The Accidental Cyclist (16 page)

When he was there, The Leader
appeared to be quite happy to see Icarus. The two would talk a bit,
look at bikes and bits, or just sit on the old sofa reading
magazines and watching television. But often The Leader was not
there, and Icarus would sit alone in the basement, deep in his
thoughts. He had no idea where The Leader went or what he did, and
Icarus wondered whether he was slipping into his old ways.

In his first weeks at the
International Cycle Courier Company (Hackney Branch) Icarus saw
nothing of the Grey Man, and as time passed his continued absence
began to bother Icarus. Not so much bother him, rather, it left him
with a nagging uncertainty about himself. What was it about him?
His father had left him even before he was born. The occasional
uncles that had visited his mother from time to time had all failed
to return as promised. And now the Grey Man had entered their
lives, gained their respect and trust, and then just as quickly
disappeared.

“We haven’t seen your friend
lately,” Mrs Smith commented one evening. Icarus for a moment
thought she was talking about The Leader, and almost told her that
he was alive and well and living in their basement. He had almost
reached the point where he believed he would never again see the
Grey Man. It was a month since the Grey Man had flashed briefly
through their lives. For most people, that was but a moment. For
Icarus, who was newly awakened to all the possibilities of life, it
seemed like an age. He began to wonder if the Grey Man’s
intervention had been no more than that of a passing angel who had
stopped to show him the light, to redirect his path, then move on
to the next divine assignment that awaited him.

And so Icarus set about trying
to forget him. His mother, meanwhile, was trying hard not to
forget. “It would be nice to see him again,” she said. “Why don’t
you invite him here for lunch this Sunday? I can do something
special – roast lamb?”

Roast lamb certainly was
something special in the Smith household. Certainly, now that
Icarus was earning a wage they had more money than ever before, but
Mrs Smith had always been thrifty, and until now had maintained
that their frugal living would continue. So roast lamb said
something about her, and her attitude towards the Grey Man.

Icarus did not want to tell his
mother that the Grey Man appeared to have disappeared, slipped into
the background as easily as he had on the first day that Icarus had
met him in prison.

“I don’t really see him that
much,” he said.

“Oh, that is such a pity,” Mrs
Smith said, with more feeling than she intended.

“But maybe I’ll bump into him,
and then I can invite him.” A thought, still hidden even to
himself, flashed through his head. “Go ahead and prepare for Sunday
lunch. I’m sure that I’ll see him, and he’ll be happy for a good
meal.”

That week seemed to be the
slowest week in Icarus’s life. It was an emotionally bumpy week –
for someone so emotionally innocent, every high was like conquering
Everest, while each low was plunging into the pit of despair.

Icarus’s efficiency in his job
was a mixed blessing. He would be praised by Helen the Despatcher,
then immediately derided by his colleagues. He could not understand
their hostility, which was cloaked in sneering cynicism and
sarcasm, something much more subtle than the puerile name-calling
that he had experienced at school.

That name-calling had never
bothered him – he had always felt that he was an outsider, and that
others simply did not understand him. His mother told him that he
was special, and, but without any pride or arrogance, he felt
special. At school he had always been an outsider, but at work he
had hoped to be … well, an outsider who was on the inside. He did
not necessarily want to dress or look like the other couriers, he
simply wanted to be accepted by them. And this rejection seemed so
much harder to accept.

By Friday, when Icarus thought
things could not get any worse, they did. He returned from a
particularly difficult job, which he completed in record time, to
the effusive praise of Helen the Despatcher. Icarus parked his bike
against the office wall and walked across to the kettle to make a
cup of tea – his mother never allowed him to drink coffee. (“It
will keep you awake and give you scary dreams, nightmares,” she had
told him. Icarus did not point out the blatant contradiction of
this statement. He simply stated that he always slept like a log,
and never had nightmares. His mother took that to be proof that her
prescription for life was efficacious.) As Icarus stood making his
tea, Justin, or was it Jason – he could never tell them apart
because they both looked and talked the same – sidled up to him
from the collective of couriers that had been stretched out sunning
themselves in the shop window.

“So,” said Justin, or was it
Jason? “so, you’re the new hotshot around here.”

Icarus, not knowing how to
respond, shrugged.

“Tell me,” Justin (or was it
Jason?) pressed on, “is it all those gears that make you so fast?
And those brakes that help you to stop at red lights? And do you
get lots of energy from those sandwiches that your mummy makes for
you?”

Icarus stared at the teabag
bobbing in the mug, trying to think of some suitable response.
Justin (or Jason) paused for a moment, planning a new angle to
attack Icarus’s dress code when Jason (or was this Justin) walked
across to bolster the faltering fusillade. “Does mummy make us wear
a helmet and reflective belt? Just to make sure that we are seen?
And does she buy us our jersey-wersey, and does she wash our little
sockses and iron our nice clean white handkerchief?”

Icarus dipped his teaspoon into
the mug to remove the teabag, and turned to drop the teabag into
the waste bin. Justin – yes, this one was surely Justin – was
standing right in front of the bin. Before it could reach the bin
the soggy teabag popped off the spoon and landed, plop, on Justin’s
fawn patent-leather riding shoe.

“Oops,” said Icarus. Then:
“Sorry.” He bent down to remove the offending article, but before
he could get there Justin flicked his ankle, kicking the teabag
into the bin. A dark brown stain remained on the riding shoe.
Behind them the other couriers clapped and cheered.

“Tell you what,” said Jason –
yes, for surely this was Jason if that other was Justin – “seeing
you’re such a hotshot, how about a little race? Just to see how
good you really are, or to see if it is just down to those
gears.”

“I suppose so,” said Icarus,
although he didn’t really suppose so.

“Okay then,” said Justin, still
looking down at his soggy shoe, “tomorrow morning then. Ten
o’clock, Herne Hill. Don’t be late.”

Justin and Jason left Icarus and
his mug of tea to stew over this development. Icarus had no idea
where or what Herne Hill was. He remained alongside the kettle as
the collective left. When he thought they had all gone, he turned
to sit on one of the chairs in the sunshine. One courier was still
sitting there. It was Jo/Joe – Icarus wasn’t sure which. They had
never spoken.

“Don’t you worry about them,”
said Jo, for indeed she was a girl, although it was not always easy
to tell with her – she had a short shock of bleached blonde hair,
spikey and cropped like a boy’s, and she wore baggy shorts that
revealed nothing of her female nature apart from the well-defined,
shaven calves of a hardened cyclist. When she looked up from her
magazine, Icarus saw that her eyes were blackened by mascara, which
made her pale cheeks seem paler than ever.

“They were like that with me
when I first arrived,” she said. “But if you ignore them for long
enough, they finally get tired of it.”

Icarus looked at Jo properly for
the first time. He noticed that, for a girl, she had a very
pleasing face. “Thanks,” he said. “I thought you were just one of
them, but you’re really much nicer than all of them.” And then he
realised that he was talking to a girl, and had just told her that
she was nice, and his throat went dry and suddenly he couldn’t
speak any more. Then the dryness in his throat brought on a spell
of coughing. Jo noticed this with faint amusement – she seemed to
have that effect on boys – then fetched him a glass of water and
waited until Icarus had regained some modicum of composure.

“Thanks for the water,” Icarus
finally managed to speak. “I don’t know what happened then.”

Jo smiled at him. Then she
stopped smiling, for fear that he might revert into a mute coughing
idiot. “No problem,” she said.

“What the heck is Herne Hill?”
Icarus asked.

“It’s a velodrome. They
sometimes go there for races. But you can only ride track bikes
there – which means fixed-wheel and no brakes.”

“But I’ve never ridden a
fixed-wheel..”

“That’s the point. They’re just
trying to embarrass you. They like to put people down, to humiliate
them.”

“So what should I do?”

“Well, if you don’t go, they
will never let you forget about it. If you go and make a fool of
yourself, they will have a laugh at your expense, and after a while
they will forget about it.”

“Did they challenge you?”

“Yes.”

“So what happened?”

“I went to the track and I beat
them all. They didn’t realise I was a junior track champion, so I
totally humiliated them. They’ve never forgiven me for that. That’s
why they don’t talk to me. But I just don’t care.” She shrugged her
shapely shoulders to emphasise her point of view.

“So what should I do then? I’ve
never even ridden on a track, let alone raced.”

“Just pray for rain.”

“Rain?”

“Yes. If it rains, they can’t
open the track because it’s too slippery.”

Icarus cycled home in a frump.
He was thinking of the cycle race at Herne Hill the next day, and
the thought of fish stew for dinner did little to lift his spirits.
He threw his bicycle down in the basement, and was pleased to see
that The Leader was not there, so he did not have to talk to him.
He walked up to the flat and opened the front door. Inside, there
was no light to welcome him. Nor was there the smell of fish stew.
Something was wrong.

All the rooms were in darkness,
and Icarus thought that his mother couldn’t have arrived home from
work yet. But she was always home at this hour. He walked through
to the parlour to close the curtains and turn on a light when he
heard the snivel. Sitting in an armchair, staring out into the
darkness, sat his mother. In her hand was a letter, and she was
crying. Icarus hurried across to her and put his arm around her
shoulders. “Whatever is the matter?” he asked.

“We’re going to be evicted,” Mrs
Smith said. Her voice was flat, lacking in any emphasis. “We have
to leave and find somewhere else to live.”

“Who says we have to leave?”
Icarus asked. “How can they kick us out? We’ve lived here all of
our lives.”

Mrs Smith waved the letter at
him and said: “It’s all in here. The council is selling off all the
flats, and if we can’t afford to buy ours, we have to leave.”

Icarus thought for a while, then
said: “But I’m earning now. Surely together we can earn enough to
buy this flat. Surely we can borrow the money or something. They
can’t just expect us to leave and go and live on the streets, can
they?”

“They can do whatever they
like,” his mother replied. “We’re just little people in a big game.
We don’t count. If they decided tomorrow that they wanted to pull
down this building and put up luxury flats or an office block, they
could do just that. There’s absolutely nothing we can do, and
that’s that.”

“But it’s our flat, our home.
We’ve always lived here. They can’t just do that.” Icarus felt that
he wanted to cry, but he realised that now he was the man of the
house, and he had to be strong for his mother. For some time he sat
with his arm around her and comforted here, saying: “There, there.
I’ll think of something. I’m sure it will turn out fine in the
end.” Although, to be honest, he wasn’t sure. In the end they went
to bed without any fish stew. Not the perfect way to prepare for a
bicycle race, Icarus said to himself as he drifted into sleep.

On Saturday morning Icarus
awoke from a fitful sleep and a dream – was this perhaps his first
nightmare – of riding endlessly around a velodrome, chasing or
being chased by a pack of jeering couriers, all throwing soggy
teabags at him. Chasing or chased, he could not tell, but his dream
went round and round this concrete-enclosed track from which there
was no escape.

The only escape was to awaken,
which left the question – chasing or chased – unresolved. Icarus
climbed out of bed and opened the curtain to a bright autumnal day,
the leaves in the park were turning red and yellow and brown,
reminding him of soggy teabags. There was not a cloud in the sky,
and absolutely no sign of rain. Icarus sighed, and sat down on the
edge of his bed.

From his bedside table he took
the tatty map that the Grey Man had give to him. He unfolded it
further than ever before until, there, south of the river, he found
it: Herne Hill Velodrome. For ten minutes he stared at the map,
visualising and memorising the route that he would take to get
there, then he folded the map and put it away.

He dressed and had a bowl of
cereal and three bananas for breakfast – one more than usual – and
told his mother that he had to go to, umm, well, to a training
morning for work.

In the basement The Leader was
snoring quietly in his sleeping bag. Icarus carried his bike out so
that the click-click-click of the freewheel did not waken him. If I
had a fixie, Icarus thought, I wouldn’t have to carry the bike, and
it would make no sound.