Wuthering Dormice (aka Bike) Part 696 by Angharad

By the time I got home, I was twitchy–I don’t mean my head jerked in a nervous tic or an eye kept winking, or anything like that, but I was definitely twitchy. I was tired but the caffeine kept me awake and somewhere not entirely alert but my reactions were hyper. My legs felt restless and I couldn’t stand or sit comfortably, they kept wanting me to move them.

“Why don’t you go for a ride?” Stella suggested, “I’ll watch Meems.” The youngest of my charges was busy painting a picture of something known only to her. It looked like it might have come from another planet, it had three legs to start with. Mark Cavendish is from the Isle of Man, where the triskele is the official logo, but as far as I know, he only has two–I was going to say the same as everyone else, but Cav isn’t. He has the ability to go from cruising speed to forty miles an hour in a very short distance.

Before Stella could withdraw her largesse I ran upstairs and changed into some shorts and shirt, pulled on my cycle shoes and grabbing a water bottle, filled it at the sink. I told Mima I’d be back soon, and I don’t think she even noticed I’d entered the room, let alone spoken to her. Glancing at her painting once again–Pre-Raphaelite, it wasn’t.

The tyres on both my bikes needed some air, so I did all of the tyres, it helps to prevent the rubber perishing. Then taking the Scott, I tightened my helmet strap and set off for the downs. In about ten minutes, I was out of the city and up into the countryside, or as close as one can get to it in a sub-urban environment.

The first climb had me puffing like an asthmatic steam engine and my legs were burning. Instead of continuing the climb, I went along a fairly level road for a breather, then climbed again eventually reaching the top of the escarpment and a viewpoint where I stopped and drank some water. I removed my helmet and cooled off as much as I could. Apart from an ice cream van, I seemed to be the only other occupant of the car park.

I took another swallow of water. “You haven’t just climbed that hill on that, have you?” asked the ice cream vendor, nodding at my bike. I wondered if he was stupid or just making conversation–I mean I was dressed like a cyclist, red faced and sweating, and holding a bike at the top of a hill.

“No, I just parachuted in, I’m an illegal alien, the bike is just a ruse.”

“I thought so, you’re far too pretty to be a cyclist, they’re all ugly as sin.”

“I hope you aren’t including Vicky Pendleton or Nicole Cooke in that statement.”

“Who?”

“Olympic gold medallists for cycling.”

“Are they? I wouldn’t know ‘em if I sold ‘em an ice cream. Wanna buy one, I can do you a special offer?”

“I didn’t bring any money with me, so I’m sorry I can’t.”

“Tell you what, I’ll give you an ice cream, if you…”

“I think this car park is getting very crowded all of a sudden.” I put my bottle back in the rack and put my helmet back on.

“’Ang on a minute, I’m only joking, ya know.”

“I don’t eat ice cream,” I lied, my stomach rumbling in protest at my deceit.

“I don’t believe you, a pretty woman like you, they all like ice cream.”

“I’m not a woman, I’m a boy.” I was telling the truth and I knew he wouldn’t believe me, they never do.

“Yeah, sure you are, with ti–a chest like that, and a bum to die for.”

“The chest is silicon and the bum is all padding,” I lied.

“If that’s the case, I think I might be turning gay.”

“What’s wrong with that? Might improve your perspective on life and stop you accosting women.”

“See I knew you was teasin’ me.”

I heard the sound of tyres and to my horror, a Sunset red Range Rover turned into the car park and on stopping, out jumped a yappy terrier, followed a moment later by Mrs B-C in her green wellies. “Good Lord, Lady Cameron, fancy seeing you here.”

“See, I knew you was a woman.”

“What is this man saying? Knew you were a woman, she’s married to Lord Cameron, who probably owns your overdraft, you moron.”

“It’s my fault, Mrs Browne-Coward, he was trying to chat me up, so I told him I was a boy.”

“I don’t think you’ll ever disguise that figure as anything but delightfully female. Really, my dear, have you ever thought of modelling?”

“Cameron, as in bank?” interrupted the ice cream man.

“Yes, you oaf, maybe you need to go to the optician, get your ears checked, too.”

“Bloody ‘ell. You can pay for your own bloody ice cream, the interest you lot are charging me.”

“You can stick your ice cream,” I replied, “I’m off to increase your bank charges.”

“Bitch,” I heard called after me as I waved goodbye to Petunia’s mother and clipped into the pedals.

The downhill ride was easier in terms of physical effort, although some gravel which had collected in the middle of the road caused my back wheel to flip out at one point, which at fifty miles an hour is quite scary, especially while bouncing in the saddle on the unevenness of the road surface.

To cap it all, a boy racer decided to overtake me. There I am doing fifty on quite a narrow country lane, and testosterone knickers, decides whatever I can do, he can do faster. He was in one of those Subaru death machines, the one with the IQ of the driver indicated by the number of stars on the front grill.

Anyway, as we are approaching a crossroads, with admittedly right of way in our favour, I’m still zipping along with the metallic blue kamikaze hard on my heels, waiting for the smallest opportunity to overtake. Then maybe thirty or forty yards before the junction he revved furiously and passed me, just as a white van decides to cross the junction. In the UK ‘white van man’ is used ubiquitously to describe appalling driving. This one was well below par.

As the van crossed the junction, boy racer clipped his rear. The Subaru went up on the bank and through a hedge, the white van spun round ninety degrees and came straight at me, the driver wrestling with the wheel as he plunged headlong at me. I had no option but to fling myself off the bike and into the hedgerow and I heard the van drive over my Scott and smash into the banking–all of this as I cannoned off the banking and onto the gravelly road, leaving a few bits of skin and lycra on the tarmac.

Dazed and shaking, I rose to my feet and tried to assess the situation. The engine of the van was still revving although the van was stuck in the bank, the driver was half through the windscreen a large tree having stopped his progress but probably killed him at the same time.

I leant in through the broken window in the door and switched off the engine. Diesel was seeping all over the road. I picked up my bike, the frame was smashed. Crossing the road I looked through the hole in the hedgerow, the blue chariot was upside down and looked as if it had rolled several times.

New arrivals on the scene started to take some charge of the situation. “You alright, luv?”

I wasn’t, my favourite bike was wrecked and so was my matching strip, and I realised my leg and buttock were painful and bleeding, so was my elbow. “What happened?” asked another newcomer.

“I was coming down the hill at quite a lick, the car in the field overtook me just as the van crossed the junction, he caught the tail of it, the van spun round and nearly hit me. I jumped off but the bastard got my bike.”

“It’s only a bike, luv.”

“Only a bike, it’s six thousand quid’s worth of bike.”

“What! You’re joking?”

“No, I’m bloody well not. And the bastard who caused it is probably dead, so I can’t even sue him.”

“That’s rather harsh, isn’t it?”

“Look, mister, if some halfwit in a van had just tried to kill you, I doubt you’d feel kindly towards him either.”

“This one’s alive,” called someone over in the field.

The sound of sirens began to fill the air and as I realised what had happened, I began to feel very sick and started to shake. Next moment I was chucking up my meagre breakfast and collapsing onto the bank.

I didn’t feel them take me into an ambulance, but I was awake when we got to the hospital. I could just see them now, “Not you again?”

To cut a long story short. After a cursory exam, I was sent for x-rays and a scan of my abdomen. “You’re not pregnant, luv, are you?” I shook my head. “ ’cos we need to check your spleen.” I nodded my understanding.

An hour later, a familiar face came around the curtain, “What on earth are you doing here?”

“Go away, I’m too old for a paediatrician,” I said back to him.

“What happened?” I told him and he said he’d been passing when they called him in to look at an injured child.

“Not in a blue Subaru, was it?”

“Yeah, her mother was driving it.”

“It was a woman driving?”

“Yeah, why?”

“She was driving like a boy racer.”

“Well, you can get girl racers, too. Looking at your kit, you’re one.”

“That’s different. I had right of way, the car shouldn’t have tried to overtake at a junction, and the van should have stopped.”

“There’s a copper waiting to see you, seems like you’re the only witness.”

“What about the woman driver?”

“She’s in theatre, blood clot on the brain, there’s a helicopter en route to take her to Southampton neuro unit.”

“And the kid?”

“Multiple fractures.”

“I’m not fostering any more,” I said almost laughing.

“No need, the father is on his way, and Simon is on his to collect you.”

“The van driver?”

“DOA, left half his cerebellum in a tree, according to the paramedics.”

“It was his own fault, the bastard wrecked my bike.”

“I suspect he did the same to his van.”

“My bike is worth more than his stupid van.”

“Surely not?” Sam Rose looked horrified.

“A 2009 model is around seven grand.”

“Seven thousand quid for a push bike? What is it, gold plated?”

“No carbon fibre.”

“Even so, seven thousand–that’s a lot of money.”

“It was a lot of bike.”

“Can’t you reuse any of it?”

“Chummy drove his van over it, broke everything, including the wheels.”

“You weren’t on it at the time were you?”

“No, I threw myself off it, hence the tarmac burns.”

“And the broken fingers.”

“What?”

“You’ve got two broken fingers on your left hand.” I looked at my hand, two fingers were strapped together. “I did a similar thing playing rugger.”

“Wonderful,” I said and felt a few tears run down my face.