The Accidental Cyclist (6 page)

At this point we will leave
Dedalus to complete his ablutions in privacy, knowing that he is
reaching his eureka moment. He will not shout it out to all the
world, or go running naked down the street, but the seed has been
planted. All Dedalus has to do is formulate his plan of action. He
does not yet realise that he has made a momentous decision that
will precipitate the series of events that unfolded in earlier
chapters. But he will, be assured of that.

Now that Dedalus is all dressed
and respectable, we will rejoin him. He is cycling slowly to his
night shift at the steelworks in downtown Sheffield, pondering on
the night ahead, and allowing his brain to sift through the
thoughts that accosted him in the shower. Dedalus’s approach to
pedalling is not poetic, but pragmatic. For him, cycling is a means
of getting from A to B, from home to work, from the shops to the
pub, or to wherever it is that he wishes to go. He was brought up
surrounded by bicycles, he has ridden bicycles wherever and
whenever he could. He was born into the lore of cycling, whereas
Icarus was a late convert to the cause – what we would call (for
reasons that escape me) a born-again cyclist. I would have guessed
that a “born-again cyclist” would first have to have been a born
cyclist, given up cycling, only to return later as a “born again”
... Oh, forget it, because we digress. Dedalus, as we were saying,
may be a pragmatic, even a pedantic pedaller, but bicycles do give
him a form of escape – not a metaphoric escape, where his mind can
roam some inner unknown realm, rather a more literal escape, where
he can leave a situation that does not please him. Dedalus is not
given to conscious introspection, he does not examine his inner
thoughts and feelings, he doesn’t even daydream about what might
be, but his time on the bike does enable his brain unconsciously to
switch off, giving time for his thoughts to filter through his
brain, formulating new ideas, discarding bad ones, and
crystallising a plan of action, even if he does not realise that
this is what he is doing.

So it is only the following
afternoon, when once again standing in the shower while getting
ready for work (and we’ll leave the poor man to make his ablutions
in private today, if you don’t mind, madam) that Dedalus comes to
realise that he has already made a decision, that the way forward
has become clear: he is going to leave his job, leave Sheffield,
and cycle across Europe to Greece. He knows, in the back of his
mind, that Greece may not be the final destination – he might just
continue riding, around Europe, around the world.

Now, cycling from Sheffield to
Greece is no small enterprise, it requires some planning and
preparation, plus a small pot of capital. Much to his surprise,
Dedalus already knows how he is going to accomplish this feat: he
has his tidy sum in a savings account, probably enough to keep him
going for a year or three, if he is frugal. The question is what
does he do at the end of the ride, should the ride ever come to an
end? What does he do in an emergency? He will need something set
aside to set him up should he decide to resume his old life once
again. This bit puzzles him for a moment – he knows that he has a
solution, but what is it? Then he remembers: he will sell his
Persian carpet – one of a matching pair left to him by his parents.
His family left Greece when he was just a small boy. They arrived
in England with little money, and few possessions, however, among
those meagre chattels were two magnificent carpets that had passed
through the family over many generations. “I will never sell
those,” Dedalus remembers his father telling his mother one day
when there was no food in the house, “my great-great-grandfather
captured them during the Persian War.” (It was only years later
that Dedalus realised that the Persian Wars had taken place more
than two thousand years before his great-great-grandfather could
have been born. When he mentioned that to his mother, she shrugged
and said that his father was probably referring to the war with the
Turks.)

Dedalus guessed that these
Persian carpets may well have come from anywhere, but he knew that
his father had valued them highly, and now, it occurs to him, the
remaining carpet is probably worth a great deal of money. He knows
that it had been one of a pair, but for the life of him he cannot
remember what happened to the other one. Oh well, he thinks, if I
sell it and put the money away, I will have more than enough for my
travels, and I probably won’t need to work when I finally decide to
settle down.

Just a few short weeks later
Dedalus finds himself back in London for the first time in sixteen
years. He is standing at the door of an Islington auction house
with a big cheque in his pocket – he is sure they added too many
zeros, but he’s not complaining. For the first time in his life he
thanks his parents for not selling that blessed rug which, the man
in a pin-stripe suit with three hyphenated surnames assures him, is
Persian, and quite unique. And very valuable, as the size of the
cheque confirms. So Dedalus is happy, and smiling. He shakes, a bit
too vigorously, the hand of the three hyphenated surnames, when
suddenly his smile slips down his face and disappears.

“Is something amiss, sir,” asks
the man with all the surnames. He calls Dedalus “sir” because he
dare not attempt to pronounce Mr Christodoulou, in spite of having
studied Classical Greek at Cambridge.

“My bike’s been stolen,” says
Dedalus.

“Your bike, sir?”

“Yes, I locked it to this
lamppost right outside your door, and it’s gone. Look, the lock is
still there, but not the bike.”

“Well, sir, I wouldn’t worry too
much about that. You can rather afford to buy any number of
bicycles that you want, now. Unless you would rather invest in a
Rolls-Royce. Ha ha.”

“You don’t understand,” said
Dedalus. “That bike was special, one of a kind.”

“One of a kind, sir? I didn’t
know that they made bikes like that.”

“They don’t make bikes like
that, but I do. You see, I made that bike all by myself.”

“Oh dear, oh dear. Now I see the
problem, sir. Well, would sir like me to inform the local
constabulary?”

“No, don’t bother,” replied
Dedalus. “I’ll just go down to the police station and report it
there.” And he turned on his heel and headed down the High Street
muttering to himself: “I knew that I should have bought a better
lock, especially in London. I’ll probably never see that bike
again.”

Icarus had expected the
courtroom to be a lofty, wood-panelled affair presided over by a
bewigged, red-robed judge. Instead it was a squat concrete bunker
bolted on to the back of the police station. The magistrate was a
squat, concrete-bunker of a woman. She had severely cut steel-grey
hair, thick tortoiseshell glasses, a starched grey suit, and was
propped up by two tree-trunk calves. In the whole courtroom the
only thing that Icarus could identify with was the wooden gavel at
the magistrate’s right hand. This small object became the focus of
Icarus’s attention.

As he sat at the back of the
court with his mother, waiting for his case to be called, the
magistrate briskly administered due justice to a succession of
low-grade criminals.

“Three months,” she barked to
the first miscreant.

“Five hundred pounds and three
points. And costs.”

“Nine months, suspended for two
years.”

The magistrate sat there,
concentrating on the papers in front of her, looking up only when
passing sentence, which she did unblinking, unflinching, merciless,
pitiless, looking the accused straight in the eye.

Icarus watched, horrified and
amazed. Every one of them guilty, he thought. For a moment he
thought: but I am different. Then he realised that such things did
not matter. He had been on the stolen bicycle, he had been caught
with it in his possession. He could not explain that away. He was
guilty, just as guilty as any of the criminals that had passed
through the court that morning.

Finally his case was called. As
Icarus walked forward, Mr Bono jumped to his feet. “Your Honour,”
he said, “my client is a minor. Is it possible that he sit with
…”

“He can sit where all the other
accused sit,” said the magistrate.

As Icarus took his seat in the
dock he saw the magistrate in profile for the first time. Her nose
was hooked, predatory. The Beak, thought Icarus. That happens only
in books, he said to himself, but here I am, up before The Beak.
Icarus looked down at the floor as a clerk read out the
charges.

“Theft of pedal cycle,
alternatively, receiving stolen property, resisting arrest, trying
to escape ….”

All of a sudden Icarus did not
want to be in this place. He sank back into the corner of the dock
and slowly began to fade away.

“Stop doing that.” Without her
even looking up, The Beak’s voice cut through the clerk’s preamble.
“It won’t work here, and I won’t have it.”

Icarus jerked upright. How did
she know what he was doing, he wondered, looking up at the
magistrate. “I just know,” she said in reply to his thoughts. “I
know everything.”

The clerk, Mr Bono and Mrs Smith
looked at each other, wondering what on earth the magistrate was
talking about. Almost as if in response, The Beak said: “Well,
let’s get on with it.”

The prosecutor explained the
circumstances of Icarus’s arrest, and called Helmets One and Two to
give evidence. The two helmets recited their piece in identical
monotones, halting here and there to refresh their minds by
referring to their notebooks. After each had made his statement Mr
Bono jumped to his feet and cross-examined them on every tiny
detail. The two helmets were implacable, their evidence impeccable,
and they would not be budged from their stated version of
events.

At this point in the proceedings
there was a rush of murmurings between the prosecutor and Helmets
One and Two, who had been moving in and out of the courtroom as
quietly and inconspicuously is their incredible bulk would allow.
The prosecutor eventually crept up to the bench and muttered to The
Beak: “We were going to call the owner of the bike to establish
ownership, but he appears to have gone missing temporarily.”

“Is he essential to the case?”
asked The Beak.

“Only in establishing
ownership.”

“Well, his absence is holding up
the whole court. I want to get on with things. If ownership becomes
an issue you can call him later.”

And so the owner of the bicycle
in question was not called to give evidence. Instead, Icarus was
asked to the stand. He walked to the front of the court and stepped
into the witness box. Inside he noticed a chair. In a moment of
panic he asked himself: Do I sit if I take the stand, or do I
stand? No one had explained this to him. What was he to do?

“Sit,” said The Beak.

Icarus sat.

Mr Bono stood up. “Now Icarus,”
he said, “tell us what happened on the day in question, just as you
remember.”

Icarus related the events of the
day exactly as they had occurred, up until Helmet Two had thumped
him on the side of the head. “And that’s all I can remember,” he
told The Beak, “until I woke up in the police cell.”

The Beak looked at Mr Bono more
sternly than before, if that was possible, and asked: “Is your
client alleging police brutality? Why was this not brought up in
cross-examination?”

“Er, um, it’s the first time
that he’s mentioned it,” said Mr Bono. “I wasn’t briefed about
this, I had no idea …”

“No one asked me about it,”
Icarus volunteered. He did not want to get Mr Bono into trouble, or
the two policemen.

The Beak was clearly put out by
this disclosure – it was about to ruin her efficient dispensation
of justice, and she did not like it one little bit. Helmet Two, who
had been sitting at the back of the court fully expecting to have
the pleasant duty of taking the young felon down, when ordered to
do so, suddenly decided that it was time to leave. He had just
reached the door when he heard The Beak: “Stop, constable. Where do
you think you’re going in such a hurry?”

Helmet Two stopped, one hand on
the doorknob. He had an urge to just push open the door and make a
quick escape, but the door, apparently, would not budge. He froze.
He was a big, big man, who had taken on many of the big, bad people
who populated this corner of the world, and nothing frightened him.
Nothing, that is, except this stocky little woman with a voice as
sharp, as stern, as cutting as his mother’s. The hair on his very
thick neck bristled.

“Is this true?” The Beak
demanded of Helmet Two. “Did you assault this young man after you
had arrested him?”

Icarus felt a prickle of pride
deep within his chest: it was the first time that anyone had ever
called him a man.

Helmet Two turned around slowly
to face the bench: “Er, um, I was just stopping him from escaping,
Your Honour.”

“So you hit him?” The Beak
asked.

“Just enough to stop him getting
away,” said Helmet Two.

For a moment The Beak appeared
to be flustered, an appearance that she did not like one bit. “This
is all getting a bit too much,” she said to the prosecutor. “I
think this young man’s response to your charges is entirely
feasible, and I tend to believe him. You charged him with theft and
receiving.” The Beak did not like acquitting people, and she wasn’t
going to spoil her record here. She had her way of getting around
such little problems. “Perhaps,” she said to the prosecutor, “you
would like to withdraw your charges, and then we can simply close
this sorry saga and let the young man go home.”

Icarus felt another prickle of
pride. The prosecutor nodded vigorously and said: “Oh, yes, Your
Honour, I agree. I agree.” And with a glance at Helmet Two he
continued: “I am sure that my colleagues in the force won’t object
to me withdrawing all charges.” Helmet Two seemed to sag with
relief in the doorway as he realised that his treatment of Icarus
would not be questioned further.