North-South Read online

  Walking along the canal path, I understand that to go to a pub and get drunk in this situation would be a mistake. But to have a single drink would, surely, be fine. So I go into a pub. I meet people. Beer splashes on my envelopes. There is a moment when I am torn between being bang on time, or having one last drink. The bonhomie is infectious. The printing plant stays open all night. They need to – they have to – print the City prices. Bonhomie wins.

  And then I’m in Angel Station, on the down escalator, watching the tops of people’s heads looming up towards me on the other side. I’m moving down, feeling no fear, staring ahead with a glazed expression, calculating my journey time, checking my documents, and I have the document that has not been marked with an ‘X’, and I’m looking for the document that has been marked with an ‘X’, and at first I can’t find it, and I’m now halfway down the escalator, I look up and there are plenty of people coming down behind me, standing there, staring straight ahead, and I still can’t seem to find the document that has been marked with an ‘X’, which might, I now realize, not matter, because now I’m not sure whether that guy Bradley marked the important one or the less important one, the one with the picture of the robin, always an odd thing to put on a Christmas card, robins being desperate predators, always on the edge of starvation, most of them starve, although people don’t know this, and I’m near the bottom of the escalator, when I think I know what must have happened; and I know, in my heart, that I’ve lost the important envelope, know I’ve taken my eye off the ball, that somewhere I made a wrong turn, and I reason that I must have dropped the important envelope somewhere on this escalator, somewhere near the top, and this is when I turn, and start climbing, looking down at the slatted steps, knocking into the hips and elbows of people, and the climb is harder than I thought, but I grit it out, thinking that, by the time I get to the top, I will find what I’m looking for, but I don’t, and the futility of my manoeuvre, trying to find something that could not possibly have fallen upwards, only occurs to me later, after I arrive at the printing firm, after the man designated to meet me has told me off, has sworn at me for being late; after he has ripped open the A4 envelope I give him, and pulled out a document, and looked at it. I can tell from his face it’s the robin.

  And now the train jolts, and judders, and starts to move, and I am filled with the icy pangs of relief I used to get halfway up the escalator, when I knew I’d see the sky again, when I knew I’d walk across the tiny concourse of whatever station, Angel or Belsize Park or Chalk Farm, and look up, and see a patch of sky, and, even though I can still smell something that is definitely burning rubber, or plastic, I have a sense that everything will be fine, that my fears are all in my head, somewhere in the dark pool, diving deeper; and they have not gone, the fears, but everything seems to be fine, I don’t know why I was so frightened of going underground, but maybe those fears were groundless, or perhaps a mechanism I employed to protect me from other, deeper fears, which I have not yet been able to identify, maybe that’s why I’m always reading books that creep me out, maybe I am attracted, in some way, to fear, but I’ve conquered this one; this is what I’m thinking as the jolting and the juddering gives way to a smoother ride, smooth but slow, too slow perhaps, or maybe again it’s all in my mind. The woman to my left, the one with the black slacks and the white shirt, or blouse, shifts in her seat and crosses her legs. The man opposite me stares ahead, probably resolutely, I can now see. The train rumbles on. I look out of the window, at the reflections of the people in the train, at the cables on the wall of the tunnel, at the diagram of the stations of the Northern Line. Barnet. Totteridge & Whetstone. I’ve never been to Totteridge or Whetstone, but I have met Mickie Most, the semi-famous music producer who lives in Totteridge or Whetstone, I can’t remember which; I met him during an interview with a pop star, in some studio near Warren Street or Goodge Street; he shook my hand, Mickie Most, and the funny thing is that people seemed more impressed that I’d met Most than the pop star, even though the pop star had topped the charts I think twice, with his very catchy songs. Most’s house, sometimes pictured in magazines, is white, and very impressive, with several balconies. And I remember the pop star said something I thought at the time was racist: he said that the Edgware Road was ‘like High Street Beirut’, meaning it was full of people from the Middle East, and later I wondered why I thought that this was a racist comment; if he’d said it was ‘like Fifth Avenue’, meaning that it was full of Americans, I would not have thought the comment racist at all. Woodside Park. West Finchley. Mill Hill East. Finchley Central. East Finchley. Highgate. Archway. Tufnell Park. Kentish Town. Hampstead. Belsize Park. Chalk Farm.

  ‘The next station is Chalk Farm.’

  I’m staring at the window, at the cables outside the window, and I know that soon, in a few moments, I will see outside light, artificial light certainly, but light coming from outside the train, and this, I have noticed during the three or four journeys since I conquered my fear, always cheers me up, always gives me a boost, particularly if the train has stopped between stations; now, even before this moment happens, I can feel a definite lightening of my spiritual load: the train has momentum, will not stop again before I see the light, and the platform, and the tiles – the very environment that used to frighten me so much, during the period when I was trying to conquer my fear, when I could get on the platform, but no further.

  This was a strange time. I would walk out of my flat, turn left, turn left twice, and then right, and in five minutes I’d be at the corner, looking at the front entrance of the station, and at first I’d walk on, with a shudder, and walk up the street, with pasta restaurants on both sides, a curious thing being that on one side of the street, if you asked for your pasta ‘al dente’, the waiter would nod, and you’d get pasta that was not soft, but on the other side of the street, the waiter would say that he or she was sorry, but the pasta came ready prepared, it was as it was, and he or she had no say in how soft it was. In any case, sometimes I’d walk on, and hail a taxi. But then I started to buy tickets, and get as far as the platform, but no further. And then I got on a train. The doors were about to close, and I leaped on, forcing the issue, and the doors closed behind me, and I felt a terrible suffocating sensation as the train entered the tunnel, and the next minute or so, the next Northern Line minute, seemed to take hours, or days, and then the train pulled into Chalk Farm Station – there was the outside light, there were the tiles – and I wondered why the doors were not opening, thought they might be jammed – why were they taking so long to open? – but they slid open, and I darted along the platform towards the lift area. But I didn’t wait for the lift. I ran all the way up the stairs. And then the tiny concourse. The patch of sky. At last – I had done it! But would I do it again? At the time, I didn’t know.

  Yes! We are pulling into the station! All is well! Here it is – the light! I stand up and grab the strap above my head. Now, I can, if I want to, get off the train. But why should I? If I do, I’ll be late. To get off here would be a regression. It would set me back. I sit down again. The train stops. There are people on the platform, waiting to get in. The doors open. Two girls, or girly young women, step into the train. One of them says, ‘Can you smell something? Like burning?’ The other makes a face. There is a moment when they are both making a face. The two girly women sit down. I look at the open doors. Two, three bounds, and I could be gone. The tiny concourse! The sky! The newsagent that sells chocolate bars! I’d be late. But! And I sit there, not bounding across the train, not doing anything, sitting there, clutching my plastic bag, which contains two books, American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, and Chappaquiddick Revealed by Kenneth Kappel, which creeps me out. It’s the most frightening Chappaquiddick book, because of its bleak, but, I think, accurate, analysis of human nature. I sit there, clutching my bag, staring at the open doors, and I do nothing; for a long minute I do not act. And I’ll remember this long minute, this Northern Line minute, for the rest of my life.


  The doors close.

  Now that the doors have closed, and there’s no way out, no way out even if I screamed and banged at the glass, I can feel a pang of regret, closely followed by a heavier pang of regret, the pangs moving like an avalanche, crushing something in me, I have a flash memory of being in a sauna somewhere, there were other people in the sauna, and it was hot, but hot in a way that was not unpleasant, or perhaps masochistically pleasant, and I wanted to get out of the sauna, and I stood up, and I tried the door, but the door was jammed, or seemed jammed, and I tried again, grabbing at it, it was definitely jammed, and then the heat of the sauna seemed to change, from something pleasant to something beyond unpleasant, frightening even, and I couldn’t breathe, and I started sweating, strange to say this, because I was sweating anyway, sweating is the point of a sauna, but sweat was now rolling off me, my breathing tortured and shallow, and the heat – the heat! It was different. It was so very different. And then another guy tried the door, and he couldn’t get it open, and we could see the door’s mechanism, could see how it worked, or so we thought, but we were stuck, and frying from the inside, and our brains seemed to be fried as well. And then the door opened. The catch had stuck. Shoddy workmanship. I pushed my way outside; the heat followed me like a cloud of insects. I didn’t feel right all day. And I worked out how long we thought we were trapped. It was about a minute.

  Desperate not to feel like I did in the sauna, my mind now beginning to spin, a definite smell of burning rubber or plastic in my nostrils (now that those girls have noticed it, it seems much stronger), I clutch at other thoughts I might have, any thoughts. Morden. Elephant & Castle. Borough. The day of Gazza’s tears at Borough. I saw Gazza’s tears, that is, in someone’s flat near Borough. Gazza losing control; Gazza making the lunge that would define him for life. The lunge – and then the tears, tears of self-pity, because the referee took out the yellow card, whipped it out, and this was the semi-final of the World Cup, and now that Gazza was booked, whatever else happened, he would not play in the final, would certainly be remembered, but as a bit-part player – would not be, as the cultural critic Paul Morley memorably said, ‘in the magic eleven’, the players who would play in the final, who would become the magic eleven if they won the World Cup, like the magic eleven from 1966, I can remember them, my mind is spinning, let’s see, Banks, Cohen, someone, Stiles, Charlton, someone, yes, Moore of course, Ball, Hunt, Hurst, someone, Peters; I’m sitting here, waiting for the train to move, smelling the smell, and I can’t remember the magic eleven! I’ve always been able to remember the magic eleven! And now I can only remember nine. This is what I’m thinking as the train moves out, Wilson, I’m thinking, Ray Wilson, wasn’t he the undertaker, but that still only makes ten, I’m thinking.

  Come on; come on, I’m thinking, as the avalanche deepens, as the fear sends new shoots through my brain, growing fast, like bamboo, everything is fine, it is just my imagination. Get a grip. Idiot! I look at the two women, the girly women, opposite me; their heads are close together. Their body language does not bode well. I shift in my seat, as the platform moves past. The women sitting opposite me, directly in my line of vision, are attractive, but they couldn’t be models, because they are shaped like normal women; I remember once sitting on a train at I think Tottenham Court Road, and two models got on, you often see models at Tottenham Court Road; these women had that look of flamingoes, too tall and all sharp angles, and they were clutching their portfolios, doing what they do all day, traipsing around London, showing people pictures of themselves, and I realized that these models were less attractive than all the other women in the carriage, and then I realized that, in fact, models are not actually attractive – they just look attractive in photographs. Somebody once told me that this was the thing to bear in mind if you wanted to date models – that they are not, in the end, very attractive. He said the upside was that, when you split up, which would be very soon, you got to keep photographs of the person, which actually did look attractive, and which would fool most people who looked at them. Even though, he said, they didn’t fool him, because he was an expert.

  Is it my imagination, or is the train moving very slowly indeed? Is it my imagination, or is the smell of burning getting stronger? Is it my imagination, or is this train on fire? Is it my imagination, or am I in a fire, in a tunnel, on the Northern Line, between Chalk Farm and Camden stations?

  Why did I not get off at Chalk Farm? Not getting off at Chalk Farm was stupid, like Gazza’s lunge; and, yes, it was impulsive, even though it was an impulse not to do something. There he is, as the clock winds down, in the semi-final of the World Cup, the match between England and Germany a stalemate, and the German player Berthold has the ball, going nowhere in particular, and Gazza, psyched up, launches himself at Berthold, sliding along, crunching through him, and the whistle goes, and, for a minute, Gazza loses it, his face and body language a pantomime of regret, his brain an avalanche of bad, roiling thoughts, a market crash of volatility, dumping everything he can; his pride, his self-respect, his ability to function normally, and the head bows, the face scrunches up. And then the tears. And people said, afterwards, how weird and unsettling it was that these tears, this loss of control, made Gazza into a national treasure, which said a lot, didn’t it, about the nation that came to treasure him.

  The train is slow, painfully slow; it’s moving, but only just, and I wonder what’s above me, but I don’t want to think about it, don’t want to think about the street, or the park, or the nearby zoo, the elephants and lions, but I can’t help thinking about the elephants and lions; if I’d chosen to walk, instead of taking the Underground, right now I’d be walking in a park, looking at elephants and lions, and I’d be able to buy a coffee in the park, and I could blow out my film, it’s only work, it’s not life itself, and I could sit down on a bench, in the mild sunshine, and read my book about Chappaquiddick.

  Of course, it’s in my bag, and I could take it out now, and pretend I’m sitting on a bench in the park, with a view of elephants, pretend everything is fine, that the smell of burning is not getting stronger, that the people around me are not shuffling and scrunching themselves up in their seats, which they are, their body language looks ominous now; I could pretend to myself that this is one of those moments like when you’re alone in a house, at night, and the plumbing makes noises, like it sometimes does, sounding like someone clumping through the house, someone with an odd, broken, rattling gait, and you say to yourself, that’s funny, if I didn’t know that this noise was coming from the plumbing, I’d be really scared right now, and then a minute goes by and you are in a new world – you are really scared, even though you know it’s the plumbing, too scared, say, to see any humour in the situation, and you can’t bear to look out of the window, and you draw the curtains, and check the doors are locked, even though you know, in your heart, that everything is really fine.

  I could pretend to myself that this is one of those moments.

  So I hunker down in my seat, and I don’t look up, not at all, and I take my book out of my bag, and I imagine I’m sitting on a park bench, lost in my book, which is a small, battered paperback, the sort with sensational pictures on the front, the edges of the pages dyed yellow. It’s the story of a man who made a terrible mistake. The mistake defined his life. The mistake defined our lives. The man was Ted Kennedy – younger brother of JFK and RFK. The mistake was that he went out with a young woman in a car, and had a few drinks. The young woman was not his wife. His wife was pregnant. He had an accident in the car. He did not report the accident. The young woman died. Which meant that he had no chance of becoming president. And this is why our lives might be different.

  Oh, the regrets he must have had! This book is compulsive – it’s part of a genre I think of as regret porn. And what could be better than to spend a happy morning reading regret porn, sitting on a park bench, with dangerous wild animals in cages just yards away. Here are the facts. It’s a gorgeous morning. The leaves are coming ou
t. The sun is bright. But it’s not too hot. There are clouds in the sky. But it won’t rain. I’m sitting on a lacquered bench, in a perfect spot – shaded by a tree. Probably a maple, but I can’t say for sure. I’m next to a path, which I sometimes jog along. I’m very happy, for some reason, to have taken the morning off. Behind me, as I say, are elephants, lions, leopards and tigers. Sometimes I can hear the big cats snarling and making guttural noises. I don’t even flinch. To the south – a road. But I can only hear a faint whine from the traffic. Above me, planes move in their holding pattern as they prepare to land at Heathrow. Below me, trains clatter along in tunnels, so far below I’m not even aware of them. In my hands – a book about a man who made a terrible decision, and killed someone, and got away with it.

  I decide to forget about my environment, wonderful though it is, and concentrate on the book. But I can’t. Something seems to be distracting me. I place the book on my lap, its spine cracked, the yellow edges of the pages just visible. I’ve read it lots of times before, anyway. Something happened one night in the summer of 1969. Senator Edward Kennedy went to a regatta on Martha’s Vineyard, an island off the coast of Massachusetts. Then he went to a party in a house on the smaller Chappaquiddick Island, which can be reached from Martha’s Vineyard by a ferry. At the party, he met Mary Jo Kopechne, an attractive blonde woman who had worked for his brother Robert. Ted drove her away from the party in a car. And here, the facts become fuzzy. He had been drinking. There was some kind of accident. He did not report the accident. The next morning, the car was found in the sea. It was upside down. Mary Jo’s body was in the car. She had drowned. But she’d lived a long time, trapped in the upside-down car, breathing from a pocket of air in the car’s footwell.