Underground

by Tobias Hill

  A double-decker bus goes past, a wall of red metal briefly cutting off the light. Then it changes gears, accelerating north towards Kentish Town and Holloway. The afternoon glare catches Casimir full in the face. He frowns against it, raises a hand to shade his eyes. A stubborn man, still looking, still looking although he knows that she is gone.

  ‘Do you want a Neon Nerd?’

  The shop is full of children and the smell of chip vats. Mrs Navratil is behind the scoured-chrome counter, ruddy-faced as she shovels out fried meat. She sees Casimir as the door swings shut behind him. Calls to him without looking up, ‘It’s Friday. Your rent is late again. Help me with these.’

  He looks down. There is a small black girl beside him, her hair braided, the braids curled flat with red ladybird ties. She is cradling a paper parcel of chips in one hand. With the other she is holding out a packet of sweets. Casimir shakes his head. ‘No. You must not offer sweets to strangers.’

  ‘Mister Casimir?’

  He looks up. Mrs Navratil stares at him. Eyes wide, brows raised, almost aggressive. ‘I need these portions served now.’

  ‘Yes.’ He nods and tries to make his way to the counter. Something is holding him back. The girl with the sweets is tugging his uniform jacket. He looks down at her again.

  ‘Are you an Underground man?’

  He smiles. It makes him look older, the skin at the ends of his eyes creasing. ‘Yes. Yes, I am.’ He pulls gently and moves through to the counter.

  There are six chicken parts on the hotplate, their skins yellowed and thickened with oil. He scrubs the grime from his hands with green soap, then works with an efficient minimum of movement, folding the thighs and breasts on clean squares of newspaper. Wrapping the corners in, rolling the paper tight.

  ‘There was a letter for you.’

  ‘What did you do with it?’

  She snorts laughter, leaning one shoulder down as she lifts a metal basket of fish from the oil. ‘You think I do what? Fry them up and sell them?’

  She looks over at him, still smiling. He is not embarrassed. He looks away because it is not possible to meet her stare. He would have to leave, and he cannot afford to leave. Navratil’s rooms are cheaper than the hostels. The extra work he does here is not unpleasant, is easier than paying more. These are the facts of their relationship.

  ‘It’s in your room. Under the door. I didn’t go in.’

  He wraps the final portion of chicken. Gives it to the stretched-out hands of the last two children. A tall boy with a scar denting the skin of his forehead. A smaller boy with the same eyes, angry and eager. The shop is almost empty. He looks round at Mrs Navratil. ‘Thank you.’

  She is already turned away, wetting a cleaning cloth in the sink. ‘I need the rent by tomorrow, please.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He wipes his hands, drops the kitchen paper into the bin and then takes out the black rubbish sack, knotting it as he holds it up.

  Outside in the street someone screams, high-pitched. He looks round quickly.

  Through the plate window he can see the children fighting. One of them is hunched in the gutter between two cars. Lightly built, younger or just smaller than the children bunched round it.

  There is a bag of fish and chips split open on the pavement. One of the bigger children picks up a piece of fish, lobs it at the child between the cars. The window is frosted with condensation, Casimir can’t make out faces or details. He can hear other children, jeering and swearing. One of them pushes forward to kick at the smaller child.

  It sprawls against a car and the alarm goes off. The sound is loud and panicky in the narrow street. The children scatter. After a moment the child in the gutter stands up. It wipes its face once, steps out between the cars and begins to run.

  He turns away. Mrs Navratil is doubled over the hotplates, scrubbing at the chrome. She stops to wring out the cloth over the sink, her teeth bared with the effort. The door to the back rooms is unlocked and he goes through and closes it behind him.

  His room is not tidy or cluttered, just bare. There is a grey metal bed with a plastic-covered mattress. A wardrobe hanging open and half-empty, a mirror on the inside of the door reflecting back the room’s darkness and linoleum. On the wall beside the wardrobe are the thick, black lumps of gas and electricity meters. There is the small click of their mechanisms, and the faint sound of radio music from the tenants on the floor below.

  There is no desk, no chair. On the floor by the bed are three books piled together: the London A–Z, a book of Zbigniew Herbert’s poetry in Polish and a copy of the same book translated into English. There are other belongings in the room, but not many. Casimir does not lose things here because there is little to lose. He likes it that way. He has lived here for eight years.

  The letter is against the wall, pushed back by the open door. He shuts the door, picks up the letter, walks to the window.

  The net curtains are closed and he opens them and sits down on the floor with his back against the wall. The feel of a day’s work is good in his shoulders. The last daylight filters in across his hands.

  The envelope is small and cheap, the blue-grey colour of soap and water. The light air-mail paper has been sealed tight, there is no room to open it with a nail or knife. The postmark has been stamped twice, each black circle skewed across the Polish three-zloty stamps. Casimir can make out the town name ‘Gliwice’ only because it is what he expects.

  The handwritten address is unsteady but not difficult to read. An effort has been made to make it legible. It is the way people write on the Underground, when the train is moving around them. Or when they are old or weak, hands travelling uneasily across the paper. Casimir taps the contents down, tears the envelope across the top.

  There is a note and a Polaroid photograph, the colours run where someone has touched the surface too soon after exposure. Casimir turns the snapshot over in his hands, looking for a date or time. But there is nothing except the familiar image, a view of the Labedy steelworks far off towards Gliwice town. Factory smoke rises in the distance, straight lines of it in a windless sky. Nearer in are trees, a back road. Meadow scrub, the rough weeds that grow quickly over wasteland.

  In the foreground an old man is smiling hard into the camera. He looks anxious, as if he is trying to say something. He is drunk; Casimir recognizes it in the way he stands. Arms folded, holding himself together.

  The man is wearing a quilted check shirt, a cardigan and dark trousers, all discoloured by the Polaroid’s over-exposure. His hair is almost gone now, the last white strands combed across the reddened scalp. Nothing in him shows that he is a cruel man, or that he has killed. That he makes money from death. In this sense his appearance lies. This is how Casimir thinks of it.

  He leans forward, hand supporting head, fingers combed under his own black hair. There is very little expression on his face. The anger he feels is internal, a private thing. He opens the note and reads it once, his eyes moving quickly along the uneven lines:

  Wittlin Farm, 22 August 1996

  Happy Birthday – Happy returns.

  Twenty-eight you are now. Good for you! Like you are, I am learning English. Can you read this? I want to know. Now it is the Wittlins go into Gliwice – Tomek and small Eliza and Zofia. Eliza and Zofia to the watering place. Tomek to the Laboratory of Haematology. And then to the post. When will you come home? Here is Piotr. For you he has taken this photo of me.

  Yours sincerely,

  Father

  When he has finished, Casimir puts the note and the photograph back in the envelope. He stands up, opens the window and looks out. The daylight is fading quickly as the sun goes down behind the glasswork of Waterloo station. From here Casimir can see the Houses of Parliament upriver. In the low light, the stonework of St Steven’s Tower is the colour of rust.

  Below his window are the Lower Marsh backyards. Oil drums and piles of rubbish, white in the deep shadow. The sound of radio music is clearer now, coming up from the first-floor
rooms. It is like the music the Underground girl was singing on the train. Like, but not the same.

  He leans out, forearms crossed on the windowsill. The letter is in his hands. He tears it in half again and again. Then he opens his hands. The pieces catch the sun as they turn and separate. He loses sight of them as they fall below the level of light.

  He closes the window, goes to the bed and sits down. The room is almost dark now. He picks up the books of poetry and opens them. The rough pages hiss against his fingers as he reads, head down, not minding the dark. First the Polish, his old language, then the English. Making the words his own.

  People ran to the shelters —

  he said his wife had hair

  in whose depths one could hide.

  *

  ‘Will the passenger who’s lost a five-litre container of salad cream please come to the ticket office? Customers are advised to take care of their belongings. This is a platform announcement.’

  Overhead the tannoy is distorted, as a voice heard through water. Casimir moves in a low ape-slouch down the platform crawl-space. A yard above him is a thick glass manhole cover, set flush into the southbound platform. Light flits across his face as passengers walk above him.

  He is checking for signs of trespass – graffiti, the smell of urine. There is nothing except the stench of lime and clay. Cave-like, as if the concrete is reverting to natural stone. His radio phone coughs and stutters as he shifts sacks of Blue Diamond concrete, set hard into their slumped, bent shapes.

  Somewhere down here, people have lived, he thinks. Not people in transit, but people sleeping and eating. Living. The idea disturbs Casimir and he stops, frowning, trying to work out why.

  He thinks of people hiding in the station, from the cold or the police. Casimir can sympathize with that. What disturbs him is what the Underground will do to people. It is where Casimir has come to ground, but he knows it can be an unsafe hiding place. Things are less mundane down here, more precarious. There is always the way the Underground can contain things, trapping them in its corners, hiding them, making them stronger.

  Adam’s voice comes through on the cellular. ‘Anything, Cass?’

  He unclips the receiver, holds it nearer his face. ‘Nothing. No one has been here. There are more chambers to check.’

  ‘You check them then. You do that.’

  He frowns. The supervisor’s voice comes through again. Faint, weakened. ‘Always careful, that’s the ticket. Good lad.’

  ‘Adams? Is anything wrong?’

  ‘I’m out of fags, Cass, that’s what’s wrong. Look after the office for me, will you? I’m just going upstairs.’

  There is a clunk as Adams’s transmitter is laid down. The line is left open and Casimir waits, only curious, listening for the sound of Adams’s voice or movements. There is nothing except the manic chatter of the other workers, a shriek of laughter. He can hear Sievwright and Weaver, their voices tinny and childlike with distance. The frown eases from his face as he goes forward again, listening as he checks the last yards of crawl-space.

  ‘I’m telling you, it’s the dog’s bollocks. All bikes, no dykes. Five minutes in Bar Rumba and you’re sorted. We should get up there tonight. Have an interfere.’

  ‘What are you like? Dykes and bikes. You sad old man.’

  ‘I’m not sad. I’m not sad, mate. ‘Cos tonight I’m getting my ride, you know what I mean?’

  Wires spill from the wall next to him, a tangle of colour like a map of the Underground itself. Casimir touches them carefully with the tips of his fingers, wary of loose current. He reaches down for the radio again.

  ‘Sievwright. Mister Sievwright?’ His raised voice ricochets along the narrow space. There is a clatter of movement from the far end of the line.

  ‘Depends who’s asking.’

  ‘Casimir. There is loose wiring in the crawl-space under platform three.’

  ‘Is there? Blow me.’ Sievwright’s voice is amused, barely tolerant.

  ‘Yes. Do you know why?’

  ‘Maybe it felt uptight, you know? I reckon it just wanted to loosen up a bit. You should try it.’

  ‘Sievwright, I need to know if people have been down here.’

  ‘No one’s been down there in months, mate.’ The worker’s amusement is already fading to boredom. A hint of aggression. ‘Anything else you want to know? Football score, price of fish?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good.’

  The line clicks shut. Casimir looks over the wiring one more time, then clambers on to the chamber’s far end. There is a second manhole cover here, old hobnailed wood, and Casimir opens it and goes up into a room full of ranked fuse boxes, power switches and bulbous glass insulators. He opens the fuse-room door and walks out along the public platform.

  It is nearly noon and the air from the ventilation shafts is sweet and damp like old leaves, the smell of surface weather carried down through the intervening clay. People turn to look at him as he passes. Their expressions are startled and guilty, or half-smiling as if with recognition. He knows it is the uniform they see, not him. A kind of invisibility. Are you an Underground man? he remembers, and he smiles as he reaches the control-room door.

  Adams is no longer there. Sievwright and Weaver the trainee are still arguing, leaning by the rack of orange visibility suits, the suits leaning back towards them like an audience. Casimir nods to them, goes past, sits down. Beside him at the counter Oluwo is bent over paperwork, face lined with concentration.

  He looks up at the monitor screens. Two cameras cover each of the four platforms, the crossroads of northbound and southbound lines. There are elevated shots of the escalator shaft, the cross-tunnels, the surface and subterranean concourses. The monitors are the office’s windows, full of flickering light.

  Crowds pass from screen to screen. A tattooed man with no shirt, belly huge and mottled in the camera’s abrupt light. A group of Japanese girls, black-haired, walking close. Travellers, not commuters.

  Casimir is almost certain he will never see them again. He likes that about London, the way it keeps people apart. It simplifies things, like a room bare of belongings. Except there is the girl, he thinks. The Underground girl. Sievwright and Weaver chatter behind him.

  ‘How much is it then, Bar Rumba?’

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘No problem. First Saturday of the month, isn’t it? I’m well wedged. All I need now is Claudia Schiffer and five pints of Grolsch. Two double shifts I did this week. You weren’t in on Tuesday, were you?’

  ‘I only started Wednesday.’

  ‘You’re lucky. You missed the accident. It’s been nine, ten years since we got one that bad. Some Care in the Community bloke pushing people off platforms. Ten years at least. It’s the worst thing about the job. The accidents.’

  The crowds are like water, Casimir thinks. Huge and quick and mindless. They collect along the platforms and then empty out into trains and cross-tunnels. He tries to imagine what would happen if the momentum went wrong somehow, the crowd failing to drain away. He thinks of how many people have travelled through the station since it was dug, a hundred years ago. Whole populations hardly touching in the Tube’s huge interior, its warren of halls and stairwells. It seems like a fragile apparatus. One accident could break it.

  He checks each screen in turn, half-listening to the other men. Workers in ash-grey suits are crammed in on the Moorgate line, running late for their Saturday overtime. By the platform telephones there is an area of space, as if the crowd is pressing against some invisible obstruction. At the centre of the vacuum stands a woman dressed completely in white.

  Casimir sighs and sits back as he recognizes her. The woman’s black face and hair are whitened with flour or paint. Her hands are covered in long pale gloves. Her mouth is moving, but even from this distance Casimir can see she is mumbling, not really talking. On the monotone screen she shines, surreally bright.

  Casimir ra
ises his voice, loud enough for Oluwo to hear, not loud enough for the other workers. ‘Rose is back.’

  Oluwo’s chair creaks as he stands up, comes over. ‘She looks older. Shall I go to her?’

  ‘No.’ Casimir watches the woman. It has been a year since he has seen Rose in the station. Then she was on the platforms every day. Leaner, more threatening. Eating on the platform benches; white meats, white milk. He wonders where she has been for a year, to make her look so old. ‘No, leave her. She is doing no harm.’

  He looks up at Oluwo, smiles. He remembers the worker carrying Rose out of the station, his scarred face emotionless. Then, Rose had trapped two Asian children in a deserted side-passage. She had covered them with white flour. Rubbing it into their hands and faces.

  Oluwo nods at Casimir, not smiling, already turning away.

  He looks back at the Moorgate screen. Blocked out behind Rose is another figure. Now Rose begins to move away, Casimir can make out a fat man in a logo T-shirt, jeans and backpack. One person at least who is not scared of the woman in white.

  ‘Cheers anyway, for the club entry. We should get a crowd together, like an Underground night out. Oy, Olly! Casimir! Are you up for a bit of clubbing tonight? Cass – What’s his other name?’

  Laughter. Sievwright’s voice is quiet, jeering. ‘Mikhail, probably. Rasputin or something. I don’t know. No one uses it anyway.’

  The fat man is smoothing something out against the telephones with one hand; political posters, Casimir guesses, Keep Britain White With Dynamite or worse. There will be time to go down there later and take them down. He looks back at Rose. She is still singing as she moves away, staring people down. Avid but furtive, like the Underground trainspotters and the platform missionaries – Jews for Jesus, Nation of Islam. The Underground is full of Roses, Casimir thinks. Anyone with enough to hide from. Like me.

  The poster hanger turns away from the kiosks and moves through the nearest commuters, suddenly graceful. Casimir thinks how fast he is. Big in the bone but muscular, the weight seeming to count for nothing. Already he is almost out of sight. Taken back into the crowd.