by Geoff Ryman
What she is doing or thinking
She is remembering a day on the tube in 1957. They were going to a wedding, so she and her sisters were all in ribbons and white. Daddy was in a morning coat. People travelled on the tubes like that in those days. There was an advertising campaign for Heinz on underground posters. Each poster told you which of the varieties a particular Heinz product was: tomato soup, no. 2, brown pickle, no. 37. If you collected all 57, you won a Christmas hamper.
Daddy was a freelance journalist: they needed the hamper. She and her sisters ran up and down the cars dressed for a wedding, squealing. They changed carriages at each station, calling like seagulls, ‘Forty is spaghetti in tomato sauce!’
Then they bumped into teenagers doing the same thing. After that, to keep the secret, they whispered or passed notes.
Madeleine can’t remember if they got the hamper. But where are the children running now? The white dresses? The top hats? She takes her father’s hand.
‘This is the last stop, Daddy,’ she says.
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176
MR PETE DAYMOND
Outward appearance
Trim man in his thirties, blue jeans, white trainers, thinning blond hair. Two plastic bags full of something square-cornered. Eyes keep looking up.
Inside information
Poster sticker, sometime dope dealer. Returning from work, pasting girls’ cards in phone booths.
What he is doing or thinking
He’s scared and knackered. He hates putting up the cards. You do five or six girls at a time. You have to leave the bag outside the booth, put your money in and phone home. While it’s really ringing, you paste the cards, receiver under your chin. Just in case someone checks you’re making a call.
You work from 6.30 to 8.30 AM. There’s enough people around in case of aggro, but not so many that they get a good look at what you’re doing.
There’s rival groups, and some of them are not very nice people. They don’t particularly like it if you paste in what they think is their turf. But you’ve got to post where the punters are. Kings Cross, Tottenham Court Road, all round there.
Pete was sure he was followed into the tube. At first, he thought it was Passenger 151. Then he saw the state of it. Bet he could use some dosh. Sub-contracting would be good for my health.
‘You looking for some work, mate?’ Pete asks.
‘I’m an Internet trainer,’ the man says, grandly. Well maybe.
‘This is part time, just mornings.’ The man’s eyebrows rise. ‘Where you getting off?’ Pete asks.
He shrugs. ‘The Elephant, I suppose.’ Going nowhere.
They get off at Lambeth instead.
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177
MR AMITABH CHOPRA
Outward appearance
A tiny middle-aged Asian gentleman, slim, in a green suit, white shirt, red tie. Sits reading a magazine with the cover folded over.
Inside information
Works in the Sweet Shoppe in Waterloo Station. Hates chocolate. But it is a clean and orderly environment. Has to control feelings of shame that he does not run his own business at his age.
What he is doing or thinking
Reading what he thinks of as a dirty magazine: the February 1995 issue of Stardust. He deliberately sat some distance away from other Asian men to prevent being discovered. The cover shows a pretty girl taking a sudsy bath in a bikini and floppy hat.
SEX it shrieks. Then, tiny letters: the industry’s. Then huge:
ORGY, tiny letters: of immorality exposed.
Mr Chopra loves Bollywood movies. Stardust is devoted to them, in over thirty countries. Sanjay-Raveena STRIP each other, it promises, with Sanjay and Raveena both in tummy-revealing pervy leather glowering into the camera. MAMTA ACCUSED! How Aamir Faked his Illness to Save his Marriage.
It’s a magazine for scandal-soaked women. Amitabh loves the movies, and wants to read about them. He extracts from the scandals news about movies like Karan-Arjun. In between there are ads for skin lighteners, wedding dresses, movie-star address finders, Bombay Jungle mix Bollywood Fever and AT&T.
Where does he fit in? Amitabh has always been a dreamer. In his mind at night he sees gods and heroes, riding elephants besaddled in red and gold. He hears the sweeping sounds of orchestra and voices.
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178
MS DEBBIE DENUSSI
Outward appearance
Glamorous red lipstick, long red hair. Floor-length coat made of black leather. Black beret perched on the side of her head. Blue jeans and patent leather, alligator-pattern shoes. Tiny dangling earrings with a Dracula-eyed glint of light in each. Clutches a tiny purse. Keeps standing up, looking at the map, peering through the window. Takes out a personal organizer and keys in a question.
Inside information
An American film maker following English instructions to the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, where she is to be briefed on the making of a new film about threadworms.
What she is doing or thinking
Where the hell is she? They told her to walk from the tube station to the Church Tower and then cross to the blue pub called the Hercules and go down that street and then turn right. Can’t miss it.
But which tube station? She looks at all the people getting out at Waterloo. The willowy woman next to her saunters out. It must be nice to be that confident of where you are going. No one gets on, and Debbie starts to get worried. What if she’s going to a bad part of town?
At Lambeth North she gets out. She looks at the dingy platform, and at the wall map, and sees the next station is the end of the line. That must have been why they didn’t tell her. You can’t miss the station at the end of the line.
She hops back on just as the doors rumble shut. Whew, she smiles. Just made it.
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179
MS ANNABELLE ROWAN
Outward appearance
Woman about 40, wearing black trousers which show a well-preserved figure. Cloth coat with extravagant fake fur trim. With stately calm, reads Jeff Noon’s Vurt.
Inside information
Receptionist at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and ex-devotee of the Bhagwan Sri Rajneesh. Sits all day surrounded by a collection of 19th-century pharmaceutical jars. They are nearly as tall as she is, translucent with ornate labels and filled with green, blue or red fluids.
What she is doing or thinking
Calmly waiting for the moment when she has to tell the Publicity Chair that his film maker will not be showing up. She printed a map with instructions, but he insisted on giving directions over the phone. No one in England can give directions. That is because there are no reliably placed street signs. We direct people to the local Tesco then on past the off-licence and wonder why foreigners stop us in the street for help.
It was one of many things Annabelle learned in Oregon.3 The Bhagwan told her: life is a joke. Always land on the wrong airfield, buy as many cars as you can. Imelda Marcos’s shoes are a great joke. One must be calm and laugh. For a woman as highly sexed as Annabelle, it was paradise, for there were handsome men, beautiful women, and they all made love rather as cats must, in complete security.
The bottles surround her, historic, preserved, huge, and highly coloured as if her own past were bottled in them.
I wonder what this film maker would have been like?
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Another helpful and informative 253 footnote
3. Oregon is the ugliest state in the union. It used to be one of the most beautiful. When I was a teenager, my parents and I used to take long drives along its coast. It seemed to be one long beach state park, with sandy cliffs, blackened driftwood, banks of wild blueberries, and small, isolated fishing hamlets. I remember one blissful week at Christmas, staying in a motel, making friends with a bunch of guys, one of whom read a girly
pop star mag. ‘It’s the only way I can find out about the music,’ he said. He was right; articles about the Kinks, the Beatles, the Stones. BRS—before Rolling Stone. I remember there was a tiny store in walking distance, with record racks: Patty Page, Perry Como…not a single pop album in the racks. ‘No call for that kind of thing here,’ said the old gramps behind the counter.
In 1996, I did the drive again with my parents on my way to Clarion West. Had the state parks become a haven for hippies? Did dope-smuggling boats land at night on the isolated coast? Did the bottom fall out of the Monterey Jack cheese market? For whatever reason, the state parks are gone. In their stead is a chain of what looks like badly built used car lots, a string of motels built right on noisy roadways, small supermarkets, or gas stations that straggle out from, and disguise, the old villages. Northern California is far wilder and less spoiled.
The development trails along a great length of coastline with a 35 mph speed limit. If you drive any faster, you will certainly get one or more tickets. If, in desperation, you turn inland, you are likely to find the stubble-covered hills that resulted from previous decades of tree-felling.
Oregon: fly over it.
180
MR TERRY WILCOX
Outward appearance
Fawn raincoat, blue suit, soft shoes. Balding in the middle of his head so that his hair makes wings. Florid face a bit like Albert Finney’s. Opens up a slim leather case stuffed full of magazines, and pulls out a DTP document.
Inside information
Manager at the Wasteco Supermarket, Elephant and Castle. Terry’s hobby is hobbies—matchbox toy cars, rare records. His jazz collection is complete, except for a few Stan Kenton LPs, and a rare Brubeck. All 4,500 records are catalogued and hardly played. The walls are insulated with video tapes of his favourite movies: he’s missing a few Deanna Durbin classics. For a while, he was in an Iron Age recreation group. He wore hessian tunics and collected replica maces and battleaxes.
His two new enthusiasms are picture phonecards and becoming an umpire for American baseball.
What he is doing or thinking
Reading the rules. Baseball moves faster than cricket. You need to have eagle eyes. It all comes down to whether the man on base catches the ball before the runner gets there.
Baseball’s a kind of fantasy: Coke, hot dogs and hot summers. It’s neither as bruising as football, nor as fast as basketball, the real American National Sports. Baseball belongs to the 1890s.
Whereas phonecards…It really is extraordinary how fast they have become collectors’ items: Star Trek phonecards, Disney phonecards. Wasn’t there something in the last issue of BT Card Collector about special phonecard storage furniture? Complete with indexing and retrieval? He puts down The Umpire Strikes Back to look.
He likes to keep active.
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181
MR KEVIN SPINNAKER
Outward appearance
Tall, round faced, wears black with black dressed hair. Yelps with laughter. Stands up and makes faces through the window between the cars.
Inside information
Works for the Pay Unit of the London College of Printing. Wanted to be a professional football player. On the field, he transforms from an easily pleased, nice-enough bloke, to someone demanding, aggressive and quick. It is the one area of life where he can be so. Boyfriend of Jenny Green.
What he is doing or thinking
Waving through the window at Jen. To tease her, he told her she was getting plump, so to get her own back, she changed cars. She sticks her tongue out at him. He loves her humour. He loves going to gigs or Formula One with her.
He doesn’t love having sex with her. He has managed to hide this from Jen by effort of main will. He’s young and fit, but it takes him forever to come because he’s so unexcited.
She misreads this. For her, a man who takes half an hour to come is a hero.
The man she loves is the man his friends sometimes call gormless. She doesn’t know the man who forces balls past goalposts as if by concentration, who feels implacable hatred for his opponents. She doesn’t know he hates her lack of make-up, her ordinary body, her ordinary face. Sweet, nice Kevin does know, but it is this Kevin who won’t be able to tell her.
So he mugs and smiles, and waves through the separating glass as if saying goodbye.
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For Your Reading Ease and Comfort
PASSENGER MAP
Car No 6
THIS MAP SHOWS YOU
WHO is in the car
WHERE they are sitting and
WHAT are their interests and concerns
182. TONY ‘WRONG WAY’ KHAN
George and Georges
217. ANTHEA DOBBS
streets and people
183. GEORGINA HAVISTOCK
wrong ways and Yesterdaze
216. SAM CRUZA
the joy of lying
184. SABRINA FOSTER
time out for romance
215. BENJAMIN POSTHATE
corporate interests
185. YONG Y’OUD DANDUSITISPHANT
Thailand long gone
214. CHRISTOPHER BRETTENHAM
Thailand long gone
186. MARGARET THATCHER
this wooden O
213. STEVEN WORKMAN
traffic flow, cash flow
187. ANGIE STRACHAN
hair and leather
EMPTY SEAT
DOORS
212. HENRY FISHER
mark of Cain
DOORS
188. BAL PATIL
action!
211. ANDREW VOWLES
convenience foods
189. SAMANTHA WILSON
linoleum pizza
210. REZIA BEGUM
husband and wife
190. RICK JUNIPER
Miss America
209. ALENKA MISJEKA GARRISON
Prague Spring
191. SANJAY KUMAR
taken to the cleaners
208. DAVID OFFSEY
snip!
192. JAMES WHITTHEAD
espresso snoro
207. ANGELA DOWD
image
193. LORRAINE HANT
Attack of the Puppet People
206. MICHAEL HANSHAW
things go better with…
DOORS
DOORS
194. MARY WALLIS
antique antics
205. DODIE McGINLAY
defenders and benders
195. HARRIET ZINOVSKY
fake and reality
204. HARRY MIGSON
Carpenters’ fan club
196. TONY ‘PEEWEE’ HATCHET
birthing Beowulf
203. LEONE SKERRIT
Golden Girls
197. JIM HAIGH
serving Anita
202. MARYAN ELLIOTT
The Knowledge
198. BEVERLY TOMPSET
to love or love up?
201. ‘BERTIE JEEVES’
going through the motions
199. STAN GRAY
Y-fronts and murder
200. ROSEMARY OLIVER
Good Food Guide
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mestoppers Textbook
THE PROFESSIONAL WAY TO DESCRIBE CRIMINALS
You can never tell when you might witness a crime. Any detail that you remember, however insignificant, may clinch a conviction and put a villain behind bars. You must be ready to describe exactly everyone around you.
Do they sit pigeon-toed or knock-kneed? Do their fat, short, stumpy legs mean they sit on tiptoe? Splay-footed? Do they have long shanks? Unfashionably short trousers revealing bony ankles? Diamond pattern socks?
The woman opposite you with blood red nails covers her mouth: does she always yawn when she has something to hide?
Do they wear wedding rings? Have they removed wedding rings? Look for tell-tale puffiness on the t
hird finger left hand. Can an alert observer note that their ears have been pierced?
Are they behaving suspiciously in any way? For example, do they seem unusually fixated on the people around them, staring at them intently?
Use the 253 description code: Categorize people!
Are they
Is their hair
□
puny: (short and thin)
□
permed like a poodle
□
squat: (short and fat)
□
crisp with gel
□
fat: (medium to tall but bloated)
□
blue with rinse
□
scrawny: (tall and skinny)
□
bacon-streaky with tints?
□
apple on a stick: (skinny with a pot belly)?
Are their faces
Do they suffer from
□
oblong,
□
receding hair
□
round,
□
facial scars or other disfigurements