After France his difficulties with balance got more and more intense, even though no scan or EEG ever traced a cause. Dad stopped trusting his feet to carry him, unless he was coaxed and chivvied and supported, and it wasn’t too long before Mum had to stop working too.
I’d persuaded the Steves to give me their phone numbers, and for a while I kept pestering them with pointless questions. Eventually one of them — I don’t even remember which — spoke to Mum and told her it had to stop. I felt it had to stop, too. I felt the secrecy about Ray had to stop. But no, that had to stay. I had to stop calling. That was what had to stop.
It was hard for me to stop phoning them and asking them things, because they’d known Ray. And I hadn’t. I didn’t know what he did for a living, if he even worked. I didn’t know his birthday, and since the two Steves told slightly different stories I didn’t know for certain which of two days had been the date of his death. That’s why I had such a desperate need to see his gravestone. To be better informed.
Wouldn’t Ray have wanted to celebrate his own birthdays, if he’d known he was going to have so few of them? Rather than borrowing mine.
I didn’t even know his last name. Among club members we weren’t called Ray and Colin, we went by Smith and Jones. I’m Colin Smith, but I’ve no reason to think that Ray’s last name was Jones. The odds against that would have to be astronomical, like the odds that we did actually by the wildest chance share a birthday.
Eventually I realised that Graham the downstairs neighbour was likely to know Ray’s last name, if not from his own mouth then from the post that Ray made sure I never saw, but when I went, strangely fearful, back to Hampton, Graham had moved. I was almost relieved, and I didn’t try to pursue him. There seemed to be a part of me that wanted not to know.
Of course I should have asked Graham on that fatal Sunday, but in fact that wasn’t the great regret I had about that day. Graham could only have told me the name on Ray’s mail, the name he was living under, and why would that be the one he was born with and buried by? My true regret was that I accepted Steve’s lift from Box Hill to Hampton, and so forfeited the right to say that the last time I ever sat on a motorcycle I was sitting behind Ray. Breathing down his neck. If I’d just been a bit more on the ball at Box Hill, I could have kept that pledge for myself. It was something I could have controlled, and I let it go without even noticing.
The Steves thought it would comfort me to realise that it was only Ray’s safety-mindedness, and the spaced-out grouping he insisted on, which ensured that no-one but him went into that oil and that skid. They weren’t well keyed in to my mood. Actually I felt that they had no business avoiding the oil. And as for me, by rights I should have been right behind Ray. Breathing down his neck as we slid together into the oil.
Not that I had a right to die with Ray, necessarily. But if I’d only been injured and in the same hospital as him, surely the club members would have refused to swear when Ray wanted their silence? Then I would still have had a stake in what had happened. It wouldn’t have been so easy to exclude me, to separate me from what happened to him.
The year after Ray’s death lasted much longer than the six before it. That’s a fact. And six years is a long time for most things, too long for most things, but it wasn’t a long time to spend with Ray. Then I pulled myself together somewhat, after a certain amount of feeling sorry for myself, and I got a job with London Transport. I was never meant to be a gardener, or at least a bowls-green-mowing, begonia-planting machine operated by Mikey Jarvis, a man who would happily drink the water out of flower-vases, so long as the vases belonged to Princess Margaret. From the start of my training with LT, I felt I was in the right place at last. Not home, exactly, but the right place to be.
I didn’t stop thinking about Ray just because a certain amount of time went by. There were changes in the world that made me daydream. I’d wonder what he would have made of them. I couldn’t help thinking that he’d have loved CDs. He would have grumbled about the absurd expense, and then planned with suppressed gloating to replace all his treasured holdings. Or perhaps he would have gone the other way. I could just about imagine him sticking with vinyl, writing impassioned letters to specialist journals about tonal fidelity — wide-band response or whatever it is.
But on balance I think he would have gone with CDs. He would have loved remote controls — the ability to change the music without our needing to shift position. His legs gripping my neck, my head heavy against his crotch. Perhaps he would have invested in one of those rather unwieldy CD players with a sort of carousel that can take five discs at a time.
When the Aids came along, that was different. Somehow I couldn’t put that together with Ray in my head. He was reckless, and he was safety-conscious. There was the time on a bike run to Bristol that he took me to a pub on a collar and leash. Straight pub. And nobody turned a hair, nobody questioned his right to do as he pleased. Well, someone said ‘Good doggie’ to me, so I bit him. All right, not bit him. Snarled a bit and snapped my teeth.
Ray was big on self-control, and he didn’t know when to stop. He loved rules, and he loved to break them, that was the thing. Once he pulled over on a busy road, angled the bike to give a little cover, told me to undo my jeans, bent me over the bike and fucked me there and then. Broad daylight. He was punishing me or rewarding me for something I’d done or hadn’t done, I can’t remember which or what. With Ray it was best to accept him the way he was and not try too hard to make everything connect up. At least I had the choice of closing my eyes, to blot out the violation of my privacy, but I couldn’t keep them shut. I don’t know why.
And then while he was still hammering away, and we were both getting into a rhythm, would you believe it, a car pulled up to ask directions. I didn’t want to get into the rhythm, but the rhythm was there. The man was driving and the woman was frowning as she held the map up in front of her. Car drivers seem to think bikers know every destination, or maybe it’s just that there aren’t windows to give bikers a bit of privacy. It must be even worse now that every other biker’s a despatch rider, and all the others are supposed to know where every little alleyway is, by magic.
Ray didn’t pull out of me, but he stopped pushing long enough to set them on the right road, and they moved off. But then they only went a few yards, either because the lady had done a double take and realised what had been in front of her eyes, or because the gentleman put two and two together. From where the car is now we aren’t screened, and Ray twists me round so there can be no doubt, and he starts in on me again, and he shouts, ‘Do you want to be after me with him, madam?’ Always polite. Most polite when being outrageous. And this time they don’t hang around. Normally Ray didn’t come inside me, but that time he did. Before the Aids, nobody worried about where come went or didn’t go, but there was usually a special reason for Ray to come inside me. He’d be making a point of some kind. Mischief or angry glee. Coming with a shout.