Underground

by Tobias Hill

It is a cold night. The concourse is crowded with people, waiting in the light and the warmth until the station closes. Casimir can feel them watching the woman, their interest and detachment.

  The dog woman begins to pull things out of her coat, piling the objects in her lap. A green canvas wallet and a black leather purse. A Knickerbox plastic bag, small and unrumpled. A full hip bottle of Rebel Yell bourbon. A necklace of garnets, tiny and bright and blood-black.

  ‘Tell me something.’

  He looks up. The dog woman is leaning towards him. Hissing, owl-eyed. ‘What’s behind the doors? All the doors underground. They all go somewhere. There’s something on the other side. You know, don’t you?’

  ‘The doors?’

  She picks up the Knickerbox bag, distracted. Smiles, sweet-faced. ‘The last time I wore these, I was invisible for six months.’

  Blue light flashes in across the oxblood tiles of the concourse walls. The dog woman stands unsteadily. Two policewomen come in from the western entrance. They nod at Casimir and he steps back.

  ‘Right then. Are you coming with us?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’ The dog woman looks back at Casimir, still smiling. ‘Goodbye, then, Abyssinia.’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  He watches them go, the voices of the police hushed, the crackle of their radios loud as they hustle through the crowd. He feels a sudden sense of regret and guilt, wishing that he had let the woman go.

  ‘You’re bleeding.’

  He turns round. The Underground girl is standing by the emergency stairs, against the wall. Watching him.

  He looks down. The uniform trousers are short on him, and the skin of his ankles is bare and startlingly red. His feet are cold. He realizes his socks are soaked through with blood. But the Underground girl is talking to him again. He stares back up.

  ‘I said I’ve seen you before. What’s your name?’

  ‘Casimir.’

  She meets his eyes without blinking. Not aggressive, just considering. ‘I saw you on the train.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re very tall. How tall are you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t –’

  ‘Do you work here?’ Her eyes stare through him, making their own private calculations.

  ‘At the station, yes. I’ve worked here for years.’

  ‘I thought you were a ticket man.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because you were watching me on the train.’

  He stops. Her gaze stops him. It is the way crowds sometimes look at those outside themselves: without expression, with no need to communicate. He thinks of it as almost inhuman and, briefly, he wonders what she wants from him.

  She is waiting for him to answer. He moves a hand inexpresssively. ‘Yes. I thought you were beautiful. I think I have also seen you here before.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  She is wearing the same clothes he saw her in last week, chinos and jacket. They look clean and he wonders where she washes them. There are ink marks on the back of her hands, like the first time. Her hair is loose except for two rat’s-tail braids, tucked back behind her ears.

  ‘It makes me think of blood, “Casimir”.’

  ‘Why?’

  She shrugs. ‘It just does. What’s your first name?’

  He sees that her skin is freckled. Even now, in autumn, when the sun is weak. ‘How do you know Casimir isn’t my first name?’

  She shrugs again. It comes to him that she looks a little like Rebecca Saville. There is a similarity in the leanness of her neck and cheeks. Her skin is paler than Saville’s, even her lips lacking redness; a face without colour, except for the freckles and eyes. It makes her look cold.

  ‘My first names are Casimir Ariel.’

  ‘Ariel.’ She repeats it carefully, the first vowel long and open. Ah, like a sigh. It shocks him, a physical feeling like static; the sound of her voice, saying his name. He sees that there is expression in her eyes, but that it is kept back; the way she smiles without it going beyond her eyes.

  He takes one step towards her. She doesn’t move.

  ‘Casimir! You there?’

  ‘Yes.’ He looks round. Leynes is at the door of the ticket office, silhouetted in the bright light.

  ‘There’s an ambulance coming for Sievwright and a van for the dogs.’

  ‘Is he in pain?’

  ‘He’s not in pleasure anyway. He needs shots and stitches. The police are coming back for a statement. You OK talking to them?’

  ‘Of course.’

  He expects her to be gone when he turns back, but she is still there, waiting for him. He tries to think of something else to say. Anything that will keep her there. It is hard, knowing so little about her.

  ‘You have writing on your hands.’

  She looks down, then back up at him. ‘From clubs. Don’t you know?’

  When he shakes his head, she smiles properly. Eyes narrowing, head cocked fractionally to one side. It brings warmth to her face, he thinks. A car goes past outside, stereo bass echoing through the concourse. The girl looks away towards it and then at the western entrance, where the police came from. He can see her thinking, the alertness of her.

  The smile is already gone when she looks back at Casimir. ‘Nightclubs, concerts, parties. Sometimes they stamp your hand, it’s like a ticket. If I know people, I get in free. It’s somewhere to go at nights. To keep warm.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Alice. Jacqueline. Lin.’

  ‘All of them?’

  ‘Yes. I use them all, and others too. You can choose, if you like. I have trouble with names.’

  Trouble with names. He turns the phrase over in his mind. ‘Jacqueline is your family name?’

  ‘I don’t have a family.’

  She doesn’t smile. He wants to apologize, or to make her smile again. He feels so slow, and speechless, as if English is a new language again and every sentence an effort.

  She squints up at the lights and the station clock. It is almost twelve o’clock, closing time. ‘I have to go now.’

  ‘Why now?’

  She shrugs. ‘Places to go, people to see.’ Already she is distracted, buttoning up her jacket. ‘You should clean up the blood. Get some antiseptic.’

  ‘I would like to see you again.’

  ‘I know. Here.’ She holds something out to him. It is a glass tray, smaller than her palm, cracked and dusty. ‘You forgot this.’

  He takes it, turns it in his own hands. There is a ridge around the top, where a lid would fit. On the bottom a brand-name is embossed in tiny letters: VICTORY SULPHUR MATCHES.

  ‘I’ll see you there.’

  ‘Wait –’

  He looks up. Alice is walking down the emergency stairs, out of sight. She doesn’t look back. Casimir thinks of the abandoned station, the echo of singing. JACK UNION on the age-cracked walls. He stands quite still, waiting until she is gone.

  ‘Mister Kazimierski, is it?’

  ‘Casimir. I prefer Casimir.’

  They are in the back of the ticket office, pressed together on rickety Formica chairs. The policewoman is almost as large as Casimir himself, broad-shouldered and masculine. She sits with a notepad open on her nyloned knees.

  ‘That’s not the name on your Polish passport. At least according to London Transport.’ He sees that her eyes are grey and quite beautiful. She doesn’t seem to blink, although she looks away from him often. Down at her pen, up at the clock. ‘Have you anglicized your name recently?’

  ‘This is irrelevant.’

  ‘Fine. Mister Casimir. My name is Detective Inspector Phelps.’ She frowns, not offering her hand. ‘Is this a bad time to talk? You look busy.’

  ‘No.’

  He shifts on the small chair. In his jacket pocket he can feel the glass matchbox, cool against his chest but becoming warmer. He thinks of her eyes, the smile held in. Alice, or Jacqueline. Jack Union. Watching him from some corner of the derelict station, with its preserved glitter of a
ntique equipment and tiny stalactites. He shakes his head, trying to concentrate.

  ‘Yes. I am busy, of course. It isn’t a problem. You want to talk about the woman with the dogs.’

  She stops writing, puts down her notebook. ‘Actually, no. I know what happened tonight. It’s a dangerous job, working on the Tube, isn’t it? I hear about attacks on staff all the time.’

  Casimir nods. ‘All the time.’

  ‘What happened last week was more unusual. The accident.’

  He looks at her again, gauging her. Waits for her to go on. She smiles. It is a hard, bright expression, without humour.

  ‘I haven’t been able to meet the supervisor who was on duty that night, Michael Adams. So until I get hold of him, I was wondering if I might talk to some of the other senior staff here. A bit of a surprise visit, in case you all turn out to be as reluctant as Adams. I’ve talked to Leynes and Sanusi already tonight. Do you mind?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good. Why won’t Adams meet me?’

  Casimir sits back. Taking a breath, trying to focus his mind. He is caught off guard by the policewoman’s sharpness.

  ‘Because he doesn’t want to talk about it.’ Now it is Phelps who waits until he goes on. ‘Adams thought the woman was pushed. Rebecca Saville. He believed it could happen again. He didn’t want to be here when it does.’

  From outside comes the rattle of the entrance grilles closing. The main concourse lights go out, darkening the ticket windows. The policewoman sits thinking, watching Casimir as she does so, not registering his gaze.

  ‘I see.’ She sits up, puts her pen down. ‘Were you on duty that night?’ He shakes his head. ‘How do you know her name? The woman who fell.’

  ‘There were photographs. I saw them.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have. What do you think?’

  ‘I think the platform photograph shows she was –’

  She interrupts. ‘Your general feelings. I’ve seen the photographs.’

  He makes himself think before he speaks. ‘The Underground attracts strange people. Even ordinary people are different. Less social, more isolated. It only takes one person to push her. It happened before, about ten years ago.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ Phelps is writing again, the chrome pen delicate in her large hand.

  ‘I don’t want it to happen again. I could help. I could look at the security videos you have from that day.’

  ‘Could you?’ The policewoman stops and looks at him again, thin eyebrows pulled together in a slight frown. ‘You know a lot about this, don’t you? Why is that?’

  He sits forward, searching for words. ‘I don’t think it was an accident. I feel the same as Adams.’ I can feel it in the Underground, he wants to say. In the tension of crowds and empty platforms. He doesn’t say this. ‘I think a woman has been killed.’

  Phelps is still frowning. ‘I’m afraid that’s my job.’

  ‘I know the Underground. You don’t. Let me help.’

  ‘No.’ Phelps sits back. Now the eyebrows are raised, in surprise or regret. ‘I’m sorry. The videos are police property now. Was there anything else?’

  He feels anger building up in him and he pauses, requiring himself to be calm. ‘Yes. There are signs that people have been in the station at night. Maybe the homeless –’

  ‘Yes, Mister Leynes told me. Fine. Call me if you think of anything else.’ Phelps stands, puts out her hand. ‘Thank you for your help. Will you show me out?’

  After she is gone he locks the grille behind her then stops still in the empty hall, listening. The sounds of his station are different at night. During the day there is the repetition of footsteps, layer on layer of echoes, a kind of human white noise. Hundreds of millions of people a year; a city under the city. He remembers his first night shift. Hearing the station by itself, the hollowness of it. There are less than a hundred people in the complex now. The tunnels magnify every noise, like a cave or a shell. Some nights, Casimir can hear the trapped air sigh against his ears: Aaah. Like the trains. Like his name.

  There is work to be done. He digs in his pockets for keys as he crosses to the far side of the concourse. There is a single metal door at the top of a short flight of steps. He opens it and steps through into the storerooms. Feels along the wall, clicks on a switch. Dusty fluorescent light gutters over stacks of boxes. Yellow paint peels off the walls in yard-long skeins. At the far side of the room steps lead down to other levels of storerooms, and from there to stairwells, locked rooms and offices. Further, blacked-out platforms and lines. Down to deep shelters and abandoned stations. Dozens of them, under the capital. He thinks of their names, beautiful and redundant. Down Street and Waterloo Necropolis. Snow Hill and British Museum. South Kentish Town.

  Outside a police car goes by and Casimir stops, listening to the howl of its siren. He closes the door, cutting off the sound. Locks it behind him.

  He lies still in the rented room. Waiting for morning to come, when he can let himself sleep properly before the next long night shift. There is nothing to see except the bare bulb’s light on the damp-stained ceiling. The sky outside, square and black against the window.

  He is too long for the bed, so that even lying diagonally his head is tilted back on the pillow. He takes it out and lays it on the floor. Lies back flat on the sheets. Their fabric is worn soft as down.

  There is pain in the muscles of his legs, where the skin has been broken. Sleep comes at him in soft waves, natural as the ache of physical exhaustion in his limbs. Usually even the action of thinking helps him sleep, but not tonight. The day runs through his mind, uneasy and uncalled for. He thinks of Adams and the falling woman. The disused station and the Underground girl. Alice. Already he wants to see her again, just to hear her voice. He listens to the sounds in the small room. There is the sigh of his own breathing, harsh against his teeth. The tick of the electricity meter in its black box. The echoed clank of goods trains from the terminus.

  The electricity meter runs out. He has no more money to feed it. The dark is solid, set like amber. When he looks at the window, the sky outside has altered by comparison. Now he can see the reflected illumination of the city; a fantastic orange glow, as if the whole of London is on fire. After a while, he can make out the faintest hint of first light.

  The disused station. He recollects the echo of music and the graffiti, JACK UNION. A strange name, he thinks. Political, the British flag reversed. Rhythmical, like something from a children’s story. Tomorrow he will go and ask Alice why she chose it. Tomorrow he can go to her, at the abandoned station. I’ll see you there. The Underground girl with freckled skin and the eyes that shock him out of himself.

  Sleep nags at him. He thinks of amber. His mother’s voice. Clear, as if he is dreaming it. The green ones are the rarest, see? Green, from the pine.

  She is laying out objects on a checked tablecloth. He is very small and the objects look like congealed honey, clear and dark and opaque. His mouth fills with saliva.

  Baltic ambers. He remembers them with the vividness of early childhood. The way his mother laid them out, like a story. Always the smallest droplet first. It was yellow with ancient pollen, the rich colour of calving cream. Then others, a small red amber from Persia. The one which was flat, like his tongue. The yellow pebble he once found which wasn’t amber at all, just a stone he gave his mother, valued only for that. Last of all the largest, green like canal water the day he fell through the ice. Bigger than his father’s fist, bigger than a duck egg. Charred and cracked along one side. It was full of trapped things: round stress-cracks like little coins, prehistoric seeds, an insect crushed in on itself by the resin’s dead weight.

  There were more before the war. My father had to sell them.

  What for?

  For me. I was so hungry. For potatoes.

  And he remembers not understanding, only turning the ambers against his fingers, the refined smoothness of them. His mother’s hands are larger than his, and red from work. She is the wom
an who chooses to forget her past. And Casimir is the one who remembers for her, even when the remembering hunts him down. Catches him in the dark, presses over him like the weight of London clay.

  He is a child again and it is five years before she leaves him. She smiles and holds the last amber for him, up to the light. A window of sky wobbles through it. It is summer, early morning, and quite warm.

  He wakes. Outside there are pigeons roosting around the vents and guttering. The sound of their crooning is vivid as memories. Of his mother sobbing softly in a nearby room. Of lovemaking, and the faces of women. The shock of Alice’s eyes meeting his. Waking dreams muddled together.

  The room is full of grey dawn light. For a moment he thinks he is back in Poland, that there is snow on the way. Then he realizes he is thinking in English and he remembers everything.

  6

  Squirrel Cage

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Wait.’

  ‘Cholera, this is a bad idea. Now?’

  ‘No. I’ll tell you when.’

  It’s the end of spring. The sky is all blue except for five puffs of factory smoke, orange like clouds at sunset. St Barbary and the Garrison Church and the Cathedral are all ringing for Pentecost, and in the streets are stalls with Pentecost irises. In Old Square is Mr Susicka’s stall with its long green tables and tall white pots and the pavement dark where Susicka has washed it down. He’s got tattery bunches of yellow broom and willow buds, but most of the stall is irises. A high deep blue wall of flowers.

  We have no money to buy Pentecost irises. Until Dad comes back we have no money. Mother said so, on the telephone to the telephone man. I heard it. She said other things too, about money. It was just after Piotr’s birthday. He is nine now. I’m still eight, but I’ve got more muscles. On the classroom door my mark is the highest.

  ‘We could get flax. That’s blue too. There’s still a field of them over near the state pig farm. Casimir? Casimir?’

  Piotr reaches out for my arm. It still hurts from when Dad went away. He held me so hard the skin has gone blue and yellow. Like irises. He has got a big deal now. It makes him smile more. I shake Piotr off.