North-South Read online

  Penguin Underground Lines

  North-South

  A Northern Line Minute

  Earthbound

  Mind The Child

  A History Of Capitalism According To The Jubilee Line

  Contents

  A Northern Line Minute

  Earthbound

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Mind The Child

  Camila

  Mind the Gap

  The ‘Underground Children’

  A Stop at the Platform

  From Underdog to Top Dog: Attempts to Survive

  Thirsting for a Safe Family

  Children of the Underground Grow Up

  The Final Stop

  Notes

  All the art included in this book was produced by the inspirational young people who are supported by Kids Company.

  All royalties from this book go to Kids Company.

  A History Of Capitalism According To The Jubilee Line

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Penguin Lines

  Follow Penguin

  Camila Batmanghelidjh and Kids Company Mind the Child

  The Victoria Line

  Danny Dorling The 32 Stops

  The Central Line

  Fantastic Man Buttoned-Up

  The East London Line

  John Lanchester What We Talk About When We Talk About The Tube

  The District Line

  William Leith A Northern Line Minute

  The Northern Line

  Richard Mabey A Good Parcel of English Soil

  The Metropolitan Line

  Paul Morley Earthbound

  The Bakerloo Line

  John O’Farrell A History of Capitalism According to the Jubilee Line

  The Jubilee Line

  Philippe Parreno Drift

  The Hammersmith & City Line

  Leanne Shapton Waterloo–City, City–Waterloo

  The Waterloo & City Line

  Lucy Wadham Heads and Straights

  The Circle Line

  Peter York The Blue Riband

  The Piccadilly Line

  William Leith

  A NORTHERN LINE MINUTE

  I’m on the train, and the doors are shutting behind me, when I smell the smoke; or rather I’m stepping into the train, towards the seating area, when I sense something bad, and I don’t know what it is, and I sit down, and I see that the doors are shutting, and I don’t know yet where the bad feeling is coming from, because when you smell something it goes straight to your memory, smell bypasses all analysis, as Proust described when he bit into the dunked cake and was transported to his childhood, and only later realized that this was because of the smell of the cake, the madeleine; I step into the train, and feel the bad feeling, the ominous feeling, that something is very wrong, it’s the memory of fires, but not good fires, and I sit down in the seat, and the doors close, and then I realize that I’m smelling something, and it’s burning rubber, or plastic, or oil, or a mixture of all three, and I shift upwards in my seat, already knowing it’s too late, because the doors are closing; have closed.

  Here I am on a Northern Line train at Belsize Park Station, and I’m carrying a plastic bag, and wearing a jacket but no coat, because it’s a warm day in the spring, in the 1990s, and my first thought, after I think I can smell burning rubber, or plastic, is that I must be mistaken, I have to be mistaken, I’m anxious about the Underground, have in fact only just started to use it again after two years of not being able to, eighteen months of not going into the stations at all, and six months of buying tickets every so often, and getting on to the platform, and not being able to get on the train, the platform appearing to close around me as the train approached; I would watch the doors open, and then close, and then I’d watch the train move into the tunnel, a tight squeeze, and I’d move back towards the lift, lift 1 or lift 2, mostly at Belsize Park, and feel an icy tingle in my spine as I got into the lift, and the lift would rise, a very long minute, what people call a Northern Line minute, and I’d get back out of the lift, and wait for the doors to open, and I’d walk out into the tiny concourse, feeling shaky, and there would be an overwhelming sense of relief when I saw the sky for the first time after being down in that tunnel.

  So the first thing I do, after feeling bad, and after thinking I’ve smelled the smoke, is to tell myself that I’m not smelling burning rubber, or plastic, or, alternatively, that I am smelling burning plastic or rubber, but that this is normal; down here, in these tunnels, smells like this are normal, in the same way that the smell of roasting meat is normal in a restaurant, or someone’s kitchen; down here, in these tunnels, things are different, the puffs of strange-smelling wind, the warm and cold air, it’s like an alien weather system, and, what’s more, the smell of slightly singed engine materials, or engine-housing materials, is only to be expected; I tell myself I’m not used to being down here, it’s been a struggle to get this far, and now I’m on the train, for the third or fourth time, I’ve conquered my fear, and this mild panic at the smell of normal things normally being singed in the course of hauling these carriages through these tunnels is fine, absolutely fine.

  And now the train hisses, or sneezes, and very slightly lurches, and begins taxiing along the platform, getting up to full speed, and I try to relax into my seat, try to re-imagine that feeling of hope and mild excitement I normally relish as the craft I’m in starts up; I normally love it as an overground train pulls out of a station, and I look out of the window, and breathe out, and watch the backs of houses, the glinting windows, and I quite like it when planes take off, the feeling of tremendous anxiety muffled by the heavy load of denial one must use to deal with the vision of the ground angling away from you, and I sometimes feel a similar thing in the passenger seat in a car, fiddling with the window to give myself a sense of control. But I can’t muster any of those feelings now; I know I must just look around me, and grit the journey out. People never tell you to have a pleasant journey on the Underground, just as people will say ‘enjoy your meal’, but never ‘enjoy your cigarette’ if you’re a smoker, which I’m not.

  I’m heading for Tottenham Court Road, in the West End of London, to see a film, and I’m late, and I might or might not have time to buy a coffee in a cardboard cup to take into the film; I might have to watch the film without caffeine, is what I’m thinking as the tiled, lighted platform, for so long a place of fear, gives way to a more novel view – the dark, cabled wall of the tunnel.

  Breathing in again, and now definitely acknowledging, being unable not to acknowledge, the smell of burning rubber or plastic, my brain struggles to interpret this information in a positive way. It smells so very wrong, the sort of thing you might expect on amateur or specialist transport, somebody’s weekend boat, or the car two boys made at school, using an engine and bits of scaffolding as a chassis, you could see them sometimes driving it around the school, an engineering project that was a spectacular success; you’d have expected that sort of thing to produce an acrid stink, although it didn’t, and now I can remember the last time I smelled something close to this exact smell, in 1982, when, as a student, I borrowed my mother’s car, she was abroad, and I said I would drive it back on the day she got back, and I had 200 miles to drive, which was fine at first, until the car started smelling, because smoke was coming out of the engine, but I decided to press on, thinking that getting home on time was the main thing; after a while the car slowed down, and t
he smoke got blacker and denser, but still I drove, crunching through the gears, the car getting increasingly sluggish; with fifty miles to go I felt that stopping would be a problem, because I wouldn’t be able to start it up again, so I forced the issue, feeling embarrassed in towns because of the smoke coming from the engine, and also the noise; the engine started grinding and chuntering, but I felt good as I entered the last few miles, believing that I would make it on time, that she’d arrive back from the airport, and I’d be there not long after, having triumphed over this minor adversity, and when I pulled into the drive, and walked into the house, I was surprised that the first thing she wanted to do was inspect the car – that’s not what you do, I thought, when someone comes to visit, you don’t say, hang on a minute, I know I haven’t seen you for ages, but first let me inspect your car, but that’s what she did, immediately becoming aware of the dense black smoke coming out of the front of the car, the smells of burning rubber and plastic, and oil and metal, which is almost exactly, but not quite, the smell that’s in my nostrils now. The car smell was sweeter, sweatier. This is sharper and denser. This is worse.

  But, as the train moves, at what feels like full speed, with slight turbulence, through the tunnel, I am still nowhere near full, or blind, panic – I am simply experiencing a rising sense of anxiety. I am, for instance, still in control of my thoughts. I clutch at my plastic bag, which contains a copy of a book, American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis; I never go anywhere without a book, having a book to flip through is a great comfort, in virtually any situation; I’m reading this book for the third or fourth time, and can remember the first time I read it, on a plane from London to Miami, where I would see what I thought were the Bee Gees’ houses, the three brothers having bought houses next to each other on the waterfront, and as I read this book for the first time, about a maniac financier who kills people, particularly women, and scoops out their brains, or more likely fantasizes about killing people and scooping out their brains, the person next to me, a woman from Miami, told me she knew the book must be good, because I was reading it with such intensity, and as she said this she looked over at the book, entering my personal space, and I snapped the book shut, because I was on a scene in which the narrator was talking about scooping someone’s brain out, and when I snapped the book shut, the woman gave me an odd look, and I could not work out whether this was because I’d snapped the book shut, which was bad enough, or because she’d read part of the text, and was now wondering about this person sitting next to her intensely being so abjectly focused on such utter filth, such utter perversion, which is what I thought that she, who was wearing pastel colours and too much make-up, would have thought; she might not have bought the idea that, actually, it’s an allegorical work, a devastating critique of the way financiers think and behave. I put the book away in the elasticated seat pocket in front of me, among the flight magazines and the sick bag, and felt my anxiety rise, because now, suddenly ripped from the world that had been occupying my mind, of people’s heads being scooped out by a maniac, I started to notice the facts of my situation, of being in a steel tube, moving through slightly turbulent air.

  I’ve always been a nervous flyer, although, unlike with the Underground, this never actually stopped me using planes. Is this because my fear of heights is less intense than my fear of depths? Possibly. But, if I’m ever asked what I’m frightened of, my first instinct is to say that I’m frightened of heights. I don’t like glass lifts, or the Eiffel Tower, or cliff paths – walking along the Seven Sisters, in Sussex, a broad undulating path with fields on one side, and a sheer drop on the other, is a very uncomfortable experience for me; even when I’m yards from the edge, I can think of nothing else, as if I’m being drawn towards it – the distance between me and the edge seems to be permanently shrinking, even when I’m measuring it with my eye, and can tell, rationally, that it is not. Something about being near the edge makes me wonder how close to the edge I could get without actually falling off, and this, in turn, makes me feel sick and dizzy. So I try to pretend to myself that the edge is not there at all; that, in fact, there are fields on both sides of the path, which is similar to what I do when I’m on a plane. I simply pretend I’m not on a plane. I immerse myself in a book, or a movie, or else, if I’m tired, I drink.

  But drinking on the Underground would be quite wrong – drinking on the Underground is a complete no-no. If you see somebody drinking on an Underground train, you automatically despise them – unless they are Johnny Depp or something. Which is funny – on planes, the staff will serve you enough booze to get you pretty drunk. More Champagne, Sir? Mostly it’s okay. You arrive, dazed and confused – but then, you’d be pretty dazed and confused anyway, after ten or twelve hours in the pressurized cabin, landing in a new time zone, with new weather and the smells of cleaning fluids, always the first thing you smell when you enter a new country – Clorox, I think, being the smell of America, or possibly Clorox B.

  In the tunnel, clutching my bag, but not taking out my book, kneading and wrinkling the plastic between my fingers, I again smell the burning rubber or plastic smell, and even though it’s stronger, I’m still fighting against my better instinct, which tells me I’m in danger, possibly desperate danger, that this, in fact, is what I was frightened of all along, a fire in an Underground tunnel – King’s Cross! – with smoke and shouting and confusion and being burned to death. I have no idea whatsoever what it would feel like, being burned to death, which is why, when you see somebody in a movie being burned at the stake, you begin to lose empathy for the victim the moment they are engulfed in flames. It’s almost a relief. There’s Joan of Arc, being dragged towards the pyre, being strapped down, and the pyre is lit – these moments are horrible. But then – woof! – the flames engulf her. Phew! It’s over! Which is something you don’t think, say, during Marathon Man, when Laurence Olivier, as the Nazi dentist, drills into Dustin Hoffman’s teeth. You don’t see the drill enter Hoffman’s mouth, and think: phew! You think: no, no, no! The question with being burned to death is whether you feel like you do when you touch a hot pan, but worse, and all over, and for ages, or whether, after the moment of engulfment, the pain just sort of becomes like white noise. Drowning, of course, would be different. Being trapped underground, with the water rising; lifting your head to take that last breath as the dark water closes in – that doesn’t bear thinking about. So when I say I’m afraid of being in a fire in the Underground, and that this is my worst fear, I don’t think actually being burned to death is the most frightening thing. It’s the thing that happens before you are burned to death. It’s the being trapped. It’s the moments of waiting, and of hope. It’s the hope. That’s the most frightening thing. The hope, and the way it never quite fades.

  The train, which definitely smells, but which might not be on fire, might in fact not have any mechanical problems at all, begins to slow down, a sensation I can feel bodily that is also accompanied by a series of squeaking noises, as the brake pads, or whatever, pinch the sides of the wheels, or whatever, and as the train slows down, I know that this deceleration is the prelude to something I have always feared – stopping in the tunnel. When the train stops in the tunnel, I can feel my rational mind, the fine-tuning of its clockwork mechanism, begin to slip, as if it’s been over-oiled. The system that takes over, the panic system, is quite different. This system behaves like the stock market at the moment it crashes – people trying to sell what they have, at any price, forcing other people to sell, dumping everything, the mass dumping a cascade of doubt and devaluation. I must not go there. I look around me – and, as I do so, I realize I have, until now, been avoiding any form of contact with other people, in case I can read, from their body language, that they, too, have smelled the burning rubber smell. There is a woman, two seats away from me, and another woman next to her. There’s a man in a suit, but no tie, opposite me. He is staring straight ahead – a picture of resolute confidence. Or absolute terror. I can’t tell. Above his head is the windo
w, and beyond the window, the wall of the tunnel, lined with cables. Why so many cables? Each one must be important. If one were to go wrong – what then? The cables loom, like the faces I sometimes think I see when I look out of my ground-floor window at night. But they are not faces – except in my head, where they are faces. Above the man’s head is a diagram of the Northern Line, all the way from Morden to High Barnet and Edgware, and, to calm myself down, to slow down the cogs of my mind, I look along the diagram, at the stations, many of which I know. Things have happened to me at these stations. Like Warren Street. That’s where I saw the man talking to himself. And Bank. That’s where I met my friend, who worked in a bank, and some other bankers, or rather traders, and that’s when I realized that traders were a group unto themselves, like fighter pilots or marines, with strange codes of behaviour, like pissing at the bar, while they were ordering beer, in unison. Angel – where I lost those documents. The guy had given me two sets of documents, one very important, he said, and one hardly important at all. They were in brown A4 envelopes. My eye goes up and down the list. Bank again – where the bomb went off. I actually heard it; the noise of it spoke to me. Clapham Common. 1987. The last time I ever played football competitively. After that game, I knew it was no use; as a sportsman, I was finished.

  In 1987, I wasn’t frightened of the Underground. Or hardly frightened. True, I dreaded the moments when the train stopped between stations. I would sit there, scrunched in my seat, trying to stop my mind from slipping into full panic mode, trying to stop the cascade of thoughts and images – the market crash, thoughts giving way to cheaper thoughts, more useless and volatile thoughts. True, sometimes I did not succeed. But the train always started up again – it always cranked back into action. I always reached my destination. I always walked through the concourse and saw the first patch of sky. In 1987, I had not yet reached the point where I could not use the Underground. That came seven years later, in 1994. Why? Trying to answer this question, I draw a blank; I dip my net in the water, and come up with nothing, and I look into the empty, dripping net, and don’t want to plunge it in deeper. Freud, I think, said the unconscious was like a big, scary fish in a dark pool: sometimes you see it, and sometimes it breaks the surface, rippling the pool, a sudden, shocking flash of tail and fin, and then it’s a dark shape under the surface, and then it’s gone. At least I think Freud said that. (My mind is spinning. I must not let it.)