“…I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” Blanche DuBois, A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
We should have been home by now, sharing a bottle of beer and reflecting on what a grand day it had been. Instead, we’re standing by a busy road less than five miles from home with a shredded front tyre and no spare.
Walking in the Quantocks & Bossington
We had spent the morning with one of my cousins, Jax, following a delightful trail along the Coleridge Way in the Quantock hills. Leaving Jax to head to work, Jack and I drove to Porlock to grab lunch before walking to Bossington on the coast. Near here is the site of a project instigated at the start of the year and designed to reset the course of the River Aller to its original meandering course. As a result, the area is now a labyrinth of small waterways and a haven for wildlife, exactly as it would have been before the advent of modern farming methods. Walking along the shoreline by the existing salt marshes gave us an idea of how lovely the project site must be.
It had been a brilliant day and, as we drove homewards, we were tired but delighted. Then in Elworthy, a car came around the bend in the middle of the road, forcing me to pull sharply into the hedge to avoid losing my wing mirror. A sickening scrape of metal filled our ears and when I tried to drive on, I could feel that something was horribly wrong.
Limping to the nearest safe place to pull off the narrow lane, I stopped at the entrance to a plant nursery where a car was parked at the far end of the long driveway. Jack got out to examine the car. Then he just looked at me and walked away to stand staring into the trees. With my heart in my mouth, I got out and walked around the car expecting to see the entire front wing mangled. Instead, everything looked fine, except for the tyre which was hanging in ribbons.
We called Roadside Assistance who engaged the services of a mobile tyre company from Devon. Ten minutes later, a call confirmed someone was coming from Exeter and would be with us in an hour or so. There was nothing to do but wait outside the car as the temperature began to fall and daylight softened towards twilight.
The kindness of strangers
As we stood there, reflecting on what had happened – Jack felt I should have stopped when I saw the other car, I insisted there would have been adequate space to pass had they been on their own side of the road – we overheard a snatch of conversation from two men who were working at the end of the long drive whose entrance our disabled car was now blocking.
“Well, it is a conundrum, to be sure,” came the voice which had a lilting, slightly upper-class accent and a timbre like rocks being dragged down a cliff by a landslide. Jack and I looked at each other and agreed that ‘conundrum’ was not a word we might necessarily associate with manual workers, nor indeed with many others. Twenty minutes later, the owner of the voice appeared at his car and realised there may be an issue.
As he walked up the drive towards us, I asked if he wanted to leave and his distinctive voice replied:
“Yes, I am sorry to be such an inconvenience to you.”
He was being sincere. Shocked, I said, “You, an inconvenience to us? It is the other way around!”
I explained our predicament and told him what had happened, and he listened intently.
“That corner’s notorious,” he said. “This happens a lot. I am so sorry for your trouble. It is awful that you are stuck here now.”
I could not believe how kind he was. I guessed he was in his seventies. He had shoulder-length white hair and a full beard, and he was dressed like he lived on the streets. He was an incredibly intelligent, well-educated and articulate man who I could happily have chatted to for hours except that we were keeping him from getting home after a long day’s work.
Jack manoeuvred the car as far forward as he could while I stood in the gateway of a farm on the other side of the road, signalling when there was no traffic coming so the man could inch his way forward onto the road. As I stood there, the gate opened behind me and a man came out with an enthusiastic spaniel pulling hard on his lead.
I apologised for being in the man’s gateway as I directed our kind stranger while the farmer with the dog stood a while and told me about how badly people drove that bend and how the rocks at the bottom of the hedge lay unseen beneath the foliage like shark’s teeth. Despite the dog’s insistent pulling, he watched and waved to our kind stranger and sympathised with our situation before finally heading off on his walk.
The tyre van arrived as darkness fell, and within twenty minutes we were back on the road, £260 lighter (ouch) and headed for home. It had been a traumatic end to what should have been a brilliant day. But it was made bearable by the kindness of strangers.
