“Of course. Nothing but centrifugal force—quite simple, really, I believe—they’ve been doing it for years in the States—but just the same it gives you quite a thrill. And those two people—my God, did you ever see anything like them? Look at that girl! Look at the way she stands there! Like a flame, my boy—she’s like a flame. And he’s really just as fine—they’re married, I think.”
“Married? Those children?”
“Well, she’s wearing a ring—you’ll see it when she comes up here.”
“Comes up here?”
“Right to the top, almost up to the top—that’s why they’ve got this guard-wire here.…”
The boy, his fair cool face turned upward, was saying:
“—you see how it is—the risks are thought to be too great, and therefore we are unable to obtain any insurance whatever. No life insurance company will take us—no matter what the premium. That is why I ask you to make any contribution you can, no matter how small—it simply goes into a separate fund which we keep in case of accident.”
He stood there, looking up, calmly and as if appraisingly—one hand resting lightly on his hip—the girl was leaning idly, indifferently, against her motor-bike, not looking anywhere, and visibly bored—it was all quite extraordinary. A cultured voice, too, clear and firm—the accent that of a gentleman. Pennies, sixpences, a few shillings, fell spinning and rolling into the Drome—he said “thank you—thank you—” as he stooped unhurryingly, and with irreproachable dignity, to pick them up. The girl watched him, unmoving, for a second or two, and then began examining her fingernails.
She remained like that, too, exactly like that, at the center of the Drome, while he started his motor-bike, rode with increasing speed round and round the tilted floor at the bottom, and then suddenly was circling round the wall itself. The uproar was deafening. The pent-up racket of the motor-bike would have been quite enough by itself—but in addition the Drome began to creak terrifyingly under that swift rush of pressure and weight, and you could see it actually changing in shape as the rider flashed round the gleaming walls. Higher and higher he came, spiraling always nearer, until at last he was roaring past us within arm’s reach of the top, the hot gust beating against our faces and gone and then back again, his fair hair blown back like a flag. And then he was dipping downward again: and had taken his hands off the handlebars; and his arms outspread, was circling as easily as a swallow. It was as beautiful, and looked just as easy, as that. It was pure flight.
I was just going to say something like this to Paul, and just thinking to myself that swallows alone, of all birds, seem to use flight for pure pleasure, when I happened to look at the girl. She had not moved. The proud face, under its silver wings, was turned slightly aside and downward, she again examined her fingernails, still leaning idly against her tilted machine, only once did she glance upward toward the moving figure above her; and then it was a glance not so much directed toward him as beyond him. Was she—as she appeared—so completely indifferent to him? Or was the whole behavior merely professional? It did not change when he dropped down, slowing, to the tilted floor, and came to a stop beside her—nor when he said something to her, in a low voice, either. Something very brief, only a word or two—he looking straight at her, she looking away—instructions, perhaps, or a word of advice. She simply continued to look away, as if through the walls, while he was announcing to us, in his polite and cultured voice, that he and his wife were the first in the world to ride two motor-bicycles simultaneously in the Drome of Death—adding, as a cautionary note, that it would be as well if the spectators would keep a little back of the guard-wire. And then, in another moment or two, the girl had mounted her machine, and was circling with greater and greater speed for her first strike onto the wall, and—flash!—she was already there, and the two bright wings were swiftly mounting toward us. It seemed to me that she had rushed the whole attack on the perpendicular wall much more rapidly than he had—or could I be mistaken? And that even now she was traveling faster. In next to no time she was whizzing round the very top, barely below the guard-wire, the beautiful viking face fixed in a sort of fierce serenity of speed, the loose blue collar blown back from the white throat; and then, below, the other machine had suddenly shot upwards; and in an indescribable uproar which seemed to be racking the walls to pieces the two flying figures circled and recircled, one above the other—the girl keeping rigidly at one level, the boy alternately dipping and soaring. One didn’t know which of them to watch—the rapt face above, or the more brilliant performance of the boy below. But now, one had to watch him for once more he was sailing like a bird, with his hands off the handlebars, and now too he was taking something out of his pocket—it was a square of black silk, a black handkerchief, fluttering as fiercely as if it were flame in its attempt to escape from his hands, the two hands holding it up before his face. Yes—he was actually going to blindfold himself! The black square blew over his face, over his eyes, and was held stiffly there by the sheer speed at which he was moving, and now again, his arms outspread at either side, he swooped like a swallow round the shining Drome, easily, effortlessly, while the girl above, traveling a little more slowly, for the first time seemed to be watching him.…
But watching him with that same fierceness, still, that same air of remote and unbreakable pride—certainly without fear, either for herself or him. Almost angrily, in fact, or contemptuously; and as if impatient, too, for him to be done with it, to get it over with. You could feel her thinking—“Come on, come on, we’ve had enough of this now, you’ve shown off enough, let’s get down off this wall and go home”—! But all the while, too, her own steel-like delight in the speed and danger, as if that gleaming perpendicular wall, for her, was something more precious than life itself.
It was coming to an end, however. The boy had whipped off the black handkerchief, had tucked it away quickly, was circling downward and slowing, the bursts of sound from the exhaust becoming irregular and intermittent—and now he was out on the floor again, and the girl, in her turn, was spiraling beautifully down the wall, slower and slower, the silver wings pointing downward, the fierce head held proudly back. In less than a minute, without any fuss, she had joined the boy in the center of the floor, they were stacking the motor-bikes for the night, and the people beside us were getting up to leave. Down below, the curved door in the wall of the Drome had been opened from outside, and the assistant had come in, bringing a wooden mallet. The girl went out first, without saying a word—the boy just pausing to say something to the assistant, then following. Our ten golden minutes were over.
“Well”—Paul said as we went down the narrow stairs—“was I right?”
“You were right. Words fail me. A pair of nonpareils. Why they’re incredible! And how exactly like you to find them!”
He chuckled.
“Yes—it was a bit of luck.”
“But tell me—why was there no applause?”
“Isn’t that funny? There never is any. Not a scrap. You know—I fancy it’s because people are really dazzled, really overcome—do you think it could be that—?”
“It may be—it may be. I certainly was …!”
Outside, the fair was closing up for the night. The merry-go-round had been darkened, lights here and there were being turned off, the last few stragglers were drifting across the littered playing-salts. Shadows moved on the curtained windows of the gypsy wagons and caravans—the fair-folk were going to bed. Beside the huge green lorry which was the power-plant, the night watchman sat in a wooden chair on the grass—he was reading a paper by the light of one naked bulb, stuck in the side of the lorry, and keeping an eye on his throbbing motors. Cables ran from the lorry across the grass to the merry-go-round, the Drome, the various wagons—we stepped over them carefully, deciding to walk home by way of the river.