The Accidental Cyclist

by Dennis Rink

  It came as no surprise when, one cold and miserable winter’s night, Icarus announced that they needed some common purpose, some goal. What Icarus proposed was a pilgrimage. Not just any pilgrimage but – since he was at that time reading another version of the Tommy Simpson story – a journey to the slopes of Mont Ventoux, where that rider had died during the 1967 Tour de France. The Grey Man and The Leader expressed no surprise that such a suggestion had been made – it seemed, quite simply, the natural thing to do.

  “When would be a good time to go?” Icarus asked the others.

  “Summer,” said the Grey Man, who seemed to know about these things. “It can only be in summer. That’s when the Tour de France takes place.”

  “I could fit panniers to your bikes,” The Leader offered. It seemed accepted that only Icarus and the Grey Man would undertake the pilgrimage. Somehow The Leader seemed to know that he wouldn’t be taking part in such an expedition, but still he needed to offer what he could. He was the backroom boy, the mechanic, while Icarus and the Grey Man were the athletes, the men of action.

  At night after work the three would troop down to the basement where they would haul out old maps of France and chart intricate routes. Other nights they would pore over guide books. They drew extensive lists of what they would need, where they would stay, how much it would cost.

  It was a long, hard winter and the planning seemed to become more complicated and detailed as time passed. By February the pilgrimage had developed into a major assault on Europe – and Icarus realised that it would probably never happen. The planning, the process, had become an end in itself. It kept the three of them together. It gave them a sense of purpose. Icarus told the others nothing of his thoughts, and he allowed the plans to develop and inflate in their inexorable way.

  The realisation that the project was probably no more than academic gave Icarus the confidence to tell his mother about it. He had not exactly planned to tell her, but one night, as he returned from the basement and was about to go to bed, Mrs Smith asked: “What is it that you’re all conspiring down there every night? You seem to spend hours down there engrossed in whatever it is you’re doing.”

  “We’re planning a journey, Mother. A pilgrimage,” Icarus had replied.

  “A pilgrimage,” said Mrs Smith, visibly alarmed. “Where to? Canterbury?” Mrs Smith had never read Chaucer, but she knew that the Canterbury Tales were all about the pilgrims who journeyed to that place. That was the only possible place where they could want to journey to.

  “No,” said Icarus, “we’re going to France, to the spot where Tommy Simpson died on Mont Ventoux.”

  “Who is Tommy Simpson? And what on earth is a montvontoo?” Mrs Smith envisioned some kind of monstrous foreign torture machine.

  “Mont Ventoux is a mountain in the middle of France. Tommy Simpson was a British cyclist who died during the Tour de France while climbing the mountain.”

  “It sounds dangerous. You could be injured, killed, maimed.”

  “No, it’s not dangerous. Not at all.”

  “But this Tommy chap died while doing it.”

  “I know, but he was racing, and he took drugs, and he just didn’t know how to stop himself.”

  “Didn’t he have brakes?”

  Icarus ignored this question. “Don’t fret so, Mother. It’s just a project – something to do to pass the time when it’s so horrid outside. We’ll probably never get around to it. It’s just something to think about to help us get through the winter months.”

  Mrs Smith studied her son as he sat at the kitchen table nursing his cup of tea. Something nagged at her as she looked at him, but she could not quite put her finger on it. She stared harder, until she almost lost focus and her eyes began to water. The teary eyes cast Icarus into a kind of soft focus, so that his outline became blurred. And that was when she realised what it was. Icarus was no longer that soft, plump, pampered boy that she had clung to for so many years. He had hardened, toughened up. Without her noticing, her son had become a man. A nice-looking man, with high cheekbones, square jaw, not at all unlike his father, she thought. And then the watery eyes dissolved into real tears that rolled silently down her cheeks.

  Mrs Smith turned to the sink and picked up a tea towel and buried her face. A few minutes later, by the time she regained her composure, she heard Icarus put his cup down and push his chair back. She turned to say goodnight. Icarus gave her a quick hug and kissed her on the top of her head, just as his father had once done. “Don’t worry,” he said, “we’ll probably never get further than the bottom of the road.”

  “As long as you’re sure of that,” she said. But she did not seem too sure of that.

  The next day, during his lunch break, Icarus went to the post office to begin his application for a passport.

  22. SPRING BREAKS

  Icarus welcomed the spring. In the park across the road from the flat the snowdrops drooped and the crocuses were thrust aside by the mightier daffodils, which proudly, colourfully announced that winter was no more. Icarus felt brighter than he had in months – perhaps it was because he thought less often of Jo, perhaps it was just the weather. Whatever it was, it alarmed Mrs Smith, who, we know, was easily alarmed. While she was pleased to see that the sparkle had returned to Icarus’s eye, she was also perturbed by his new-found confidence and independence.

  The Leader, on the other hand, had not realised that it was spring. That is, the changing season had not registered until he was rudely awakened one Sunday morning. “Come on, get up,” Icarus said as he shook The Leader’s shoulder. “It’s time to go.”

  The Leader cast his weary clock a sideways glance, and then tried to shut eyes again. “But it’s only seven o’clock. We agreed to ride at eight.”

  “It is eight, silly,” said Icarus. “The clocks went forward last night, so we lost an hour.”

  “Lost an hour?” The Leader asked. “How the hell did we do that? I’ve wasted time before now, but I’ve never lost it.”

  “It happens every year. The last Sunday in March, when the clocks go forward.”

  “I know that, it’s just that I didn’t know that it was happening last night.”

  “It’s called daylight saving.”

  “You lose an hour, and call it a saving.”

  “You know exactly what it is,” said Icarus. “Come on, we’ve got to get going. The old man will be waiting.”

  And the “Old Man” was waiting, although if he had heard himself referred to in such terms, he surely would not have waited. “Hurry up,” he told his two straggling friends. “We don’t want to waste such a beautiful day catching up on our beauty sleep.”

  “Where are we going today?” asked Icarus.

  “We’ll just take a gentle ride out to Richmond Park,” said the Grey Man.

  “Richmond Park,” said The Leader. “Where on earth is that?”

  “It’s just the other side of London. Perfect ride for a day like today.”

  “The other side of London,” said The Leader, who was rapidly losing enthusiasm for this ride. “How long is that gonna take us?”

  “Oh, just a couple of hours, if we don’t hang about talking.”

  “What, two whole hours,” said The Leader, exasperated.

  “Well, two hours there, and two more back.”

  “And to think, I could still be sleeping,” The Leader groaned as they pedalled off down the High Street.

  There is nothing more beautiful than being on a bicycle when the sun is shining, and the sky is such a wonderfully deep blue that you feel you could dive into it and swim all the way to heaven, Icarus mused as the trio sped along the Embankment. Today the smiling sun squinted at Icarus, seeming to invite him to join it on its journey across the sky. So bright, so wonderful was the day that as our three companions pedalled alongside the sulky Thames its usual muddy brown seemed to dissolve into more of a murky blue. Along the way they passed clutches of cyclists, some lithely clothed in Lycra, on sleek, well-tuned r
acing machines. Others were in baggy shorts and flapping T-shirts on full-suspension mountain bicycles with enough hydraulics to drive a steam locomotive.

  The Embankment on this sunny Sunday was surely cycle heaven. Icarus smiled as they passed young women and girls who trailed flowing skirts on their pretty sit-up-and-beg Kettlers and Pashleys, wicker baskets at the front that begged for a bouquet of spring flowers, or a panting puppy. There were parents followed by a retinue of children on ever-diminishing bikes that seemed to have come out of one another, a vehicular version of Russian dolls. Clearly everyone in London who owned a bike had the same thought on this perfect day: this was the ideal moment to get out and ride. Indeed, even those with no bike of their own joined the procession, mounted on Boris bikes, the city’s indestructible blue and white clunkers-for-hire that seemed to proliferate faster than rabbits.

  And everyone seemed happy and at ease, gliding along effortlessly, as if impelled by some invisible force. Even The Leader seemed to have caught the spirit of the moment. If only it were always so, thought Icarus, as they turned through Parliament Square and headed down Milbank.

  The journey to Richmond was an effortless glide through virtually traffic-free streets, and even The Leader was surprised to arrive still feeling fresh and ready to go further. The trio decided to enjoy a circuit of the park before stopping for their cup of tea and slice of cake – compulsory fare for a Sunday-morning cycle ride. And if Icarus had thought that the Embankment had been cycling’s heaven, well, then Richmond Park must be its Valhalla and Nirvana rolled into one, because so many riders thronged the park’s roads and tracks that no motorist would dare venture close. In the end even The Leader had to concede that it was worth losing an hour’s sleep for a day out like this.

  By the middle of June the joy of spring had faded. London was hot and cloudless, the air motionless. The only breeze to be felt was when cycling through the streaming, stinking traffic that seemed never to move. The London gridlock kept Icarus and the Grey Man busy. Moving about by bicycle was the quickest way to get urgent documents from A to B. And so it was boom time for the International Cycle Courier Company (Hackney Branch). Icarus and the Grey Man were in a permanent sweat, speeding from A to B, or C to D, while Justin, Jason and the others never raised more than a faint glow as they glided gracefully between X, Y and Z, and then back again, Y and Z being the coffee shop and the bicycle shop, respectively, and X a moveable spot at any given moment, depending on where Justin or Jason decided to place it.

  In all their busy-ness, Icarus and the Grey Man quickly forgot their plans for the pilgrimage. The Grey Man spent much of his spare time visiting auction houses on Mrs Smith’s behalf, and eventually he found one that would auction her carpet, for indeed, it had been verified as a genuine Persian of some vintage. “I can’t guarantee what it will fetch,” the auctioneer had told him, “but I’m sure that it will be a tidy sum.”

  The Leader, in the meantime, found that he had more than enough time to brood over the project, and so he found himself borrowing books about France and its famous cycle race, and he read everything that he could about the country and the race (the event, that is, not the people).

  “Strange people,” he said one evening to Icarus, who had absolutely no idea who or what he was talking about.

  “They drive on the wrong side of the road, eat frogs’ legs and drink wine for breakfast. Do they also cycle on the wrong side?”

  “Uh huh,” replied Icarus, who was simply too tired to engage in any conversation. France was far from his mind. All he was thinking of – dreaming of – was bed and sleep. The idea of the pilgrimage, a holiday, a break – call it what you will – was a thousand miles from Icarus’s thoughts, so that when, the next morning, his shining new passport arrived in the post, he could not remember why he had applied for it. Quietly he slipped the document into his bedside drawer and cycled off to work. His state of confusion was compounded when he reached the International Cycle Courier Company (Hackney Branch). Helen the Despatcher called him across to her booth and told him to sit down.

  “You’ve been working here for almost a year,” she began.

  “Eleven months, two weeks and three days,” Icarus interjected.

  “Yes, exactly,” said Helen the Despatcher, although she didn’t mean Yes exactly, but Yes, that is exactly my point. She did not explain the distinction to Icarus, but went on. “Eleven and a half months. And under employment laws, health and safety and all that, you have certain rights, and we, as employers, have certain obligations. You have the right to a certain amount of time off.”

  “Oh, I don’t need time off. I love my work. I’d do it even if I wasn’t paid.”

  “Never tell anyone that,” said Helen the Despatcher. “And that’s not the point. Under the law you have to take time off. From next Monday I don’t want to see you here for four weeks. You will be paid as usual during that time, of course.”

  “You mean that I can’t work for four weeks? What will I do?”

  “You’ll take a holiday, and that’s an order.”

  “But I’ve never had a holiday. I don’t know what I’ll do. Where can I go?”

  “You’ll find something. I’ve also told Con that he has to take leave. He’s your friend. Speak to him.”

  That evening The Leader found Icarus sitting in the windowless basement, wallowing in the gloom of the fading light that came through the open door.

  “What’s up with you?” The Leader asked.

  “I’ve been told to take leave. For four weeks. What am I going to do with myself for four whole weeks?”

  The basement darkened as the figure of the Grey Man blocked out the light in the doorway. “Me too,” were his first words. He had heard the brief conversation as he came down the stairs.

  “You too what?” asked The Leader.

  “I’ve also been told to take leave. For four weeks.”

  “What are we going to do?” Icarus asked again.

  “I’ve no idea,” said the Grey Man. “I’ve never been forced to take leave before. And I haven’t taken a holiday since ….” his voiced trailed off.

  “Don’t you worry about a thing,” said The Leader, “just leave it to me. By this time tomorrow I’ll have you both organised.”

  “What do you think you are?” asked the Grey Man. “Some kind of travel agent?”

  The next day The Leader was ready and waiting for Icarus and the Grey Man as they walked into the basement after work.

  “Here,” he said, handing each of them a printed sheet of paper. “It’s your itinerary.” He pronounced each syllable of the word. I-TEE-NER-RARY.

  “I-TEE-NARY,” said the Grey Man.

  The Leader glowered at him and repeated it, syllable by syllable, then added: “It’s spelt I-T-E-N-E-R-A-R-Y.”

  The Grey Man was feeling tired and tense. He wasn’t looking for an argument. But neither was he looking forward to being told what to do by The Leader. He looked at the sheet of paper in his hand. “DAY 1: London to Dover,” it read.

  “When is Day 1?” he asked.

  “Monday,” said The Leader.

  “It’ll take two or three days to cycle to Dover,” said the Grey Man, “because I have somewhere where I want to stop at on the way.”

  “No problem,” said The Leader, slightly annoyed, but determined to be the travel agent who accommodates a difficult client, “I’m sure I can work that into the schedule.” He crossed the basement to a table in a darkened corner and switched on a lamp. On the table was a laptop computer and a small printer. They hadn’t been there a week earlier.

  Icarus and the Grey Man studied their itinerary. Clearly The Leader had put a lot of thought and effort into the journey. The pair would have a demanding ride across France from north to south, avoiding the major cities, all the way to Mont Ventoux. As a bonus, according to The Leader, twice along the way they would intersect the Tour de France and, should their timing be right, they would see it again for the third and final time
on the summit of the mountain where Tommy Simpson had died. They would then travel to Marseilles to catch a train back to London, and they should be home within their allotted four weeks.

  “You will camp along the way,” said The Leader, serious and businesslike. He handed each of them another sheet of paper. “Here is an estimated costing, including ferry and train fares. If the weather turns bad you should be able to afford a hostel or B&B now and then.”

  The Grey Man’s earlier irritation had dissipated, to be replaced by surprise and an element of respect for The Leader’s obvious organisational abilities. He and Icarus studied the sheets, amazed. What for them had been but a pipe dream was presented as a concrete, costed blueprint. They tried to find objections, impossibilities, excuses to avoid the trip, but could find none. Finally Icarus asked The Leader: “You’ve organised and arranged all of this for us, but what will you do? Why don’t you join us?”

  “I’ll ride with you as far as Dover, and see you onto the ferry. Then I’ll catch a train home. I’m not as fit as you two, and once you have to ride long distances in France I’d slow you down. And anyway,” he said with a sweep of the arm around the basement, “I’ve got a business to run, don’t I?”