Before I begin my story, let me explain something about your world that you may have already sensed but do not in fact know. Everything made or named by Man attracts a soul. Everything that is created - like Man - to have fire in its belly and live its own arc from birth to death is in its own way animate and in its peculiar way aware. It may or may not be self- aware - that is the prerogative of Mankind, the higher creatures and the angels (oh yes, there are angels!) but there is the capacity to sense its place in the wider environment, and also to suffer. Man has no conception of the suffering he inflicts on the silent world around him. The spirit in a tree has no voice with which to tell him; the great soul of a trampled mountain has no voice with which to cry out in its distress.
I too have a soul. And because I am a moving thing created and used by Man, uniquely among built creatures I have self-awareness; my self fuses with the self of the man or woman who fires me up and then drives me, and I can sense through their senses, hear with their ears, see through their eyes. A key in my body is turned; I wake. The key is turned again; I sleep. My conscious experience is discontinuous but vivid, the more so as my life extends and my soul expands with all its gathered memories. I can reflect in words like a human child learning from its parents. I can speak with the silent voice of my growing mind with the minds of others like myself - and with you, here, transcribed onto this page. I have even begun to dream.
My earliest memory is of a roaring and an echoing; a shuddering through my frame as I was given my first life in a closed space full of shapes and contrasts. I remember how light glanced off highly polished surfaces; how this loud world became polychrome; and how brief was that first phase of waking. At first I had no idea how I came to be - but soon I learned that I was a vehicle made by men, the offspring of another who had been sacrificed to bring me into being. This other - in a sense my mother - was a perfect black Jaguar XJ. The men had brought precision cutting gear and driven it through her gleaming body in her sleep, halving her so that they could extend her chassis and frame to perfect what I am now, a specialist vehicle to carry the elaborate boxes of the human dead. I am a hearse.
“You black beauty!” said the man beside whom I next awoke. He laid his gloved hand on my bonnet and passed it slowly, lovingly over its reflective surfaces to the smooth curves of the wheel arch.
“She purrs! She’s a real cat!” said the younger man with him. “Listen - you can hardly hear her. Finest car in the fleet.”
“She’ll be in demand, Edward,” said my master.
I was.
Season after season I bore my solemn cargo from parlour to chapel, from church to grave. I moved silently through splintered ice and muffling winter snow, through sharp spring breezes that set the Lent Lilies dancing, over hot August asphalt and crisp autumn leaf-fall. The world raced past, unconcerned.
“There was a time,” said my master to Edward,”When everyone would stop as a hearse went by. They would bow their heads in respect for the dead, and some would say a prayer. Where has that courtesy gone?”
“I wish I knew, Sir. I wish I knew.”
My master looked after me well. I would wake from my sleep aware that hands had been busy with brushes and polish. A little water left around my wheels, reflecting the lights and shelves of my austere garage, bore witness to hours of cleaning. My engine was always beautifully tuned. Spark plugs were pristine, oil changed with not a drop spilt, tyres checked ... nothing was ever missed. I would be replete with fuel for the working day. It was most often the young man Edward that greeted me, and I slowly learned to understand his state of mind each day from his walk, his thoughts, the touch of his hand on my steering wheel and his feet on my pedals. There was one feeling which curiously moved me; I came to know this as love. I felt it every time he settled in my seat, in the tone of his voice when we were ready for our next journey and he would say, “Come on, lovely girl. Let’s take this old fella to say goodbye.” He and my master were true gentlemen. They treated everyone they met, living or dead, with the utmost dignity, and I was proud of my part in the service they provided.
Then one damp October day everything changed. I was being driven through the town streets toward the Catholic Church, carrying a simple coffin in which was laid the immaculately embalmed body of the priest’s late housekeeper. My roof was smothered in white flowers; Edward was driving. Suddenly his attention was no longer on the road but distracted by a commotion outside the General Post Office.
“Mr, Simkins! That man has a gun! He’s robbing the Security van!”
“Drive on, Edward,” replied my master. “The Police will deal with it.”
There were two loud, short sounds from an object in the hands of a faceless man, screams from the passers-by, and another man in grey protective clothing fell to the pavement.
“Sir, I can’t. There may be a murderer in that van. We are the only people close enough to catch him. This girl has the horse-power ...” he was already going up through the gears and my engine was racing “... Get the Police on your mobile and hold on tight. The funeral will have to wait.”
Oh, the joy! At last I could show my masters what I was made of. My purr changed to a roar. The escaping van sped across the market square, scattering shoppers as we raced in pursuit. Straight across the next intersection as turning cars slammed on their brakes. Full speed out to the ring road, white petals flying from the roof like unseasonal snow and the coffin nearly jumping out of its deck. Roundabout approaching at breakneck speed; blue signs to the motorway. The van slewed toward the slip-road and we followed. Into the fast lane - cars, delivery vehicles, huge pantechnicons swerving in panic to get out of our way. Then blue lights behind us. We were gaining. Large signs again; nearing a major junction. And now overhead flashing orange messages:
FOG: SLOW DOWN.
Then we hit the fog bank. There was a ghastly, prolonged shrieking of metal, a series of jarring impacts - and silence.
I don’t feel pain. I am aware however when a part of my system is non-functional. In that fog, glowing now with scattered fires, I knew I was broken. I was still awake, my engine running with nowhere to move; Edward and my master were broken too. This was my distress - I knew they were in pain, and it was far, far worse than previous experiences of a trapped finger, a sprained wrist.
Soon there were more blue lights. Men in vivid yellow wrangled my twisted doors. One then turned my key - and I slept.
Much time must have passed before I woke again. The garage was unfamiliar. Vast. Unkempt. I was in the company of dead and dying vehicles and strange, rough men.
“I thought this one was a write-off?”
“Yes - for insurance purposes. But she’s still got some life left in her.”
“So we do the checks and flog her off?”
“The repairs were mainly to bodywork; she’s basically OK. She was strong enough to save her drivers in that smash - though the coffin went AWOL!” Laughter.
“Who buys a beat-up hearse?”
“I do!”
A young man had appeared in the doorway.
“Heard that Jaguar engine running. Knew it was our Edward’s Black Beauty!... Hi. I’m Phil. My brother was driving her when they chased down that murdering bastard from the GPO. He said I’d find her here. I want to buy her back.”
“She’ll never be fit for a funeral car again.”
“I know, I know. But she has such a turn of speed! No - I’m going to race her.”
I am now truly happy. Although my looks are gone, I am back with my family after very nearly losing them. I have been instrumental in the capture and subsequent conviction of a violent criminal; and I am spending my final years doing the thing I was made for - responding each track-day to a loved foot on my accelerator, pushing hard all the way to another chequered flag for Phil’s next glittering trophy.
And when I die, I know it will be a dignified farewell.
Before I begin my story, let me explain something about your world that you may have already sensed but do not in fact know. Everything made or named by Man attracts a soul. Everything that is created - like Man - to have fire in its belly and live its own arc from birth to death is in its own way animate and in its peculiar way aware. It may or may not be self- aware - that is the prerogative of Mankind, the higher creatures and the angels (oh yes, there are angels!) but there is the capacity to sense its place in the wider environment, and also to suffer. Man has no conception of the suffering he inflicts on the silent world around him. The spirit in a tree has no voice with which to tell him; the great soul of a trampled mountain has no voice with which to cry out in its distress.
I too have a soul. And because I am a moving thing created and used by Man, uniquely among built creatures I have self-awareness; my self fuses with the self of the man or woman who fires me up and then drives me, and I can sense through their senses, hear with their ears, see through their eyes. A key in my body is turned; I wake. The key is turned again; I sleep. My conscious experience is discontinuous but vivid, the more so as my life extends and my soul expands with all its gathered memories. I can reflect in words like a human child learning from its parents. I can speak with the silent voice of my growing mind with the minds of others like myself - and with you, here, transcribed onto this page. I have even begun to dream.
My earliest memory is of a roaring and an echoing; a shuddering through my frame as I was given my first life in a closed space full of shapes and contrasts. I remember how light glanced off highly polished surfaces; how this loud world became polychrome; and how brief was that first phase of waking. At first I had no idea how I came to be - but soon I learned that I was a vehicle made by men, the offspring of another who had been sacrificed to bring me into being. This other - in a sense my mother - was a perfect black Jaguar XJ. The men had brought precision cutting gear and driven it through her gleaming body in her sleep, halving her so that they could extend her chassis and frame to perfect what I am now, a specialist vehicle to carry the elaborate boxes of the human dead. I am a hearse.
“You black beauty!” said the man beside whom I next awoke. He laid his gloved hand on my bonnet and passed it slowly, lovingly over its reflective surfaces to the smooth curves of the wheel arch.
“She purrs! She’s a real cat!” said the younger man with him. “Listen - you can hardly hear her. Finest car in the fleet.”
“She’ll be in demand, Edward,” said my master.
I was.
Season after season I bore my solemn cargo from parlour to chapel, from church to grave. I moved silently through splintered ice and muffling winter snow, through sharp spring breezes that set the Lent Lilies dancing, over hot August asphalt and crisp autumn leaf-fall. The world raced past, unconcerned.
“There was a time,” said my master to Edward,”When everyone would stop as a hearse went by. They would bow their heads in respect for the dead, and some would say a prayer. Where has that courtesy gone?”
“I wish I knew, Sir. I wish I knew.”
My master looked after me well. I would wake from my sleep aware that hands had been busy with brushes and polish. A little water left around my wheels, reflecting the lights and shelves of my austere garage, bore witness to hours of cleaning. My engine was always beautifully tuned. Spark plugs were pristine, oil changed with not a drop spilt, tyres checked ... nothing was ever missed. I would be replete with fuel for the working day. It was most often the young man Edward that greeted me, and I slowly learned to understand his state of mind each day from his walk, his thoughts, the touch of his hand on my steering wheel and his feet on my pedals. There was one feeling which curiously moved me; I came to know this as love. I felt it every time he settled in my seat, in the tone of his voice when we were ready for our next journey and he would say, “Come on, lovely girl. Let’s take this old fella to say goodbye.” He and my master were true gentlemen. They treated everyone they met, living or dead, with the utmost dignity, and I was proud of my part in the service they provided.
Then one damp October day everything changed. I was being driven through the town streets toward the Catholic Church, carrying a simple coffin in which was laid the immaculately embalmed body of the priest’s late housekeeper. My roof was smothered in white flowers; Edward was driving. Suddenly his attention was no longer on the road but distracted by a commotion outside the General Post Office.
“Mr, Simkins! That man has a gun! He’s robbing the Security van!”
“Drive on, Edward,” replied my master. “The Police will deal with it.”
There were two loud, short sounds from an object in the hands of a faceless man, screams from the passers-by, and another man in grey protective clothing fell to the pavement.
“Sir, I can’t. There may be a murderer in that van. We are the only people close enough to catch him. This girl has the horse-power ...” he was already going up through the gears and my engine was racing “... Get the Police on your mobile and hold on tight. The funeral will have to wait.”
Oh, the joy! At last I could show my masters what I was made of. My purr changed to a roar. The escaping van sped across the market square, scattering shoppers as we raced in pursuit. Straight across the next intersection as turning cars slammed on their brakes. Full speed out to the ring road, white petals flying from the roof like unseasonal snow and the coffin nearly jumping out of its deck. Roundabout approaching at breakneck speed; blue signs to the motorway. The van slewed toward the slip-road and we followed. Into the fast lane - cars, delivery vehicles, huge pantechnicons swerving in panic to get out of our way. Then blue lights behind us. We were gaining. Large signs again; nearing a major junction. And now overhead flashing orange messages:
FOG: SLOW DOWN.
Then we hit the fog bank. There was a ghastly, prolonged shrieking of metal, a series of jarring impacts - and silence.
I don’t feel pain. I am aware however when a part of my system is non-functional. In that fog, glowing now with scattered fires, I knew I was broken. I was still awake, my engine running with nowhere to move; Edward and my master were broken too. This was my distress - I knew they were in pain, and it was far, far worse than previous experiences of a trapped finger, a sprained wrist.
Soon there were more blue lights. Men in vivid yellow wrangled my twisted doors. One then turned my key - and I slept.
Much time must have passed before I woke again. The garage was unfamiliar. Vast. Unkempt. I was in the company of dead and dying vehicles and strange, rough men.
“I thought this one was a write-off?”
“Yes - for insurance purposes. But she’s still got some life left in her.”
“So we do the checks and flog her off?”
“The repairs were mainly to bodywork; she’s basically OK. She was strong enough to save her drivers in that smash - though the coffin went AWOL!” Laughter.
“Who buys a beat-up hearse?”
“I do!”
A young man had appeared in the doorway.
“Heard that Jaguar engine running. Knew it was our Edward’s Black Beauty!... Hi. I’m Phil. My brother was driving her when they chased down that murdering bastard from the GPO. He said I’d find her here. I want to buy her back.”
“She’ll never be fit for a funeral car again.”
“I know, I know. But she has such a turn of speed! No - I’m going to race her.”
I am now truly happy. Although my looks are gone, I am back with my family after very nearly losing them. I have been instrumental in the capture and subsequent conviction of a violent criminal; and I am spending my final years doing the thing I was made for - responding each track-day to a loved foot on my accelerator, pushing hard all the way to another chequered flag for Phil’s next glittering trophy.
And when I die, I know it will be a dignified farewell.