A Breathless Story

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I sort of came round to the sound of Les moving about in the front of the shop and singing to himself and I thought I'd better get on with my work. Later on I asked to keep the picture to put up on my bedroom wall. He said he'd been thinking of doing the same thing himself, but he let me keep it anyway.  

Les met Martin a couple of times before he turned professional, and last week I heard him talking to one of his mates.  

'Nice of Martin Johnson to come all this way for the charity ride.'  

'He lives in the West Country, doesn't he? What will he do, travel up on the day before or stay overnight?'  

'He's staying overnight. He rang me to talk about those new electronic gear changers that have come out.'  

'Friend of yours, is he? Not staying overnight with you by any chance?'  

'No, people like you might talk if he did. He's booked into Goodman's Hotel.'  

'That's a queers' hotel isn't it?'  

'I only know two types of hotel. Clean ones and doss houses.'  

'People talk about you anyway Les.'  

Some of my mates at school say Les is gay, and he does live on his own above the shop, but he's never tried to touch me, other than his hand on my shoulder or the back of my neck for a couple of seconds. Sometimes I think he looks at me a lot while I'm working, but he's probably just checking that I'm doing my jobs properly. Anyway why shouldn't Les look at me if he wants to, where's the harm in that?  

On the day of the charity ride the five of us in Les's team met really early at the bike shop and set off for the start at Richmond Common. There were several hundred cyclists there already and the common looked terrific, everybody in brightly coloured cycling gear with their machines sparkling in the sunshine. We had to wheel the bikes into a marquee, register and pick up our route maps, and then join the queue for the start line. We passed a clown walking up and down on stilts and beneath a couple of acrobats hanging over our heads on wires.  

We mounted the bikes and set off, steadily overtaking people who had started out before us. There was hardly any traffic at that time of morning so it was not difficult to work our way forwards. The good club cyclists are faster than us, they train twice a week on runs of about fifty miles, but everyone in Les's group had put in some long rides recently and we were in pretty good shape.  

The charity ride is not a race, it's just for fun, but we rode like a proper team, each of us taking a little turn on the front of the group before dropping behind into the slipstream of the others where the going is a bit easier. Les had told me not to worry about speed because the important thing was to get to the finish, and he didn't want my dad coming to his shop complaining that I was shagged out afterwards. I'm as tall as some of Les's mates so I don't see why I should be any slower than them.  

We came to a stretch of country lane beside the River Thames with just a few road humps to slow us down, and I thought the ride was going to be a doddle. There were not many other cyclists about now, mainly the keen ones like us who had done some training rides. We were going faster than the one or two cruise boats we passed motoring up the river. At the end of the lane someone checked behind and said 'I think there's a pack chasing us.' Looking round I could see a group of about a dozen riders from the cycle club gaining on us fast. They caught up after we turned into a busy main road, riding past in tight formation, swinging way out across the road to overtake us, making on-coming drivers blare their horns. They did not even acknowledge us, although they all must have known Les because his is the only decent bike shop for miles. This was supposed to be a friendly charity ride, so what is the point of being like that?  

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