To catch the other train I had to cross to the far platform. I saw the red bridge that spanned the track. Would I have time to run across there? Through the windows of the other train I could see the press of passengers, even at this time of night. They were still boarding...
I decided to risk it.
I was off the Hampstead train before it stopped moving. Running down the platform, pounding towards the wooden steps of the bridge. I heard a door slam. Up the stairs. A whistle. Over the bridge. Another whistle.
The blue and silver carriages of the Euston train began to glide forward just as I was descending the steps to the platform. I could still make it, I thought...
But no, by the time I reached the platform the train was moving too fast. I swore, and that’s when the whistle sounded from the other side of the tracks. My train, my Hampstead train, was leaving. I ran back up the bridge, but too late...
I stood there, above the railway lines, stood beneath the oversized Dream London moon that hung like a golden gong over the city and I twisted back and forth, watching the lights of the two trains, diminishing in both directions. The clickety-clack sound of their wheels died away.
“You were tempted by the easier way,” said the old man who passed me by on the bridge, heading for the exit. He must have got off the Euston train.
“I need to get out of here,” I said.
“Be patient,” said the man. “Accept the train that Dream London sends you.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
But the old man walked on.
“Don’t go all mystic on me!” I shouted. “Really, what the hell does that mean?”
Disconsolate, I wandered back down to the platform the Euston train had just departed from.
I saw a porter, dressed in green. His uniform bore the usual linked DLR logo.
“The next train,” I said. “The next train to Euston, when is it?”
“Not until tomorrow,” said the porter. “Your best bet, catch the next train to Hackney, change at the Angle.”
“The Angle?” I said. “You mean the Angel?”
“You pronounce it the way you want to,” he said. “Either way, it should be along in five minutes.”
He walked off down the platform, leaving me alone. Despite the activity of just a few minutes before, the station was now deserted. All those passengers a moment ago, and now nothing. Dream London was playing with me, I knew it, but I wasn’t to be defeated.
The station was called Hayling Road East. Odd that, I’d lived in this area for nearly a year and I didn’t remember hearing of a station by that name. I looked down the long stretch of track, seeking out the lights of the next train. I could still see the broken stump of the Belltower, lit up by night, and for a moment I entertained the idea of leaving the station and simply walking towards it.
That would be one way to break the Dream London railway trap. Or would it? You heard stories. Stories of people who had been missing for ages suddenly walking into their homes half starved, of people collapsing in bars telling stories of wanderings through empty streets. Or of people who had come to places where the people didn’t speak English, or where they didn’t quite look human...
I wasn’t quite ready to start walking yet, though. One missed train wasn’t reason enough to give up.
There was an old vending machine standing on the platform. Whatever it had once been, it was now something made of cast iron, shell patterns embossed on the corners. There was a place to insert money, and a slot for the product to drop from. I took a closer look at the words embossed on the machine’s surface:
TAKE COCAINE
Somewhere in the distance, music started. It drifted up from the darkness and echoed around the walls of the empty railway station. Odd music, music that was different to what you normally heard nowadays. The silver sound of a soprano cornet, the regular beat of a drum. Trombones and euphoniums. Then cornets and horns and baritones. Musical instruments, all playing together, all keeping time. A brass band. When was the last time I had heard a proper band? What was it about that sound that jarred against its surroundings?
I remembered the children carrying the instrument cases, coming to visit Amit Singh. I thought of Anna, practising with her cornet in her room, back at the Poison Yews. The sound of music boomed and echoed from the walls, it threaded its silvery way through the spaces between the yellow lamps. I stood, so lost in a trance that I literally flinched when I saw the lit windows of the electric train that had crept up so silently to the station.
The train came to a halt. I saw the word Hackney on the destination boards, so I climbed on board.
There weren’t many people on the train. A group of football supporters at one end of the carriage, brown and cream Armoury scarves tied to their arms. There was a woman with a bag full of cats, their heads emerging from the top and looking patiently outwards in all directions, a young boy reading a chapbook, a man asleep with a large pink badge on his lapel.
“Excuse me,” I said to the woman, “does this train go to the Angle?”
The woman looked up at me and replied, “Errgh oll un marv’k.”
“Thank you.”
The train jerked and began to move. I approached the young boy.
“Excuse me, do you know if this train goes to the Angle?”
“Fuck off,” said the boy, without looking up from his book. I noticed now that the cover had a picture of two women locked in an extremely obscene embrace.
I left the boy alone and went to sit near the sleeping man. The badge on his lapel read Wake me at Victoria Station.
This was what happened when you tried to escape from Dream London, I knew this from bitter experience. Everyone did. You rode a train and circumstances conspired to stop you reaching your destination. It was happening to me now, I knew it, but I had no choice but to try. What was the alternative? To wake the thing that slept in my tongue? To be captured by the things that controlled Angel Tower?
The train slowed and we glided into another station. A large crowd of people were waiting here, obscuring the signs. Where were we now? The train stopped and the people climbed on board. All of them were dressed in black, men in dark suits, women in black silk dresses, their faces obscured by dark veils. I watched, unsettled, as their dark shapes entered the carriage. Their pale silence unnerved me. I wondered about getting off, but I told myself I was being silly. Captain Wedderburn was frightened of nothing.
It wasn’t until the porter let out a whistle and the train began to move that I saw the signs declaring the station name. My unease at the dark-suited passengers increased once more.
DREAM LONDON NECROPOLIS
“Don’t worry,” said the young man who had sat down at my side. “You turned white when you saw the sign! It’s not as bad as it sounds. This is an actual station from before the changes, regenerated by Dream London. The station used to stand next to Waterloo, it was there for the benefit of the people who wanted to visit the large cemeteries to the south of the city.”
The young man fumbled in his jacket pocket and produced a pewter cigarette case. He offered it to me.
“Smoke?” he said. “You look like you need one.”
“Thanks,” I said, selecting an oval Turkish cigarette. The young man lit it for me and I breathed the scented smoke. “Oh, I needed that.”
“Where are you going?” asked the young man.
“Euston. Or any of the big stations. I’m trying to escape.”
“Good luck with that,” said the young man. “I’ve tried myself a couple of times. I always give up when I get to the mud piles.”
“The mud piles?”
The young man’s eyes narrowed as he drew on his cigarette. He exhaled lavender smoke with a sigh.
“I don’t know where it is,” he said. “Somewhere to the west, I should think. The river is so wide and flat, and the muddy banks seem to be miles wide. There are people living there on the flats, they pile the mud into little towers. The r
ailway lines stretch for miles across the mud, and there are little stations set every so often.” The young man shivered. “It’s awful. So bleak and depressing.”
“I’ve never seen that,” I said. “Whenever I’ve tried to get away I always seem to end up back by the towers in the Square Mile.”
“At least you know where you are. It takes me days to find my way back to the centre.”
A woman across the way was crying, and the young man leant forward to pat her hand. I looked out of the window. The train glided past a windmill, its shape black against the bright surface of the moon.
“Don’t worry about that, either,” said the young man. “There used to be windmills in London. This one used to be out near Upminster. You’ll see the old tube trains in a moment.”
Sure enough, we rode past a wide yard full of abandoned trains, bone white in the moonlight. The lines of carriages were tethered by vines that sought to pull the metal back down into the earth.
The train slowed and the funeral party stirred, gathering their possessions as they prepared to leave.
“I think this is our stop,” said the young man. “Good luck with your escape.”
“Thank you.”
Something stirred inside me.
“I’m sorry about your bereavement,” I said.
The young man’s eyes widened slightly in surprise.
“I think I owe you an apology,” he said. “I had you down as someone who didn’t give a damn about the misfortunes of others.”
“Oh...”
I didn’t know what else to say, apart from that he was right.
“Here,” he said, and he pushed a handful of cigarettes into my hand. “Good luck!”
He left the train. The cat woman and the foul-mouthed young man left too.
This station was called East Ham Sandwich. Nothing looked familiar now. I sat alone in the carriage, waiting for the train to move. Opposite me the man with the pink lapel badge slept happily. After ten minutes I realised the train wasn’t going anywhere.
I leant out of the door and called across to a nearby guard, stood in a pool of yellow light, drinking from a bottle of Dream London beer.
“I say!” I called. “When are we going to move?”
The guard took his time finishing his drink. He lowered the bottle from his mouth and carefully wiped the top.
“You’re not,” he said. “That train is out of service.”
“Out of service? It said Hackney!”
“This is the Dream London Railway,” said the guard. “and things change. Or hadn’t you noticed?”
I clenched my fists. No one spoke to Captain Wedderburn like that.
Or maybe they did now. Besides, hitting him wouldn’t make the train move. I relaxed, forced myself to speak in calmer tones.
“How do I get to Euston from here?”
The guard screwed the top back on his bottle before answering.
“Cross over to the other platform. Catch the next train to Mud Flats. Change at Coffee Street for the Hackney train. Change at the Angle for Euston.”
My heart sank. Two changes this time. My destination was receding all the time. I didn’t want to go to the Mud Flats, but what choice did I have?
I lit another of the cigarettes the young man had pressed on me and set off to the other platform to wait.
The silence was the most frightening thing. Nights in Dream London were filled with noise: the singing of drunks, the laughter of whores, the sounds of fighting, of guitars, of accordions. You can hear the shriek of birds, the hiss of lizards, the screaming of cats as they are tortured by the blue monkeys. But here there was nothing, just the darkness of the night that seemed to rise much higher in the deep Dream London sky. I felt a shiver of relief when the rails started to sing. I looked up and down the tracks, but there was no train in sight. Up and down again and then I saw it, closer than I had expected, running without lights, coming closer, racing the wind and then it was upon me: a black engine pulling black carriages. It ran past the platform in a whisper: smoked glass windows revealing nothing, nothing written on the side of the carriages unless it was in black paint. A black train. I had heard of them, the trains that ran the line from no one knew where to no one knew where.
Now I had seen one.
THE MUD FLATS train was a dark electric thing that looked as if it had been built by some distant country at the turn of the nineteenth century. Something about the line of the driver’s cabin spoke of distant steppes, and of days spent journeying through bleak landscapes filled with frost and birch trees. The train wheezed its way to a halt and I climbed on board. The interior was old and cracked and torn. The only other passenger was a woman in a white lab coat who slept with a pink badge pinned to her breast that read Wake me at East Ham Sandwich. I placed a hand on her shoulder and shook her gently. She mumbled something, but went on sleeping. Outside, the whistle sounded. I shook her harder. She gave a snort and came awake, looked up at me, eyes wide. She slapped me hard on the cheek. I slapped her back.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she said, her hand to her face.
“Your badge said to wake you,” I said, indignantly. “We’re here at East Ham Sandwich!”
“Shit,” she said. She jumped to her feet, but she was too late. The train was already moving from the station. She went to the door and I could see her hesitating, wondering whether or not to jump. She thought better of it and softly closed the door. She came back to sit opposite me.
“Sorry,” she said. “I was in such a deep sleep, then I woke to see you standing over me. It gave me a fright.”
“I understand,” I said, and then Captain Wedderburn kicked in, the big man looking after the little lady. That’s what the Captain did, it was a way of showing who was in charge, after all. “But don’t you think it’s a bit dangerous? A woman sleeping on a train like this? Anything could happen to you.”
“I can look after myself,” said the woman. “Besides, this is the only way to get around if you want to go somewhere that Dream London doesn’t want you to go. Haven’t you heard about it yet?”
“No...”
She sat up straight in her seat.
“You got a cigarette?” she asked. I handed her one and lit it for her. She took a deep drag.
“Ah! That’s better!” She held out a hand. “Cynthia Graham.”
“James Wedderburn.”
“Ah! The famous Captain. You know, I’d heard you were good looking. I didn’t realise just how attractive you would be.”
She laughed at my expression.
“Don’t look so shocked! I don’t fancy you.” She gave me a sideways glance and added drily: “I prefer brains to looks any day of the week.”
“Hey...”
I realised that she was playing with me then. Just because I was playing the big hero didn’t mean she had to play the damsel in distress.
She took another drag of the cigarette and slowly blew blue smoke into the air.
“So, you really don’t know about the badges yet?” she said. “I would have thought the idea would be all over Dream London by now.”
“I’ve seen them around,” I said. “I thought that only the drunks were wearing them.”
“Maybe they are,” said Cynthia. “But they won’t be the only ones. I used to work for the LSAPM team. Did you ever hear of them?”
“No.”
“The London Sub-Atomic Particle Model. We were part of Imperial College, had a lab out in the Square Mile.”
“I never heard of you.”
“Really? We were in all the papers a year ago, just before all of this started.”
“I never really read the papers.”
“You surprise me,” she said in a voice as dry as the cigarette she was drawing on. “Well, you’ve heard of the Large Hadron Collider?”
I nodded. She wasn’t fooled.
“Mmm. It was a great big physics experiment dug out in a huge tunnel underneath Switzerland. You know how muc
h that thing cost? I doubt it.”
She wasn’t giving me a chance to speak.
“Well, we at El-spam had a plan to do the same thing, but much cheaper. We were looking for sub-atomic particles, but we were doing it using pen and paper.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We wanted to describe things smaller than atoms,” said Cynthia. “Things so small that you can know where they are, or where they’re going, but not both at the same time.”
“I’ve heard of that,” I said.
“Of course you have,” said Cynthia, not quite keeping the sarcasm from her tone. “Well, it worked! We found what we were looking for. We wrote the model for a sub-atomic particle perfectly. We described it in such detail that we captured it so completely that we became part of its system. And now, look at us. We ride the trains and we know where we are, or where we want to go, but never both at the same time.”
“So that’s why you have a badge,” I said. “You’re asleep so you don’t know where you’re going. And of course, I knew where you were.” I frowned. “But didn’t I know where you were going as well?”
“I’d already arrived there, though. I wasn’t going anywhere.”
She smiled at me. It all made perfect sense to her, I was sure.
“You’re not in the right place now,” I said. “Does it ever work?”
“It might take some time, but you get there in the end. I’ve been everywhere in Dream London.”
“Have you left?” I asked, eagerly.
“Never tried,” she said. “This is where my work is.”
I couldn’t do that, I reflected. I couldn’t fall asleep on these trains. Not with Honey Peppers and the Quantifiers looking for me. I needed to keep my wits about me.
We were pulling into another station. The streets outside here looked odd: the houses seemed to be constructed from porcelain, their rounded shapes blending into each other and the street. The station signs declared this to be Chinatown.
“Well, if you’ll excuse me,” said Cynthia, “I’ll get off the train here and cross onto the other platform. Try and catch a train back to East Ham Sandwich.”
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