Then we are in the countryside. Wide green pastures and the run of a smooth road. Paris has gone, not even an echo of its noise hangs in the air. An hour, two hours. We have joined other riders. Individuals riding on their own: isolés, provincial and trade teams. The pack smells of coffee and skin and leather. I look over my shoulder and expect to see evidence of the capital, but there is nothing, just the country.
Opperman sits behind Osborne’s wheel and turns and gives me a wink and I go. I ride to the front and try to get a sense of the mood. I listen to them breathe, watch the pack twitch at the movements of others. For the moment there is a lazy breathy air about us. No one is talking, no one is willing to think out loud and nobody makes a break. I sweat and feel the drips fall onto my thighs. I watch my fellow riders and I’m amazed by some men’s ability not to lose water as they blaze through the sun.
Farmland and trees hanging their greenery over the road. The paving alternates between gravel and concrete. In the villages the cobblestones begin once more and our bodies jar as if shaken by a distant hand. The French wave to the crowds lining the streets and eventually we do the same.
We jump from our bikes beside a river and run to tables strewn with foods. Bananas and bread, apples and coffee. There’s chops and they taste muttony, but we swallow them down anyway. Twenty or thirty grown men with fat glistening on their chins. Monsieur France is there, he’s saying: ‘You must hurry. Hurry and hurry.’
Soon we are back in the race and France rides in the car behind us with Bruce Small (Hubert’s friend from Melbourne) and our interpretor, René. Placed on the bonnet is a Union Jack and strapped to the back a kangaroo. Toys for tourists. This is our support as we chew off the day’s kilometres, 207 in total. They unravel, distinctly, as if words spoken between two cities. We trade positions, shift places in that long missive, amazed at the people we have become.
Rain flattens the dust.
The format is a time trial, a team time trial. We race the clock, though we don’t know what it says. Any riders that come alongside are potentially quite some time behind us, or ahead. The lot of us make a clattering sound when we hit a crossroad made of cobblestones. We forget who is where and it is only when Bruce Small comes alongside that we have information. He shouts with one hand on the steering wheel and the other holding a cone, a hailer that supposedly amplifies his voice but to my ear makes it thin and inaudible. Percy seems to understand the fragments and relays time and distance.
We find ourselves passing stragglers: one from Alcyon, two out of Alleluia, riders who have fallen behind their packs. We overtake them as they dawdle. Slow like campers. I hear Ernie shout out, ‘Pitch a tent, ya filthy frogs.’ I barely understand him but enjoy the titter that runs through our group. Riders and groups of riders jockey for position, elbows and hips bang. People swear in their own sweet voices and riders threaten to break away. There are grunts, noises of animals as one rider makes gestures and feints, puts on a fake rush to lure riders out. And some go. Most stay, waiting.
Outside of Lisieux the Louvet team ride straight through us and Percy shouts and Hubert goes with them and I try to follow. I pace him for an hour until my legs start to lose rhythm and I fall off to the rear. At Caen I come in five minutes behind him, 300 yards ahead of Percy and Harry. 19th. There are still 150 others on the clock behind me. Opperman receives flowers and kisses. We come together in the evening to discuss and unwrap the day. We talk of tactics, of our bodies. There is the burning sensation and a sharp smell in small successes.
‘You know what I’m doing?’ Percy says. ‘You know what I’m thinking? I’m thinking ’bout Louvet.’ He’s got a mouthful and stops to swallow. He’s heavy set for a cyclist, jokes that he got lost on the way to footy training and ended in these strange levels of hell. ‘How close they get to each other. I’m thinking –’
‘They’re French, they don’t care about the smell,’ Ernie says. ‘They’ll ride up their own arses.’ There’s mud under his eye, has been there for hours.
‘I’m being serious. I’m gunna ask if they take passengers next time they come through. “Excuse me dear sir, would you mind awfully –”’
‘Use your elbows,’ Ernie says. ‘Just get in there.’
‘Just the way they went through us,’ Percy says. I look over at him and see that he is thinking, perhaps thinking over what we know. The facts of energy. The fact of our effort and how the effort we expend on poor technique is the effort they expel riding at a rate faster than we can summon. We are aware of this: we make a rattle in our ride which could be a fraction of a horsepower pulling us through. He won’t blame his build for his slow pace, but seems certain about the French, how they understand form in a way we couldn’t hope to know.
Harry taps me on my shoulder as I tear bread with my teeth. It is rubbery and I squint at him as he speaks. ‘Tomorrow, we go together. If he goes,’ and he nods at Opperman, ‘we make sure of it. All right?’
I nod and drink water. ‘I’m happy with that.’
‘The way they went through us,’ Percy repeats. ‘I just, I just – I’d hate to know the place that kind of discipline leads to.’
‘Mate, they’re starting their own monastery,’ Ernie says. ‘Them and Alcyon. You’re their first –’ and Ernie has his old mate in a headlock for a second. They do this: rough-housing the love out of the late evening.
‘But the thing is,’ Harry says, ‘if he goes and I’m not there, you go, right?’ I watch him for a long time and realise he is being serious. His expression some kind of rule of measurement against my slowness to respond. I nod and lightly punch his shoulder. A friendly punch. The act of a young man too close to caring to have anything intelligent to say about it.
After eating I leave the men and walk.