It was an evening in late summer in about 1961, possibly a year either side. I lived in Halstead, a village between Orpington and Sevenoaks, lying just off what was then the A21, the London to Hastings road. I had, as transport, an ancient BSA M20 motorcycle and sidecar. It was not unusual for this contraption to require maintenance or repair, which was necessarily of a do-it-yourself nature.
On the evening in question I had carried out an adjustment of some sort, which required me to make a test run. This was before the Sevenoaks by-pass was built and one or two of my readers may recall that the A21 went south from Badgers Mount, down Polhill and then descended into the village of Dunton Green. After emerging from the tree-lined and twisting section of Polhill, the road straightened, though still descending, for a distance of about half a mile. Roughly halfway along this straight section, a road, known to us as the ‘new cut’, turned off at right angles, to the right. Directly opposite this junction, on the left of the A21, stood an R.A.C. box, resplendent in the blue and white livery of the Royal Automobile Club. There was a small lay-by for the convenience of any R.A.C. member who wished to use the telephone which this box housed. For the information of younger readers, who may not be familiar with such things, both the Automobile Association and the R.A.C. provided these boxes at strategic points around the country, so their members could summon assistance, in the event of a breakdown. The box was quite a handsome structure, probably four feet square and about seven feet tall. It was usually surrounded by a paved area, itself bounded by a neat, box hedge, about a foot high.
So it was that I drove down Polhill, with the intention of using this lay-by as a convenient turning point. As I pulled into the lay-by I was stopped by a police motor-cyclist, whose Triumph Speed-Twin was parked there. The policeman looked rather pale and shaken and asked me to come round behind the box. “I just came round here for a pee,” he said, “and look what I found”. There, lying across this low hedge, was a girl of about 17 years old. The policeman had already established that she was alive, but she was unconscious. She was fully clothed, though only in a short-sleeved summer dress, with no jumper or coat. There was no smell of acetone on her breath, which might have indicated a diabetic coma, and no signs of any injury. He had already called for an ambulance and asked me to stay with him until it arrived. “This has given me a real shock” he said. Soon the ambulance arrived and she was taken to hospital.
I have never known what happened to this poor girl. There was nothing in the local papers and I never heard from the police, but I’m not sure whether I gave the policeman my details. He was not in a fit state to think about such things.
So many questions go through my mind every time I think about this. Who was she? Did she recover or did she die? There were no houses in the vicinity, so where had she come from? Had someone put her there or had she gone there of her own accord?
She was out of sight from the road and would not have been found if the policeman had not walked round behind the box. Her light clothing suggests that she was not expecting to stay out after dark, or that she had been in a car.
I don’t suppose I will ever have answers to these questions, but this experience will stay with me forever.