Underground

by Tobias Hill

  ‘Hey, Casimir. You coming to Bar Rumba tonight?’ Weaver jostles against Casimir’s chair as he moves past.

  ‘No.’ He looks down from the screens, sits back.

  Weaver’s shadow flickers and looms against the yellowed office walls. ‘It’s Saturday night, man. Come on.’

  Casimir doesn’t reply.

  The trainee’s voice is childlike, disappointed and enthusiastic at the same time. There is the track noise of tap-water as he fills the kettle, plugs it in. ‘Saturday night. Olly’s going to come, aren’t you, Oll? What’s your first name, Cass?’

  ‘Casimir.’

  ‘Eh? What’s your last name?’

  ‘Casimir.’

  ‘Piss off. What, Casimir Casimir?’

  ‘My name is Kazimierz Ariel Kazimierski. You can call me Cass. It is easier.’

  ‘Fair enough. Ariel?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What, like the washing powder?’

  The station-to-station telephone rings once and Casimir leans back, ignoring Weaver, reaching for the receiver. The trainee mutters behind him.

  ‘Camden Town.’

  ‘Who is this?’

  He doesn’t recognize the voice. It seems to him over-measured, as if English is not the speaker’s first language. He can hear no accent.

  ‘This is Assistant Station Supervisor Casimir.’

  ‘Where is Adams?’

  ‘He’s working. Can I help?’

  ‘This is Line Management.’

  The voice makes Casimir think of teachers and politicians. Low-pitched, made calm. Deceptive. Immediately he is on edge, not wanting to say more than he has to. He tries to place the voice as masculine or feminine. It is hard to be certain.

  From round the corner comes Sievwright’s loud voice and laughter. The voice on the line is still talking. Casimir cranes over the receiver.

  ‘I’m sorry. I couldn’t hear what you were saying.’

  There is a pause. Not long, patient but suggesting impatience. ‘I know Adams is working this shift. It is very important that I talk to him.’

  The accident, he thinks. He remembers Adams’s voice on the radio. The ashen tone and broken sentences. I’m just going out for a minute.

  ‘The station is a big place. He may be working anywhere. I can give him a message as soon as I talk to him.’

  ‘Can you see him on the monitors?’

  There is an edge to the voice, almost musical. Feminine. She knows the control room and where I am sitting, Casimir thinks, and then: be careful. There is more than you understand here. Be careful if you lie.

  He turns round, looks up at the screens. The crowds thicken and come apart. Monotone sunlight comes in through the east-west entrances of the surface concourse. Two children run along one of the platforms with a kite, racing to get it airborne in the tunnel wind. It batters along the ground behind them.

  ‘Assistant Casimir –’

  ‘I can’t see him. I can give him a message. By radio or when I see him.’

  The line goes quiet again. Casimir can hear no background office noise, no breathing. When the Line Manager’s voice cuts in again it is more tentative, less sure of itself.

  ‘This is confidential. It is about Rebecca Saville. The accident. It is unfortunate.’

  He waits, not saying anything. He remembers the photographs. The woman’s neck exposed, lean and beautiful. Her hands reaching out towards the track.

  ‘Adams may not have told you. The doctors say she was born with a heart defect. She had a pacemaker. Any large electric shock would –’

  ‘Is she dead?’

  ‘Yes.’ The Line Manager sounds surprised. As if Casimir should have known all along. ‘She died late last night. The police are coming to talk to Adams this afternoon. Between two and three. Just for the facts. It was an accident, of course. We just want him to give the facts. Can you tell him to be ready?’

  ‘Yes, I can do that.’

  He puts the phone down. Stops with his hand out, head down. He doesn’t want to hear any more. After some time he looks round at the monitors.

  He can see Adams now. He is in the surface concourse, leaning by the east exit, the noon light slanting in around him. Almost lost in the public crowd. He might have been standing there all the time, Casimir can’t be sure. He is quite still, looking out across the streets and midday traffic. As if he’s waiting for something.

  His jacket is hanging on the wall and he takes it down, looks up.

  On the monitor screen Adams is watching the Camden streets. The light coming in parches his features and simplifies them. From here it looks as if he is grinning.

  He walks through the late summer rain to the river and sits, a lone figure under the trees, while the embankment pavement begins to darken and shine with water. He is hunched forward on the iron bench with his elbows on his knees, supporting himself. His head is bent and his hands are clasped loosely together, so that from a distance it looks as if he is praying. The rain plasters rat’s-tails of hair against his scalp and runs down his cheeks and back.

  He is not praying, only thinking. He thinks of how scared Rebecca Saville must have been as she fell, knowing the weakness of her own heart. He thinks of the Underground girl, the smell of rain on her and the acid odour of oranges on her hands. The vividness of her being alive.

  A cyclist goes past and he looks up at the hiss of tyres on the wet ground. The shadows under Casimir’s eyes and the hollows of his cheekbones make his face look bruised. He will not sleep until morning tomorrow as he prepares for the night shifts. But he is surprised at how alert he feels, as if the closeness of death has shaken him awake. He looks down at his watch, stands up quickly and begins to walk back up past Westminster Bridge and the grey hulk of County Hall, shoulders raised against the rain.

  By the time he reaches Lower Marsh the sky is already lightening, the afternoon sun breaking through as it falls below the level of clouds. Mrs Navratil’s shop is crowded with people, their jacketed shoulders pressed against the steamed-up window as they queue for Saturday night fish. Casimir can see Navratil’s weekend workers behind the vats, Den and Merrick, their faces shiny with sweat and oil just as his own is slicked with rain.

  He opens the door and edges through the crowd to the chrome and glass counter. The smell of cooking meat makes him hungry and he tries to remember how long it is since he’s eaten. Den nods at him from the cash till, hands still working while he smiles.

  ‘All right? How’s the Tube?’

  Casimir shakes his head, tries to smile back. He doesn’t know how to answer. He opens the counter, goes through and locks it behind him. The vats hiss and spit as Merrick drops in fishcakes one by one.

  ‘Cushty little job, that is. Isn’t it, Merrick?’ The younger man laughs and nods. ‘All those strikes, feet up on the picket lines. Cushty. Desk work, is it? You’re not down in the tunnels, are you?’

  ‘Not today.’ He opens the rear door. ‘Is Mrs Navratil here?’

  ‘Upstairs with her loverboy, heh. Laters, yeah?’

  ‘Yes.’ He closes the door behind him.

  The rear staircase is narrow and walled-off between shop floor and storerooms. Casimir has to turn his shoulders to walk up, the bare steps creaking under him. On the first floor is the lodgers’ kitchen, four o’clock light streaming in across the empty surfaces. The hallway light bulb has still not been replaced and Casimir goes on up carefully, past his own second-floor room to a last flight of stairs at the back of the building.

  There is a small door at the top, thickly repainted, the yellow gloss already chipped in layered patterns of brown and red. Through the door Casimir can hear the low monologue of a radio or television. He knocks and waits, knocks again.

  ‘Who is that?’ Mrs Navratil’s voice is close to the door, waiting before opening. Casimir takes a step back down before he answers.

  ‘It’s me. I have the rent.’

  He is looking down, reaching into his jacket as the landlady ope
ns the door. He hands the money up to her and waits while she counts the notes. Her hair is down and she is wearing good clothes: a long skirt and blue-grey silk blouse, old-fashioned but well kept. Casimir hasn’t noticed Mrs Navratil’s hair before. It is tarnished like old silver.

  ‘Good.’ She is looking at him again. ‘You seem tired.’

  ‘There was an accident at work.’

  ‘A bad one?’

  He nods. ‘A death. It has never happened before at my station, in my time.’ When he looks up to meet her eyes, Mrs Navratil is already glancing away, back into her room. ‘I’m sorry, you’re busy –’

  ‘Yes. Can you work the chicken vats tonight?’

  ‘I have to go out first. I can try and be –’

  ‘No. It doesn’t matter.’

  She is already closing the door. He turns and goes back down the stairs, thinking of the lodgers’ stories of Mrs Navratil: that she loves a television newsreader; that she sits in her best clothes, waiting for him to notice her. Behind him the television monologue is turned up, a deadpan masculine voice against a background of theme music.

  He goes into his room and locks the door. The net curtains are drawn and he opens them and then the window, letting in light and air. He sits down on the bed and then lies back on the cheap mattress.

  He is still wearing his uniform jacket and he takes out the rest of his month’s pay, smooth brown and blue banknotes in a white packet. The pocket is full of material, neatly folded and arranged: a notebook, a staff list, a dozen International Registered envelopes, stamps and pen. Sitting up, he unfolds £250 and puts the money in an envelope, then tears a page from the notebook.

  The London A–Z is on the floor beside him and he picks it up, flattens the notepaper against it, holding the book’s spine to keep it taut. He writes quickly. Each letter is joined but distinct.

  131b Lower Marsh

  London SE1 7AD, England

  Saturday 7 Sept.

  Dear Piotr

  Here is money for September. Write to me if Tomek’s treatment becomes more expensive.

  I hope you are all well. Summer is almost finished here. Tonight is not so warm and the leaves are falling. Even in London there are trees.

  I do not want my father to write to me. Please do not post his letters again.

  Love,

  Ariel

  When he is finished he goes to the window, closes and locks it. Upriver, the faces of Big Ben read ten to five. He goes out of the room and downstairs to the lodgers’ side-door. The queue for fish has lengthened into the street. Casimir walks without hurrying. Taking long steps, covering the ground.

  He looks up at the railway bridges and high-rises, enjoying the feel of sun on his face where the clouds have broken. High up the nearest high-rise an office has been burnt out. He slows as he passses its blackened, hollow space. The windows above it have been dulled and warped by the fire’s intensity.

  The road ends at the south bank of the Thames, three streets of all-day rush-hour traffic meeting at Waterloo Bridge. At the hub of the crossroads is the Bull Ring, subways opening into its half-underground space. Casimir can see the tops of lampposts and a warning sign on the far concrete wall, FIRES ARE PROHIBITED. In the mouth of the northern underpass he can make out figures moving and the bare, skewed shapes of cardboard shelters. Signs are already up, warning of new construction work: a multiplex. Casimir wonders where the homeless will go, forced out of the old shanty town.

  The post office on the corner of Stamford Street is still open and he hands in the registered letter and leaves quickly, heading towards an empty phone box, crossing the street between grid-locked cars. He swings open the phone-box door and picks up the receiver. It has been smashed open, the mouthpiece trailing like a lid from a nest of red and yellow wires. Casimir holds the receiver to his ear. There is still a dial tone, only slightly muffled by the parts twisted out of alignment.

  He takes the staff list out of his jacket, folds it out on the wall and leafs through the pages of names – Weaver, Sievwright, Aebanyim. Under Adams’s name are a telephone number and address: 215 Coppermill Lane, an Outer London area code. Casimir feeds in a pound and dials the number. He leans back against the booth door as he waits. The smell of urine in the box is overpowering. The windows are scrawled with graffiti, purple and green ciphers like those in the Underground cross-tunnel.

  Casimir closes his eyes while the telephone rings and rings. He is trespassing here already. He has no place in Adams’s private life, knows nothing about it. He imagines the supervisor drinking alone in a dark room. Thinking of the day.

  The connection clicks open. For a moment there is no voice, only a sense of distance. Casimir can hear gulls.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘It’s Casimir.’ He waits uncomfortably. The breathing on the other end of the line is Adams but not Adams. Hoarse and weak, like an old man. ‘Casimir from the Underground.’

  Again there is the sound of seagulls. Now he cannot hear Adams at all, not even his breathing. The gulls and the silence make him think of waterlands, or the sea. ‘Adams, are you there?’

  ‘Yes. What do you – What can I do for you?’ There is irritation in the other man’s voice.

  ‘The girl who fell, Rebecca Saville. I want to talk about it.’

  ‘There’s nothing to say. She’s dead.’

  He feels anger start up in himself at the quickness of Adams’s answer. He waits, letting himself become calm again. ‘You knew about her heart.’

  ‘Not to start with, no. Not when I told you.’

  ‘But you knew she was pushed. You had the photographs.’

  There is no reply. An ambulance goes past outside, siren loud in the built-up streets, moving slowly through the five o’clock traffic. Casimir leans forward, trying to hear his own voice or Adams’s.

  ‘You must have –’

  ‘Yes, I knew.’

  He remembers Adams telling him about the fall, three days ago. The half-smile. A suicide wouldn’t be an accident now, would it? Now he holds the receiver carefully against his ear and mouth, trying not to loosen the smashed parts.

  ‘What did you tell the police?’

  ‘I left them the photos.’

  ‘You didn’t see them?’

  ‘I don’t know anything, Cass. Nothing to speak of. They’ve got the photos, they can make up their own minds. I don’t want nothing to do with it.’

  He is surprised at the levelness of the other man’s voice. Not deadpan, only tired.

  ‘I’m on sick-leave from today, for two months. That’s my notice. I’m not going back down there again. I’ve had done with it, Cass, and if you’ve sense you’ll do the same.’

  ‘Who pushed her?’

  ‘How the fuck should I know?’

  Adams’s shout is distorted by the telephone. Casimir pulls his ear away from the harsh, ragged sound. The supervisor is still talking, fast and loud. Casimir puts his ear back against the broken mechanism, holding it together with both hands.

  ‘– rotten about this whole business. Something brewing. You’re a careful lad, Cass, why don’t you just take care of yourself? That’s all I’m doing, taking care. Looking out for myself, it’s what I’ve always done. When I’m down there now, I keep wanting to look over my shoulder and I don’t, but the feeling’s that strong. I trust my feelings. I’ve been down there a long time, you should remember that –’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘You know more than me. About the Underground and about Rebecca Saville. I want to know. I only want to have things clear, to understand. All you have to do is talk. Then I will leave you alone.’

  When Adams speaks again his voice is softer. As if the feeling has been allowed back into it. ‘Leave it, Casimir. You can’t help her now. Just let it be.’

  The line goes dead in his hands.

  He needs to walk, and London is good for walking. Casimir crosses Waterloo Bridge with his head down, then loses himself in a
mare’s-nest of back streets and hotel service entrances with their smell of kitchens and clean, steaming laundry. His thoughts feel packed tight, as if the day with its death leaves him no room to think of anything else.

  When he looks up again he is by Embankment station. He climbs the steps to the Hungerford footbridge, heading back south. Night trains clank past him, moving slowly over the river, out towards the suburban stations of Eden Park, Clock House and Summer Hill.

  He stops to lean on the metal railing, breathing easily. The anger towards Adams is dull, walked out. Downriver the city lights are laid out along the curves of roads and the lines of towers. They remind Casimir of the bright watch-work mechanisms on his grandfather’s black repairer’s cloth. Cogs and teeth and springs. The dome of St Paul’s is lit up, grey against the brighter illumination of Docklands. He goes on towards Lower Marsh, down concrete steps, under railway arches to the Waterloo subways.

  This is a different kind of underground – more open to the sky and weather, less enclosed in itself. Unlit where the Tube station passages would be barred with light. There are graffiti on the concrete walls, high rambling letters. Casimir can read them only where there is light from staircases and entrance ramps: HOT WIRES. LITTLE LEGS LOVES MIDGET.

  There are figures sitting against the walls, on damp mats of cardboard or newspaper. Casimir looks at faces as he walks carefully between their hunched forms. It is an old habit, the looking for someone familiar in these lost places. Casimir has done it for as long as people have been lost to him. It is longer than he cares to remember.

  The subway opens out into the concrete arena of the Bull Ring. The place is empty except for a ring of metal benches at its centre, arranged like a barricade around one tall halogen lamppost. A small child is standing on the benches, peering downwards, her back to Casimir. From her height he guesses her to be no more than three years old; an inhabitant of the cardboard city. From overhead, he can hear the evening traffic on the roundabout, the slow groan of lorries and the late rush-hour tailback.

  It comes to him that she could have been here, the Underground girl. In the dark he is almost convinced that he remembers seeing her here. She sits cross-legged in one of the subways, pulling the white dreadlocks back from her profiled face. The bones of her cheeks and the small, neat hook of her nose.