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.