by Dennis Rink
The Grey Man paused to let that knowledge sink in. Icarus was beginning to feel less sure about cycling along the roadway. Maybe he should stick to pedalling around the park. The Grey Man saw a hint of fear in his eyes, and went on: “There’s nothing to be afraid of. Just do what I’ve told you, and you’ll be fine.”
Icarus had been about to rise from the step, but the Grey Man straightened up and looked back into the crowd of Icaruses. Pondering on the multitude for a moment, the Grey Man continued: “I know that it’s a cliché, but remember, it’s a jungle out there. It’s a jungle, and there are all sorts of animals that you have to watch out for. Think of yourself as a gazelle – quick, supple, graceful. This is your natural environment, it is where you live and thrive, but it is not without danger.
“The most common danger that you will come across in the city is the pedestrian. They are like sheep, or lemmings. They walk into the road without looking, and cross over wherever they like, ignoring signs and traffic lights. And when they step into your path and suddenly see you, they freeze like a rabbit caught in a car’s headlights. It’s surprising that there are so many pedestrians, because I’m sure they have a communal death wish. But you don’t have to fear them – they are more of a danger to themselves than they are to you. They are more a nuisance than a serious danger, because in a collision they are likely to come off worse than you.
“Then there is the cab driver and the white van driver. They are a bit like warthogs, dodging this way and that without warning. They don’t mean to do you any harm, they just want to get about their business as quickly as possible and don’t like it when anyone gets in their way. But they are not very pleasant to tangle with, so you should do your best to avoid them. It’s not easy, though, because whatever you expect them to do next, they will do the opposite, so you should never be surprised by whatever they do. As I said earlier, always expect them to do the unexpected.”
The Grey Man was building to his finale: “But finally, there is one beast of the road that you ignore at your peril – lorries, and all similar high-sided vehicles. Never ever tangle with them. They are like rhinos. They have thick skins, their vision is limited, they move too fast for their own good but are always slow to react. If you get on the wrong side of them, they will trample you into the dust and then trundle off without even knowing what they have done. You should steer clear of them until you are more confident in your riding and fully conversant with your surroundings. And even then, make sure you never, ever pass them on the blind side.”
The Grey Man stopped and thought, and then said: “Well, I think that’s it. Just remember: be sensible, stay alert, and always be slightly paranoid – that’s the Golden Rule. Oh, and always wear a helmet, that’s the other Golden Rule. Now, let us ride.”
“Amen,” said Icarus solemnly, and stood up.
The morning was already hot and breathless. Icarus and the Grey Man donned their helmets and set off at a sedate pace towards the High Street, the younger man in front. “Keep to the cycle lanes where possible,” the older man instructed, “and obey all the road signs.” Then, as an afterthought, he added a rider that puzzled Icarus: “You’ll quickly learn when not to obey them.”
They hadn’t progressed fifty yards when Icarus braked suddenly and came to a halt.
“What’s the matter?” the Grey Man asked.
“What do I do here?” asked Icarus. He pointed ahead to where a marked cycle lane ended quite abruptly, and a bus stop was marked on the roadway.
“You just ride through it, or around it, if a bus has stopped there,” said the Grey Man, a little exasperated. “Don’t take everything quite so literally.”
They set off again. About two hundred yards further was a set of traffic lights and a pedestrian crossing. Just before the lights Icarus again ground to a halt, and climbed off his bike. The Grey Man looked up at the sign above the boy’s head. It read: “Cycle lane ends. Cyclists dismount.” The Grey Man sighed.
“How do I not take that sign literally?” said Icarus. “It only has one meaning.”
“That sign is the most stupid sign ever produced,” said the Grey Man. “If you dismounted every time you saw one of those signs, you would be off your bike more than on it. What you have to realise is that these roads and cycle paths are designed by people who don’t cycle, who probably have never ridden a bike in their lives, and who don’t know what it is like to cycle. They are idiots who have only studied cycling in a manual, and they probably hate cycling and cyclists, so they really want to discourage people from cycling.
“The people who design them see us as a different tribe. And we are. They don’t like it that we are different, they don’t like our sense of freedom, so they’ve hatched a plot to get rid of all cyclists. I think they want to make us dismount so often that we’ll be so frustrated that we never get back on our bikes again.”
“So what should I do?” asked Icarus.
“Just ignore them. Ignore them unless your common sense tells you otherwise. Stop if you feel in danger, stop and get out of the way. And stop if you feel someone else is in danger, even if it’s their own fault.” The pair set off again, they reached the High Street, and rode uninterrupted from one end to the other, past the library where they had used the computers in the dark, past the International Cycle Courier Company (Hackney Branch).
One block further along was a set of traffic lights. The lights were green when Icarus reached them, but he braked and came to a standstill.
“What’s up now?” the Grey Man asked. “The lights are green, so you can go.”
“This is as far as I’m allowed to go,” said Icarus.
“You won’t be any good as a cycle courier if you can’t go beyond this borough into the next.”
“Well, I don’t mean I can’t, it’s just that I’ve never been further than this road. My mother has always said that everything we need is right here – the shops, the school, the park and the doctor’s surgery. I’ve never needed to go any further than here.”
“You’ve never left the borough before?” asked the Grey Man, slightly incredulous. “Never been into the City, down to the river?”
“No,” said Icarus.
“You’ve never been on holiday?”
“No, never.”
The Grey Man could hear a note of sadness in those two simple words.
“Well,” he said, “let’s make this into an adventure. Open your eyes and welcome to the big wide world.”
Icarus and the Grey Man made their way into the next borough, which was Islington. The streets were filled with Sunday morning shoppers who were taking full advantage of the warm weather. They crowded the pavements and bustled in and out of the chic little stores and delicatessens, restaurants and coffee bars and bookshops that lined the street. Beyond that they reached a series of gleaming glass canyons, broken by monolithic slabs of ancient stone institutions, all of them the bedrock of the nation’s economy. This was the City of London, populated by skyscrapers that Icarus had seen slowly developing on the horizon of his childhood. “From the park this all looks so far away,” he said, “but really, it’s so close. I thought that it would have taken all day to ride here.”
The streets were all but deserted, and Icarus wondered where all the people had gone. “They come only during the week, to work here,” the Grey Man told him.
They followed a mazy course through the City until they came to the biggest church that Icarus had ever seen, a dazzling white affair, intricately pillared and topped by an enormous dome.
“That’s St Paul’s cathedral,” said the Grey Man. “Wren’s masterpiece, many say. But I think there are other finer examples of his work elsewhere in London.”
After the empty streets they had just travelled through, St Paul’s seemed to be swarming with people who, antlike, appeared to be going about some unknown business.
“Are they all going to church?” Icarus asked.
“In a sense. They are the modern-day pilgrims,” said
the Grey Man. “They are probably all tourists.”
They circumnavigated the marble confection and then turned eastwards. A short while later there came into view a squat castle, and behind it a magnificent bridge, with two tall towers and a span of blue metal girders, which crossed a murky expanse of water. “The Tower of London,” said the Grey Man, feeling a bit like one of those tour guides leading the ants that were scurrying around St Paul’s cathedral, “… and Tower Bridge.”
“That must be the Thames then,” said Icarus, pointing to the heaving brown expanse of water that divided the city in two. Once again, the area was teeming with tourists, walking, stopping, looking, photographing, and moving in the most unpredictable antlike patterns.
They stood and watched for a while, until the Grey Man said: “Shall we go on?”
“I just want to look and take it all in,” said Icarus. “I shall have to tell mother all about it when I get home.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll see it all again, many times, once you’re working.”
They left the Tower behind them and headed west, through a noisy underpass, emerging once again next to the Thames. They cycled along the Embankment, past dolphin lampposts and camel benches, and Cleopatra’s needle. Around the bend in the river they could see the London Eye and Big Ben. “I’ve seen that on the news,” said Icarus, “but I always thought it was miles and miles away, not somewhere you could see it. But it’s right here, so near to home.”
When they reached Westminster Bridge they leant their bikes against the stone wall and peered over the bridge to watch the ferries and river buses pass beneath them. The Grey Man bought ice-creams, which they had to lick quickly before they melted and ran down their sticky fingers. Around them life swirled and eddied, just like the waters below them, and Icarus began to feel that, after years as an observer, an outsider, he was now becoming a member of the human race.
“You know,” he said, turning to the Grey Man, “I think that this is absolutely the best day of my life.”
Icarus could not stop talking about his day out. He had to tell his mother everything. He did not perceive her discomfort, but the Grey Man could tell that she was on edge. Mrs Smith had invited the Grey Man to stay for dinner. He asked politely if she was sure that it was not an inconvenience, but Mrs Smith insisted, saying that it was amazing how far one could stretch a roast chicken. The Grey Man accepted graciously.
“It was incredible,” an excited Icarus told his mother. “At all the big landmarks there are millions of people and they all scurry around just like ants, going this way and that, and with no apparent purpose.”
“I’m sure you’re exaggerating just a little,” said Mrs Smith.
“No, really Mother, they are just like ants. They come up and gather where there is food, then they disappear underground, to emerge at the next place. Except, of course, their underground is the Underground, you know, the Tube – that Underground.” Icarus thought he had made a profound observation, and could not understand why his mother and the Grey Man did not share his enthusiasm. He did sense a certain tension between his mother and the Grey Man, but could not read what it meant, what it indicated. That was stuff for grown-ups, for older people, so he just kept talking in his little-boy fashion as his mother prepared their meal and the Grey Man sat quietly in an armchair in the front room, amazed by the exotic birds that flitted about on the magic carpet, while outside in the park the late summer evening was swallowed by twilight.
“I can’t believe how we found our way back home,” Icarus said, half to his mother, half to the Grey Man, and half to himself, or anyone else who might have been listening. “I could never have done it on my own. When we left the Thames it was like riding through a rabbit warren, and I thought we were going totally the wrong direction and the next thing there we were, on our High Street. It really was quite a slice of luck, wasn’t it?”
Without saying a word the Grey Man stood up and took something from his back pocket. He crossed the room to the small dining table and sat down. He opened out the paper he’d taken from his pocket and folded it again and again, a strange origami, then told Icarus to sit beside him. Icarus looked at the paper. It was a map, no larger than the palm of his hand.
“This is where you live,” the Grey Man said, indicating a spot on the map. He pointed to the park, to Icarus’s old school, the shops on the High Street, and the International Cycle Courier Company (Hackney Branch), which had been ringed with a red ball-point pen. “This is the route we took to St Paul’s,” said the Grey Man, unfolding the map slowly so that it formed a strip about five times the height that it had been. He traced the route they had taken. Icarus’s attention was caught by the bewildering web of side roads that dissected the route, roads that ended suddenly, falling off the edge of the map. “How can there be so many streets? So many street names? Are there people living in all these roads?”
The Grey Man replied: “This is only a fraction of the streets of London. When you start work you’re going to have to remember all of these street names, and many, many more, if you’re going to find your way round.”
“But there are so many. I can never remember them all.”
“That is why you will have this map,” said the Grey Man. He then proceeded to open the map widthways, so that it doubled, then quadrupled in size, showing their route across London from east to west, curling along the Thames. Roads that had ended so abruptly now continued to a new edge, another fold in the map.
“Wow,” said Icarus, “London must be huge.”
The Grey Man traced their return route: “London is huge. And remember, we never even went south of the river.” He took the map with both hands and shook it, as he were unfolding a tablecloth, and the map covered the whole of the dining table, and hung over the edge, a mass of haphazard lines intersected by a ribbon of blue that swirled majestically across the middle.
“It’s hard to believe,” said the Grey Man, “that this static piece of paper represents the heaving mass, the millions and millions of lives that make up London. And we didn’t even see a fraction of the city today.”
Icarus looked in amazement. He bent over to try to find the tiny section that the Grey Man had first shown him, the comfortable corner that had been his life, and would be comfortable no more. It seemed that suddenly his life had unfolded, unravelled, but he could not know how it would spread from here, where it would go, what direction it would take.
From the kitchen Mrs Smith called: “Could you set the table please, Icky. We’re almost ready to eat.”
Our three subjects sit and eat their dinner in almost complete silence, each swallowed up by their own thoughts.
Icarus is retracing the route they had travelled, his mind trying to recapture the twists and turns, picture the highlights, the places that previously he has seen only in pictures or on the television, and which he now knows are all on his doorstep. He realises, in his own simplistic way, the significance of the map that the Grey Man has shown him, and that his unfolding of it is a metaphor, even though that word is not yet a part of his vocabulary. Just as the bicycle is a metaphor for his new-found freedom, so the map is a metaphor of his life spread out before him. He realises that his life is a book, vast, unwritten, unending, and that his life so far has been but one page, which he has been reading over and over again. He has been stuck on that same page for years without knowing it, but today, under the guidance of the Grey Man and with the help of his bicycle, his beloved bicycle, more precious to him that that expensive Condor Paris Galibier that he chanced upon in the park, he has finally turned over to the next page. Now he wants to know what will happen on all the subsequent pages, those blank folios, even though that story has not yet been written.
Mrs Smith’s thoughts are flitting, birdlike, between two trees. The one tree is a mere sapling, her Icarus, whom she loves and adores and nurtures with all her phobias and insecurities. She can see that he is growing stronger, his roots are digging deeper, and his branches are
spreading wider. He is rapidly outgrowing the shadow cast by her own slender boughs. He is becoming independent, resistant to her noxious influence. For his own good she wants to release him, allow him to grow and flourish. At the same time she knows that she depends on Icarus, and she clings to him like a vine, she needs his support for her to continue to live. She knows she is being selfish. She knows that if, like ivy, she continues to cling to his tender branches, her tendrils will eventually squeeze the life out of him, leading to their mutual demise.
And at this point Mrs Smith’s birdlike mind flits and flutters to that other tree, a solid willow that appears to bend to the wind, whose branches can be whipped up by storms in one instant, and the next is as calm and tranquil as a summer’s day.
She looks across the table at the Grey Man. He appears to be studying a roast potato, his face lined with years of hardship and experience. Yes, Mrs Smith thinks to herself, a willow tree. Her first impression of the Grey Man was of nothingness. He was there, but not there. But slowly he has crept into her consciousness, an adjunct to Icarus. She feared that the growth may have been malignant, she thought no good could have come of the Grey Man’s influence. But the change she is seeing in Icarus, his blossoming, has made her re-examine herself and her motives. She can see no fault lies with the Grey Man, only with herself. She wants to dislike him, to find reason to turn him away, to bar Icarus from seeing him, but she realises that she, too, is somehow attracted to him. And to her birdlike mind, this makes everything too complicated to contemplate.
The Grey Man studies the roast potato carefully before cutting it and putting it in his mouth. It’s not easy to cook a good roast potato, he thinks, and this isn’t a particularly good roast potato. It’s not a bad roast potato, but it’s not that good either. A good roast potato needs to be crisp and crunchy on the outside, light and fluffy on the inside.