The Accidental Cyclist (2 page)

The Leader’s jaw dropped ever so
slightly, then ever so slightly further, before he regained his
composure and said: “You gotta be shitting me. It looks like some
home-made piece of ...”

“No way,” said Gingerhead in a
slow, incredulous whine. “It can’t be. It doesn’t even have a
proper crossbar.”

“Two effing grand,” gawped
Shorty shortly. “That’s like worth as much as a house, isn’t
it?”

Icarus, despite his nervousness,
realised that he, rather than the bike, was becoming the centre of
attention, and in some strange way he was enjoying this. “Yes,” he
continued, “two effing grand…” he had no idea what an effing grand
was – some kind of street language, he was sure, “... although this
one may well have cost more.”

“And he thought he might get
fifty quid for it,” said a high-pitched voice at the back of the
group, mocking The Leader.

“You won’t get anything for
that, mate,” ventured another, “or, if you're lucky, you might get
five years.”

At first Icarus did not catch
the meaning. “What do you mean?” he asked. And then the full import
of the boy’s statement struck him. Icarus was aghast, especially at
such possibly dire consequences. “You actually stole it,” he
exclaimed, uttering words that usually went unuttered in these
circles. The words had flown out of his mouth even before he knew
that he had intended to say them. The thought of stealing something
precious had never entered his head. Icarus knew he wasn’t as
innocent as he seemed, but he had never stolen anything more than
his regular supply of cycling magazines. Well, the magazines, plus
a couple of bicycling books from the local library. He looked at
The Leader, trying to give the young bullock his mother’s sternest
look. The Leader was unmoved. “I found it,” he countered, not quite
convincingly.

“Yea,” said Gingerhead. “With a
lock on it.”

“But not a very good lock,” The
Leader parried.

“Not a very good lock,” Shorty
mimicked him. “Not a very good lock, your honour.”

The Leader’s arm snaked out
swiftly and grabbed Shorty’s ear, twisting sharply. Shorty yelped
like an injured pup, and sulked off, nursing his mangled ear.

“If whoever owned it doesn’t
look after it, he doesn’t deserve it …” said The Leader, hoping to
put an end to this strand of the conversation, “… even if he spent
two effing grand on it. He should have spent that much on a chain
to lock it up.”

Now, it would not be entirely
wrong to say that Miss Smith had put some strange ideas into her
son’s head. Miss Smith – or Mrs Smith, as she preferred to style
herself, not wanting to be cast in the role of the unmarried mother
– had never had a particularly strong grasp on the facts of life.
She had been brought up without religion or creed, so all that she
believed in was what she had picked up along life’s journey,
usually the cast-offs that others had shed along the way. These
beliefs she had passed on to Icarus as matters of fact, and he had
come to believe much of it without questioning. That was why Icarus
believed Mother Earth would always take care of him, as long as he
never allowed his feet to leave the ground. And that was why he
would never fly. Or ride a bicycle. Come to think of it, ever since
he last rode in his baby buggy, Icarus had never, in his small,
insular world, ventured onto any form of vehicular transport, be it
bus, train, car, boat, aircraft or – heaven forbid – bicycle.

And so Icarus Smith had grown up
believing he had a special understanding with the Earth. True,
whenever the young Icarus had fallen, never was he hurt in any way.
But then, if we are never to rise very high, we cannot fall very
far and so, in consequence, we can never be very hurt. Or can
we?

We are not sure whether it was
Mother Earth who had whispered these words of wisdom to the boy in
a dream: it may well have been Mrs Smith trying to reassure herself
concerning her own fears and prejudices, repeating her acquired
beliefs by rote, while lulling the child to sleep, like a good
Catholic reciting her rosary while rocking the cradle.

As for Icarus, despite all of
his maternally induced beliefs, he was totally without fear or
phobia: flying was never an option in his small, earth-bound life
where even buses had only one purpose – to be looked out for when
crossing the road. Prejudices, too, were something he was without.
But that is not necessarily a good thing, as he was about to find
out, because without prejudice, we are unable to discern character,
or make judgments on how we should be influenced by others.

Back in the park, a small boy
with a partly shaven head pedalled up to the group. Tufts of
gristly blond hair were trying to force their way through the shorn
region of his misshapen scalp, but the growth was not enough to
disguise an angry scar that shouted out that stitches had recently
been removed from here. He was riding a mountain bike, a
full-suspension affair that his father had bought from the local
car dealer, probably for whatever it would be worth as scrap,
because surely, thought Icarus, it must weigh a full half tonne.
Scarhead circled the group several times, and then nosed his front
tyre into the centre of the group.

“Hmm,” he said, looking at the
dazzling racing bike at the centre of the group, “quite nice, but I
bet you can’t do this on it.” He swung his bike around, grazing
several shins as he did so, and sped off, turned and headed back.
As he neared the group of boys his skinny legs began to spin
dervishly and, with his two puny arms, he heaved at the handlebars,
lifting the front wheel off the ground. For several yards, legs
circling furiously, Scarhead maintained his wheelie until suddenly
his legs were drained of all power, and the front end smacked down
onto the grass, bounced several times on the oversized springs that
formed the suspension, and the bicycle was brought to a juddering
halt.

Unimpressed, the small crowd
turned away from him, and directed their attention back to the
multicoloured racer in the centre of the group, and the main
protagonists.

The Leader said: “Wanna ride
it?”

It took Icarus a few moments
before he realised that he was being addressed. “I don’t ride,” he
replied. The thought of riding such a beautiful machine – or any
machine, come to think of it – had never entered his head. The bike
was there to be viewed, admired, but to ride it … the idea had
never occurred to him.

“Don’t ride or can’t ride?” The
Leader mocked.

“My mother won’t let me ride –
she says it’s dangerous.”

They all laughed. Scarhead, on
his oversized mountain bike, had returned to the crowd, wondering
why the other boys weren’t impressed by his wheelie.

“Well,” said The Leader, “just
give it a go.”

Like an adolescent noticing a
girl for the first time, Icarus felt that sudden tug of attraction,
the desire to do something he had never done before. But his mother
was nagging at his shoulder, her warnings surging into his head,
scrambling his thoughts.

“I can’t,” he gabbled, grasping
for some reason that might save him from the unknown. “My mother
says that potholes grab at wheels as they go over, and eat them
up.”

“What rot,” sneered The Leader,
to a chorus of snorts and guffaws.

“You’re crazy,” said Scarhead.
“Watch this.” He pointed his mountain bike towards a grassy knoll
just in front of them, where there was a small hole in the
ground.

“Stop,” shouted Icarus, but he
was too late.

The boys were all laughing at
Icarus’s dismay as they watched the bike roll towards the pothole.
As he was about to pass over the dent in the ground, Scarhead
pedalled down hard, at the same time pulling up the front wheel as
he had done before. He appeared to have cleared the pothole when,
almost in slow motion, the front wheel was sucked down into the
ground, disappearing almost completely. Boy and bike swivelled in
unison over the fulcrum that was the front axle. Midway through the
arc Scarhead released his hold on the bike, which continued its
passage to thud onto the grass, while the boy sailed on head-first
through the air. As he approached the landing, Scarhead tucked his
misshapen skull down to his chest, performed an acrobatic double
forwards roll and landed sitting on his backside, facing away from
the trapped bike, looking slightly puzzled.

He turned round to see his bike
spewed out of the pothole. He could have sworn, which is something
he did quite often, that at that moment he heard a soft, earthy
belch. Icarus ran over to the boy, then to the bike. The boy
appeared to be okay but the bike’s front wheel was buckled, the
tyre missing.

“See,” said Icarus, “I told you
so.” He looked sternly at the others. They all looked slightly
shaken, their earlier swagger melting in the hot afternoon sun.

“It was just a fluke,” said The
Leader, but he did not look quite so certain.

Scarhead finally got to his feet
and walked over to his bike. “My Dad’ll kill me,” he said, over and
over. “My Dad’ll kill me.”

“You should have been wearing a
helmet,” said Icarus. “You could have been seriously injured.”

“How do you think he did his
head in before?” said Shorty.

After some tut-tutting and
commiserating the group’s interest in Scarhead evaporated and their
attention refocused on the stolen bicycle.

“So,” The Leader asked Icarus,
“you’ve really never ridden a bicycle?”

“No.”

“Not even sat on one?”

“Nope.”

“You gotta at least try sitting
on it,” said The Leader. “Just swing your leg over the crossbar …”
Icarus felt a shudder run through his body at the sound of that
word, “… but be careful that you don’t crack your nuts – the
saddle’s sharp as a knife.”

The Leader wheeled the bike
around so that it stood between him and Icarus on the slightly
sloping grass. “Just try it,” he pressed Icarus, “just stand over
the crossbar and feel the grip of the handlebars.”

Icarus felt that surge of desire
again, a tickling in the lower regions that he could not
understand, and which he had never felt before. But still, there at
the back of his mind, was his mother, tugging at his conscience.
Stop the nagging, he thought.

“C’mon,” the others began to
chant, “c’mon.” Icarus hesitated.

“Look,” said The Leader, “either
you try it, or I’m going home. This is getting boring.”

Icarus was afraid. He was afraid
of mounting the bike. But he was also afraid of losing sight of
this vision, this beauty, this first love.

“Okay then,” he said, “but just
for a moment.”

He swung his leg over the
saddle, just as he had seen many cyclists do. The bike was exactly
the right size – his crotch cleared the crossbar by a whisker.

“Lean forwards and grab the
handlebars,” said The Leader, “feel the brake levers and the gear
changers.”

Icarus thought he should tell
The Leader that the bike did not have gears, but somehow, that
didn’t matter now. Instead, he caressed the yellow-taped bars, a
young suitor fondling his beloved’s breast. A tingle ran through
his fingers, his arms, his body. This all seemed so natural, as if
it were meant to be. How could this be wrong? he thought to
himself.

The Leader took a strong grip of
the handlebars and the saddle, bracing himself to support the bike,
and he ordered Ginger to do the same on the other side.

“Now just ease your bum up and
back onto the saddle,” he said, “see what it would be like to ride.
Come on, guys, help me to hold him up.”

Icarus could not believe how
good this all felt. For all of his mother’s nagging, he could not
resist. This will be my secret, he thought. He put his left foot on
the pedal, and hoisted his backside up and backwards, onto the
saddle, then lifted his right foot onto the other pedal. Shorty
ducked down and turned the pedals round, so that the toeclips were
over Icarus’s shoes, and he pulled the straps tight.

Icarus gripped the handlebars
more tightly, and wiggled his bum to get comfortable. He noted,
almost blissfully, that his nuts seemed to rest comfortably on
either side of the saddle. For a cycling virgin, it was like
touching first base – and he knew he did not want to stop here. He
would be tortured by the experience, he would not be happy until he
had gone all the way.

Icarus closed his eyes so that
he could better savour the moment, and he allowed himself to slip
into a state of consciousness where he was detached from the
tensions, the dynamics, of all those around him. Already the wings
of the Condor had transported him a million miles away. He was in
dreamland – his ecstasy had transported him to another realm, where
fear and apprehension did not exist.

It was Scarhead, still standing
open-mouthed in front of his ruined mountain bike, who first
noticed them. “Oh crap,” he shouted, “the pigs are here.
Scarper.”

Icarus’s eyes flew open.
Immediately he was back in the park, surrounded by this motley
crowd. For years he and his mother had lived in their flat opposite
the park, and never once had he seen livestock here, apart from
dogs – and their walkers. This really was becoming a day for
firsts. He looked around rapidly, but there were no pigs in sight.
All he could see was a pair of portly policemen puffing across the
grass towards their small throng.

“Shit,” said Ginger, “I’m on an
asbo. I’m buggered if they’re gonna get me.”

Icarus did not share the general
sense of panic, at least, not until he realised that those who had
been supporting him on the bicycle were suddenly fleeing in all
directions. This is it, he thought. This is the moment that I’m
going to fall. This is what Mother warned me about, this is what
she told me, and I have chosen to ignore her. I’m sorry, Mother,
for not listening to you. I’m so, so sorry I’ve been such a bad
boy. Icarus shut his eyes again, and waited for the moment when he
would collide with the ground.