Down Station

1

Mary looked at the watches in the window with an emotion that swung like a metronome between wonder and envy. They were beautiful, glittering bright with polished metal and inset jewels, and they were so very expensive. They shone like the sun, and they belonged on her skinny wrist. The work that had gone into just that one with the silver-steel bevel and the three separate dials must have been incredible, and no matter how many hours she worked, however hard she saved, she’d never be able to afford it in her lifetime.

The price tag was almost incomprehensibly high, as if whoever had written it out in fine, precise figures, had daydreamed away and added too many zeros. It had to be a joke; an obscene joke, even, aimed right at her. She wasn’t laughing.

A hand came out from behind the display to snag the stand. As the watches retreated, Mary could see into the shop beyond. Tall glass cabinets with black velvet squares that showed off the clarity and colour of the gems, the coolness of the platinum, the warmth of the gold. Blond wood on the floor. Rich red on the walls. Lights. Lights everywhere.

She was about to turn away into the night when she accidentally caught the eye of the woman dismantling the window display. For a moment, the immaculately made-up face, powdered and shadowed and lipsticked, froze, taking in Mary’s scruffy Puffa jacket and scraped-back coils of black hair, her dark eyes and the acne scars on her cheeks.

And for a moment, rather than scorn or derision, a slight, secret smile and a rise of an artificially arched eyebrow. Neither of them could possibly afford to shop there. Then she turned her head◦– a voice, calling from somewhere unseen◦– and she hurried away towards the back room.

Mary imagined the clacking the woman’s stiletto heels would make on the floor, the soft smell of a floral perfume, the whisper of material as stockings brushed against a tight pencil skirt. She imagined the woman’s boss, paying her a pittance and using her beauty to sell beautiful things.

Her fingers, buried deep in the pockets of her jacket, curled involuntarily into fists. A brick wouldn’t break these windows, thick and laminated. And even if it did, and she grabbed a watch in the second before the alarms went off and the street behind her filled with blue flashing lights, and somehow she avoided immediate capture◦– what would she do with it? She couldn’t possibly wear it, and fencing it would leave her with, at best, a few quid in her pocket because the property would be red hot.

She’d be better off lifting something with a plastic strap from a display in a department store. More her style. More in keeping with her budget.

However: she had faithfully promised the magistrate she wouldn’t do that again, because she had a job now, and was taking responsibility for her life, just as her solicitor and her probation officer had told her to say. It was a promise that, to everyone’s surprise, including hers, she’d kept for nine weeks now, along with the job they’d got her.

She hadn’t had to take it. She could have told them to stick it◦– except that everyone was expecting her to, and that, perversely had made her jut her chin and say she’d do it. It had probably been the deciding factor in keeping her out of Holloway.

Mary turned from the window and the dazzling reflections of light. The street, though busy with black taxis and red buses, late-night theatre goers and rich kids, seemed dark and mean. It didn’t help that the sky was so low: bulbous clouds descended almost to the rooftops, pregnant with rain, turning the harsh sodium glare a deeper red.

From away over Richmond, the first growl of thunder reached Leicester Square. For a moment, the sound stilled every other noise. People looked up, realised they were unprepared for a downpour, and contemplated their choices.

By the time Mary finished her shift, it would be morning and the storm would have blown over. She’d walk all the way back, tired and dirty, to her hostel along the freshly washed pavements. But still, inexplicably, despite everything, free. Not exactly free: she had regular meetings with her probation officer, a wispy thing called Anna who didn’t seem at all afraid of her, and then there was her Anger Management course, which wasn’t a surprise in the slightest, and her supervisor at work who would rat her out in an instant if she didn’t turn up on the dot.

But free all the same. There were compensations to working for the Underground. The other◦– aside from not being banged up for twenty-three hours a day, or whatever the current regime demanded◦– was the people she worked with.

It was like clocking in with the United Nations every day, but she was a London girl and fine with that, though some of the accents were difficult◦– not just at first, either. Supervisor aside, and he really was a prime piece of shit, the rest of the crew didn’t seem to mind her past, or her future for that matter. All that counted was whether she pulled her weight in the now.

She lugged her heavy bag across the road against the flow of traffic, towards the tube entrance. Another low boom echoed from the west, and the waverers decided against stopping for that last drink, heading for the stairs too.

When they pushed past her, running and talking too loudly for the confines of the concourse, she had her mouth open and an insult balanced on the tip of her tongue.

She checked herself, as she’d been taught: her breathing was fast and shallow, and inside she felt the cold rush of rage. Those that worked with her had lots of fancy names for it, but none of the labels meant anything to her, except a single off-hand comment that she seized on. The Red Queen was the one she recognised and owned: the terrible desire to give orders, to be obeyed, was deep inside her. Yet she knew she’d never be in charge of anything, let alone be a queen.

She counted to ten, and hoisted her bag back on to her shoulder. By then, they were gone, voices muffled in the depths. They were jerks. They probably hadn’t even seen her. She was better than to rise at their carelessness. She took a deep breath, and carried on.

She had a pass: a proper pass that she’d had to sign for, that carried her photo◦– God, she hated it because it made her look like this weird child-thing◦– that allowed her to access almost everywhere and everything. Losing it would mean instant dismissal. Losing it and not telling anyone she’d lost it would be enough to land her inside. They may as well have printed her details on a gold brick instead of a laminated piece of plastic, for all they went on about ‘the integrity of the system’.

The ticket hall was all but empty. A couple of stragglers tripped down the stairs from another entrance, stumbling and looking back the way they’d come, then hurried on to the barriers, wallets already out and in hand.

She followed them, touching in on the pad. The gates banged back, and she twisted to get her bag through.

Then it was the long ride down the escalator, down to the deep levels where it was hot and humid, and ever-so-slightly foetid. The advertising panels flickered their wares at her, five-second looped images, discordant and bright: enough to catch her attention and slam a message into her eyes, but not enough to seduce or explain.

One was for a holiday. How long was it since she’d had a holiday? They’d had day-trips from the home that had been, to quote one of the staff, a logistical nightmare. One of the other members of staff had said it was more like herding cats. It had been Southend, usually, and Eastbourne once.

That’d been a disaster. The M3 had locked solid, and they’d barely had time to eat fish and chips in some formica-countered sea-side shed before piling back in the minibus for the trip home. Eight teenagers with a broad spectrum of emotional and educational problems, four carers. It was a wonder that any of them made it back alive.

Again, the five-second image: a white beach and blue sea, and a lone woman, just about in a bikini, lithe and tanned and happy, running into the waves. Visit Greece, it said.

Mary didn’t have a passport. She didn’t even know if she had the documents to get a passport. She knew she’d need a birth certificate, and if one existed for her, she’d never seen it.

She imagined it, for a moment. That she was the woman. That the white sand was hot under her feet and between her toes. That the water was clear and bright and broke like diamonds as the wave hit her shins.

She stumbled off the end of the escalator, nearly falling in the process.

It was a dream. A pipe-dream. The woman in the jeweller’s would one day meet a rich man who liked her enough to take her on holiday to Greece. And good for her. Nothing wrong in that. If she had the opportunity, she should grasp at it with both hands, and get out while she still could.

Mary took the stairs down to the westbound platform of the Piccadilly line. The last train was still ten minutes away. She was early.

There was nowhere to change. Literally, nowhere. Whatever she was going to do, she had to do it here on the platform, amongst the drunks and the stoners. She could wait, but then it was always a rush to get kitted out, Mr Nicholls with his clipboard chivvying and tapping and looking at his watch.

So she walked down to the far end of the platform, right to where the jumpers usually positioned themselves for their one final step across the ill-minded gap, and dropped her bag to the ground.

The CCTV could see her, so she turned her back as she shucked her jacket. All she was wearing underneath was a thin tan vest that was a shade lighter than her skin. It got hot, working in the tunnels, and the first day, against all advice, she’d made the mistake of wearing a T-shirt and a pair of sweat pants.

She’d cooked, and she wasn’t going to do that again.

From inside her bag, she dragged her thick orange boilersuit. Ironically, it made her look like she was on a chain gang, or she was one of those Guantanamo inmates. She shook it out, kicked off her shoes, and quickly dragged her jeans down to her ankles.

The rumbling she felt through her feet told her that a train was due. Probably eastbound on Piccadilly, as it was too solid a hit to be the nearby Northern line.

Someone wolf-whistled. She ignored them, and sat on the platform, on the boiler suit, to pull her jeans free.

With a few practised moves, she had the bright orange suit up to her waist. Left arm, right arm, and she was covered up, the zip-up front open to her navel but nothing showing.

She had a pair of heavy work boots in the bag too, steel capped, solid, thick rubber soles. She stepped into them and crouched as she laced them up. Now she looked down the platform, at the men where the whistle had come from, and studied their gelled hair and sharply ironed shirts. They could have been anything during the day◦– brickie, office drone, city trader◦– but here, at night, together and full of drink, they were all the same.

Now she had the uniform on, the oversized sexless boiler suit and the big brown boots, perhaps she was a less of a catch, though she knew it wasn’t the catching that mattered. For men like that, it was about the chase, a quick fumbling conquest, and move on.

She tied her unruly curls up in a red bandanna and piled her discarded clothes into her bag.

Five minutes until the last train.

The platform should have been filling up, but it was still sparse. She perched herself on one of the inadequate seats to wait, feeling the distant passing of other trains reverberate in her bones.

There should have been others of her shift down on the platform by now. She couldn’t explain their absence. She chewed at her already gnawed fingers, hunched over.

The overhead sign ticked down the seconds and the minutes.

And suddenly they were all there, walking in a loud phalanx out of one of the connecting corridors and into her sight.

The meeting. She’d forgotten the meeting.

Her sudden relief was replaced by burning panic. She jumped up as if hearing a shot and took a step forward to explain to the clip-board wielding Nicholls. But what should she say? Some flannel about being late because of… what? She hadn’t been late. She’d just forgotten. Tell him that she’d blown the meeting off as a waste of her time? She was supposed to be avoiding the snark and triggers for confrontation.

She’d have to apologise. God, she hated doing that, especially to little weasel-faced Nicholls and his stupid ratty moustache. Mama was with him, matching him stride for stride, rolling her body like a ship at sea. If Mama was there, it’d be fine.

It was Mama who called to her first.

‘Mary! Where’ve you been, child? Mr Nicholls,’ and the way she said ‘Mr Nicholls’ always managed to convey just how much she’d like to scrape him off the underside of her shoe, ‘Mr Nicholls was worried about you.’

‘Sorry. Sorry. I was here in plenty of time, and I was just used to the routine.’ Mary raised her gaze for a moment, and looked at the reflections of the overhead lights in Nicholls’ black-rimmed glasses. ‘I missed the meeting and I’m sorry.’

Nicholls stopped in front of her and consulted his clipboard. ‘Mary. All staff are required to attend such meetings as management see necessary to facilitate the smooth running—’

He was interrupted by an almighty boom, like someone slamming a heavy steel door. It echoed forever along the tunnel.

When it had faded, he clicked his biro and started again. ‘All staff—’

‘Oh, let’s not worry about that now, Mr Nicholls. Mary’s a good girl and a good worker.’ Mama was in full flow. ‘She’s fine and strong, and she was here early. She’s always on time and never misses a day. She’s one of the best on this team and she said she was sorry and I can tell her what we all talked about while we work, which is what we’re not doing now.’ She turned to the rest of the shift and shooed them into action with her thick fingers. ‘Come on, people. We’re keeping Mr Nicholls waiting.’

Nicholls might have the clipboard, but Mama seemed to run the show.

As the others put their bags down and started on suiting up, the last train was called. It seemed to settle matters, and Nicholls found it necessary to consult the top sheet of the sheaf of paper he had in front of him.

‘Get changed, Noreen,’ was all he said, and went to the locked telephone box on the wall.

Mama waited until their supervisor was otherwise occupied, then took Mary by the elbow.

‘What d’you want to do something stupid like that for, girl? You know he’s just itching for the chance to report you.’

‘I forgot, all right?’

‘Well, don’t you go forgetting again.’ Then she added. ‘Help Mama into her finery, girl.’

Mama was short, but wide, and wore nothing under her boiler suit but a pair of hefty knickers and a bra with more cross-bracing than Tower Bridge. Her wide legs filled the trousers, and she held in the rolls of chocolate-coloured flesh while Mary zipped her up.

‘You’re okay, girl. But you got to pay more attention. Doesn’t matter if you do the job nine times out of ten. Folk like Nicholls, he’s watching for that one time you don’t.’

A waft of hot, steamy air presaged the arrival of the tube train. It rattled and squeaked into view, and the carriages flashed by. Then it slowed, and the blur of windows resolved into discrete images of people mostly standing, even though there were plenty of empty seats.

They looked nervous. Some of them wanted to get off, and did so quickly the moment the doors opened, jumping the gap and hurrying quietly away. Those getting on were frowning, glancing behind them, hesitating before boarding.

The buzzer sounded, the voice intoned. The red lights at the rear of the train receded into the black tunnel, grew faint, winked out. The flurry of litter stopped wafting on the track bed, and was still.

Mama took a pair of cotton gloves from the cleaning cart, and a black bag. She passed them to Mary, then helped herself.

‘Aren’t you supposed to be telling me what Mr Nicholls was saying?’

‘Oh, it’s nothing worth wasting your time on, or mine, either. Now you stay out of trouble, girl.’

‘Yes, Mama.’ Mary pulled on her gloves and flexed her fingers, watching the woman dole out supplies and advice to the rest of the shift. Most of them were women, none of them British except Nicholls, and he didn’t really count as part of the team. He didn’t do any of the work, just looked occasionally at his watch when he thought they were behind time and cracked the whip a little harder.

The three little tunnel lights winked from white to red. The rails were no longer live, and it was time to get to work.

She wasn’t the first to lower herself down into the suicide pit, the deep gap between the running rails, but there was plenty of debris for her to pick up. Scraps of paper, sweet wrappers, more copies of the bloody Metro than she could count, buttons, coins domestic and foreign, articles of clothing◦– the baby socks and shoes she could understand, but the items belonging to adults? Seriously?◦– empty wallets thrown in by pickpockets, phones dropped by tourists, plastic bags, tin cans, bottles, pairs of glasses, and the thing that had freaked her out at the start but no longer bothered her: hair.

Teased out of passengers’ heads by the whirlwind of passing trains, it formed spidery clumps, not just at the stations, but deep into the tunnels where it had to be picked out from the rocky ballast, by hand, by people like her.

Earrings weren’t uncommon. Mainly paste with plated fittings, but occasionally something of worth turned up. And rings. Mary often wondered about those. Had they been lost from a cold hand, much lamented and impossible to replace. Or had they been torn off in anger and thrown under the train in an evocation of sympathetic magic that would have the ring-giver similarly cast under the wheels of an oncoming train? It wasn’t called a suicide pit because it saved lives; rather, the concrete trough was there because it made it easier to retrieve the broken, scattered bodies afterwards.

They were supposed to turn the expensive stuff◦– notes, wallets and purses, lost travel cards, jewellery◦– over to Nicholls. He was, in turn, supposed to log it all and transfer everything to Lost Property in Baker Street. They were each supposed to watch everyone else and make sure the rules stuck. It was a lot of supposing. Mary knew at least a couple of her shift were in the habit of diverting the most saleable items inside their boiler suits. It was risky, but they thought it a perk of the job.

She didn’t do that. She couldn’t do that. She had to keep her nose clean. She was getting almost nine quid an hour which, when fences were offering somewhere between five and ten pence in the pound, was pretty good money. Some of it was going on paying off her past fines, but it wasn’t like she had many outgoings.

But she didn’t feel like she was going straight. She still had the same urges as before, to take what she wanted and lash out at those who pissed her off. The fear of what would happen if she gave in kept her partly in check, and recently, some little bit of pride flickered in her heart, sparked from God knew where.

She’d cleared her immediate area, and ducked under the middle rail to collect the debris from the far side of the tracks. Though the power was off, she was still reluctant to touch the rail, despite her rubber-soled boots. Her bin bag started to fill.

The tunnel echoed again to a growl of deep, distant violence. As she looked up, so did everyone else. She caught Mama’s eye, and the women stared at each other until Mama shrugged.

‘Rail replacement near Hyde Park,’ said Nicholls from the platform, tapping at his clipboard. ‘Come on, we haven’t got all night. Back to work.’