The Accidental Cyclist (27 page)

Today the ride seems to be
almost all downhill. Our travellers don’t seem inclined to
conversation. It’s not that they are already tired of their
pilgrimage or of each other’s company, but maybe they sense that
some big decision lies ahead, some dilemma. They ride in
single-file close formation – a mini-peloton winding its way
Doverwards, where part one of the pilgrimage will come to an end
and there will be a parting of ways.

Mid-afternoon, and without
consulting his map, the Grey Man leads them along a lane away from
the main road. They toil up a long hill until the lane peters out
and they find themselves on flat, rolling grassland. Salt is in the
air. And the grass comes to an abrupt end, the ground falls away
sharply into the dark green sea below, flecked with flashes of
white.

“Wow,” says Icarus, “the sea.”
For it is indeed the sea, and indeed the first time that he has
seen the sea. He drops his bike and leans over the cliff’s edge,
ignoring a moment of vertigo to peer down the chalky chasm, until a
wave of nausea draws him back. It is the first time one of them has
spoken for some miles.

They determine to spend their
last night together on this cliff top – although not too near the
edge. Tomorrow they will have but a few miles to cycle to reach
Dover, and the ferry to France – for Icarus and the Grey Man – and
the train back to London for The Leader.

Icarus is clearly excited by the
prospect. The Leader, in contrast, appears to have been struck by
the same malady that afflicts the Grey Man: silence. Icarus is so
enraptured by his first sight of the sea – even if it is only the
English Channel – and by the prospect of travelling to France in
the morning that it takes some time for him to notice his
companions’ complaint. And so they settle down to another silent
meal, and an early night.

The trio have set up camp less
than an hour’s ride from Dover, which they can sense in the
distance. They are on a treeless cliff top and they can smell the
sea below them, feel the freshness of the breeze. They know that
they have reached the end of England – a critical point in their
pilgrimage. They roll out their sleeping bags and lie down,
munching the last of the cheese sandwiches from the tinfoil package
that the pretty nun gave the Grey Man yesterday morning. It is
their last supper together.

“You never told us about the
cheese sandwiches,” says Icarus.

The Grey Man looks at him with
tired eyes. He shuts them for a time, and just as Icarus decides
that he must have fallen asleep, the Grey Man begins talking,
slowly, eyes still closed, as if only half awake.

“I told you that I had a
breakdown and walked out of my job.” Icarus nods. The Leader says
nothing, but is listening.

“Well, there is so much more to
the story. And over these past couple of days it’s all been coming
back to me, more and more. When I first walked out, I slept rough
in London for a few weeks. It was the worst time of my life. I
hated it. But I couldn’t escape it. My depression fed on itself,
and I just sank deeper and deeper. I lost all my self-respect. I
didn’t wash or shave for weeks. I scrounged for food from bins, or
from the back of restaurants, eating other people’s leftovers. I
slept in the doorways of shops, covered in cardboard to keep me
warm at night.

“Then one day I was outside a
takeaway restaurant in The Strand. I was digging through a waste
bin looking for scraps to eat. I looked up and I saw this chap
looking at me. I didn’t recognise him at first – he was filthy,
unshaven, thin as a rake. Only when I moved did I realise that I
was looking at my own reflection. I knew then that I couldn’t get
any lower. I had sunk so deep into this hole, and now I had to
start digging my way out. I decided to go home.”

The Grey Man pauses, thinks
about what he is saying, what he is about to say. “I walked home,
to my house in southeast London, my shoes falling off my feet. It
was along the route that we cycled a few days ago. By the time I
got there it was dark. The house was empty, and next to the gate
there was a SOLD sign. I had known the neighbours well – we used to
socialise together, our children played with each other, we were on
all the local committees together. I went to their front door and
rang the bell. The wife shrieked when she saw me and ran inside and
called her husband. When he came out he was carrying a cricket bat.
Clearly he did not recognise me, and he told me to leave or he
would call the police.

“I wanted to say to him, Don’t
you recognise me? I know your golf handicap. I know about the
affair that you had with your secretary. I even know your kids’
middle names. But I said nothing. I was, well, not really
embarrassed, but ashamed.

“I stood there for a few
moments, and he made as if he was going to come after me with the
cricket bat. So I said to him that I had done some work for his
neighbours, some gardening, and that I had left some tools there
and wanted to collect them. And I added that I hadn’t been paid
yet. He seemed to feel sorry for me all of a sudden. He said that
something had happened to the people next door, they had fallen on
hard times and had to move away. I asked him where and when they
had gone and he said they had left only two days before. Gone to
the Kent coast. Somewhere like Deal, he thought.

“Then he pulled out his wallet
and gave me a fiver and said: I hope this will help you. And then
he shut the door. For a while I stood outside, wondering why I felt
ashamed. And I realised it was because I had been like him. The old
me would also have chased away someone who looked like I did. The
old me would have shown no compassion.”

The Grey Man stops, as if too
regain his breath before assaulting the next climb of his odyssey.
Icarus and The Leader say nothing. The Grey Man lies there, looking
up at the sky as if addressing the gathering dusk.

“That night I slept on the
doorstep of the house that I had bought and paid for myself. I
couldn’t even break in and sleep inside. Shows how conscious I had
been about security, protecting what was mine.

“The next morning I set out to
walk to the Kent coast, to find wherever my family had gone. My
wife’s family had come from Sandwich originally, so the neighbour
was probably right about where she had gone. So I walked for three
days, the last two with absolutely nothing to eat or drink. I
reached the town where we spent our first night. I was falling down
by then, hardly able to stand. I stopped outside the supermarket –
everyone just passed me by, as if I wasn’t even there. All these
affluent people with bags full of shopping and fat children
munching fistfuls of sweets. And I leant against the railings, not
able to move any more. I thought that I would die right there, and
no one would even notice.

“I’d shut my eyes for a while,
then a squeak woke me. It was a nun, and she was parking her
bicycle against the railings. She bent down and gave me a bottle of
water, then unwrapped a foil parcel – inside it was a cheese
sandwich.”

Icarus notices that the Grey
Man’s eyes are moist. He wants to do something, but doesn’t know
what. He lies there, and waits for the story to continue. The nun
helped the Grey Man up and took him to the monastery. The monks
cared for him there and when he had regained his strength he began
to do odd jobs around the place to earn his keep.

One day he found a rusty old
bicycle in a shed at the monastery. It was an old delivery boy’s
bike, heavy and chunky, with a huge basket at the front and no
apparent brakes. “I took it down the lane where I thought no one
would see me. I’d never ridden a bike before, you see. Well, I fell
off more times than I thought possible. I just didn’t seem able to
keep the thing upright and going in a straight line. It had a mind
of its own.

“I was just about to chuck it
all in when Sister Susan – she’s the one who found me – cycled
along and saw me under a heap of bicycle. Well, when she eventually
stopped laughing she said that she would teach me to ride the bike.
And she did.

“After that we used to go for
rides all over the countryside. She would sneak out from the abbey
and we would meet up, and we’d ride all day long. Eventually the
Mother Superior found out where Sister Susan was going. She told
the brothers at the monastery to send me packing. It was either me
or Sister Susan. So I decided it was time to move on. Sister Susan
had helped me to rediscover my self worth. She told me that if she
could get me back on the road to good, her life’s work would have
been done. And it was done.

“I suppose I was a little bit in
love with her. But how can you be in love with a nun? I mean, you
can’t make a pass at her, can you? And I’m sure that she felt the
same way too. So for her good and for mine I decided to move on,
and I went back to London and became a cycle courier.”

His story ended, the Grey Man
lapses back into his sullen silence. It is dusk as they crawl into
their sleeping bags and, one by one, they drift off to sleep under
the wide open sky.

Icarus awakens with a start,
startled by a sharp cry. He looks in the direction of the cliff.
The cry comes from a seagull that is arguing with its mate. Icarus
watches as the awkward, ungainly birds wheel and turn, furiously
flapping in the updraft of the cliff face to gain altitude in their
eternal search for food. I never saw a seagull in the magic carpet,
Icarus thinks. No, they are too ugly, too ungainly for such a
place.

Then he looks up, higher, and
sees another, bigger bird that seems to hang in the air like a
kite, its wings unmoving, effortlessly rising and drifting in the
thermals. It is bigger than the seagulls, more majestic, more
serene. It is a bird that seems to have appeared in his magic
carpet, but passed by, almost unnoticed. It must be some kind of
eagle, Icarus wonders. Now, if I was a bird, if I was to be a
creature that flies, that is the creature that I would be – an
eagle or a condor, although you don’t get condors in Britain, do
you? He allows his eye to follow the bird as it circles slowly in
the sky, rising on the warming morning air, until it becomes no
more than a speck in the sky.

Icarus turns his gaze to the
ground, to his present situation. Something is amiss, but it takes
a moment to realise what it is: the Grey Man is gone, and so is his
bike. The beauty of the sun rising over the sea fails to penetrate
the mists that fall over Icarus. Our pilgrimage is over before it
has truly begun, he thinks. He sees that the Grey Man’s sleeping
bag is lying empty alongside The Leader, who is still dozing
quietly. The panic inside Icarus subsides, but still he feels
anxious. To calm himself he tries to find the eagle high in the
sky, but it, too, had disappeared. Icarus flops back onto his
sleeping bag and lies there, waiting for The Leader to waken.

But before The Leader is awake,
a head appears across the hilltop, gliding smoothly along the
horizon. As it crests the brow towards Icarus the shoulders, chest
and body of the Grey Man appear. His is riding with one hand on the
handlebars, his other clutches a paper bag. He has not yet reached
them when The Leader jerks upright, awake. “Bacon rolls and
coffee,” he comments, nostrils flared. The Grey Man appears to be
in good spirits compared with last night. “Breakfast,” he smiles
broadly.

The three tuck into their bacon
rolls.

“Did you see the fish eagle?”
the Grey Man asks between mouthfuls.

“I saw a bird that must have
been some kind of eagle,” says Icarus. “It flew without moving its
wings.”

The Leader seems not to have
heard them. His eyes remain fixed on his fast-disappearing bacon
roll. When he has finished his breakfast the Grey Man stands up and
says: “I have an announcement,” as if he is about to give an
after-dinner speech.

Icarus looks at him. The Leader
keeps his attention strictly on his food. Icarus nudges The Leader
with his foot and says: “I think he wants you to pay
attention.”

“I have decided,” the Grey Man
continues when they are both looking at him, “after some difficult
deliberations, that I must go to Deal, to see my wife and
children.”

Icarus stops chewing. His jaw
drops, revealing a gobbet of half-chewed bacon. “You’re not coming
to France with me?” he asks, although it is more a statement than a
question.

The Grey Man shakes his head
sadly and says: “I’m sorry, Icarus. I know that your heart is set
on going. But this is really something that I’ve been putting off
for years. And if I don’t do it now, I know that I’ll never do it.
But I do have to thank you two for bringing me to this point where
I feel confident enough to go and see my family. I really do need
to know what has happened to them, find out where they are and how
they are doing. So it’s now or never.”

Icarus thinks that he is going
to cry. “But I can’t go on my own,” he says.

“Of course you can,” says the
Grey Man.

“But you don’t have to go on
your own.”

Icarus and the Grey Man turn to
look at The Leader, for it is indeed he who utters these last
words. The last crumbs of his bacon roll are still sticking to his
lips. He licks them off, the reaches into a pocket and pulls out a
tattered red booklet. “Look, my passport,” he says.

“You’ve got a passport?” asks
Icarus.

“Hell, yes. It’s from when my
mom took me to Ibiza some years ago.”

“You’ve been to Ibiza?” asks the
Grey Man. “What was it like?”

“Hot, is all I remember.”

“What did you do? Go to the
beaches? Go to restaurants?”

“Nope, I spent the whole time in
our hotel room playing video games.”

“Why?”

“Well, my mom just locked me in
the room all the time so that she could go out partying. All I did
was play games, eat pizza and watch lots of Spanish telly.”