by Jo Baker
“You all right, son?”
For a moment, Billy can’t believe it. He dips his head down to glance back between his legs; Rudd is crouched down behind the back wheel, he can’t quite see him: just a tuft of white hair.
“I got to tell you something,” Rudd says.
What is the old man playing at? “What?”
“Mr. Butler, what he said to me. Just. Thought it might help.”
He should know better. He does know better. “What?”
“This is your year, Mr. Butler said; ‘This is young Hastings’ year.’ ”
Billy squints harder at the pinkish blur. The dark smudges of his eyes. His voice is constricted by the odd angle of chin curled down to chest. “He said that?”
The blur nods.
Billy lifts his head. Tries to resettle himself. Chin to handlebars, elbows at ninety, breathe. Breathe. Breathe. He tries to push all other thought aside: there is just the man ahead and the man ahead of him, and the press and heave of his bike and body, and the next ten yards, and then the ten yards after that. He can’t think about what it will mean if he wins. Not about the Olympic trials coming up, or what it would be like to ride for Britain in Berlin, or about after that, about World Championships and turning professional, about racing for a living and having money come in in handfuls and your picture in the paper. He can’t think what it would be like to wear a sleek grey double-breasted suit and glacé shoes, and have people recognise him in the street and come up to shake his hand, and all the while have her arm looped through his arm, feel the smoky warmth of her beside him, to know she’s his. To have all this, and to have it by doing the thing you love most in the world. He can’t think about it now. That comes afterwards, if it comes at all: what matters now is the race. You don’t look beyond the next ten yards. Rudd taught him that.
So Rudd should bloody well know that. Does know that.
He hears Rudd suck the air in through his gappy teeth: Billy grits his own.
“I’m just saying, lad. Just so’s you know. Mr. Butler’s got that kind of faith in you.”
This is deliberate. He’s doing it on purpose, the bitter old sod.
Back at Butler’s, Rudd’s picture’s on the office wall, clipped from a paper: he’s standing by his bike, an old drop-handled fixed-wheel roadster. Must be turn of the century, maybe late nineties. A white crewneck sweater with the Manchester Wheelers crest on the front. A brilliant look in his eye and his nose a great streamlined beak. Mr. Rudd, twenty-odd, amateur champion in his day. Been coaching Billy ever since he was taken on at Butler’s.
“Thanks,” Billy says. Bastard.
The linesman’s ready: he reaches his flag up into the air. He’ll drop it when the gun goes, whisk it up again if there’s a foul start. Mr. Wilson stands poker straight and to attention. Rudd takes a tighter grip on the saddle, rises to a sprinter’s start, as if nothing’s out of the ordinary, as if he hadn’t said a word.
Billy feels his heart now, the slow determined thud of it. He has trained for this. He is prepared. He knows the track better than any foreigner can ever hope to.
He will do his best. He will get through the next ten yards, and the ten yards after that. He’ll catch the man in front, and the man in front of him.
Mr. Wilson raises the starting pistol. The officials stand aside. Billy’s pupils dilate. The crowd sounds blur into a pulsing roar like blood, or waves on shingle. His vision saturates with light, the sky is a wall of white fire, the figures ahead on the track are stark and clear. Everything is diamond-cut, beautiful. The air splits. The flag drops. For just a moment Billy is in the crazy accelerating fumble of the push-off, heavy on his pedals, Rudd hammering along behind him pushing at the saddle, a waft of pistol smoke in the air, and his legs straining with the work, and then the launch and freedom as Rudd lets go, and the air streams and the world collapses down to just his body. His bike. His breath. The men ahead of him. The next ten yards.
They’ve reached the far side of the track. The afternoon sun makes her squeeze her eyes narrow. She can just see out between the dark heads of the men in front of her. That foreign man thunders on, his legs bunched with muscle, powerful; and he’s taken the inside track. Amelia’s teeth pinch her lip. Billy’s skimming along on a wider loop, halfway up the banking.
He looks ever so slight, ever so vulnerable.
He presses himself smaller, harder, forcing the bike faster, dropping it down from side to side as he pushes each pedal through its circuit. A heaving, hard progress. But he is fast. Very fast. She thinks he’s gaining.
Down on the thick spring grass of the central pitch, the ginger fellow has already dropped out. He bends double, hands on knees, desperate for breath. Billy caught him in three laps.
The cyclists blur along towards her now, coming round the far curve, closer, closer, the stand roars, and the dark man’s past, and then for a moment Billy’s profiled, sweating, gaunt with effort—and away—she follows his back as he pulls away. He’s climbing up the outer edge of the track, high up the banking, just below the crowd, tilted almost against gravity, at an odd angle to the world. She knows what’s coming. The crowd knows what’s coming. They’ve seen this tactic before. The noise begins to swell. The dark man passes again, and then Billy—muscles proud, shirt dark with sweat—and she stands up to watch his back as it speeds away from her, her mouth open, shouting for him, bouncing, willing him on. And others are on their feet in the stands, hollering—and she sees it; a kick-up of speed, like he’s dug his heels into a horse—the crowd noise breaks like a wave and voices yell, bellow, cheer her son on.
Hastings. Hastings. Hastings.
She sees the foreigner notice. There’s not a glance up or round or a wobble, nothing as obvious as that, but it’s there: from the crowd’s reaction he knows an attack is coming. And then Billy dives down across the track, hurtling like a demon, using the slope and height to—it’s dangerous, he risks a crash, will he—and then the older man catches sight of him, and there’s a noticeable break in his rhythm, a kind of flinch. And that’s it, Amelia knows. That’s the failure of nerve. He could power on, try and squeeze out a little more speed from the bike, try to clear the spot Billy’s aiming for before Billy makes it there, risk a crash. But he doesn’t. He’s afraid. He slows off a fraction. It’s lost him the race.
For her, the moment is calm and clear and silent and beautiful, as though she is standing alone on an empty hillside. Billy’s front wheel clears the foreigner’s front wheel, and he’s slipping in front of the older man, taking the inside track now, and heaving the bike on ahead, faster still if you can believe it. He’s done it.
Then Amelia’s heart explodes in fireworks. She yells out at the top of her lungs. Billy. Billy. Billy.
He’s coming back round towards her and she blinks and a run of wet escapes down her cheeks. Her hand’s over her mouth and she is crying. Billy. My Billy. She’s laughing behind her pressing hands, and her gloves are blotched with tears.
One of the men in front of her glances round at her, and she wants to say, That’s my boy, my son, my Billy, but she just laughs and cries and shakes her head.
The foreigner slows off, shifting his hands up to the top of his curved handlebars.
Billy is upright now, sitting back in his saddle. He touches his crash-hat, courteous, as he passes the foreigner, and the dark man nods back. Amelia can see Billy’s stomach swelling and sucking like a frog’s throat. And as he passes her, there’s an expression on his face that she doesn’t recognise, that she has never seen before. She can’t know how he feels. She can’t really ever know, because none of this belongs to her. Five thousand people roar and clap and stamp for her son. She can’t know how it feels.
She sits down. She folds her arms across her stomach. The men in front of her sit down too. She hears her son’s name from all around. Hastings. Billy Hastings. Billy Hastings. The world reels, unsteady. She folds her arms tighter across her stomach’s hollow, to try and stop its groaning.
She smiles to herself, exhausted, her face wet with tears.
If your father only knew.
Billy crunches to a halt on the cinder track, fifty yards past Mr. Rudd. He swings off the bike. His legs are hardly there and his knees buckle and for a moment he thinks he’s going to fall. His ears roar; he doesn’t know if it’s the crowd or his own blood. The bike holds him up. Everything hurts. The sky’s too bright and there is so much noise. He tries to gather himself, think himself into his knees, his thighs; tries to keep upright. Rudd’s coming over towards him already, with Billy’s jacket slung over an arm, pulling his mouth into a congratulatory smile.
“Told you, didn’t I? Your year, Billy-lad. Your year.”
Rudd holds his hand out for the bike. His palm is pink and dry and creased. For a moment Billy doesn’t move. The bike is Billy’s, like his legs are his, like his lungs are his. It is part of him.
Rudd gestures for the bike. Billy reluctantly lets its balance tip to him, then looks up into those rheumy eyes. Rudd holds his gaze a moment, just a moment, doing his best to pretend that he had spoken in all innocence earlier. Billy feels a strange kind of exalted grief; he has moved beyond Rudd, out and away. Rudd failed as a sportsman, and now he’s failed as a man too. And he, Billy, well. It looks like he might just be a success.
Then Rudd glances down to Billy’s jacket which he’s holding, and offers it to him. Billy takes it, shrugs it on, turning away from the older man. The movement makes him feel dizzy. There’s a great big sore swelling in his throat, even worse than his lungs.
From across the pitch, people approach them. Soon there will be a crowd and distraction from the brokenness of things. Rudd digs his nail fussily into the handlebar tape; it’s not loose and doesn’t need adjusting.
“Mr. Butler will be over,” Rudd says.
Billy nods. The crowds are a blur of dark suits, pale faces.
He picks out Cinelli and Hooley, standing some distance apart. Hooley’s just slouching there, with his coach, fists in his jacket pockets and scuffing the grass with a toe. Cinelli’s handing his bike over to his man, frowning as he talks, gesturing down to the wheel, as though it’s some fault with the bike that’s lost him the race.
The breeze cools the sweat on Billy’s skin. He does up his jacket buttons. He moves away from Rudd, from the bike. He reaches up and unbuckles the strap of his crash-hat, lifts it off and his sleeves feel strange and stiff against his race-cooled skin.
Billy heads to Hooley first. When Hooley notices him approaching, there’s a moment’s uncomfortable, indecisive flicker before he pulls himself together. He comes to meet Billy, his hand extended. The Irishman’s face is the colour of boiled ham. He blinks out through spectacles, smiles. Billy takes his hand. Hooley squeezes it, jolts it down hard, then lifts it up again. Billy gets an impression of strength and solidness and damp.
“Good man,” Hooley says, and lets go of Billy’s hand, and turns away.
Cinelli’s palm is paper-dry. His face is stark. His black eyes, the ridge of his nose, the blue shadow across his cheeks and chin. Ten years Billy’s followed this man’s races. Cheered him. He was a kid when Grandpa first brought him here to watch the great man race; Grandpa always used to say Cinelli was unbeatable. Billy feels a deep ache at the loss of the old man, who’d brought him to the races here, and who’d taken him down to Butler’s and insisted on speaking to the foreman, who’d told Rudd to his face that he’d be a fool not to give the boy a trial. Who isn’t here to see this day.
“Congratulations,” the Italian says.
“Thank you,” Billy manages.
Cinelli’s going to turn away, but Billy says, “We’ve met before.”
He turns back.
“You beat me, last year.”
“Oh?”
“You shook my hand then too.”
Cinelli presses his lips together, as if remembering. He nods, frowns. He doesn’t want this conversation.
“Thank you,” Billy says.
Cinelli dips his head, then turns away, back to his man. They slip back into Italian.
Billy looks round for a race official. In the stands, the crowd noise has softened to a buzz. Someone will come for him soon, and they will give out the prizes. But for a moment he is alone. The air is wet. The breeze is cool. He can smell hyacinths from the nearby park. He feels like he’s a kite, sailing through an empty sky.
• • •
Billy teases the last fibres of flesh out of the crook of a chop bone with his fork, marshals them into a heap with his knife. He feels glossy, sleek, though his legs are stiff and his lungs still raw. He crushes the mutton together against the tines, raises the fork to his mouth and slides the meat off between his teeth.
The canteen is open to the sky. Outside the track, trestle tables and benches are laid out on the grass, like for a fete. Alfie has finished eating, has started up the company song:
Oh we’ll pump up our tyres till they bust
And we’ll grind up our pedals till they’re dust
For we are the boys from Butler’s
The best of British bikes.
Charlie and Ted shovel down their fuel. They are all red and shiny just like Billy, all wiped down and brushed up and back in their Sunday suits. The races have continued, but for the boys from Butler’s there have been no further wins.
They’re being very nice about Billy’s success. Still, Billy doesn’t want to rub their noses in it.
The clock stands off towards the end of the table, a layered confection in rose-and-cream marble, with an elegant bronze figure poised on top. She’s dressed in a slip, arms extended like a swan’s wings, leg raised, toe pointed, caught in the middle of her callisthenics. The boys have been squinting up her skirt. Alfie has persuaded him to wind the clock up, see how it sounded. Imposing is how it sounds, even in the breezy April open air: a great considered mechanical tick that would fill the whole tiny house, if he were to keep it. He has no intention of keeping it.
Because this is just the beginning. Everything is possible now.
“What’s next then?” Alfie shunts his plate away, leans his elbows on the table. “For our bold champion?”
“I don’t know,” Billy says. “I don’t know.”
He crushes a chunk of potato onto the fork with it, and raises it to his mouth. He chews. He does know, and Alfie’s a dunce if he doesn’t know too. The Olympic trials are in June. And after that, Berlin. Wheeling the light-framed bamboo-wheeled bike tick tick tick through the German parks and gardens and out towards the track. It will be good to beat the Germans on their home turf.
“Try for the Olympic squad?” Alfie asks.
“Ride for Britain? I’d love to.”
“Bet you will,” Alfie says. “Bet you a quid.”
“You’re on.”
Alfie shrugs, grins. “That way we’ll both be happy, eh?”
They shake hands. The others talk, a tangle of agreement, encouragement, because they are good lads, they are the best. Billy reaches out a fingertip, and runs it along the grain of the marble. It’s cool to the touch. The moment shops are open again after the Easter weekend he’ll be down to Leibmann’s with the clock and get his ten pounds.
There’s a thread of meat caught between his back teeth. His tongue pushes at it, and at the sharp broken edge of the tooth there, and Charlie is asking if he fancies heading to the Half Moon for a couple, and he’s thinking maybe not, since Rudd will be there with the old boys, and then he’s thinking, sod Rudd, and beginning a nod, and glancing up, and raising his hand, index finger crooked, to hook into the back of his mouth and claw at that stuck meat with a nail. And he sees her. Her face powder white, her lips pillarbox red, and her eyes shadowed dark and smoky. The sun making her squint. A cigarette between her lips and smoke spooling up into the blue.
She’s twenty yards away, moving between the Humber crowd and the BSA lot. They notice her. One of the boys glances idly up, but then his gaze clicks into place and slides down the
length of her to her ankles, then back up again to rest on the swell of her breasts. A nudge to the next man along.
Billy starts to his feet.
She’s looking for him. She’s short-sighted.
Alfie twists round in his seat to see what Billy’s looking at. Charlie cranes his neck.
“What, what is it?” Charlie asks.
“Ruby,” Alfie says.
And there’s something in the way he says it that Billy doesn’t quite like. But Alfie’s stirring sugar into his tea, one spoonful after another, as if he’s intent only on that. And he doesn’t look up, doesn’t offer anything else by way of comment, so Billy just turns away, leaving him to it, swinging one heavy leg over the bench, and then the other, then skirting round the table to her.
She’s coming towards him. The effect she’s having. That figure-skimming suit.
His cheeks burn. He’s out past the end of the table, and into the walkway between the trestles. She peers at him, uncertain, for just a second. Then she takes a few tottering steps towards him—her heels are sinking into the grass—and a slow smile spreads across her face, pushing her cheeks into powdered curves like breakfast rolls.
His smile wavers, tense, as she approaches. Quicker now, on her toes, a little skip to her step. He wishes they were entirely alone.
“Darling,” she says, and there’s that slight tint to her voice that speaks of the fabric shop, the lush mountains of cloth, the jewel colours, the scent of foreign tobacco and her dad behind the counter with his yellow skin and greyed curls, looking up over the rim of his little brass-rimmed spectacles, his eyes creasing in welcome.
She comes right up to him. They’re almost of a height. The length of her body is parallel to his. He’s aware of himself, his body—its rawness, his skin filmed with oil and salt, mutton fat on his lips. He can smell her scent: something sweet but overlaid with smoke and warmth and body. If only they were alone.
She takes his naked hand in her gloved hand. The press of kid leather, and beneath it firm, plump flesh. Her eyes are dark as black coffee. Her breasts are just inches from his chest. Her hips just there. He could reach an arm around her and crush her to him, make her feel what she is doing to him. He glances round to see if the Humber lad is watching, to see if the men realise. That she is his, and nobody else’s. That she is his.