The Confusion of Karen Carpenter

by Jonathan Harvey

  We chuckle.

  ‘I’ve just got a bit of personal business to attend to.’

  He nods, but does a ‘that’s a shame’ face. That won’t work with me, though, for he is the original dirty old dog. I see it now. He was a dirty old dog in the supermarket with his ‘which platter shall I choose?’ shtick and he is a dirty old dog now. I’m surprised he’s not dry-humping my leg or suggesting we go for some sexy time in the bedroom. I know his sort. Well, I do now. I give Connor a hug and say I’ll see him Monday. I compliment him on his food again. I shake Kevin’s hand – he’s still looking dazed. (Oh, what? Not used to getting turned down, hmm? Get back to your vicar, Shamrock Features, and put your tongue away while you’re at it.) Then I head up the garden and into the house.

  I realize I’ve only stayed about ten minutes when I pass Sigmund Freud still stood at his bus stop.

  You know, I might get a cab to Michael’s work. I might just live a little this evening.

  EIGHT

  He was taking me down a staircase. It was dark except for the light from his torch. It might have been the middle of the day, but the lack of light made it feel like midnight. That must have been what it was like down here all the time: permanent midnight. We giggled like school kids in an Enid Blyton adventure. Off into the dark, scary woods to solve a crime. Uncle Quentin and his missing lemonade, Aunt Fanny and her priceless ruby necklace. We passed a sign on the toffee-coloured brick walls – ‘31 steps to exit’ – and an arrow pointing back the way we’d come.

  ‘Where are you taking me, Michael?’ I gasped between nervous giggles.

  ‘You’ll see in a minute. Come ’ed!’

  Michael had been working on the Underground for about six months by now and had taken to it like a duck to water. Or, well, like a Tube driver to a Tube train. His uniforms hung in our wardrobe and received such love and attention, anyone would have thought they were ermine robes belonging to Her Majesty and he was the curator of an exhibition displaying the finest garb in the land. I was amazed he didn’t have them in cabinets with halogen spotlights. It was fair to say he loved his job. He loved his new purpose, his new direction, which on the whole was forward, through tunnels.

  Thank God I trusted him. Thank God I knew him. This felt like the kind of route a murderer would take his victim on in a horror movie.

  ‘Come down this darkened stairwell, my lover. It’ll be a laugh . . .’

  OK, so I shouldn’t be writing horror-flick dialogue, but I’m sure you get the picture.

  Then suddenly we were in a room, a long, narrow room. It was icy cold. I could just make out my breath hanging in clouds before my mouth. The brickwork here was blacker, stained with lime; the odd stalactite hung from the ceiling. Michael turned round and did a three-sixty-degree circle with his torch, as if revealing Aladdin’s secret cave to me for the first time. I had to admit I was confused. He had brought me metres underground to show me this? I wasn’t quite sure what ‘this’ was.

  ‘What . . . is this place?’ I asked, trying to sound bewitched and beguiled, bothered even. This clearly meant a great deal to him, if not to me, and so, as his delightful girlfriend, I had to take an interest in his fascination.

  He seemed to be looking for something. He seemed to find it. He walked to the corner of the room and did a ‘Da nah!’ fanfare noise, then said, ‘Let there be light!’

  He did something with his left hand in the darkness to the side of his torch spotlight and – hey presto – some lights came on.

  We switched off our torches.

  I looked around, my eyes adjusting to the newly lit surroundings. Yes, it was still the slightly dull room I’d thought it was. I still didn’t get it.

  ‘I still don’t get it.’ (See, I was no liar. In fact, you might have said I did exactly what it said on the tin. If a paint- based analogy works here . . .)

  ‘This . . .’ he said, fizzing with excitement ‘. . . is St Mary’s Tube Station!’

  And as if to prove his point, beyond the brick wall to my left I heard the deafening rattle of a Tube passing by. A blast of warm air seemed to shoot through the bricks. Had I been wearing a white Fifties-style dress, I might have done a Monroe.

  ‘And we are on . . .’ OK, his overexcited schoolboy routine was starting to grate slightly ‘. . . the old platform.’ He pointed to the floor and walls of the room we were standing in.

  ‘Right,’ I said, and OK, that did pique my interest. Slightly. ‘But it’s all bricked in.’

  Even with my ever-so-slight knowledge of my newly adopted home city, I knew I’d not heard of a station called St Mary’s.

  I knew where we were, as in I knew which part of London we were in: he’d not brought me here with a blanket over my head. I knew we were in the East End (somewhere), and I knew we’d got in via a door in the street and he’d had to use a code on a punch-pad. I also knew we weren’t in an area called St Mary’s. St Mary’s sounded like a quiet hamlet, where Miss Marple might hang her panty girdle at the end of a long day’s detecting. Or it sounded like a nice suburban church where your cousin Sue might marry her childhood sweetheart and you’d get a fit of the giggles when she got his names mixed up in the vows so it sounded like she was marrying someone else, or that she was a goer who’d get hitched to anyone. In fact, I knew that the area, now I came to think of it, where we actually were was an area called Whitechapel. Which was odd, as I’d not seen a single white chapel up there in the real world before we’d started our descent.

  ‘That’s because . . .’ he went on to explain. God, would he ever say a sentence today without putting a War and Peace-length pause in the middle of it?‘. . . it’s an abandoned Tube station.’

  Abandoned. Jeez, I didn’t like the sound of that. How did a Tube station get abandoned? How did the poor Tube station feel about that?

  Did the paying public just decide one day, en masse, that ‘D’you know what? This Tube stations doing my head in. Let’s abandon the boring Tube-station bastard. Come on – up those thirty-one steps!’ Or did the station master give it roses and say, ‘It’s not you, it’s me,’ and then run off with some other station?

  ‘Have a look . . .’ here came that pause again ‘. . . round here!’

  Then he headed off to a corner of the room, so I followed.

  There was an archway in the corner I’d not seen till now, and he hurried through, like a kid at Christmas throwing himself through the gates of the grotto because Santa would be somewhere in there, and with him, some presents to take home. I followed, less enthusiastically, wondering what amazements lay in store.

  We walked down a narrow corridor. There was less light in here. A rusting Coke can sat on top of an empty electric points box on the wall. Some pretty recent gang-style graffiti was daubed on the brickwork. Michael put his torch back on and pointed it towards the ceiling.

  ‘See up there?’

  I looked. Across the top of the walls was an imposing pattern of iron latticework.

  ‘That’s the old footbridge, linking the platforms.’

  OK, so that was pretty interesting, but where were we going now?

  ‘And look.’ He shone his torch onto the opposite wall. A handrail dissected the wall, rising up like a ski slope against the brickwork. ‘That’s where the old staircase was.’

  It looked like the set of an abstract play. A handrail you could never grab on a staircase that was no longer. Or might not have been there to begin with.

  ‘And now . . .’

  He turned the corner and led me into another narrow room. Not too dissimilar to the first we’d been in. Again he found a power source and switched on some lights. Low benches lined the walls. A rusty red wishbone-shaped ventilation shaft hung on one wall, the top of it disappearing into the ceiling. Something told me this wasn’t a platform.

  Michael started explaining, with the brio of a newly trained tour guide, that the station had been closed during the Second World War and used as an air-raid shelter. In fact, we were standing
in the air-raidy bit right now. The benches were where the people used to sit when escaping the bombing raids on East London. The air vent was what kept them alive probably. I felt a shiver down my spine as he pointed to some poles on the walls, parallel to the benches, about four feet above them. Michael explained that these had held bunk beds, so they could fit more people in, and they could get cosy. Well, as cosy as you can when there are bombs going off above your head and you’re bricking it that you might emerge to find your house mown to the ground. He continued that the station and the shelter were bombed towards the end of the war, and as a result the station never reopened.

  Immediately I could see the scores of people huddled in here, trying to be brave as London was blasted to pieces. Ordinary people. People like me and Michael. The rousing camaraderie that must have existed between them all. Checking their ration books, singing ‘(There’ll Be Bluebirds Over) the White Cliffs of Dover’, cuddling their kids and telling them everything was going to be all right, once they’d beaten that bastard Hitler.

  OK, so my imagination might have been slightly clichéd at times, but it was like they were there in front of me. The ghosts of the past lingering on. Maybe they were excited that Michael and I were here. They can’t have got many visitors. Maybe we should stop, have a chinwag with them, tell them what life was like in the late twentieth century. Tell them about mobile phones and Anthea Turner. Or was that rubbing their noses in it? And come to think of it, would there really be ghosts if nobody actually died down here? I knew Michael would know if I asked him, but I didn’t want to.

  I didn’t want to think that anyone had actually died here. I wanted it to be a place of safety.

  I turned to see that Michael was pulling two cans of lager from the pockets of his trench coat. (He was going through his mistimed mod phase, complete with wannabe Paul Weller haircut.) He handed me one and cracked his open.

  ‘Thought we could stop for a drink, princess.’

  He’d started calling me ‘princess’. He’d adopted a few cockneyisms since moving to London, which felt at odds with his Liverpool accent. I pulled back the ringpull on my can and took aglug. It was warm. His was too. We both pulled a face. Then he moved to one of the walls and licked his finger. In the grime on the wall he wrote:

  MF

  Ls

  KC

  and drew a heart round it, then turned to me, grinning.

  ‘So everyone knows we’ve been here.’

  His finger was now black from the grime. He wiped it on my nose and we laughed.

  I felt so confident on my way here. I could have taken on the world, well, Michael and won, but now that I stand outside the gates of his depot, it’s like someone has taken a pin to that balloon of courage and it is slowly deflating, leaving me a shrivelled scrotum of bleurgh. I am empty of all hope, bravery and the requisite amount of chutzpah to make me walk in there and ask to see him, ask if he’s on duty, politely request an audience with him and then defiantly demand an explanation.

  It doesn’t help that it has started to rain and I didn’t bring a brolly. Nor does it help that I am dressed for a wake in my best heels and skirt and with only the flimsiest of jackets. It certainly doesn’t help that my hair, with its tendency to frizz when wet, is shrinking in curls around my face. Stand here any longer and I’ll look like a Roman centurion with one of those tight-knit boy-perms you see on urns dug up from a burial site. Without even looking in a mirror, I know that what little make-up I am wearing will be dripping down my face in rivulets of unattractiveness. Basically, I look like a bloody mess. I just know I do. I can’t move, though. Try as I might to actually turn and run away, I can’t. And try as I might, I can’t advance towards the entrance and go and announce myself either. I am catatonic with ambivalence. That is not to say I don’t care – I do – but the competing parts of me, the 50 per cent that wants to run away and the 50 per cent that knows I’ve got to run towards, are competing, and in the fight, nothing is happening. That for me is the recipe for ambivalence.

  But I know. I know if I do turn and go home now, I am in dire danger of kicking myself for the rest of the night. My incompetence will hang over me all weekend and I won’t be able to think about anything other than how frustrated I am with myself.

  The main door opens and for a second I panic. It may well be Michael coming out now, his shift over. The decision about whether to go looks like it might have been taken out of my hands. I am almost excited, but I’m anxious too. Then the decision is snatched away from me when I see it is not Michael but one of his colleagues, Laura.

  Laura, the one who always fancied him. She’s not the slimmest of ladies, and her shape is not ameliorated by the girth of her uniform topped with all-weather overcoat. Cleverly, though, she is wearing wet-look gel in her hair, so she will maintain a consistency of appearance in all weathers (like her coat). I am almost jealous.

  Almost. Because then I remind myself that wet-look gel is hideous, particularly on a burgundy perm.

  Did I really get jealous of this woman when she left flirty comments on Michael’s Facebook? No wonder he laughed in my face when I suggested she was after him. I mean, come on, it’s 2012 and she is sporting a burgundy perm with wet-look gel. She pulls a ciggie from her pocket and lights it quickly, so quickly I don’t actually see how she did it (though I’m guessing a lighter must have been involved. I’m clever like that). I step back against a wall, shielding myself from her view, but she’s not looking over anyway. She’s too busy peering at something on her phone. A website about Eighties hairdos, perhaps, seeking inspiration for her next look’.

  I put my hand in my bag and feel for the envelope inside.

  You see, I have been clever. Oh yes, very clever.

  It is miles from the Fountain Woods estate to here, so I had plenty of gin-inspired thinking time on the journey over and I came up with a rather marvellous plan.

  I mean, what’s the likelihood that what you want to happen actually happens? Just because I have decided that tonight is the night I will get closure of sorts with Michael, how realistic is it that because I turn up at his depot at six o’clock in the evening, he will be here too? And not on a train? And hanging around the mess room. And available to chat. And explain. And apologize. And beg me to take him back. And . . .

  Getting a bit ahead of myself there.

  So. Using the old adage ‘Hope for the best, expect the worst’, I got my taxi driver to drop me at Westfield, Stratford. Where – hoorah – Paperchase was still open. And I bought a jaunty card with a picture of a Jack Russell in a deckchair. And I have written him a note. It says:

  Dear Michael,

  Hope you are OK and .finding some peace.

  I would really appreciate the opportunity to have a chat with you sometime soon. I think after all our time together I deserve an explanation for why you left. Please don’t worry that I’m going to kick off, or be a bitch. I just want to hear it from the horse’s mouth, just want to hear what went wrong. I kind of know, but I need to hear you say it so I can .find some closure and move on. Call me anytime. I’m still on the same number.

  Karen x

  I chose the dog in the deckchair because it is generic enough not to raise alarm. It is not a card with all hearts and flowers on it screaming, ‘Take me back! I’m still besotted with you!!!!’ Nor is it a gothic piece of artwork that threatens, ‘Meet me or I will kill you, then myself.’ It is anodyne and harmless and – judging by how relaxed the Jack Russell is – say, ‘I am doing OK and getting on quite fine without you, thank you very much.’

  I keep my hand in my bag as I approach Laura. I clear my throat and she looks up, ready to smile, then looks slightly panicked because I have my hand in my bag, as if about to draw a gun. She relaxes a bit when I pull out the turquoise envelope.

  ‘Sorry. Er . . . is Michael Fletcher working tonight? The driver?’

  She freezes, like she is suddenly remembering my face but can’t quite place the name. She shakes her head slo
wly.

  ‘I’m Karen, his girlfriend.’ Then I quickly add, ‘As was.’

  She nods. ‘Hi, Karen. Yes, I remember you from—’

  I don’t give her time to explain. I thrust the card into her hand. ‘Could you give him this for me? Thanks!’ Then I turn and run away.

  I can imagine her watching me run and thinking Michael was right to ditch me, as I appear a bit unhinged, interrupting her sentences and running really fast towards a parade of fast-food outlets. I seek refuge from the rain in a Chicken Cottage. I manically order a chicken kebab with garlic sauce. It’s only then I look back and see that, further down the street, Laura is no longer there. I wonder if the card is in Michael’s pigeonhole yet. She will put it there, won’t she? I have no other way of contacting him. I could send him a message on Facebook, but I know he will ignore it. You see, I noticed just after he left that he’d deleted me as a friend on there. It was a painful blow at the time. I actually cried. So sending him a message on there will be about as useful as a ra-ra skirt made of chilli sauce.

  Jeez, where did that one come from?

  Oh. The bloke behind the counter is talking to me.

  ‘Chilli sauce?’ he asks, like he’s said it six times before, which is feasible.

  I shake my head. ‘No, thanks.’

  I rat-a-tat my nails on the stainless-steel counter, smile at the bloke, then cross my fingers that at some point over the weekend Michael will get my inoffensive card.

  Of course, what I really wanted to write was:

  Dear Michael,

  You fucking bastard. EXPLAIN.

  K

  No kiss. See that, sunshine? Two can play at that game!!

  But I know I’d never have heard from him again, so I had to tread carefully and be charming and lovely and . . .

  God, this is exhausting. It is completely knackering me out, whittling away at my emotional core, thinking about him and his departure and my future and my house and my job and my history and my loneliness and my bruised ego and my hair and my . . . lack of Michael. I have to stop this. I have to do something that will give me some closure, just in case he never offers it to me.