Devil Take the Hindmost

by Martin Cathcart Froden

  ‘Sometimes, it’s got nothing to do with that. Sometimes cycling goes beyond reality. On a good day your chain purrs like a fat cat being stroked in the sunshine. Your spokes whisper sweet nothings, your tyres remain hard and your saddle is part of you rather than a separate piece of leather.’

  ‘That’s true. Let’s just hope today is a good day,’ Paul says, glancing towards the starting line.

  ‘On bad days, the opposite,’ Harry continues. ‘You can’t get into any rhythm. Your wheels seem softer, heavier than your opponent’s. Your bike is an admiralty anchor, your legs are made from slag, and it feels like you’re swimming wearing a chainmail suit. Yet still you push. You silence the voice inside telling you to give up, to let your heart rest from the torture.’

  Paul gets off his bike. Weary of what Harry is saying and of the cramps that come and go, unexplainable like weather systems, he’s stretching. Holding onto the top tube and bending at the waist. Keeping his legs, back, and arms straight. His mind too.

  Harry smiles and says, ‘The ability to disregard, to pretend to yourself that today you’re having a great time and glory will be yours, is the main difference between you and the other cyclists.’

  Paul nods and gets back on the bike. Clicks his feet into place. Pulls up his shorts, pulls down his top. Flexes his arms.

  ‘I know you’ll do well out there. You always do,’ Harry says.

  Paul leaves the side of the track and rolls toward his designated place on the starting line.

  He takes three deep breaths. Then comes the crack of the gun and the immediate pain of hoped-for glory. He gets a good start. Manages to squeeze in to be third in a big field, close to the bottom line, where the distance he’ll be riding is a lot shorter than if he was higher up. The sun is out and he affords himself a little smile now that he’s underway. Now that he doesn’t have to think about anything besides racing. After the long warm-up his legs are used to the motion, and he relaxes a little. Nothing’s going to happen in the first five laps. Then, after that, anything can.

  The first time he ever rode the velodrome at Kensal Rise he didn’t know about high turn two and low turn four and buckled his front wheel. Paul had an important race on the Monday, at Fallowfield Stadium in Manchester. An awful shale track, long and steep, cold and unforgiving, the site of the controversial 1919 Championship. Jack fixed the bike overnight and cycled it to Copenhagen Street in time for Paul to catch the train.

  That was many months ago now, and Paul feels like he knows the track well. Like an old dog, a well-worn jacket. The first fifteen laps pass before anyone really does anything other than positioning. They are all trying to sense the pace, the wind, the mood, the willingness of the others.

  He hears shouts and what he presumes are jokes in Dutch. A strange guttural sound. Two of the Dutchmen, gangly greyhounds, possibly brothers, weave in and out of the field with expertise they can only have gained from years of racing. They are freckled and fair like Paul. Their shared complexion doesn’t mean that the brothers won’t do their best to kill him.

  On lap forty-two the shouts and jokes stop and the professionals, he now realises that’s what they are, knuckle down to do some real racing. It’s beyond human. He tells himself it’s impossible. His body now turns into pig iron as he tells himself nothing should hurt this much.

  The pace picks up.

  The Dutchmen are pushing for a fast pace. Paul runs out of water long before he should. He feels like he’s got nothing to stoke his fire with. Some days his body just won’t listen to his commands. It has turned into an unruly army, a mass of deserters. His limbs threaten to give up. He can’t have that. It doesn’t work like that, he tells himself. The gulf between mind and body grows wider and wider for every lap, for every push on the pedals. Then a group of three riders try to break free. Or is it four? He can’t see properly though eyes running with sweat, frustrated tears, and the sharp prickles of dust from the riders in front of him. It feels like he’s swallowed sandpaper, but he won’t give up. The group, three riders, he can see now, are still pushing hard. The fourth rider, an Englishman with a great moustache and what looks like the kind of swimming caps cross-Channel swimmers use, has pulled back, screaming in pain and frustration. His ears standing out like wing nuts, now that he’s pulled off his hat.

  Paul decides to make a point of asking the man about his headgear after the race, but soon forgets in the sheet lightning of pain coursing through his body.

  ‘Bloody Dutchmen,’ he groans under his breath, over and over until he’s caught up with the group of three. The last man looks over his shoulder, and notices Paul. He shouts something in that gruff tongue of theirs and the first and second man, nodding as if this was all going to plan, simultaneously stand up. Push, push, push. Half a lap. Paul is still on the back wheel of the last one.

  The Dutchmen have devised a strategy whereby the last person, the one just in front of Paul, eases off. The gap between Paul and the two riders out front widens. The third man looks over his shoulder and smiles, still easing off, pulling to the right, up on the track. Making it hard for Paul to pass, even if he had the lungs and legs to do so. The Dutchman now looks over his shoulder and changes the position of his hands on the handlebars, from a grip up on the top to the vertical bend. Still monitoring Paul; an owl eyeing a mouse. The Dutchman turns his attention back to the track, to the gap up to his countrymen.

  Just as the man’s eyes leave him, Paul swerves down from the line he’s been holding slightly above. For a split second Paul eases off, lets the momentum and gravity propel him forwards to the inside of the Dutchman. To a place the man never thought Paul could fit in. This is his one chance to leave some of the competition behind, to catch the two out-runners. He feels his mind go blank and his vision go black. His muscles pull him back into his body. Only the acute pain keeps him conscious.

  When he can see again he’s closer to the leading pack than he is to the Dutchman groaning behind him. Another couple of pushes and he changes that balance more and more. Now he reaches behind him to the pocket of his sweater and fishes out two pills. One he shouldn’t be taking for another thirty laps. The other is an emergency one he always carries in case he was to drop a pill. He greedily swallows them both. Soon he can’t feel anything. Soon he’s all speed.

  Chapter 21

  An hour after the race I find Paul sitting in an alley behind the racetrack. I’ve been looking everywhere for him. He’s shivering uncontrollably, distraught and disorientated. His lucky jersey torn all down the back. It looks like he’s fallen because his shoulder blades are bleeding, then I realise it’s from sliding down the rough wall.

  I’ve been asking janitors and competitors for him. I’ve been annoyed, then worried for him. When I find him relief washes over me. Then anger. Not at him. At the situation. I say his name but he doesn’t react. I walk up to him, but he doesn’t seem to recognize me. Even when I stand right in front of him. Even when our noses touch.

  I can tell he’s had too much of the powders Mr Morton has prescribed. I’ve never been against them, realise they’re useful, crucial in fact. But some of the pills Mr Morton procures for the boy are clearly too strong. They make him very active, then very down. It’s awful to see, but it means Paul can enter twice as many races in a week than before.

  ‘Silas?’ he says, momentarily coming to.

  ‘Shh,’ I say, putting both my hands on his cheeks. ‘Don’t speak. I’ll fix you Paul.’

  ‘Did I win?’ he asks.

  ‘Don’t worry about that. Worry about yourself,’ I say.

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘Bronze. A very good bronze,’ I say, one hand now supporting his neck, the other still on his clammy cheek. ‘You qualified. Now rest.’

  He’s in terrible shape. A boy champion, passed out in a seedy alley, all hopped up.

  I don’t know what comes over me but I kiss him. He doesn’t even react. He tastes of salt. Butter and toast on his breath. Immediately after I regret it.
I berate myself for letting my emotions get the better of me. What if we had been spotted? What if Paul will remember?

  He seems oblivious to the world as I lead him out of the alley. I walk home on light feet. Paul lumbers by my side quite unaware. A dull, copper-coloured medal dangling from his neck. I can tell it was hard to come by tonight. It was the last position to qualify, and Paul did so by less than half a wheel.

  I decide against a taxi. He needs to walk off whatever Mr Morton crams into the pills I’ve been told to supply Paul with. Luckily it’s not far to my place. The air will do us both good.

  I take his hand. Tell him it’s fine, that men do that all the time in Greece. He tells me the pain in his left lung and leg is too much for him. His eyes water like he’s been chopping onions, just from walking.

  After many breaks, and him drinking pint after pint of water from a flask I refill in every pub we pass, we’re on my street. I take him upstairs to my big rooms, newly appointed with saffron velvet and the latest Atelier d’Or wallpaper. White and yellow digitalis on an oxblood background. Cost me a fortune, but worth every sou.

  Paul stands in the middle of the hall while I busy myself getting the bath ready. In the past he’s told me he needs one cold then one hot. I oblige. He gets in the first, the ice cold one, and I stand to the side and look. He doesn’t seem to mind, or notice me.

  He’s explained that the pain from the shock of the cold water takes his mind from his body. Makes his muscles seize up, in a good way. Then down the drain the cold water goes and I bring a huge vat of water just about to boil. Paul, wet and cold to the touch, stands up and cups his privates with one hand. I leave him and fetch the next big pan. He still doesn’t seem to know quite where he is. The hot water goes in, and it steams up the room, I turn on the cold tap, blend the water with my hand, my face at his hip.

  ‘Sit down,’ I tell him. ‘I’ll make it right just for you.’

  Now the swirl of the hand, the hand that can brush his thighs, the hand that can brush his chest. It’s just mixing, a tool for the best bath. It’s a hand that puts in bath salts, and pats Paul’s back. Squeezes his neck and shoulders. I’m just helping him recuperate.

  ‘Take it easy. You won a place on the next tier, the next qualifier. It’s as good as gold,’ I say. I look down on Paul. His eyes are now closed. ‘That’s it my boy.’ Paul’s now breathing slowly, slowly. ‘You can come here whenever you want,’ I say. I’m pretty sure I’m talking to deaf ears.

  When it looks like Paul is sleeping I kneel by the bath. Slowly add more hot water. I watch my hand move from the neck, down Paul’s chest. His heart slow now. I’m fascinated. My hand is a five-legged crab crawling over freckled sand. It stops by his navel.

  I stop myself. I take my hand out of the water and sit on the floor by the bath and listen to his breathing. It’s warm and steamy in the bathroom, and some condensation must have gotten into my eyes. I feel myself crying a little. Surely just a cold.

  After the bath he looks better. We sit dressed in thick bathrobes. I’m drinking copiously. He’s both high and coming down at the same time. We talk absolute rubbish, giggle like girls and decide to cut Mr Morton out of our lives. We don’t talk about the crab crawling around on his thighs. I’ve decided it was just a dream.

  The last bus thunders by, and I make a bed for Paul on the sofa. I say goodnight to him. I can’t sleep, so I check on him every now and then through the night. His breathing isn’t all that regular which worries me a little. Wouldn’t want him swallowing his tongue, or choking on his own vomit. I turn him over a couple of times. Tuck him in. Finally I must have fallen asleep.

  ***

  When Paul wakes up in the afternoon he tells me his whole body aches.

  ‘It’s not the exercise,’ he says. ‘I’m used to that. I don’t mind the drugs so much. They make me faster. But after a race I feel horrible.’

  ‘You don’t look too good,’ I say. It’s both true and a bit of a lie. ‘You must stay here. I’ll keep an eye on you.’

  ‘I’m fine, I can go home, wouldn’t want to be any trouble.’

  ‘No trouble. Can’t afford to have you in hospital.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he says.

  ‘It’s just business. I don’t care either way,’ I say, then go and make him a cup of tea. Throughout the day I provide Paul with freshly ironed, emblazoned handkerchiefs to spit blood into. My mother would have been proud.

  As the evening becomes night outside we listen to the radio in silence. He falls asleep in the middle of a symphony. I sit by the window, his slow breaths behind me. I drink another two inches of whisky, then pull his covers over him and go to bed. I toss and turn but can’t go to sleep. It’s because he’s right there. It’s because of what would happen to me if anyone realised. This makes me so angry that I don’t know what to do. I leap out of bed, snatch my robe and stride out to the sleeping shape on the sofa. While the anger and the bile about the whole situation is still up I shake him. I prod him and push him till he wakes up. I say sternly to his face, ‘Paul. This has been a holiday that will never be repeated. I will be sleeping late in the morning but you can show yourself out before six. This is not a private hospital, you realise.’ I hate myself for it, but that’s how it’s got to be. He just nods once and goes back to sleep.

  I can’t sleep. I hear him leave in the morning.

  ***

  The next time I see Mr Morton he tells me he wants Paul to race more. For less. He tells me again I need to make the boy more profitable, mentions he knows a doctor who’s come up with some miraculous new mixtures. I nod and say yes, but I’m not listening. I think about the strongbox in his office. Mr Morton doesn’t know that I know the combination, as I was there when it was installed. I know also that it’s not been emptied between last week and now and that it’s been a bank holiday, which always means more drinkers. Mr Morton talks about injections and slowly upping the dosage. I nod. I say yes. I can’t possibly continue this. It has to stop. For Paul’s sake. Still I nod and agree to all sorts of things.

  When I finally get away from the Carousel I sit in a pub where I’m unlikely to bump into anyone I know. I think about things, I think about the future. I try to make a plan and think about the odds of me succeeding. It doesn’t look too good. My lapse in judgement is unforgivable. The flaw in my defences, taking him home and letting him stay like that, has really shaken me up. I might need some violence to level me. I drink and drink. Then I go looking for Rupert.

  Chapter 22

  Rupert stands just inside the front door, looking dazed, when Paul comes down the stairs. ‘Morning Rupert. How are you?’ Paul says, but gets no reply. He’s come home to pay rent. This is usually done by slipping an envelope under the door of 1A at Copenhagen Street, the Ofiss. But today he’s racing early, so he’s up and about even though it’s only half past five. He’s been spending less and less time under the eaves and more and more time with Miriam in the room at Hampstead. Between that, racing and running things across the city for Mr Morton he’s barely been in the house for weeks. September has become October and Paul feels like he is married to one of his woollen jumpers.

  Rupert looks surprised to see him, ‘Fine, just fine. I’m a little busy right now, could you come back in a while?’

  ‘I’m off to Wood Green, big race weekend coming up. I’m just here to pick up some things, and pay rent. I was wondering, have you seen Silas lately? I’ve got some money for him. Would like to pay off this bike before it breaks you know.’

  Rupert is standing in the corridor, hasn’t opened the office door yet. There are two big sacks leaning against the banister. Rupert moves as to pick them up, then seems to change his mind.

  ‘Need a hand with those?’ Paul asks.

  ‘No, no.’

  ‘Should I just put the rent under the door then?’

  ‘Give it here.’ Without looking inside the envelope, something that surprises Paul, Rupert folds it over in a hurry and stuffs it into his inner pocke
t. But he doesn’t move either to unlock the office or for the sacks. The front door opens and the two bakers walk in. David happy, Henry with black rings around his eyes. Each carrying another sack like the ones at Rupert’s feet on their shoulders, aprons flapping around their legs like hungry lapdogs. Henry shoots Rupert a questioning look, and Rupert drags a hand across his face. He looks up the stairs, at the bags. At Paul, then at Henry, and nods. David stands, sack still on his shoulder, with his forehead leaning against the wall, arms hanging by his sides, eyes closed.

  ‘Come on then Paul. You’ve got time before you go I’m sure,’ Rupert says to Paul. ‘See if you can lift those two,’ he continues with a smirk. Straining, Paul manages and the four of them walk up the stairs to the door of 2C. Rupert gets a key out and Paul notices a new clasp and a padlock.

  ‘Someone has been fiddling with the door. Stolen the knob. Some people.’

  ‘Who would do that?’ asks Henry.

  ‘Probably that man Sorensen upstairs,’ says Rupert getting the lock open.

  ‘So Paul, this is something you don’t see every day.’ He pushes the door open and invites Paul to come and have a look. Paul acts surprised to see the black void. Even plays along when Rupert jokingly pushes him a little in the back.

  ‘When they redug some of the sewage system they came too close to the surface or something under this house. The floor under one of the flats collapsed into the underground. Luckily no one was in. With Silas and Mr Morton’s connections in the insurance world we were able to get a decent amount of money to compensate for the damage.’

  Paul can see there are still pictures hanging up on the wall on the opposite side of the door, and the curtains are still drawn.

  ‘And what are we doing with the bags? Is it flour?’ asks Paul.

  David closes his eyes, Henry looks at his feet. Rupert looks at Paul as if he’s expecting him to say something more, but then he nods and smiles.

  ‘Yes. Yes, that’s what it is. It’s flour. Isn’t that right Henry?’