The Spiral

by Gideon Burrows

  Work hard, play hard. Keep this country running, really. Another drink?

  “Well, thank you again Giles,” Megan tried hard not to say for sharing. She felt like a fool, but the stage was hers and it looked like the only opportunity she was going to get to perform today.

  “And Charles, we know you’ve been a history teacher. Anything else to share?”

  “I’m 60 and live alone. I was on my way to the British Library at Euston to do some research. I come in most days. Sad, really. Not very exciting.”

  “You always been a history teacher, Charles?” It was the builder who asked.

  “Navy, prior to that. Another case of young ones coming in and booting out the oldies like me. I was only 30. Anyway, ended up teaching. Like most of us did. That or middle management in a bank.”

  Megan noticed how comfortable Charles seemed to be, not only with his surroundings, but especially with the builder. She had always been a little hesitant with men. Thanks to Dad, probably.

  But there was something else. Why wasn’t Charles, well, why didn’t he seem the slightest bit hesitant around the builder. Most white old people feared black men, didn’t they? Hell, most white people of any age were afraid of black men. Especially those built as big as he was.

  But Charles seemed entirely comfortable.

  Silence.

  The builder spoke.

  “Well, I’m Benny. I work on building sites, and I’ve been shovelling materials all night. My back is killing me, my feet are sore in these boots. I was on my way home in Acton, where I was going to sleep until nightfall and do the whole thing over again. That’s my life. That’s all there is to tell.”

  “That’s great Benny,” said Megan. “I guess you know a bit about the structure of buildings, brickwork…”

  “Tiles, concrete and that? Yeah, they teach you the basics. But I’m just a labourer. All muscle, not much up here.” He tapped his temple.

  “I’m sure that’s not true,” said Megan.

  He smiled a little.

  Silence.

  “Oh, okay, my turn? I’m Megan, I live with my Dad in Epping, and I’m trying to get out of a crappy local secretarial job and into something in a legal firm in London. Today is my second interview. Sorry, was my second interview. So, it’s back to my boring, go-nowhere job tomorrow.

  “I enjoy dancing, and singing, and yoga, and hanging out with my friends, and music and watching TV. And I’m only joking about all of that. Except my job, which really is crappy.”

  All of them smiled.

  “And now I’m down here with you guys, and I don’t have a clue what to do next.”

  “You asked what we knew,” said Giles. Megan was pleased that the guy was finally playing along. Offering a bit of camaraderie.

  “I did,” she answered.

  “Well, we know we’ve walked down a very long spiral staircase,” he said. “And I’ve always counted 129 steps on my commute. I think there’s even a sign that says it at the top. But I know for a fact that I walked further than that from where Charles sat down.”

  “Okay,” said Charles. “That’s minus 129 plus from where we started. Who went further up then?”

  Giles and Benny lifted their palms slightly.

  “I walked 129 steps up from where Charles first sat down, and Benny did more,” said Giles

  “Another 20 maybe?” said Benny.

  “Okay, call it 150 steps,” said Giles. “Then you and Charles caught up with us, so that puts us, right now, at…”

  Giles stopped for a moment.

  “Two hundred and seventy-six steps below us, at least, and nothing at the bottom?” said Charles.

  Megan cursed.

  “But no one has gone any further up from here?” said Giles

  “But we all came down, didn’t we? Does that count?” said Benny.

  “Of course it does,” said Giles. “We came down, so there’s a top.”

  “But we’ve already come up as far as the top should be,” said Megan. “So, for the sake of keeping sane…”

  “Sane?” said Giles. “I can’t keep track of who’s speaking, let alone the numbers.”

  “For the sake of our sanity, let’s assume we didn’t come down to here. Just for a moment, let’s imagine that. Don’t we just have to go up?”

  Megan watched her fellow captives. Was that the right word? Commuters didn’t seem right. Colleagues wasn’t right either.

  Each of them was probably feeling the same as her. Puzzled, annoyed, tired.

  What they were probably not feeling, and what she’d kept from them with every ounce of her being right now, was her creeping feeling of claustrophobia. Megan didn’t like tight, enclosed spaces. She never had.

  Benny stood.

  “You say the staircase should have been 129 steps?”

  Giles nodded.

  “I’ll go up that far, and if I find anything, I’ll send for reinforcements. Otherwise I’ll come back down.”

  “And I’ll go down 129 steps, if that’s what we’re working with. Just to make sure I wasn’t just a turn from the platform.” Giles smiled. “I may be some time.”

  5

  Megan had been trapped in a dark black dustbin when she was younger. She couldn’t remember how old she had been, but she must have been quite small to have even got in there. Seven, eight at most?

  Dad didn’t let her play with kids from school, but some of those who lived on her street he said were okay because he knew their parents. Those kids used to get together on summer evenings, and occasionally she’d persuade him to let her play too. They’d play until they couldn’t see each other clearly any more. It wasn’t that dark, but it was dark in the bin.

  It was one of those black plastic bins you don’t see much anymore. Before the ubiquitous great and green wheelie bins. They were completely black, had Not for hot ashes embossed on the lid. Megan always wondered what that meant: Not for hot ashes. The only time she’d heard the word ashes was something to do with Granny dying and her body being burned at a funeral. Did people fling dead bodies into the bins after the ceremony?

  At the houses of most neighbours, the bins were hidden from view by wooden trellis grown over by climbing plants or tucked behind small privet hedges. Her Dad would take out the rubbish from the kitchen and dump the bin liners into the black plastic tubs ready for collection.

  The bins had been collected that morning, which meant the plastic bins were empty. And as usual, the refuse collectors hadn’t bothered to put them back behind the bushes. Instead, two bins sat by the low brick wall at the front of Dad’s house. One of them had its lid thrown to the floor.

  Looking back, the bin men ought to have fixed that lid back on top of the bin. There were metal clasps at the top that could be pulled up to stop smells from escaping from the bin. To stop foxes and rats from getting in.

  And to prevent little girls from climbing into a bin to hide on a balmy evening night when she and her friends were still out playing Forty-Forty and her neighbour Katie was leaning up against a big oak tree with her head buried in her arms counting to twenty before she’d come and look for them all.

  Megan only had to wait until some of her friends had been found, or she’d heard someone shout Forty-Forty at the top of their voice when they touched the oak. They’d then be crowned winner of the game and counter next time.

  Megan didn’t want to win. It’s no fun being the youngest and not being able to find people. Whenever she was ‘it’, the game lasted less than a minute before a laughing cry of Forty-Forty would be shouted and the rest would all climb out from their obvious hiding places - low down behind Dad’s car, down the little valley that led to a stream, even behind the Forty-Forty tree itself - and they’d tease her about how bad she was at the game.

  No. Megan didn’t want to win. But she didn’t want to be found either.

  The bin seemed like a good enough place to hide. It was clean inside, and she could dip into it by wiggling over the side from the lo
w wall, then pull the lid on top. She’d have to crouch, but the bin was wide enough to take her legs in a squatting position. She pulled on the top just as she heard Katie shout, ‘coming, ready or not’.

  Megan never found out who pulled the clasps over the lid. She just heard a clunk against the plastic. She heard a light giggle that could have been a girl or a boy. Then footsteps running away.

  She pushed up at the lid with her head, but it wouldn’t budge. She tried her arms, shifting them uncomfortably from her sides and heaving. But still no movement. It was only then she noticed how totally dark it was inside. Before it was just as if she’d closed her eyes tightly, a seven-year-old being brave in a game. But now she was really looking around, eyes wide open, and still couldn’t see a thing.

  The switch from feeling clever with her hiding place to absolute panic was immediate. She leant back against the inside of the bin and hammered with her fists on the lid. She stamped with her feet. She screamed. She wept in total and utter fear.

  She elbowed the side, threw her whole body around, bruised her head as she banged it again and again and again.

  She felt absolute mind-numbing terror so strong she couldn’t even think about how it had happened, how stupid she had been, what she was going to do to get out, or even whether she’d suffocate. For Megan, it was already over. She kicked and screamed and punched and gulped air as if fighting away death itself. Not for hot ashes.

  And then the lid came off. She heard tiny running footsteps go past again, but there was no giggle this time. She sprang from the bin, leaping onto the low brick wall and kicking the bin away from her with a thrashing of her feet. Her face was soaked with tears and she could hardly catch her breath. She sat on the wall, her back to the Forty-Forty oak, sobbing but trying to rub away the tears. Her friends would tease her for being a scaredy-cat. Don’t show it.

  Megan never found out who released her from the bin. Whoever it was, it was the same person who must have followed her as soon as Katie starting counting. They must have seen her climb in and then locked the lid over her head. It didn’t matter, because she was out. She could breathe again.

  When she turned back to the tree, the game had broken up and each of the kids was ambling quickly and silently back to their houses. No one said goodbye. A game gone too far.

  She didn’t tell. She’d be in big trouble for what she’d done and didn’t want to face Dad.

  There might have been some huge street palaver. She would be at the centre. Dad would be furious with her. Every neighbour was a customer, he would say. She’d ruin his business with her stupid behaviour.

  But that night she begged Dad to leave the landing light on. To leave her bedroom door open just a few inches. She’d never been afraid of the dark before. She was always a little scared after.

  Megan never played Forty-Forty again. And for the last eighteen years she had never gone to bed without at least a small orange glow nearby. Softening the darkness. Allowing her to sleep.

  Megan looked around her. The curved walls around her felt closer than they had been. But surely that was an illusion. And anyway, to the front and the back, the space stretched endlessly. Wasn’t that the problem?

  Unusually, Megan felt herself wishing for six sides. Four on each side, as well as the ceiling and floor. Because at least one of those sides would contain a door, a window, a way out of here. A little normality.

  The two younger men had gone off in either direction. Benny venturing still further up the steps, while Giles had gone down. Megan had suggested they all stick together until they were rescued. Giles thought that was silly. They didn’t need to be rescued; they hadn’t fallen down a mine shaft or got trapped under rubble. It was just a case of keeping going until one of them reached the end. Benny had shrugged his shoulders, remaining distant and thoughtful.

  She’d stayed to look after Charles. His face had gone red, the colour wasn’t abating, and he was gasping deeply.

  Giles had - far too reluctantly, Megan felt - offered Charles the last swig of his Lucozade. What was Charles? Sixty did he say. And clearly not in the best of health. Giles was, despite his obvious hangover, relatively fit and certainly not as in need of an energy drink as Charles.

  God, he was probably the guy who sat and pretended not to notice when obviously pregnant women stood next to him on the Tube.

  Megan looked around the chamber more closely. Each step was about a foot and a half long at the thick end of the wedge, where it met the outside wall. The connection was seamless with the concrete of the step and its painted scuffed yellow edge leading into the dark tiles. At the thin end of the wedge, the step tapered into just an inch, where it met a solid concrete column, arranged in sections placed on top of each other.

  The outside wall rose to about a metre, where the thick iron bannister was attached, then continued up to normal head height, before curving over at its highest point. Benny’s head cleared it by a foot. Megan reckoned she could stand, reach her hands up and just about be able to place her palms against the curved ceiling. In line with the steps, the ceiling spiralled down with the stairs.

  Along the highest point of the curve sat a row of lights embedded into the concrete. Each was about the size of the bottom of a coffee mug, and the row stretched forwards and backwards along the chamber, with one light every seven or eight steps.

  The glass in the lights was dirty with grime, but no dirtier than the rest of the chamber. The steps had a gritty feeling, no doubt from dust and stones trodden down there by commuters passing this way. The tiles that surrounded the whole chamber were also coated in a thin film of dirt.

  Charles coughed. A gravelly hack that sounded as if some of the grit and dirt had gone down his throat, and hadn’t been washed away by Giles’ drink.

  “Are you okay Charles?” Megan asked.

  He coughed again before answering. “Yes, yes. Just feeling a bit worn out. Should have brought some water. But I’m usually in the library by now with a cup of tea.”

  Megan looked at her watch. The four of them had been down here for over an hour now. That’s if there were four of them left. Maybe Giles or Benny had made a break for freedom by now. She smiled. Some chance.

  “Do you think they’ll be long?” Charles asked. “Only, weak bladder and all that. Won’t be long until I need to find a toilet.”

  Charles didn’t seem to have a clue about their situation. He’d only walked a fraction of the steps up and down. To him, it was all still a minor confusion.

  But he had a point. Megan now felt a little pressure from her own bladder. She didn’t know what was harder: blotting out the creeping fear of being down here for days, or the now growing urgency of her need to pee.

  Thanks a lot Charles.

  When the others came back – she did already know they would come back – she’d have to continue to take charge. Giles seemed too flaky. Benny, well, just not bothered. Might as well use some more from that course on leadership she had taken.

  That was the stuff she had planned to talk about at her interview, which now, she looked at her watch again, would have been well and truly over.

  Just middle management guff her dad would have said. Far too many managers. Haven’t got a clue. Never seen a day of work in their lives. Better roll up their sleeves and pick up a spade. Learn a proper trade. Country would be better off for it.

  All the while he’d be shoving bank notes from his latest job into his back pocket. Let’s keep that from the nosy bastards at the tax office, shall we? See these darlin’ - he meant Megan - these hands? These are working hands.

  She looked at her own now. They were grubby, with the dirt worked into the creases. She laughed as she thought about the hand cream she’d rubbed into them this morning. Dirty enough for you, Dad?

  She shook her head. No, she’d have to resume charge. Allocate jobs. Someone to deal with toilets, someone to deal with food and water, someone to think about rescue, someone to think about passing the time in a dim tunnel wit
hout end, with nowhere to sleep or even properly sit down, with nothing to do but stare at the ever enclosing walls, until they all went completely, totally and utterly mad.

  Who was she kidding? There were no toilets. She didn’t have any food or water. Did anyone else? And rescue, from what?

  None of this made sense. There had been nothing about this in her marketing and management course syllabus. There was nothing like this in any of her experiences. Nor Dad’s. He’d not been down a mine. Hell, he’d never even been into a cave.

  It wasn’t like they were trapped down here. There was just no way out. Not the same thing.

  But what Megan felt now, as she sat next to Charles, was exactly that. Just an inkling, just the tiniest seed of that same sensation of the bin when she was a kid. Of being totally and utterly trapped, surrounded by darkness. The meek little girl again, cruelly scared by someone playing a big joke.

  She thought she had learned not to be that girl. She thought she was a strong, uncompromising, ambitious woman, despite the lack of support from her father.

  But now, Megan felt that deep panic throw out fresh shoots into the pit of her stomach. They’d crawled outwards, down into her abdomen, up into her chest, stepping up her spine, vertebra by vertebra. She tried to ignore the feeling, struggling to push the creeping terror back down.

  She was grateful to smell a faint whiff of cigarette smoke rising from below.

  6

  Giles held the cigarette in his mouth as he climbed the final few steps to where Megan and Charles were sitting. He took long drawn out puffs to calm his nerves and dissipate his laboured breathing.

  He’d resisted so far. He wasn’t a 20 a day man, just kept a pack of Camels on him for social situations - outside the pub on a sunny day with the boys from the office - and for stressful ones, like sitting at home alone half-drunk after another night out with them wondering where his life had gone.