The Accidental Cyclist (4 page)

“Jenkins,” yelled Mr Wobbly, in
the loudest voice that Icarus had ever heard, so loud, in fact that
even the solid walls of the establishment appeared to shake.

Helmet Two appeared. “Yes,
sarge?” he asked, almost nervously.

“Didn’t you lock up after you?”
Sergeant Wobbly demanded to know. “Or have you lost your keys
again, along with your marbles?”

Helmet Two looked across and saw
Icarus. A look of total puzzlement took over his face, replacing
his appearance of stupidity. “I’m sure I did. I mean, I’m sure I
locked up. I’ve never not locked up before, I don’t see how I could
not have done …”

“Excuse me,” said Icarus, now
hopping from one leg to the other, “but I really do need the
lavatory. I’m desperate.”

“Shut up,” Sergeant Wobbly said
to Icarus, then to Helmet Two: “I don’t know what’s happening to
this service. It’s falling apart, can’t get the right people …”

Icarus was squirming in the
corner. He had the feeling that Sergeant Wobbly and Helmet Two were
not really concerned about his problem, so he decided the only
thing to do was to return and use the dirty lavatory.

The two men did not notice that
Icarus was gone until they heard the barred gate clink closed
behind him. Helmet Two turned to go after him: “Just where do you
think you’re going, young man?” He followed Icarus to haul him
back, not slowing to go through the barred gate. But the gate
appeared to be locked, so he came to an abrupt halt, his top lip
splitting as it struck one of the metal bars. The blow knocked him
onto his backside. He looked up, coughed, and his two front teeth
fell out into his hand. He looked down at his teeth, then at the
bars, and then beyond, to where Icarus had just disappeared into
his cell.

Icarus was zipping up his flies
when he became aware of a movement behind him. When he entered the
room he had shut the door behind him, and he thought that no one
else was there, but now he had that disconcerting feeling that he
was not alone. He turned around and looked carefully into the gloom
– it took him a few moments before he saw his cellmate.

“Where did you come from?” asked
Icarus.

The man had a weather-worn but
kindly face, long grey hair pulled back into a ponytail, and a grey
beard, which seemed to be plaited. He had steel-grey eyes, and even
his skin appeared to be grey, as if all colour had leeched out of
him. All of this helped him to fade into the shadows. He looked
Icarus up and down before answering. His voice was low and slow,
and had a slight drawl. “That depends on when you’re talking
about.”

“I mean now, right now. You
weren’t there a minute ago.”

“I’ve been here since you
arrived. I watched them carry you in, and lay you down, and take
your belt and shoelaces …”

“But I didn’t see you
before.”

The Grey Man thought about that
last statement for a while, then realised that it was actually a
question of sorts.

“Well,” he said to Icarus, more
slowly, carefully, “I suppose you could call it my talent.”

“You call that a talent,” said
Icarus, almost laughing, “you pop up out of the blue, and you call
that a talent. You wouldn’t get far on X-Factor with a talent like
that.”

“Just a minute,” said the Grey
Man, “I’m not going to sit here and talk to you if you’re just
going to insult me. You’ve got it all wrong.”

“How did I get it all
wrong?”

“For a start, everyone has a
talent, even if they don’t know it. And second, my talent isn’t
popping up out of the blue, as you so quaintly put it. Rather, it’s
disappearing into the background, a kind of vanishing act.”

Icarus thought about this for a
while.

“So, can you vanish now? Can you
just disappear?”

“It’s not magic,” said the Grey
Man, sighing. “it’s simply a talent. It’s something I can use to my
advantage in certain circumstances. It won’t work now that I have
brought myself to your attention, but I used it earlier so that you
wouldn’t take any notice of me.”

“Why? Didn’t you want to talk to
me?”

“No, not really. I am quite at
peace with my own company, and I don’t generally enjoy the type of
conversation that you usually get in prison. But I was very taken
by your own extraordinary talent.”

“But I don’t have a talent,”
Icarus protested. “My mum keeps telling me I don’t really do
anything well. I can’t sing or play the violin. What talent could I
possibly have?”

“I already told you, everyone
has a talent. A talent is a special gift from God – it is his
special gift to you. And even if you don’t believe in God, or
anything like that, if you respect this world you live in, you
should use your talents as a gift to the world. If you don’t use
your talent to help others, then your life is wasted.”

“But I don’t have any talent. I
can’t think of a single thing that I can do that you could call a
talent.”

The Grey Man stroked his
grizzled beard thoughtfully, then said: “Ah, so you’re one of
those.”

Icarus looked at him
quizzically. “One of what?”

“Well, you’re an innocent, and
if I told you what it is that you have, you may well lose it. You
see, you have a special gift, more special than the talent that I
have, and you seem to be unaware of it. But if you understood what
that gift was, you stand every chance of losing it.”

Icarus sat down on his bunk. “I
just don’t get you. Are you teasing me?”

“No, it’s just that I don’t want
to spoil what you have.”

Icarus shook his head. “Now I’m
just going to sit here and worry about what you’ve told me.”

“Look,” the Grey Man
interrupted the long silence, “do you know where you are?”

“Well, I thought it was a
hospital,” said Icarus, “but now I’m not so sure.”

“Ok, you’re not in a hospital.
You’re actually in a police cell.”

“You mean like a prison,” said
Icarus. “What will Mother say?”

“Never mind about that right
now. Why don’t you go out and tell the policemen that you shouldn’t
really be here. That it’s all a mistake. Just go out and call
them.”

“But how can I?” asked Icarus.
“Look at that huge steel door. It will be locked.”

“Why is that suddenly a
problem?” asked the Grey Man. “You opened it and went out
before.”

Icarus looked across the cell,
confusion in his eyes. Slowly he stood up, crossed the cell and
pushed at the door. It did not move. He set his shoulder to the
door and pushed with all of his strength, but the door remained
shut tight. “They probably left it unlocked before,” Icarus said.
“The policeman lost the keys, or something.”

“That doesn’t matter,” said the
Grey Man. “You see, your talent is your innocence, it allowed you
to do whatever you wanted to do. Most people would simply have
expected that door to be locked. I did. And that stops us from even
trying to open the door. But really, freedom is simply a state of
mind. If your mind doesn’t know that you are in prison, then you
are free. St Paul had the same talent, although some people think
of it as a miracle, and claim that he was helped by angels. You
have that talent. It may be missing right now, but it will return.
If you can set your mind free, you will be capable of
everything.”

Icarus was not able to set his
mind free. His conversation with the Grey Man had locked his mind,
his emotions, his very spirit, in chains. He had no visions of
soaring, liberated from this prison on waxen wings constructed to
carry him to freedom. Darkness shrouded Icarus. The Grey Man
disappeared back into the gloom and Icarus sat there alone, weighed
down by the heavy silence, a palpable depression that he had never
experienced before. Just like his fabled namesake, Icarus was
beginning to believe that he would never see the sun again, let
alone fly close enough to feel the warmth of its rays.

He began to withdraw into his
cocoon, seeking comfort from the isolation that his mother had spun
around him all his life. When the desk sergeant came to fetch him a
few hours later, Icarus followed him to the interview room as if in
a trance.

Inside the room, sitting at a
table, was a chubby, red-faced man in a rumpled pin-stripe suit
that was a size too small for him. He was sweating slightly, even
though the room was quite chilly. The man was looking through a
sheaf of papers. Without even looking at Icarus, he said: “Smith,
sit down. I’ve been appointed as your brief. I’m Pro Bono, so let’s
get on with it.”

Icarus sat down at the table
opposite Mr Bono. The big sergeant stationed himself behind Icarus.
Mr Bono coughed, and looked up at the sergeant. “A bit of privacy,
please sergeant, just for form’s sake.”

Slowly, like a whale trying to
reverse, the sergeant turned around and left the room.

“So,” said Mr Bono, looking at
Icarus for the first time, “so.”

Icarus looked back at him, and
said nothing.

“Ah,” said Mr Bono, “is that how
it’s going to be. Non-cooperation doesn’t help, you know. If you
plead guilty and show contrition, I can probably get you three
months maximum. You’ll be out in six weeks, if you behave. What say
you?”

Icarus stared across the table
at Mr Bono. He had absolutely no idea what the man was talking
about.

“The only problem,” Mr Bono went
on, “is your record. They seem to have mislaid it. If you’ve done
this kind of thing before, you could go away for a year or more.
This was a high-end article, you realise, not just some cheap lump
of metal that most kids around here seem to have a preference for
…” – Icarus stared dumbly at Mr Bono – “… but I suppose you know
that. Did you think you could sell it on, or what?” Mr Bono waited
for an answer, but there was none. “Don’t you have
anything
to say for yourself?” he continued, the
anything
erupting
from his mouth in an explosion of exasperation.

Icarus seemed to stir, and said
in a very small voice: “Can I see my mother?”

“So, you think that your mother
can get you out of this? You kids are all the same – a brave face
until you get caught. Such a big boy, crying for his mummy. How old
are you anyway? Eighteen? Nineteen? It doesn’t say here …”

“I’ll be sixteen next month,”
said Icarus.

Mr Bono shot to his feet as if
his chair was about to explode. Apart from the shuffling of pages,
it was the first movement that Icarus had seen him make. At almost
the instant that Mr Bono opened his mouth to shout to the sergeant,
the door sprang open and the sergeant filled the entire
doorframe.

“Stop,” said the sergeant, his
several chins jiggling to underscore the exclamation. “Stop, I
say.”

“I have stopped, as well you can
see,” Mr Bono addressed the rippling chins. “Do you know how old
this boy is?”

“Yes,” wobbled the sergeant,
“and I was about to inform you that …”

“He’s a minor,” shouted Mr
Bono.

“… I was about to tell you
that,” said the sergeant.

“Well, why didn’t you tell me
that before? Didn’t the fact emerge when you interviewed him?”

“Er, well, we didn’t exactly
interview him. He wasn’t in, um, in a fit state.”

Icarus watched this interchange,
wondering how on earth he had come to be in the company of two such
disagreeable characters. The verbal ping-pong continued, with Mr
Bono serving what he thought was his ace: “You should have let me
know he was a minor. I could lose my licence again.”

The sergeant rallied: “I told
you the minute we found out.”

“Well, you’re all imbeciles
here. You don’t know how to run a …a….”

The sergeant began to quiver
frighteningly, and then suddenly erupted: “I don’t like being
called an imbecile by a jumped-up attorney who survives on handing
out his services to those who can’t afford their own brief.”

Mr Bono seemed to shrink inside
his suit, making it appear more rumpled than it already was. “I
didn’t mean to call you that,” he backed off slightly, “but I was
shocked to realise that my entire career might have been
compromised by instructing a minor without the presence of his
parents.”

This statement reminded them
that they were not alone, that they were supposed to be in the
process of interviewing a young felon. They looked around the room.
The sergeant was still blocking the only door, so that Icarus
couldn’t have gone anywhere. But they did not see him.

“What the …” said Mr Bono.

“Where the …” said the
sergeant.

The two men stood there,
scratching their heads. Mr Bono asked: “So, how did you find out
his age?”

“His mother is outside,” said
the sergeant. “She came to report him missing. We put two and two
together and made ….”

“Five,” said Mr Bono, finishing
the sergeant’s sentence for him.

“My mother’s outside?” said
Icarus, perking up. He was still sitting right there at the table,
plumb between the two men. He was looking rather pleased with
himself, although they couldn’t fathom why.

“Where did you go?” asked the
sergeant.

“How did you do that?” asked Mr
Bono.

Icarus just smiled to himself. A
new talent, he thought, then said: “No more questions, gentlemen,
until I see my mother.” He was learning fast.

Mrs Smith was standing
tearfully in the waiting room, miserable and weather-worn. Outside
was a wonderful sunshine day, but Mrs Smith seemed to travel
beneath a constant cloud of gloom. The grey mists lifted marginally
the moment she saw her son, and she tripped across the room to
embrace him.

Icarus braced himself for the
onslaught, standing stiffly to weather the wave of motherly
affection. As gently as his big hands allowed him to, the sergeant
prised them apart.

He cleared his throat. Mrs
Smith, despite all the hardships that life had thrown at her, still
had her attractions for men like the big sergeant. Her primary
attraction was her apparent vulnerability – she always looked as if
she was about to trip over her own shadow. She was well aware of
this secret weapon, and occasionally she knew just how to use
it.