by Geoff Ryman
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90
MISS MIGUELA PALLARÉS
Outward appearance
Large, amused woman in her early twenties, dressed in jeans, white trainers, and black leather jacket.
Inside information
Studying hotel management at Bruenwalt International College. Companion for the day of Passenger 92. They are watching a troupe that performs comedy routines on the tube.
Miguela comes from a large Catalan family which shouts its mind, which refuses to budge, which prides itself on never putting on a false face.
What she is doing or thinking
Miguela is studying Americans. It is good for her English. It is good for her understanding. They are funny, these Americans. They never stop performing, like Sara now, perky, sitting up, playing pretty Miss. If she needs to, Sara can play a tough business professional, or tell-me-your-troubles counsellor, or street smart clubgoer in her clean blue jeans.
So who is acting now? The poor guy on show isn’t acting: he sits on the old lady for real. The nice American couple, they wear the same clothes. They want to look like bookends. Why?
Police get on and they are all arrested, and the Americans think that is a show too. Sara gleams at Miguela, her mouth wide open in delight. As if we really were friends, thinks Miguela, who smiles back at the effrontery of it.
They have to get off, and Miguela knows that Sara’s ego means she will have to do the talking. So she starts being flirty with the old cop, gets him all itchy, and Miguela wonders. You throw on different people, Sara, like clothes. Is there anyone underneath?
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91
CONSTABLE JAMES BARTLETT
Outward appearance
Young Transport Policeman, skinny, red-cheeked. Gets on at Waterloo. Blocks one doorway as his colleague blocks the other.
Inside information
Still in his first month. James’s whole family are in the police, including his mother, who monitors surveillance videos. James’s first job was with a merchant bank. The computers and columns of figures bored him. It was also a trade for wide boys. He believed he could help people through police work. But he wanted out from under his family, so went into transport security.
What he is doing or thinking
Has he made a mistake? James’s partner seems to have come out of an episode of On the Buses. Prejudiced, unschooled. He leers at the people, who are obviously a group of tourists. What is the point of trying to scare them?
They get out. Bert glowers at the leader. ‘I wasn’t aware that London Underground is a theatre. Are you charging money for this?’ An American girl tries to explain. Bert fancies her, so he keeps her talking.
It goes on and on. The radio squawks, Bert eyebrows James to answer it.
Did he hear that right? A train has just gone through the barriers at the Elephant. James hunches over the radio and asks, ‘Which train, repeat, which train?’
James knows how to stop Bert now. ‘Excuse me, everyone, sorry. We’ve all been very lucky.’ James looks at them all. ‘The train we were on has just crashed.’
Even Bert falls silent. They stare down the long black tunnel, curving into darkness. A mouse flees along the track.
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92
MS SARA IVANOVIC
Outward appearance
Pretty American student. Blonde hair, spotless casual clothes. Eyes glisten with amusement, as a man sits on an old lady, and then on her neighbour.
Inside information
Studying hotel management at Bruenwalt International College. It’s important to have experience of other cultures if you want to run a good hotel. European management styles are really weird, but kinda interesting too.
Today was an optional visit to the Radish Edwardian Hotel at Heathrow which is where Sara stayed when she first arrived, so it seemed kinda a waste, so she’s watching Mind the Gap instead with a girl from her class, Miguela.
What she is doing or thinking
It’s really neat. These actors do routines on the tube. They’re in some kinda trouble with the fuzz. At the next station, they all have to get out. Sara bounces out onto the platform with Miguela. The Director just runs away up the stairs, looking like an ostrich. The poor actor is left explaining to the police, ‘We’re a theatre company.’ Sara thinks this is the funniest of all.
‘It’s true…it’s true,’ Sara tells the cop, helplessly giggling, ‘Everything this guy told you is true!’ She lets the cop have it, full blast, the eyes, the smile, the blaze of being a young American.
The old cop narrows his eyes, like a horny old elephant. Sara thinks: I’m young, I’m sexy, I’ll just do this until you get bored and let us go. The radio squawks, his young partner takes it.
‘Which train, repeat, which train?’ the young cop asks. He sounds worried.
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93
MRS HELEN TIMMINS
Outward appearance
Woman in her fifties, specs, checked shirt, cream slacks, new white sneakers, sky-blue fisherman’s hat. Grins in Cheshire-cat fashion, holding her neighbour’s hand.
Inside information
On holiday in London with her academic husband. They married in 1960, just before Larry went to college. From 1965 on, Helen was an Army wife. Now she’s an academic wife. She does charity work, reads and writes a little. They have one grown-up daughter.
What she is doing or thinking
Present laughter eases her heart. It keeps what is coming at bay. When they get back to Irvine, Helen is going to ask Larry for a divorce.
There’s a professor of Hebrew literature, a Russian émigré called Sasha Gnessin. They met at her writing group. She surprised herself that first night; she was a bit drunk; she went to bed with him. As he opened the door to his apartment, she found her knees were shaking. Sasha is small, bespectacled, slightly hunched, her own age (thank heavens), but there’s something about him. Lust. It breaks her heart, but she doesn’t lust after Larry. Larry is distant from her. He always has been. Despite his size and his masculine image, there is something frail and unsexed about Larry. He is affectionate, but there is nothing exciting in his touch; nothing excited in it either. Sasha awaits, with his sly grin, his books, and his cock that he pulls out of his trousers, and that she kneels to swallow. She never did that before. The image, even now, startles her, shakes her with its power.
So she laughs.
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94
PROFESSOR LAWRENCE TIMMINS
Outward appearance
A big man, broad-shouldered, approaching retirement. Wears a checked shirt, cream slacks, new white sneakers, sky-blue fisherman’s hat. Grins in Cheshire-cat fashion, holding his neighbour’s hand.
Inside information
Professor of business studies at the University of California at Irvine. To keep his hand in, Larry produced an interactive multimedia training package on producing multimedia training packages. It was a perceived niche market. Treating himself and his wife to a trip abroad on the proceeds.
Played high school football in the jacket worn by Passenger 38.
What he is doing or thinking
Feeling proud that he spotted Mind the Gap in Time Out.
It’s fun. One of the actors whispers to you the next destination and herds you all into the same carriage. Then they start doing their routines. Like asking everybody else directions to Edgware or borrowing another actor’s newspaper and cutting out the pictures without asking him first.
Larry gets over to the UK when he can. But it’s strange. Things are obviously better since Thatcher took over, but it seems there’s less and less reason to come over. Everything’s so American, or, like the BBC, the best of it’s in America anyway. They can see Andrew Lloyd Webber5 at home.
Things like this will have to go. Figure they got only four
people paying £5.00 each. Twenty pounds for a morning’s work? That’s only about 30 bucks. There’s three of them, so do some of them volunteer or something?
Now there’s cops. Are the cops part of the deal too? Larry looks at his wife and roars with laughter.
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Another helpful and informative 253 footnote
5 Andrew Lloyd Webber is one of Britain’s authentic theatrical geniuses. His discovery that a ‘show’ depends neither on acting, content nor direction but on staging has meant that his spectacular musicals are exactly the same whether playing in Los Angeles or Singapore.
Serious theatre in London has benefited enormously from this discovery. For example Murmuring Judges, a serious exposé of London legal life, featured real taxis on stage, fake rain, and recreated interiors onstage of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, not to mention a chorus line of full frontal (male) nudity, greatly enhancing its message.
To sum up, because of Lloyd Webber, everything is now a musical.
95
MRS DORIS McPHERSON
Outward appearance
Brown waterproof, brown bow legs, flat shoes, transparent hood tied over a helmet of tightly woven white hair.
Inside information
Winner of the Howick Evening Gazette’s London Winter Getaway Prize. It’s all laid on. A week at the Savoy. Very nice. Doris is down with her friend Cynthia, who’s poorly this morning. Doris is off to see an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery: German Romanticism. Not too sure what it is. Doris is a cat-lover whose seven cats are safe back home in a cattery.
What she is doing or thinking
She gets on at the Embankment, only to be sat on by a very tall young man. Well, it was an honest mistake. He gets up straightaway and hits his head, and sits down on someone else. Must be terribly embarrassing for him, poor lad. Everyone laughs. They’re ever so cheerful in London, not at all like what everyone says.
Her stop comes up and Doris stands and nods and smiles. ‘Any time you want to sit on my knee, feel free,’ she says to the young man. As she gets off, a policeman gets on and says hello, so she grins back.
On the platform, amid the gush of people who know where they are going, she is lost. She sees a woman near her own age, Passenger 80. ‘Excuse me,’ Doris asks, ‘do you know the way to the Hayward Gallery?’
‘I’m going there myself,’ says the woman. By the time they help each other to the top of the stairs, they’ve got onto the subject of cats.
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96
MR GEOFF RYMAN
Outward appearance
Tall, ravaged, nervous-looking middle-aged man in tourist dress. Stands up to peer at the Tube map opposite his seat. At Embankment, the doors rumble shut and he sits back down on top of an elderly passenger.
Inside information
An amateur actor on holiday from his day job, taking part in a performance of Mind the Gap. Paying customers follow the comedians from station to station as they perform. In this routine, he is supposed to stand up from his seat, while another member of MtG takes it. The art is to sit without looking backwards.
What he is doing or thinking
To his horror, Geoff discovers that he has sat on top of a real passenger. The man opposite him roars with laughter. Geoff’s ears burn. This is the first time he has taken the lead idiot role, and he had not counted on how embarrassing it is. He stands up, hits his head on the rail, and sits on top of Ben, the leader of MtG, on whom he should have sat. More laughter.
Then the police arrive. It must have been the tie and scissors routine—that scares people. Ben just sits there. Ben, say something!
Questions race. Is this legal? Do LT know? Geoff finds he has no answers. They all have to get off at Lambeth North, and, instead of helping, Ben flees up the steps.
Ben, don’t leave me!
‘We…I’m…I’m sure we have a letter of permission.’
‘Good,’ says the policeman. ‘Where is it?’
The train rolls out for Elephant and Castle.
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MS KAREN KEOWN
Outward appearance
Pale woman, about 29, wispy hair, fine features cramped by tiny spectacles. Her arms form a circle in front of her.
Inside information
Unemployed woman on her way to St Thomas’ Hospital to steal a newborn baby. At home, there is already a nursery with a pram and toys. The neighbours know she is pregnant.
What she is doing or thinking
She is suffocated by a sense of being cheated, of people watching her in order to thwart her. In her arms, she can feel her beautiful baby. There are people everywhere who would deny it to her.
At Waterloo, police get onto the train. Karen refuses to look up, but sees the dark trousers, the blue shirt out of the corner of her eyes. Who betrayed her? Her mind races.
‘Do you wish to make a complaint?’ the policeman asks. Yes, she answers him in her mind, yes I do, you people should be chasing real criminals. In her mind she must also disguise her intention from him.
The train idles at Waterloo, doors open. If she gets off now, the police will know that she plans to go to St Thomas’. The doors trail shut as if cutting her baby in half.
‘I can explain,’ the man next to her says. She thinks he is her boyfriend who will protect her. Conspiratorially, she avoids his gaze. At Lambeth North, he lures the police away. Grateful, she decides to make him the father. Karen shifts to make the baby more comfortable. She goes on to the Elephant.
That’ll fool them.
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98
CONSTABLE BERT HARRIS
Outward appearance
Fifty, bug-eyed, pot-bellied in Transport Police uniform. Gets on at Waterloo and looms over the end row of seats. His colleague, Passenger 91, blocks the other doorway.
Inside information
Joined Transport Police after a stint in the Army. The job consists of scooping up drunks from platforms, hoisting suicides off the tracks, moving buskers on.
What he is doing or thinking
He’s aware that something strange is happening to his mind the longer he stays in the job. You see the worst on the Tube: beggars with hands that won’t work properly who stink, whose hair is falling out because they can’t wash. He’s started to wash it for them, with Windolene spray. The lads caught a poof in the toilets at Waterloo. For a joke they poured bleach on his genitals and he ran screaming out into the main concourse with his trousers down. Bert arrested him for indecent exposure, which was the best joke of all. Animals. Even animals don’t do it in toilets. The skin came off.
Now we got some berk bothering people for a bunch of fun-lovers. An old dear is getting off. ‘Do you want to make a complaint?’ Bert asks her. She just grins at him and gets off. She’s gaga. Put her in a home.
‘You ought to find yourself a seat, sir,’ says Bert.
‘I can explain,’ says the berk, scared. ‘We’re a theatre company.’
‘I can get your autograph then. When we get out at the next stop.’ Officer Harris grins. God, he hates his job. God, he hates the people.
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MS SUZE MORLEY
Outward appearance
Young woman pulling a bicycle into the carriage at Embankment. Short hair, a fluorescent coat, safety helmet, and thick legs in track suit bottoms. She flips off a Viva! shoulder bag onto an empty seat and stands holding onto the bike.
Inside information
Danni Jarret’s sister. Works for the Personnel Office of the Department of Transport near Lambeth Bridge. Devoted to serial monogamy, meaning she only has sex with one man a night. Concerned about the size of her arse, so today she cycled into work.
What she is doing or thinking
Whose good idea was this? It’s supposed to be downhill fro
m Camden. A motorcyclist slapped her with his wing mirror at Seven Dials. Trafalgar Square was the most terrifying event of the week, especially when a taxi driver decided to pretend she wasn’t there. Now she’s sweaty, shaken and utterly puffed. Fags and booze, that’s what keeps me in good shape.
People laugh, she looks up. Some comedian has just sat down on an old woman. He jumps up and sits down on someone else. There’s no pleasing some people. As the train whines into Waterloo, the old woman gets up and says to him, ‘You can sit on my knee any time you like.’
Just let him try it with me, thinks Suze.
A policeman gets on. Just leaving, Officer. The policeman says to the old woman, ‘Would you like to make a complaint?’
The old dear just smiles back. You a native Londoner, then? thinks Suze. They both get out without saying a word to the Filth.