Dad laughed I guess he saw the terror on my face.

 

‘Only joking, Son. The car’s running really nice, I’d forgotten how smooth it is. You’ve done a great job looking after it.’

 

All the while Dad had that damn car I always had a nagging worry that he’d have a minor accident. If the insurance company suspected the engine was modified he’d be in deep shit. I was so relieved the day he traded it in for a Victor. 

 

PIc courtesy Wiki commons: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Ford_Cortina_1600E_registered_April_1970.jpg