Leaving the Underground

If only I could just take one step from the office and be home and not have to suffer this hateful journey every day. I work nine-to-five yet I don't step through my own front door until six-fifteen at the earliest. Six-thirty if there are delays on the Underground, which there usually are. Seven if I get off early and walk, which seems to be happening more and more these days. I just can't bear it down there.

He stood outside the coffee shop sipping his drink and reading his newspaper, putting off the evil moment, glancing now and then over the paper to gauge the number of commuters flowing steadily down the stone stairs to the ticket hall beyond. A red bus halted nearby, disgorging fifty or more. Wait another five minutes to let that lot go through, maybe. The mechanical clunk-whirr of the ticket gates was audible at street level in spite of the city traffic, pumping travellers deeper into the tunnels until at some point they'd reach a thronging platform and wait for the next service.

Should he go now? Go earlier, be home earlier. Go later, fewer travellers. There was a lull in the number of people walking down. His decision made, he crumpled the paper cup and dropped it on one of the outside tables. No litter bins nowadays, what with bombers. As if they'd bother putting bombs in litter bins when there's the…no, don't go there. Just being crammed onto a tube train full of strangers was torture enough without worrying about backpacks and rucksacks.
Picking up his briefcase, he began walking. As he approached the steps a young man with a large sports bag over his shoulder dashed down past him. He almost stopped and turned back there and then, but these steps were clearly marked 'entrance only'. Anyone climbing back up would get hard stares and muttered comments. It was simply not done. Anyway, it looked like the man was heading for a different line.
He deftly swiped himself through the gates, his pre-paid card hanging around his neck on a cord, and he let the escalator carry him down.

---

Stand in your spot near the doors. Find an advert and focus on it. Portable air conditioning units. Volunteering in Africa. Car insurance for women and senior citizens. A new citrus drink. A hula girl drinking from a coconut shell. That'll do. Focus on the slogan: "New lemon and lime flavour Krush takes you to a special place."
The train drew into another station, bright lights, lurid advertising hoardings and row upon row of faces. The ones at the back knew they're weren't going to get on this train. Maybe not even the next one. A distorted, unintelligible announcement from the driver. The doors shuddered open and commuters poured in and out simultaneously, somehow avoiding each others glance. He was pushed further and further inside by the mass of people. Only ten more stops. Keep reading the slogan. Immediately behind him a mobile played a tune and a man answered, a gruff voice used to issuing orders and demands. He could feel the man's breath on the back of his head as he shouted into the phone, fighting to be heard over the noise of the train as it pulled away.
Someone was moving further down the carriage, shuffling along. A beggar. He couldn't stand beggars, they made him feel guilty and repulsed at the same time. It was a woman, her head covered in a dirty white woollen shawl, a baby in one arm. Getting in everyone's face, her hand out in front of her. Most of the commuters are ignoring her, looking at an invisible point five feet behind her. He wished he was able to do the same thing. He tried to keep his eye on the advert slogan – "Krush takes you to a special place" – but as the woman made her way closer he couldn't help but glance at the baby. It had been born with a cleft palate; where-ever it had been born they didn't – or couldn't – fix it. The infant gurgled and dribbled. He stared at its gaping mouth and misshapen nose and wondered how it swallowed. He swallowed dryly, just to make sure he still could.
The train shuddered to a halt in the darkness of the tunnel, swaying everyone forwards then back. The lights flicked off, then after a second or two back on again. He shifted uncomfortably, his left hand moist against the handle of his plastic briefcase. He knew the print would be coming off the newspaper and marking his right hand. He daren't touch his face with that hand in case he ended up with a black smear across it. Read the slogan. Breathe.

Then she was there, right in front of him. Hand out, no words, yet demanding his attention. She had a sign slung around her neck, blue biro on corrugated cardboard: please to give mony sick baby and famly what you can. He shifted uneasily, trying to shrug. Suddenly a hand shot past his ear, a mobile phone jabbing at the woman's face.

"Piss off!"

She jerked back involuntarily, her expression mingling dismay and disgust. The man on the mobile continued his conversation as if he were the only person in the carriage.

"Yeah, just telling some gyppo scrounger to sling her hook. Can't believe they've got the front to wander round tube trains with their hands out when they're all fiddling their benefit in the first place."

His guts were churning and his armpits were suddenly moist. He wished he'd been able to give her some money now, even just a couple of pounds for the baby, so she could…well, whatever they do with kids like that. She was moving further away down the carriage now, far out of reach.

The train jerked into life, forcing the standing passengers to take a step in order to keep their balance. He was caught off-guard, stumbling backwards. There was that awful feeling when he could tell he'd trodden hard on someone's foot.

"Oi, watch it!"

A hand in the small of his back shoved him away. He twisted to look back and apologise. A young black girl, her white baseball cap on sideways. She was already looking away as if he wasn't even worth the effort of looking at. He opened his mouth to speak but then closed it again. Tiny white earphones were jammed into her ears, the cable running down to her tiny pearl-pink mobile. He felt aggrieved; there was no way he could apologise if she wasn't looking at him and couldn't hear him. He couldn't right the wrong, and now she would go away with a bad impression of him. A deep blush crept up from his throat and a trickle of sweat ran down his side under his shirt, halting only when it met the belt on his trousers. He could feel the heat climbing up his face like a blanket. He tried to swallow again, but he couldn't. Mouth dry, everything else damp with sweat. Look up at the advert, at the slogan – "to a special place". Maybe he'd get off at the next stop and walk. Anything would be better than this torture.

---

The train drew to a halt. The dimly-lit station platform was empty, the advertising spaces embedded in the curved beige-tiled walls chaotic rectangles of torn posters. He didn't recognise the place at all. Maybe they'd been shifted onto a different line the last time they stopped. The vacant space outside was inviting, just a couple of steps away, but for some reason the doors hadn't opened yet. He screwed up his courage and stepped quickly towards the doors, pushing his fingers into the gap and pulling them. They resisted at first, his panic increasing moment by moment. The train is going to pull away and I'm going to be stood here by the door like a hopeless idiot, the poor fool who forgot to get off at his stop. They'll laugh at me for the next hour. He pulled harder.

Finally the doors gave, jerking open. As he stepped out into the cool air they quickly closed again, accompanied by the beeping alert that indicated the train was about to move. His arm was stuck in the door up to his elbow. His left arm, still gripping his briefcase. His case, with his keys, his mobile, his wallet. He pulled urgently, twisting the case sideways in the hope that it'd somehow fit through the gap. The train began to move. He shouted incoherently, unable to form the right words. Behind the glass, inside the train, the other passengers looked at him impassively, unresponsive to his plight. He was walking quickly now, crab-like sideways as the train gathered momentum. Now the door was pinning his hand and his case was halfway through. With one final effort he tore himself free. The case spun out of his hands and clattered onto the platform, spinning around. He watched it dumbly, knowing exactly what was going to happen and how he was powerless to prevent it. The case spun once more and then slid off the edge of the platform. Struck by the wheels of the final carriage it broke open and a swarm of papers and business cards billowed out in the wake of the train, looping in the disturbed air before settling back between the electrified tracks in the grimy concrete gulley below.

He felt dizzy. He squatted down, not wanting to faint. The beginnings of a retch tickled him in the hollow of his throat. Breathe slowly. Remember the slogan – "a special place". As his eyes focussed he caught sight of his keys, glinting far below, out of reach. A dull brown mouse ran out from a hiding place, sniffed the keys and ran away.

---

Somebody will come. They'll have seen what happened on the cameras and come down and fetch my things. He looked up and down the length of the platform. The train tracks emerged from a pitch black hole at one end and disappeared into another hole at the other end. Somewhere in the distance, in the darkness, a train rumbled, screeching and clanking as it passed over a set of points. He sat down on a smooth wooden bench and unfolded his newspaper across his lap. His right hand was clean. No ink on it at all. He ran it across his face and took a deep breath.

---

Sometime later it occurred to him that he'd been sitting there for quite a while. He looked up from his newspaper. There were no cameras, no CCTV monitoring at all. Of course, this is why nobody has come, they don't know I'm here. He stood up, folded the newspaper neatly and left it on the bench for the next commuter to come through. He'd finished with it, after all.
At one end of the platform a sign glowed yellow: Exit. As he began walking towards it a figure appeared, beckoning him. He smiled.