I Like It Here
coming up the road reminded him of his wife’s existence. Right: whatever the rights and wrongs of the thing, Barbara must not be allowed to prevent him from doing what he felt he wanted to do, such as it was, about Buckmaster. There was a sound from his stomach as of convivial, Friar Tuck laughter: it knew lunch was imminent. He went to the window. The boys, full of fun, were conducting a running fight with each other as they got out of the car. They at least were having a whale of a time abroad; perhaps in years to come they would thank their old father for having, at untold cost to himself, taken them to foreign climes before their attitude to these could be vitiated as his had been. Then came Barbara, carrying a yelling and stiff-backed Sandra.Bowen’s heart went out towards his wife. Poor little thing, he thought, this is a pretty poor sort of abroad-holiday for you, and you were so excited about coming. She looked at the same time fit and haggard; her eyes, brighter and clearer even than usual, were rolling a little in weary protest. All right, Oates, this is your lot, Bowen said to himself: smarten your bloody ideas up or … Or what? Well, or something, anyway; you wait and see.
10
“COME,” BACHIXA SAID politely. “You will see my bicycle now. It stands just over here, sir, by the gate. It’s an English machine, you know. In Portugal we think they’re very good. They have good power, also when they’re older.”
It was with a sense almost of anticipation that Bowen followed Bachixa’s stocky lumberjacketed figure down Oates’s minute drive. He was already by way of being an authority on Bachixa’s motorbike, both as regards its recent and its more remote history. He knew all about the soft-rubber handgrips and their advantages in a hot climate, the devoted watch on fuel consumption, the slight but recurring trouble with the chain, the tellingly long life of the tyres. There was also the envy manifested by the owner’s colleagues at the Lisbon shipping office where he worked, though this was hinted rather than itemised. Never to cast eyes on this bike would have seemed to Bowen a readily endurable deprivation, but Fate was not to be turned aside.
They reached the bike. It was rather smaller and less florid than Bowen had expected: no twin fins or vast fluted cylinder. In fact it looked just the thing for a rural dean’s crazed widow to go and buy the cat’s-meat on, especially in view of its crimson velveteen saddle-cover. It clearly inhabited a more spacious and sedate world than either Oates’s ginger-coloured German model or the Italian motor-scooter favoured, as Bowen well knew, by de Sousa. (Where was he, by the way? He and Bachixa were so much a dual phenomenon that to see only one of them carried intimations of sudden illness or arrest.)
Wincing softly through pursed lips, Bachixa sprang smartly forward and dusted the speedometer-glass with his cuff, then leapt back to a stand-at-ease position at Bowen’s side. Together they ran their eyes over Bachixa’s possession, the latter in quiet pride, Bowen in quiet search of material for comment. The silence lengthened and he could feel Bachixa starting to eye him. Without looking (he hoped) too much like a man in an advertisement being given an electric shaver by his girl, he tried to filter on to his face an expression of gratified desire. “Well,” he said unguardedly, “she certainly looks in tip-top shape.”
“She …?”
“I mean everything is in very good condition.”
Bachixa shrugged his shoulders, as if to say “What else?”
“Er … the paint’s new, isn’t it?”
This time he smiled eagerly. “Ah no, sir. In last December. It was the best paint. And …” Quickly and dexterously he threw open the tool-case and shook out a spotless sky-blue duster. “I clean with this all the painted parts, every day. It’s the best idea.” He flicked off-handedly at the front mudguard.
“I agree,” Bowen said warmly. “You burn a mixture of petrol and oil, I think you said?”
“A mixture, yes.” The duster refolded and restored, he threw his leg across the saddle and settled himself comfortably in the riding position. The seconds went on ticking by while he went on sitting there and Bowen watched him. So did the policeman’s two children across the way. Bachixa glanced loftily at them. Don’t mind me, Bowen wanted to say to him: go brrrmmm, brrrmmm if you want to. But why should he want to? He rode the thing practically all the time, didn’t he? Then whence this symbolical re-enactment?
When Bowen was wondering whether to tiptoe away, Bachixa dismounted with a sigh, smoothed out the wrinkles in the saddle-cover and adjusted the waistband of his lumberjacket at the regulation level. “You would like, sir ?” he asked.
“I would like?”
“You would like to try?”
“Oh, well, thank you very much, yes.” Bowen got on. Try? Try what? How did he mean, try? He sat there trying for some time, his brain slogging about for a peg on which to hang superlatives. In the end he said emotionally: “Very comfortable.” He jogged up and down a little. “Most comfortable. And everything”— he gestured towards the exhaust-lifter, the handbrake, the ignition-advancer-and-retarder— “so …nice and handy.”
Bachixa digested this, nodding to himself once or twice. Then he said: “Would you like to take a ride, sir?”
“That’s very kind of you, but I don’t think I could manage the gears and things.” Bowen laughed ingenuously. “It’s been so long since …” He could easily remember his last motorbike ride. It had been on an old and massive Army machine which had unseated him at 10 m.p.h. and then tried to roll on him.
“I will drive, of course. You may sit behind me.”
“Well, actually, I don’t think I’ve got time, thanks all the same. My wife and I are going …” In a pig’s ear I may sit behind you, Bowen thought to himself. Oates hadn’t got