Lawrence of Arabia – Essay from “The Mint”
The extravagance in which my surplus emotion expressed itself lay on the roads. So long as roads were tarred blue and straight, not hedged, and empty and dry, so long was I rich. Nightly I'd run up from the hangar upon the last stroke of work, spurring my tired feet to be nimble. The very movement refreshed them, after the day-long restraint of service.
In five minutes my bed would be down, ready for the night. In four more, I was in breeches and puttees, pulling on my gauntlets as I walked over to my bike, which lived in a garage-hut opposite. Its tires never wanted air, its engine had a habit of starting at second kick - a good habit, for only by frantic plunging upon the starter pedal could my puny weight force the engine over the seven atmospheres of its compression. Boanerges' first glad roar at being alive again nightly jarred the huts of Cadet College into life. “There he goes, the noisy beggar,” someone would say enviously in every flight. It is part of an airman's profession to be knowing with engines, and a thoroughbred engine is our undying satisfaction. The camp wore the virtue of my Brough like a flower in its cap. Tonight Tug and Dusty came to the step of our hut to see me off.
“Running down to Smoke, perhaps?” jeered Dusty, hitting at my regular game of London and back for tea on Wednesday afternoons. Boa is a top-gear machine, as sweet as most single-cylinders are in middle gear. I chug most lordly past the guardroom and through the speed limit at no more than 16. Round the bend past the farm, and the way straightens. Now for it. The engine's final development is 52 horsepower. A miracle, that all this docile strength waits behind the one tiny lever for the pleasure of my hand.
Another bend: and I have the honor of one of England's straightest and fastest roads. The burble of my exhaust unwound like a long cord behind me. Soon I heard only the cry of the wind which my battering head split and fended aside. The cry rose with my speed to a shriek, while the air's coldness streamed like two jets iced water into my dissolving eyes. I screwed them into slits, and focused my sight 200 yd. ahead of me on the empty mosaic of the tar's graveled undulations.
Like arrows, the tiny flies pricked my cheeks, and sometimes a heavier body, some house fly or beetle, would crash into my face or lips like a spent bullet. A glance at the speedometer: 78. Boanerges is warming up.
I pull the throttle right open, on the top of the slope, and we swoop flying across the dip, and up-down-up-down the switchback beyond, the weighty machine launching itself like a projectile with a whirr of wheels into the air at the take-off of each rise, to land lurchingly with such a snatch of the driving chain as jerks my spine like a rictus.
Once we so fled across the evening light, with the mellow sun on my left, when a Bristol Fighter, from Whitewash Villas, our neighboring aerodrome, was banking sharply round. I checked speed an instant to wave: and the slipstream of my impetus snapped my arm and elbow astern, like a raised flail.
The pilot pointed down the road towards Lincoln. I sat hard in the saddle, folded back my ears, and went away after him, like a dog after a hare. Quickly we drew abreast, as the impulse of his dive to my level exhausted itself.
The next mile of the road was rough. I braced my feet into the rests, thrust with my arms, and clenched my knees on the tank till its rubber grips goggled under my thighs. Over the first pothole Boanerges screamed in surprise, its mudguard bottoming with a yawp on the tire. The plunges of the next 10 sec. would have distinguished a kangaroo dodging gunfire. I clung on, wedging my gloved hand in the throttle lever so that no bump should close it and spoil our speed.
Then the bicycle wrenched side-ways into three long ruts: it swayed dizzily, wagging its tail for 30 awful yd. Out came the clutch, the engine raced freely. Boa checked and straightened his head with a shake as Brough should.
The bad ground was padded and on the new road our flight became birdlike. My head was blown out with air so that my ears had failed and we seemed to whirl soundlessly between the sun-gilt stubble fields. I dared, on a rise, to slow imperceptibly and glance sideways into the sky.
There the Bif was, 200 yd. and more back. Play with the fellow? Why not? I slowed to 90: signaled with my hand for him to overtake. Slowed 10 more: sat up. Over he rattled. His passenger, a helmeted and goggled grin, hung out of the cockpit to pass me the “Upyer” RAF randy greeting.
They were hoping I was a flash in the pan, giving them best. Open went my throttle again. Boa crept level, 50 ft. below; held them; sailed ahead into the clean lonely country. An approaching car pulled nearly into its ditch at the sight of our race.
The Bif was zooming among the trees and telegraph poles, with my scurrying spot only 8 yd. ahead. I gained though, gained steadily - was perhaps five miles an hour the faster. Down went my left hand to give the engine two dollops of oil, for fear that something was running hot; but an overhead JAP Twin, supertuned like this one, would carry on to the moon and back unfaltering.
We drew near the settlement. A long mile before the first houses, I closed down and coasted to the crossroads by the hospital. Bif caught up, banked, climbed and turned for home, waving to me as long as he was in sight. Fourteen miles from camp, we are here, 15 min. since I left Tug and Dusty at the hut door.
I let in the clutch again and eased Boanerges down the hill along the tram lines through the dirty street and uphill to the aloof cathedral, where it stood in frigid perfection above the cowering close. No message of mercy in Lincoln. Our God is a jealous God, and man's best offering will fall disdainfully short of worthiness, in the sight of St. Hugh and his angels. Remigius, earthy old Remigius, looks with more charity on me and Boanerges. I stabled the steel magnificence of strength and speed at his west door and went in, to find the organist practicing something slow and rhythmical, like a multiplication table in notes, on the organ. The fretted, unsatisfying and unsatisfied lacework of choir scream and spandrels drank in the main sound. Its surplus spilled thoughtfully into my ears. By then my belly had forgotten its lunch, my eyes smarted and streamed. Out again to sluice my head under the White Hart's yard pump. A cup of real chocolate and a muffin at the teashop, and Boa and I took the Newark road for the last hour of daylight. He ambles at 45: and, when roaring his utmost, surpasses the hundred.
A skittish motorbike with a touch of blood in it is better than all the riding animals on earth, because of its logical extension of our faculties, and the hint, the provocation, to the success conferred by its honeyed, untiring smoothness. Because Boa loves me he gives me five more miles of speed than a stranger would get from him.
At Nottingham I added sausages to the bacon which I'd bought at Lincoln: bacon so nicely sliced that each rasher meant a penny. The solid pannier bags behind the saddle took all this and at the next stop (a farm) took also a felt hammocked box of 15 eggs. Home by Sleaford, our squalid, purse-proud local village. Its butcher had six penn'orth of dripping ready for me. For months have I been making an evening round a'marketing, twice a week, riding a hundred miles for the joy of it and picking up the best food cheapest, over half the countryside.
The fire is a cooking fire, red between the stove bars, all its flame and smoke burned off Half past eight. The other 10 fellows are yarning in a blue haze of tobacco, two on the chairs, eight on the forms, waiting my return. After the clean night air their cigarette smoke gave me a coughing fit. Also, the speed of my last whirling miles by lamplight (the severest test of riding) had unsteadied my legs so that I staggered a little. “Wo-ups dearie,” chortled Dusty. It pleased them to imagine me wild on the road. To feed this flight vanity I gladden them with details of my scrap against the Bit.
“Bring any grub?” at length enquires Blackie, whose pocket is too low, always, for canteen. I knew there was something lacking. The excitement of the final dash and my oncoming weariness had chased from my memory the stuffed panniers of the Brough. Out into the night again steering across the black garage to the corner in which he is stabled by the fume of hot iron rising from his sturdy cylinders. Click, click, and the bags are detached; I pour out their contents before Dusty, the hut pantryman. Tug brings out the frying pan and has precedence. The fire is just right for it. A sizzle and a filling smell. I get ready my usual two slices of buttered toast.