by Dennis Rink
Icarus recognised that there was a difference between him and the other riders, but he did not understand the differences, so they did not bother him. As far as he was concerned, he had never conformed, he had always been an outsider. All he wanted to do was learn from the others, even though, in truth, they had very little to teach Icarus.
On his third day at work Icarus was sent out on his own for the first time. He was given a bright orange sling bag. On the bag’s flap was a picture of an eagle, wings spread and clasped in its talons was a parcel. This was the logo of the International Cycle Courier Company. The bag’s shoulder strap had a small pocket, and in the pocket was a radio that crackled and fizzed. Helen the Despatcher briefed Icarus. The job was simple: cycle to A, which is a solicitor’s office, pick up a letter and take it to B, another lawyer’s office, where it will be signed, then return the letter to A, A.S.A.P.
“What’s A.S.A.P?” asked Icarus.
“Don’t you know anything? It means As Soon As Possible,” said Helen the Despatcher, adding an insult that cannot be repeated in these pages.
B.T.W, this was Icarus’s introduction to the language of Acronym. Over the next weeks and months he would learn a totally new vocabulary, much of it abbreviation and abridgement. His mother would never approve, but Icarus saw it simply as a necessary tool of his new trade.
“And come straight back here as soon as you’re finished,” Helen the Despatcher called after Icarus as he flew off, “I don’t want you hanging about the coffee shops chatting up girls.”
Half an hour later Icarus was back, standing in front of Helen the Despatcher’s cubby hole, eyes wild, hair flattened by his helmet, beads of sweat on his brow.
“What’s up,” asked Helen the Despatcher. “Got lost or something?”
“No. Job’s done. What’s next?”
Helen looked at Icarus with eyes of suspicion. “You sure?” she asked. “You were only gone half an hour. That job normally takes about ninety minutes. You did wait for the signature, and take it back to the sender?”
“Well, you did say A.S.A.P,” said Icarus, eager to use his new terminology.
“Everything’s A.S.A.P. here,” said Helen. “not that this lot take any notice. Keep this up and you’ll get shifted to the City run in no time.”
The first solo job left Icarus on a high. He knew he had carried out his task quickly and efficiently and he took Helen the Despatcher’s words about moving to the City office as an indication of praise. Over the next days and weeks he carried out any duties assigned to him with a similarly alarming alacrity. He felt happy and successful and appeared to walk taller, more erect among his fellow couriers, although that might simply have been down to the fact that he was still a growing adolescent.
In the evenings, after work, he would pedal, peaceful and contented, back to the flat and relate to his mother the events of the day. After dinner, on the excuse that he had to clean and maintain his bicycle, Icarus would slip down to the basement to see if The Leader was there.
When he was there, The Leader appeared to be quite happy to see Icarus. The two would talk a bit, look at bikes and bits, or just sit on the old sofa reading magazines and watching television. But often The Leader was not there, and Icarus would sit alone in the basement, deep in his thoughts. He had no idea where The Leader went or what he did, and Icarus wondered whether he was slipping into his old ways.
In his first weeks at the International Cycle Courier Company (Hackney Branch) Icarus saw nothing of the Grey Man, and as time passed his continued absence began to bother Icarus. Not so much bother him, rather, it left him with a nagging uncertainty about himself. What was it about him? His father had left him even before he was born. The occasional uncles that had visited his mother from time to time had all failed to return as promised. And now the Grey Man had entered their lives, gained their respect and trust, and then just as quickly disappeared.
“We haven’t seen your friend lately,” Mrs Smith commented one evening. Icarus for a moment thought she was talking about The Leader, and almost told her that he was alive and well and living in their basement. He had almost reached the point where he believed he would never again see the Grey Man. It was a month since the Grey Man had flashed briefly through their lives. For most people, that was but a moment. For Icarus, who was newly awakened to all the possibilities of life, it seemed like an age. He began to wonder if the Grey Man’s intervention had been no more than that of a passing angel who had stopped to show him the light, to redirect his path, then move on to the next divine assignment that awaited him.
And so Icarus set about trying to forget him. His mother, meanwhile, was trying hard not to forget. “It would be nice to see him again,” she said. “Why don’t you invite him here for lunch this Sunday? I can do something special – roast lamb?”
Roast lamb certainly was something special in the Smith household. Certainly, now that Icarus was earning a wage they had more money than ever before, but Mrs Smith had always been thrifty, and until now had maintained that their frugal living would continue. So roast lamb said something about her, and her attitude towards the Grey Man.
Icarus did not want to tell his mother that the Grey Man appeared to have disappeared, slipped into the background as easily as he had on the first day that Icarus had met him in prison.
“I don’t really see him that much,” he said.
“Oh, that is such a pity,” Mrs Smith said, with more feeling than she intended.
“But maybe I’ll bump into him, and then I can invite him.” A thought, still hidden even to himself, flashed through his head. “Go ahead and prepare for Sunday lunch. I’m sure that I’ll see him, and he’ll be happy for a good meal.”
That week seemed to be the slowest week in Icarus’s life. It was an emotionally bumpy week – for someone so emotionally innocent, every high was like conquering Everest, while each low was plunging into the pit of despair.
Icarus’s efficiency in his job was a mixed blessing. He would be praised by Helen the Despatcher, then immediately derided by his colleagues. He could not understand their hostility, which was cloaked in sneering cynicism and sarcasm, something much more subtle than the puerile name-calling that he had experienced at school.
That name-calling had never bothered him – he had always felt that he was an outsider, and that others simply did not understand him. His mother told him that he was special, and, but without any pride or arrogance, he felt special. At school he had always been an outsider, but at work he had hoped to be … well, an outsider who was on the inside. He did not necessarily want to dress or look like the other couriers, he simply wanted to be accepted by them. And this rejection seemed so much harder to accept.
By Friday, when Icarus thought things could not get any worse, they did. He returned from a particularly difficult job, which he completed in record time, to the effusive praise of Helen the Despatcher. Icarus parked his bike against the office wall and walked across to the kettle to make a cup of tea – his mother never allowed him to drink coffee. (“It will keep you awake and give you scary dreams, nightmares,” she had told him. Icarus did not point out the blatant contradiction of this statement. He simply stated that he always slept like a log, and never had nightmares. His mother took that to be proof that her prescription for life was efficacious.) As Icarus stood making his tea, Justin, or was it Jason – he could never tell them apart because they both looked and talked the same – sidled up to him from the collective of couriers that had been stretched out sunning themselves in the shop window.
“So,” said Justin, or was it Jason? “so, you’re the new hotshot around here.”
Icarus, not knowing how to respond, shrugged.
“Tell me,” Justin (or was it Jason?) pressed on, “is it all those gears that make you so fast? And those brakes that help you to stop at red lights? And do you get lots of energy from those sandwiches that your mummy makes for you?”
Icarus stared at the teabag bobbing in the mug,
trying to think of some suitable response. Justin (or Jason) paused for a moment, planning a new angle to attack Icarus’s dress code when Jason (or was this Justin) walked across to bolster the faltering fusillade. “Does mummy make us wear a helmet and reflective belt? Just to make sure that we are seen? And does she buy us our jersey-wersey, and does she wash our little sockses and iron our nice clean white handkerchief?”
Icarus dipped his teaspoon into the mug to remove the teabag, and turned to drop the teabag into the waste bin. Justin – yes, this one was surely Justin – was standing right in front of the bin. Before it could reach the bin the soggy teabag popped off the spoon and landed, plop, on Justin’s fawn patent-leather riding shoe.
“Oops,” said Icarus. Then: “Sorry.” He bent down to remove the offending article, but before he could get there Justin flicked his ankle, kicking the teabag into the bin. A dark brown stain remained on the riding shoe. Behind them the other couriers clapped and cheered.
“Tell you what,” said Jason – yes, for surely this was Jason if that other was Justin – “seeing you’re such a hotshot, how about a little race? Just to see how good you really are, or to see if it is just down to those gears.”
“I suppose so,” said Icarus, although he didn’t really suppose so.
“Okay then,” said Justin, still looking down at his soggy shoe, “tomorrow morning then. Ten o’clock, Herne Hill. Don’t be late.”
Justin and Jason left Icarus and his mug of tea to stew over this development. Icarus had no idea where or what Herne Hill was. He remained alongside the kettle as the collective left. When he thought they had all gone, he turned to sit on one of the chairs in the sunshine. One courier was still sitting there. It was Jo/Joe – Icarus wasn’t sure which. They had never spoken.
“Don’t you worry about them,” said Jo, for indeed she was a girl, although it was not always easy to tell with her – she had a short shock of bleached blonde hair, spikey and cropped like a boy’s, and she wore baggy shorts that revealed nothing of her female nature apart from the well-defined, shaven calves of a hardened cyclist. When she looked up from her magazine, Icarus saw that her eyes were blackened by mascara, which made her pale cheeks seem paler than ever.
“They were like that with me when I first arrived,” she said. “But if you ignore them for long enough, they finally get tired of it.”
Icarus looked at Jo properly for the first time. He noticed that, for a girl, she had a very pleasing face. “Thanks,” he said. “I thought you were just one of them, but you’re really much nicer than all of them.” And then he realised that he was talking to a girl, and had just told her that she was nice, and his throat went dry and suddenly he couldn’t speak any more. Then the dryness in his throat brought on a spell of coughing. Jo noticed this with faint amusement – she seemed to have that effect on boys – then fetched him a glass of water and waited until Icarus had regained some modicum of composure.
“Thanks for the water,” Icarus finally managed to speak. “I don’t know what happened then.”
Jo smiled at him. Then she stopped smiling, for fear that he might revert into a mute coughing idiot. “No problem,” she said.
“What the heck is Herne Hill?” Icarus asked.
“It’s a velodrome. They sometimes go there for races. But you can only ride track bikes there – which means fixed-wheel and no brakes.”
“But I’ve never ridden a fixed-wheel..”
“That’s the point. They’re just trying to embarrass you. They like to put people down, to humiliate them.”
“So what should I do?”
“Well, if you don’t go, they will never let you forget about it. If you go and make a fool of yourself, they will have a laugh at your expense, and after a while they will forget about it.”
“Did they challenge you?”
“Yes.”
“So what happened?”
“I went to the track and I beat them all. They didn’t realise I was a junior track champion, so I totally humiliated them. They’ve never forgiven me for that. That’s why they don’t talk to me. But I just don’t care.” She shrugged her shapely shoulders to emphasise her point of view.
“So what should I do then? I’ve never even ridden on a track, let alone raced.”
“Just pray for rain.”
“Rain?”
“Yes. If it rains, they can’t open the track because it’s too slippery.”
Icarus cycled home in a frump. He was thinking of the cycle race at Herne Hill the next day, and the thought of fish stew for dinner did little to lift his spirits. He threw his bicycle down in the basement, and was pleased to see that The Leader was not there, so he did not have to talk to him. He walked up to the flat and opened the front door. Inside, there was no light to welcome him. Nor was there the smell of fish stew. Something was wrong.
All the rooms were in darkness, and Icarus thought that his mother couldn’t have arrived home from work yet. But she was always home at this hour. He walked through to the parlour to close the curtains and turn on a light when he heard the snivel. Sitting in an armchair, staring out into the darkness, sat his mother. In her hand was a letter, and she was crying. Icarus hurried across to her and put his arm around her shoulders. “Whatever is the matter?” he asked.
“We’re going to be evicted,” Mrs Smith said. Her voice was flat, lacking in any emphasis. “We have to leave and find somewhere else to live.”
“Who says we have to leave?” Icarus asked. “How can they kick us out? We’ve lived here all of our lives.”
Mrs Smith waved the letter at him and said: “It’s all in here. The council is selling off all the flats, and if we can’t afford to buy ours, we have to leave.”
Icarus thought for a while, then said: “But I’m earning now. Surely together we can earn enough to buy this flat. Surely we can borrow the money or something. They can’t just expect us to leave and go and live on the streets, can they?”
“They can do whatever they like,” his mother replied. “We’re just little people in a big game. We don’t count. If they decided tomorrow that they wanted to pull down this building and put up luxury flats or an office block, they could do just that. There’s absolutely nothing we can do, and that’s that.”
“But it’s our flat, our home. We’ve always lived here. They can’t just do that.” Icarus felt that he wanted to cry, but he realised that now he was the man of the house, and he had to be strong for his mother. For some time he sat with his arm around her and comforted here, saying: “There, there. I’ll think of something. I’m sure it will turn out fine in the end.” Although, to be honest, he wasn’t sure. In the end they went to bed without any fish stew. Not the perfect way to prepare for a bicycle race, Icarus said to himself as he drifted into sleep.
15. THE VELODREAMGIRL
On Saturday morning Icarus awoke from a fitful sleep and a dream – was this perhaps his first nightmare – of riding endlessly around a velodrome, chasing or being chased by a pack of jeering couriers, all throwing soggy teabags at him. Chasing or chased, he could not tell, but his dream went round and round this concrete-enclosed track from which there was no escape.
The only escape was to awaken, which left the question – chasing or chased – unresolved. Icarus climbed out of bed and opened the curtain to a bright autumnal day, the leaves in the park were turning red and yellow and brown, reminding him of soggy teabags. There was not a cloud in the sky, and absolutely no sign of rain. Icarus sighed, and sat down on the edge of his bed.
From his bedside table he took the tatty map that the Grey Man had give to him. He unfolded it further than ever before until, there, south of the river, he found it: Herne Hill Velodrome. For ten minutes he stared at the map, visualising and memorising the route that he would take to get there, then he folded the map and put it away.
He dressed and had a bowl of cereal and three bananas for breakfast – one more than usual – and told his mother that he had to go to, umm, well, to
a training morning for work.
In the basement The Leader was snoring quietly in his sleeping bag. Icarus carried his bike out so that the click-click-click of the freewheel did not waken him. If I had a fixie, Icarus thought, I wouldn’t have to carry the bike, and it would make no sound.
Icarus cycled through the quiet Saturday morning London, which was slow in waking up. He wondered what kind of race he was expected to take part in – there were so many types of track event that he could not guess what was expected of him. If it was a sprint he surely would be humiliated. He was not built for speed, but he seemed to be able to ride all day without ever tiring. He looked up at the sky often, trying to discern the slightest hint of a cloud, but none was there. No, rain would not stop play today.
He found his way to the velodrome without any problems, apart from some roadworks on the entrance into the stadium’s car park. A mammoth mechanical digger was eating mouthfuls of tar and dirt from the roadway as workmen stood around and watched, as workmen do. Just beyond the digger Jason, Justin and their crew leant against a wall, casually propping it up with their mounts beside them. When they spotted Icarus, Justin said to the others: “Well, look what the cat dragged in.” Then, to Icarus: “I didn’t think you’d show. Let’s get this over and done with, then we can get on with our day.”