‘Tell Dad I’ve met a friend and I’ll be staying with him.’ Ray hadn’t said in so many words that I’d be staying over, and I shot him an anxious glance, but he didn’t react at all, so I got a little extra confidence from that. I introduced the two of them, and Ted made a bit of a mess of shaking hands. When his siesta had overtaken him, he’d still had the ring-pull from his beer can wedged past the knuckle of his middle finger, right hand. With the little curl of soft metal still attached to the ring, it looked like a piece of costume jewellery or a down-and-out’s rather pathetic knuckleduster.
Ted held out his hand to shake, and then noticed the ring. He pulled abruptly back to wrestle it off his finger. He felt foolish for a moment. He even blushed, not that anyone but me would notice beneath the ale-flush. Then he scowled, so he looked downright unfriendly when his hand was finally free of ornament and he could safely offer it to be shaken.
If somebody had held up a mirror on front of me at that moment, I would immediately have realised I had nothing to offer Ray. Ray had no possible need of this blob. But luckily I was looking at Ted, and the part of me that was doomed to make unflattering comparisons, that was already holding everything and everybody up to this amazing Ray and finding them wanting, had something else to work on. I decided that Ted’s hair was greasy, and sideboards made his face look fat. Everyone wore sideboards in those days, even me, even Ray, though his were neat, and the strong symmetry of his face would have been able to ride out the fashions of any decade.
I noticed that even Ted’s leathers looked sorry for themselves, scuffed and faded, while Ray’s looked as if they’d just been oiled. Not new or anything, just beautifully broken in and cared for.
I knew perfectly well that Ted wanted a private word with me about the change of plan. He kept jerking his head, to mean I should come aside for a while, but when I didn’t budge it made him look as if there was something wrong with his neck. Nerves. I wasn’t nervy at all. It felt wonderful just standing next to Ray, standing doing nothing, and watching the way the world changed round him.
Finally Ted had exhausted his options, and he asked me: ‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’ To which the honest answer could only be No. It was because I didn’t know what I was doing that I needed to go along with Ray, wherever it was that he was going. And of course I said Yes.
Thinking about it, Ted’s part in all this was pretty small. He didn’t need to look so solemn. All he had to do was make a phone call. He didn’t even need to speak to my dad direct, he was only passing a message along. Strange to think that as late as 1975 my parents didn’t have the phone. Marjorie next door would take the message, and it was Marjorie who would trot across to tell my dad I wasn’t coming home. Marjorie was still mobile in 1975, still sighted and able to get around. In 1975 there were still a few people called Marjorie. A few Ediths, a few Ivys.
Ted was in the clear. Ted could drink as late as he liked. I’d worn Ted’s spare helmet on the way to Box Hill, and now he swung it rather sullenly towards me. He almost threw it. Perhaps he was offended by Ray’s keeping his gloves on when they shook hands, or embarrassed by the whole kerfuffle of the business with the ring-pull, the ring-pull he’d thrown to the ground like a man in a silly strop breaking off an engagement.
The helmet I was to wear had a shabby, second-hand look. Almost a junk-shop look. It was easy to believe that it had fallen off a bar-stool more than once, just like the man who was lending it to me. I hoped I’d never find out how much or how little protection it had to offer, after so many tavern impacts. Even before I needed to put it on I could tell that it smelled of beer. Perhaps he drank out of it, for a bet, or not needing even that much of an excuse. Perhaps that was his secret sense of himself, as a sort of Viking. Ted the biking Viking.
Ray said nothing while we walked the few hundred yards to where he’d left his bike. I can’t think of a word to describe the way he walked: ‘stroll’ is all wrong, unless you add in a huge assurance, an authority that radiated from him with every casual step. Kings don’t stroll. I could feel myself scurrying after him on legs that seemed stumpier than ever before, anxious to keep up but dreading the inevitable moment when he would turn to me and say, ‘You didn’t really think you were coming home with me, did you? Try looking in a mirror sometime, when you’re feeling strong.’ That had to be his game, his way of getting kicks. Building up my dreams to send them crashing down. But I knew that whatever happened I wasn’t going to go back to Ted and to Isleworth with my tail between my legs. I’d sleep on Box Hill if I had to. Curl up in a bush.
Ray had left his helmet hanging from a handlebar of his machine. We all of us had less reason to expect our possessions to be pinched in those days, but even then I found Ray’s confidence that nothing of his would be taken or tampered with extraordinary. It was as if he could fill things with a protective charge, and needn’t worry that anything would happen to them while he was away.
For the first time I had a mystifying glimpse of Ray’s glove ritual: the thin ones peeled off and tucked carefully in the pocket of the jacket he was carrying, the thicker gloves — gauntlets, almost — retrieved from the helmet where he had so trustingly or defiantly left them. His helmet, quite unlike mine (Ted’s), gleamed softly and held no dents.
I didn’t know much about bikes then, and I don’t know much more now, but even at first glance Ray’s machine, a black Norton Commando, put the Japanese bike on which I’d arrived at Box Hill to shame. Which was strange, since Ted’s Yamaha, his pride and joy, was only a couple of months old, in the earliest stages of neglect, while the Norton was far from new. But there was a symmetry between the man and what he rode, between both men and what they rode. Ray’s bike was as classic as he was — they were versions of the same superlative, he in confidence and leather, the Norton in power and chrome.
If you’re a glasses-wearer, putting on a crash helmet presents quite a problem, particularly if it’s full-face. If you wear glasses with wire stems, the sort that wind around your ears, I don’t see how it’s even possible. Even with my rigid stems I had to remember to take the glasses off — I laid them on the grass for a moment — before putting the helmet on, and only then to push the earpieces awkwardly into place.
Before I took my glasses off I had time to notice that the interior of Ted’s spare helmet, which it had once seemed such a privilege to wear, the fibre-glass shell of it, was matted with hairs, some mid-length and brown, which might have been anybody’s, which might have been mine from the ride down, and some long and blonde, with a flip at the end, which might have been Joyce’s. All girls’ hair had that flip. Girls’ hair in those days had learned lessons from the Partridge Family, from Abba, from Suzi Quatro. ‘Charlie’s Angels’ were just around the corner, preparing to undertake their first missions.
While I fiddled with the chinstrap Ray walked round the bike. It puzzled me that he kicked at the tyres and leaned over with a frown to inspect the brakes. Over time I learned that he did these checks every time he returned to the bike after a lapse of more than a few minutes. He was always scrupulous about safety, in a way that was far from common at the time.