by Geoff Ryman
Her workmate Susy was desolate after her husband left her. Marina invited Susy to stay, to talk. That was four weeks ago. Marina now knows everything about Susy’s sex life, childlessness, and pets. Susy’s mother has come to stay as well.
What she is doing or thinking
Marina listens to Susy rejoice: her husband wants to come back. Susy can get rid of her mum and go home to some comfort.
Susy’s mum announced, ‘I’ve decided to clean that oven of yours,’ the day after Marina cleaned it. ‘I’ve thrown out all that old food from your refrigerator. I brushed Susy’s cats. Sorry about the fur. I’ll deal with it later.’
Susy’s mother drinks. She snoozes on the staircase. None of this has bothered Susy. ‘At last the old bag will be out of my hair,’ she chuckles.
Susy still has not thanked Marina. Not once in four weeks has she expressed concern for anyone else. Marina can understand why Bill left.
The real question is: why do I keep asking for this?
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244
MRS SUSAN REECE
Outward appearance
Heavy on the slap. Ruby cheeks, vermilion lips, long polished boots. Clutches a black bag, leaning sideways, confidentially, towards her neighbour. Talks, stops, leans sideways again, adds something else, looks away, is moved to speak again.
Inside information
Works in HM Customs and Excise. Workmate of the woman next to her, with whom she has been living since separation from her husband. The rat has asked to come back.
What she is doing or thinking
She feels vindicated, enraged, and can see that Marina feels the same on her behalf. She really doesn’t know how she’d have got through it without Marina, especially after Mum stuck her oar in.
‘I’ve told him, if he does come back then we’ll have a contract in writing about what happens to the property. If I play my cards right I’m sure I’ll get my new kitchen out of it. You remember the one I showed you in the catalogue?’
She leans back, absorbing the sense of victory.
‘The white counter tops with the built-in stove? I mean the least he can do if he’s coming back is finally do something around the place. It’s a tip. The whole house will have to be redecorated, and that’s a promise.’
She leans back. She wants a fag. A white Kleenex is wrapped around her thumb, in case she starts to cry. ‘Oh God,’ she says in despair. ‘I’m sure I’m being too nice again.’ She looks into her companion’s eyes, then at her silver fingernails.
‘I’m sure you’re not,’ says Marina, tartly.
What?
Waterloo.
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245
MR MAB MAHANCHANDRA
Outward appearance
Plump, brown, sharp. Short, greased, standing-up hair. Thick overcoat in zigzag black and white pattern. A green suit that seems to flow like the sticky plastic from which squidgy toys are made. Cobalt-blue tie. Reading a Superman novelization.
Gives the party in the car one gimlet look and joins it.
Inside information
Anglo Indian. Degree in computer science. Writing cyberpunk novel. Loves dance music and helps a friend convert his stuff to MIDI files. Folded in his jacket pocket is a business plan for a consultancy to get small firms online. He is en route to the SBS, to present it to Camilla Burke-Harris.
A free man in the new Britain. Mab fancies Dean Caine. He fancies Lois. He fancies anything. Already a father: his girlfriend gave birth at home. Even his bewildered parents don’t know about it. His various occupations mean he spends most daytimes taking care of the infant. Works on his programs in the evening until ten o’clock, then goes out ’til 3.00 AM.
What he is doing or thinking
Right now, Mab is thinking of Dean Caine’s body in his own new suit. It’s by Tom Gilbey, it’s green, everyone else is in blue or black. Mab is the bee’s knees and knows it.
The dance begins. ‘Everybody!’ Mab jumps up, swings the black woman around. She recognizes a fellow spirit and roars with laughter. He kisses her on the cheek. He shakes his plump tummy, hands over his head. Then they all spin off the car at Lambeth North.
World, meet your future.
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MRS SYLVIA KAYE
Outward appearance
Plump, red-cheeked woman in grey raincoat, scarf, good black shoes. She looks at the floor, the lower half of her face continuing to sink.
Inside information
A beautician in a salon on Kennington Road. Sylvia and her husband are 38, but he looks years younger. He left her for an exciting 25-year-old. Peter has always been outgoing, but weak. He lets their daughter Diana go clubbing with him. They smoke dope together. Diana comes back and abuses Sylvia. This morning Diana hit her. The red cheeks are bruised.
What she is doing or thinking
What do you do when your daughter continually calls you a bitch? When you ask her to turn down the music and she tells you to fuck off? When you ask her friends to leave at 2.00 AM and they all just laugh?
This morning Sylvia had enough. Diana called her bitch again, and Sylvia grabbed her arms and spun her around. Diana slapped her, hard on the face. ‘Keep your fucking hands off me!’ The girl’s face was a mask of hatred. Sylvia broke down in tears.
Sylvia remembers her baby daughter’s merry little face. How did it happen? Di was always cheeky, but it made people chuckle. There was no malice.
Sylvia stares glumly at the party in the car. Crushed by a sense of weakness and failure, she is immune to it. Right now laughter is for other people.
My daughter hates me, and I can’t cope any more. The only question now is: how do I get her to leave?
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247
MS LISA SINDERSLY
Outward appearance
Chunky young woman in loose ethnic trousers, bulky sweater, AIDS ribbon.
Inside information
Contract data processor for USB’s Technopark, working on a project measuring differences in male and female brains. Last night, the patterns came together.
What she is doing or thinking
Lisa is remembering her father, a big slow kindly man obsessed with order. He trainspotted, recording engine numbers. He would travel overnight to Clapham via Carlisle. His travel bag always held a campstove for boiling water.
Lisa remembers her autistic cousin Annie. Annie loves bank interest and counts it obsessively. She plots the stars. She has a system for recording her own learning process using fruit gums, paste-on architectural symbols, and electrical wiring.
Autism is produced by damage to the cerebellum, which controls movement and mimicry of movement. Mimicry of movement allows us to recreate other people’s feelings, to understand them. For Annie, people move too quickly to be read. She is subject to rages, especially when someone disrupts her systems of order.
Lisa’s data has proved that men are born with a differently functioning cerebellum. Men are mildly autistic. Their elaborate systems of logic, their narrow focus, the lack of emotional understanding are symptoms.
What happens when science proves that a group of people are limited? Do we love them more, like Annie who has learned at 35 to say sorry and mean it? Lisa likes fast cars and raunchy bars. She likes men. She loved her obsessive father.
A young man bows, offering to dance with an old lady out of kindness. Lisa has her answer.
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248
MRS ELISABETTA SOBEL
Outward appearance
Middle-aged woman festooned with symbols of beauty: rings, a brooch of a cat, a bracelet of semi-precious stones. Enters at Embankment, fingermarking her place in the Journal of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.
Inside information
Wealthy volunteer for the RSPB. Her family were Italian Jews
who escaped the war by fleeing to Chicago. Her parents are dead; her cousins scattered to Chile or Israel. Her nephew has cancer.
Much troubled by peacocks. Elisabetta loves birds, but banshee wails from neighbouring Wimbledon Common plague her all night. Peacocks line up like fluorescent ghosts outside her window, peering in, demanding. They follow her footsteps, pecking at them. This morning they lined up across her drive, inflating their tails all at once in a phalanx, saying: remember?
What she is doing or thinking
Remember?
When Elisabetta was seventeen, her synagogue put on a production of Fiddler on the Roof. She wasn’t pretty, so they put her in charge of the lights. The hall was to be in darkness, until the first line. Elisabetta couldn’t find the right switches. The hero entered a badly lit temporary hall, and said, ‘Let there be light.’ Elisabetta plunged the hall into darkness.
Like the birds, this unnerved her. What had been meant to be beautiful had become terrifying: there was no light even from God. Why else would so many of her people have been killed?
The carriage begins to dance like a nightmare; the party favours shriek like peacocks. Elisabetta has never understood: the pain in the lament sets it free.
As a bird.
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249
MRS CHUNG MAE
Outward appearance
Tiny, rumpled Chinese lady in khaki anorak, tartan lining inside the hood trimmed with green fur. Lenin-style cap, black jeans over the top of her trainers. Carries various cheap plastic bags. Pink objects with yellow feathers are pressed up against their sides.
Inside information
Granny imported from Hong Kong. Worked for years in the kitchen of a Lisle Street restaurant. Got too old for the hours and the physical demands. Now runs a stand at the Elephant selling party novelties. The season for novelties has just passed.
What she is doing or thinking
Her bones ache, she will be cold, but it’s better than sitting behind a till in a steamy shop. The family keep trying to pull her back inside. They don’t understand: she likes being on her own, with the little money she gets. Everything else in her life is work and duty.
A strange woman is singing. Suddenly people are dancing; out comes a puppet. Mae doesn’t understand. The man next to her offers her a glass of whisky. At first Mae is suspicious. Is it poison?
It is a party. Why else does she have party favours? She takes out a whistle and blows it. It unwraps its pink and feathery length, squeals, and people applaud. ‘How much?’ asks the whisky man. Mae understands that. Two more people buy them, and blow them, warbling.
The train stops at Lambeth North. Mae hesitates as they all tumble out, having so much fun. Just before the doors close, the strange old lady pushes Mae out. The party continues.
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MR HARRY RUNCIMAN
Outward appearance
Plump, Pickwickian gentleman in un-ironed striped shirt, plaid green jacket, grey trousers, greenish Burberry.
Inside information
Lecturer at the new Electronic Polymer Unit at the University of the South Bank. Has had to wear the same clothes since Monday.
What he is doing or thinking
Facing up to the fact that he must indeed go shopping for clothes. Shopping is something that seldom enters his purview. Harry does not shop. A market researcher once thought she had found a prime AB. She questionnaired Harry. How often do you buy the following: CDs? What are they? Oh, you mean those compact tape things. Televisions? Don’t have one. Video recorders?
He does his laundry on Sunday nights. Last Sunday night, he smelled smoke. He thought it was his lovely log fire. When he finally went downstairs to the basement to unload his laundry, he was amazed to see smoke pouring out of the washing machine. Flame circulated round and round inside it. It was only eighteen years old.
All eight pairs of underpants, four shirts, four string vests and three pairs of drip-dry slacks were burned to ash. He has nothing to wear. It’s depressing because he knows from past experience that he won’t be able to find exact replacements.
An old woman is asking people to dance. Harry loves eccentrics. He begins to giggle as she starts to sing. Then, to his surprise, people join in.
Harry just happens to have a bottle of whisky in his briefcase, and plastic cups. You never know when there will be a party.
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MS SUSAN WHEEN
Outward appearance
Conventional student: blue donkey jacket; limp sweater in streaks of ochre, pink and beige; clean jeans. Sits upright, avidly reading the bestseller about female weightlifters, Clean and Jerk. Shakes her head in wonder and delight. The cover features huge sweaty breasts.
Inside information
Friend and occasional employee of Tina Ravon. Helps pay for her drama course at RADA by hiring out her services as a new form of advertising. She rides up and down the tube visibly reading particular books for money.2 Sometimes the publisher pays for a friend, and Susan reads aloud to her. Today, she’s working the Bakerloo line alone, shuffling back and forth all morning from the Elephant.
Susan calls this ‘reality editing’. She invented it herself. Instead of using media that are understood to be bought and paid for, this new advertising changes reality to carry the desired message.
What she is doing or thinking
Acting. She has not read Clean and Jerk, in case it interferes with her performance. Instead, Susan focuses with professional rigour on communicating different kinds of reading experience: rapt attention; shock at a plot turn-around; being overcome with emotion, tears filling her eyes. Sometimes, she manages to say to someone convincingly: ‘This is such a wonderful book.’
She’s getting increasingly annoyed by an old woman singing loudly. It’s a distraction from her own performance. When someone shouts, ‘Everybody!’ and people start to dance, Susan knows she’s beaten. Better to work another car heading north. The bookbuyers all get off at Waterloo anyway.
Glaring at the dancers, she stands to exit at Waterloo.
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Another helpful and informative 253 footnote
2 I sincerely wish I could claim to have invented this. Unfortunately it’s true. I mentioned to someone in the trade that I saw a phenomenal number of people on the tube reading a particular bestseller. That book was known to have been promoted in this way; indeed, the advertisers worked in pairs so that one could read aloud to other from the book as if moved by sheer delight.
But I thought that would stretch credibility.
252
MR HAROLD POTTLUK
Outward appearance
Tiny, about 28. Grey slacks, white shirt, no tie, shaved black hair. Rubber-soled Doc Martens mutated towards respectability. Writes on a clipboard.
Inside information
A market researcher for London Underground.
For the last six months, Harold has listed people on carriages by age, gender and racial background. He then selects individuals to interview, using demographic criteria. He asks them about the length of their journey and things to improve. This is the last car on his last day.
What he is doing or thinking
Busy finishing his draft report. It ends with a list of those people who do not travel on the trains: the infirm, infants, men with cars. He identifies the need for further research. Why do so few children go to school by tube? Why are there more women than men until you pass Lambeth North station?
Working on the tubes, Harold has witnessed two suicides, one busking quick-change drag artiste, and one successfully completed sexual act. When the bag lady next to him starts to sing ‘Is that all there is?’ in a voice like Lotte Lenya’s, he is merely mildly pleased. When she succeeds in persuading other passengers to dance, he thinks: that’s a nice send-off, one final fling on the cattle tr
ucks.
Harold sees them all, sitting inside their fates like eggs in cartons, there through an inexorable logic of age, gender, genes, character, their time in history, luck. He sees their faces like insulation wrapped around boilers. Their stories wheedle out of them like escaping steam. Mostly unheard.
Like his own.
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MISS ANNE FRANK
Outward appearance
Elderly woman in a donkey jacket and old grey trousers. Lumpy bandages under stockings are visible over the tops of her scuffed shoes. She scans the rows of faces, stricken. She smiles sweetly, and says to the young man across from her, ‘Would you like to dance?’
He stares at her and doesn’t answer. She looks at the foreign business woman, at the sad blonde girl, at the nervous old hippy. Anne starts to sing, ‘Is that all there is?’ She starts to dance alone.
