Sottopassaggio (3 page)

I swallow hard. I feel shaky and scared but I bluff through it. “Yeah,” I say, “I know.”

Owen and I hug rigidly. “You look after yourself,” he says.

I nod. “You too!” and aware of a tidal wave of emotion swelling suddenly from a distant undersea tremor, I whack him on the back, force a grin, and head off down my tunnel.

I don't look back until I hear his suitcase trundle into the echoing distance.

Slightly dazed, I wander along the tunnel towards the Circle Line.

I think about Owen heading off at a different vector, being pulled back towards his wife, his projects, his camper-van, and I think, not for the first time, how amazingly centred heterosexual lives are when compared to mine; just how many ties and stays – mortgages, dinner parties and schools – straight
families have holding them centred, bang in the middle of their lives.

My own life seems so fragmented, so un-tied to anyone or any one place, that spinning like a top, or perhaps circling like an electron, the slightest nudge and I could oscillate out of control and spin off into space. I could end up just about anywhere. The possibilities are infinite, terrifying.

The greatest tie for most is the responsibility to feed and clothe and educate. It's something I will never have, and something I will never have to worry about either. My straight friends are so often jealous of my freedom, jealous precisely of the free-electron aspect of my existence, and I wonder briefly who actually gets the better deal.

I descend a small flight of steps and catch a glimpse of a poster advertising the National Gallery, which my father loved with a passion. As a child of course I thought it was boring and would watch my own feet scraping along the floor as he dragged me around the building.

As I head out onto the deserted platform, I decide, in memory of my childhood, to take my eyes, which are in some way his eyes too, not only to the Tate Modern, but to the National Gallery as well. I wonder if other peoples' childhoods are as intense, as all consuming as mine was. Can they too pause at any moment and sense in every atom of
their
being, the events of childhood that made them what they are today?

It's a shame we didn't organise this differently, I realise. Owen would have loved to visit the National gallery too. It's going to be hard without him. I knew
that of course, but it's just hitting me now, quite how difficult everything will be.

I wonder if even Owen realises. I wonder if
even he
understands that I can do anything, go anywhere, and that in some way it matters not one jot. For what's the point in going to the National or the Tate on your own? What's the point of spending a day in London if you have no one to tell about it when you get home?

I take a deep determined breath. I will snap out of this. I will make this OK. I will get myself to the National, and then the Tate, and then back to Brighton, and it will all be
fine
.

The platform is deserted. There are only four of us: three standing waiting for the train, and a wide-eyed tramp on a bench muttering to himself.

“I can do this. It's easy,” I tell myself. “Life is just one step at a time.”

Wind from the tunnel blows a crisp packet along the floor and a distant screeching announces the train's arrival.

As the headlights of the train appear in the darkness, I absently note that at exactly the same moment the two other people standing on the platform move in opposite directions. The man in the sombre suit with the fluorescent pink tie steps backwards, and the ashen grey woman in the woollen coat forwards; it looks almost as though their steps have been choreographed.

As the train bursts from the tunnel, at the precise moment its leading edge thrusts into our presence becoming a rumbling, shrieking reality, the grey woman – for everything, her clothes, her hair, even her skin is grey – takes another step forwards. It's one
step too many.

With unexpected grace she drifts and tips and pivots over the edge of the platform. In a strange weightless movement, drifting like an autumn leaf, she tumbles and vanishes beneath the hulk of the train.

The train shudders to an early halt halfway along the platform. The man in the suit sprints past me, tie flailing, to an intercom beside the tramp. My own mind is empty, possibilities of action have not even started to form, so I stand mouth open, staring at the space where the grey woman once existed as the image of her fall, of the weary elegance with which she tumbled out of life plays over and over in my mind.

A driver jumps, green-faced and shaking from the front of the train. Two staff in yellow jackets push me towards the exit. A tannoy bursts into life with a recorded message.

“Evacuate the station,” it shrieks.

People from other platforms are flooding up the escalator, running terrified from an unknown menace.

“A track incident,” the tannoy echoes. “Please leave by the nearest exit.”

I let the machinery carry me slowly upwards and watch the people stream past.

“Why did she do that?” I wonder. “What can make someone so desperate, so completely hopeless that falling in front of a train seems like the best option?”

As I reach the top of the elevator, and am carried by the panicky swell out through open ticket barriers and into the dingy daylight of Leicester Square I think, “
I can't tell Owen
.”

Owen has gone, and I realise with a shudder that there's no one else I want to tell, no one I
can
tell. I lean back against the wall and watch people gushing past, streaming away from me, trying to put maximum distance between themselves and the unknown horrors of the tunnels.

It's such a brutal thing to have witnessed; I'm amazed to have seen such a thing and to have been simply ejected onto the pavement. Surely that can't be right?

Some distant part of my memory conjures up my own accident. It's not a visual memory but a physical one, the subsonic thud of the impact.

My hands are shaking so I thrust them into my pockets and stare at the crowds and wonder if it's actually possible to survive this world alone. As a single soul, isn't the world maybe just too hard-edged to actually
be
survivable?

I lean against a wall and stare numbly at a man selling newspapers. Stupidly I look at the posters to see if the tube suicide is already in the headlines.

I watch a Japanese woman fighting her way through the sudden crowd with a mass of high-class shopping bags and I see the tramp from the platform as he appears at the top of the stairs.

“Was he watching too?” I wonder. “Is he feeling shaky and alone as well?”

Carried by the crowd, he drifts along still muttering to himself. But as he passes in front of me, moving from left to right, I hear his voice.

“She had nobody,” he says.

I'm not sure if he's talking to me or just rambling.

“That's why she did it,” he says. “She had nobody.”

I watch, frozen, as he disappears around the corner. My mouth fills with saliva and for a moment I think I might vomit, but then the feeling passes, and I cry instead, salty tears dropping shamelessly onto the tarmac as a hundred indifferent strangers stream past.

I spend my days wandering along the pier, surfing the net, sleeping rather more than is normal, and watching English TV – a novelty.

I feel lonely and disjointed, as though this isn't my life, which of course it isn't.

I read Owen's old books, listen to Owen's old records, look through Owen's old windows at the sea. It's not even Owen's life that I'm living. It's his past.

I battle on, waiting for the wind to change and for things to start to feel like they fit, but on Friday as I stand looking at the sea, I realise that I haven't actually spoken to a human being for three days. I haven't uttered one word since the woman in Safeway said, “That'll be twenty-two-fifty.”

I know that this isn't healthy. I know from experience that the time has come to be brave, and acting quickly, before I have time to chicken out, I swipe my keys from the counter and head out the door.

The
Bulldog Tavern
is shouting, heaving, laughing.

It's only 8pm and my initial shock at how busy the place is fades as I remember that unlike France it will close at 11pm. Back in Nice, people don't even go out until midnight.

The noise and the laughter are also a big surprise after years of living overseas. French bars are such a serious affair; here people look like they are actually having fun.

As I push towards the counter, I scan the diverse
shapes and forms around me, none of the homogenous thin, olive skinned posing of the Côte d'Azur here. There are fat guys with beards and thin guys in suits, and old men in leather, and, more than anything, I note that there are lots and lots of people, of all shapes and sizes, with buzz hair cuts and goatee beards. I have slipped, unnoticed, into the fold.

I randomly select a pint of bitter and move back to the centre of the room in order to free up the limited access to the bar.

For a while I fidget, unable to choose a point amongst the crowd and a position, leaning, sitting or standing that feels comfortable. I finally settle against a pillar, hanging up my denim jacket and placing my pint on a little shelf.

I have never been good at hanging around alone in bars, it has always made me feel self conscious, but by the time I have drunk half a pint the place has become so full that it would be impossible for anyone to realise that I
am
alone.

I note a few people watching me. I guess that Brighton remains a small town, and I am fresh meat after all.

“
Here we go again
,” I think. The thought depresses me.

I glance around the room again and my eyes settle on a couple against the opposite wall. They are the most identical pair I have ever seen, the same height, the same shaved heads, matching goatee beards. Even their jeans are the same tone of blue. They look slightly ridiculous but, it has to be said,
cute
.

One of them winks at me and, slightly embarrassed to have been caught staring, I turn away and face the other side of the bar.

I end up wedged between a fit-but-knows-it guy in cycle shorts on the left, a very ugly man in beautiful one-piece motorcycle leathers behind, and a diverse group of slightly drunken men in front.

To distract myself from the two clones and they from me, I stare vaguely into the group in front as though I am involved in their conversation. They are talking about someone's holiday plans and whether his boyfriend will cancel just before the departure. Most people seem to think that this is what will happen.

I'm so pushed into the group I start to feel as though I am involved and the main man, a big guy with a beard and a beer gut glances at me with smiling eyes as he entertains everyone with his spiel. After a while I realise that he does think that I
am
with them.

His neighbour – a thin guy in a suit – asks him how the man in question managed to take four weeks leave.

“Well exactly!” the big guy laughs. “Especially because his boss is his ex … I mean, they're not exactly on the best of terms.”

“Apparently he put the form in on the day Joe went on holiday, so it just slipped in without anyone noticing,” comments an older guy in a leather jacket.

Without thinking, I lean forward and comment, “fnarr, fnarr,” a mocking laugh I recall from way back that indicates an unintended
double entendre
.

It's the beer talking, and I immediately realise how rude this is, especially as I don't know anyone in the group or even who they are talking about. But a couple of the guys laugh heartily and the others smile at me.

“Try that in France and you're dead,” I think.

The guy in the suit says, “I can't believe you missed that one Burt; you're losing your touch.”

The group opens to let me in; I feel I have to say something.

“Hey, do you know how they say double entendre in French?” I ask.

“Um, double entendre?” asks one.

“Nah, I know this one,” says the fat guy. “Jean told me.” The guy glances behind him, then shrugs and continues. “Apparently they don't have a word for it in French.”

“They don't,” I agree.

A man appears at his side. It is one of the clones. His double is just behind him holding two pints of beer.

“We say double-sense, but that isn't necessarily rude, so it's not really the same,” he says, his voice smooth, his accent French.

“We don't really use what you call double entendres in French humour.”

“So what you're saying,” laughs the guy in the suit, “is that we use your language better than you do.”

Jean smiles wryly. “Maybe,” he laughs.

The conversation drifts around France and the French. Jean and his twin partner – who amusingly turns out to be called John – take position either side of me and chat. I can feel a move coming and I find the idea amusing and actually quite flattering.

By my third pint I am feeling amazingly relaxed, and this in turn has created a happy feeling of homecoming. It's a surprise to me, but I am realising that despite fifteen years in France it is still only in England that I can strike up an instant rapport, only
in England that I can feel comfortable enough to join in an overheard conversation.

As I start my fourth pint, the crowd is diminishing, and the clones are standing either side of me, touching me regularly as they talk, a prod here, a playful punch there.

John tells me that they have been together for eleven years.

I nod impressed. “I don't know how you do it,” I say.

Jean winks at me. “We'll show you if you want.”

I laugh. “No, I meant how do you stay together so long.”

Jean smiles at me. “We'll show you if you want,” he deadpans. “The thing is to keep the sex life healthy, the rest is following.”