| POWERED CYCLE
By Julie Noble
He’s caught me on a bad day, but just to see him makes my mood lift
ever so slightly, like the corner of a page being pinched upwards in preparation
for reading on.
It’s the bike. I’ve always thought of cycling as the great
leveller. As in: you might have the fancy framework, the gamut of gears,
the trousers black or bright (always tight as tights) and the arrogant
attitude, but if you didn’t have the dogged determination to keep
going, then frankly, any old pedaller in jeans could do the same. But
this! This is the future, and the future is fraudulent.
A powered cycle, sneakily so, not blatant. Just an unobtrusive engine
the same shape as the chain covering, the whole only a little chunkier
than an ordinary guard.
I can’t help but smile, and look up at the culprit, a sprightly
elderly gentleman who is just in the process of removing his pilot-style
cycling goggles. His hairless head shines smooth in the sunshine. I make
a casual comment about the motor and he acknowledges it with a boyish
mixture of shrug and head shake, the ‘Yes I’m guilty but I’ve
got a good excuse’ gesture I am so used to seeing in my older sons,
both teenagers.
‘Well I’m coming up eighty now.’
I nod. He takes in the sight of me on the bench, the train-style double
buggy with sleeping baby, the huge dog attached to a lead, pulling eagerly
towards the stranger, and the toddler, bored with sitting, just investigating
the possibility of adventure in the muddy entrance to a field off the
tiny country road.
‘You’ve got your hands full,’ he suggests mildly, raising
his brows. It’s a comment I hear regularly, almost every time I
go out, especially when people see the toddler on reins going one way,
the dog another, and me hanging on to the pram with my ankle.
‘Oh yes,’ I reply, using the same style as the voice of the
Churchill Dog on the TV adverts. Reassuring but wry. I always make the
same response. It’s supposed to be humorous, to myself at least,
but sometimes it sneaks out verging on grim. Today it’s close to
dour as my little girl moves nearer the mud bath. Quickly I jump up to
assume better parental responsibility, lifting the lively toddler upwards
from the fascinating filth and placing her by my side on the bench. There
are fierce protests – I can see her behind a placard in twenty years
- until I produce a packet of raisins. If only all campaigners were so
easily pacified, all wants so simple to appease.
‘Would you like a raisin?’ I ask,
‘No thanks, got a banana,’ he says cheerfully, but makes no
attempt to retrieve it.
He stays behind the gate which barricades the unwary car from the steep
hill with stream at the bottom. His head, peering, searching, reminds
me of a meerkat. (That’s because of another advert. You can see
that the television is on too much in our house, but it’s such a
useful pacifier.)
Peacefully, in silence - apart from the scrunch of raisin packet - we
take in the view, our retinas restfully absorbing the varying greens of
the landscape before us, some bursting bright lime with spring vibrancy,
others steadfast with mature sage. The moors crest the horizon, a collar
stained with history, scarred by exploiting quarries and pitted with stones
from ancestral man’s homestead. Beneath them, nudging up the hillside
like a ruched blanket, is the patched scenery of past century farming
life. Quilted green quadrangles, stitched with hedging, and red roofed
buildings, bound with thick tufts of trees, which rise like freshly pulled
rag-rugs. It is a sight I never tire of.
My daughter holds out a raisin to the cyclist but he is still gathering
his harvest of impressions. Behind him a spume spray of delicate white
hawthorn blossom reaches up to a perfect blue sky, clustered like hands
offering flowers to a Saint’s statue in the Easter parades they
have in Spain. I’ve seen the immobile statues brought out and carried,
boisterously, joyously, and sometimes reverently on shoulders; it’s
one of my memory’s favourite scenes.
‘This is the first time I’ve been out this year,’ he
says, as much to the landscape as to me, ‘and it’s only possible
because of the powered cycle.’
‘How lucky!’ I say, smiling at the bike again.
‘I’ve lived here all my life, and walked or cycled everywhere.’
His gaze traces the hills, climbing the inclines. ‘I’ve spent
hours and hours on the bike on the old railway line. I love it.’
I too love cycling that railway line. As he speaks, I picture myself standing
on the pedals to climb the rise to the first stretch into my favourite
part, the tree tunnel. Here the languid limbs bend across to each other,
trunks brushing like the shoulders of concerned parents curving over a
child, branches mingling like fingers folding. When the leaves are fully
layered, and the track is empty, it’s as peaceful as entering a
cloister, the shimmering green air is nourishing to the soul, the invisible
molecules enriched with the earth’s silent prayers.
The times I have taken the dog out, pedalling desperately to escape from
domestic demands, financial anxieties, or other troubles, and on meeting
that hushed, shaded atmosphere, felt the stress bathe away and my pedalling
automatically slow into quiet reverence.
He’s stopped talking, and is looking at me closely.
‘I’ve met you before haven’t I?’
I nodded,
‘Bramble-picking.’
‘Last year,’ he decides, subconsciously raising his shoulders
with the knowledge that he has remembered my face correctly. ‘Or
the year before.’
‘You picked some blackberries for me,’ I remind him, and he
steps backwards in delight, a bow without a bend, as he turns to regard
the now barren bushes. He’d cheered me that day too, a wet day,
when weeping, drooping hedgerows were more welcoming than the same four
walls.
The ‘little man’ starts to stir now, with the twin enticements
of his mother’s voice and his sister’s rattling of the raisin
packet. As he thrusts his fists to the side of the pushchair to heave
himself skywards, the dog nosily shoves his face towards him, surprising
the baby backwards, but not upsetting him. As I bend to unstrap my smallest
son, the cyclist takes a keen interest.
‘Do they get on alright, then? The dog and the children?’
‘Yes, he’s very good.’
‘Which did you have first?’
‘The dog, for my older boys,’
‘Right, did you have him from a puppy?’
One-handed I prepare the baby’s bottle, thinking of my first sight
of the matted, exhausted Alsatian that staff at the rescue centre were
told no one would ever want, and I smile wryly to think of him as a fluffy
puppy. When my sons picked the biggest, nastiest looking, meanest barking
dog out of the whole sad selection, I’d felt like I’d been
landed with unwanted detritus, someone else’s mess to clear up.
It was only because my life was like that at the time anyway that I said
yes to the dog. That, and the look in his eyes.
‘No, I got him from a rescue centre. They weren’t sure how
old he was, five maybe, or six.’
‘But wasn’t he jealous? Some dogs can be, you’ve got
to be careful.’
‘Yes, I know, but I asked advice, and was told take the baby to
the dog, introduce it, and I did, and he’s been fine.’ I smile
at my son, tucked in the crook of one elbow, and he regards me solemnly
as he concentrates on the contents of his bottle.
‘That’s good, that, that’s the right thing to do.’
He nods generously, affirming his approval.
‘Do you have children?’ I ask, poking round my bag for a wipe
for the toddler.
‘I have a son, that’s why I’m here today.’
‘Oh? Is he meeting you?’
‘No, he’s given me this camera and told me to take shots of
all the places I like to see.’
‘That’s nice.’
‘He’s going to put them on a DVD.’
‘Oh wow, what a good idea!’ I smile, impressed. It’s
the sort of thing I always mean to do, when I have time. He nods, curtly
this time, staring forward again.
‘Then I can watch them when I can’t get out anymore, which
probably won’t be long.’
‘Oh.’ I bend my head to the new person in my arms, not sure
what to say. Do I ask the cyclist how he knows he’s now sentenced
to life indoors? I’ve been stuck in the house so much myself lately
I could give him a lecture on how awful it is. Some days are like being
wrapped in cotton wool, senses suffocating, brain clogging with the closed
air.
He’s still looking forward when a soft breeze uprising from the
valley bottom brushes our faces, wafting just a few of the scents of spring:
the sweetness of juicy just-cut grass, the wholesome warmth of rich, raw
turned earth, the strong musky odour of a fox passed this way before us.
You can’t get these on a DVD. Suddenly I want to cry.
The toddler shuffles herself forward, grouchily sliding off the bench.
The cyclist watches us,
‘Are you off now?’ he enquires, with just a trace of wistfulness.
‘Yes, she’s tired.’
While I fasten the babies into the pushchair he stands holding the gate
open and watching us, staring at the picture that his camera will not
take. I wonder if he is thinking of his own family, and whether they will
one day bring their children here.
The toddler waves goodbye and we set off for home, trundling the long
buggy, dog lounging alongside. As we leave the shelter of the high hawthorn
hedgerow, bursting with its foamy bouquet, a blast of chilled air suddenly
rushes at us. A sharp slap of skin-tingling cold, the sort that reddens
the cheeks and gives you that rosy, wind-blown glow. The type of freshness
to your senses that you can never get in the comfort of your own home.
A tear escapes me, for the cyclist.
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