example might be a sensitive one. Did Terence drive, she wondered, while he was on a higher plane? Or did he come down from the higher plane before he started to drive, and then return to it later on? Either way, she was not sure whether she would be at all confident making any car journey with him other than the relatively direct one from the railway station to his house. That took them along quiet residential roads, where nobody would be held up by the Morris Traveller’s customary speed of twenty miles per hour or Terence’s habit of driving in the middle of the road.
Now, seated in Terence’s kitchen on Saturday morning, with the newspaper in front of her and a cup of coffee at her side, Berthea listened while Terence described his efforts to start the Morris Traveller.
“Mr. Marchbanks told me that he had put some petrol in,” he said. “He had a can of petrol in his truck and he realised that I might have run out, so he put it in. But it still won’t start.”
Berthea frowned. “Does it make any noise at all?”
“No,” said Terence. “It’s as quiet as anything. Nothing happens. Nothing at all. It’s as if it’s in one of your dissociative states.”
“Battery,” said Berthea simply. “If nothing happens when you turn the key, it means that your battery’s dead.”
Terence digested this. “Dead?”
“Well, batteries don’t necessarily die with such finality,” said Berthea. “They have what I suppose you, Terence dear, might call a near-death experience.”
The metaphor was exactly what Terence needed to grasp the state of his battery. “Ah! I see. So a battery that has a near-death experience comes back? Its life isn’t entirely over?”
“Precisely,” said Berthea. “And what you can do is you can give the battery more … more life force.”
“More electricity?”
“Yes. You charge it, you see. You take electricity from the mains and you put it in the battery. Then the starter motor will—or may—work. I think perhaps that is what you should do.”
Terence nodded. He had seen where the battery of the Morris Traveller was, and although he was not sure how to remove it, he knew that he had a long extension cord in the garage. Mr. Jones, the man who came to cut the lawn, used it to enable him to take the electric lawn mower to the far end of the garden. Now, if Terence simply removed the plug socket from the end of the extension cable he could then separate the two wires, strip them at the ends, and wind them round the terminals of the battery. Then he could turn on the switch at the wall and revitalise the battery in that way.
It seemed simple, and he decided that he would do it while Berthea finished reading her newspaper and drinking her coffee. She thought he was impractical—oh, he knew that, all right. Well, he would show her.
44. Don’t Try This at Home
TERENCE MOONGROVE LEFT Berthea in the kitchen and made his way to the garage off to one side of the house. Mr. Marchbanks, who had rescued Terence’s Morris Traveller, had pushed the car into the garage with its nose facing outward, pending some resolution of its mechanical plight. He had rescued Terence on many occasions before and knew the car well; indeed, he had fixed it several times over the last few months.
“They make new cars, Mr. Moongrove,” he had observed to Terence the last time that the car had been in his garage. “Have you ever thought of getting something a bit more up to date? Not that I’ve got anything against Morris Travellers, of course. Just asking.”
Terence frowned. “But should we be rushing around replacing our cars all the time?” he asked.
“How long have you had this Morris?”
“Oh, not all that long. Thirty years—something like that.”
Mr. Marchbanks sighed. “I wouldn’t call it rushing around replacing a car if you got a new one now. Some people change their car every three years, you know. Alfie Bismarck down the road gets a new Jag every year. Regular as clockwork.”
Terence shook his head. He disapproved of Alfie Bismarck. “I would certainly not get a new Traveller every year,” he said. “Out of the question.”
“You couldn’t, Mr. Moongrove. They don’t make Travellers any more.”
Terence expressed surprise. “But they’re such good cars,” he said. “With this wood and everything.”
Mr. Marchbanks explained that very few cars were made of wood now; only the Morgan, which had a chassis made of Belgian ash. But it