Underground

by Tobias Hill

  ‘There! Now you must look for yourself. If you want more papers, they are all here. I am going upstairs to sit down. In twenty minutes I lock you out or lock you in. Yes?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you, Wanda.’

  Casimir is already lifting out newspapers. He doesn’t look up at the archivist. Her footsteps echo away as he kneels down, hair falling forward, shadowing his eyes.

  Tenth of June. Eleventh, twelfth. Casimir carefully unfolds the newspapers from the plastic wrapper. The newsprint smells fresh but the paper peels apart slowly, like onion skin. The first few pages are full of election news, then sideshow stories: ‘Cecil Parkinson Gets Energy’, ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog’.

  Casimir lays the newspaper out on the aisle floor. The pages hiss as they turn. After some time he stops. As he reads, light is reflected upwards from the white paper, emphasizing the flat blades of the cheeks.

  ‘RUSH-HOUR KILLER’

  Suspect Arrested at Scene of Third Death

  by Li Ailema, Crime Correspondent

  Police have confirmed that a man has been arrested in connection with a third death on the London Underground. Thomas Gray, 32, a mental hospital outpatient, was apprehended yesterday morning at Camden Town Underground station. Shortly before the arrest a man was fatally injured after falling on to live rails. Sean Harris, 42, of north London, was announced dead on arrival at the Royal Free Hospital, north-west London.

  The death of Harris follows a chain of similar incidents over the past six months which includes the deaths of two other London Underground passengers. A poster campaign on the Underground is said to have led to the arrest, when a member of the public identified Gray on a crowded platform immediately after Harris had fallen. The victim died after injuries sustained in the fall led to a massive heart attack.

  Passengers’ groups were today calling for an independent government inquiry into why Gray, diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic with violent tendencies, was released into the community. Thomas Gray has been shunted between hospitals, hostels and prison since his release from Marginfields Home for the Mentally Disabled, East Sussex, in 1981. Pressure on NHS beds has meant that Gray has been either discharged prematurely or refused admission to suitable facilities since that time.

  No police comment has yet been issued as to whether Gray will be charged with the Underground deaths of William Tull and Lawrence Cluny, who died on 10 May and 21 March this year. However, all three victims bear a clear physical resemblance to Gray. If convicted of all three deaths, Mr Gray is likely to be kept permanently in a secure medical institution, although the final period of detention will be decided by doctors and medical staff.

  Beside the writing are four photographs. The first three are mugshots of the victims’ faces: white-haired, white-skinned men. Their physical differences are emphasized by different lighting and background. Casimir is aware of their similarity without being able to place exactly which features they have in common. Harris is standing outdoors, a high white sky behind him as he grins ludicrously. Snapshots, taken in lunch-breaks or days out. Never meant to be this important, as records of death. They remind him of Saville, unsmiling and badly lit.

  The larger photograph shows Gray being pulled along through a crowded hall by police officers. Casimir screws up his eyes, trying to make out details in the blurred newsprint. With a shock he recognizes his station, the surface concourse at Camden Town. Gray is stooped between the policemen, a head taller than either of them, light hair falling across his face. The mouth is visible, thin-lipped and curved downwards. Without being able to see his eyes, it is hard to gauge the expression. It could be anger or satisfaction. He could be crying or smiling.

  Again he remembers Adams. The room full of surreal, watered light and the supervisor’s voice, angry and haunted. He was living down in side-passages. Got away with it for months, staying down there all night, out of the way of the cameras … In a place the size of London, there’s somebody pushing all the time.

  Casimir closes his eyes tight. The archives make nothing clear, disturbing everything. Thomas Gray has been locked away for life. There is no sign that this is the man who is following Alice. This is not the man he has been looking for. ‘Kurva!’ He whispers harshly, under his breath. The sound ricochets away along the tunnelled walls. Away past the last shelves where the dark begins, like deeper water. He is still thinking of Gray’s killings as he folds the newspapers back into their box. The repetition of a pattern. Gray killing the men who looked like him. Alice and the dead women, their hair and skin and eyes.

  As he walks back along the hall to the lift Casimir can feel the dark behind him, deep and cold. Wanda is waiting for him by the exit, buttoning a woollen coat over her jumper. Casimir walks her to her car. Kisses her goodbye on both cheeks, her hands gripping his forearms. Turns back towards the station.

  It is not long until evening. To the south the sky is darkening with rain, and over the market streets runs a great skewed track of cloud the colour of neon. Casimir narrows his eyes to make out the scale. It looks gigantic, curving out towards the city’s western edge.

  Then he is at the oxblood entrance of the Underground. He bends his head and goes inside.

  By the time Casimir arrives at Waterloo the terminus is full of the sound of rain, a fine hush of water against the glass vaulting. He walks across to the side exit, out between the shining black bulks of the taxi rank, down the steps towards Spur Road.

  A figure sits against the metal balustrade, one arm held out sideways, hand resting on the head of a white dog. The stray looks round at Casimir first, eyes white and pink in the rain. He remembers it from days ago, before the news of the first death. He doesn’t recognize Alice until he is standing beside her and she looks up, eyes narrowed against the hazy downpour.

  ‘I love rain. The sound of it. I miss it underground. You do too, don’t you?’

  She is wearing a black wool hat, and the length of her wet hair is tucked inside the collar of a green duffel coat. Water shines against the flat of her forehead and he sits down, reaches out, wiping it or warming it with his hand.

  ‘Yes. How did you know I live here?’

  Alice reaches into the coat. She smiles as she passes him a square black wallet, as if she is giving him a present.

  It is his own, cheap plastic impressed with the Underground roundel. Casimir turns it in his hands, not frowning. He pockets it without checking inside for the last of his month’s wages, the London Transport identity card.

  ‘How long have you been here?’

  She shrugs. The dog turns its long head away from Casimir, grinning down at The Cut market.

  ‘You cannot have known I would come this way.’

  ‘If I didn’t know, how come I’m sitting here?’

  ‘When did you take it?’

  ‘Last night, when you were asleep.’

  They are sitting close, not looking away from each other. Rain runs down the sharp jut of Casimir’s nose and around the cavities of his eyes. ‘I didn’t sleep.’

  ‘Whenever then. You told me I could come here. Stay with you.’

  ‘Stay. Not steal.’

  ‘It’s not stealing.’

  ‘I don’t see –’

  ‘Which part don’t you understand? I gave it back to you, it’s not stealing. Did you find out who’s after me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You said you could.’

  ‘I was wrong.’ He stands up. Puts out a hand. ‘If you’re hungry, I have food.’

  She gets up by herself. They walk together, down the steps to Lower Marsh. Behind them the dog stands watching, panting into the sound of the rain.

  The shop front is bright and quiet. A few stall-holders sit inside, cradling tea, sheltering their cigarettes away from wet faces. A fat man in sodden black jeans and T-shirt hunches over five polystyrene bowls of mushy peas, shovelling them into his mouth, hair plastered against his forehead. Casimir goes past the shop door to the lodgers’ entrance and
leads Alice up the uncarpeted staircase to his room. He closes the door behind them. Plugs in the bar heater and feeds the meter. Stands, awkward, as she looks around.

  ‘I will get some food. There will be something left over from last night.’

  ‘I’m not hungry yet.’ She walks over to the window, looks out, then draws the net curtains shut. ‘How long have you lived here?’

  ‘Eight years.’

  She is taking off her hat, the coat, not turning round. When she says nothing else he walks up behind her and she leans back against him and he puts his arms around her waist, breathing in the smell of her wet hair, hardening against the small of her back. They make love there, at the window. Quietly, Alice’s cries almost as soft as the sound of the rain. Once her forehead bangs against the glass and when Casimir begins to apologize she laughs, breathless, turning her face to kiss him over her own shoulder.

  Afterwards he goes downstairs for food. There are reheated chicken portions on the glass-fronted hotplate, dull and crusted with old oil. He toasts thick slices of white chip-shop bread, butters them with margarine. Warms up glutinous minestrone soup, ladles it into tall polystyrene cups.

  When he gets back upstairs the door is unlocked. Alice is sitting on the bed, naked and cross-legged, drying her hair with Casimir’s bathroom towel. Her cheeks and breasts are flushed with heat. He feels a sharp sensation of physical desire for her near his heart, almost painful.

  ‘I needed a shower. I wasn’t sure which was your towel.’

  ‘You chose the right one.’

  ‘I know. It smells of you.’

  ‘What kind of smell is that?’

  ‘Like fish blood. It goes with the sound of your name. I like it.’

  He sits next to her on the narrow bed, carefully putting down the food between them. Alice eats quickly, head lowered, not speaking. Casimir is too hungry to watch her. When her food is gone she leans against him, side to side, breathing out once with satisfaction.

  ‘It doesn’t feel like you’ve lived here for eight years. It feels as if no one lives here at all. Don’t you have any things?’

  He drains the last soup, then looks up at the room, trying to see it as she does. ‘I like it to be like this. But yes, I have some belongings.’

  He puts the cup down on the floor and goes over to the wardrobe. There is a single drawer under the main cupboard and he pulls it open. Inside are his books of street-plans and poetry. His birth certificate, passport, London Transport work permit. An old shirt of soft grey cotton, rolled up and tied with elastic bands. He brings the bundle back to Alice, strips off the bands, unrolls the cloth. Inside is a black-and-greenish lump of material with the texture of plastic. It is large as Casimir’s closed, white hands.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Amber. From the Baltic. It was my mother’s.’

  She touches her fingers against it. One side of the amber is smooth and golden-green, the colour of a pike’s scales seen through water. The rest of the piece is blackened and gnarled with a hatchwork of cracks. ‘It’s beautiful. What happened to it?’

  ‘It was burnt.’

  ‘Yeah, I can see that. How come?’

  He shrugs. ‘A stove. My mother was cooking duck eggs. It was when I was small, before I remember.’ Out of nothing, he thinks of curtains. The smell of coal, the smell of snow. He moves his hand near his forehead, as if batting the images away.

  ‘Was she hurt? Your mother.’

  ‘No one was hurt.’

  ‘Don’t you miss her?’

  ‘No.’ His heart judders at the lie. ‘She left us.’

  ‘Yeah? Join the family. How old were you?’

  ‘Twelve. I went on a journey with my father. She waved goodbye to us when we left. She told me to love my father, because she loved him. When we came back home, she was gone. No one saw her go and she took nothing.’

  ‘Why did she leave?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ All at once the words well up in him. He swallows to force them down, but it is too late. ‘To put us both behind her. She should have left a long time before. She should never have married my father.’

  From outside comes the sound of an ice-cream van, its mechanical music cut off abruptly, repeated, cut off again. The tune sounds familiar, although Casimir has no name for it. Already the sound of it is distant, streets away.

  ‘Why not?’ Alice’s voice is soft, careful. Casimir leans back against the wall. Beyond the window, the dark rain sky has merged into early evening.

  ‘My father never deserved her. He is a bad man.’

  ‘So why did she marry him?’

  He pauses again. ‘I think it is that she loved him.’

  Alice looks away. Carefully, she begins to cover the amber with its cloth, wrapping it away. ‘So where are they now? Your mum and dad.’

  ‘My father is in Poland. We do not speak. My mother I never saw again. I used to think she died at sea, but I don’t know. After she left, I couldn’t live with my father. I stayed in youth hostels in Praga, downtown Warsaw. Then on the streets. Then in hostels again. I lived there for some time.’ He takes the wrapped amber, holds it in his hands. ‘And then it was as if I woke up. And I came here.’

  ‘What was wrong with your father?’

  ‘There were things he did. In the war, and after.’

  ‘Everyone did something in the war.’

  Alice moves away from him towards her clothes. Casimir had forgotten her quickness and for a moment he thinks he has said too much, that she is leaving. But she is reaching out a cigarette towards the heater. The filament dulls where the tobacco touches it, flares as Alice lights up, sits back.

  For a time they don’t talk. He listens to the sound of the depot yards from outside, and the hoot of a river boat. Alice is warm against him, a slight pressure on his heartbeat.

  ‘You’re very beautiful.’ The words sound clumsy in his mouth, in the English which is still alien to him.

  She laughs, a ripple going through her, through him.

  ‘No. I’m the girl on the train, Ariel Casimir. That’s all. I’m the girl on the train who you never see again.’ Over her shoulder, he watches her smile to herself. ‘But here I am. Go on, it’s your turn. Ask me something.’

  He doesn’t stop to think. ‘What is your real name?’

  ‘Jacqueline Chappell.’

  She sucks at the cigarette. It is quiet in the unlit room. Casimir can hear the crackle and wince of tobacco and ash. She shifts against him, getting comfortable.

  ‘The other names are pretend. I used Alice when I went underground. I’ve got nine National Insurance cards, nine names. All you do is tell Social Security you’re a traveller and your parents are travellers. Then when you’ve got your National Insurance number, you can get everything. The more you have, the easier it is. But my real name is Jacqueline Chappell. Do you believe me?’

  ‘The man at the abandoned station. He called you Blip Girl.’

  She picks a strand of tobacco from her teeth and tongue, then laughs. Casimir realizes he has never heard her laughter before today. It is startling. Clear and musical, like her voice when she sings.

  ‘When I was smaller I used to get caught doing stuff. The police called me Blip Girl because wherever I was, I messed up their crime figures. They couldn’t lock me up because I was juvenile. They tried to load me off on foster carers. Now I’m older, I don’t get caught any more. Not much anyway.’

  ‘What did they arrest you for?’

  She shrugs, shoulders thin against his shirt. He reaches around her, stroking her breasts. The smooth warmth of her skin against the roughness of his knuckles, palms, the backs of his hands.

  ‘Nothing bad. Just stealing. Drugs – no needles. Once there was a man who tried to hurt me, so I hurt him back. That’s all.’ She folds her arms, trapping him against her. ‘Foster homes were the worst. Worse than being homeless. Your hands are so big. Giant, like that statue, the marble one. It’d be good, being like you. You must scare peop
le.’

  ‘How long have you been homeless?’

  He feels her breathing change against him. She picks up her polystyrene cup, delicately stubbing out her cigarette in its wet base. ‘I can’t remember. A long time now. Time goes different when you’re on the streets. You get old fast, but then you know that.’ She shifts, looking back at him. ‘I’m not staying here tonight. I’m going back underground. Do you mind?’

  He wants to ask her to stay. He wants her to tell him about the seventeen scars that run from the wings of her shoulder bones to the curve of her hips. Instead he stops himself, shakes his head. ‘No.’

  ‘It’s safer. I don’t like the way he keeps on. He’s so – in Camden at nights he was so quiet, it was like he was everywhere. But I do feel safer, underground. Don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Will you come and see me tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes.’ She is moving away, picking up clothes, pulling them on. When she is dressed she turns to Casimir. He hasn’t moved from the bed. One arm is still loose, where it held her. She comes up and leans over to kiss him, fast and supple, her mouth tasting of food and cigarettes. Then she goes quickly, without saying goodbye.

  For some time he sits, thinking. His eyes adjust faster than it becomes dark. Too needy, he thinks. Adams was right after all. I need to know too much; it makes me careless of myself. He remembers the pike under canal ice, white teeth in a green mouth. No one else saw that. Such a beautiful monstrosity.

  After an hour the sky is the blue of slate between the half-drawn curtains. Casimir gets up and takes off the work shirt and trousers he has worn for two days and a night, dropping them to the cold linoleum floor.

  He gets dressed again mechanically, pulling on a pair of lightweight cotton trousers and a blue shirt bought cheap from the weekday market. His work jacket is hung up against the back of the door and he puts it back on and leaves quietly, pulling the door to behind him. As if someone were still sleeping in the empty room with its thin curtains and half-light. In the Stamford Street telephone box a female skinhead is arguing about money, leaning forward over the chrome machinery and dial. Casimir waits in the rain, his back to the Bull Ring and its circling traffic. The phone-box door is wedged open with a shopping trolley. In the trolley a small boy is curled up asleep next to an empty fish tank. The woman’s voice yells over the sound of cars. She slams the phone down into its cradle and backs out towards Casimir.