Epigraph:
Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images…
– T.S. Eliot
***
I peer through the two tiny holes, the roiling motion and noise of the party dimmed out by the thick rubber. I stroke my whiskers for comfort.
My beady eyes spot Jo Humphreys, née Williams, across the gallery. She is laughing, head thrown back. Is it me that causes this mirth? Or is it her husband, resplendent in a mauve tailcoat and grey moustache, shouting at the top of his lungs, one foot raised on a chair the better to display his handsome package to the bemused diners? I cannot know.
I turn my head a fully ninety degrees – the only way to avert my gaze. My vision swims back into focus on the smiling Edwin Smith, whose pert backside had, some hours earlier, disappeared away from me down the slick Oxfordshire lanes, wiggling merrily as if in mockery at my imploding chances of success.
“At some point in proceedings,” he chuckles sagely, “this event never fails to take on the feeling of a dream sequence”.
I nod my rubbery walrus head and stroke my whiskers. If only I could eat the food sitting on my plate, or swig greedily from the precious crystal wine glass. Alas, the mask prevents it.
***
The plough is a great leveler.
The line of tired, struggling bodies stretches a kilometer ahead of me across the shining sillion. I can see them all – monsters, pigs, seals – scattered at intervals, all slowed to a toiling plod, seemingly unmoving in the landscape.
With every heavy footfall in the freshly turned soil, their feet gather cakes of fertile Oxfordshire mud, sapping the ebbing strength from wearied legs. The harder they run the slower they go: a field crossing of which the vengeful Greek gods would have been proud.
***
Suddenly rousing harmonies fill the long gallery. A flash mob of the sort usually reserved for YouTube proposals. Smiles of surprise and pleasure. Suspicion too: they must have been practicing…
***
The rain lashes down, whipped sideways by a howling wind. My wheels bounce over pot-holes and skid perilously on the loose gravel. Thank goodness this isn’t my bike, I think.
I have been alone now for some time (though time itself had lost all meaning since I clung desperately to the reeds on the banks of a river that seemed determined to drown me).
The last I saw of man or beast was the wiggling backside of Edwin Smith, disappearing off up the road with the two other Dark Riders, the whirring of their wheels and the raving of their leader fading into the distance, leaving me for dead.
But now there is someone up ahead. I push hard on the peddles. I am catching him fast. Perhaps, I think, this lonely soul will work with me, keep me company until I reach safety. I pull out to pass the straggler and shout, charitably, “Jump on my wheel sir!”
“I can’t, I’ve got a bloody puncture!” comes the aggrieved reply.
A pang of sorrow washes over me – but is it for Keir, or for myself? I cannot tell. I adopt once more the backbreaking tuck and press on into the lashing rain: alone again.
***
“One hundred and fifty francs on an Uber? That’s absolutely insane! The train only costs thirteen!”
“What choice do we have? If we try to get the train, we’ll miss the flight!”
“I knew it was a bad idea to book these flights.”
“You’re the one who booked them! I told you we would never get out of work on time”
“Fuck”
A whispered conversation the English department office. My wife was, annoyingly, right. I tap “Confirm Uber X” and, in my mind, hear the sound of a cash register ringing cheerily as the total cost of entering this ridiculous triathlon climbs steadily higher.
***
The pigs are swimming front crawl!
I simply don’t believe it. I rub my eyes to check that the contact lenses are properly seated and look again. It is true: an entire field of pigs, including Whitefang, have all set off, heads down in the water, arms windmilling over their heads with the semblance of competent swimmers. Every single one of them, God Damn It, making steady progress upstream.
This event has certainly changed during my absence, I muse. A pig swimming front crawl – unthinkable a few years ago.
I suddenly wonder whether I am, in fact, at the right event. Who are all these people? Why was everyone listening attentively during the briefing rather than braying and showing off? Why is there a race number on my hand? Who was the man with the telephoto lense hiding in the brush? An actual bike rack? Draft legal? Matching swim hats? Talk of disqualification? I feel the panic rising. This was not what I had flown back for. Not at all.
Beside me, Anthony Maguire quietly confesses to me that he has just urinated copiously into his wetsuit. It is still eight minutes before he will enter the water. I sigh, and a line of Tennyson comes to me: “though much is taken, much remains.” I relax and promptly feel the comforting warmth of my own waste spread across my area.
***
Johnny Smith-Willis delivers one more powerful blow, teeth gritted, palm flat, punching with all the force of a previous race champion.
The saddle twists an inch as, at last, the seat post comes free. Jonny doubles over in acute pain, whimpering. He clutches his hand. His shoulder appears to be listing at a funny angle and he mumbles something about the imminent arrival of a new born.
I am hardly listening. “Thank god”, I think. “At least now I will now at least be able to reach the peddles.” I leave Becky Phillips, née Sammon, to fix my flat tire and lube the chain while I go to attend to some other business.
George, whose bike it is, is still refusing to say hello.
***
“What’s that in your back pocket?”
“What business is that of yours?” I reply, with unnecessary indignance.
“Well, what is it?”
“An inhaler if you must know”
“Do you need it?”
“Christ. What is this?”
“I wouldn’t feel safe without it”
“I see a lot of that”
…
“I’m a doctor, you see”
***
You hear them before you see them. At first, an indistinct shouting carrying to you down the howling wind, then the purr of fast-spinning aero wheels.
You glance back over your shoulder and you know that this is moment you have been waiting for: a single organism appears in your peripheral vision, barreling towards you at unlikely speed, breathing fire and howling wildly. As it passes, you can see that this beast is, in fact, made up of three diabolical figures working together in unnatural unison.
A large yellow monster drives them at the front, in the middle their leader screams at the top of his lungs in a language thought lost to man in the last ice age, and, at the back a silent, lowslung figure wiggling his pert behind.
With all my might I fling myself onto the beast’s back. It convulses, trying to throw me off but I dig my nails into its flesh, know that this is my only hope. The manic screaming of the leader intensifies. I try, desperately, to avoid coming near its head as we hurtle at terrifying speeds across the county. I know that if I take the lead I will be devoured and spat out on the road. The angry beast sees my tactics and accelerates wildly. A flood of lactic acid. Time slows. I am fourth in the line, then third, then second. I can hear the captain berating me, snarling, and then I find myself hit with the full force of the gale. I peddle a few more strokes before peeling off to retreat to the back but, as I do so, the furious overlord accelerates again and, try as I might, I fall from the beast’s back.
I watch helplessly as the horsemen of the apocalypse, the Nazgul, the dementors, hurtle away. The last I see is the pert bottom of the one who calls himself Edwin, wiggling in mockery as it slips round the corner behind the tall beech hedge.
I am alone again. The grey tarmac stretches far away.
***
A man waiting for a Negroni threatens me with an ice axe. Perhaps this is a joke but it does not feel like one.
***
I am not the first, nor will I be the last, to feel a frisson of excitement, nay arousal, at the sight of Matthew Maguire’s naked back. It really is a wonderful sight. As I come closer I drink it in: all rippling sinews and defined power – it could, I reflect, have been carved by Michelangelo himself.
I step lithely off the path and overtake. He’ll not be so glad to see the back of me, I’ll wager.
***
A mirthless accordion player, face set like thunder, is interrupted again by proceedings and his tune peters out sadly. He slumps over his instrument in the corner, visibly depressed.
***
My feet grope in the inky black, desperately feeling for the bottom.
I cling with an icy grip to the branch of an overhanging tree. The current pushes hard against me. In the distance, I can see the distinctive colours of Becky Phillips, née Salmon, disappearing effortlessly upstream towards the spawning grounds.
I haul myself into the silty bank, panting furiously. I plead to the gods: “don’t let that paddle board guy see me like this! Better to drown unseen than to be spotted cowering in the reeds!” The story of Duncan Lawrence’s hapless wade down the slippery banks of the upper Thames has become part of Walrus lore. In fact, as the so-called Pigs had set off in their uncannily professional front crawl, I had recalled that very incident, telling anyone who would listen that those were better days.
And now here I was, for the second time in just a four hundred meter swim, in mortal danger of either drowning or being the butt of a long-running joke. Or both: I wouldn’t put it past them.
Through my wetsuit, I cannot access my inhaler to relieve the panic-induced tightness in my lungs.
I turn to check that nobody is looking and begin the long, ignominious wade through the shifting sands towards Bailey, and safety.
They’ll pay for this, I thought, on the run.
***
“Are you alright?”
Shit. It’s mum. I really thought I was going to get away with it this time. I’d been so quiet.
“FINE! YES I AM FINE!”
“Are you sure? That’s the third time you’ve vomited…”
Fucking hell. She heard the very first one. She’s been counting.
“YES! FINE! ABSOLUTELY FINE! MUST HAVE BEEN SOMETHING I ATE! OR THE RIVER WATER I SWALLOWED WHILE …”
“You don’t sound fine. Are you pissed?”
I stare down at the dark, soupy contents of the toilet bowl that were, moments before, the contents of my stomach. I am transported in my mind to the blinding murk of the Thames. I cling for my life to the loo role holder. As I try to catch my breath, the current of nausea sweeps over me and I wretch again.
***
The marshals, smiling and pointing; benign facilitators of the madness. I thank them, but I do not mean it.
***
It really is boiling hot in here. The sweat drips down inside the mask. At least, I think, the lack of a mouth hole will protect me from the perils of The Horn!
To my right, on the dias, I can just about see a man I vaguely recognize with his arms full of prizes. He holds a portrait of a walrus, a large wooden carving of a walrus, and three small walruses nailed onto plaques. He resembles an unsuccessful competitor on Bargain Hunt. His wife looks on furiously at the junk that will now clutter their tastefully decorated London home for at least a year.
People call him Eddie, Ed Humphreys, Wetbeak. He is outrageously handsome, eminently likeable. They are singing for him now, men stand on the benches belting out a rousing chorus of approbation: “He’s the king of the sea! Like a lion but he’s soaking wet!”
But I know from the glint in his eye, undimmed by the copious volumes of red wine and WKD blue he has consumed, that this jovial “Wetbeak” is really him – the leader of the riders of death, the lord of the three, the reaper – come back for what is rightfully his.
Suddenly, boiling alive though I am, I feel intensely glad of this fishy disguise.
***
Epilogue:
A half-eaten cinnamon and raisin bagel on a Portmeirion side plate, a luke-warm cup of Earl Grey, the muffled rugby commentary from next-door, and Mum kindly avoiding the obvious topic of conversation: “So, how was it?” she asks blithely.
On my phone, an alert from Uber asks if I want to add a tip to my 152 franc bill, a sea shanty rings around my addled brain, my throat burns with stomach acid. On the clotheshorse, my wetsuit emits the faint smell of river water and urine; it drips steadily onto a forlorn heap beneath it containing some trainers, half a tonne of fertile Oxfordshire soil, my unused inhaler, and my hopes of success. My whole body aches, the number 13 is still faintly legible on my hand like the bad omen it turned out to be, and my facial hair is carved into a style that will surely see me summarily arrested at Heathrow in just a few hours’ time.
I chew on my bagel and try to stay calm as a dream sequence of horrid images flashes through my mind. I acknowledge silently that any attempt to report to this well-meaning woman, with any degree of clarity or coherence, on the events of the past twenty-four hours would be completely futile. Much easier to issue the well-worn and bald-faced lie she knows so well:
“Fine thanks mum. All good”.
***