Box Hill - Adam Mars-Jones Page 0,1

book after he’d finished eating. Military history. Something about the ocean and its creatures. He’s the only person I’ve ever seen who could turn a page wearing leather gloves and not fumble.

For heaven’s sake, the man could shuffle and deal a pack of cards without taking his gloves off — even if that was a party trick, something done for a bet with his poker club. Supple dress gloves, not his bike gloves. When he got off his machine, he’d pull off the stiff bike gloves and fold them in his helmet, then pull out the thin dress ones from his jacket pocket. A hundred to one those dress gloves were Mayfair jobs, made to measure, for his fingers to fit them so snugly, all the way to the tips.

And in the moment between gloves, when his hands were naked, he would use the left one to sweep back the leading edge of his thick yellow hair in a single brisk gesture, much too decisive to seem like grooming. You could never think of that poised impatient movement of the hand as grooming, let alone preening. Hair that was never either lank or unruly, and never long enough at the front to count technically as a quiff.

When people stared at him, Ray ignored them, but he wasn’t used to people paying no attention in the first place. When I woke him up by tripping over him, it stands to reason that I suffered more than he did from the upset of our meeting. I went sprawling and barked my knees, while the worst thing that happened to him was that one bike boot scuffed the other. From the way he scowled, though, that was serious enough. When I dusted myself off and sat up on my haunches, Ray was glaring down at me and snarling, ‘Why don’t you look where you’re fucking going?’

I may have got the ‘fucking’ in the wrong place. He might have said, ‘Why don’t you fucking look where you’re going?’ It’s hard to be sure after all this time, but there was definitely a ‘fucking’ in it. I wasn’t used to being sworn at, and I know I flinched. I was scared but I didn’t run away — not that running has ever been a strong suit. One leg always trails behind when I try.

I couldn’t take my eyes off him, that much is true, but who could have in my place? He was like a glossy catalogue illustration from Lewis Leathers, and I expect I looked like a tired window display from the Burton’s menswear shop, when they’ve tried lots of backdrops and lighting schemes and they still can’t make people want the merchandise. My flares were timid — yes it’s possible for flares to be timid. My brown leather jacket had exaggerated rounded lapels. Its zip was plastic rather than metal and it went straight down the middle, not at the sexy angle of the ones on bike jackets. Ray was six foot five and I was what I still am, five foot six. Even if I’d been taller I would have been at quite a disadvantage, looking up at a stranger scowling down.

Except that, the way he always told it, it wasn’t his scowl I was looking at. But it was news to me when he said, ‘I get it. So this is what you’re interested in?’ His voice changed, it was menacing in a different way. Menacing in a way that promised something. As much lazy as angry, now. I hadn’t even realised I wasn’t looking at his face. Not that it wasn’t a fine face, a strong face, a chiselled face. I just wasn’t looking at it.

He was always a step ahead of me. Sometimes a whole flight of steps. Looking down on me from the top of a flight of steps, wearing no expression, just waiting to see if I had the courage to follow him. Sometimes ducking round the corner so I had to run to catch up, breathless and stumbling, afraid that if I lost sight of him it’d be for good.

He was wearing one-piece leathers, and now he reached up to the neck, where there was a sort of lateral strap across the zip, fastened with a popper. He unsnapped it, and flicked it open with a finger. I watched, not really taking it in, as he slowly pulled the zip down all the way, down as far as it would go.

If Ray was six foot five,