The Accidental Cyclist (7 page)

The Beak turned to Icarus. “You
are free to go. Of course, if you wish to pursue any action against
the arresting officers, that is up to you.”

And with a bang of the gavel,
the first time it was used that morning, the court leapt to its
feet in unison and The Beak was gone.

A few days later Icarus
informed Mrs Smith, “I think that tomorrow I’ll go to look for a
job.”

“What about school?” asked Mrs
Smith.

“I don’t want to go back. And I
don’t think that they want me back.”

“What will you do?” cried Mrs
Smith. “You have no qualifications, no skills, no …” she was about
to say “no talent”, but managed to stop herself. “You’re still so
young,” she went on. “You’re just … you’re just a boy.”

“The magistrate called me a
man.”

“That doesn’t make you a
man.”

Icarus said nothing. He had not
thought this through. What could I do? he wondered. His mother
watched him, sitting in his striped pyjamas at the breakfast table.
The summer holidays end next week, she thought. If he doesn’t go
back to school, I will have to stay at home to look after him, and
I can hardly afford to do that.

“I’m 16 now, well, almost,” said
Icarus almost in response to her thoughts. “I can look after
myself. I’m not a child anymore.”

“What will you do?” she asked
again. “What can you do? I don’t want you to just land up working
in a shop …” she was about to add “like I did” but refrained.
“You’re a bright boy. You’ve got wonderful prospects, high hopes,
great expectations, and if you study hard and finish school you
could do anything you want.”

“Anything like what?”

“Well, you could become a
lawyer, just like that nice Mr Bono, who got you out of this mess.”
It was the first time that Mrs Smith had made any mention of “this
mess”.

“Mr Bono isn’t nice, he’s
creepy.”

“Well, I think he’s nice, and
helpful, and even chivalrous, which is something you don’t see much
of these days. Anyhow, that’s not the point. You could be a lawyer,
or doctor, a magistrate, or even a policeman ….”

Icarus had a fleeting image of
Helmet Two sitting on the police station floor, spitting his front
teeth out after walking bang into the steel gate, and knew that
never, never, never would he be a policeman. Not even a policeman
who rode a bicycle.

“I’ll find something,” he told
his mother. “I’ll go down to the job centre tomorrow and find
something.”

“I’ll take the day off then, and
come with you.”

For a moment Icarus hesitated.
He almost said okay, but he knew that it wasn’t okay, and said
quite firmly: “No, I have to go alone and do this all by myself.
I’m not a boy anymore.”

Mrs Smith felt her eyes moisten,
she knew that she could do nothing right then. For sixteen years
she had been terrified of this moment. It was a moment that she
knew would come one day. She always believed that she would know
when it was about to arrive, and that she would be expecting it.
Suddenly that moment was here, totally unexpected, so much sooner
than she could have imagined. For the second time in her life she
was about to lose her greatest love, and there was absolutely
nothing that she could do about it.

“It’s just a job, Mother,” said
Icarus, “it’s not like I’m leaving the country and going away
forever. I’ll still live at home here with you.”

“You will go away,” said Mrs
Smith, finally shedding a single tear, “you will.”

The following morning Icarus
arrived at breakfast time wearing his best T-shirt and trousers –
his mother wouldn’t allow him to lower himself to the level of his
degenerate peers by wearing denim jeans. He sat down to his
porridge, two slices of toast and Marmite, and a cup of tea, saying
nothing more than a muffled “morning” to his mother. Mrs Smith
hoped that the madness of yesterday had passed, that the silly talk
of going to find a job was forgotten. For her, time seemed to be
slowing to a crawl, each second stretching into a minute, into an
hour, into an eternity.

Icarus appeared to be eating
more slowly than usual. It’s almost, Mrs Smith mused to herself, as
if he’s tasting that breakfast, that same breakfast that he has
eaten almost every weekday of his life, for the first time. He
doesn’t want to go, she thought. He’s procrastinating, lingering,
loitering, delaying. She did not realise that the change in pace
was in her head alone. Nor for one moment did it occur to Mrs Smith
that Icarus might well be savouring that bland, boring breakfast in
the hope that it was the last time he would be eating it.

So Mrs Smith watched him,
sibilant synonyms slipping through her vacant mind, until Icarus
washed down the final crust with a mouthful of tea. He pushed his
plate away from him, leant his elbows on the table, in just the
manner that she had told him not to, and rested his chin in the
palms of his hands.

Mrs Smith was about to admonish
the boy, to tell him to get his elbows off the table, but found
that she could not. She looked down at him from across the tiny
kitchen. The plump boyishness of his face would soon disappear, she
realised. He was growing into the handsome dark looks of his
father’s Greek heritage. Swarthy, she thought, but not too dark –
that must be my influence, she thought – but certainly the son of
Dedalus.

“Mother,” said Icarus, waking
her from her reflection. “Mother, do you think that tomorrow I
might have something different for breakfast? I’m getting a bit
tired of the same thing all the time.”

Oh, what joy, thought Mrs Smith.
He has forgotten, he is still my boy, he is staying home after all,
and all he wants is something different for his breakfast. She
walked around the table and held his head to her breast, running
her fingers through his curly black locks.

“What’s that for?” he asked,
startled.

“Just because … because I’m
feeling happy, joyful, ecstatic …”

“Well, try not to mess my hair.
I want to look nice when I go looking for a job.”

Mrs Smith took a few moments to
recover her composure.

“So,” she said finally, “you’re
determined to continue with this silliness, this childishness, this
wilfulness …”

“I don’t want to go back to
school, Mother. I want to find a job and earn some money so that I
can go out and …. do things.”

“What do you mean, do
things?”

“I want to go and find out what
the world is really like. I don’t know anything about life except
from what I’ve learnt from school and books. From what I’ve seen on
television and in magazines, I know there’s much, much more out
there.”

“Don’t I give you everything you
need?”

“You do. You have. You’ve given
me everything, but I still need to find a life, I need to find what
life is.”

“I gave you life, I gave you
breath.”

“You gave me life, Mother, you
gave me this life, but I know now that there is more. I’ve never
ever ridden on a bus, or in a car. I want to …. to expand my life
beyond the few streets around here.”

Mrs Smith put up her hand and
stopped him. “It’s that bike, isn’t it?”

“No. Yes. No. Well, I don’t know
… I suppose that is has something to do with that.”

“I knew it,” Mrs Smith’s voice
rose in anger. “I knew it from the moment that it happened. Nothing
good can ever come from those infernal machines, those conniving
contraptions. They are evil incarnate …”

“Maybe you can never understand
this, Mother, but for the few moments when I was on that bicycle, I
felt like I was flying, like I was free from everything that
worried me.”

“You’re not yet sixteen. You
don’t have any worries in your life. Worries are for grown-ups,
adults, older people, like me. Whatever could you have that worries
you?”

“I’m different from all the
other boys …”

“Of course you’re different from
all the other boys – you’re special …”

“No, I’m just different. I don’t
wear the same clothes as them, I’m not allowed to do the things
they do. I’m just not one of them. I’m different because I’m just
an outsider.”

“Being different, being an
outsider, that is special. It’s something that you should be proud
of it.”

“No. It’s nothing to be proud
of. It makes me some kind of a freak. They tease me at school, they
make fun of me. I try to ignore it, but inside here …” Icarus put
his hand on his chest “…in here it hurts. It has hurt since as long
as I can remember. And for those few moments when I was on that
bicycle, it stopped hurting. And that was when I realised that I
was missing out on life.”

Mrs Smith could not reply. Her
face began to crumple, her eyes moistened again. Icarus hesitated
for a moment, almost conquered by her performance. “Please don’t
cry, Mother. Because as bad as this pain is,” he said, “it’s never
as bad as seeing you cry.”

When the storm had passed and
the cloud of despair over Mrs Smith had lifted a little, Icarus
remained insistent that he was going to the job centre, and to find
employment. Mrs Smith insisted, too, that he change from his casual
clothes into his grey school trousers and a clean white shirt. From
God knows where she found a black necktie, which she insisted on
knotting for him, and a navy blazer that fitted across his narrow
shoulders, only just, although it was a little short in the
sleeves. Icarus noted that it buttoned the wrong way, and when he
asked his mother why, she just shrugged and said it must have been
made in Europe. She then tried to tame his wild, curly hair, to no
avail.

Finally she stood back and said:
“There, you look so smart, so handsome, so … grown up. Who could
refuse you a job?”

She led him to the door, where
she checked one last time: “You’re sure you don’t want me to go
with you?”

Icarus departed with an emphatic
“No”.

Icarus walked down the steps of
the flat and turned right towards the high street. The job centre
was at the far end of the high street, about four or five blocks
away. As he walked along opposite the park he became aware of a
figure hovering at the edge of his vision. He looked to his left
and there was The Leader on a BMX bike that was far too small for
him, riding against the flow of traffic, dodging between parked
cars. Icarus looked at him, looked at the ridiculously small bike,
smiled to himself and just kept on walking. The sight reminded him
of the time that his mother took him to the circus and a man in a
gorilla suit rode a miniature bicycle. His mother had insisted that
it had been a gorilla on the bike. “No man would be so stupid as to
ride such a ridiculous bicycle.” Icarus knew that it was a man in
the gorilla suit, and he was faintly amused by the mental anecdote.
He smiled to himself, and The Leader caught a glimpse of the smile,
and thought that perhaps it was intended for him. The Leader,
though, was not amused. He jumped the bike over the kerb and
stopped across the pavement, blocking Icarus’s path.

“Where’s my bike?” The Leader
demanded of Icarus.

Icarus ignored the question, and
tried to step around the boy. The Leader jumped off the bike and
quickly moved it backwards to block Icarus’s progress. “Where’ve
you been?” he asked. “I’ve been looking for you for days.”

Again Icarus ignored him and
moved the other way. The Leader was quick, and moved the bike
forwards again. Icarus stopped still, and looked down at the
bullock of a boy standing in front of him, nostrils flared, angry
at being ignored, and that anger feeding on itself.

“Where’s my bike?” The Leader
asked again. Icarus wondered to himself why he thought of the boy
as The Leader, because here he was, on his own, without any
followers. Icarus certainly was not following him. No one was.

Again: “Where’s you been?
Where’s my bike?”

Icarus said: “Isn’t this your
bike?” pointing to the pint-sized BMX.

“Don’t be funny. I mean my
two-grand bike that I left with you in the park.”

“Oh, that one,” said Icarus. “I
imagine that the police still have it. Unless they’ve returned it
to its original owner.”

“The police?” The bullock froze
as if struck by a sedative dart – the fire faded from his eyes and
the steam from his nostrils was doused by that information. Icarus,
ever the innocent, realised he had the tactical advantage in this
power play, and he wanted to keep it. “Yes, the police,” he said.
“Where do you think I’ve been? I was in jail, all because you stole
a bike.”

Icarus noticed now that the
bullock was no more than a mere calf, doe-eyed and a bit snuffly.
“You … you didn’t mention about … me, or the rest of the group, did
you?” he asked Icarus.

“What do you think I am? Some
kind of …” Icarus grasped for the right word, but snitch wasn’t in
his vocabulary.

“Grass…” The Calf offered. “…no,
I didn’t mean to say you were.” Just then he seemed to become aware
that Icarus was actually a lot taller than him, a growing lad who
seemed to be almost bursting out of his jacket. “I just want to
say, um, we’re all grateful that you took the fall. We owe you
one.”

Icarus detected a note of
respect in The Leader’s voice. He had no idea what it meant, but he
repeated: “Yes, I took the fall for you, and you owe me one.”

Icarus left The Leader playing
tricks on the BMX. As he reached the High Street he turned back to
take a last look at The Leader, and as he did so he glimpsed a
strange-looking individual, a wisp of figure dressed in a long
beige Macintosh and big yellow floppy hat, as it skipped behind a
newsstand. Strange way to dress on such a warm day, thought Icarus.
But then, people are strange.

At the job centre there were
fewer people than he had expected. Instead of being able to
disappear into the crowd, as he had always done at school, here
Icarus felt quite conspicuous. He wished he was able to emulate the
Gray Man’s disappearing trick, but because he felt that he was too
stressed, too self-conscious, he was unable to pull it off. One
quick glimpse around the room told Icarus that, in his Sunday best,
he was totally overdressed for the occasion. Everyone here was, to
say the least, casually attired. And apart from one rather sturdy
young woman with severely cropped black and pink hair sitting at a
desk in one corner, he was the only person wearing a tie.