Devil Take the Hindmost

by Martin Cathcart Froden

  ‘He did. Punched a man in the face. Knocked his teeth out, kicked him in the head.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ Mr Morton says.

  ‘Have a look at his leg. See the blood? That’s not his. It’s the other fellow’s.’

  ‘Really? I find that hard to believe. No one bothers you. Unless they don’t know who you are.’

  ‘I was tired. Forgot to think. Left my purse on the shop counter, next thing I knew someone was running for the door, and this man, what’s his name?’

  Demonstratively Mr Morton turns to me and asks, ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Paul,’ I say.

  ‘This man, Paul? Paul, runs after the thief and, well, gets my purse back,’ she says.

  ‘You’re losing your touch Miriam,’ says Mr Morton.

  ‘Maybe,’ she says.

  Mr Morton continues, ‘So, there’s more to you than meets the eye, Paul,’ says Mr Morton. Paul looks hard at the woman. I’m keeping completely still. I honestly don’t know what to think. She’s got lovely eyes, great sense of clothes and a nice cloche hat. She’s pretty. Too pretty for him.

  ‘So it seems Miriam can vouch for your arms, and Silas here has been talking about your legs,’ Mr Morton says. ‘Fine. You’re forgiven. All I want to do is ask a few questions, regarding your head, and depending on your answers I might have a job for you.’

  Paul looks at me, I nod, and look down at his hands. They are shaking. I don’t like it. Mr Morton’s voice jolts me out of it, ‘Silas, run downstairs will you and fetch my abacus. It’s behind the bar. I want to speak to Paul here. Miriam, you can show Silas out. You can also bring the abacus up, and bring another bottle of Cointreau for me and a drink for Paul.’

  ‘I’d be happy to stay,’ I say.

  ‘And I’d be happier if you didn’t,’ Mr Morton says, looking at Miriam’s legs.

  I stand up as Mr Morton leans forward. ‘What’s your poison Paul?’ he asks looking down at his empty glass.

  Paul says ‘Sarsaparilla,’ and in the deathly silence which follows Mr Morton looks at him, weighs him on a scale no one can understand.

  ‘Are you a woman under those trousers?’ Mr Morton asks, then waves away the notion of an answer. ‘Miriam, bring up two bottles of sarsaparilla, one AJ Stephans, and one Bickford’s – so we can have a little taste test, Paul and I – and two frosted glasses. Seems Paul needs to feed himself sugar lumps dissolved in water. As for me I would still like another bottle of this French orange liqueur, I feel it’s very good for my joints.’

  ‘Yes Mr Morton,’ says Miriam, while I say nothing but I look at Paul as though we are now on either side of a ship snapped in half by a torpedo, one side sinking, the other floating.

  ‘I’ve got a proposition for you Paul,’ Mr Morton says. ‘I understand you run deliveries for a fruit and veg man? Well that ends today. You work for me and no one else. I will ask you to deliver messages. An envelope here. A small package there. Silas tells me you’re fast and I know you’re harbouring dreams of becoming a velodrome racer, which is fine. Just remember I own all your time from now on. You understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you ever seen a cheese wire?’

  ‘Yes I have.’

  ‘Your thighs are of more or less the same consistency as a large Italian hard cheese. Keep that in mind.’

  Mr Morton suddenly turns to me and shouts, ‘Why are you still here? Off you go. Both of you.’

  While I stand up and Miriam walks over to open the door, Mr Morton leans back in the chair and asks Paul, ‘So how long before you’re an Olympic champion?’ Paul looks at us standing in the doorway. In my nose the smell of lemon, geranium, pine tar, Miriam. As Miriam and I leave, again accompanied and kept quiet by the two big men, Paul turns to face the full moon of Mr Morton’s face.

  Chapter 10

  The next morning Paul receives two messages, delivered by little boys, not ten minutes apart. The first one is a note saying ‘Be careful. Get out if you can!’ There’s no signature, but the handwriting is round, and slanted. The other is a boy telling him to come to the Carousel for lunch. It sounds like an invitation but he knows it isn’t.

  Paul goes to tell the fruitmonger he needs to leave. Mr Morton has told Paul he won’t have the time to cart around apples between races and delivering messages. Also, the vegetable shop doesn’t have a Drago waiting in the wings, so Paul’s decision is easy, even if it means disappointing the fruitmonger.

  Mr Morton is not there to receive Paul for lunch. Neither is there any food. Just a set of short, snappy instructions issued by one of the many well-dressed men at the club.

  ***

  The next day, his messenger services begin. At set times Paul picks up envelopes with a slip of paper inside. Sometimes from Mr Morton’s place in Elephant and Castle, sometimes from William Knapp, a bookmaker working from a back booth at the Southampton Arms on Nine Elms Lane.

  The envelopes are always glued shut, apart from one time, about two weeks after the meeting in the white room, when the envelope was open. Paul resisted the urge to look inside. After the message was delivered Mr Morton seemed especially pleased, and told Paul he had passed a test. Mr Morton told Paul he had hidden a blonde hair inside the envelope, and showed Paul that it was still in place. Other than that the contents of the envelope were nothing but a small bit of paper with a series of typed numbers on it. First eight, then a space, then four. On the other side a picture of a woman in nothing but her bloomers, her long hair covering her upper body.

  Mr Morton had told him he could keep the card once the receiving man had been given the numbers. On the way out of the building Paul eased the photo out of the envelope to doublecheck. It was dark inside, the electric lights kept off in anticipation for the evening’s revellers, so he stood by the windows in the room with the giant bar.

  One of the bartenders came up behind him, and once he realised what Paul was looking at he shouted ‘Pervert!’

  He pointed at Paul, backing away while the rest of the bartenders laughed at him. Paul tried to explain, tried to show them the back of the card, only to realise the numbers were probably secret, and though they might not mean much to him, they might mean things to other people. And he was in a hurry. Should have been in a hurry. Not looking for nipples in a pub.

  Once outside Paul ripped the picture into as many bits as he could manage before feeding them down a drain. Though the light was poor inside he was able to ascertain the girl in the picture was Miriam. The same wideset eyes, the same nose, and while he can’t know about her chest, her hair looked similar.

  ***

  Today he delivers an envelope to a bald, uniformed man sitting in the foyer of the Cumberland Hotel by Marble Arch. Same as for the last week. The man jots down the sequence on a page of yesterday’s Evening News. He tells Paul next week he’ll be sitting in the Kensington Hotel on Bayswater Road, and that Paul can never come to the Cumberland again.

  Despite the passing of time the picture of Miriam is still firmly stuck in his mind as he cycles off to the Peckham velodrome. He’s trying hard to make the image, and any implications, go away. Once at the velodrome it fades a bit. Here he’s Paul MacAllister of Copenhagen Street, cyclist. He changes in a daze, folds his clothes, and walks out onto the track. He nods to some, tries to sum up others. Judging by bikes and thighs today might be harder than he had anticipated.

  He hears someone shout his name from the side. It’s Harry Wyld. Paul rolls over and asks how things are.

  ‘Same, but different,’ is Harry’s answer. His breath is heavy with beer. ‘Paul, look around you. They’re all good enough cyclists, but the difference is not so much in the legs, we’re all born with pretty much the same legs. It’s in the mind. And I sense that you have a pretty one-track mind. That’s tricky in life, and great in sport.’

  ‘That’s one of the most backhand compliments I’ve ever had,’ Paul smiles, glad to be distracted from the impending race.

  ‘I�
�ll tell you something else Paul,’ Harry continues, ‘I’ve been looking at these boys warm up, and to be honest there are some pretty good ones, but, and this is a big but, they are mostly road racers. They think velodrome cycling is the same as road racing. It’s not. You know this. You’re better constructed for the velodrome.’

  ‘Maybe,’ is all Paul can say.

  ‘Road racers dream of the tour finish in Paris, sprinting around Parc des Princes, wearing a wreath the size of a lifebelt. Your goal in the velodrome is the handlebar: the bent bit of metal half an arm’s length in front of you. Knees pumping, legs disappearing down and coming back up. The momentum created by the pistons your cranks become. Just forward movement, just pain.’

  ‘I suppose,’ Paul says, one eye on the starting line where racers and organisers are starting to congregate.

  Harry takes a deep drink from a brown bottle, and looks Paul in the eye. Then he says, ‘You’re going to do well today. I can sense your hunger. That’s another thing that separates you from a lot of the boys here. They enjoy it. You need it. Make sure you translate that into a win.’

  ‘I’ll try my best.’

  ‘Be aggressive. And be careful.’

  ‘Thanks Harry.’

  ‘I believe in you son.’ Harry sits down. Beaming like a favourite uncle at a christening.

  Lining up, Paul takes ten deep breaths, knowing that it will be the last time in a couple of hours that his heart will be beating at a normal pace. A commissaire in an outmoded stovepipe hat nods and it’s time to straddle the bike and strive again for more, better, faster.

  Two minutes to go, and he looks at his hands. They are shaking. They are the same hands that would like to touch Miriam more than by accident. The man in the hat comes out of the men’s lavatory and Paul forces himself to put his thoughts away. The commissaire raises his arm, in his hand a gleaming starter gun. Paul pushes down hard with his right leg, the pedal almost bending under his weight. He’s off just as the echo of the gun starts bouncing between the walls of the stadium.

  Chapter 11

  Paul has been given a day off. No races, no deliveries. It’s about as likely as winning the lottery. It’s a lovely bright day in June, and after being paid upon completion of his first month with Mr Morton, Paul cycles to Jack Lauterwasser’s shop. Feeling like royalty Paul can spend money on things not absolutely necessary for his survival. The sensation is unfamiliar to him, and he grins like a maniac coming through the door of the shop. The jingle-jangle of the bell and the smell of grease, leather and oil come to meet him in a familiar embrace. Jack laughs at him and asks Paul who the lucky lady is, to which Paul replies, ‘No one. There’s one lucky man, and it’s me.’ Jack looks doubtful but Paul continues, ‘I’ve been paid.’

  ‘I see.’ Jack smiles.

  ‘So, what’s new? What are the professionals using?’ Paul says sauntering around the shop.

  Bowing, Jack directs him to a display by the counter.

  ‘I’ve got something here,’ Jack says, wiping his hands on a rag from his back pocket. Gleaming dully on a pillow of wood shavings are a set of pedals. They’re like nothing Paul’s ever seen, far from the simple platforms he uses.

  ‘You clip your shoes into them,’ Jack tells him. ‘This way you can pull your leg up as well as push down. In a sense this doubles your output.’

  ‘Can I hold them?’ Paul asks, and at Jack’s nod he picks them up. They’re light but feel solid. There’s a spring holding a plate in place. He tries it a few times with his thumb.

  Jack gently takes the pedals back from Paul. He’s not a stupid salesman, he knows the power of holding something, the ebb and flow of ownership. He takes a pen from behind his ear and starts to point to the pieces of the mechanism. To Paul the pedals are as intricate as the inner workings of a pocket watch, and possibly as expensive. And that’s before considering the specialist shoes that no doubt will have to be purchased to go with the pedals.

  Jack reads out loud from a catalogue, sounding like a school teacher. The words coming out of his mouth are like a different language to Paul. He soon stops listening and lets the torrent of words wash over him. It’s a foreign tune of technical terms, a hymn heard in passing.

  ‘It’s a Belgian make. Dinant. The Dutch Olympic team used them for the games in Amsterdam this year,’ Jack says, and points to a series of pictures at the back of the catalogue, adding Gerard Bosch van Drakenstein, Johannes Maas, Piet van der Horst, to the melody of mechanisms and merchandise.

  With the shoes, an extra set of springs and a small bottle of clear oil, the pedals end up costing Paul more than a month’s rent. Paul smiles and walks a full lap of the shop. Then he returns to the counter.

  You need to spend to earn, Silas has told him more than once. While Jack puts them on his bike Paul walks around the shop, fingering objects of desire, then abruptly stops himself. He forces himself to stand by the window. To not touch anything, to stop thinking that he can afford anything. The only thing he allows himself to do is to look at the people passing by. This is the last free activity in London; the experience of lives flicking past like snowflakes.

  In a gap between two cars, he sees a woman who looks like Miriam. He runs out of the door, the bell doing a double jinglejangle behind him. Leaping this way and that, running in the gutter, being sworn at by coachmen, drivers and cyclists, he eventually catches up with the woman. The fox fur on her shoulders gleams in the afternoon sun. Her step is forceful but not hurried. He overtakes her, a silly grin on his face, his mind blank as to what to say, but his body telling him it is very important he speaks to her.

  It’s not Miriam.

  After apologising to the surprised woman, Paul returns to the shop, and has to explain to Jack why he dashed out. Jack laughs, and finishes putting the pedals on the bike before following Paul out of the shop. He smokes a cigarette, wiping his hands on his apron.

  ‘It must be a woman that’s made you this happy,’ Jack says.

  Paul is on the bike struggling with the action of the pedals, tip of his tongue pointing out, and can only nod.

  Jack, turns his cigarette to inspect the tip, says, ‘By the way Paul, a Mr Halkias was here a couple of weeks ago. He said he was your friend.’

  ‘What else did he say?’ Paul says, a hand on the shop window, now strapped in.

  Jack exhales and says, ‘Nothing much. Didn’t seem to be very interested in bikes.’

  ‘He’s not,’ Paul says.

  Jack grinds out the cigarette with his heel, and asks, ‘Is he your financier? A sponsor?’

  ‘He paid my rent when I first got here. And bought me the bike. You remember I was here with another man, Rupert?’

  Jack nods, and asks, ‘And what do you have to do in return?’

  ‘Nothing. Pay him back.’

  ‘Look, it’s not my business, but I’ve heard rumours about this Mr Halkias. Be careful.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘I’m just speaking as cyclist to cyclist. I’ve seen some bad deals and more than my share of scary managers in the past. I was winning a lot of races for a while but wasn’t getting any money out of it, until I realised what my backer was doing.’

  ‘I appreciate your concern, but I’m fine.’

  ‘Well, from now on I want to sponsor you too. To even the odds. I’ve got a couple of racing tops I had made for a guy I was racing a tandem with ages ago. He was huge. As big as you. The perfect stoker. But he’s retired from cycling now. You might as well have them.’

  ‘Thanks Jack,’

  ‘I’ll give the tops to you if you promise to wear them when you race. And if you send people this way for their purchases, I’ll give you a good price on whatever you need for the bike in the future. What do you say to that?’

  ‘I’d be delighted to race for you.’

  Jack nods and ducks into the store room to fetch a box. The tops are on the big side, but Jack tells him they’ve never been washed and will come down a bit in size, if he knows someone wh
o can do his laundry extra hot. Paul says he does, but he doesn’t. He’ll be doing it himself. The top he prefers is a black one with two yellow lines across the chest, and the same lines with the name of the shop in an arch over his shoulder blades, and space for a number, on this one 34, underneath, on the back.

  ‘There’s a white and a yellow one too. One long-sleeved, one sleeveless, one for every condition,’ Jack says, smiling proudly.

  Out in the street Paul clips into the pedals and immediately falls off. Laughing to himself and ignoring the whistles and jibes from coal porters and newspaper boys, he gets back up. He takes it slow. Cycles round and round De Beauvoir Square for a while. Soon he’s mastered it and gets out on a real road for some speed. He quickly realises his power transfer, as Jack called it, has increased significantly. As he eases out into Holloway Road into heavy traffic, it feels like there’s more space in his head now to think about other things. Breathing, traffic, the wind, horses, women, children, the road, potholes and the highway oysters dropped by horses. How to find the way to where he is going. Then realises for the first time in a long while that he doesn’t know where he is. He doesn’t need to. He’s still got change in his pocket and would like this to be a day of celebration. So he cycles to Elephant and Castle. But not to the Carousel, not to the Ram’s Head, not to the apartment up three creaky stairs. To a coffeehouse across the road from it.

  Chapter 12

  Paul sits in the coffeehouse for hours. Once the man behind the bar realises Paul doesn’t even like coffee he sells him milkshakes instead. The cold drink is something fashionable the proprietor is very proud over. Paul gets a sore neck from his head darting back and forward, as if he was watching a fast badminton game, but his efforts yield no sightings of Miriam. Disappointed and with a solemn promise to himself never to drink milkshake again he cycles home when the place closes.

  The morning after he rushes around the city in a seemingly endless chain of deliveries, made slightly easier by his new pedals. There are envelopes going back and forward between the Carousel and various drops. Some are new but most of his deliveries are to well-known addresses. Paul cycles to a man above a Russian restaurant, to a little old lady in Barnet who runs a pet shop. She never looks at the envelope, just puts it in a bag of birdfeed and sets it behind the counter. Always offers Paul a glass of lemonade, if he’s got time, which today he hasn’t. To a tall, completely hairless man who dresses in rags, but usually slips Paul a big note out of a golden money clip, if he’s been quick getting there.