John Davis - The Year of Dangerous Loving

And this was more like it! This was what he imagined when the salesman had eulogized about the Shimano 36-speed gears, making it sound as if he would whiz gracefully everywhere. Hargreave went swooping down the hill effortlessly, cool wind suddenly on his sweating face, the sunset caressing instead of beating him – this was almost like sailing! There was no other downhill traffic and he had half the swathe of road to himself. He trod on the pedals harder, and the machine surged again, going faster, and faster, the uphill traffic flashing by now. Hargreave pedalled joyously, effortlessly, gracefully, the wind whistling in his ears, drying his sweating face; harder he pedalled, and harder. And, oh, he would love to just keep going down this steep winding peak all the way down to Central, fun fun fun all the way. That’s what he’d do tomorrow, by God – ride down to the Supreme Court and then take the Peak tram home with his bike and then it was downhill once more from the top of the Peak to his apartment.

That is how Hargreave was feeling on his new Canadian mountain bike as he approached the entrance to his apartment complex. Halfway down the hill his speedometer told him he was doing thirty miles an hour, threequarters the way down he was doing thirty-five. When he was a hundred yards from the entrance he was doing an exhilarating forty, and he felt twenty-three years old, like Olga. When he was fifty yards from the entrance, Hargreave began to apply his brakes for the turn.

First he applied the rear, and the machine slowed somewhat, screeching. Twenty yards from the entrance Hargreave felt he was going too fast to make the turn and he jerked on the front brakes as well and the machine lurched. Ten yards from the entrance Hargreave panicked: he had to make a ninety-degree turn into a blind gateway at terrifying speed. He wrenched on both brakes with all his might and rang his bell frantically. He hurtled towards the entrance. Two yards from it he filled his lungs and bellowed ‘ I’m coming! ’ and he clenched his teeth and swung the handlebars.

Hargreave swung into the blind entrance at a breakneck fifteen miles an hour, slap-bang into an oncoming car. All he knew was the terrifying wobble of his hurtling turn, his wheels juddering, then the bonnet of the car looming towards him, the skid of its wheels as the driver slammed on the brakes, the blast of his hooter, the radiator roaring towards him, then crash ! Hargreave smashed into the car head-on with a blinding jolt, his front wheel buckled and his rear wheel bucked, and he flew through the air. He went sailing over the handlebars, hit the bonnet, skidded along it, and smacked head-first into the windscreen.

The windscreen was fucked. The bike was fucked. ‘And so am I.’

That was Wednesday. Hargreave took it very easy on Thursday. He did not go to the gym. He did not ride his exercycle. He did not have a drink. He did not even go to his chambers – he stayed in bed. But he re-read Champion’s uranium file, finally making a note in the Investigation Diary that he recommended the expenditure of further police funds ‘in view of the international importance’. It eased his conscience that he had done some work.

But when Friday dawned he felt wonderful. He still had some stiffness, but he was rested, he had been off the booze for thirty-six hours, his body felt wide-awake: and tonight he was going to Macao! He swung out of bed in the sunrise, to get the day by the tail good and early – and he winced. He had more than some stiffness: the wonderful feeling was only in his head. He walked to the bathroom very experimentally. His knees were still painful and he had a big bruise on his hip. He lowered himself very carefully into a hot bath and lay there, eyes closed, thinking of Olga.

After a moment he felt as excited as a teenager again, his aches and pains did not matter a damn. He knew it was crazy, but that’s how he felt.

It felt even more like that as, in the sunset, the hydrofoil sped across the South China Sea towards Macao. The whole world was exotic, the haze, the mauve islands, the junks, the Pearl River mouth, and he was going to the most exotic girl in the world. He was smiling with anticipation as he swigged his cold San Miguel beer in the first-class cabin, his first drink in forty-eight hours: it was going down into his system like one of Ian Bradshaw’s vitamin B shots. He was impatient with the delays at the immigration counters, but he loved the crowds, the noise, the smell of the place. He had a grin all over his face as his taxi sped and honked and swerved him along the teeming waterfront, then wound up the knoll to the gracious Bella Mar. He strode into the picturesque old hotel, and he loved every creaking floorboard and pillar and potted palm and smiling Chinese. It almost felt as if he had come home. He checked in with a flourish and hurried up to his suite with hardly a hobble. He dumped his bag, snatched a bottle of whisky out of it, poured a big shot, then picked up the telephone and dialled the Heavenly Tranquillity Nite-Club.

‘Hullo, darling!’ Olga cried. ‘Are you really here?’

‘In the flesh. In the hotel. In the bedroom. In the bed.’

‘Oh darling, do not go anywhere!’

Twenty minutes later he heard her running up the staircase. He flung open the door as she burst into it. And there she was, even more beautiful than he remembered, her mass of golden hair piled up on her head, her big blue eyes sparkling, her lovely bosom bursting out of her dress, her wide laughing smile. Hargreave’s heart turned over at the sheer glory of her. ‘ Olga …’

He clutched her joyously, felt her fulsome young womanness against him; and he turned her as he kissed her and jostled her towards the bed, laughing into her mouth. She collapsed on to the bed, making giggling noises, and he fell on top of her, one hand wrenching up her dress, the other grappling with his belt. ‘ The door – ’ He scrambled off her, his trousers halfway down, hobbled painlessly to the door, slammed it and turned back to her. Olga was laughing, her dress up round her waist, her lovely long legs bent as she raised her hips and wrestled her panties down. As Hargreave blundered towards her she hooked them on to her big toe, pulled back the elastic, then let go. They sailed through the air over his head as he collapsed, laughing, on top of her.

They had a wonderful time that weekend. For a week he had fed on the image of her beautiful body, and now he truly had her again. And despite his aches and bruises, his health-kick had paid off: it seemed he wanted to make love to her all the time. And it felt like love. It had almost felt like that last weekend when he left her waving on the jetty. For at least half the week it had still felt like that as he laboured at his exercises; only sometimes had he managed to convince himself that it was only a crazy case of lust. But this glorious weekend he knew that it was not just that, it was better – it was besottedness. He was besotted with her, her tumult of golden hair, her fragrant loins, her magnificent breasts – it seemed he could not get enough of her, there was no feeling more magnificent, more lovely than her body under his, her legs locked around his, thrusting, thrusting into the sweet hot depths of her. Every position she adopted was wildly erotic but the most magnificently important one was to feel her full naked beauty splayed out underneath him.

But there was plenty of laughter, too, and plenty of other fun. She loved jokes. They had the same sense of humour, the same sense of the ridiculous. She thought his health-kick was a hilarious story, and when he came to the bit about writing off his new mountain bike she went into roars of laughter. That established him as a raconteur, and thereafter, whenever he started to tell her a joke she began to giggle, even before he reached the funny part, and when he came to the punchline she threw back her head and guffawed, her lovely eyes wet.