The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories

by Connie Willis

  “You thought I was the one who was having an affair with Sara,” I said.

  She nodded numbly.

  “You thought I was having an affair with Sara?” I said. “How could you think that? I love you.”

  “And Sara loved Elliott. People cheat on their spouses, they leave each other. Things…”

  “…fall apart,” I murmured.

  And the air down here registered it all, trapped it below-ground, distilled it into an essence of death and destruction and decay.

  Cath was wrong. It was the Blitz, after all. And the girl crying on the train to Balham, and the arguing American couple. Estrangement and disaster and despair. I wondered if it would record this, too, Cath’s fear and our unhappiness, and send it blowing through the tunnels and tracks and passages of the tube to hit some poor unsuspecting tourist in the face next week. Or fifty years from now.

  I looked at Cath, still standing against the opposite wall, impossibly far away.

  “I’m not having an affair with Sara,” I said, and Cath leaned weakly against the tiles and started to cry.

  “I love you,” I said and crossed the passage in one stride and put my arms around her, and for a moment everything was all right. We were together, and safe. Love conquers all.

  But only till the next wind—the results of the X-ray, the call in the middle of the night, the surgeon looking down at his hands, not wanting to tell you the bad news. And we were still down in the tube tunnels, still in its direct path.

  “Come on,” I said, and took her arm. I couldn’t protect her from the winds, but I could get her out of the tube tunnels. I could keep her out of the inversion layer. For a few years. Or months. Or minutes.

  “Where are we going?” she asked as I propelled her along the passage.

  “Up,” I said. “Out.”

  “We’re miles from our hotel,” she said.

  “We’ll get a taxi,” I said. I led her up the stairs, around a curve, listening as we went for the sound of a train rumbling in, for a tinny voice announcing, “Mind the Gap.”

  “We’ll take taxis exclusively from now on,” I said.

  Down another passage, down another set of stairs, trying not to hurry, as if hurrying might bring another one on. Through the arch to the escalators. Almost there. Another minute, and I’d have her on the escalator and headed up out of the inversion layer. Out of the wind. Safe for the moment.

  A clot of people emerged abruptly from the Circle Line tunnel opposite and jammed up in front of the escalator, chattering in French. Teenagers on holiday, lugging enormous backpacks and a duffel too wide for the escalator steps, stopping, maddeningly, to consult their tube maps at the foot of the escalator.

  “Excuse me,” I said, “Pardonnez moi,” and they looked up, and, instead of moving aside, tried to get on the escalator, jamming the too-wide duffel between the rubber handholds, mashing it down onto the full width of the escalator steps so no one could get past.

  Behind us, in the Piccadilly Line tunnel, I could hear the faint sound of a train approaching.

  The French kids finally, finally, got the bag onto the escalator, and I pushed Cath onto the bottom step, and stepped on the one below her.

  Come on. Up, up. Past a poster for Remains of the Day and Forever, Patsy Cline and Death of a Salesman. Below us, the rumble of the train grew louder, closer.

  “What do you say we forget going back to our hotel? We’re not far from Marble Arch,” I said to cover the sound. “What say we call the Royal Hernia and see if they’ve got an extra bed?”

  Come on, come on. Up. King Lear. The Mousetrap.

  “What if it’s not still there?” Cath said, looking down at the depths below us. We’d come almost three floors. The sound of the train was only a murmur, drowned out by the giggling students and the dull roar of the station hall above us.

  “It’s still there,” I said positively.

  Come on, up, up.

  “It’ll be just like it was,” I said. “Steep stairs and the smells of mildew and rotting cabbage. Nice wholesome smells.”

  “Oh, no,” Cath said. She pointed across at the down escalators, suddenly jammed with people in evening dress, shaking the rain from their fur coats and theater programs. “Cats just got out. We’ll never find a taxi.”

  “We’ll walk,” I said.

  “It’s raining,” Cath said.

  Better the rain than the wind, I thought. Come on. Up.

  We were nearly to the top. The students were already heaving their backpacks onto their shoulders. We would walk to a phone booth and call a taxi. And what then? Keep our heads down. Stay out of drafts. Turn into the Old Man.

  It won’t work, I thought bleakly. The winds are everywhere. But I had to try to protect Cath from them, having failed to protect her for the last twenty years, I had to try now to keep her out of their deadly path.

  Three steps from the top. The French students were yanking on the wedged duffel, shouting, “Allons! Allons! Vite!”

  I turned to look back, straining to hear the sound of the train over their voices. And saw the wind catch the gray hair of the old woman just stepping onto the top step of the down escalator. She hunched down, ducking her head as it blew down on her from above. From above! It flipped the hair back from the oblivious young faces of the French students above us, lifted their collars, their shirttails.

  “Cath!” I shouted and reached for her with one hand, digging the fingers of my other one into the rubber railing as if I could stop the escalator, keep it from carrying us inexorably forward, forward into its path.

  My grabbing for her had knocked her off-balance. She half-fell off her step and into me. I turned her toward me, pulled her against my chest, wrapped my arms around her, but it was too late.

  “I love you,” Cath said, as if it was her last chance.

  “Don’t—” I said, but it was already upon us, and there was no protecting her, no stopping it. It hit us full-blast, forcing Cath’s hair across her cheeks, blowing us nearly back off the step, hitting me full in the face with its smell. I caught my breath in surprise.

  The old lady was still standing poised at the top of the escalator, her head back, her eyes closed. People jammed up behind her, saying irritatedly, “Sorry!” and “May I get past, please!” She didn’t hear them. Head tilted back, she sniffed deeply at the air.

  “Oh,” Cath said, and tilted her head back, too.

  I breathed it in deeply. A scent of lilacs and rain and expectation. Of years of tourists reading London on $40 a Day and newlyweds holding hands on the platform. Of Elliott and Sara and Cath and I, tumbling laughingly after the Old Man, off the train and through the beckoning passages to the District Line and the Tower of London. The scent of spring and the All-Clear and things to come.

  Caught in the winding tunnels along with the despair and the terror and the grief. Caught in the maze of passages and stairs and platforms, trapped and magnified and held in the inversion layer.

  We were at the top. “May I get past, please?” the man behind us said.

  “We’ll find your china, Cath,” I said. “There’s a second-hand market at Portobello Road that has everything under the sun.”

  “Does the tube go there?” she said.

  “I beg your pardon,” the man said. “Sorry.”

  “Ladbroke Grove Station. The Hammersmith and City Line,” I said and bent to kiss her.

  “You’re blocking the way,” the man said. “People are trying to get through.”

  “We’re improving the atmosphere,” I said and kissed her again.

  We stood there a moment, breathing it in—leaves and lilacs and love.

  Then we got on the down escalator, holding hands and went down to the eastbound platform and took the tube to Marble Arch.

  Blued Moon

  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Mowen Chemical today announced implementation of an innovative waste emissions installation at its experimental facility in Chugwater, Wyoming. According to project direc
tors Bradley McAfee and Lynn Saunders, nonutilizable hydrocarbonaceous substances will be propulsively transferred to stratospheric altitudinal locations, where photochemical decomposition will result in triatomic allotropism and formation of benign bicarbonaceous precipitates. Preliminary predictive databasing indicates positive ozonation yields without statistically significant shifts in lateral ecosystem equilibria.

  “Do you suppose Walter Hunt would have invented the safety pin if he had known that punk rockers would stick them through their cheeks?” Mr. Mowen said. He was looking gloomily out the window at the distant six hundred-foot-high smokestacks.

  “I don’t know, Mr. Mowen,” Janice said. She sighed. “Do you want me to tell them to wait again?”

  The sigh was supposed to mean, it’s after four o’clock and it’s getting dark, and you’ve already asked Research to wait three times, and when are you going to make up your mind? but Mr. Mowen ignored it.

  “On the other hand,” he said, “what about diapers? And all those babies that would have been stuck with straight pins if it hadn’t been for the safety pin?”

  “It is supposed to help restore the ozone layer, Mr. Mowen,” Janice said. “And according to Research, there won’t be any harmful side effects.”

  “You shoot a bunch of hydrocarbons into the stratosphere, and there won’t be any harmful side effects. According to Research.” Mr. Mowen swiveled his chair around to look at Janice, nearly knocking over the picture of his daughter Sally that sat on his desk. “I stuck Sally once. With a safety pin. She screamed for an hour. How’s that for a harmful side effect? And what about the stuff that’s left over after all this ozone is formed? Bicarbonate of soda, Research says. Perfectly harmless. How do they know that? Have they ever dumped bicarbonate of soda on people before? Call Research.,.” he started to say, but Janice had already picked up the phone and tapped the number. She didn’t even sigh. “Call Research and ask them to figure out what effect a bicarbonate of soda rain would have.”

  “Yes, Mr. Mowen,” Janice said. She put the phone up to her ear and listened for a moment. “Mr. Mowen…” she said hesitantly.

  “I suppose Research says it’ll neutralize the sulfuric acid that’s killing the statues and sweeten and deodorize at the same time.”

  “No, sir,” Janice said. “Research says they’ve already started the temperature-differential kilns, and you should be seeing something in a few minutes. They say they couldn’t wait any longer.”

  Mr. Mowen whipped back around in his chair to look out the window. The picture of Sally teetered again, and Mr. Mowen wondered if she were home from college yet. Nothing was coming out of the smokestacks. He couldn’t see the candlestick-base kilns through the maze of fast-food places and trailer parks. A McDonald’s sign directly in front of the smokestacks blinked on suddenly, and Mr. Mowen jumped. The smokestacks themselves remained silent and still except for their blinding strobe aircraft lights. He could see sagebrush-covered hills in the space between the stacks, and the whole scene, except for the McDonald’s sign, looked unbelievably serene and harmless.

  “Research says the kilns are fired to full capacity,” Janice said, holding the phone against her chest.

  Mr. Mowen braced himself for the coming explosion. There was a low rumbling like distant fire, then a puff of whitish smoke, and finally a deep, whooshing sound like one of Janice’s sighs, and two columns of blue shot straight up into the darkening sky.

  “Why is it blue?” Mr. Mowen said.

  “I already asked,” Janice said. “Research says visible spectrum diffraction is occurring because of the point eight micron radii of the hydrocarbons being propelled—”

  “That sounds like that damned press release,” Mr. Mowen said. “Tell them to speak English.”

  After a minute of talking into the phone she said, “It’s the same effect that causes the sunsets after a volcanic eruption. Scattering. Research wants to know what staff members you’d like to have at the press conference tomorrow.”

  “The directors of the project,” Mr. Mowen said grumpily, “and anyone over at Research who can speak English.”

  Janice looked at the press release. “Bradley McAfee and Lynn Saunders are the directors,” she said.

  “Why does the name McAfee sound familiar?”

  “He’s Ulric Henry’s roommate. The company linguist you hired to—”

  “I know why I hired him. Invite Henry, too. And tell Sally as soon as she gets home that I expect her there. Tell her to dress up.” He looked at his watch. “Well,” he said. “It’s been going five minutes, and there haven’t been any harmful side effects yet.”

  The phone rang. Mr. Mowen jumped. “I knew it was too good to last,” he said. “Who is it? The EPA?”

  “No,” Janice said, and sighed. “It’s your ex-wife.”

  “I’m shut of that,” Brad said when Ulric came in the door. He was sitting in the dark, the green glow of the monitor lighting his face. He tapped at the terminal keys for a minute more and then turned around. “All done. Slicker’n goose grease.”

  Ulric turned on the light. “The waste emissions project?” he said.

  “Nope. We turned that on this afternoon. Works prettier than a spotted pony. No, I been spending the last hour erasing my fiancée Lynn’s name from the project records.”

  “Won’t Lynn object to that?” Ulric said, fairly calmly, mostly because he did not have a very clear idea of which one Lynn was. He never could tell Brad’s fiancées apart. They all sounded exactly the same.

  “She won’t hear tell of it till it’s too late,” Brad said. “She’s on her way to Cheyenne to catch a plane back east. Her mother’s all het up about getting a divorce. Caught her husband Adam ’n’ Evein’.”

  If there was anything harder to put up with than Brad’s rottenness, it was his incredibly good luck. While Ulric was sure Brad was low enough to engineer a sudden family crisis to get Lynn out of Chugwater, he was just as sure that he had had no need to. It was a lucky coincidence that Lynn’s mother was getting a divorce just now, and lucky coincidences were Brad’s specialty. How else could he have kept three fiancées from ever meeting each other in the small confines of Chugwater and Mowen Chemical?

  “Lynn?” Ulric said. “Which one is that? The redhead in programming?”

  “Nope, that’s Sue. Lynn’s little and yellow-haired and smart as a whip about chemical engineering. Kind of a dodunk about everythin’ else.”

  “Dodunk,” Ulric said to himself. He should make a note to look that up. It probably meant “one so foolish as to associate with Brad McAfee.” That definitely included him. He had agreed to room with Brad because he was so surprised at being hired that it had not occurred to him to ask for an apartment of his own.

  He had graduated with an English degree that everyone had told him was worse than useless in Wyoming, and which he very soon found out was. In desperation, he had applied for a factory job at Mowen Chemical and been hired on as company linguist at an amazing salary for reasons that had not yet become clear, though he had been at Mowen for over three months. What had become clear was that Brad McAfee was, to use his own colorful language, a thimblerigger, a pigeon plucker, a hornswoggler. He was steadily working his way toward the boss’s daughter and the ownership of Mowen Chemical, leaving a trail of young women behind him who all apparently believed that a man who pronounced fiancée ‘fee-an-see’ couldn’t possibly have more than one. It was an interesting linguistic phenomenon.

  At first Ulric had been taken in by Brad’s homespun talk, too, even though it didn’t seem to match his sophisticated abilities on the computer. Then one day he had gotten up early and caught Brad working on a program called Project Sally.

  “I’m gonna be the president of Mowen Chemical in two shakes of a sheep’s tail,” Brad had said. “This little dingclinker is my master plan. What do you think of it?”

  What Ulric thought of it could not be expressed in words. It outlined a plan for getting close to Sally Mow
en and impressing her father based almost entirely on the seduction and abandonment of young women in key positions at Mowen Chemical. Three-quarters of the way down he had seen Lynn’s name.

  “What if Mr. Mowen gets hold of this program?” Ulric had said finally.

  “Not a look-in chance that that’d happen. I got this program locked up tighter than a hog’s eye. And if anybody else tried to copy it, they’d be sorrier than a coon romancin’ a polecat.”

  Since then Ulric had put in six requests for an apartment, all of which had been turned down “due to restrictive areal housing availability,” which Ulric supposed meant there weren’t any empty apartments in Chugwater. All of the turndowns were initialed by Mr. Mowen’s secretary, and there were moments when Ulric thought that Mr. Mowen knew about Project Sally after all and had hired Ulric to keep Brad away from his daughter.

  “According to my program, it’s time to go to work on Sally,” Brad said now. “Tomorrow at this press conference. I’m enough of a rumbustigator with this waste emissions project to dazzlefy Old Man Mowen. Sally’s going to be there. I got my fiancée Gail in publicity to invite her.”

  “I’m going to be there, too,” Ulric said belligerently.

  “Now, that’s right lucky,” Brad said. “You can do a little honeyfuggling for me. Work on old Sally while I give Pappy Mowen the glad hand. Do you know what she looks like?”

  “I have no intention of honeyfuggling Sally Mowen for you,” Ulric said, and wondered again where Brad managed to pick up all these slang expressions. He had caught Brad watching Judy Canova movies on TV a couple of times, but some of these words weren’t even in Mencken. He probably had a computer program that generated them. “In fact, I intend to tell her you’re engaged to more than one person already.”

  “Boy, you’re sure wadgetty,” Brad said. “And you know why? Because you don’t have a gal of your own. Tell you what, you pick out one of mine, and I’ll give her to you. How about Sue?”