The Accidental Cyclist (24 page)

“Don’t worry too much about
that,” the Grey Man said. “I know of an excellent bike shop on
Grey’s Inn Road that can sort that out. We’ll go there in the
morning.”

The next morning the three
cycled into the City, to Greys Inn Road. The Leader and Icarus
stopped outside, studying the window display. “This is bleeding
paradise,” said The Leader. “Just look at all of that stuff.
They’ve got everything here.”

“Yes, and just look at the price
tags,” said Icarus. “I think I’ll stick to Freecycle.” His eye,
caught by a particularly elegant single-speed, caused him to add:
“But by gosh, they’ve got some beautiful stuff here.”

The Grey Man led them inside and
summed up the emporium in two words: “Bike porn.” For this
certainly was the type of shop generally loved by men and hated by
women. Customers spent hours drooling over bits of pressed metal,
moulded carbon fibre, and hand-shaped leather. The staff, too, were
the epitome of cycle chic, displaying perfectly shaped and shaven
calves, and dressed in expensive branded cyclewear that matched the
beautiful machines. They reminded Icarus vaguely of some of his
more stylish colleagues at the International Cycle Courier Company
(Hackney Branch), except that they seemed to know what they were
doing.

The Grey Man asked at the
counter for someone to have a look at Icarus’s irksome front wheel.
They were ushered to the workshop and introduced Sam, who would
look after them. Sam was busy when they entered, bent double over a
set of spokes that seemed to have a mind of their own. The Grey
Man, the Leader and Icarus waited. Sam had short-cropped hair, wide
shoulders and baggy shorts that displayed the mandatory moulded
calves.

To break the silence, and to
attract Sam’s attention, Icarus said: “So, you must be the company
spokesman.”

Sam looked up, stared straight
at Icarus, and spat: “Spokeswoman, if you please.”

Icarus mumbled an apology while
behind him the Grey Man and The Leader had to stifle their
laughter. “I should have told you before,” the Grey Man whispered
into Icarus’s ear, “that is Samantha, Jo’s other half.”

Icarus felt a bolt strike his
heart. He had forgotten Jo. He hadn’t thought about her for days,
maybe weeks – well, at least since they had decided on the
pilgrimage. Suddenly Jo was back in his heart and mind. He pictured
her face, her infectious smile. He thought really hard about Jo,
and he smiled. At that moment Sam finished what she was doing and
looked back up at Icarus. But it wasn’t Icarus that she saw in
front of her, it was Jo. She stood up, cupped Icarus’s cheeks with
her big, strong hands, and kissed him full and passionately on the
mouth. Icarus’s eyes widened. He tried to pull back, but was held
firm.

Then Sam opened her eyes, she
saw it wasn’t Jo, but Icarus in her arms. “So, so, so sorry,” she
stammered, in confusion, “I don’t know what came over me. I thought
you were someone else.”

The Grey Man and The Leader were
bent double in the corner, they could no longer stifle their
laughter. They had no idea what Sam had seen, they had no idea why
she had kissed Icarus, and Icarus, for sure wasn’t telling them.
That, he decided quite firmly, was the last time he would ever make
use of that particular talent. Clearly no good could come of
it.

By late on Sunday afternoon
Icarus, the Grey Man and The Leader had completed all their
preparations. The Leader had insisted, twice, that they check all
their bikes and equipment. He wanted to make sure that everything
was perfect, every eventuality covered, every nut and bolt and
spoke tightened, before he was happy to release them for the last
supper. Together they trooped into Mrs Smith’s parlour to await her
summons to eat. It was the first time that The Leader had been
inside the flat, so he noticed nothing unusual, but Icarus and the
Grey Man were acutely aware of the bare wooden floor in the
parlour.

“The magic carpet has flown,”
said Icarus, quietly. The Grey Man nodded. The Leader studied the
tiny apartment intently, the bay window overlooking the park, the
worn leather sofa, book-lined walls, all with a slightly shabby
out-of-date aura. “This place is a palace,” he said, finally. “Some
day I’m gonna to have a lovely place like this.”

Before Icarus and the Grey Man
could ask The Leader why he so liked the small flat, Mrs Smith
called them through for dinner. The Leader amazed Icarus and the
Grey Man with his elegant table manners and his eloquent praise for
Mrs Smith’s culinary skills. From the size of the limb, the roast
that they were eating appeared to be the other leg of that poor
little creature of which they had previously partaken. Icarus and
the Grey Man were subdued throughout the meal but The Leader kept
up a running conversation on his own, swaying this way and that
between praising the delights of the day’s meal and the adventures
that awaited the intrepid travellers.

Finally, when the meal was
finished and The Leader’s monologue had run dry, Mrs Smith pushed
her chair back and said: “I’m going to miss you … both of you … all
of you.”

For a moment The Leader felt a
tear in his eye. It was, after all, the first time that he had ever
been consciously included in some kind of familial bond.

Mrs Smith rose from her seat and
left the room. She returned carrying two yellow cycling jerseys.
“For you,” she said, handing one to the Grey Man, “and for you,”
giving the other to Icarus. As she did so, she pulled his head into
her bosom, what there was of it, and held him there until he
struggled free. “It’s the right colour, I hope,” said Mrs
Smith.

“The maillot jaune,” said
Icarus, studying the jersey.

“The what?” asked The
Leader.

“It’s the yellow jersey,” said
the Grey Man.

“Oh, I can see that. I just
didn’t understand what Icarus was saying just now.”

The Grey Man fingered the
jersey, as if appreciating the texture. It seemed new, but was not
made of modern fabric, rather an older, heavier knit that was
becoming popular with trendy riders who sought the so-called retro
look.

Mrs Smith noticed the Grey Man’s
inquiring look. “They belonged to Icarus’s father,” she said. “He
was a cyclist too. He never wore these two jerseys. And I don’t see
any point in hanging on to them any longer. Now they can be put to
good use.”

The Grey Man’s fingers fumbled
across an irregularity in the fabric, and he looked down. On the
neckline of the jersey was embroidered, in cream cotton, a scallop
no bigger than his thumb. “Ah, the sign of the pilgrim,” he said.
And then to Mrs Smith: “Thank you, ma’am. For your hospitality, and
especially for this jersey.”

Mrs Smith turned to The Leader
and said: “I didn’t know that you too were going, so I don’t have a
jersey for you. But I hope that you’ll accept this.” In her hand
she had a thin silver chain, and on the chain was a tiny silver
scallop. The Leader burst into tears. He tried to say thank-you but
couldn’t find the words, so he simply hugged Mrs Smith. And she
hugged him back, in a way that he had never been hugged by his own
mother.

For Mrs Smith the following
morning’s farewells were all too brief. She hugged Icarus as if she
would never let him go, she shook hands embarrassedly with the Grey
Man, and said: “Well, good luck George, and look after my boy.
Goodbye, farewell, adieu …” and finally she gave The Leader a pat
on the shoulder and a peck on the cheek. As the trio pedalled off
in the Monday morning traffic she wished that just once more she
could fling her arms around her dear, dear Icarus, but instead she
stood on the bottom steps of the flats, her hand over her mouth,
covering the sadness that wrinkled her face, as tears trickled
slowly down her cheeks. Long after they had disappeared from sight
down the High Street she went back inside the flat. She made
herself a cup of tea and sat down in the front room. For a while
she simply stared at the bare floorboards. She felt totally
drained, and more bereft than when she realised, seventeen years
earlier, that Dedalus would not be returning, that he had gone,
fled, absconded.

Finally she lifted her eyes from
the uncarpeted floor to the window. The sun outside reflected off
the window. Mrs Smith looked up and saw a sea of green leaves
flooding the park, a symphony of green that danced and swayed,
leaving her feeling a little giddy. She looked down at the floor
again, and realised that she actually missed the old carpet. It had
been Dedalus’s carpet, and it had been his final gift, after the
gift of Icarus. And then she thought: all my little birds have
gone, taken flight … and for a while her mind went blank, empty …
It was a good half hour before her tears had run dry, and by then
so too had her font of synonyms. Disconsolate, she stared at the
bare floorboards, as a sense of nothingness enveloped her. It
seemed as if she would sit there all morning, just staring at the
empty floor.

Outside the rumble of traffic
subsided to a simple murmur. But if she listened carefully, there
was another sound there too, almost imperceptible. Mrs Smith
strained her ear to hear. She placed her teacup on the lace doily
on the side table, crossed the room and opened the window.

On a branch just beyond the
window a blackbird was perched, singing its throaty song. Close by,
on another branch, sat a robin. In the background Mrs Smith caught
the cawing of crows. Two swallows swooped by, chasing one another
before disappearing in the thick foliage. As Mrs Smith stood by the
open window she saw more birds than ever could have populated her
precious magic carpet, all swooping and swerving across the sky
above the park. For a moment a faint flicker of a smile flitted
across her face, and she thought: the silent birds on my parlour
floor have been liberated, set free to sing their hearts out. I
suppose it was time to let them go. If I had not released them,
they would never have learnt to fly free, to sing sweetly, to
explore the great wide world just outside this window. Not for one
moment did she relate these thoughts to Icarus and his adventure.
She could not yet see that, like her birds, he would have remained
a silent, two-dimensional cipher if he was not released from her
grasp.

So she sat there by the window,
for the first time in many years passing the day by doing nothing.
About mid-morning she fetched herself another cup of tea. When she
came back to the window she noticed someone sitting on the bench in
the park, with a bicycle beside him. For just a moment she thought
it was Icarus, that he had decided not to go on his pilgrimage, and
her heart quickened. But then she saw the hints of grey in the
black hair, and she realised that the man was older than Icarus.
Besides, he must have been waiting for someone, a woman, because he
had a bunch of flowers besides him on the bench. The bicycle beside
him was a strange-looking one, a bicycle that she was sure she had
seen somewhere before.

Icarus had feared that his
mother’s tears would somehow dissolve his resolve and make him
change his mind about the expedition. He had had to carefully
extricate himself from her motherly embrace, mount his bike and
wave a cheery goodbye as the threesome headed down the High Street.
But the memory of his mother’s tears evaporated faster than the
morning mists were dissolved by the choking fumes of the traffic.
The Grey Man led the way through Islington, with Icarus at his rear
wheel like a sprinter being led out for the final burst down the
finishing straight. The Leader pedalled further back, less sure of
the traffic and the other cyclists along the way, who they seemed
to be passing at an alarming rate. They sped along City Road, and
then Commercial Road, so that they reached Tower Bridge which, to
The Leader’s relief, was being raised to allow some megabucks
Russian yacht to pass beneath it.

“Are we trying to get there by
lunchtime?” The Leader panted. He had no idea where “there” was but
he certainly was not in quite so much of a hurry to reach that
point as his travelling companions seemed to be.

“Sorry,” said the Gray Man,
“it’s just that feeling of freedom on the first day of a
holiday.”

“Well, feel free to slow down
any time you want to,” The Leader replied.

When the bridge was once again
in the horizontal position the procession proceeded, this time at a
rather more leisurely pace.

The journey through southeast
London was, for Icarus and The Leader, already an adventure.
Neither had ever travelled through the concrete canyons and leafy
suburbs that formed the corridor that led them out of the city. The
Grey Man knew where he was going, and led them like a seasoned tour
guide, commenting on the areas that they passed through and
pointing out places of note. Icarus took in all that the Grey Man
was saying, looking around as they cycled and enjoying the
ever-changing vista. The Leader kept his head down and pedalled
furiously, simply trying to keep pace with his fitter friends. It
was somewhere past Bromley town that Icarus finally managed to
leave behind – in his mind, that is – his mother, and her hold over
him. The three were riding along Sevenoaks Road when, had you been
listening very carefully, you would have heard the proverbial apron
strings snap. Suddenly Icarus was released, to ride, to fly, to
pedal as far as the horizon, and when that point on the horizon
became the road beneath his wheels, to continue on to the next
horizon, and the next, until all horizons merged into a single
ever-shifting landscape that was all-reachable, all within his
sight and grasp.

They passed Orpington, a place
of no note other than that the houses, buildings, and even cars and
people appeared to be less populous than in central London, while
the trees appeared to be bigger, the fields larger, and dare one
say it, the grass greener.