The Last Bike Ride - Chapter 6/15

Chapter 6

Since Fleet services Steve had got his head down and had knocked quite a few miles off his target. Vehicles were now running out of fuel and the previously odd abandoned car over on the other side of the motorway was now becoming a regular sight.
He stopped at the bridge that crossed the railway line and looked down at the rails shining with the light of the moon. The green light of the signal was also shining brightly but, he thought, there wouldn’t be any train drivers seeing that for a while, if ever.
‘There certainly wouldn’t be any trains from London. Those off in the distance to the south-west would have been abandoned mid-journey and would eventually rot away where they stood on the rusting lines,’ he continued to wonder.
The famous railway stations of London had all gone, along with all the other well-known landmarks.
He stood there for a while, remembering the sight and, in particular, the smell of a steam train as it might have passed under this bridge. Health and safety, and electric trains, meant that kids couldn’t hang out of train windows any more to smell that steam-train smell and get covered in coal dust, as he had often done, on those long childhood journeys from King’s Cross.
He was able to get a bit of a breather from a very long downhill stretch, just steep enough to let him free-wheel for most of the way. As the road flattened out he could see ahead a dark object in lane one. It was a crashed motorbike which must have been thrown from across the other side. He unclipped the front light from his bike and went to have a look. There was no sign of the rider.
‘If he’s still over on the other side, it won’t be worth looking,’ Steve thought, ‘he would’ve been killed within seconds.’
He recognised the make of the bike because of the distinct green of a Kawasaki, but what model it was he couldn’t be sure because of the damage. As he looked a bit closer, from the corner of his eye, he saw the flashing blue lights of the Royal convoy appearing over the horizon and bearing down towards him.
He dashed for his bike, lifted it over the barrier, and ran up the embankment.
As the convoy raced down the hill, Groves sent out his order.
“Pete, take over at the front!”
“Roger that, sir!”
Pete opened the throttle and roared past the Royal car which had moved over slightly to the left to give him some more room, but not enough to give him a view of the crashed bike. Both he and his bike were launched into the air; the bike coming down and scraping along the road in a shower of sparks, and Pete hitting the ground and sliding along for a hundred yards before coming to rest in an ugly pile, high-lighted by the fluorescent–yellow of his jacket.
Groves heard the Prince, from the back of the car, say,
“Keep going.”
Then, again, more excitedly,
“Keep going!”
“Keep going Dave, there’s nothing we can do,” radioed Groves.
Dave knew it too, but his natural instinct was to stop, but he and the reduced convoy sped on.
Only after they had cleared the scene did Groves look in the rear-view mirror at the Prince, and his blood ran cold when he saw the princess’s head bobbing up and down.
The Prince probably hadn’t even noticed what had just happened.
‘Why the fuck are we protecting this bastard?’ thought Groves, ‘but Pete wouldn’t have survived that, surely?’
He carried on in a sombre mood, wondering what life, if there was to be any after this night, would be like under his passenger whenever he became King.
They negotiated their way on the wrong side of the motorway until they were able to join the A303 and managed to avoid any more trouble on the rest of the journey. They handed the Prince and his companion, with neither of them acknowledging their efforts, over to the Army and the security of the underground bunker deep under the Wiltshire landscape.
Steve couldn’t believe what he had just seen, and he had already seen a lifetime’s ugly scenes over the last few hours.
‘Jesus, that must have been someone important in there, to leave this guy for dead like this.’
This time he wanted to help, if he could. He had been unable to help anyone up until then, and knew that it was unlikely that he would be able to help now.
He wheeled his bike nearer to where Pete lay and walked over and shone his torch over the pile at his feet. He realised that Pete was conscious and clearly in pain. Steve knelt down and hinged the front part of Pete’s crash- helmet up. There was blood trickling from Pete’s mouth.
“Careful,” mumbled Pete, “don’t try and take it off.”
“Don’t worry, mate, I’ve got one like this.”
“Listen, I don’t know what I’ll be able to do for you, but I’ll try my best.”
“Thanks. I should have gone with the others. It’s my Susie’s fifth birthday today.”
Steve certainly knew about girls’ fifth birthdays, but didn’t understand the rest of what Pete just said.
“Look, I’m Steve. What’s your name?”
“Pete. What are you doing here?”
“I’m trying to cycle home to my wife and girls in Bournemouth.”
The scenario was more than Pete could cope with, so didn’t bother to ask Steve to elaborate. The blood continued to trickle out.
“Steve, do me a favour please.”
“Sure, what is it?”
“Can you reach into my jacket for my phone and dial “Home’. It’s number 2 on speed dial”
Steve pulled out the phone and pressed 2. There was a click and then just a scratching noise. He looked at the signal indicator – there was nothing.
“Sorry, Pete, there’s no signal.”
“Just my luck. Steve, can you take my phone with you and try later, and call my wife, Hattie, and tell her that I should have come home to them, and that I love them so much, and wish my Susie a happy birthday.”
“Sure, Pete, I’ll do that for you.”
“Steve, can you see my bike?”
“Yes, it slid a bit further than you. It’s just up there.”
“Can you try and un-clip the left-hand pannier and bring it over?”
Steve walked to the bike and found it had landed on its right side. He un-clipped the box and took it back to Pete.
“Here, I’ve got it.”
“Good. Inside you’ll find a couple of foil blankets. One each, mate!”
“There should be a bottle, if it’s not smashed.”
Steve found a small bottle of brandy under a sinister-looking black case.
“You sly bugger, do you all carry a bottle with you?!”
“For emergencies only, Steve! I think this is an emergency, don’t you? Come on, open it up, and let me have the first swig. I’m sure you haven’t got any diseases, but I’m in so much pain here.”
“That’s good stuff, Pete,” after they had both had good slugs from the bottle.
“Steve, I haven’t got much more time.”
“Don’t say that, Pete, you’ll be fine.”
“Steve, this isn’t Casualty, mate. I’ve seen enough of this in my job to know.”
“I won’t mind if you get going on your bike.”
“No, Pete, I’ve left plenty of people behind tonight and this is the first time I’ve had a chance to help. Even if it’s just staying with you and talking.”
“Thanks, Steve. Do you know any jokes?”
“Jokes? Are you joking?”
“I need to laugh, Steve.”
“I’m sorry, Pete, my jokes don’t make anyone laugh!”
“That’s a start,” Pete spurted out, along with more blood from his damaged insides.
“Christ, you’re easily pleased. OK, I don’t know what flies you go for when you try and swat any indoors, but I always go for the females.”
“What are you on about? How do you know which ones are female?”
“Well, the males are usually found on a beer can, and the females are always on the phone!”
Pete sprayed Steve with his dying blood as he almost choked.
“One was enough, I think, Steve. You said you’ve got a helmet like mine. What do you ride?”
“Just a scooter now, Pete, but I used to ride a lot when I was a dispatch rider.”
“Stay with me a bit longer and tell me about that.”
“It was just a job in London.”
“I know, I’ve nicked enough of them up there in my time! There must have been some funny times, no?”
“It’s a toss-up really between the black nutter who always parked up in Berkeley Square, or the time I ran into the back of a Transit van.”
“Well, I’m not going anywhere, and I’m not going to nick you now, so tell me both!”
“OK, the black guy and his bike were always covered in oil, how he was allowed into any of the offices is anyone’s guess, and one morning he pulled up near me carrying a pigeon he had just run over. He then wedged the bird between the engine and the exhaust down-pipe to try and cook it. Apparently, he did, I was told. I didn’t see him after that.”
“That’s funny. Now, what about the Transit?”
“Oh, yeah. I was following a Transit and discovered that it didn’t have any stop-lights until it was too late and I knew I wouldn’t quite be able to stop in time. I just concentrated on hitting the bumper square-on. I used to ride trail bikes then, so the front tyre was quite tall. I did better than what I was expecting and just hit it hard enough, and square enough, to wedge the tyre under the bumper, leaving me sitting there until it drove off!”
Steve knew what was coming and leant out of the way of Pete’s next blood shower.
“Steve, I’m really hurting now and the brandy’s gone. I can’t stand the thought of lying here waiting to die. There’s nothing you can do for me to ease the pain, apart from one thing. Can you give me the black case from the pannier please?”
Despite the foil blanket around him, Steve was starting to shake again. He didn’t like Pete’s changed tone. He felt nervous.
“There’s a gun in the case – a powerful hand-gun. Have you fired a gun before?”
“Well, yes, but I hit the prize instead of the target at the fairground.”
“I thought we had finished with the jokes.”
“That wasn’t one!”
“Would you like to fire this one?”
Steve didn’t reply. He knew where this was leading.
“Take it over there and fire it into the embankment. Go on.”
Steve took the gun, aimed at the embankment, and pulled the trigger, but the safety catch was on.
“It’s on the left,” said Pete, knowing what Steve was going to ask him as he walked back.
Steve went back and shot at the embankment. This time it fired, but he had hit something metallic up on the bank and the bullet ricocheted back over the carriageway, striking the steel central barrier, and ending up back in the bank close to where Steve was standing.
He shakily walked back over to Pete.
“Good shot, Steve!”
“Steve, I want you to finish me off.”
“I thought you were going to ask me to do that. I have to admit, the police have never been my favourite people, but I’ve never wanted to shoot one, especially one who I could have been mates with. Please don’t ask me to do it.”
“I’m begging you, Steve. I can’t stand the thought of lying here for another couple of hours, maybe, with the pain getting worse. If you stay, you’ll freeze to death.”
Steve had thought of that. The brandy was losing its warming effect and he might soon be too cold to get going again.
“Steve, just stick the barrel against my head, pull the front of my helmet back down, and squeeze the trigger. Even you couldn’t miss!”
Steve took a long breath and got the gun into place.
“Bye, my friend.”

***
The next few miles were a blur of emotions, but soon he was passing Basingstoke, always the best thing to do. It had earned the label of the most boring of all the new towns created in the South over the previous twenty or thirty years. Steve had only ever been there to deliver to the drab, window-less, industrial units, which hadn’t helped the town’s image.
He found himself approaching Junction 8 where the A303 filtered off to the left and then swept under the M3 and away to the South West, carrying with it the many families trying to get as far away from London as possible.
Most of those left on the motorway were clubbers heading down to Bournemouth for the last night of hedonism as promised by the town’s club owners who had all been preparing themselves for the worst over the last few weeks. Each club had installed back-up generators to ensure that the party would only end when the last person dropped.
This was a tricky junction to cycle across as it was very wide and if anyone was still travelling this way they would be going very fast. Two cars did indeed zoom by – did they know what they were heading towards? - but once past that danger, Steve started the gentle, but long, uphill climb as the M3 narrowed down to two lanes.
He stopped briefly to look down over the barrier at the traffic on the A303 speeding away towards Devon and, more likely, Cornwall to get as far away as possible. Steve had made that journey many times, on his own when he was single, and since then with Juliette and the girls. They had been great times. It had been years since they had been back to Cornwall, though. They had always left in the early hours and had always stopped near the A30 junction for an early morning bacon sandwich. He could almost smell the bacon now.
Back in the saddle, he was soon passing the farmhouse, down below on his right. He could just make out in the moonlight the white paintwork of the building which had only recently been completed, after being converted from an old barn - a process that had taken years, and had always caught Steve’s attention on his journeys to London.
A little further on, he knew that another of his nightly landmarks would be coming up.
It was a house which appeared, at least when viewed from the motorway, to have been built into the side of the embankment as one wall of the house looked as though it was just hanging over the edge. An incongruous chandelier always lighted the single curtain-less window in that wall, and Steve made a point of looking up at it each night he returned from the City.
Although he had driven past it many times over the years, it was only after he had started his current job that he had first noticed it. For the first three months it had been dark when he drove by, but when he first saw it in daylight he was expecting something more impressive than the drab, grey wall above. Clearly, the highway planners had allowed the motorway engineers to get as near to the house as possible when the route was cut through this landscape, but he wondered how it hadn’t affected the foundations.
As Steve approached he knew he wouldn’t be able to see the window from the hard shoulder just below. He stopped under the bridge next to the house and decided to climb the stairs built up the embankment for maintenance access. There was a fence at the top which he climbed over and then stood looking at the main part of the house which he had often wondered about. He was stopped in his tracks by what he thought was a horse in the driveway leaning against a wall, just like the drunken horse in the spoof-Western film Cat Ballou, although this one wasn’t cross-legged. He relaxed a little when the moonlight revealed that it was in fact a life-sized model of a stag which was probably due to be mounted somewhere in the small front garden. Steve was also able to make out the nameplate of the house – London Lodge.
His curiosity satisfied, he made his way back down to the carriageway and walked across to the central barrier which he stood on to gave him a glimpse of the chandelier shining brightly through the window. On any other night, the sight of someone standing on the central crash barrier, peering up at a window, would probably have caused an accident, but for most, speeding past on the other side, he would have gone unnoticed, and for those who did spot him, it was just another bizarre sight on an increasingly crazy night.
On a normal night, the traffic would have thinned out by now, and among his regular fellow travellers would be the big trunkers of the supermarkets and the parcel carriers, and the coaches. Tonight though, he hadn’t seen any of those. If they had managed to leave their depots they would have struggled to get through to the motorway, but most of the drivers would have made their way home.
A little while later, Steve’s attention was fixed on something ahead on the hard shoulder. As he got nearer he could see that it was a car and he moved over to the outside lane, wary of potential trouble, and then walked with the bike for the last fifty yards trying not to disturb whoever may be there. He could now make out that it was an early VW Golf that, at first, seemed to have been abandoned with a flat front tyre, but as he reached it, he could see someone asleep in the driver’s seat. He got his torch out and saw no one else in the car and knocked on the window. He knocked again, a bit harder this time. Whoever it was must have been in a deep sleep, or maybe worse, Steve thought, perhaps one of many suicides taking place tonight.
He leaned against the roof and thought of those unlucky enough not to have died in the blast. Those who did die in the killing-radius of the strike wouldn’t now be contemplating their deaths as those 10 or 20 miles away were now doing.
When the nuclear bombs hit Nagasaki and Hiroshima to finish the Second World War, no one living in either city would have known what had hit them, but since then everyone knew the consequences of a nuclear strike and the horrendous agonising deaths awaiting those on the edges of the blast area.
Steve thought about the re-make of On The Beach, even worse than the appalling American re-make of The Italian Job. In the latest version of On the Beach a man drove his family over a cliff for a quicker way out of life, but there aren’t any cliffs in London to drive over, and not many would have been able to escape in their cars to find one anyway.
‘Perhaps some are copying Dr Osborne’s suicide in the original On The Beach by gassing themselves with their car exhausts, although any families would be needing something bigger than his Ferrari 750 Monza,’ contemplated Steve.
After a while the driver woke suddenly and the long dark hair, which was all Steve had been able to see up to then, shot back to reveal a stunningly attractive dark-skinned girl, possibly in her late twenties.
“Oh sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you,” stuttered Steve, who had been taken aback himself after convincing himself that the driver was indeed, dead, it had taken so long to wake her.
“It’s OK,” she replied, composing herself, “you’re not the RAC man then.”
“No, I’m not, I’m cycling back home.”
Even though she wasn’t fully awake she was aware of how odd it was to be woken by someone cycling on the wrong side of the motorway.
“Are you mad?”
“Probably, but still alive.”
“What do you mean, still alive? As in getting away with a daredevil prank and not being squashed into the road by a big lorry?”
“No, still alive, as in not being one of the victims of ….,” and he realised that she might not be aware of what happened earlier.
“Do you know what’s happened?”
“What do you mean?”
“Haven’t you heard anything on the news?”
“No, I’ve just been listening to music. I came over from France earlier, and have been waiting here for hours and just fell asleep. I was in such a deep sleep. I haven’t slept for about two days. There was a farewell party for me in France which just went on and on – it was great – and I can’t sleep on ferries. Don’t know why, I should be used to them by now, I just worry myself sick about drowning and shit like that.”
“Hang on, you mean you don’t know that we’ve, I mean London, has been hit by a nuclear bomb?”
“Wh .. oh, no, …. ,” and she put her hands to her face and started sobbing.
‘Oh, fucking hell! Girls,’ he thought, but then he realised that most people, not just girls, would be reacting all over the country, all over the world maybe, tonight in the same way, and waited for her to stop crying.
“Why?”
‘Shit, this definitely is a girl’s question.’
“Look I don’t know, and we might not ever know, but I’m trying to get back to my family and need to get on.”
“Oh, sorry, yes, you go.” She was calmer now, but still shaking. “Have you got a long way to go?”
“Yeah, quite a way on my bike. Bournemouth.”
“You better get going then. I’ll wait here for the breakdown people. Do you think they’ll get here?”
“I doubt it. Look, I can’t leave you here like this. I’ll change your wheel and you’ll have a chance to get away.”
“No, it’s OK, I’ll be fine.”
“Fine? Here, stranded on the side of a motorway, miles from anywhere? You must be joking. I’m going to fix your wheel, otherwise that will stay with me forever, even if that is only until tomorrow probably.”
“What’s your name, by the way?”
“Ranjia, and yours?”
He told her, and they shook hands – an odd thing to do in the circumstances. She really is attractive, he thought, and noticed just how beautiful her dark olive skin made her.
“I only got new tyres the other day in France, and a new battery while I was at it. I managed to have a couple of successful exhibitions and thought I’d splash out,” she said, as Steve searched around for the tools.
Luckily the spare wasn’t flat and everything he needed was in the boot.
“Well, you can get a puncture anywhere, even in new tyres, as you’ve found out. What exhibitions were they?” he asked.
“They were art shows. Those who know me from my early days would like me to go back to doing portraits. I don’t want to sound big-headed, but I was good at those, but now I prefer acrylic landscapes and harbour scenes, and spend the autumn in Brittany every year. I stayed on a bit longer this time to get some scenes with bare trees and some early winter coastal views.”
“Where were you heading for?”
“I’ve got a place in Shoreditch. I like to stay in London for the winter and spring, and then I spend the summers in my cottage in Cornwall.”
“Sounds like a great life!”
“Yes, it was.”
“Sorry, I …” he mumbled, as reality returned.
It was Sod’s Law that the last nut wouldn’t come undone despite the steel layer in his work trainers letting him get a good purchase on the wheel-brace.
“OK, Ranjia, I want you to sit back in the car and really stand on the brake pedal when I tell you.”
He jacked the car up and got the offending nut to the lowest point and put the wheel-brace on at about the 5 o’clock position.
“Right, press that pedal as hard as you can. I’m going to let the car down while you do that.”
This was an old trick that he hoped would still work, and it did. The weight of the car on the wrench was too much for whatever was holding the nut stuck, and it came undone.
“OK, you can relax, I’m going to jack it up again now.”
“Relax, are you kidding? We’re under a nuclear attack!”
A couple of minutes later her car was ready to go.
“Hey, that was quite a trick with the wheel-brace. I remember my Dad not being able to undo a wheel nut, and he was quite handy with cars. We were stuck for hours one bank holiday waiting for help. Have you been trained?”
“Sort of,” was all Steve wanted to say.
He was well aware of his unfulfilled potential and had always been a good problem solver with an ability to think laterally. It was only about every other minute that he thought about that as he burnt away the miles in his van. This wasn’t the time to talk about his failings with a girl who had clearly used all her skills to make a contented life for herself. Even though things couldn’t get any worse for either of them, or anyone, he didn’t think it right to try.
“Why don’t you head down to Cornwall, there’ll be nothing left for you in London?”
“Thanks, that’s a good idea.”
“If you carry on up here you can pick up the A303 in a bit. It’s going to be busy. How’s your fuel?”
“It’s fine. I filled up in France just before the ferry.”
“Steve, how can I ever thank you?”
She knew how she wanted to thank him, and even Steve, with years of nearly always missing the sexual hints behind him, knew. What they also both knew was that this could be the last chance that either of them would have.
“Look, you are stunningly beautiful, and as tempting as it is, I’m not going to start being unfaithful to my wife now. It’s time for us to take our chances wherever we’re heading, but just tell me, is Ranjia a nick-name?”
“No, that’s my real name. I was named after my two grandmothers, Ranju, who was Indian, and Olympia, from Italy, so I’m a bit of a mixture. ”
“A beautiful mix, Ranjia.”
With that they hugged and he kissed her on the cheek.
As he cycled away, his mind raced with erotic thoughts of taking Ranjia on the back seat of her Golf, but then remembered a couple of reasons why it hadn’t happened.
One was the irrational, almost chivalrous, faithfulness he felt at this time, not that he had been anything else before tonight. He wasn’t in any way religious, and the state of the world just confirmed his agnosticism, which had moved very close to atheism in the last few hours, but he regarded his lack of sexual adventures as some sort of punishment.
The other, more practical reason, was of a physical nature. Even on the hottest of summer mornings, it still took a long hot shower to return his genitalia to anything like its normal healthy proportions after one of his regular bike rides. He had often wondered what the medical terminology is for ‘Cyclist’s Penis’, the condition where the airflow around a man’s crotch while cycling reduces his ‘meat and two veg’ to something more like a chip and two hidden peas. Not as painful as ‘Tennis Elbow’ or ‘Housemaid’s Knee’, but just as debilitating unless one only wants a wee.
‘I wonder if women have the same problem?’ his mind was still racing away with all kinds of thoughts.
‘They don’t have as many moving parts as us blokes, although I’m sure Ranjia’s would have moved me eventually. Apparently there’s something called a clitoris which some say is kept in that area, but that can’t be right, I mean, that’s one of the first places we would look!’
‘What a dick you are, Steve,’ he thought to himself as he pedalled on, chuckling away, ‘or have!’