The Race

by Nina Allan

  “She seems okay,” I said. “Better.”

  “Thanks for helping out, Jen.” He gazed out across the lunges, to where Lim was still running the hurdles. Tash stood immobile, lean and supple as a young tree, her eyes half closed against the sun, which was sinking over the marshes in a fissile incandescence of soap-coloured light. “Lim took two seconds off his PB today. I mean, two whole seconds.”

  “That’s not possible, Del. Not at his age. It must be a fluke.”

  “It’s not, though. Lim knows what’s at stake and he’s going all out. He’s going to win for us, Jen. He knows he has to win, because of Lumey.”

  “What’s Tash told him?” I knew that for all practical purposes the question was meaningless. What Tash knew, Lim would know too, automatically – that’s just a natural part of being a runner. What I was asking, I suppose, was what Del had told Tash.

  “Everything,” Del said. “It’s the safest way.”

  I thought he was taking a risk but it was too late to worry about that now. I sat side by side with my brother, watching the great silver dog course across the wide green sward and thinking for no reason at all about the old days, before Mum ran out on us and when Del and I were still kids. We had been close then, in a way that quickly receded after our mother left. That would probably have happened anyway, of course. Kids grow up, go their separate ways. Back then though it was just Del and me against the world, and we were fearless with it. We’d slink off and kick around the old waste dumps where our father worked, or else bunk off to Hawthorne to hang out with this kid Del knew who lived up there. Rico, his name was, Rico Chavez. Rico had this dog, Saltash. We used to nick stuff out of the abandoned flats.

  I still have something from there, a brass button with a crown on it. From an old army uniform, it looked like. I found it on the floor, under a table. There were a fair few war vets living on the estates then. Most of those old coves are dead now. Sometimes when we were up there gallivanting one of them would come out on to his balcony and yell at us.

  We’d run away laughing but some of them were scary as fuck.

  Del was such a bright kid, but something nagged at him, deep down. A constant anger at the world that made him restless and wouldn’t heal.

  Em reckons it was that restless anger that got Del into dealing glass.

  Tash let Lim complete one final circuit and then called him to her, silently and without a gesture. They came unhurriedly down the field to where we were sitting.

  “Timings are great,” Del said.

  Tash nodded. She looked down at Limlasker, who immediately drew closer to her, leaning his silky body against her legs. Tash rested her hand lightly on the top of his head. “He’s in good shape,” she said. “He’ll do okay.” I could smell her sweat, a bitter scent, rough as tree bark. Runners tend to perspire a lot during a training session, even though they barely move a muscle.

  “Stay for supper, Tash?” Del said.

  Tash shook her head. “We should get back.” I thought of the house she shared with Brit Engstrom, a shack built from breeze blocks and corrugated iron, about three miles out on the Fairlight Road, at the edge of the marshes. Brit used a bicycle to get to and from town, but Tash liked to use the pitted lane as a running track, Limlasker trotting along by her side with his tongue hanging out.

  Brit Engstrom’s hair was very blonde and cut very short. She had a sharp, beaky face, and a scattering of powder-fine freckles across the bridge of her nose. She liked to cook using wild roots and herbs she gathered in the marshes. Claudia thought she was mad, that the plants she used in her recipes would be toxic from seepage, but Brit insisted that so long as you knew where to forage there was no real danger.

  Brit was a freelance photographer. She took pictures of ruined buildings mainly, and abandoned industrial workings – the burned-out music hall, the rubble-strewn interior of the old Sapphire department store, the rusting gasometers and mining machinery at the town’s northern perimeter. She sold a lot of her stuff for good money to advertising and commercial agencies in London. Brit also had a zany sense of humour. I could never quite figure her relationship with Tash – the two were so different – but I liked her a lot.

  Del invited me to stay for supper also, but I said no. I’d had enough of people, and I needed to work. I left Del and Tash to walk down the lunges to the marsh road, while I hiked up to the top of the sward where there was a cut-through to the main road and the Wickham Hill tramway stop. I was home within the hour. There wasn’t much in the fridge, just some leftover potato. What with all the ongoing drama there’d been no time to go shopping. I heated a can of oxtail soup and mixed the potato pieces in with that. I watched the six o’clock news as I ate. I kept expecting them to start talking about a four-year-old girl, found murdered, but in the event there was nothing of that kind. When the news had finished I washed the dishes, and then went back to working on Kiwit’s gloves.

  I placed the completed paper patterns against the flesh side of the leather, pinning them in place as close together as I could without the danger of stretching. Kid leather is expensive, there’s no point wasting any if you can help it. Once I’d cut out the pattern pieces I pinned them together using new pins bought especially for the purpose. While I worked I listened to music, an album by the Argentinean singer Paula Komedia that I’d first heard over at Brit and Tash’s place. Brit told me the songs were based around the great poetical ballads of Saffron Valparaiso’s A Patagonian Odyssey. The CD case contained an insert, with the lyrics in the original Spanish on one side and the English translation on the other. Paula Komedia’s voice was high and sinuous. On some tracks she sang without accompaniment, on others she performed with a backing group – electric and steel guitars, accordion and flute. Listening to her made me forget where I was. When the phone rang towards the end of the last song I jumped a mile.

  I thought it would be Del, calling to check up on me, but it was Em. We hadn’t spoken in weeks, not since he left town, really. He’d left messages on my voicemail once or twice but I hadn’t responded. This was partly because I was still angry with him for leaving. I knew I had no right to feel that way, but I couldn’t help it. I felt abandoned and I was determined to let him know it.

  Mainly though it was because I was afraid. Afraid in case Em’s feelings for me had changed.

  I missed him a lot. I missed his voice and his dry sense of humour, his habit of turning up to cook me meals. Also I missed sex with him. The thought of starting again from the beginning with someone new was both exhausting and depressing.

  I was so pleased to hear his voice, though stupidly I did my best not to show it.

  “Hey,” I said. “How’s it going?”

  “Is it true, Jen?” Em said. “Derrick’s plan for getting hold of the ransom money, I mean?”

  For a second I couldn’t think what he was talking about. I had no idea that Em and Del were still in touch even.

  “It’s all right,” Em said. “Derrick’s told me everything. But you have to talk to him, Jen, he won’t listen to me. You have to tell him not to go through with this lunacy of his, that it’s too much of a risk. Tell him I’ll lend him the money, that I can have it in his bank account tomorrow. Can you do that?”

  “I can try,” I said.

  “Good. That’s all I’m asking.”

  There was a short silence. I was still finding it hard to take in, that this was Em on the phone, that we were actually talking. But the longer he stayed on the line the more it began to feel like the old times, before I met Ali and made such a mess of everything.

  “Is this what you and Del rowed about, Em?” I said at last. “Del dealing glass, I mean? You found out and told him to stop and he refused?” It was an idea that hadn’t occurred to me until that moment but it made perfect sense.

  “It was one of the things, yes. But don’t worry about that now, it’s not important.”

  “I still don’t get it. I mean, Del hates glass. He’s always ranting on about h
ow much he hates the street dealers. None of this makes any sense.”

  I could hear Em’s breathing, so close it was as if he were there in the room with me. I felt like crying.

  Em sighed. “I think he saw it as a game,” he said. “In the beginning he did, anyway. You know how much Derrick loathes the police. He liked the idea of making fools of them. It was only later on that he began to understand how much money he could make. I think the whole business was a prank that spiralled out of control.”

  I thought there was probably a lot of truth in what Em said. Del had to have something to kick against: first our mother and then the teachers and now the cops. And Del did hate the cops. He thought they were all either thugs or yes men.

  “None of that matters now, anyway,” Em insisted. “The only thing that matters is getting Lumey back.”

  “I miss you, Em,” I said.

  “I miss you too. Let’s talk properly when all this is over. Can I call you then?”

  “I’d like that.”

  I pressed the receiver hard against my ear and then ended the call. I went to bed soon after. I put the Paula Komedia album on again, letting the music unfurl itself around me in the dark as I brought myself off, light, barely-touching strokes at first, then right in deep, clenching myself around my fingers as I thought of Em with his schoolmaster’s cock, of Paula Komedia as she appeared on the CD cover, her untidy waist-length hair, of the vast South American plains that I had never seen but only read about, heavy with horses, bright with pampas grass, clean and dry and yellow to the horizon.

  ~*~

  I woke early, around five. I waited till seven and then called Del. I came straight to the point.

  “I spoke to Em last night,” I said. “He told me to tell you he’d lend you the money. He says staking everything on the race is too much of a risk.”

  Del said nothing at first. For a moment I thought he’d put the phone down.

  “Are you still there, Del?” I said.

  “Yes, I’m still here. I just wish that little prick would mind his own business.”

  “Don’t call him that.”

  “I’ll call him whatever I like. What the fuck’s he doing, calling you anyway?”

  “I think you should listen to him – he’s trying to help you.”

  “The fuck he is. He doesn’t have a clue what’s at stake here. Not a clue.”

  “It didn’t sound like that to me.”

  “Listen, Jen, just drop this, will you? I’m not having Emerson sodding Rayner calling the tune on me and I’m certainly not going to land myself in debt to him. I’ve told him that already. If you want to do me a favour you can call him back and tell him to piss off.”

  He sounded furious by then, ready to blow. I had no idea what could have provoked such a reaction, but I knew that anything I tried to say in Em’s favour would only make things worse.

  “Okay,” I said. “Steady on.”

  “I mean it, Jen.”

  “I hear you.”

  He calmed down after that. He told me Claudia had asked if I’d come over at the weekend. “She’s having a painting party or something. God knows what that’s supposed to be.”

  I said I’d be round at some point but ended the call without being more specific. I felt furious with Del, not just for calling Em names but because I thought he was behaving irresponsibly. There was nothing new in that, but now was not the time for him to start throwing his weight about.

  I was beginning to see that for Del, winning the Delawarr and showing the supply cartel who was boss was in danger of becoming an end in itself. He didn’t want to be beaten. Neither did he want to go cap in hand to Em to get himself off the hook.

  It was all so stupid, the same kind of impulse that landed him in this mess in the first place, but there was no point worrying about that now. The only question that counted at this stage was whether Del’s plan had any chance of succeeding.

  Partly this would depend on chance – weather conditions, the quality of the field – but what it finally came down to was Limlasker. Del seemed to believe Limlasker could do it, that he would give everything.

  I hoped he was right.

  ~*~

  Time went a bit strange after that. I phoned Claudia every day, but as the race drew closer our conversations seemed to become more and more strained. I came to dread them, to be honest. Claudia chattered away about Lumey’s homecoming as if it were an established fact, instead of just one of a number of possibilities. I did my best to keep the pretence going but it began to feel wrong, not just putting a brave face on the situation but an actual lie. More and more often there came moments when I found myself wanting to drop the act and tell her the truth the way it was and damn the consequences.

  In the end I kept with the programme but it wasn’t easy. The idea that Lumey had been gone now for almost a fortnight, with no word or news or reassurance that she was okay – that was something we were all ignoring, even Del.

  Del was never in when I called, so I didn’t have to talk to him. That at least was a relief.

  I worked on Kiwit’s gloves, mainly. At the end of a week she came for her fitting. Some gantiers don’t bother with a preliminary fitting – they trust to their original measurements and make alterations at the end as and when they are needed. I find the prelim essential though, an important part of every commission. It’s not so much to make sure the gloves fit – if you’ve done your prep work properly that shouldn’t be in question – as to get a proper feel for how they will look. I like to see how the colour of the leather suits the client’s skin tone, the way the gauntlet hugs the contours of the wearer’s arm. These sound like small things, perhaps, but they are crucial, the kind of subtle details that demonstrate the difference between a good craftsperson and a fine artist.

  I always look forward to the prelim because it’s then that I get to find out how well I’ve understood the wishes of my client. I never get tired of that moment, and it never stops scaring me. I knew Angela Kiwit was pleased the moment she saw the colour of the leather. She hadn’t expected me to understand so exactly what she wanted. Either that or she thought that getting such a perfect colour match would prove impossible. But for me that had been the easy part. I had the colour right – I knew that already.

  “Don’t worry if they feel a bit loose,” I said. “Most of this stitching is just temporary. I won’t put the actual seams in until we’ve checked the fitting.” I unrolled the right-hand gant from its muslin and slid it gently on to Angela Kiwit’s outstretched arm. For the lining I’d picked out a silk in eau de Nil. Not the most obvious choice, perhaps – my first thought with that neon blue had been flame red – but after thinking it over for a few days the idea had begun to grow on me. Red would form a stronger counterpoint, but eau de Nil would be more subtle, not so much thrusting the blue into the spotlight as giving it depth by lighting it from within. I had the silk I wanted already, an offcut I’d picked up on spec from Romer’s remnants bin months before. It was expensive but I liked it so much I couldn’t resist it and I knew I’d find a use for it eventually. The silk’s base colour – the softest and most subtle of greyish greens – was stippled all over with many dozens of tiny markings in a variety of other colours: violets and greys and mauves, colours that were similar to the green in tone yet formed a stunning contrast with the overall background. Some of the colour flecks looked random, like tiny ink blots or paint spots. Others, when you examined them closely, were formed to look like flowers or snowflakes. The overall effect was like a collage, or an artist’s doodle. The silk was utterly gorgeous, a real one-off.

  With some types of racing gant the design allows for the top part of the gauntlet to be folded back, forming a deep cuff that serves as a showcase for the lining fabric. I’ll sometimes use a different fabric for that part of the lining, as a deliberate contrast, but in the case of Kiwit’s gloves I had decided against this. With her strong, very muscular forearms I thought a plainer style would suit her better.
Instead of cuffs I inserted a six-inch zip into the outer seam of each glove. The zips, made from solid silver, were of a striking and unusual design. Not only were they decorative in themselves, but if you wore them part way open the tops of the gauntlets could be folded back to reveal the lining.

  It might seem like a waste, to spend so much time and effort on a glove’s lining when mostly only the wearer would know it was there. But so far as I was concerned that was the beauty of it. The lining of Kiwit’s gloves was like a secret weapon. Anyone of a more fanciful turn of mind might see it as a symbol for the innate talent of the runner herself. For me it was the hidden lining, as much as anything, that made the gloves special, and I hoped that Angela Kiwit would feel the same.

  “Oh my God,” Kiwit said. “They’re amazing.” She twisted her arm gingerly from side to side, as if she was afraid that any sudden movement might interfere with or destroy what she was seeing. I knew this nervousness would soon disappear, that within a day or two of taking the gloves home her caution would evaporate and she would inhabit them as their owner and not their slave. But just for the moment that look of shyness gave me a feeling of intense pleasure. It was proof that I was doing my job. Not that I needed proof, but it was nice to have.

  “They fit well,” I said. I lifted her arm towards me, checking first the line of the seam and then the overall flow. The long and narrow sheath lent the glove a heightened elegance, whilst the plain design seemed to emphasize the power and strength of Kiwit’s physique.

  This was what I had intended, and I felt satisfied with the result. “We can take it off now,” I said. I undid the zip, then slipped the glove free of her arm and wrapped it carefully once again in its muslin sleeve. Angela Kiwit watched me in silence. She seemed reluctant to lose sight of the glove and that made me smile. People condemn the desire to own things as simple greed, but sometimes it is more than that, less base. Sometimes it’s the only way we can convince ourselves we might live forever.

  “They’re amazing,” Kiwit repeated. I found her hard to make out, to be honest. If you saw her on the street without her gloves on you’d most likely mistake her for an out-of-towner – she had that strut about her, that sense that not only was she used to having money but that she expected to have even more of it in the future. But in those moments when she forgot herself she had what all runners have: not just the pent up energy, coiled like a snake at the heart of her, but that peculiar absence of being, the sense that what you were seeing was just a foil, that the essential Angela Kiwit resided elsewhere.