Alan Hunter - Gently Go Man

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 crawl: 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.

‘Spooky, isn’t it?’ Deeming commented out of the corner of his mouth. ‘You know, I go for this, screw. Like it reminds me of the outback. You ever been down under, screw?’

‘No,’ Gently said. ‘Not yet.’

‘You get it just like this,’ Deeming said. ‘But like it’s hotter and the sky’s hollow. I had a spell at a station out a bit from Alice. Big drought country, screw, say it’s five hundred from Alice. I was herding on the trail, slept in places like this. Mulga trees. Abos. Spooky as hell, it was.’

‘On the borders?’ Gently asked.

‘Yeah, plumb on them,’ Deeming said. ‘Like I hadn’t thrown that jazz then, but I was getting the kick all the same. And the kick you get here, maybe you get it a bit stronger. Because like your abos are ghosts, screw, though they’re still here, they haven’t moved out.’

‘It’s a theory,’ Gently said.

‘Too right it is,’ said Deeming.

They went on riding. At times the track seemed to disappear altogether. Its line was straight, it followed a depression or climbed a ridge indifferently. From the top of the ridges you could see some miles, but all those miles were more breck: there was only the black Chase far behind, perhaps a couple of firs far ahead. The sky was whitish without gradation. The sun was a brightness over to the left.

At last they did arrive at something that made an event in the sameness. It was a level depression of a few acres, grown with scanty, brownish grass. At either side it had hummocky ground and on one of the hummocks were the two firs they had seen. The track passed by the nearer hummocks and crossed the depression to a point near the fir trees. Deeming followed it there and stopped. He killed the engine, thrust up his goggles.

‘What do you make of this?’ he asked.

Gently climbed stiffly off the bike. He was getting tired of his pillion-riding, tired of the weight of the helmet.

‘It could have been camping ground,’ he said.

Deeming shook his head. ‘No water, cobber. The abos didn’t build camps away from water. Like you must give them a little sense.’

‘What do you say it is?’ Gently asked.

‘Well, it could be a holy place,’ Deeming said. He had his eyes fixed hard on Gently. ‘You reckon it might be a holy place?’ he said.

Gently didn’t say anything. He felt for his pipe and filled it. After a moment Deeming propped the bike, fetched out a case, lit a cigarette.

‘Like these broken bits here could have been barrows,’ he said. ‘Maybe some squares bust them up, looking for loot and whatnot.’