The Accidental Cyclist

by Dennis Rink

  6. BEFORE THE BEAK

  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.

  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.

  6. RIGHT MAN FOR THE JOB

  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 sk
ills, 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. Icar
us 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.