by Alyson Rudd
The following morning she had mooched about her flat in her dressing gown tearfully with nowhere to go, with nothing to interrupt her dark thoughts, so she took a long shower, dressed as she would have done for work and took the Tube into town. This cheered her up enormously. If she was needed on the Underground, she would be there. She avoided the platform where it had happened though. Later, she thought, I’ll be ready for that later. And ten months later, she still was not ready. Soon she would be out of money. What was she waiting for? It was beginning to look as if she had been waiting for Ryan but he had not needed her help. He had not tried to jump from the food balcony at Waterloo. He had needed to buy a book for his sister, that’s all, and he had not needed her to help him with that; and then it dawned on her that perhaps it was she who needed help from him.
They met again on the booths hovering above the heads of the scuttling passengers and this time she ordered the garlic bread on his behalf.
‘So tell me,’ he said, ‘what it is you need to sort out. Maybe I can help. I’d like to help.’
‘Why?’ she said.
There was silence. Their food arrived.
‘Good question,’ he said. ‘I’ve not been completely honest with you. If I tell you all, will you tell me all?’
‘Are you with the police?’ she said.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Jeez, no, why? Don’t answer that. We’ll get to why you thought that.’
Sylvie played with her food. Ryan barely touched his.
‘I saw you ages ago, on the Tube, and thought you were really beautiful. Sometimes you’d be on my train and sometimes not and now and again I’d miss my train on purpose in case you were on the next one. I kept thinking I’d pluck up the courage to say hello but I never did and—’
Sylvie interrupted him. ‘And then you saw me here. That’s not so strange, it’s nice, really. I’m flattered, honestly I am. And I was a bit worried about the book but that explains why you knew about Mrs Henry Wood. You’d seen me reading her, hadn’t you? Months ago.’
She seemed so relieved that he could not bring himself to continue.
‘Yes, I did consider striking up a conversation about one of those books but then I wouldn’t see you for a while and you’d be reading a different one. It’s hard to keep up with your book club.’
She smiled, she appeared very happy with his story, as if it answered everything, which it did not.
‘Your turn?’ he said hesitantly.
‘Mine is more… awkward,’ she said. ‘Nowhere near as lovely as yours. You won’t like it. You might hate it.’
‘I doubt it,’ he said.
She sat up straight and pushed a strand of her hair behind her ears. It fell back onto her cheek almost immediately.
‘I seem unable to get off the Tube.’
Ryan knew this. He knew he was not supposed to know this. He opened then closed his mouth and at last said: ‘Why not?’
‘I lost my job. Very unfairly. I wouldn’t let my boss have a grope and on the day I lost my job I didn’t go straight home. I didn’t want to, not immediately, and I ended up at King’s Cross. A woman on the platform seemed to recognize me. It was very strange and she handed me her baby. It sort of appeared out of nowhere and I took it. I mean, I held it so she could tie her shoelace or something and she jumped in front of the train. While I held her baby. I puked up a few times, they took the baby away, the police drove me home but I felt dreadful.
‘I should have done something else, not just held her baby so she could kill herself, and when I got back on the Tube the next day, I felt better about not avoiding the place, like I was making amends. I don’t even know what that means, but I sort of hang around waiting for something to happen. Maybe see someone holding a baby. I don’t know. Sometimes I think I’m waiting to go back in time but of late I’m thinking that I am procrastinating, building up the courage to go back to the platform at King’s Cross, I don’t deliberately avoid the platform where it happened but on the other hand it’s never the right time, the right day, to actually go there and so… And so I am stuck on the Underground.’
She had been staring down at the passengers while she spoke, not daring to look him in the eye. As the words flowed she wondered at the stupidity of them. Perhaps, she thought, I have gone mad. Perhaps Ryan is my mental health nurse. Perhaps he is my guiding angel and no one else can see him.
She turned to look at him. He was tapping one thumb against the other as an inner voice scolded him for being as mesmerized by her voice as by her story, for being so grateful to be her confidant. He had to stifle a grin at the realization that he was part of her life now. He calmed his breathing and ordered himself to sound sage and understanding. He had to believe that Sylvie’s trauma was not so scary, that Sylvie could be saved, or else how would she believe it?
‘Maybe I can help,’ he said. ‘Would you be up for me trying to help?’
She exhaled almost happily.
‘We hardly know each other,’ she said, ‘but I think you can and I am ready to try.’
As Ryan returned to his labs, he wondered at the sensation in the pit of his stomach. It reminded him of the day he signed his mortgage papers. It had been an isolating, grown-up thing to do. He had done it propelled by a maturity he did not realize he possessed and by motivations that he did not quite understand. It had been an act that mapped out his future as an employee with responsibilities and a lack of freedom. It had also been a satisfyingly sensible decision and had given him a sense of propulsion, a sense of having direction in his life.
He had chosen Millie, now Sylvie, and had known on some level all along she was different, fragile and challenging. She was also pretty and funny and someone he wanted in his life. Right now, though, he needed to know if the answer to why she never got off the Underground was an acceptable one. He needed to know what Paul thought about it and he texted him that he had news.
‘I would never have guessed that,’ Paul said. ‘But it’s better than her being a trainspotter, isn’t it?’
‘That’s one way of looking at it,’ Ryan said, distracted.
A young woman had walked into the pub alone wearing the sort of big cream Nordic knitted jumper Ellen had worn for their only full winter together.
‘Do you think me and Ellen would have stayed together, be married by now?’ he asked Paul.
He had never asked him that before, although his friend had been waiting for him to ask it for a long time. Now, though, to ask him now? Was he asking for permission to leave her behind?
‘I think yes, you would, but I don’t think that should guide how you live today,’ Paul said. ‘Except…’
Paul shrugged. He was no expert on relationships. He had no idea if Sylvie would be good for Ryan but he did know it would be no good if he let Ellen be the thing that stopped him being with Sylvie. Ryan was not interested in the ‘except’. He had wanted confirmation this was not the life he should be living. It helped him to make sense of the interruptions by Ellen in his thoughts, his dreams and in avatars. She was letting him know that the further from her he travelled, the harder it would be to forget her. He did not want to forget her, he reminded himself, but he wished she could forgive him for still being alive.
‘Is it mad of me to want to help Sylvie? Would you do it, if it was you?’
‘I’d do it, but as a challenge. My ego would let me think I could kill off her vicious circle, free her from the ogre, find the fucking golden fleece or whatever and I would do it without caring whether it meant an obligation. It might mean she became infatuated with me or resented me. I wouldn’t care either way if I succeeded. And I doubt that is very helpful, is it?’
‘It’s honest,’ Ryan laughed, ‘but I’m not sure it will be as exciting as all that. My cunning plan so far is to tell her I’ll accompany her to the platform she’s been avoiding, hold her hand – literally, if necessary – and then we’ll walk out into the street with violins playing and she’ll be over it.’
‘Beau
tiful,’ Paul said, ‘naïve, but really fucking beautiful.’
Ryan leaned forward and almost hit the table with his forehead.
‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘it’s a test. You know, like The Truman Show.’
‘Shit,’ Paul said, ‘we thought you were years off guessing. Can I stop pretending to be mates with you now?’
‘Not just yet,’ Ryan said. ‘I need your rent money to cover my mortgage.’
‘I’m paying you rent? When did that happen?’
And they spent the rest of the evening in high spirits, a little drunk, eating kebabs in the street in a blaze of nostalgia for their college days, the gunky sauce running down towards Ryan’s elbow as they stood in a puddle of shaved lettuce and underripe diced tomatoes.
‘Ellen would say she could be vegetarian if kebabs didn’t exist,’ one of them recalled but the next day neither was sure which one of them, if it was indeed either of them, had said that out loud.
Chapter 17
A weird deadline entered Ryan’s life. Theo and Jenny, his next-door neighbours, were having a party to celebrate Theo’s early retirement. Ryan had never been invited to a house party with so much notice before. June. Three months away. He would take Sylvie, the new, free-from-the-past Sylvie. It would form her debut on the world stage after her period of hibernation. Theo and Jenny could give her career advice, Sylvie would meet Paul and Naomi and perhaps even be able to talk about her trauma, her past trauma, her fresh start. Three months.
‘The weekend?’ she said. ‘I don’t use the Underground at the weekends. I was commuting when it happened so my peculiar routine follows a commuter’s.’
‘That’s the point, or at least partly the point,’ Ryan said. ‘I work in the week so it’s easier for me to do this on a Saturday or Sunday. But I can book time off if you think it would be easier in the week for you. Really. I do get time off.’
They were sat at their usual banquette. It was a table with which Ryan had a love/hate relationship. It was claustrophobic, very public, very transient, very pasta-based, but it was theirs.
‘Or we can go now, right now. I’m covered at the uni today.’
Sylvie tried to smile but could not quite manage it.
‘Not now,’ she said. ‘Saturday is good. Thank you.’
‘I’ve given this some thought and I think it will also help if I meet you at the start, at Eastcote station. Start as we mean to go on, sort of thing.’
He stood on the pavement outside the station at 11 a.m. as arranged. He was wearing black jeans and a black sweater. She was wearing a short black dress under a short black cardigan.
‘We look like we’re off to a funeral,’ he said. She tried to smile again but failed.
‘Right, Metropolitan line to Baker Street and then we change, or,’ he said, turning to look at the miniature LED screen, ‘we can wait another six minutes and get one straight to King’s Cross.’
‘Let’s not wait,’ she said and hand in hand they boarded the next train and he felt like Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate, rescuing the girl of his dreams; no need for any more words, no need to do or say anything other than travel towards what they needed to escape from. They sat next to each other in silence. She placed her head on his shoulder for a few minutes, in between Northwick Park and Preston Road. He held her hand. It was peaceful.
They navigated the intricacy that is changing trains at Baker Street with relative ease and Ryan forced himself to forget that this was where he had tried and failed to keep up with her. Three stops later they were at King’s Cross standing on the eastbound platform. All they had to do was shift to the westbound platform, walk to the end of it and wait for the next train.
‘Coffee first?’ she said.
‘No worries,’ he said, keen to sound relaxed.
They sat not far from yet another young musician at the free-for-all piano who was trying his best not to overkill an Eric Satie ‘Gymnopédie’.
Ryan thought the piece could easily be called ‘Delay’. He asked her about her boss, the pervert, and how it was he could get away with removing her.
‘It was,’ she said, ‘very easy. They gave me more than I would have got if I took them to a tribunal or to court and they did it so… swiftly. It was like the guillotine. I even had to leave there and then like you see in films about Wall Street. I was escorted from the building in a state of shock, I suppose. And I ended up here, cash rich, job poor.’
‘That sort of thing doesn’t happen in universities; at least I don’t think it does, but if it did I’d like to think if the lecturer was the groper then he would be told to leave, not the student he tried it on with. But as you can tell, I can be hopelessly naïve.’
She had to smile now. She had the nerves associated with exam halls not grand station concourses, but he was hopelessly naïve and that was, she realized, a large part of his attractiveness to her. He was nothing like the corporate men she had worked with and for; he was earnest, possessed of something akin to purity, a sexy purity. She clung to the phrase. She had found a man with sexy purity, which made her very fortunate. She needed to remember that.
He drained his latte. ‘Ready?’
‘I’ll just use the loo,’ she said, touching his arm. ‘Wait here.’
He waited, wondering if she would come back and if she did come back whether she would ask for another coffee, then for something to eat, for some fresh air. He decided he would not be too surprised if he sat there for an hour, waiting, eventually wondering if she existed at all or was a test sent by Ellen. Ah, he thought, here she is again, and as a joke to himself – or at least a diversion from his dead girlfriend – he looked at the corners of the café to see if there were cameras all pointed at him for The Ryan Kennedy Show.
Sylvie was only gone five minutes in the end. She placed both hands on his shoulders.
‘I’m ready if you are,’ she said with enforced jollity.
‘It’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘And if it isn’t quite fine, I’m here.’
He stood up and they headed along the arcade of posh shops towards the entrance to the Underground. There was a huge swell of travellers and very few of them were wearing normal clothes. There were men, women and children in replica football and rugby shirts, a hen party in tutus and tiaras, a tall man in heels and a red leather skirt. There were transatlantic tourists in nasty leisurewear and bright trainers pulling and pushing bulky suitcases wrapped in thick layers of clingfilm. There were four policemen with guns stood to one side watching people in the early stages of revelry: before the booze, before the game, before the triumph and disaster, before the emotions got out of hand, before the abuse, the posturing, the singing, the chanting, the puking, the falling over, the ankles sprained by teetering on platform shoes while drunk, the stabbing. There would be at least one stabbing tonight. The policemen were sure of that.
‘You’ve got to love this city,’ Ryan said as he guided her towards the ticket barriers.
He stood behind her on the escalator, aware, suddenly, of how fragile she was physically as well as mentally. Her nearly red and robust hair had distracted him from quite how petite she was.
The westbound Metropolitan line platform was full so they hung back, allowing the throng to ebb in and out of the next train, and then together they walked to the far end of it. Sylvie was acutely aware that somehow this did not count as an exorcism. Saturdays were different. She could easily have been on the underground system of a foreign city for all the familiarity she felt. She stared at the tracks but there was no blood, no traces of the clean-up of a body crushed. There were no traces of emotion either. She was neither fearful nor tearful.
Ryan realized he had not thought about the moment. Was she supposed to cry or shake or, God forbid, wail?
‘Is this helping?’ he said.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t feel anything. It’s not the same as it was then. It was quieter. It was sort of in slow motion. There was a hush, believe it or not. I should have brought so
me flowers.’
‘That’s probably not allowed,’ he said.
‘No, you’re right.’
He tried to imagine what it must be like to watch someone jump in front of a train but decided he didn’t want to. That decision came too late. It was Ellen’s face he saw being slammed against a windscreen. He stepped back, wondering if this was all more unsettling for him than it was for Sylvie.
‘Do you need longer?’ he said.
She shook her head.
‘It’s so sad though, isn’t it?’
‘Of course it is, no one would say it wasn’t.’
He looked at the clock on the platform display.
‘I think we should go for a walk, have some lunch, maybe go to a gallery. What do you think?’
She paused in front of the map of the Tube.
‘I’ve never been to Holland Park,’ she said.
‘Then let’s go,’ he said.
They wandered among the grand houses and leafy lanes, dodged the bikes in the park itself and then found a café just off Kensington High Street which was serving Moroccan chicken stew as its daily special, so they ate and they chatted like any couple.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘For today. You know the policewoman said I had saved a life, that I was in the right place at the right time and had done a good thing. I didn’t believe her but you were in the right place at the right time at Waterloo when you recognized me so maybe there’s a pattern to it all, a reason, fate, something.’
‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘I think you had post-traumatic stress and it’s rubbish, really, that no one gave you any advice about it. You should probably tell your doctor, you know, get some free counselling on the NHS.’
She clutched the top of her head. ‘I should have done that straightaway. I feel pretty stupid now.’
‘So, what next?’ he asked. ‘Job hunting, or did they pay you off with a million quid?’
‘I am registered with all sorts of agencies and I think I might do some temping, to ease myself back in.’