Last Race
by J. B. Pick

 

 

Even through the flurry and determination of the start he knew: something's wrong. Not with the bike. The bike was alive and eager, the exhaust-note crisp and clear, the trees, faces, houses cracked past and were gone, the corners raced towards him, exploded and died behind, the road streamed too fast beneath the wheels, everything seemed too easy.

His mind drifted too far above the race; he was riding in a dream. Fine, of course, unreal upon an unreal monster to measure the corner, change down, brake, lean smoothly over, accelerate, change up and soar away devouring road, all with the silky ease of instinct-until the blind second when he hit a patch of oil, another rider spilled in front or the wheels began to slide.

He was holding the lead, but how he didn't know, for the others were alive in concentration, he was half awake, half dreaming, half here and half nowhere; when the test came he wouldn't pass it. He strove deliberately to wake up, to become keyed and keen, conscious of real road, real trees, real machines and real competitors. Instead he found himself thinking: nothing matters.

Always during a race everything but the race itself became unreal: the tension, preparation, superstition, restless, sleepless anxiety, hope, fear, worry, impatience which preceded it seemed ridiculous burst bubbles. Even while he was enduring these preliminary tortures he held at the back of his mind the thought: the race will start, then all this is swept in the dustbin. But now the race, too, was unreal...

In the past the race had been a difficult but familiar job; he accepted what it offered. If the machine failed bitter disappointment was soon swallowed by relief: he was safely out of it without having disgraced himself, without letting Dad Palmer down.

After all, he hadn't expected to win. He had been told that should he win against an international field there would be a place for him in the Calvis works team. He wanted to win, but knew he would never do it. He rode as he must and because he must, that was all... He was bewildered by the frightening difference between this race and the others he had known.

The race wasn't a familiar job today, it wasn't even real, he was drifting above reality like a seagull above human events. He felt that this strange detachment was a disguise for something sinister, that a trap would spring open and destroy him. Never before had he led a first-class field through the initial lap. Never before had he felt so distant and indifferent. "I must be ill," he thought. But he didn't feel ill. He simply felt far away.

If he tried to explain this extraordinary sensation to Phyllis afterwards, he thought, she would never understand. How pleased she must be now to know he was in the lead. Little fool. She pleaded with him before every event to give up racing, and whenever he did well, she quietly, infuriatingly boasted about him to a hundred uninterested and insignificant people.

Three nights ago he had lain awake worrying as the moon rolled past the window. Phyllis said in a small, clear voice:

"Can't you sleep?"

"No."

"It's the race, isn't it?"

"No. Not just the race."

"You worry so much. You're so tense. I wish you'd give up!"

"Don't be daft. I'm tense before every race; so's everyone else; it doesn't matter."

"But if it scares you, why go on?"

He drew a deep breath and said slowly: "Racing's my life. I've got to keep trying."

"Why? Why have you got to keep trying?"

"Listen, Phyl, Dad Palmer raced for years and never won. He looked after me since I was six, didn't he? I owe everything to him. I owe the garage to him. He always said: one day we'll win a big race."

"You were a boy, then. That's a boy's idea!"

"Not to him it isn't. I've got to keep trying."

The silence lasted so long he thought she had fallen asleep until suddenly she said: "Bill! If you won, would you give it up? Would you give it up then?"

He sighed heavily. "Yes."

 

Now he forgot Phyl as the thought struck home: "I'm leading Jamieson." Surely that couldn't be true. Jamieson's name never appeared in print without the word 'brilliant' before it. His name rarely appeared in print at all. When it did appear there were no adjectives, and no comments. But Jamieson was in the race, all right. And he was leading the race. Then where was Jamieson? He must be leading Anzetti, too. Ever since the first surging minute he had felt his machine eating up the empty course, as if in solitary practice.

Awning Corner ran towards him, and memory said: This one scares me. He had no time to think: change down, brake, take it well out, be careful. All this must be done automatically. He was mildly surprised to find that he changed down a full second later than usual, and hardly braked at all.

The thought flashed through his mind: I'm going too fast; it's too late now. A blur of faces, the road suddenly real, the roadside wall, blank and sliding away, grit in the sun, a rush of panic-this is it and then upright, flat down, and the bike streaking free up the hill. "I took it on the inside," he said to himself, in a daze of astonishment and knew he could never do that again.

Only Jamieson, Anzetti and Madden took Awning Corner on the inside, and Madden was crazy. Because he had done it once they would all expect him to do it again, and he couldn't do it again.

As he bored past the Pits he glanced in the ludicrous hope of seeing their faces, but saw nothing except the code signal telling him: One. He made no acknowledgment, accepted his leadership with-out surprise or conviction. He thought dreamily: Odd I'm not worrying about the bike.

Always he had ridden surrounded by a swarm of insect fears: At least I've got to Parson's Cross and she's still running; but what if a tyre blows; last year the chain broke; the jet got choked in Ulster; the mag packed up that time in Belgium. always listening for the first suggestive sound to warn him: She's not going right, now you're done, now you're free for this race anyhow. He felt free now, but in a vastly different way, dangerously free from all responsibility, free from reality itself.

When the drizzle began he thought: Anzetti won't like that. Then the idea took shape in his mind like a statue in the centre of a plain: You won’t get through alive. Wet road. Awning Corner taken on the inside. A death-trap. A slide… the wall… darkness. That’s what this strange detachment had meant. He felt calmly indifferent. The idea of taking Awning Corner on the outside refused to solidify.

He thought dully of disaster, then of Phyllis – and dismissed her image easily. It was the same in every race. To be parted from her in the normal course of daily life was a torment; as soon as a race started she became a chatter in a vacuum, a nest of useless emotion....

The bike took off over the hump of Farmer's Bridge and he knew he was travelling faster than he ever had before. The bike seemed charged with fiercer vitality the farther he relaxed into his dream. He thought: Plenty of competent riders go haywire and put in a storming lap before they pile up. But that was hysteria. None of those fellows ever had this disease - vague indifference.

Slowly he grew aware of physical dis-comfort: wet goggles, blurred vision; wet gloves, cold hands; his whole body chilled, the muscles of arms and shoulders sore. His mind remained unaffected. As he neared Awning Corner for the second time the bubble in which he felt himself enclosed grew larger and larger and soared like a balloon. He had a vision of his own figure riding across a grey, illimitable, featureless landscape; a feeling of nullity invaded him, and he thought: When the bike stops, when the race is over, everything's over. He went into Awning Corner at a cracking pace and tore it clean across on the inside, without braking at all.

The road shone black, the stones of the wall glistened, mackintoshes blurred past, a battalion of scared eyes and he was flaring away, the wet road sizzling beneath the tyres. "There's no sense in anything." he thought. "There never was, and I always knew it. I never cared about anything but racing; what's the sense in racing?" He no longer knew. He welted past the Pit in a spray of moisture and the code signal told him Jamieson lay eight seconds behind. Two more laps to go.

Out of a blankness of wet speed came the image of his son as he blundered plumply into the workshop and stood wobbling on sausage-like legs as he watched them working on the engine. The boy's eyes were wide and solemn; then he extended a podgy hand and awarded his father a fat punch on the shoulder, beaming with the jovial inanity of eighteen months. Johnson said: "We could never beat the works bikes, Bill. Why the hell I try at it beats me blue. We haven't a butterfly's chance in a thunderstorm."

Now Johnson's words were blown clean away by the wind but the boy's beaming smile remained with him, remained real.

For the first time came the fear: "I'm going to wake up,” and he knew the trap was sprung. He sensed, without letting himself clarify the intuition: I mustn't wake up; if I wake up, I'll lose. Concentrated, tense, determined he could never beat Jamieson, for Jamieson's concentration and determination were harder, keener, and nearer the bone than his. That was why Jamieson always won. Jamieson was keyed higher.

And he recognised now, with growing distress, that he had begun to hope that he might win. I mustn't hope, he thought. If he hoped to win, he would lose. His only chance was indifference.

But the very effort to hold the dream helped to disperse it. The exhaust note, the scream of the wind, the buzz of the chain, the whining tyres, the rain whipping his face, the blurring goggles, the sheeted road, the flash of sudden sunlight were all real, and growing closer. “God help me,” he said, ready to weep. And he thought: I can’t lose. I can’t go back to being fifth and sixth and seventh. I’d rather die. His daily life seemed a vision of purgatory. To lose would be to fall back into it like a thirst-crazed man into the dead desert sand. If he lost the race he had lost everything. Wrapped in dreamy indifference he had approached the climax of his life without noticing it. That was the trap.

Indifference was dangerous enough. but a tense effort to hold Jamieson would be suicidal. He would lose his nerve, or stiffen up, make a mistake, smash the gearbox, crash or if he didn't crash, superstitions would crowd in on him, the bike would feel their weight, the clutch would begin to slip, the tyre strip, any-thing, everything, disaster, ignominy, an intolerable, deadly disappointment.

And surely Jamieson must be gaining every minute. It wasn't possible that he couldn't pass. Jamieson was simply playing with him. Anzetti, too. All of them. Yes, he could hear the note of another engine now. It could only be Jamieson. No, that bike was ahead, not behind.

A slim pencil along the tank of a mis-firing Canfield. He was about to lap Jerry Wilson, the last man in the race. He had often fought for eighth, ninth or tenth place with Wilson. Now he passed him as if the Canfield were standing still.

The sight of Wilson seemed to bring him nearer normal human life. But he could still hear another exhaust note. Jamieson, of course. Jamieson was waiting to take him. The attack on his nerves began. "I can't do it," he said. "I'm alive now, and can't do it."

The house whose wall hit the road just before Awning Corner came at him like a live monster. He heard himself go through the gears without any consciousness of action. “I can’t see,” je groaned. The world was formless, and misted in grey. The wall sprang up, the dark road swayed close, the back wheel seemed to slide away… “I’m going”… And the bike was screaming up the hill, free and faster than ever.

For half a lap he rode in a stupor of automatism, conscious only of the singing wind, the solid roar of the exhaust. He saw Jamieson’s front wheel beside his own rear wheel. A sudden terrible exhilaration seized him. “You swine,” he shouted mentally at Jamieson. “I’ll kill you for this, I’ll kill you!”

He felt weak and terrified. He thought: I'm going mad. I'm possessed by the Devil. Or by the race. I'm not built for this. Jamieson is, he can always win. I can only do it once. This is the only race I can ever win. Now I've GOT to win. Now or never. And as the bike became airborne over Farmer's Bridge: If he can beat me, he can beat the Devil. He had a vision of the Devil, flat along the tank of a huge Calvis, tail straight in the wind.

Jamieson went past him. A huge, tearing rage swept him. The bike wouldn't go any faster. There was nothing he could do. Johnson was right: however religiously tuned, his machine could never beat the latest works-entered machine. Jamieson was winning because he always won. He could do nothing but kill himself, since he couldn't kill Jamieson.

Then he saw Jamieson brake for Awning Corner. "He can't take it as fast as I can," he shouted to his fears and slammed into the bend with an exploding sense of desperation. There was a juggle of wheels, a momentary slide, a clash and separation of exhaust notes and he knew without surprise that he had gone into the corner ahead of Jamieson and came out of it with a good length to spare, and drawing away. Jamieson could still catch him, but he could still win.

The exhilaration was huge - and suddenly replaced by a dull ache of melancholy. Phyllis and the boy swam before his mind's eye and disappeared, followed working on Stimson's old Morris; breakfast; dinner; tea; the daily round; the next race. "So this is it," he thought. "This is it.”

"The end of everything. I'd never win again. Next year-failure, even with a works Calvis, I couldn't stick it - running fifth or sixth on a works bike. Dad Palmer's slow grin covering black disappointment.. No. Never again. Now or never." The words Now or Never seemed to repeat themselves again and again in his head. Wide open and lower still.

Jamieson coming, falling back, coming. Exhaust notes clashing. Buzzing tyres, a stream of spray, faces, the engine's roar growing strained and desperate. He took the chequered flag a length ahead of Jamieson. Johnson, Dad Palmer, Phyllis were clustering, clutching, patting, pressing round him. Cameras. Someone was crying. Eyes in faces, distant and unreal.

"God, boy," some familiar person said, and the voice was strange. Dad Palmer, was it? "God, boy, I've never been so damn scared in my life!"

"It's yours!" Johnson said. "The whole world's yours. Calvis will be all over you. They'll break their necks get-ting here. You beat Jamieson, Bill, do you hear me? Wake up, man, you beat Jamieson on a works-entered Calvis, do you know that? You beat him. With our bike. We beat him! I'll never be the same man again. Never. I'm a king. No, blast me, I'm an emperor…

Yes, Phyl was the one crying, tears slipping down her face in swift procession, and she didn't know they were there.

"This is just the beginning," Dad Palmer went on. "You're out in front now, boy. And I've never been so damn scared in my life!"

He was trembling, he could hardly stand. The only feeling he had now was one of leaden sadness that he would never race again.

 

THE END

 

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