The Accidental Cyclist (21 page)

Icarus read these books and
others with no particular purpose in mind other than to amuse and
enrich his growing mind. He assimilated their cumulative
information, salting away random facts and figures, little
realising that, quite soon, these books would subconsciously change
the direction of his life to a degree that he – and Mrs Smith and
the Grey Man – could not anticipate. The books, totally different
in nature, were to plant the seeds of an idea into a brain that too
long had lain fallow, too long been discouraged from exploiting its
own rich potential. The cross-pollination of ideas in these books
would germinate, blossom and flourish in a fertile imagination, and
enable Icarus to leave the comfort and security of the tiny world
he had always lived in, to discover the great beyond. They would,
in short, give Icarus the wings to help him to fly.

A brief four weeks after his
accident – and much to the disappointment of Mrs Smith – Icarus J
Smith returned to work at the International Cycle Courier Company
(Hackney Branch). Helen the Despatcher almost did not recognise
Icarus as he wheeled his mended bike into the shop. He had cut his
long, wavy locks and now his hair was a knot of tight black curls
clinging to his head. He had, in a matter of the few months since
he had started work, changed from a boy to a man, she thought. And
a nice-looking man too.

“Welcome back,” she said in a
warm voice. She walked around the counter and gave Icarus stifling
hug. “We’ve all missed you.”

Icarus looked around to see who
the “we” were that Helen the Despatcher was referring to, because
it clearly did not refer to Justin, Jason and co, who were in their
usual positions variously propping up the wall or sprawled across
the chairs, all radiating intensely studied indifference.

Icarus had just finished making
himself and Helen the Despatcher a cup of tea when the Grey Man
arrived and gave him a warm smile. “You here to pinch my rounds?”
the Grey Man asked.

A look of alarm flickered across
Icarus’s face before he realised that the Grey Man was teasing him.
He did not hear the Grey Man saying to Helen the Despatcher: “Keep
an eye on him, won’t you?” Nor did he hear her reply: “I was
counting on you to do that.” However they agreed, still out of
earshot, that perhaps Icarus should shadow the Grey Man for a few
days, to recover his confidence, teach him some new routes and,
most importantly, get him out of the office and away from the
malignant atmosphere that hovered over the other couriers like a
fetid fog.

As far as Icarus was concerned,
he was just as good as any of the couriers at the International
Cycle Courier Company (Hackney Branch). The suggestion that he
should shadow the Grey Man irked him somewhat, and although he did
not say as much, the Grey Man and Helen the Despatcher could tell
that he was not happy. They decided to keep him on his mettle.

“When is Lazarus’s Run?” Helen
the Despatcher asked the Grey Man.

“Oh, it must be soon – this
Friday, I think,” the Grey Man replied.

Icarus was surprised to hear the
Grey Man’s real name used at his place of work. He thought that
only he and The Leader knew the Grey Man’s real name. “What is
Lazarus’s Run?” he couldn’t resist asking.

Helen the Despatcher smiled
broadly at him. “Oh, you’ll find out soon enough,” she said
enigmatically. This response irked Icarus even more, but he said
nothing.

The week passed with Icarus and
the Grey Man making routine calls between lawyers and their
clients, advertising agencies and newspaper offices, financial
houses and big banks. Some trips were billed as more urgent than
others, but all were accomplished with swift efficiency by the two
couriers, which for them still counted for nothing more than a mere
canter. The jobs were interspersed with coffee breaks, snatched
catnaps and serious street-corner conferences with courier
colleagues. The Grey Man also managed to persuade Icarus to spend
some of his wages on cycling gear suitable for the coming winter.
“Jeans and trainers and t-shirts are fine for the summer, but once
the real cold and wet weather hits us, you need to be
prepared.”

Icarus was in the habit of
handing over his weekly wages to his mother, who subsequently
issued him with the occasional spot of pocket money. The Grey Man
persuaded Icarus to open a savings account and put a proportion of
his pay packet into the bank each week, before handing his money
over to his mother. For a rainy day, he said. Icarus could not
think of any reason why he would ever need such savings, and the
Grey Man patiently explained to him that at some stage he would
need to replace worn-out bike parts, clothes, and so on. “Besides,”
the Grey Man said, “maybe you’ll even want to take a holiday some
day.” Icarus, who had never in his life taken a holiday, agreed
reluctantly, even though he felt that somehow he was cheating his
mother of something that was rightfully hers.

The week passed slowly and the
Grey Man could tell that all was not well with Icarus. The lad
seemed to be tagging along behind him like a shadow that was
frightened of the dark. On the Thursday evening they cycled back up
City Road towards Hackney. The light was fading fast and as they
rode along the Grey Man watched their shadows overtake them as they
passed under each streetlamp, then flee into the darkness ahead.
The process was repeated anew at each streetlamp they passed.
Somehow Icarus’s shadow seemed to lag behind his, and it appeared
reluctant to flee into the darkness beyond.

The Grey Man braked sharply and
pulled over to the pavement. Icarus stopped just in front of him,
and looked back, startled.

“What’s up?” Icarus asked.

“That’s exactly what I want to
know.”

Icarus looked at the older man,
puzzled.

“I want to know what’s eating
you,” the Grey Man said, moving alongside Icarus. “Ever since you
came back to work you’ve been moping about like …” he cast about
for the right words, but they weren’t there. He went on after a
pause. “What is it? You’ve not been concentrating on your job. You
don’t seem conscious of the road, of the dangers. You’ve had
absolutely no enthusiasm for anything this past week. You just seem
to be drifting about behind me like a bad smell.”

Icarus shrugged. “I don’t know
what it is,” he confessed. “I just haven’t been feeling so good, I
suppose.” He was about to set off again, but the Grey Man put a
hand on his handlebars and held him back. He wasn’t prepared to
allow Icarus to shrug this off.

“It’s not like you’ve got a cold
or a stomach bug,” he said. “There is something far more serious,
isn’t there? Something in your head that isn’t right.” He tapped
Icarus on the helmet.

Icarus looked at the Grey Man
for a while, his brain racing through several versions of the
possible truth, then said: “It’s not in my head. It’s here.” He
patted his chest. “It’s a nagging pain that just doesn’t go away. I
don’t know why.”

The Grey Man smiled to himself.
He knew what caused that pain, even though it was a long, long time
since he had been similarly afflicted. “Who is it?” he asked.

Icarus felt the pain surge
through his chest, his head, his whole body, then slowly subside to
its regular dull pulse. “Jo,” he said almost silently, “It’s
Jo.”

The Grey Man shook his head
slowly. “She’s a lovely girl, but she’s not available. You know
that, don’t you?”

Icarus looked perplexed. The
pain shook his body again, before subsiding.

“She’s a lot older than you,”
said the Grey Man. “And she has a partner. They’ve been together
for years.”

Icarus felt as if the Grey Man
was twisting a knife slowly in his chest. “But she was so nice to
me, so friendly. She wasn’t friends with Justin or Jason or any of
that lot.”

“That’s because you were no
threat to her. That’s why she likes you.”

“She likes me?” Icarus perked
up.

“Yes, I’m sure she does. But she
will never be your girlfriend.”

“Why not?”

The Grey Man had hoped to avoid
this, but he could not get away from it now. “Like I said, she
already has a partner – a girlfriend.”

“A girlfriend?” Icarus was
confounded.

“Yes, a girlfriend. She’s gay.
So just get over it, okay.”

Icarus had never known anyone
who was gay. He had heard other boys at school talking about gays
and queers, but he had never really comprehended what it meant.
They had even called him queer, but it had never bothered him,
because they called him many other things besides. Never before had
Icarus felt physically attracted to anyone, of either gender. Now,
as he and the Grey Man cycled the last couple of miles home in the
dark, he tried to comprehend what it would be like to be attracted
to another man. But he couldn’t. He liked the Grey Man, he might
even like The Leader, but certainly there was no attraction there.
Not like the attraction he felt for Jo.

When they reached the flat the
Grey Man said: “That hurt in your chest will go away eventually.
It’s not a bad pain – it’s quite good, actually, because it shows
that you have a heart.”

“I don’t understand,” said
Icarus, “surely everyone has a heart.”

“Everyone has a muscle in their
chest that pumps blood around their bodies. But they are not all
like you, because you have a great capacity to love. Not everyone
has that capacity. And it is something good, because it means that
you are a good person, a good human being, because you have love in
your heart. That can only be for the better, can’t it?”

“I suppose so,” said Icarus,
although he wasn’t really that sure.

“Another thing,” the Grey Man
continued. “If you really like Jo, and you accept her as she is,
you will probably find that she will always be your friend. That’s
not something that would necessarily happen if she was your
girlfriend.”

Icarus frowned. He did not
understand this logic.

“You see,” the Grey Man
explained, “physical relationships can get in the way of
friendship. Any two people can be friends, and friendship can go on
for ever. But relationships – especially physical relationships –
often don’t last as long. Once a physical relationship is over, it
is very, very hard to hold on to friendship.”

Icarus nodded slowly as he
walked his bicycle down to the basement of the flat. He was sure
that the Grey Man meant well, but his words just did not seem to
make him feel any better. And the pain in his chest felt sharper
than ever.

It was about lunchtime on
Friday when the call came through. “This is it,” said the Grey Man.
Icarus looked at him blankly. He had absolutely no idea what he was
talking about.

“Lazarus’s run,” the Grey Man
prompted.

“Oh, that,” said Icarus. He had
forgotten about the exchange earlier that week, and of Lazarus’s
run’s supposed challenge.

“Are you sure you’re up to
this?” the Grey Man asked.

“Of course, why do you ask?”

“You still just don’t seem to be
all with it. You’ve got to be totally alert for this. And fit. I
can’t be waiting around for you if you’re not completely up to
it.”

“I’m fine. Don’t you worry about
me, I’ll be right behind you.”

But still the Grey Man was
worried, although he tried not to show it. They were cycling down
Cannon Street when they had received the call. They crossed Tower
Bridge and turned down Tooley Street, where the Grey Man pulled
over and said to Icarus: “Here, hold my bike while I go inside.
I’ll just be a couple of minutes, and after that we’ll be off full
tilt.” He disappeared down the canyon formed by the series of
office blocks. Icarus waited, chilled by the cold wind that blew up
the Thames and was funnelled between these buildings. Office
workers were blown along the concrete chasm like autumn leaves,
scurrying along to their Friday lunches. The Grey Man reappeared at
a run after the promised few minutes, carrying a white box that was
about two feet square and four inches deep.

“Okay,” he said, “this is urgent
– we have to have it at the Law Courts on The Strand in five
minutes, or there will be trouble.”

The Grey Man set off at a pace
that Icarus found hard to match. His legs had become cold during
the wait, and he was struggling to keep up. Along Tooley Street
they rode, then back across Tower Bridge. On the bridges’
pavements, behind the pale blue railings, the tourist hordes
strained their necks to peer up at the towers, and down to the
murky waters below, while huddling together to pose for
photographs. Traffic on the bridge was at a standstill, so the Grey
Man and Icarus carved a path down the middle of the road. The
gusting wind that blew along the river tugged at them, knocking
them this way and that as they passed between buses and
lorries.

At the Tower Hill intersection
they ignored the red light and turned left, immediately crossing
the slow-moving traffic as it entered the city-centre congestion
zone. Icarus was warming to the ride, and tracked the Grey Man’s
back wheel like a pursuit rider hunting down his rival. They turned
right at Great Tower Street, using the pedestrian crossing to get
around the bus barrier that barred the way. Down Eastcheap they
pedalled, and into Cannon Street, where they picked their way
through the gridlock before accelerating down the hill and past the
station, braking sharply to avoid a black cab that had paused
halfway through a u-turn, undecided which way it wanted to go.

Up Cannon Street they went, to
the one-way around the obscurely named Friday Street. Icarus felt
his legs pumping hard past St Paul’s Cathedral, dodging tourists
that milled around the crossing to take pictures of that famous
dome, the red double-decker London buses, black cabs, and anything
else that happened to take their fancy.