Eleven Lines to Somewhere

by Alyson Rudd

  She scoured her trashed emails but could find nothing about Jersey so sent an email to Poppy, the hippy who probably hardly ever used her phone but was the only other member of the hiking gang she had swapped details with. Sure enough, it took two days for Poppy to forward the itinerary of the proposed ferry from Poole to St Helier in mid-September when the school holidays were over and hotels and fares were cheaper.

  Before she replied to Ed, she booked her place. He could find out, if he wanted to, that she had only reserved a spot after she had heard from him. She was not sure she cared. She convinced herself, almost, that she would be happy to travel to the Channel Islands with or without him.

  Yup, I’m booked on that one

  she typed. She waited a few seconds before pressing send but then panicked that he might be at that very minute on his phone and would be able to see the signs, those little grey dots, of her indecision, of her desperation.

  He replied almost immediately.

  Then so am I.

  And that was that. There would be nothing else, no more contact until mid-September. She knew that, he knew that, and, weirdly, Hana decided it was extremely classy of him. Classy of them both, in fact. She lay face down on her bed as if fourteen again and held her pillow with both hands in the tightest grip she could muster. When Poppy emailed to say how lovely it would be to have a buddy her age on the hike, Hana could hardly suppress her annoyance. No, Poppy, she thought, we will hardly have time to speak to each other, but later she was forced to concede that Poppy was a handy backstop should Ed be playing an unkind game.

  Poppy was, it seemed, waiting for her as she arrived at the departures lounge. The rain pelted against the windows but it was rain that had long since cleared Jersey and the weekend ahead would be breezy, sunny and warm.

  ‘It’s the cream teas that get me every time,’ Poppy was saying and Hana nodded as earnestly as if Poppy was explaining how she had found a cure for diabetes. Perhaps the cure was to avoid scones and jam. She nodded because she could hear Ed, his deep, carefree laughter in response to something the organizer had said. She nodded to seem unneedy. Hana remembered she was already booked onto this trip before Ed contacted her.

  ‘I came as a child because you didn’t need a passport,’ Poppy was saying, ‘and they speak English and it was a sort of fake foreign holiday and I remember how embarrassed I was when I got back to school and we hadn’t been abroad at all. Just pretended to be. But the cream teas were magnificent. Better than Devon. I hope they’re still the same.’

  An image appeared in Hana’s head of Poppy’s long, straggly hair blowing across her plate and whipping clotted cream across her nose and she struggled not to giggle. Instead she spluttered and Ed rubbed the palm of his hand between her shoulders.

  ‘Getting overexcited, ladies?’ he said.

  Poppy glowered because she remembered now how Ed had monopolized Hana the last time they walked together and she could tell it was about to happen again.

  ‘I thought we were a pair for this one,’ she whispered sullenly and Hana puffed out her cheeks before giving Poppy a hug.

  ‘It’s so good to see you again,’ she said in a noncommittal sort of way as Ed tugged at her arm and pulled her to the quietest corner.

  ‘How can we dump the broad in the long skirt?’ he said, in a Bronx accent, his eyes twinkling.

  Hana thought she might simmer if he tried to pretend nothing had happened, that he had not made her throw her coat in a bin, but now, now she was here – about to board a boat to the land of cream teas, twinkling seas, castles and lighthouses – she thought it might be for the best, after all, if they just forgot all about the icy cold of Regent’s Park and a tall girl called Naomi.

  Chapter 25

  Isak was not stupid. He had travelled from Cambridge to King’s Cross to Oxford Street to St Paul’s so many times that he could, of course, reverse the journey without help. But they were not expecting him. It was a Thursday afternoon and he stood in reception, his long back stooped with the tiredness of a grief he did not understand.

  They tried to phone Ulla but she did not answer and Isak’s most recent counsellor was in Prague in expectation of a marriage proposal. They decided that Isak could stay the night and speak to Christie, a new recruit, about his stepfather’s death. The idea was to give Isak the chance to vent his pain and fears, to calm him down while they worked out if his mother would continue to pay for the same routine.

  Christie was keen. Christie was enthusiastic. Christie told Isak about all the ways Andrew could live on in Isak’s heart, in his dreams, that he would see him in a rainbow or a sunset, hear his voice in a crowd and that one day that would be a source of comfort. Some people, Christie said, choose to wear their grief like they would wear their favourite T-shirt. It was all about acceptance, of learning how to live this new life, one in which you would be sad but slowly less sad. Christie was interrupted by a blackbird flying into the window with an unsettling thump. Christie was keen, Christie was enthusiastic and told Isak that the bird was like him, stunned and in pain, but it would dust itself down and fly away and soon be able to enjoy the skies and trees and the breadcrumbs thrown by the children in the park.

  ‘Andrew said not to feed birds bread,’ Isak said, frowning.

  Christie beamed.

  ‘There, you see, Andrew is with you now because you remember all his advice, all his kindnesses. He is not truly gone if he is loved by you and remembered by you. Would you like to talk about what you loved most about him?’

  Isak launched into a long exposition that lacked punctuation and revolved mainly around hot showers in new swimwear followed by bowls of spaghetti. It left Christie feeling uncomfortable and with a sense that he had been unprepared for the session, that elements of Isak’s backstory were missing from his file. On the other hand, Isak was in better shape than when he had arrived and Christie made sure he was there to bid him farewell after Isak had eaten his usual Friday lunch of a baked potato, plenty of salt, no butter, sour cream and chives, washed down with iced sparkling water, a vase on the table containing a single yellow dahlia.

  The clinic staff felt good about themselves. Morally good and also good about their medical choices. Instead of billing Andrew, they would simply bill Ulla and soon enough Isak would be back to his old routine. He left the reception area, straight-backed, waving his forefinger in time to the Vivaldi that was usually on in the background, the ‘Four Seasons’ having been deemed the only piece of music none among the staff and none among the patients disliked. It went down very well indeed with the people who paid the bills. Sometimes they switched to Handel but it never quite fitted the vibe correctly. At Christmas they played, with success, ‘Carols from King’s’ and at Easter there was the peculiar tradition of ‘Peter and the Wolf’. But mostly it was Vivaldi.

  ‘Autumn,’ Isak said and Christie nodded.

  A taxi, as usual, took him to the station. The driver, as usual, was sullen. There were never any tips on this run. It was just loads of distracted fares whether it be worried relatives or patients without social graces. Sometimes, they acted as if the driver was a member of the clinical staff, another stage in bloody self-discovery. As they overtook the students on their battered, flat-tyred bicycles and pulled into the station, Isak was on autopilot. He sat on the train bound for King’s Cross, humming a little to the ‘Autumn’ in his head, and then went towards the Victoria line where he alighted at Oxford Circus, only to stand stock-still on the platform, the commuters exhaling in exasperation into his face, or rather his neck, for he was taller than most of them.

  He had no need to buy new swimming trunks; he had no one to swim with any more and he had no cash with him anyway. All he had was St Paul’s and his bridge, the thought of which cheered him a little, but then it would be back to the flat and his mother would be weepy or clingy or distant and cold and he liked none of these versions. He liked the Ulla who was serene and elegantly dressed and who squeezed his shoulders when she placed
the bowl of spaghetti bolognese in front of him, his white hair still damp, his eyes mildly bloodshot, his Speedos in his bathroom bin. He liked the Ulla who let him lie on his bed watching the CGI cold mountains of Winterfell, the blood on the snow, the sex between beautiful young men.

  He was sad and suddenly very lonely. He did not want to cry – not in front of all these serious commuters – but neither did he want to leave the comfort of strangers, and he did like the Tube and its enveloping warmth so long as it was not too busy. He followed the signs for the Bakerloo line and was swept into a carriage heading for Elephant and Castle. That sounded funny, he thought, but when he arrived he shuddered at the thought of a street he did not know and headed back towards Waterloo. He would keep travelling. He would try the Northern line next, even though he was tired now.

  Christie had said he would feel bad but that he was a bird, he could take a deep breath and fly. He had even been on a train that a bird, a pigeon, had caught too. It had pecked calmly at the floor where someone had dropped a Burger King carton and its cargo of half-eaten onion rings. He had wondered how the pigeon would know where to get off, if it would be lost to its family, but Andrew had later explained that pigeons were very good at working out where trains had taken them. Maybe that was why he was catching all these trains, he was turning into not a pigeon but a raven – a clever raven like the ones used to send scrolls from King’s Landing and Gulltown. It was just as Christie had predicted, he would not always be sad and lost, he would fly to Andrew. He could hear Christie urging him on. ‘Go for it. Isak, you can pick yourself up, see Andrew again, fly to him’ – and there it was, a small gap in the platform’s footfall, so he could run, run to the edge and let the rush of the air lift his bedraggled wings.

  Chapter 26

  She did not wear a high-vis vest but was in a smart trouser suit. She was shadowing a pair of British Transport Police officers. Their afternoon had been not too dissimilar to the days she had spent on her long vigil. They alighted and they disembarked. They climbed escalators and descended them. They had a word with a couple of lads in the tunnel heading to the Jubilee line at Waterloo who were trying to run the wrong way along the travelator. They walked slowly as if the air underground was precious and special and needed to be savoured by connoisseurs. Sylvie listened and watched attentively. The pace suited her. The job might just be one she was prepared to train for.

  ‘Will you be back tomorrow?’ Michaela asked her. ‘Not too bored?’

  ‘No, not at all, I’m really grateful to you allowing me to tag along.’

  Michaela pointed subtly to Clem, her partner.

  ‘Nice to have a new face, a pretty one,’ she said, ‘one that smiles.’

  Clem threw them both a sneering glance but Sylvie guessed he was a good bloke, really, if maybe not keen on being outnumbered by women.

  The next day they supped the coffee that Sylvie had brought them on a tray from Starbucks, in the control room at Waterloo. She shyly offered them muffins. Clem refused but Michaela was enjoying being spoiled by a woman with such pretty hair she was in danger of developing a crush on her. The women brushed the crumbs from their laps and then all three went promenading.

  It was not promenading, Sylvie knew that, but the way they sauntered, so casually, looking left and right as if taking in some breathtaking scenery, amused her. They told her you become atuned to the way people behave, able to tell if they are in a hurry for work or in a hurry for a date.

  ‘How can you possibly tell the difference?’ she asked.

  ‘Lipstick and perfume,’ Clem said sourly but then he brightened when he realized that Sylvie was genuinely interested.

  ‘It’s difficult to explain,’ he said. ‘There are obvious pointers, like the time of day, what they are wearing – but people who are late, socially, won’t run too fast in case they perspire, they sort of shuffle quickly rather than run. But we don’t care really about that, we care about those who sweat when not running, who turn a corner when they see us coming towards them and then of course—’

  He was interrupted by a message in his ear.

  ‘Left here and then down, now,’ he said. ‘Northern southbound.’

  They all three ran with purpose and then halted suddenly.

  ‘We’re looking for…’ Clem said and then he stopped talking and coughed and Michaela nodded. Sylvie felt their bodies tense. Ahead of them on the platform – which was expecting a Northern line train to Morden – a young man was stomping and thumping his head. As the wind of the approaching train picked up the man turned his head maniacally and began to run towards the lights in the tunnel.

  ‘He’s a jumper,’ Clem said and he turned to speak to Michaela and his shadow but Sylvie had already skipped ahead of him like an athletic ballerina. She did not need confirmation from Clem that this was a jumper, she had waited so long to see one again that she had, without knowing it, become an expert herself and she darted purposefully between the heaving congregation of passengers, glad of her new trainers with their firm grip. As the man, a boy really, raised his long arms – the way a large bird might lift its wings in preparation for a tough lift-off from choppy water – she sprang forward and gripped, then pulled on his small black rucksack, which caused him to trip and fall onto the platform just as the train pulled in. He curled immediately into a ball and breathed heavily, desperately.

  Clem spoke into his walkie talkie. Several passengers gasped, one screamed, the rest either did not notice or deliberately avoided the scene, while fervently hoping that the incident did not mean the train would be held up. A further two officials arrived and the man was half carried towards the surface, his striking white-blond hair bobbing merrily as if the whole escapade had been a joke, as funny as a pigeon in a carriage.

  Clem closed the door as the young man was seen by a doctor and turned to Sylvie to tell her that a shadow was not meant to intervene.

  ‘Not AT ALL,’ he said, his face reddened with an anger born partly of the knowledge that had not this dainty creature acted as swiftly as she had, the boy might have jumped before Clem or Michaela could have reached him.

  Michaela, knowing Sylvie’s story because she had quizzed Stocky Stan about her, tapped Clem’s shoulder firmly and then took her to one side.

  ‘Well done,’ she said, searching Sylvie’s face for a reaction.

  ‘Thank you,’ Sylvie said and Michaela would later describe her expression as gently and tiredly triumphant.

  Ryan’s heart sank. Sylvie had sent him a text asking him to meet her for a drink at the cocktail bar overlooking the station concourse they had frequented back when he had no idea of the depth of her attachment to the Underground. She was already there, the same drinks, two Appletinis, on the small table in front of her.

  Perhaps she was leaving him, giving in. He steadied himself for her to say she was moving in with her parents and would be commuting from Reading, traversing the Tube before heading back to Berkshire every evening. He had tried, he told himself, tried more than most boyfriends would have tried.

  And now he tried to smile.

  ‘Hello, and, er – cheers,’ he said, talking a gulp of a sit-com drink.

  ‘It’s over,’ she said.

  ‘I tried,’ he said, mechanically.

  ‘That’s why it’s over,’ she laughed and he frowned. Sylvie had never laughed like this before and for some reason an image of Tinkerbell – from the animated version of Peter Pan he had watched as a child – popped into his head. Sylvie’s laughter was like a happy wind chime.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he said, taking another gulp.

  ‘I mean, Mr Kennedy, that I saved a boy today and I absolutely do not want to travel on another train ever again. Except to get home, later, obviously.’ She began laughing again and then forced herself to pull a serious face.

  ‘It’s over. Thanks to you, it’s over.’

  Ryan wanted to know all the details and to know nothing at all. He was worried she might find a loophole and be
come downcast and lose the Tinkerbell laughter and start commuting again.

  ‘Are you sure – how can you be sure?’ he said. ‘I mean, this is wonderful news, but are you sure?’

  She kissed him playfully.

  ‘Don’t blame you for the cynicism,’ she said, ‘but you’ll see.’

  Ryan felt slightly overwhelmed. He had fallen for a pale and serious mysterious girl with nearly red hair who had become a dilemma of a girlfriend, someone with whom he might not have a future, who had been stuck as if in a fairy-tale labyrinth waiting for a wicked stepmother to release her from a spell. Even before the spell was broken she had become the woman he suspected would bring him to life, to a way of living and loving that was not wrapped in the absence of Ellen. And now, he was just a bloke, any sort of ordinary bloke, who most people would say was punching above his weight with a woman who was gorgeous and carefree and capable of anything.

  He knew that for certain. He could tell Sylvie would be energetic, busy, successful. She would make up for lost time if the compulsion was really at an end. Would he spoil the moment by putting it to the test?

  ‘I’ll bunk off on Monday,’ he said, ‘and we’ll celebrate properly by taking the bus into town and walking everywhere and being tourists.’

  ‘I’d like that,’ she said.

  Paul accepted he was not media savvy and that he would work on a script in collaboration with people who were familiar with how such TV shows evolved and yet he was beginning to lose his enthusiasm for the whole project.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ he said to his half-naked producer, ‘I’m a parody. How do you keep a straight face?’

  The tipping point for his exasperation had come as Lloyd, a short, lean editor with round, blue-rimmed spectacles too big for his, face had tapped at the pages in front of him.

  ‘Diseases, yes, I can see, quite obviously, they are an important issue but we’re not making medical drama here. This is science done well but with fun. The nation needs cheering up not dragged down by—’ he looked down, ‘Gaucher’s disease or, or Usher syndrome.’