6

Leonard woke early. Turning on his side, he saw in the pale light Tolson’s face latticed by the spokes and frame of his bike; the smell was of some fetid monster that had stabled with them all night.

Tolson didn’t move. Even so, there seemed a certain awareness under the shut eyes, the black fans of the lashes alive as if concealing laughter. There was something stunning, deliberately ugly about the face, split into sections between the ribs of the bike, each part sullen and heavily relaxed. Tolson didn’t seem to sleep; he seemed fully awake, as though aware that Leonard was watching him.

Leonard stood up over the joist of his bed, his head stooped under the roof of the tent, bowed forward. At the end of the bed was Tolson’s suitcase, torn apart at the seams, his clothes spilt out like entrails. His footmarks were all over the tent, and on the roof which he’d been kicking, imprisoned by the rain the previous afternoon. Between the two beds were empty beer bottles, a guttered oil lamp and, spreading across the muddy wheel tracks, violet stains that had dripped steadily from the bike during the previous four nights. Tolson’s bed was surrounded by balls of paper which he’d crumpled up before going to sleep and, all over the ground, cigarette butts. It was as if he were just a piece of his own debris, his great steel bike as strong as eight horses skulking in the shadows of the tent like an intense part of him, waiting for him, watching for him, another segment of his huge body. Leonard lifted his clothes from the line by his head and pulled them on.

He slid his feet into his boots and crawled under Tolson’s hanging clothes to the flap. Crouching down he wound up the small portable gramophone. The handle creaked loudly in the tent. He moved the needle to the edge of the record and for a moment longer watched Tolson’s heavy face. Then, as it started to play ‘What do you want if you don’t want money?’ he squeezed out under the brailing.

The dawn air was live. The heavy rain of the night had left the air clean and the limestone hills on either side of the valley were shrouded in deep white mists, reddening and yellowing already where the sun splattered over the escarpment bank. The stump of the castle tower was now indistinguishable from the rock scars overlooking the dale.

The square of marquees surrounding the field were stiff and white. Like whales cast up on a beach, they lay about the field empty and disused, the carcases taut with rain and dew, the guy-lines strained at their moorings. Stakes had been torn out with the contraction of the canvas. He picked up a sledgehammer from a row standing by the blackened tent and, his slight figure curved to the weight, walked across the glistening field.

He slackened the guys and knocked the aluminium rods back in, his hands clenched round the hammer neck until the points were bedded firmly in the ground. His arm trembled with the weight.

He stood back and paused, his hands wrapped round the hammer-shaft. Then he swayed, half-folded, and swung the stone weight over his head and down on the penny-size top of the stakes. He worked slowly, the hammer swung over not by strength but by a nervous litheness that seemed to spring from his hips. It seemed an inner convulsion that manoeuvred the heaviness through the air.

Beyond a row of lime-trees a dog was barking, in the village, and on the moors curlews called with a strangled cry. Then the music stopped.

Leonard stood up, resting the hammer. For a second the needle wailed over the record, then silence. A minute later ‘Mack the Knife’ started. Leonard gazed up at the tent. He waited a moment. Then, hurriedly, he turned and walked down to the river at the opposite end of the field.

It rushed down from its mountain coldness, clear and hard, folding over and round the torn rocks. It had a quiet ferocity. He picked up a stone, clenched it briefly in his hand, then threw it in, almost lunging at the water which burst and sprang apart, the ripples arcing over the smooth surface, breaking against the rocks before they were absorbed in the deepening currents by the far bank. The river surged morosely between the grey rocks. Nothing moved but the water.

He lifted the hammer and swung it down on a boulder. He glanced up once more at the tent. He brought the hammer down again, more fiercely. The grey skin split to a yellow-brown core. The hammer cracked bleakly in the still air, the steel echoing off the stone surface, then crushing, slurring, as it bit between the fragments. The splinters flicked into the surface of the river. The boulder was crushed.

Then just as suddenly he bent forward. He coughed, then knelt down casually and half-supported himself with one arm. His breathlessness contracted his whole figure. He coughed heartfully into the grass, heaving forward so violently that eventually he lay down. His forehead rested against the wet grass. Again the music suddenly stopped. He hurriedly pushed himself to his feet and, without glancing up, scrambled to the edge of the river. He stretched his head out over the water, his hands thrust down into the pebbly bed. Then he drank with short, rapid breaths. When he climbed back up the bank the coughing had almost stopped. The air rasped in his throat and he spat out the phlegm awkwardly. He seemed angry.

He’d almost reached the tent when the motor-bike started and blue exhaust fumes drifted under the brailing. The engine revved explosively. Leonard immediately dropped the hammer and unlaced the flap.

Tolson sat astride the bike, his broad back curving, suddenly relaxed as he sensed Leonard’s entry. He exploded the machine in the tent, the metallic apparatus shuddering within its rubber frame. Its fumes shrouded the place. He throttled back the engine and, without looking up, began to heave himself and the machine out backwards.

His bare toes curled under the gear. The bike turned. For a moment his foot held the lever, trembling with the bike, his head twisted away from the acrid fumes, then he lurched forward. The rear wheel spun out a cord of mud.

The engine screamed as the bike disappeared amongst the empty tents, then moaned, fell back, as Tolson came up between the marquees and the stone wall. Suddenly the sound was muffled, swallowed up as the bike ran inside the large beer tent. An intent insect, it shot out roaring, and made straight for Leonard. The engine opened up, the bike spinning over the mounds. Tolson’s face was concealed by the deep stoop of his body. He lay on the machine. The tyres seized. They skidded, ripping the grass, suddenly immobile. His foot came down, sliding in the mud, his body wrenched forward, the bike hurrying towards the tent with an impersonal momentum. It stopped within touch of Leonard. Tolson glanced up at him. Then he smiled, throttling the engine. His eyes were screwed up from the smoke of a cigarette.

‘How about a ride round the showground, Len?’

He looked down at the engine, fingering it as he tilted the machine between his thighs.

‘How about it, then? I see you’ve been round resetting the stakes.’

‘What about some breakfast?’ Leonard hadn’t moved.

‘We’ll get that. The Show won’t start for a couple of hours.’ Tolson shook the bike from side to side, swirling the fuel in the tank. ‘It won’t kill you. Least, it’s evens it won’t.’ He waited, twisting the throttle grip, booming the engine, and shivering slightly now as the early morning penetrated his thin clothes.

Leonard climbed on behind.

Tolson waited a second while he slotted his hands round the strut, then they were flung forward.

The machine sprang forward. It sprayed through the muddy earth towards the river. Tolson saw an avenue under a row of guy-lines and, ducking low, took the bike underneath.

Leonard crouched against his massive back, his mouth pulled open. The ropes clipped his hair. As they came out onto open ground Tolson’s shoulders expanded, the bike bursting forward, drumming over the tight grassy mounds and bouncing hugely under their weight. His body had relaxed, holding the machine beneath him, its rigidity vibrating into his body and into the limbs gripping his sides. They were one piece. The wheels bucked and twisted as they slid between the rows of stakes, then leaned over, the tyres driving, compressed, into the mud tracks, up and over the thick clay ridges and ruts, swinging from side to side, Tolson’s foot groping out like a discarded limb. The bike moaned into its madness, crazed by its own scream. It raced by the high stone wall, the buttress catching Tolson’s arm, glancing, and the frozen assemblage sliding and the engine wailing before the bike came round, thundered, splaying mud in wide screes, fanned out. Beneath him, Leonard felt the savage rip of the tyres burning against the wet grass.

They rose, curled over, shuddering on the even mounds of the lower field, then dipping. The bike turned, dropping, stooped over the slipping grass and braking into the broad front of the beer tent. Their bodies were crushed together, bent down, turning across the length of the trestled bar. Tolson edged the bike round with his bare feet and in the gloomy interior revved the engine. It shuddered a moment in the clutch, then drove them past the tent poles and screening. Leonard closed his eyes: he clung to the figure between his legs, the crescendo of metal throbbing on the canvas behind him. Then they were in the daylight again, and the cold air.

Tolson cut the engine and the bike moaned to itself, softly; it jolted and slowed towards their tent. He braked quickly and Leonard’s head creased against his back. He got off and went into the tent. A moment later he came out with the Primus stove and the fuel can and started to fill it. He was breathing heavily, almost panting, his crouched legs trembling as he stooped forward.

Tolson watched him a while. Then he pulled the bike onto its stand and took the stove from him and lit it. His pyjamas and feet were spattered with mud, his right foot bloodied from fumbling with the gears. He squatted down leisurely and pumped the stove. The bike moved slightly on its stand, its front forks turning a moment like a limb at rest.

Tolson’s thick hands waved over the flame, and his face, reddened now under tight, black curls, turned up to Leonard. His eyes had a curious, half-startled look; then he stood up. His stare was suddenly diffident, pointedly casual, and he glanced back at the stove.

‘Did you bring the bacon?’

‘I couldn’t find it. It’s somewhere in your mess.’

‘Oh, yes?’ He held his hands together for warmth. ‘I’ll have a look, then. It can’t be far.’ He stated it quietly. ‘You can fetch some water if you like.’ He went into the tent and started searching amongst the debris of his belongings.

Leonard picked up the pan and walked down to the river. He was trembling. Out of the hill-mist taut sails of pink cloud bulged into the overhead blueness. On the road down the valley a man cycled slowly, looking over the stone wall at the show-ground.

In the grass by the river was the shape of his body pressed out in the short, broad blades. He stopped, gazing down at it for some time: it was narrow and small, crumpled. Then he stepped in the centre of it and dug in his boots, tearing them across it. He worked intently. In a short while the grass was squashed and torn, the pressed shape quickly trampled out of all recognition.

Tolson was hunched over the stove as he came back with the water. From half way down the field he could smell the bacon frying and see Tolson sawing the bread into large, square blocks and laying them out on a newspaper. Tolson picked up one of the wedges in his thick fingers and dipped it into the sweet-smelling fat, chewing it while he worked. The muscle was taut and mobile in his face. Leonard let his shadow lie across him.

‘Your bike’s sinking in the mud,’ he said after a while.

‘It’s all right.’ Tolson gave it a quick look as though he knew it would never betray him. He turned the sizzling bacon over.

Then he glanced up at Leonard shyly. He’d flushed. He stared round at the deserted hills and the moor, then he stood up. ‘Shall we leave this, then?’ He leaned forward slightly, his eyes intent. ‘Shall we?’

Leonard didn’t answer. He frowned, and glanced down at the fire. As he turned to the tent, however, he saw Tolson stoop swiftly and remove the pan from the flame. Then he felt his hands across his shoulders.

‘We better get undressed,’ Tolson said. He secured the tent flap and turned quickly, staring at Leonard in the faint interior. ‘If we take everything off we’ll be as warm as anything under the blankets. Shall we do that?’ He begun to take off his thin, mud-stained pyjamas, watching Leonard closely, almost threateningly. Slowly Leonard began to remove his jacket, still gazing down at the ground.

A moment later, naked, Tolson came and touched him. ‘Hold me. Hold me!’ he said, his lips buried in the hair behind Leonard’s ear.