‘Will this cover it, Tony?’ he asked.
Tony nodded, screwing his face up.
‘Sorry,’ Deeming said, ‘about the dust-up. It won’t happen again, Tony. You’ve got my word for it.’
‘I don’t lika the trouble, Mister Deeming,’ Tony said.
‘Me neither,’ said Deeming. ‘It’s screwball. And like I’ve talked to these guys some more I’ll put some hip into them yet. I’m not a jee for trouble, Tony.’
‘No, Mister Deeming,’ Tony said.
‘That’s not the way to be real,’ Deeming said. ‘That’s just the square action coming out.’
He came back to Gently.
‘I saw your car,’ he said. ‘Like I was just going out for a spin. I wondered if you’d care to ride along.’
‘With you, pillion?’ Gently asked.
‘Sure, pillion,’ Deeming said. ‘Have you ridden a Bonneville before? Man, they’re cool, they’re refrigerative.’
Gently hesitated. All of them were watching him. He dropped a couple of reflective puffs.
‘I’ve come along this far,’ he said. ‘I might as well go the whole distance.’
‘Crazy, you’ll go for it,’ Deeming said. ‘Jack, lend the screw your helmet and goggles. Man, I can guarantee this will send you. I dig your style. This’ll put you way out.’
His slate eyes glinted a smile at Gently. Bixley spat some more blood on the floor.
They rode back into town, down the High Street, past the Sun. The cloud had thinned now to a light haze and the light was golden and the air warm. Gently’s helmet was rather small for him, felt like a crown perched on his head. He felt a little ridiculous straddling the pillion and holding Deeming by his waist. The slipstream plucked at his light trousers though they were tucked into his socks. Where only the socks protected his ankles were two bands of chilled flesh. He had a sensation of insecurity. His seat on the bike seemed precarious. He was naked and unfenced from the streets and buildings that flickered by him.
Beyond the Sun they crossed the bridge and headed, as he knew they would, in the direction of Castlebridge. On the short run through the town Deeming had shown himself a talented rider. He rode steadily, at an even pace, seeming to adjust the traffic to suit himself. Now, as they passed the delimit, he twisted the throttle open with a smooth precision. The machine seemed to be soaring away from Gently, as though it were climbing and he was sliding off. He clung tighter, crouched over Deeming. The slipstream punched him like icy dough. The road, a streaky grey death, unreamed a few inches below his feet. The note of the engine was a pummelling throb and the heat from it was roasting the insides of his shins. Traffic exploded on their right. Sometimes it howled past Gently’s elbow. A monstrous truck rose up ahead, slanted to the left, went by in madness. They were into the trees in under two minutes. The trees were ghosts. They didn’t seem to belong.
Deeming’s back pushed hard at Gently and the road came wheeling up from the right.
‘Roll!’ Deeming bawled over his shoulder. ‘Christ, roll with me, or you’ll have us off!’
The road sank back. They were on a straight again. The machine was soaring in its climb to speed. They knifed through traffic that notched both sides of them, the trees sprang open in an insane geometry. Gently had stopped now trying to resist, to brace himself for the violence of disaster. A half-real mirage was all that contained them. It kept falling away from their inevitable onset. Nothing was real except the machine and the two of them. They were out of the world. They were alone, unreachable.
‘Roll!’ Deeming bawled, pressing backwards.
This time Gently relaxed, leaning with him. The grass verge reeled in a crescendo at their shoulders, stayed with them, slid away into its streaming level.
‘You’ve got it!’ Deeming roared. ‘Just let yourself go with me. And man, hang on tight. This is where we hit the ton.’
They had come to Five Mile Drove. Its vacuum of straightness was sucking them into it. Like the glorious path of an arrow it split upwards towards the sky. And on the path of that arrow they hung poised in an immaculate balance, the world falling away from them, faded away in divine speed. He felt a curious sense of freedom, a calm almost. He seemed released into a peacefulness, a huge detachment from the diminished physical. In a sort of wonderment he noticed the tree expanding like some black, spiritual flower, at first slowly, then urgently, then rushing into the sky. At the same moment an invisible hand crushed him back from the peace he experienced. The vision, the sensation, was dragged away from him. He was painfully returned to the dull moment.
Deeming slid over on to the level ground that surrounded the tree, bucked joltingly up to it, dropped his feet, cut the engine. Gently’s ears were still buzzing, the air felt suddenly hot and thin. His legs were aching. He was aware of pain from the chilled bands around his ankles. Deeming raised his goggles, twisted his head round. His eyes rested on Gently smilingly.
‘You get it now, screw,’ he asked, ‘like the way it was with Lister?’
Gently raised his goggles also. His face was burning and stiff.
‘The ton and nineteen,’ Deeming said. ‘That was cooling it some, screw. That was touching it good and hard. That was way out, way out. And you were getting the kick, screw. Like that’s a kick you can’t miss. You were on the borders, you know? You were on the borders way out.’
‘You’re a good rider,’ Gently said.
‘Yeah,’ Deeming said. ‘Sid taught me.’
‘He’s another good rider,’ Gently said.
‘Sure,’ Deeming said. ‘That makes two of us.’
‘Two good riders,’ Gently said.
Deeming gave him a broad grin. ‘I like you, screw,’ he said. ‘You’re subtle. You’re cool, too, in your Squaresville way.’
He raised his hand, made a gesture of fiddling.
‘Like that was just the allegro movement,’ he said. ‘But that’s not all. I’ve got an adagio for you. Like you’re through with the interval I’ll make with the baton.’
He pulled his goggles back down, lifted the bike and kicked the starter. They bumped back on the road, pointed towards town again. Deeming rode at a fluent sixty but sixty now seemed a crawclass="underline" it took them all of five minutes to put the tree back on the horizon. They approached the scene of Lister’s crash, neared the lane that cut in just before it. Deeming slowed and took the lane. Its surface was soft and littered with pine needles. The boughs of the pine trees met above it and the air was moist and resin-scented. The lane went straight for some distance, then slanted left, and again right. They passed an enamelled fire-warning notice with beneath it a stock of beating brooms.
‘Like Canada,’ Deeming jerked over his shoulder. ‘I’ve seen it like this in Canada, screw.’
There was a deadness and hush among the close-packed trees that seemed to absorb the low throb of the engine.
It continued for above a mile, changing direction in straight slants, rising and falling over shallow ridges, and with occasional surfaces of loose gravel. Then the tall trees knifed away and gave place to a grove of saplings, then the saplings stopped abruptly to reveal a nursery of bush trees. The nursery was fenced with small-mesh netting. It bore the fire-warning plates. The young trees had a bluish bloom and the wistful appearance of bold callowness. Deeming slowed right down through the nursery as though he wanted Gently to take it in. At the end it was protected by twin lines of birches and beyond the birches they were out on the brecks.
Deeming kept to his slow pace. The lane was a barely visible track. About it the brecks went sweeping and rolling in blackish and tawny valleys and ridges. There was nothing to see but these undulations. They moved from one horizon to the other. Their vegetation was bramble, heath, furze, and russet patches of bracken. They lacked landmark or direction. They had apparently no bird-life. They had a silence as of unbelievable age, or as though they were listening. Even their sky seemed lower and stiller and watching the dark stillness beneath.