The Motorbike (A Story)

In summer, in certain villages, it’s hard to separate the silence from the heat. From where we sat, the river didn’t seem to move. The sky looked opalescent; polished with a clumsy thumb so that the surface dust had formed the outline of the houses underneath. They looked like smudges; like something’s shadow.

Richard’s face, meanwhile, was vivid with disgust. He lay flat, with his arms outstretched, so that it looked like he’d been pressed into the grass. He said,

“A bike.”

“Well done.”

“No, Mick. A bicycle.”

“Oh. Right.”

“I’m seventeen years old. I come downstairs and it’s all “Happy Birthday, son” and there it is. It’s like…”

There was a pause. At last, he shook his head. His face – the bulbous chin; the eyes, bulging like ping pong balls – was a cartoon in any case. He always looked outraged; he seemed to lunge at you even when, as now, he was merely sitting up. It was too much for him; he threw himself back down.

“My God”, he said.

His feelings always seemed to rush up to the surface. Even his arms were flushed.

“This place.”

We’d seen a motorbike, in a shop window. It had had the same forward tilt, the same musculature, as Richard but it was set there in the gloom just like a jewel in a case. Inside, he’d drawn his fingertips over the seat. He’d bent over the engine, just as though he was going to murmur to it. Now, he spat his gum over the quarry’s edge.

“A bicycle.”

He looked out over the meadow, at the snail’s trail of the river. He said,

“Where would you go?”

He shuddered.

“Who would you end up being? I’d rather die.”

The thing was, you believed him. His eyes, his rigid frame, compelled you to. He walked to where a tree hung at the edge. He swung himself over the drop and back again until I felt my stomach go. He rode an invisible bike along a ridge, a sort of path, with a sheer drop on either side. We’d seen this done, by men on motorbikes, but even so... Later, I said to Natalie,

“He frightens me.”

She laughed.

“Me too.”

She was drawing a monkey with her finger, in spilt beer. There were just the two of us, which is why we had been served. She tilted her head and pursed her lips then gave it Richard’s hair; a shaggy Beatle mop. I laughed, but circumspectly: Natalie was his girlfriend. She was saying,

“I like them to be… You know: mad. And…”

“Built.”

“Oh God, yes. Built, of course.”

She ruffled my hair.

“No offence, sweetheart.”

There was a softness, a creaminess, about Natalie. Her gestures were sleepily self-aware. You only had to look at me, meanwhile, to see that I was safe. Richard would urge me to go for a drink with her so that I could report back what she’d said. I did, and didn’t. She lit a cigarette.

“He’s broke”, she said. “At least, he claims he is.”

“He’s going to work for Stan.”

She spluttered. Her breasts, I knew, were shimmying under my nose.

“For Stan! That’s good that is.”

Smoke seemed to curl itself around her neck.

“Oh: love him. He’ll be shovelling shit all day.”

She was still giggling when we left the pub. I walked her home, the river lisping somewhere near at hand. Her hand was on my arm. Why would you want to go anywhere? The sleepiness – the sideways-leaning cottages; somebody’s weight against your arm; her slurring feet, in step with yours – contained a germ, a version, of future happiness.

And Natalie was right: he smelt. He hadn’t, quite, managed to get his fingers clean. He said,

“She won’t come near me.”

“No. Well.”

“I’ve bathed. I’ve scrubbed. It won’t…”

His hands dragged downwards at his skin.

“So you’re giving it up?”

“I’m bloody not. I want that bike.”

He’d taken a second job; construction work, on Saturdays. Three times a week, he washed dishes in a restaurant. (They wouldn’t let him serve the customers.) He hardly saw Natalie now.

“I told her. It’s for her.”

“You live two streets away.”

“I can’t take her anywhere on a bicycle, can I?”

But there wasn’t, really, any difference between the way he looked off into the middle distance now and the way that he had once looked at Natalie. He seemed to be staring, in his imagination, at the bike. He looked like he was going to track it down; to bring it down, with a lassoo. I summoned all my courage. I said,

“I don’t think that she cares, Richard. I think she’d rather just have you.”

“Yeah. ‘cos you know all about women, don’t you, Mick?”

I didn’t say anything. But I could see what Richard couldn’t: that, for Natalie, the bike might just as well have been another woman. He wanted it so very much; you could see his hands shaking when he smoothed its curves. Natalie carried herself, most of the time, with a sort of ostentatious lightness – a humorous slyness, as though she were in an operetta – but, these days, one could see how heavy she would become. Richard was saying,

“Stan says I can have double time if I do Sundays from now on.”

“But not on the weekend of the festival?”

He shrugged.

“Oh, Richard: no.”

His hand moved rapidly under his nose; it was the embarrassed, compulsive gesture of a drug addict.

“You’re going to have to look after her for me”, he said.

I found, to my relief, that I was angry with him.

“God”, I said. “Look at you. Why aren’t you satisfied?”

“With what?”

I pointed. With all of this, I meant: the apples hanging over the garden wall; the wall itself, like cake that crumbles to the touch; the way the water ravelled and unravelled so that the weir looked like a loom. And Natalie, of course. Her plush and mottled throat. Her grin. The way her fingers hovered above your arm.

“It’s greed”, I said.

It’s difficult, now, to resurrect the intensity of Richard’s stare. At last, he said,

“You have to keep her sweet for me.”

What could I do? You wouldn’t have mistaken us for a couple, in any case. In those days, I was all nose and neck, with hair that seemed to rush upwards, like I’d dived into a swimming pool. Not even when she put her arm through mine would you have thought that we were together. I said.

“You know what he’s like. He’s a primitive. He likes it because it’s shiny.”

“Nuh-huh.”

She shook her head.

“It’s big.”

She giggled.

“And what we have here, you see, is a man who…”

She wiggled the tip of her little finger. She tilted the bottle of vodka up, she hoisted it, and took a defiant swig. She used the back of her hand to wipe her mouth. The combination of the whiteness of her arm and the navvy-like gesture was alluring. So were her eyes, which had become a little blurred. They were hooded, piratical, and I found that I wanted to encourage it. I said,

“Have another one. Go on.”

This time she held it like a trumpet, doing a burlesque bump and grind so that her bottom swivelled, slowly, from side to side. I led her through the hot food stalls, up to the stage. The festival was something that the three of us had been looking forward to for months. There were local bands – none of which I can remember now. I remember lying on my back and staring at the sky. The bands were turgid and mechanical; they merged, in the end, into a sort of soup. Later, in the evening, the sky itself seemed to thicken. The vodka had all gone. I looked at Natalie and tried, but failed, to speak. Behind her, tracing the outline of her breasts, the stage-lights looked like distant fires. My hands weren’t actually touching her but they were making the very same gesture that Richard had when he had stroked the motorbike. Up hill, it seemed, and then down dale, then, suddenly, she was leading me towards her tent. Inside, it felt like I was being flung around; as though desire was a dog that had me in its teeth. I couldn’t see Natalie; could only feel her piecemeal, as it were. Afterwards, she turned her back. I crawled into my tent and, in the morning, she was gone.

The site seemed vast. Its emptiness and my own emptiness seemed, somehow, to correspond. It was the same in the village. I wandered the streets, aware that I had done something irrevocable. Aware, as well, that part of me was glad; that I wanted to do it again. The torpid river; the war memorial; the antique shop, dark as an aquarium – all of this had an expectant air; an air of having been paused, somehow, so that, once one had pressed the button, something dramatic, something irrevocable, would happen next. I avoided traffic; jumped into a doorway at the buzz, like a giant bee, of a passing motorbike.

And then, on the Wednesday afternoon, the doorbell rang. When I opened the door, the first things that I noticed were Richard’s gloves, thick leather things that doubled the size of his hands. His face seemed preternaturally calm. Beyond him, his bike reared upwards on its stand. He said,

“Come on.”

He thrust a helmet into my hands. I distrusted him, of course, and the helmet felt disproportionately alien; cold and hard and, once it was on your head, too snug, like something that someone might forcibly strap you into. He drove too fast. I held on to his thighs and, at the bends, had to lean outwards with him. It was a subservient position, one that depended on his mastery of the bike, and, once we had stopped, I considered staying on, just to continue to give him the satisfaction. He gestured, roughly, with his head and I saw that we were above the quarry. I stood beside him, but he didn’t get off, nor did he switch off the engine. He kept revving it. He said,

“So.”

“So.”

“Big man.”

“Richard…”

“Big sexy man.”

“I didn’t…”

“What? Think? You didn’t do anything, is that it? Go on: tell me that you didn’t do anything.”

I looked away, over the river and the empty meadow. He said,

“Uh-huh.”

Slowly, he dismounted. I could feel everything – my lips; my stomach; the tops of my legs – beginning to clench. He stared at me but then he gestured to the bike.

“Go on.”

I didn’t understand.

“The ridge. Go on, big man. I dare you. Ride the ridge.”

That “dare” was accompanied by a sudden lurch, so that his face was only inches from my face. I didn’t know what to say. He was holding the keys towards me.

“Go on”, he said.

He continued to stare at me. He seemed, obscurely, to be pleading with me. There was a pause – a terrible, fathomless gap – and then he shook his head.

“Thought not.”

He turned away. Already, he was getting back on his bike. I said,

“Richard…”

But he wasn’t listening. He and the bike, a composite animal, seemed to leap hungrily towards the ridge. What could I do? It was all over in a second. He slipped. The bike seemed to complain; to buck and whine. I didn’t see his face or hear him make a sound. There was a thud, no more, when he hit the bottom. I saw a little mushroom cloud of dust; saw Richard, sprawled, like a dog’s toy, beneath his bike. I shouted, or screamed – I can’t remember. And then…

Well, then, there was just the silence.