‘How did it happen?’
‘I’ve lived here how long now? I returned in 1918. At the end, I came back and went looking for him. After we got to France he joined the army and did the best he could to get killed. He wrote me letters. They arrived within hours, from the bloody front to Margate. He talked about love. He talked about death and how when it was over he would become a promise, fold himself into a envelope and whisper over the Channel and we’d be together. But what? That never happened. Never. He went back to his wife because he actually lived. I don’t think he expected to live. He expected to die and just be those promises in limbo out in the sun waiting for the wind to blow them to dust. Christ. Now he’s dead. These years I’ve been following this so we could be near. Turned my life into another’s so we could be close. I haven’t been that girl from Margate for 14 years. Now what? The rest of you all free to –’
‘How?’
‘Sepsis, if you know what that is.’
‘I know.’
‘You know,’ she says with cold confirmation. Her face narrows. ‘How do you know?’
‘How do you think?’ I ask. ‘How do you think, in the end, I know these sorts of things?’
‘Your brother. What an ass you are,’ she says and blinks that long slow blink. I barely hear her. My cousin Alice. Celia. Louvière is dead and she says this. God, what a trick to unravel and find at its centre: the dead. What an ass I am. How many years has she been following this race, how many years has she watched as Louvière has ridden alone. How many years has she waited for the moment he will come back to her, walk her back across those fields, back to the unsullied city before the war began where she taught and let herself try to understand the world and the things of the world: beauty, love and the precision machinery of love itself, how many years?
‘I’m sorry,’ I say.
‘Come on. Thomas. Thomas, Thomas, Thomas.’
‘You know my name.’
‘Who cares who you are,’ she says and stares at me, challenging. That I say the same thing back at her. The cruel thing, the emptying thing, the thing that will make her lose the contents of her hurt self on the floor. ‘Don’t. Only he –’ she starts.
‘Alice,’ I say.
‘– only he calls me that. You don’t call me that.’
The way she cries, it is different to others. It is louder than her voice. Louder than speaking, louder than anything we ever wished to say to each other.
29
Teams are fragments now. Five left from Alcyon. Louvet no longer a part of the race. The four of us remain despite the lack of obvious stakes. We run south in a definitive line to Dieppe. Hubert has been dragging us for how many thousand miles we don’t count any more. But we remain. Discuter, five of them still on the course. The long torture has been escaped by how many? 120. 120 deserters. We ride without their wake dragging us. And we know why we are here: if we left we would leave a legend behind stating false myths of gutless, senseless waste. We want nothing in place of our story but the one we have made.
Outside Dunkerque, 45 miles out, Opperman’s forks go. They give in on the cobblestone roads. The jarring hell of those things. We sit for 40 minutes on the side of the road as he refits a new frame to his wheels and chain. We sit with him, yet he seems so alone. So far out in front of us, so far behind the leaders. He seems caught in an ownerless space, out beyond our horizon but impossibly beside us. I look at him and can’t imagine him ever not riding in this race.
I piss in the trees and slip two pills into my mouth. I await the tremor thrill of their effect. The handkerchief Celia offered me way back in Caen, more a rag now. I drop ether into its dirty cotton and draw hard and hope for all the things we hope for when near the end. I keep my eyes out for her car, for her short hair and that wave of her scarf. I watch closely, too, for what she might bring with her. Those things sleeping deep within me, between my head and my chest, squeezed between my oesophagus and skin: fear and the mould of fear trying hard to be swallowed.
Hubert finally has his bike back together and he calls us. We stand around staring. The alignment is all wrong, the bike bent. If this is the end, the end is shallow for I feel little but the smell of brine on the air drawing me back over the depth of oceans to my own seaside city beneath the weight of the mountain. My body entwined with the shadow of the thought that this is it. A morning close to noon. A field close to unsowable for the salty breeze. I expect Celia to appear driving slow, her eyes on us as if to prove a point. She would say nothing as we gave in and sat in her Citroen and felt the car pull away from the race. But there is no one, no one but two citizen riders watching without emotion. Tourists leaning on their own machines. They seem in no urgent need for us to ride on. Standing watching.
‘What do you say?’ Harry says.
‘What?’
He nods at the riders. One has a Union Jack on his pannier bags. He calls out. ‘Let’s borrow your bike then? How do you feel about that? We’ll borrow it and you can meet us up in Paris.’ He turns to me. ‘You think they speak English?’
‘Leave them alone,’ I say.
‘What you say?’ he calls out.
‘We don’t want their bike,’ I say. ‘Look at it.’
I look at Opperman and tilt my head in question. He doesn’t move or speak. The men step forward, moving slowly. One speaks but I’m still looking at Oppy, waiting for what he’s going to say. The machine is painted grey, stone dented and I can see where two spokes have snapped and they hang from the rim.
‘You’re going on to Dieppe?’ the man asks.
I’m watching Hubert. He doesn’t move, his eyes on the bike. It’s a heavy machine with low gearing, unfit for road racing. He stands waiting, his mouth closed. ‘Don’t ride it,’ I say. But Harry is already moving the bicycle from the men.
‘How will we know to get it back?’
Opperman barely nods, but he does and then it lifts, this weight that seems wrapped about him.
‘How will we –’ the man starts but doesn’t finish his sentence. They watch us stand on our pedals and head out into the kilometres that wait.
Hubert pushes as hard as he can but barely keeps up with us. We pace him. Riders come through us. Little is said. There’s rain and the road mud becomes grey. Conversations are not taken up and there is no fight. Something in the peloton is dragging, a protest perhaps, a long slow salute to Louvière. It is difficult to say. His name is not mentioned. We ride on. The coarse rattle of Opperman’s borrowed machine, an ugly grind of an unoiled chain.
People still line the roads. But there’s an awe now that builds in a way as to concern me. It seems as if they merge for the fact of their own gathering, and I watch, fearing what would happen if we were simply to stop and step aside our machines. Of course, I do nothing but ride on inside my blank stare.
Of those of us who are left, most have only one chance at victory: the conquest of fear and pain. That is all we are fighting. The deep plough of agony digging at our bodies. I watch Opperman on the borrowed cycle, riding like Frantz two days ago. But no one seeks him out for a duel, no fool is looking for a scrap in the hope of false fame. He is utterly alone beside us nobodies, breathing heavy, scrapping himself along in the wet. Such a disappointment to finish this way. Such a way to farewell a legend. The man is dead and somehow this is all we manage: a ride on borrowed equipment, faces shedding the last of our skin in the sun, and Hubert on a machine made for tourists.
Nothing is ever the real thing.
We hit the final town. An ache clamps itself to my head. Our names shouted in the echoing streets, nouns like nails. Every shouted name a little death for the things we are. We hit the boulevard facing the channel, faces leaning, eyes wide, the shimmer of flags. The awe builds. It is for their own gathering – a hymn to themselves. A woman shouts: ‘Aller à cheval! Aller à cheval!’
I smell the incense of a bonfire at the entrance to a park not a hundred yards from the beach at Dieppe. The waft of smoke. The smell of r
iverside summer evenings of damper and story. The beer and the reek of mutton come rushing. The smoke smell in my clothes somehow pleasant the next day and the days after that.
I see several racing cycles up against a fence. The man from the car that follows Discuter through the dark, the same car Celia goes to when her supply is lean, stands by watching. I nod his way then head towards trees drooping their long arms across grass green and rich where smoke wrestles. I walk into the trees and find a breeze pleasant against my warm face. A group up ahead beside the bonfire I smelt from some way out, a circle of men and children and women and racers and whoever else has decided to group together at this point. I hear the familiar grunt and stunned slap of hands against flesh, the sound of effort and force, of breaking things. I jog up to the rim of the people there and peer through. I catch a glance of the Belgians, those forever bloodied men. One is thrusting his hand towards an unseen body or head. The crowd murmur, bottled excitement as they watch. A man turns to me and we laugh, both together at the same time. I smile and peer around him. I twist my head hoping for a view of these men once more. It has become quite a ritual, these Walloon bastards and their fists.
Earlier I stood amongst the pebbles that fill the expanse of the beach. It was wide, 50 yards from the umbrellas beside the road to the sea. The rocks undulated under my shoes and I thought of stones in the mouths of children playing a game without a name. And now I imagine these Belgians, I think of these men mumbling when asked what it is they do to one another.
I push into the circle and two men shimmy their shoulders to let me in. A bloodied figure. The two men have found a partner for their match. He staggers about, the chap not in good shape. Neither of the Belgians is looking at the other, rather at the figure swaying and dripping blood on the ground. One of the Belgians throws a fist into the man’s midriff. He coughs and starts to fall and arrests himself before vomiting. Blood and mucus. The other comes at him and feints a kick at the man who seems quite unpractised at this ugly show. The kick isn’t followed through and things pause for a moment. The man’s hands go to his knees and I see something familiar, something in the profile and the clean bit of his skin which isn’t bloodied. I see it and I see the boy’s shape. The Spaniard in the middle, the lad who had rejoined the race in Metz. I step back. His head is bleeding, a stream coming down his shirt which is half torn from his body. I see him stagger and one of the Belgians runs at him and hits and hits again in the boy’s kidneys and liver. The other sidles at him and thuds the sharp of his elbow into the back of his neck. Then they walk away. The lad falls and rolls over so dust and leaves stick to his face and skin. He begins to crawl. Slowly moving himself to the edge of the circle. I see a foot come out of the crowd push him back down as he tries to stand. I shout and look out for a face, a broom of familiar hair because I know she is here somewhere. Then the Belgians are at him once more and I realise this is not a fight, it never was a fight.
The crowd disperses. The Belgians walk to the fence where their bicycles rest and cautiously set off when they realise there is nothing left of the kid, their teammate, to hit. Any pain in their bodies I doubt could have been caused during the assault. I search for faces to look into, to see what kind of words they might say but I see only blank eyes, no smiles, no tears and for the first time in this country so full of love and hate and joy and cried-out eyes and lungs, I feel a strange vacancy, a hollowed grimace that has its back to me as it walks away. Then I see her. I look for bodies to hide behind as Celia moves through the crowd. And then I can’t see her. I stretch my neck. She is small amongst the crowd and is gone.
What name would I shout anyway? All names are borrowed, especially when you’re a thief and take another’s just to see how it rhymes in your body.
Finally I find her again, she is beside the car, the blue car I have seen throughout. It idles on the grass. Celia leans into the window. The man from the hotel, the same jaw and dark eyes.
Two men and a woman head towards the Spaniard. I watch him for a few seconds, and then look back at my cousin leaning into the car. I feel a wave of nausea ride in my body. I shout her name, but there is no response, she is still in the car window. I turn, I jog to the lad, to where he lies. His face swollen and broken, his nose spread and his cheeks cracked where they have kicked and kicked again. Blood caked in his long moustache. I come close. One of the men lifts him up so he is on his haunches like a dog. He looks up, eyes so red I don’t believe he can see; I crouch down and stare at him. Seconds, minutes, his face a mangle and I wouldn’t know he was the Spanish boy who showed me his photos, who offered me his wine, who rejoined the race, who I desired to hit or to see being hit. And now my desire has been met, I have nothing to say. One of the men has a wine bottle and he tips it on the boy’s head and I see it is water. I watch it run off and think that the son of a doctor should know something of this. But nothing, just the lie, the lie that I had my father’s hands and how useful they might be right now.
In some final act, men from the car come out of the doors and walk to the boy and take him away. I look about for her, for Celia, but there is no sign, no indication she is near. Just the sense that she has something to do with the lad’s beating. I want to look at her, I want to look her up and down, for her to know I am looking her up and down, that it has nothing to do with the shape of her, nothing to do with her hips and legs. I’d look up into her eyes and show her what stones we have become. But nothing, she has gone. I go to my knees. My arm numb. I breathe between my teeth. The coarse grab of tendons in my neck.
The Spaniard’s bike is left there on the fence. Nobody touches it. Not until a few hours have past and someone might come by, a child perhaps, a boy who needs such a thing to ride about the neighbourhood, to wave to the girls and the rest, not until then will it be taken away.
30
I turn back towards the town. I start running. I stumble on legs so unused to this movement, but I run, my arm limp. I jog and pause and feel the glimmer of unusual tiredness. I run again. My lungs hack and I think to rest on the side of the road, to breathe and let sleep take me. I want to be a ball curled and warm, the centre of a skein, the light blotted out by dye and wool, the flavour of an unnamed animal in my mouth. Instead I walk in the tunnel in the middle of vision blurred and twisting. I return to my hotel. I walk into Percy in the hall. He looks at me, a hand through his thick hair, flaking lips pursed and whistling briefly. He takes my arm, feels the shaking and we are soon walking down the stairs out onto the street. I say to him, I tell him my neck is out. My arm is limp and my neck is out. He says nothing. It had clicked in that audible crunch as I’d searched out Celia. A nerve clasped between bone. Volted hits of pain. I stand momentarily looking into the eye of a donkey hitched to a cart piled high with flowers and their long stalks. I’m confused for a moment, worried who will buy all this. He directs me through a shimmer of pigeons picking seed out of the cobblestones into the café under the hotel. They take to the air and drop liquid on the stone behind us. Noise and pealing laughter. My team, men in the new moments of the last night. I stand with a white wind-cracked face.
They eat, fish and eggs and bread. They talk on and smile. Jokes. Men who want to be amused, buoyed by the thought of the final hours which will shrink to a dot at the end of the track rimed by so many thousands. Harry’s eyes jump to mine and I suspect fear and a fear for the lack of lightness in my face. I attempt to put food into my mouth but can barely lift my fork. A pain deep behind my left eye like a heated nail. The room is all tablecloths and candles and shakers for salt and men in the corners murmuring into soup. There is a crust of bread in my hand. Nothing seems like food.
‘Eat,’ Percy says. His eyes catch mine almost by accident, they’re monosyllabic and utterly sufficient. Eat, they say.
‘Thanks.’
‘Eat it,’ Ernie says. ‘If you leave your seat for even a moment, that’ll be gone. That there on your plate’ll be gone. Licked.’
‘You hear about Louvière?’
Percy asks.
‘You must have heard.’
I look up at him. A certain defensive jerk. ‘You must have heard.’
‘What?’
‘You hear?’
I nod but have the sensation that I impart no information in the act.
‘He’s dead. You must have got that in your ear.’
‘Of course he’s dead. He’s been dead for days.’ I squint at him trying to gauge how displaced this conversation really is, how far it is from the reality of what he thinks he’s saying. ‘Hasn’t he?’ I say. I stare at him, his fork at his mouth, his food.
‘I’m just saying,’ he says. He wipes a piece of bread about his bowl. A lone piece of chicken thigh remains. He forks it, lifts the meat to his mouth. Protein, flavour. He is saying that is all he cares for. ‘Eat.’
Men filling themselves. The shelter of a room made purely for eating, it makes the perfect den for repeating the hours and assembling memories, looping them together into what in the future will become the day. Right now everything is translucent. I watch each of them, each in their own secret battle to make this so.
‘Back in Luchon. You remember Luchon?’ Percy is saying. ‘I haven’t got a clue where that was. In the mountains. I know you’re gunna say that but – I’ve no idea. I really don’t. But that’s where.’
For the whole day we’d ridden and for the whole day I believed we rode in the trance of a funeral march. Our poor pace an elegy, an ode to the final pains of Louvière. Nothing is the same as what you want it to be and Percy proves how far I have shifted from the plain objectives of the race, how far I am from winning. I’m dead last by this reckoning, heading backwards. ‘I have to leave,’ I say.
‘Your plate’ll be licked clean. That’s a fact.’
‘I have to. I have to get out.’
‘Where?’ Percy asks.
‘I have to get out of the race.’
The Invisible Mile Page 25