by Geoff Ryman
Inside information
Swaps day and night shifts driving the same minicab as his cousin, Passenger 9. Mr Swiswe arrived in Britain before him, and is already having to avoid drawing attention to himself for fear of deportation.
What he is doing or thinking
He’s preserving the innocence of Passenger 9. His cousin thinks the car was damaged in an accident. It was in fact the target of a gang. Mr Swiswe dropped off a fare at Hammersmith tube station. There were many cars and people gathered in the glare and darkness of the forecourt. He drove alone up Shepherd’s Bush Road, to the traffic lights at the Bush. Suddenly, the car was surrounded by white youths. They shouted at him; he did not understand. They gestured at him to come out. The lights were red, he could not escape. They started kicking his car, and wrenching off the antennae. ‘Stay out of it, you black bastard!’
Mr Swiswe feels he cannot call the police. His cousin with the British passport advised, ‘Stay out of Hammersmith. The gangs there think they’ve got a right to all the cab trade. And the Hammersmith4 police are the most unpredictable in London.’ Mr Swiswe remembers how Britain first looked to him: calm and orderly, if slightly deadened. That’s a lie, he thinks, it’s still all there, all the shit. He is badly frightened, and wants to go home.
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Another helpful and informative 253 footnote
4 Hammersmith is relentlessly self-improving. It used to have the scuzziest pub in London, The Clarendon, now long gone. It is now part of a shopping mall. Squatting over the mall and tube station as if they are eggs to be hatched is the new, huge Coca-Cola building.
Other revamped Hammersmith landmarks include The Hammersmith Palais, round the corner up the Shepherd’s Bush Road, which has been a danceateria since about World War 2.
Underneath the M4, The Hammersmith Apollo or whatever it is now called, used to be a great rock venue (in autumn 1996 it was running, Dear Jesus, Riverdance, a show). But it was a great place to see rock artists on the way up or the way down including David Bowie and Paul McCartney.
The Lyric Theatre was given a new face, but still looks ornate and gilded inside.
Hammersmith is also distinguished by being ringed round with feed-in roads to the M4, an ecologically friendly building that is quite nice inside called the Ark, and HarperCollins Publishers inspired by, appropriately enough, a Scandinavian prison.
Like many London areas, Hammersmith is a bit difficult to characterize. There are pockets of posh housing, left over from its village days. It has a beautiful walk along the river from its bridge to Chiswick. The Dove is one of only about five OK pubs along the river, which also has many rowing clubs. Lots of revealing lycra in summer. The policeman Harry Daley in his autobiography This Small Cloud portrays Hammersmith in the ’30s as being a mini East End in the West of crime and vice. He remembers the riverside walk as where the lowest order of prostitute massaged tired old cocks in bushes. Nothing much changed there then.
Hammersmith has been a place since at least the 13th century. Then as now it really exists because of its junction of roads. The IRA failed to blow up its bridge in 1996. The explosive didn’t go off.
About Hammersmith police, I only know that they are much given to arresting people for walking home at the wrong time of night.
11
MR DOUGLAS HIGBEE
Outward appearance
Blandly British, about thirty, plump, moustache, no chin. Black trousers, huge winter coat, blue shirt collar. A large overnight case. Appears to be asleep, except that one eye is open.
Inside information
Mr Higbee is the bar piano player on a cross-Channel ferry. His bag contains a change of underwear, a top hat, and home-produced cassettes which he offers for sale on the top of his piano. No one ever buys them. Like Superman, his costume, a tuxedo, is under the ordinary coat.
What he is doing or thinking
He is trying to avoid having to talk to the ship’s magician, Passenger 18, who is also in the same carriage. Douglas has nothing against the magician. They have to spend a lot of time in the same bar and cabin being professionally pleasant to each other. You hardly want to be pleasant all the way from Waterloo to Dover as well. Douglas finds it difficult to be pleasant.
It’s all right for the magician. He’s pretending to be riveted by a newspaper. Douglas has no such luxury. He left in a terrible rush this morning. Forgot his book, sponge bag, sheet music. He could always have pretended to read his underpants or his own cassette covers, like he forgot the running order of the tracks.
Instead, Douglas is pretending to be asleep, but only with the right-hand side of his face, the one turned towards his colleague. His left eye is reading the ads in safety.
The underwear in the bag is in fact a pair of his girlfriend’s frilly knickers.
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12
MS GINA HORST
Outward appearance
Virulently pink and orange coat, men’s blue slacks, brown shoes. Arms folded like a boxer around a cloth briefcase. Short disordered blonde hair, clear bronze skin. Looks either fed up or not quite awake.
Inside information
Owns and manages a gym near Waterloo Station. Has a degree in Leisure Management.
What she is doing or thinking
She is contemplating the oiks who work for her. They are rotund with muscle, so big they have to wear Hawaiian sportswear all the time—nothing else is loose enough.
It’s not so much that they want to play dance music instead of George Michael. It’s not that they won’t repair the exercycles because they think exercycles are girly.
It’s their friends. They want the place to stay a club for weightlifting Neanderthals. She dreams of aerobics and sunbeds, customers from St Thomas’s, Dun and Old, Pall Mall Oil, BT.
One of the thugs works for Railtrack. Yesterday he boasted how he’d seen off a pooftah in the Waterloo toilets by pouring bleach over his genitals. They roared with laughter. How can she explain that she wants a few pooftahs? They’re polite and they pay the bills.
She sees suddenly that it’s not her fault. It’s not a question of her making the case to them. It’s that they don’t want the place to change.
She thinks again of the Health Centre on Lower Marsh. It went bankrupt, but none of its members came to her. I could always sell the old one5 and buy that. Yes, she thinks with growing excitement, yes. I can.
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Another helpful and informative 253 footnote
5 Two years later, by some strange twist of fate, Gina’s first gym was converted to a gay sauna. Equally sadly, the gym on Lower Marsh that Gina bought closed again in April 1996.
13
MRS MAY HANMORE
Outward appearance
Painstakingly turned out older woman. Flawless make-up, beehive jet black hair. A spotless waterproof neatly belted. Sits unmoving and small. Her eyes dart, flicker.
Inside information
Lives near Bow Road, works at Boots near Waterloo, mostly in the photo section.
What she is doing or thinking
May lives in terror of crime. She is convinced that older women are the main target of hoodlums. Chains and locks are no use, they just kick doors down.
Her housing estate is strangely laid out with long balconies on the upper floors. May has to walk through clusters of local children and teenagers to get to her front door. They are beginning to make fun of her.
She is aware with gratitude that it is already getting dark at 5 PM rather than 4.30. All the way home she is in a state, clutching her bag.
She feels unsafe, even at Boots. A shop for violent perverts has opened nearby. You see horrible people all in black with rings. Some of them give her film to develop.
May is unable to concentrate at work. She gets terribly muddled with all those red envelopes. Yesterday a gentleman who had ordered two complete sets of 300 photos of
his holiday in New Guinea found instead a range of other people’s Christmas parties. May burst into tears. She now fears for her job.
Someone shouts nearby, men move suddenly. Unnoticed under the neat coat, May begins to shiver as if freezing cold. She cannot take this journey any more. She decides to quit her job.
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14
MR PHIL BARKER
Outward appearance
Tiny, nervous, about nineteen. Longish brown hair, brown sports jacket, yellow shirt, green floral tie. A blue sleeping bag coat balloons around his shoulders. Sits slumped into the aisle with his left foot resting on his right knee.
Inside information
Works in the post office near Waterloo Station. Actually 22 years old. Lives with his family in Hackney.6
Phil’s problem is his father. His father is 38 and still wants to be 22. He works as a bouncer and furniture repossessor, and is big, blond, spotty. His knuckles are tattooed. It’s like living with the head of a rival gang. ‘How much you bringing home each week?’ Dad said this morning. ‘You need to get yourself a sideline. Women love villains. I should know.’
Money, women, respect, power to terrorize—Phil has none of these and his father makes sure he knows it.
What he is doing or thinking
As the doors close, a blue blur sits next to him. A tremor passes through Phil, and the sole of his left foot sweeps down the blur’s trousers. His neighbour immediately slams back with his knee. Phil’s leg is pushed into the dividing panel. His knee nerves buzz like a funny bone.
Phil explodes. ‘You do that again and you’ll get a fucking knife in the ribs.’
The man stares back at him—he is blond and huge and his mouth hangs open. Then he hurls Phil against the dividing panel. Phil crumples, and swiftly withdraws. He stands hunched in the door area, burning with shame as the train pulls into Waterloo.
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Another helpful and informative 253 footnote
6 Hackney is poor, gentrified, central, peripheral, ex-sweatshop…it’s a good example of how London swirls with change. Up until the mid-19th century, it was known for its rural character. It became, with the railways, an industrial centre and an active hub of the kind of business that hires non-English speakers at sweatshop rates. In the early 1980s, many of these businesses closed.
Bordering on gentrified Islington, it has canals along which gentrification spread like athlete’s foot. Other parts remained resistant to buyouts, partly because so many old buildings had been torn down to build the swathes of large public housing buildings called, with the typical respect the British have for people with lands who don’t work, ‘Estates’.
That just about sums up Hackney’s history, estates to estates. Given its rough edge, it’s actually a great place to live. My clever chum Roz lives there. I had another friend who did some arts work for Hackney Council, which in those days sounded oppressively politically correct.
15
MR HARRY WADE
Outward appearance
A swollen cherub. Blond, pink cheeked, too big for the train. His huge shoulders push the woman next to him to one side. Conventional dark blue suit, blue-grey overcoat. Battered briefcase has papers scrunched into side pockets. Shifts and fidgets as he sits. His stare is blank and he is chewing the inside of his cheek.
Inside information
A rugby player. On the field he is swift, calculating, fierce. Almost everywhere else—passive and put upon. Works as a tracker for repair calls made by British Telecom. Hopeless at it and about to be made redundant. His mother bought the flat in Pimlico for him.
What he is doing or thinking
Nothing—until Passenger 14 smudges dirt from his shoe down Harry’s stale suit. Harry still thinks nothing as his body knee-jerks.
‘You do that again, you’ll get a fucking knife in the ribs.’ Harry stares at the boy, temporarily unmanned. Why would someone swear at him? He was the one who was kicked!
Then the rugby field takes over. Harry is fed up being confused, alarmed. He finds he has seized the little weasel, the little spiv, and ground him like a pretzel against the dividing panel. He sees fear in the little spiv’s eyes. He sees him scuttle away, suddenly small. Confused again, Harry feels he has done a wrong.
He thinks about his mother, his childhood. Nothing since then has really made sense. From somewhere deep inside him comes the thought: I want to be a farmer. He sees himself wind-blown on a green slope, looking for lambs.
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16
MRS MINERVA NICHOLAS
Outward appearance
An older woman, face creased by continual despair. She is too short for the seats—the tips of her thick soft blue shoes only just reach the floor. She is an odd combination of the academic and the prosperous. A silver eagle brooch is pinned to her cloth coat, a Hermès scarf splashes pink and black across the collar. She looks as if she were hypnotized, concentric circles of flesh around her eyes.
Inside information
Lives in Marlow. Husband is a Head Teacher in High Wycombe. He takes the car; she has the commute, getting up at 6.00 every morning. The cushioned shoes help with the walk to the station. Works for a mental health charity in Lower Marsh.
What she is doing or thinking
She is remembering a dream from this morning. She dreamt that her house was in Bosnia. She was serving supper, carrying in a dish of Brussels sprouts, her husband sitting at the table.
Something was thrown through the window. In her dream she knew it was a bomb full of ball bearings. She flung herself back into the kitchen; there was a crackling of fireworks.
She can still hear the noises her husband made—like cricket balls dropped into custard, and a horrible dog-like yelp that rose to a squeal. The sudden silence afterwards told her that her unattractive but decent husband was dead.
That is what Bosnia is like. It is real. And now someone has threatened to knife the man sitting next to her. She feels delicate, shivery and wants to get off the train.
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17
MRS HARRIET DAWE
Outward appearance
Extremely tired woman in her thirties. Bumfreezer black jacket over a bright red dress with white polka dots. Red shoes. Dead blonde hair.
Inside information
Works as a fully qualified masseuse in a Soho basement. Her boss is an older woman with a smoky voice…‘We have a lovely girl here…’
Fat, unshaven Mediterranean men walk in, see two older women and walk out again. Police come for payoffs. Tricks get threatening. Harriet likes doing old gents best; she feels kindness for them and nothing else.
Last night her sixteen-year-old son came in. She heard his voice and her heart stopped. He doesn’t know about her job.
She stayed hidden in a curtained room with a handsome, brutish Aussie. She was towelling her hand when she heard Charlotte call, ‘You still busy, love?’
‘Mmm hmmm,’ Harriet said, disguising her voice. She heard curtains close. The trick growled at her, she let him go and stayed hidden. Afterwards, she peered between the curtains and saw only her son’s back. Tall, skinny, alone. She wished he had a nice girlfriend instead.
‘Fancied the Aussie, did you?’ was all Charlotte said. Harriet stared at her over their usual morning cup of coffee and thought: you’ve had my son.
What she is doing or thinking
What does she do now? She can’t go back. There is a Sauna Centre near Lambeth North. That’s a bit too close to home—her son would never go there. Harriet decides very suddenly to change venue. Maybe they’re still open. She gets off at Waterloo, instead of the Elephant.
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18
MR TONY COLLEY
Outward appearance
Worn, but otherwise well turned out. Coiffed and tinted hair. Dark coat over black pressed
trousers. Large case at his feet. Reading The Daily Express. A playing card peeks out from his cuffs, and the bag stirs uneasily, all by itself.
Inside information
A magician on a cross-Channel ferry. There is a live rabbit in the bag.
What he is doing or thinking
Pretending not to notice the ship’s piano player, Passenger 11, who also sits in the carriage. He tries to absorb himself in news of Camilla Parker-Bowles’s divorce. He vaguely identifies with her; he suffers a similar sense of exposure, of ageing, of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nothing beats getting a card trick wrong in front of a bored seven-year-old. Nothing beats a set of hardened eyes which plainly say: did we ask you to come to our table and do tricks with coloured scarves?
If it were possible to live in complete good faith, he would tell management that it doesn’t work, people don’t want a magician. But he needs the money. He has a beautiful little daughter. He never sees her, bounding back and forth from France in a French boat. He hates the fatty food, the iced prawns, the language.