The Accidental Cyclist (17 page)

Icarus cycled through the quiet
Saturday morning London, which was slow in waking up. He wondered
what kind of race he was expected to take part in – there were so
many types of track event that he could not guess what was expected
of him. If it was a sprint he surely would be humiliated. He was
not built for speed, but he seemed to be able to ride all day
without ever tiring. He looked up at the sky often, trying to
discern the slightest hint of a cloud, but none was there. No, rain
would not stop play today.

He found his way to the
velodrome without any problems, apart from some roadworks on the
entrance into the stadium’s car park. A mammoth mechanical digger
was eating mouthfuls of tar and dirt from the roadway as workmen
stood around and watched, as workmen do. Just beyond the digger
Jason, Justin and their crew leant against a wall, casually
propping it up with their mounts beside them. When they spotted
Icarus, Justin said to the others: “Well, look what the cat dragged
in.” Then, to Icarus: “I didn’t think you’d show. Let’s get this
over and done with, then we can get on with our day.”

Icarus noted that all the
couriers had cycle helmets dangling from their handlebars. Icarus
pointed to Justin’s helmet and said: “Your mother make you bring
that today?”

Justin did not seem to
appreciate the little joke and snarled: “They’re compulsory on
track.”

Icarus followed the riders into
the stadium, where they were issued with their hire bikes. Icarus
duly wheeled his out onto the track and mounted. He sat perched on
the saddle, hugging the side railings. He winced inwardly as the
assistant strapped his feet into the pedals – it was the first time
he had used toeclips since the incident in the park.

“Your first time?” the assistant
asked. Icarus nodded. “Just keep hold of the railings until you get
going, then take it slowly until you get the rhythm. After that,
you’re on your own.”

Icarus clutched the railings as
if he was trying to avoid being swept away by a storm. A storm, he
thought, no chance of that now. He looked along the track, along
the straight where he was, and studied the steeply banked curve
ahead of him. The others couriers were setting off, slowly,
casually, to warm up. Icarus was not comfortable – the saddle was
too high. He asked his helper to unstrap the toeclips so that they
could lower the saddle. At the same time, in some desperate silent
prayer, Icarus cried out in his head: Please, Lord, do something –
make it rain or something.

Icarus jiggled the saddle to
adjust the height when, behind him, he heard a loud noise and a
shout. He turned to see a plume of water shoot fifty feet into the
air, arc elegantly over the velodrome wall, and splash down onto
the curve of the track just where the banking was steepest. The
group of couriers were already on the gradient and, without brakes,
they could not avoid the shower, which sent them sliding down the
track in a tangle of frames and arms and legs and wheels. Icarus
tried his hardest not to smile as the velodrome manager hurried out
of his office. “Track closed,” he cried. “Sorry, but we’re going to
have to close the track. They’ve hit a water main on the roadworks.
Track closed. Track closed.”

Justin, Jason and the others
untangled their grazed limbs and scratched bicycles, gathered up
their bruised pride and returned to the main straight, where Icarus
was waiting, trying his best not to look smug. Icarus didn’t know
what to say. The others simply glowered at him silently, so Icarus
said: “I say, that was rather unlucky.”

“It was lucky for you,” Justin
responded.

“I suppose it was,” said
Icarus.

“Yeah, lucky for you,” said
Jason. “You were about to get humiliated.”

“How come you weren’t in the
bunch with us when that happened?” asked Justin.

“Yeah,” echoed Jason. “Where
were you?”

“You sure you didn’t have
something to do with that burst water main?” asked Justin.

“I had to get my saddle
adjusted,” said Icarus.

Justin was beginning to get hot
under his collar-less shirt: “I’m starting to wonder if you set us
up.”

“Yeah,” said Jason, a finger
close to Icarus’s face, “did you set us up? How did you do it?”

“Do what?” Icarus countered. He
was determined to stand his ground. “You don’t really think that I
could be responsible for those workmen hitting a water main?”

“Well,” said Justin, “whatever
it was, you were just so lucky because you were about to get a
pasting.”

“Yeah, lucky, lucky, lucky,”
Jason did a little Kylie impersonation, wiggling his hips. “You
were going to get pasted.”

“We’ll get you another time,”
said Justin, hoping to end the dialogue.

But Icarus wasn’t quite ready.
“If you like, I’ll race you from here back to Hackney.” Icarus had
not intended to make the challenge, but the words just seemed to
rush out of his mouth on their own, as if someone else was speaking
for him.

Justin looked around at his
dejected, defeated crew. The fight seemed to have gone out of them,
and they were shaking their heads at him. “Another time,” he said
to Icarus. “We’ve all got stuff to do, so we aren’t heading back
across town just yet.”

“Okay,” said Icarus, perhaps a
bit too brightly, “another time.”

“You can count on that,” said
Justin.

“Yeah,” echoed Jason, “you can
count on that.”

As Icarus left the velodrome he
cycled past the roadworks where the workmen were scuttling around
like demented ants. He smiled at them as if to say thank you. With
their help, he had just pulled of the great escape, and he felt as
if he had got clean away from the threat that had been hanging over
him. He had no fear of retribution. If they challenged him to
another race, he would face that obstacle when it appeared.

A movement to his right caught
Icarus’s eye. A flicker, another cyclist on the periphery of his
vision. Was Justin coming after him?

“Don’t think that it’s over,”
said the cyclist, who was quickly catching him. Icarus looked to
his right. It was Jo. Icarus felt his chest tighten, and he
wondered if he had set off too quickly. No, he thought, I feel
fine, and yet the tightness remained. He had no words to say, so he
just smiled more broadly at Jo.

“They probably won’t challenge
you to another track race,” she said, slowing to match his pace.
“They’ve lost the element of surprise. But they won’t forget this.
They’ll find some new way to humiliate you, and when they’ve done
that, they’ll just forget about you. Ignore you. Pretend you don’t
exist.”

Icarus’s smile slackened. He
shrugged his shoulders, but it wasn’t as pretty as Jo’s shrug the
previous day.

“Until they bring you down,
they’ll make your life a misery,” Jo continued. “Believe me, I
know, because they tried to do it to me. In fact, it’s still
happening, because they haven’t beaten me yet.”

Icarus was listening to Jo, but
he realised that he was not listening to what she was saying. He
noticed that her voice had a singsong lilt, an alien accent. He
realised that she was probably foreign, French perhaps. But he did
not ask her.

They stopped at the junction to
wait for the traffic to clear. Icarus put his left foot down to
support himself. He glanced across at Jo. She had stopped,
perfectly still, but both feet were still on the pedals, her front
wheel angled slightly to the right. She was performing a perfect
track stand, something he had read about, but never seen. He stared
at her, and noticed that she wasn’t weary her usual baggy shorts.
Instead, she was wearing very short black shorts over sheer black
tights, with a thin gold belt around her waist. And, Icarus noted,
she had the most perfect, petite bum. The track stand served only
to emphasise its perfect proportions. Jo glanced across at Icarus.
“What’s up?” she asked.

Icarus, who had yet to utter a
word since Jo had caught up with him outside the velodrome, had to
search for his voice, and he managed to find it in a break in the
traffic, as they set off again. “Umm,” he said. Then “Errm.” He
ignored the growing tickle in his throat and managed to say: “I was
watching you do your track stand and trying to work out how you do
it. I’d love to be able to do one.”

“Of course you would,” said
Jo.

“Could you teach me?” asked
Icarus. The tickle was growing.

“Sure, I suppose so. No problem.
For a moment then I thought that you were looking at my backside,
and that I was going to have to slap your face.”

Jo’s remark changed the tickle
into a full-blown cough, forcing Icarus to a halt again. Jo offered
him her water bottle. “This seems to be becoming a habit,” she
said, slapping him on the back.

Icarus and Jo stopped along the
South Bank for a coffee – her treat, she insisted. They sat on a
bench facing the river Thames outside the old County Hall. For a
moment Icarus wondered if this was his first date. It was, to be
sure, his first coffee. A latté. He didn’t know what to ask for, so
he just said that he’d have the same as Jo. And now they were
sitting on a bench, their bikes leaning side by side against the
stone wall in front of them. Icarus slowly tasted this new
experience, savouring it. He noticed that, unusually, his heart
rate had not slowed when they stopped riding. And now, as they sat
side by side, not quite touching, not quite apart, that still his
heart was thump, thump, thumping away. It wasn’t a bad thumping,
like when he had been reprimanded by the headmaster. It was more
like the thumping of an exciting ride downhill, than the pain in
the chest when climbing a steep hill. Perhaps it was the coffee. He
thought of his mother. He wouldn’t tell her about the coffee, but
maybe he would tell her something about Jo, the new friend that he
had made. That would be okay. He would tell her about Jo, but not
about the coffee. And maybe about how she taught him to do a track
stand. Perhaps it would help to get his mother to forget about the
threat of losing their home.

On Sunday morning it was grey
and wet. The rain that Icarus had prayed for had arrived a day
late. Doesn’t matter, he thought, it all worked out fine. He
remembered Jo, and his heart jumped in his chest. It worked out
more than fine, he thought. Then he remembered his mission for the
morning: he had to find the Grey Man, and get him to the flat by
lunchtime.

Icarus had an inkling of where
he might be, and soon he found himself cycling along slippery,
rain-swept streets to the one place that he had hoped he would
never again visit. He did hesitate, but only for a moment – as he
cycled past the baker’s shop on the High Street he stopped to buy
half a dozen sugar-coated Chelsea buns. Then he was back on his
bike. At first he thought it had been just a wild guess, but as he
got closer to the police station Icarus became ever more certain
that he would find the Grey Man there.

Icarus chained his bike to the
railings opposite the police station. He crossed the road and
stopped, dripping wet, under the canopy outside the police station
entrance. He stood there, unmoving, for about fifteen minutes as
several police officers and some members of the public, citizens of
Hackney and Islington, came and went. All ignored the sodden,
motionless Icarus, hurrying past, heads down, going about their
business or, in the case of the police, going about other people’s
business. When finally he had stopped dripping, Icarus quietly
pushed open the door and entered. Across the charge room, behind
his desk on the pedestal, sat the large sergeant, studiously
evacuating the contents of his left nostril with a chubby finger..
He did not appear to see Icarus, who paused, just to make sure that
he remained unnoticed. He clutched the buns tightly to his chest,
trying his hardest to prevent the paper bag from rustling.

The sergeant continued his
excavations. Icarus quietly crossed the room and pulled open the
barred gate that led to the cells. There were eight doors, all
closed and apparently locked. Icarus checked the shutter of each
door: the first seven were occupied by men sleeping off the
excesses of the previous night, or still suffering the consequences
of their inebriation. The last cell appeared to be empty. Icarus
reached down to pull the door open, but there was no handle, only a
gaping keyhole.

“Psst,” Icarus whispered through
the observation hole. Nothing. No reply.

“Psst,” again. There was a
grunt, then the Grey Man materialised from the gloom.

“What the … What the hell are
you doing here?” he asked Icarus.

“I came to get you out. My
mother wants you to come to lunch.”

“You’re springing me from prison
for a lunch date?”

“Shh,” said Icarus. He pushed
the paper bag full of Chelsea buns through the flap.

“What’s this?” asked the Grey
Man, “the lunch that you’re inviting me to?”

“Just open the bag and put it in
the far corner, then come and stand by the door.”

Icarus flattened himself against
the corridor wall and waited. A few minutes later they heard a
bellow: “Are those Chelsea buns that I can smell? Which of you
miserable lot has got Chelsea buns in his cell, and how did they
get there?” The voice was lumbering closer. It was Helmet Two, and
he was quite literally sniffing out the culprit, following his huge
bulbous nose. Even the hairs protruding from his nose seemed to
quiver in anticipation of the freshly baked Chelsea buns.

Helmet Two narrowed his search
to the last cell. He peered through the inspection flap and saw the
paper bag on the bunk. He fiddled with the keys, flung open the
door, took two long paces across the cell and apprehended the
offending Chelsea buns. The Grey Man, meanwhile, quietly slipped
out of the cell and took up his post alongside Icarus.