The Accidental Cyclist (14 page)

“This is where you live,” the
Grey Man said, indicating a spot on the map. He pointed to the
park, to Icarus’s old school, the shops on the High Street, and the
International Cycle Courier Company (Hackney Branch), which had
been ringed with a red ball-point pen. “This is the route we took
to St Paul’s,” said the Grey Man, unfolding the map slowly so that
it formed a strip about five times the height that it had been. He
traced the route they had taken. Icarus’s attention was caught by
the bewildering web of side roads that dissected the route, roads
that ended suddenly, falling off the edge of the map. “How can
there be so many streets? So many street names? Are there people
living in all these roads?”

The Grey Man replied: “This is
only a fraction of the streets of London. When you start work
you’re going to have to remember all of these street names, and
many, many more, if you’re going to find your way round.”

“But there are so many. I can
never remember them all.”

“That is why you will have this
map,” said the Grey Man. He then proceeded to open the map
widthways, so that it doubled, then quadrupled in size, showing
their route across London from east to west, curling along the
Thames. Roads that had ended so abruptly now continued to a new
edge, another fold in the map.

“Wow,” said Icarus, “London must
be huge.”

The Grey Man traced their return
route: “London is huge. And remember, we never even went south of
the river.” He took the map with both hands and shook it, as he
were unfolding a tablecloth, and the map covered the whole of the
dining table, and hung over the edge, a mass of haphazard lines
intersected by a ribbon of blue that swirled majestically across
the middle.

“It’s hard to believe,” said the
Grey Man, “that this static piece of paper represents the heaving
mass, the millions and millions of lives that make up London. And
we didn’t even see a fraction of the city today.”

Icarus looked in amazement. He
bent over to try to find the tiny section that the Grey Man had
first shown him, the comfortable corner that had been his life, and
would be comfortable no more. It seemed that suddenly his life had
unfolded, unravelled, but he could not know how it would spread
from here, where it would go, what direction it would take.

From the kitchen Mrs Smith
called: “Could you set the table please, Icky. We’re almost ready
to eat.”

Our three subjects sit and eat
their dinner in almost complete silence, each swallowed up by their
own thoughts.

Icarus is retracing the route
they had travelled, his mind trying to recapture the twists and
turns, picture the highlights, the places that previously he has
seen only in pictures or on the television, and which he now knows
are all on his doorstep. He realises, in his own simplistic way,
the significance of the map that the Grey Man has shown him, and
that his unfolding of it is a metaphor, even though that word is
not yet a part of his vocabulary. Just as the bicycle is a metaphor
for his new-found freedom, so the map is a metaphor of his life
spread out before him. He realises that his life is a book, vast,
unwritten, unending, and that his life so far has been but one
page, which he has been reading over and over again. He has been
stuck on that same page for years without knowing it, but today,
under the guidance of the Grey Man and with the help of his
bicycle, his beloved bicycle, more precious to him that that
expensive Condor Paris Galibier that he chanced upon in the park,
he has finally turned over to the next page. Now he wants to know
what will happen on all the subsequent pages, those blank folios,
even though that story has not yet been written.

Mrs Smith’s thoughts are
flitting, birdlike, between two trees. The one tree is a mere
sapling, her Icarus, whom she loves and adores and nurtures with
all her phobias and insecurities. She can see that he is growing
stronger, his roots are digging deeper, and his branches are
spreading wider. He is rapidly outgrowing the shadow cast by her
own slender boughs. He is becoming independent, resistant to her
noxious influence. For his own good she wants to release him, allow
him to grow and flourish. At the same time she knows that she
depends on Icarus, and she clings to him like a vine, she needs his
support for her to continue to live. She knows she is being
selfish. She knows that if, like ivy, she continues to cling to his
tender branches, her tendrils will eventually squeeze the life out
of him, leading to their mutual demise.

And at this point Mrs Smith’s
birdlike mind flits and flutters to that other tree, a solid willow
that appears to bend to the wind, whose branches can be whipped up
by storms in one instant, and the next is as calm and tranquil as a
summer’s day.

She looks across the table at
the Grey Man. He appears to be studying a roast potato, his face
lined with years of hardship and experience. Yes, Mrs Smith thinks
to herself, a willow tree. Her first impression of the Grey Man was
of nothingness. He was there, but not there. But slowly he has
crept into her consciousness, an adjunct to Icarus. She feared that
the growth may have been malignant, she thought no good could have
come of the Grey Man’s influence. But the change she is seeing in
Icarus, his blossoming, has made her re-examine herself and her
motives. She can see no fault lies with the Grey Man, only with
herself. She wants to dislike him, to find reason to turn him away,
to bar Icarus from seeing him, but she realises that she, too, is
somehow attracted to him. And to her birdlike mind, this makes
everything too complicated to contemplate.

The Grey Man studies the roast
potato carefully before cutting it and putting it in his mouth.
It’s not easy to cook a good roast potato, he thinks, and this
isn’t a particularly good roast potato. It’s not a bad roast
potato, but it’s not that good either. A good roast potato needs to
be crisp and crunchy on the outside, light and fluffy on the
inside.

The Grey Man’s wife used to cook
good roast potatoes. It was a long time since he had thought about
her, and her roast potatoes, and about their two children. He
wonders where they are now, what they are doing. It is a good
twelve years since he left them. His son, Sammy, would be about the
same age as Icarus now.

This is a strange train of
thought, he thinks, from roast potatoes to Sammy. But he knows that
this train of thought is going on a circuitous route because it is
trying to circumvent the single issue that keeps flashing up an
urgent message in the back of his brain: what am I doing here?

The Grey Man looks at his two
hosts – they are both unusually quiet, absorbed in the meal and
their own thoughts. Again, he thinks: what am I doing here? Here is
a boy who knows nothing about the ways of the world, and I am
helping to detach him from the single human being that gives him
life and strength and love. I am taking on a father’s role, a role
that I could not fulfil even for my own children.

And this woman: even as I know
that I am taking away her single reason for living, so I remain in
her home to console her, to give her support, and to eat her
mediocre roast potatoes. What am I doing? Soon both of these people
will depend on me. And that’s what caused me to disappear, to leave
my family, my work, my world.

Yes, the Grey Man has one
serious phobia: he fears commitment. What happens, he thinks, if
these two become dependent on me? I am responsible for the
situation that all three of us are in. What am I going to do about
it?

He looks down at the chicken leg
that he is cutting. Now, he thinks, it’s difficult not to roast a
chicken properly, and as roast chicken goes, this roast chicken is
pretty damn good.

A couple of days later Icarus
decided to ride alone along the route that he had taken with the
Grey Man. He headed along the High Street and then south through
Islington, but he lost his way when he reached the intricate web
that formed the City. He tried to retrace his tracks but only
became more confused.

The weekday traffic made it much
more difficult to navigate, especially because much of his
concentration was focused on remaining safe. Every time he thought
he recognised some building or landmark he would find his direction
blocked by a stream of traffic, forcing him to a halt and
preventing him from turning the way he wished to go. On his
previous ride all the buildings had looked quite distinctive,
different. Now they looked alike. Old buildings were all made
stone, with columns and arches; modern buildings were all glass
that reflected the new and the old alike, adding another dimension
to the amazing labyrinth.

Icarus stopped at a junction to
try to find his bearings. He watched the flow and counterflow of
cars, cabs, vans and bicycles as they twisted and entwined, merged
and split. On the pavement pedestrians performed a similar dance,
dodging and weaving in a never-ending waltz, unfazed by the
vehicles and traffic lights and road signs.

Icarus stood and watched this
amazing performance. Every part appeared to have been
choreographed. Everyone, every car, van, bicycle, pedestrian seemed
to know their part, where they were going – everyone except Icarus,
the island in the midst of this human torrent. This isn’t the fun
that it was on Sunday, he thought. He remembered how he had enjoyed
the previous ride. That was fun, this is all hard work,
concentration. It wasn’t the free-wheeling, easy-riding heady
experience that his first ride had been. And it struck him: this is
what his job would be like – cycling every day through this mass of
people and cars and buildings. Still, he thought, this is better
than school. And the sun is shining. But it won’t always be
shining, it will be cold and wet and miserable, Icarus said to
himself. I’m not tough enough to do this. I’m going to go home and
put the bike away and ask if I can go back to school. I’ll tell the
Grey Man that I can’t do this job, I can’t live this life, I’m
frightened by all of this. I’ll just go home…

But he couldn’t go home. He was
still lost, standing on a street corner somewhere in the City of
London.

Icarus pulled from his back
pocket the tattered map that the Grey Man had given him on Sunday.
He unfolded it, trying to picture his route. He looked around him
to see the name of the street that he was on – Little Britain, what
a strange name – but he could not locate it on the map. The first
seeds of panic had been sewn and he sensed that he might soon reap
some devastating harvest, although he had absolutely no idea what
such a silly simile meant. His whole world seemed to be tilting,
swivelling, like the dial on a compass. Icarus shut his eyes tight,
trying to still the spinning. But instead of slowing, the movement
increased, and Icarus found himself spiralling out of his body and
looking down at himself and the streets around him. Slowly he
turned in the air – ahead he saw a landmark that he recognised: the
distinctive dome of St Paul’s cathedral. Icarus opened his eyes to
find he was looking at his map, correctly oriented with Little
Britain at the centre. He looked up, and was facing St Paul’s. The
tide of traffic and people seemed to have receded, and Icarus
pedalled to Wren’s masterpiece as if pulled along by some
irresistible magnetic force. If this was what panic does, he
thought to himself, it has its uses.

Anyone who has ever cycled
through the City of London will know that it was never designed for
motorised transport. Actually, the City itself was never really
designed – it sort of grew organically, changing with the needs of
its times, adapting itself to modern life, be that the life of the
twelfth or the seventeenth or the twenty-first century.

Every time that there has been
the opportunity to rebuild the city, after fire or war or
pestilence, those in authority resisted to chance to start afresh.
Instead, they allowed the wounded city to heal itself naturally,
leaving behind scars to remind citizens of its painful past. At the
time of the most extensive destruction of this city – the Great
Fire of 1666 – there were no cars or vans or lorries to think about
when rebuilding. These modern inventions are better suited to the
big American cities that have sprung up in the new world, designed
on simple grid systems with wide avenues, huge car parks, and long
open roads that go on forever. They were not designed for ancient
cities, even less for ancient cities on small islands.

The bicycle, on the other hand,
is perfectly suited to city life – compact enough to allow easy
movement and storage, clean enough not to pollute its surroundings,
and quick enough to take its passenger from A to B in a minimum
amount of time. If you think about it, a little more than a century
ago most journeys in London would still have been undertaken on
foot, and most food produce or commercial commodities would have
been transported by handcart. Only the very wealthy could afford
their own horses and carriage. The better-off could afford cab
fare, while the vast masses would simply walk. Nowadays every man
and his dog owns a car – that is the curse of modern life.

Icarus may have been thinking
these thoughts as he circumnavigated St Paul’s, but it is hard to
tell, because he was still mindful of the Grey Man’s instructions
to be slightly paranoid, to watch out for car doors opening ahead,
cabs making a u-turn, lorries and pedestrians and all the other
perils that awaited him. After years of his mother’s example,
paranoia came easily.

Icarus proceeded past St
Paul’s, but instead of continuing down to the Tower, he paused to
watch the ant-like figures scurrying across the Millennium Bridge.
The slight paranoia was still there, but it did not quite prevent
the return of his sense of enjoyment. He was about to continue
along the route that the Grey Man had taken, but felt an urge to
cross the river, find his own way along the Thames. This was his
choice, this was him venturing into the unknown, undirected,
unshepherded. Icarus’s hesitation was but momentary. He wheeled his
proud machine across the narrow walkway and then set off pedalling
along the South Bank, upstream against the pedestrian tide, smiling
like a lunatic at everyone he passed. He cruised along easily, past
the South Bank Centre and the London Eye. He crossed under the arch
of Westminster Bridge and came out of the tunnel opposite Big Ben
and the Houses of Parliament, recognising the spot that many
television presenters used for broadcasts. On he went, past the MI6
building that he had seen in a James Bond movie.