Better still, they discovered how to use the food vouchers the old lady had handed them. Free soup, sandwiches and cake were on offer to the homeless each evening in the Cattle Market and there was another charity handing out food in the car park at the back of Waitrose. Spiro and Murat felt safe using these open-air facilities. Existing like this wasn’t comfortable or easy and couldn’t last indefinitely, but it was better than sorting rubbish ten hours a day, seven days a week. When they’d learned some English and found casual work paid at a fair rate, they would begin to think about what happened next.
Once the basics of survival were overcome, the biggest problem would be communication. Albanian has obscure origins and bears no obvious resemblance to any other language, even those of neighbouring countries, never mind to English.
Murat was better than Spiro at picking up a smattering of English. He had an ear for sounds. He listened and repeated the words and was good at remembering them. “What are they talking about?” Spiro asked him one evening at the food van when everyone seemed more animated than usual.
“Something about goody bags.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m not sure.”
Spiro set his logical mind to work. “I know what good is and I know what a bag is. Maybe they’re saying where good bags can be found.”
“Instead of plastic?”
He shrugged. “It’s only a suggestion. Listen up, Murat, and they might say more.”
“They seem to be talking about stuff inside the bag. I’m hearing water, biscuits, granola, bananas and chocolate. They could be the goodies.”
“Is all this being given away? Where?”
“Wait.” Murat tried speaking some English to a homeless man who seemed to be the main bringer of the good news. After much nodding, pointing and repetition he came back to Spiro. “It’s not till Sunday morning and thousands of these bags will be given out.”
“That’s an exaggeration. I can’t believe thousands. There aren’t thousands living on the streets here.”
“Hold on. I may have misunderstood.” Murat went back to his informant and a longer consultation took place, punctuated with much gesturing, nodding and pointing. “It’s true,” he told Spiro. “Five thousand and they’re given to runners.”
“What do you mean, runners? People on the run like you and me? I keep telling you there can’t be that many.”
“No, Spiro. Ordinary runners doing it to get fit, like we see every day on the streets. There’s a big road race here on Sunday and they get given goody bags after they finish. Some of them aren’t interested in the food in the bag, so it’s a great place to be for handouts.”
“Okay, it’s making sense. Where does this happen?”
“The runners’ village.”
“Get away,” Spiro said. “They don’t have their own village.”
“On Sunday they will and that’s where they collect their bags when they finish the race. They get a T-shirt and a medal. They always keep the medal and most keep the shirt, but not all of them want the bag.”
“So where exactly is this runners’ village?”
“A sports field over that way.” He pointed. “It’s just big tents.”
Spiro’s interest in all this evaporated. “I know where you mean and I’m not going there for biscuits and bananas. I wouldn’t go there for a five-course dinner. They can keep their fucking goody bags.”
Murat understood why. He’d pointed in the direction of the no-go area east of the city where they’d been detained all those months. Neither of them wanted to see that house again, ever. But the goody bags had a strong pull. “It could be all right, Spiro.”
“No.”
“It’s going to be busy with all those runners milling around.”
Spiro ignored him.
Murat wasn’t giving up. “We won’t be noticed. I’m up for it if you are.”
“Fuck off.”
“Safety in numbers.”
“You were the guy who didn’t want to come back to Bath at any price. Now you’re saying we show our heads where we were last seen.”
“I get hungry, Spiro.”
“Go there if you want, but if you tell anyone I’m hiding up here, you’re a dead man.”
10
Five thousand men and women were jammed shoulder to shoulder in Great Pulteney Street. Here they started and here they would finish.
If they survived.
This was the worst time, waiting for the start. The tension showed in a variety of ways: muscles twitched, hands were rubbed together, hair was tugged, scraped and smoothed, watches checked many times over, water bottles upended. Some stared fixedly ahead and some tried joking with the people around them.
In the runners’ village at the Sports Centre, North Parade Road, marshals with loudhailers had been issuing instructions for the past hour. People were graded by ability and sent to the start by different routes. The white pen was for the elite group, the ones who took the front position and already stood with fingers poised on their own stopwatches. Green was for those with some experience who weren’t expected to challenge for a top-fifty finish. Orange, by far the largest, filtered by way of the riverside path and Grove Street, where most were waiting, was for the tenderfoots, starters who might never have tried such a distance. They would probably walk some of the way.
The last ten seconds were counted down to 11 a.m.
The hooter blared.
The elite runners led the charge. The white pen emptied like rice from a packet and the greens were close behind. The winner would finish in little more than an hour.
That first dash towards Sydney Gardens at the top of the street was thrilling to watch, cheered by hundreds crushed into the space along the sides. Sydney Place was closed to traffic, so they headed straight across the road, through the entrance to the gardens and around the Holburne Museum to the central walk, where lines of marshals kept control.
The route took them over the bridge across the railway cutting, heading for the canal path and south, right through the tunnel under Cleveland House, where tolls were once collected from the barges through a hole in the roof. From here they would follow the Kennet and Avon Canal until it merged with a stretch of the old Somerset Coal Canal. Ancient canal paths and disused railways made up much of the Other Half course.
All who came after the elite runners passed at a slower tempo, competing mainly with themselves. A personal best or the triumph of finishing at all was their aim. They didn’t worry about starting some minutes after the hooter. They all had timing chips fastened to their shoelaces that emitted a unique code when the shoes passed over the antennas sheathed in the rubber mat that was the start line. Everyone from the winner to the wackiest fancy-dress runner would be timed.
The prizes weren’t huge. The first male and female finishers would each get a thousand pounds. Others who placed in the first five would get scaled-down sums. There was a similar prize list for the best British finishers, so in theory a Brit might win in each category and earn two thousand. The big beneficiaries were the charities. Among them, they would scoop a cool two million. Their main outlay was a T-shirt for each supporter. Some proud wearers of the shirts would have spent more time getting sponsors than getting fit. When they suffered, as they would, they had the consolation of knowing it was for a good cause.