“What?” he said. “An old man can’t have a drink after a day like that?”
She managed a small smile that lit up his mood a little. He was pleased with how she was doing. It wasn’t the sun yet, but it was a candle in a basement. He’d take any kind of progression from the absolute darkness of those hours after her last race.
She pointed at the drink in his hand. “But whisky?”
“If they made anything stronger, trust me, I’d be drinking it.”
She tried another smile.
He hadn’t left her alone for a fortnight. In the daytime he’d kept her engaged with the simple tasks of winding up her sponsorship deal and moving out of her apartment. In the night, in his small flat, he’d looked into her room every half hour. He’d slept only in twenty-minute bursts shattered by the piping of his wristwatch alarm. Still, at his age, you needed life to forgive you more than you needed sleep.
This morning he’d organized a small white hire car with the rental company’s sticker on the doors, powered by something that was nominally an engine. He’d driven her down south to the decaying Hampshire church with the overgrown graveyard that she’d never visited. It had taken them half an hour to find her brother’s headstone. It was polished and lacquered black marble, in the shape of a teddy bear. The canonical features had been carved into the stone with inhuman precision using a computer-controlled router programmed by a manufacturer that presumably specialized in these stelae and produced them in short runs of ten or a dozen units at a rate determined by statistical algorithms to be proportional to the rate at which children passed away within the geographical purview of the distributor. At a later time, possibly further down the supply chain, the routed lines of the teddy bear’s eyes and smile had been picked out in a patent-protected brand of weather-resistant gold paint that had the property of adhering to metamorphic stone when properly keyed in and staying there pretty much forever.
Tom had hated the stone. The sense of disappointment at a world that had produced such an artifact and compelled this young woman that he cared about to look at it was almost more than he could bear. He’d taken it out on the grave’s overgrowth of long sedge and bramble, ripping it away so violently that his hands were left torn and bleeding. The headstone, when they had finally exposed it, was stark and upright and unweathered in that flat field of lolling, rusticated crosses.
Zoe hadn’t said a word, just silently stared at that terrible child’s monument traveling in eternal locked formation with the softer stones of the elderly dead. Then, kneeling, she took out her first Olympic gold—the sprint medal from Athens on its faded blue ribbon. She hung it around the teddy bear’s neck. From her jacket pocket she took the dented aluminium water bottle she and Adam had shared. She stood it up carefully on the grave, heaping the white marble chips to keep it upright on its uneven base. “You won,” she whispered. “You must be so thirsty.”
Walking back to the car, they had clung to each other for support. His knees were shot, her ankles were questionable, and both their hearts were in the kind of state where, if they had been any other muscles, he’d have recommended that they should be rested for the remainder of the season.
They’d sat in the car in silence for a few minutes before he started the engine.
“I should have come here twenty years ago,” she said finally. “I should have dealt with it all in my head. That’s what normal people would have done, right?”
He thought about it for a moment, then sighed. “Let’s both not get started on what we should have done.”
Zoe looked out at the churchyard. “Is it always like this, when someone falls out of the sport?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. It feels like dying. Or being born.”
Tom weighed it up, tapping his fingers on the wheel. “No,” he said finally. “I mean by the time they retired, the other riders I worked with had more or less figured out what they wanted to do next. Maybe that’s why they won so much less than you. You never really thought about next, did you? Gave you a hell of an advantage on the track.”
“Was that not fair on the others, or was that not fair on me?”
He grinned. “Sweetheart, fair is a hair color.”
She’d laughed and they’d driven back north in a mellow kind of silence. They’d arrived back in Manchester and dropped off the hire car in the evening. They’d gone up to her apartment on the forty-sixth floor and packed the last of her things into a single Team GB holdall while the moon rose over the city through the tall plate-glass windows. Then they’d put her single Yale key into a plain white envelope and posted it through the letterbox of the solicitors who were handling the sale.
They’d stood out on the pavement, not knowing what to say to each other.
“I could go for a drink,” Tom had said.
Zoe had shrugged. “I suppose I could go and watch you drink it.”
Now Tom sat opposite her and positioned their glasses on the coasters. The pub was nearly empty. The blood-red carpets were patterned to camouflage whatever might be spilled on them in the future, and musty with the smell of whatever had been in the past. No one had put money in the jukebox and so it was choosing its own tunes. At this moment it was playing “God Only Knows” by the Beach Boys.
“How are you feeling?” said Tom.
“Okay.”
“How are you finding the weather, down here where us mortals live?”
She flipped him the middle finger.
The baby-faced barman rang a brass bell suspended from the canopy of the bar, to indicate that time had reached a point of division. “Last orders,” he called.
Tom frowned at his watch. “Sure you don’t want something stronger, Zo?”
She shook her head, and he reached over to touch her arm.
“You want us to go and see Kate and Sophie tomorrow?”
“Soon. Not just yet. I need some time to let it all settle.”
He watched her carefully. “Do you regret not telling Sophie?”
Zoe sniffed and shook her head. “No, I’m glad. Kate is her mother. Kate went through hell for her and I just … went.”
Tom squeezed her arm. “You did the best you could. That’s all you ever do. I wouldn’t like you so much if that wasn’t true.”
“But Tom, I love her. It’s possible to love a child even though you can’t be her parent. Isn’t it?”
He smiled. “I reckon so.”
Her eyes were still, the green of them muted and dull. There was a long way to go with her. Soon, maybe in another week or so, she’d start hearing the hints he was dropping. She still wasn’t receptive to the idea that there might be something great she could do with her days. She talked about modeling deals or becoming a commentator or any of a dozen lives he knew would make her unhappy. Still, he wasn’t going to give up. It was a patient business, talking comets down to the speed of life.
“Never mind,” he said. “Everything’s going to be alright.”
The barman was putting chairs on tables and spraying the kind of aerosol furniture polish that had the quality of simultaneously being citrus fresh and unsurvivable. The TV in the corner was showing the war in Afghanistan. The jukebox had moved on to Ella Fitzgerald singing “Dream a Little Dream of Me.”
“You’re a pretty nice person,” Zoe said finally.
“If your ankles get any worse, honey, then you’d better start being nice too.”
She smiled at him then, a full smile that lifted him to a place he hadn’t been in weeks.
Slowly her mouth sank back into a soft and serious line. “You’re good to me,” she said quietly.
“You’re the story of my bloody life,” he said. “Why wouldn’t I be good to you?”
The barman gave two strikes on the big brass bell and said, “Time, ladies and gentlemen, please.”
Tom growled.
“What?” said Zoe.
“Time,” he said. “Never liked that stuff.”
Three yea
rs later, Sunday, April 2015
National Cycling Centre, Stuart Street, Manchester
Jack sat next to Kate, high up in the stands, watching Sophie train alone on the track. They didn’t talk, only listened to the rumble of her wheels on the boards and the beeps from the lap timer. They liked to wait up here, out of Sophie’s line of sight, letting her get on with it. They liked to listen to Zoe’s excitable shouts as she coached their daughter.
Sometimes, as Sophie carved around the high banking and dropped snugly back down to the racing line, they felt their own hands twitching on phantom handlebars and the muscles in their legs aching to fire. Their heart rates climbed and they were there on the track with her, roaring round those polished maple curves, pushing the biomechanics to that perfect edge where everything clicked and their minds became still.
When it carried them away like that, they had to close their eyes and slow their breathing and remember that their time was gone. It persisted only in the immutable stillness of Jack’s gold from Athens, buried in the ground with his father, and in the daily motion of Kate’s gold from London, swinging in its rightful place on the end of the light cord in the understairs toilet of their home.
After all the years of speed, the greatest challenge of all was to make themselves sit still, up here in the dark of the stands. This was what you learned, after all the racing was over: that the hardest laps were the ones you did after the crowd had gone home.
“Kid looks good, doesn’t she?” Jack said after a while.
Kate watched Sophie grinning as she swooped into another curve. “Yeah, she looks really quick.”
“Think she’ll go gold one day?”
Kate was about to warn him against hoping for too much, but she closed her mouth. Who was she to say what the probabilities were? Sophie had come back from leukemia. She had fired the Death Star’s destructor beam into the limitless constellations of space and hit exactly the right target. She had beaten those kinds of odds.
They watched their daughter. Dark locks protruded from under her crash hat. When she took the helmet off, she liked to wear her hair in side buns, and she had a tendency to accessorize with a belt and a blaster. Strangers who saw the Argalls now were more likely to diagnose a fashion disaster than a medical one.
Sophie had bulked up as quickly as they had. With remission from leukemia had come respite from some of the allergies and intolerances. With her off the chemo and them off their training diets, the family had become partners in second breakfasts and midnight feasts. Sophie’s cheeks were filling out. Jack’s jeans were three inches bigger at the waist. They had eaten themselves back to normal, or as normal as any family could be whose daughter was currently circling the national velodrome in a custom-made Princess Leia Lycra outfit under the supervision of an Olympic quadruple gold medalist at seven o’clock on a Sunday morning while her school friends were all at a sleepover.
Jack squeezed Kate’s knee. “Youth Nationals this summer. Think we should let her compete?”
Kate thought about it. “What does Zoe say?”
“She told me Sophie was going to beat the other girls so badly they’d need counseling.”
Kate laughed. “She doesn’t change.”
He felt the anxiety catch in his chest. “But I don’t know. Is it safe for Sophie to push herself so hard, physically?”
“She says she feels great.”
“But that’s what she told us when she was practically dying. I mean, how do we know what to believe?”
Kate hugged Jack around the waist and nestled her head into his shoulder.
“We’ll see the truth on the track,” she said quietly.
They both looked down at the action. Far below them, with fits of echoing giggles and rivers of foul language, Zoe was psyching their daughter up to race pace. In the fading years behind them, the vast crowds shouted their names. Far above them all, and falling through the skylights high in the vaulted roof of the velodrome, the brave April light was golden.
Author’s Note
Cycling is hard. The training is brutal and relentless, the racing desperate and dangerous. Researching this novel, I spent some time on a bike, seeing how far I could push myself and trying to record how it felt. I am a willing but poor cyclist, and with every turn of the pedals I am more in awe of the champions. There are barriers of physical and emotional pain which they can push through and I cannot. They are extremely brave people, and I feel it is important to record some of their real achievements here.
At the Athens Olympics in this novel, Zoe Castle won gold in the women’s sprint and individual pursuit, while Jack Argall won gold in the men’s sprint. In reality, gold in the women’s sprint was won by Lori-Ann Muenzer of Canada, gold in the women’s individual pursuit by Sarah Ulmer of New Zealand, and gold in the men’s sprint by Ryan Bayley of Australia.
At the Beijing Olympics in this novel, Zoe Castle won gold in the women’s sprint and individual pursuit. In reality, Rebecca Romero of Great Britain won gold in the women’s individual pursuit, while Victoria Pendleton of Great Britain won gold in the women’s sprint.
May their victories be remembered and their characters celebrated, forever.
At the time of writing, the London Olympics of 2012 are still a year away. Good luck to all the athletes.
Caring for sick children is the Olympics of parenting. While researching this story, I was allowed to shadow Dr. Philip Ancliff, a consultant hematologist at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children in London, where gravely ill children are brought from all over the world. I was present in the room while Dr. Ancliff, a brilliant and compassionate man, broke the news of some very serious diagnoses to the parents of some very sick children.
Nothing prepared me for the emotional impact of witnessing parents’ reactions at times like these. And nothing has ever filled me with more hope and anticipation than to see how those parents, together with the amazing team at Great Ormond Street, subsequently cared for their dangerously unwell children. Parents and staff alike seemed to step up into a state of focused grace in which all worldly concerns were cast off until all that remained was love. As a researcher, it was like being embedded with angels.
I am sometimes depressed or discouraged by the behavior of institutions and individuals in this world, including myself, and I have frequently struggled to find something that is unequivocally good—something I can look up to without fear of being let down or disillusioned. For me, Great Ormond Street Hospital is that thing. It embodies not only a pure spirit of mission and selflessness on the part of the staff, but also the astonishing progress made by doctors and scientists. Only four decades ago, a diagnosis of childhood leukemia was a death sentence in nine cases out of ten. Today, through advances in medical research, the odds have been reversed and nine out of ten children will enter remission.
There is, of course, far more work to be done. If you have a spare moment, then I would urge you please to visit the website of the Great Ormond Street Hospital charity, where you can find out about children with conditions like Sophie’s, and learn about the extraordinary things that can now be done for them. If you are moved to donate, then I believe you will be effecting one of the most efficient conversions of money into love available anywhere on our planet.
http://www.gosh.org
Thank you.
Chris Cleave
London
2011
Thanks
This novel evolved through six drafts and Jennifer Joel read all of them. Her insightful critiques and unfaltering support meant everything to me. Thank you, Jenn.
Peter Straus is a brilliant man who always has my back, and I’d be nowhere without his wisdom and strength.
Lynn Henry is a thoughtful and ingenious editor whose notes are a thing of beauty in themselves. I’m also indebted to Kristin Cochrane for her own editorial insights, for her passion for original writing, and for her wonderful support.
My thanks and admiration to all at Random House an
d Doubleday Canada, especially Brad Martin. I’m honoured to have been with Bond Street Books since the start, and I particularly want to thank Maya Mavjee for all her kindness.
Scott Richardson is the art director for my books, and he is also an unfairly talented author who writes as C.S. Richardson – do check him out.
My very grateful thanks also to Simon Appleby, Tina Arnold, Leena Balme, Maite Cuadros, Suzie Dooré, Stephen Edwards, Harriet Ferguson, Katie Haines, Jonathan Karp, Kiara Kent, Sarah Knight, Laurence Laluyaux, Martha Leonard, Job Lisman, Nicola Makoway, Zoë Nelson, Gunn Reinertsen Næss, Jorge Oakim, Marina Penalva, David Rosenthal, Eleanor Simpson, Mathilde Sommeregger, Henrikki Timgren, and Synnøve Helene Tresselt.
Thank you to my cycling friends for getting me up to speed: Matt Rowley, Matt Hinds, Jake Morris, Neil McFarland, Ian Laurie, Jonny Moore and Alex Cleave.
A very special thank you to Danielle Ryan for the incredible support she has given to my family.
And thank you, as ever, to my family and friends.
About the Author
Chris Cleave was born in London and spent his early years in Cameroon. He studied experimental psychology at Balliol College, Oxford. His debut novel, Incendiary, won a 2006 Somerset Maugham Award, was short-listed for the 2006 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and is now a feature film. His second novel, Little Bee, is an international bestseller with over 2 million copies in print. He lives in London with his wife and three children. Chris Cleave enjoys dialogue with his readers and invites all comers to introduce themselves on Twitter; he can be found at www.twitter.com/chriscleave or on his website at chriscleave.com.
Chris Cleave, Gold
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends