The Spiral

by Gideon Burrows

  1

  Reggie Ross hit the woman. He killed her.

  Strictly speaking Reggie Ross didn’t hit her. Strictly speaking he didn’t kill the woman.

  But for the rest of his life, Reggie Ross would always have to say to himself: I hit and killed that woman. He’d have to take it to his own deathbed.

  Thirty years driving trains and Reggie Ross had never had a ‘one under’. Then, in his last week on the job before retirement, his very last week for God’s sake, he got one. His leaving drinks were already organised at The Barrowboy & Banker at London Bridge. Then today, this morning, he’d hit and killed a woman.

  A one under.

  Something every train driver knows they’ll get at least once in their career. Often more. A jumper. A suicide. A faller. Someone pushed. A one under.

  It took about five seconds for Reggie Ross to find out if the pretty girl standing too close to the other end of the platform at St Paul’s was to be his first and only one under.

  It was five seconds, but it seemed to stretch for five hours.

  Reggie had only done one switch of the Central Line so far that day. It was an early start. His first train, 5.00 a.m. from Hainault via Bank to Ealing. His first journey went without a problem, not even an unexpected stop light. But on his second loop. Well, that was different.

  When you’re a Tube driver, most of what you see is the dark rails swinging around corners, ever trying to converge in the distance. But they never quite make it. Those haunting lines and the blip-blip-blip of white lights that pass. They can send a driver into a kind of trance.

  Sometimes, Reggie couldn’t tell whether he was awake or asleep. It was a welcome feeling of distance from the world, but the darkness could also give you a chill. After three decades driving London Underground trains, Reggie still secretly welcomed the reassurance of the circle of brightness ahead as a station hurtled towards him.

  Then he’d gently come out of his trance, let his right hand roll forwards against the pressure of the driving handle and ease off the gas. He’d let out a comfortable sigh as the carriages rolled neatly into the station. He always prided himself on stopping in the correct place without a touch on the emergency brake.

  Reggie reckoned he’d spent about a quarter of his life under the surface. Only miners beat that.

  His dad had been a railway driver too, but above the surface. He’d worked the West Coast Mainline after the war. There were materials - coal, steel, bricks - to be carried from the Black Country to London to help with rebuilding the capital.

  Good steady work for his dad, and that was back in the days when there were jobs for life. Reggie had been lucky. His dad’s connections in the Union had helped him get a job on the Underground and once he was behind the dead-man’s handle, it was hard for any government, or New Labour consortium of quasi-government companies, to prise him out again.

  Now Reggie was nearing 60, no one would dare even try. What with age discrimination and RMT Union threats of strikes if anyone even so much as threatened new pension arrangements or to privatise the lines again.

  For Reggie it was a simple life. And good money. He’d never really had any official training: it seemed back then they just put you into the driver’s carriage, pointed towards the tunnel and sent you on your way.

  More recently, of course, he had to attend brand awareness days, training on customer relations, courses on health and safety for drivers. They were only slightly more work than driving a Tube train, and most often seemed to be presented by those who looked like they’d arrived in taxis and never used the Tube in their life. At least Reggie got paid for the training, and who knows: health and safety training could do no harm.

  There were presentations about communication with fellow Underground staff. About spotting anything dangerous, like a platform that was too raucous (a football match has just finished); or too crowded (radio up to surface level to close some inward ticket barriers, slow up entries). And classes on spotting something unusual. These days that meant terrorism. A discarded package. Someone who looked out of place. Didn’t seem to belong.

  See It. Say It. Sorted.

  The girl attracted Reggie’s attention because, at this time in the morning, a single young woman waiting for a Tube train was unusual. Particularly at St Paul’s. At this time, it was mostly only big men in paint-smudged overalls and grubby reinforced boots who would get on, and then only at the far-out stations. They’d be on their way to or from one of the next skyscrapers they were throwing up between the last ones they’d worked on in the city. Builders and labourers got off the train at St Paul’s at this time. People rarely boarded in the financial district this early at all. And definitely not a young woman.

  Alone.

  The girl wasn’t dressed for 6.15 a.m. She wore an orange skirt hitched above the knees, a light blue jacket - was it denim? - buttoned up to the neck. Her hair seemed limp, but not untidy. A little makeup, but smudged. Had she been out all night, and on her way home?

  Possibly. But that only happened on a Saturday and Sunday morning. All-nighters coming home from clubbing in central London. But they usually came home in groups of three or four. And anyway, this wasn’t central London.

  There were no nightclubs in the financial district. On the weekend most of the pubs weren’t open during the day, let alone at night.

  But there was something else. Something about how the girl was dressed. Something Reggie couldn’t put his finger on. Her head dipped. From the side Reggie could see a blank distant look on her face. She wasn’t reading one of those posters that curved up the inside of station tunnels. She was looking down onto the rails. Reggie looked to the area where her eyes led, then back to the platform where she was standing.

  That was it. The something else. He could just make out the low pink glow of her grubby toenails underneath the Tube station lights. A few inches from the edge of the train platform, the wrong side of the yellow line.

  A pretty girl at the wrong time, in the wrong place. Standing on the bumpy lines cut into the concrete platform edge. Not belonging.

  And she wasn’t wearing shoes.

  Something was definitely wrong with this picture. And when something doesn’t look right there’s only one thing Reggie’s driver training had taught him he should do.

  He hit the brake.

  2

  Charles was only 30 or so steps down when he had to take his first rest. No more than a few seconds, but at least he’d got down more steps than yesterday before having to stop. He clung onto the metal bannister and took a moment to collect himself. To take a breath or two.

  He waited for the twinge in his chest to calm. Charles took a hankie from his blazer pocket, removed his glasses, and wiped his brow. He stuffed the hankie back into the pocket and then felt in the blazer on the other side for a little cylinder of pills. There they were, under his leather notebook.

  Charles didn’t want to take the staircase down to the Northern Line that day. But it was doctor’s orders.

  They’d always been walkers, he and Felicity. But these days, he wasn’t doing the exercise he needed to stay on top of a slowly ageing heart.

  “You’re just starting to creak up a bit, Mr Lawrence,” the doctor told him. “Do some gardening, get off the bus a little earlier, a little vacuuming. Anything to keep the joints oiled.”

  He’d sent him away with a prescription.

  Gardening. That’s what the headteacher had recommended too. Charles would be due for retirement in a couple of years. He should take some gardening leave. Take it easy until his pension kicks in. Let things die down a bit.

  Charles hated gardening. All that scraping of weeds from between patio slabs, clipping a few centimetres off the side of hedges, scratching grass to get rid of th
e moss.

  There was a proper old woman next door who’d appear every time the sun shone. She had white hair, a green puffer jacket, pink bobbled gloves and knee pads. A Gardener’s World cliché. She was always out there with her secateurs or a trowel. She’d put sheets down to collect the weeds so she didn’t damage her perfect lawn when tending to the flower beds. She’d use a dustpan and brush to gather up the leaves from the shrubs, the driveway, from the grass for God’s sake. She’d brush the pavement outside her house, creating a little line of dust exactly where her property stopped and his began.

  Charles’ garden was a rough patch of grass in front of a tiny bungalow. He liked it that way. Now it was all grown over with weeds and waist height saplings from surrounding trees. He hadn’t touched it for two years. Didn’t intend to either. Let his uppity neighbour grumble, with her too perfect patch.

  Gardening. Gardening is what old people do. People with empty lives. Old bastards who are going senile. Charles smiled, patted the notebook in his blazer, and continued downwards. Felicity had been the gardener.

  He’d been going this way down since the doctor’s appointment and was sure it would do him some good in the long term. He liked this staircase, even though the steps were narrow and the going was slow. There was a solid bannister to hold on to, and only a few people came this way. Most passengers didn’t even know about it.

  He could get the exercise he was supposed to, but take little breathers now and then without getting in the way. At the other end, the easy way down with the escalators, he had always been pushed and jostled. People would tut at him if he had to stop, even for a second.

  He’d had enough of the tutting and pushing.

  At the bottom of the stairs, he would board the Northern Line and go up to Euston. From there, he’d walk for ten minutes to the British Library, take tea in the café. Then he’d continue his research in the history department, making detailed notes in his little notebook.

  Kings Cross Station was slightly nearer to the library, but the doctor had said every tiny snippet of extra exercise would do an extra bit of good. For his heart. For his mental health.

  That was the talk these days. Mental Health. Like it wasn’t okay to feel lonely. Or think back to the old days, about his friends on the submarines, with fond sadness. Can’t possibly be miserable. Pull your socks up.

  Everyone had to be happy. Everyone had to be sociable. Everyone had to be friendly.

  He’d tried that. Now he was on gardening leave.

  The Tube train halted so abruptly outside Bank Station that Giles’ head bounced off the glass. He was already pressed in by some huge tourist with a guidebook and a stupid cap. His massive suitcase was squashing Giles to the side.

  Why did they need so much stuff, anyway? Tourists should be banned from the Tube, during the morning commute at least. Most of them could walk between Tube stations anyway, if they could be bothered to look at Google maps.

  The stuffy train carriage was full of school kids, of course. The girls mocked each other, shouting across the gangway in whiny voices. The boys were talking tough, especially when the girls were watching. They gathered in a clump, bumping into Giles even though there were sprinkles of empty seats they should shift to. White kids talking Black. Calling each other bro, waving their hands like rappers. Stupid oversized bright white trainers. So white they hurt Giles’ eyes. The kids’ voices wheedled their way into his head, ramping his headache up a few more notches.

  Giles took another swig of Lucozade and swallowed past the dryness in his throat. So much for a hangover cure. The sickly fizz, with the background taste of TCP, was supposed to knock out the fug. But this hangover was the real deal.

  Tequila, wasn’t it? Gin and tonics? Definitely cocktails, and of course a line or two. Champagne later in the casino. That’s on top of the four pints of European lager straight after work.

  A voice came over the tannoy, all chummy cockney accent, we’re in this together.

  “Sorry folks. As per previous, we had an incident on the line earlier this morning. We’re all backed up. I’ll get you all into Bank Station just as soon as I can. Shouldn’t be any more than a few minutes.”

  “Shit,” said Giles. A school teacher looked across at him, but Giles stared him down. Every couple of months some selfish idiot would throw themselves onto the line.

  Another three minutes. The train had been stop-start all along the Central Line since he’d got on at Snaresbrook, where he shared digs with some friends from his Cambridge college.

  The train lurched forward, then stopped, then lurched forward again. Bile rose from Giles’ stomach with the sway, but he kept the Lucozade down and belched behind his hand.

  The doors finally slid open and Giles kicked past the tourist’s suitcase and stepped onto the platform. Without taking a break, he turned left, heading against the crowd towards the staircase down to the Northern Line.

  It was his usual route to Bank, then one stop under the river to his office in The Shard at London Bridge. Most of the others went the long way via the escalators at the other end of the platform. As if a few steps were more than they could handle.

  Benny fell back gratefully, allowed his whole body to go limp and be enveloped by the seat. He leant his head right back and rested it against the window behind. The stretch in his neck felt good. He closed his eyes and enjoyed first the low vibrations as the Tube doors closed, then the deeper rocking as the carriage got underway. This is how they rock babies to sleep.

  He opened his eyes, lifted his head and glanced up at the long red Tube line outlined on the ceiling ahead of him. He counted across. This was Stratford, so it would go Mile End, Bethnal Green, Liverpool Street… he stopped naming the stations after Bank and just counted the little red squares sitting on the line. Eighteen stops until East Acton. Forty five minutes at least, maybe an hour. Not long enough to sleep, but unbearably long to keep awake. He closed his eyes again, put his head back, and tried to get comfortable. Only the sound of some school kids at the other end of the carriage might disturb him, but he was too tired to be bothered. The train slowed as it pulled into Mile End, the doors opened, the doors shut, the train speeded up again.

  Seventeen more.

  It had been the usual story last night. Benny had climbed out of bed in the tiny room in a flat he shared with others he’d been put together with on the Programme. He didn’t really know them. Didn’t really want to. He slept through the day, then worked at night. They, the other way around.

  He opened his bedroom door quietly and entered the bathroom. He brushed his teeth and splashed his face, staring down into a filthy limescale-caked plug hole. He looked into the mirror at eyes that veined with thin red threads of tiredness. He ran the back of his hand against the rough stubble on his cheek. He really ought to have taken a shower and a shave to wake up a bit, but he didn’t have any of those crappy plastic shaving blades left. It was a long time since he’d had the money for decent blades.

  Back in his room, Benny had pulled on jeans heavy with paint and oil. He picked up and sniffed the t-shirt that had been lying on the floor, then squeezed himself into it and buttoned up a lumberjack shirt over the top. He chose some new socks from the pile because once his feet sweated in those heavy work boots, his blisters would get worse and he’d end up limping around the site.

  Benny had taken the last Tube out of East Acton and sat eating a dry bread roll and sipping from a bottle of water he’d filled up from the tap in the bathroom. All the building was taking place in the East End now. Guys like Benny had to follow the work, even if it was the other side of London. He hated going back east.

  The Programme had hooked him up with the agency. The agency had hooked him up with some site safety training. Now he had to go where they told him.

  Mixing sand and concrete all night at a waste ground, turning it into a car park near Leyton. Hauling bricks up and down scaffolds at Bethnal Green. For the last two weeks, he’d been ripping up broken paving ston
es and cracked concrete, wheelbarrowing the hardcore to skips at a newbuild close to the Olympic Park.

  The doors opened. Liverpool Street. The doors closed.

  Bernard Harris. Benny. The limp guy at the Programme had called him Benny on the first day when he’d flounced into the centre with a smile on his face, swinging a clipboard. An identity card hung from a pink lanyard around his neck, the words Unite written repetitively along its length.

  Benny. It was meant in a friendly way, but the tone the guy used as he went through the paperwork – now Benny, let’s see how we can really help you reach your future potential – irritated him. We weren’t going to help Bernard at all. And Bernard didn’t have any future potential. He doubted the 22-year-old in front of him had ever smoked a spliff, let alone knew what cocaine looked like.

  But after three or four brainstorming sessions – let’s just think blue skies, Benny, no rules, just imagine, blue skies – Bernard had got to like the guy.

  Call me Stevie. He liked the way Stevie would laugh at himself, be rude about the other staff at the project, and still had the innocence to think he really could help someone like Bernard.

  Make that Benny. New name, new start.

  The agency had been much more detached. Paperwork. Distaste. The girl assigned to him always had the attitude that she was doing Benny a huge favour. Just be grateful there are people like me around. Stevie would have bitched about her. A Tart in a Tiara, he’d have said.

  “We’ll only be able to give you a day’s notice, a couple of days at most. But it’s work. So get some tough clothes, just turn up and do what they tell you to do. You’ll be able to hang on to your benefits as long as you keep showing up, so you better get used to late nights.”

  Benny had nodded and smiled at what he thought was her being friendly. But she’d gone back to ticking boxes on the form in front of her.

  “Okay, off you go,” she said. “I’ll call you when something comes in.”