North-South Page 4
I shudder. I pick up the book again, and flip through its pages. Kennedy’s claim was that he drove off the edge of a causeway, into the sea, and somehow got out of the sinking car, and ‘dove repeatedly’ to save Mary Jo – but, when he couldn’t do this, instead of reporting the accident, he sat on the bank for a while, walked across the island, swam to Martha’s Vineyard, went to sleep in his hotel room, woke up, had breakfast, and then remembered he’d driven a car off the edge of a causeway with a woman inside. That’s his story. That’s the best he can do. Under any form of close examination, his story falls apart. Almost nothing makes sense.
Just looking at these pages, with the pictures of the funeral, documents from the legal battle about whether or not Mary Jo’s body should have undergone an autopsy, diagrams of blood-spatter, photographs of the recovered car, gives me a sense of moment, of something big happening, which it’s supposed to do – and Kappel has interpreted the facts in a way that makes Kennedy’s behaviour very sinister indeed. Judging from the evidence, as Kappel says, only one thing can have happened – drunk, Kennedy crashed his car; Mary Jo was knocked unconscious. She had a wound to the head. She was bleeding. She would need a doctor. The incident would reach the media – so no presidency. But what if …
Sitting on this bench, something jolts me out of my reverie – but it’s something I can’t bear to think about. I bring my book closer to my face. Where was I? What if. What if Kennedy and his associates pushed the car, and the girl, into the sea? What if he said he tried to save her? What if he waited until there was no alcohol in his blood? What if he said he’d become dazed and confused? What if he waited until the next morning to report the accident? What if he arranged for the car to be towed away and crushed? What if he used his contacts to make sure there was no autopsy? A huge task lay ahead of him. And he did everything – he ticked all the boxes. And he stayed out of jail. But nobody really believed him. He could never successfully run for president. It was no use. No use! That’s what he must have thought, over and over again. It was no use! It didn’t work! In the end, he had to face reality. How many times, I’m wondering now, has he woken up, having dreamed that he didn’t go to the party, or that he did go to the party but didn’t have anything to drink, or that he did go to the party, did drink, but decided not to drive, or that he did drink, did drive, and reported the accident straight away, Mary Jo being rushed to hospital, and surviving, his presidential hopes in tatters. But it didn’t make any difference anyway – that was the point.
I look at the pictures in the centre of the book, at the drawing of Mary Jo in her final position, gasping for her last few breaths, upside down in the footwell of the car, as the car sinks, as the water level rises, and I close the book, and I bend my head, and I’m on a train, on the Northern Line, in a tunnel, between Chalk Farm and Camden Town, knowing that something is wrong, the smell more acrid now, the train moving at an odd, slow, rattling pace, and I open the book, and look at the drawing again, of Mary Jo, and think of the description of how she was when they found her, she’d stiffened up, and I peek to the sides of my book, in this dim tunnel, and people are moving oddly now, still unwilling to reveal their panic to each other, but they know they are trapped, or possibly trapped, I can feel that something here has changed, although still going through a charade of decorum, still not talking to each other, even the two girlish women, who are looking away from each other, but you can tell, you can tell from the hands, the hands and the feet, that something is deeply wrong.
Me! This is happening to me! A person who always shied away from danger. A person who hated cliff paths, glass lifts, high towers. Who never went in caves – and I knew people who went into caves, they said it was safer than driving, and I’m sure they were right – but driving was also something that frightened me. But I drove. And I flew. And then, about two years ago, I developed a specific phobia, a phobia of the Underground, because I hated being in tunnels, hated getting stuck in tunnels, felt very strongly about it, but I didn’t listen, did I? I listened to other things. Like, when Saddam invaded Kuwait, and we invaded Iraq, us and the Americans, and I was working for a newspaper, and we were told to report to the editor for our war assignments, and I said, right then, that I wasn’t going, that nobody could make me, that I’d resign first, I’d rather chuck my job than go somewhere where I was in harm’s way, and the next day, I got out of the Underground at Old Street, near the newspaper; I wasn’t particularly afraid of the Underground then, this was 1991, and I went to see the editor in his office. There were two people ahead of me. The first one came out. He’d been sent to the Gulf. The second guy came out. Gulf again. Then it was my turn. I was ready to chuck it all in. I really was. He told me he wanted me to provide an American point of view. I asked him where he wanted to send me, because I’d been thinking about this, and, in fact …
‘America,’ he said.
I looked at him. I nodded. It was, I said, something I’d love to do. And, later, as I put my ticket into the automatic machine at Old Street, as I stood on the platform, and as I sat down on the train, I was ecstatic – to be going somewhere where there were hotels, sports bars, domestic and imported beers, room service, TV, movies and bookshops (in one of which I would buy Kenneth Kappel’s book Chappaquiddick Revealed, which made me think that, if Ted Kennedy had not had those drinks, or had had those drinks and had not driven, he might have run for president in ’88, and might have won, and, as he said later, if it had been his decision, he would not have invaded Iraq in ’91), and let’s not forget decent restaurants. Rather than a hot, dry, inhospitable place full of bombs, and guns, and tanks, and armoured vehicles, and explosions, and fires, and thick, black, oily smoke.
The train eases to a stop. It hasn’t been moving fast. There is smoke in the tunnel, and it’s permeating the train. This is my guess. But why? What’s on fire? Is this the same fire I could smell? I look up. I am now prepared to meet another person’s eye. I am not yet ready to do anything further, such as kick at the glass. But why? Don’t know. Is this the same smoke? Is this … the man across from me coughs. I look at him. He looks away. I can’t believe this. I am angry. I am furious. Who would have thought? Three million people take the Northern Line every day, I think, three million people, and how many die in fires every year? Answer: none. That’s three million times a hundred times three and a half, which is, let me see, how many journeys is that? – a billion, that’s how much, give or take, a billion journeys a year and no fires, a billion journeys a year and no deaths, that’s like, what, twenty lotteries, by God I’m going to play the lottery if I get out of here – a billion! I breathe, and, for the first time, feel the acrid sensation in my throat as well as my nose.
Why didn’t I get off at Chalk Farm? Why not? Two, three bounds and I would have been out – two or three bounds, then a jog up the spiral staircase – or I could have waited for the lift! The doors open. I get in. The doors close. I ride to the surface in comfort. And then the tiny concourse. The patch of sky. The chocolate bar. The walk along Regent’s Park Road. The bench in the park. The zoo. The coffee in the cardboard cup. Forget the film. I’ll see the film another day. Why did I not do that? I was already standing up, knew in my bones that something was wrong – and I sat down again! Why?
My fury grows. I am angry because I have no alternative. Or, rather, because I will not have any truck with the alternative. I don’t want to be full of fear, and dread, and desperate hope. Spare me the hope! I am so angry with myself. Why did I come down here at all? Something is desperately wrong when people, for whatever reason, decide to travel in underground tunnels when there are perfectly good alternatives. Why would they want to do this? The smoke is thicker now. People are coughing. I had no idea – but it’s so obvious! Why did I not think of this before? It makes no sense – absolutely no sense; I should tell people. It’s only just occurred to me. But it’s a major discovery. I feel like Galileo. Underground tunnels – this is, is …
And now I’m putting my face in my hands, breaking out of formation, the first in the carriage to adopt a position of open despair. We are in the penultimate carriage. The carriage is not even half full. We are towards the back of the train. These are the facts. The train is not moving. This is a fact. We are 150 feet below Chalk Farm Road, right on the border between Chalk Farm and Camden, by Camden Market, that place I don’t much like but would give anything to be in right now, wandering around, fingering cheap trinkets, whatever. This is a fact. I think we might not get out of here. Another fact. All these facts. I am armed with facts. I was, it turned out, right not to want to come down here. At least there’s that! I was right – and everybody else was wrong. But who is down here, in the smoky tunnel? Me, who was right. Another fact: the train is not moving.
My options this morning: stay in bed. Get up early, walk through the park, and see the film. Get up early, have breakfast, sit in garden. Get up early, have breakfast in café, hail taxi, go to see film. Forget film, walk to park, sit on bench, read book. Go on long walk. Stay at home and watch daytime TV. Do my taxes. Clear out cupboards. Pay bills. See my bank manager. Go into a tunnel where there’s a fire. That’s, let’s see, a 92 per cent chance of not being in a fire in a tunnel. The train is still not moving. I have never been stuck in a tunnel this long. I have never smelled so much smoke in an Underground train. So there must, there must, be a fire in the tunnel. There must.
Now there’s a noise. The door opens. The noise is the noise of coughing. A man comes through the door. He is the person who is coughing. Smoke comes through the door. The door closes. The man moves through the carriage. He moves through our carriage, the penultimate carriage. The man has made smoke come into our carriage. The smoke is on the other side of the door. The smoke is in the next carriage. It
smells of burning rubber, or burning plastic. It smells of oil and metal. Somewhere beyond the next carriage, things are being singed and charred. The door opens again. Another man comes through the door. This man is coughing too. He closes the door behind him. He lets more smoke in. He runs through our carriage. He runs into the next carriage.
The timetable. It’s all wrong. Everything happens very, very slowly. But it’s all over very quickly. People are pushing through the door. Two come through. Four come through. Five come through. Smoke comes through. There is coughing. I am coughing. The smoke is thicker on the other side. Some people are still sitting down. I try to stand up, but somebody knocks me down. A beefy man, who might almost be the man who knocked me down the last time I played football seriously; his face has thickened up, he’s coughing, he’s wearing a Gore-Tex jacket, and I stand up again, clutching my bag, and more people are coming through, and another man knocks me back, there is a river of men coming through, some women but mostly men, I can see their hands and their necks, flesh spilling over seams, bad shoes, cheap shirts, hair gone wrong, teeth, mouths open, choking. Everybody wanting to move.
More smoke is coming.
People are not quite panicking. They are on the edge of panic. But they are not quite panicking. I’m quite impressed. This is quite orderly. This is good. Orderly.
I’m in a train, in a tunnel, and there’s a fire, and I’m trapped, and smoke is coming into the carriage, and it’s not stopping, and people are coming into the carriage, and they are not stopping, and I am not thinking about my chances of getting out alive, cannot at all go there in my mind, not at all, I keep trying to stand up, so I can go into the end carriage, so I can go where the others want to go, the promised land where there is less smoke, but I can’t, there’s a steady stream of people, of knees, elbows, chins, and the man across from me, the resolute man, says, ‘Sit down, everybody!’ and I stay seated, while the promised land fills up, and now people from the front, smokier, end of the train are beginning to fill up our carriage too; we have become the promised land, fancy that, now everyone wants to be in our carriage, me and the resolute man, the woman in the white shirt, the woman with the clumpy shoes, and the two girly women, who, when I can see them, which I can intermittently, look shocked, faces in a rictus; we may not be in the prime location, but our price seems to be rising, here we are, filling up, one man in front of me has a handkerchief in his hand, another with a grey suit and tie, the new neighbours; and I will not let my mind drift towards the future, I am looking at the people, looking for orderliness, for who is orderly and who is not: here is a handsome man in a suit, with a side parting in his hair; he is orderly, here is a man in a fleece; he is orderly too, they are taking their places, the opened door of course allowing more smoke into the carriage, which makes things much worse, but seems less of an affront – and, now that the carriage is filled with people, it’s quite extraordinary how little space there is around me, and I think: but I have a seat, I have a seat, and there is air, and I can breathe it.
There is a voice coming from the next carriage – from the promised land. It’s a woman speaking into a megaphone. I can’t hear what she is saying. She keeps saying the same thing. Then I can hear what she is saying. We will evacuate the train and move down the tunnel in the direction of Chalk Farm.
Then she says: ‘Stay where you are.’
Then she says: ‘The driver will attempt to take the train into Camden Town Station.’
I do not feel saved. I feel trapped. I feel more trapped now than I did before; now I have allowed a chink of sunlight to enter my mind. A moment ago, I was thinking of smoke, and orderliness; now I’m thinking that the train might start to move; any minute the train might start to move. But the train does not move. The train stays still. Which does not make me feel saved. Which makes me feel trapped.
The train rattles. Then the train judders. Then nothing.
Perhaps there is less smoke than there was. Or perhaps not.
I am looking up, at trousers, at fabric.
The people in my carriage are nowhere to be seen. Other people are in the way.
The train judders. Then it moves. Then it stops.
Then it moves.
This is a different style of movement. We’ve had slow movement. But this is very slow movement. This is the movement of a big old galleon. We are making stately progress. But we are not stopping.
And now, we stop. We’re in the station. I couldn’t see it, that’s all. But we must be in the station. I want to believe it. The area above my head is lighter. People are shifting. Nothing happens for a while. Then the doors open. We are in a station, and the doors are open. I begin to worry about being crushed by people. I had not thought of that! I’d been concentrating on the smoke.
The first people start to get out. The people in my carriage start to thin out. They are orderly. Now I can see the girly women. We do not look at each other. The woman with the white blouse stands up. The woman with the clumpy shoes stands up.
I stand up. I am stiff. I feel wrecked. I feel angry. Why am I angry? I am saved.
Now it’s my turn to walk through the doors. The doors will be open until everybody is off. I can tell that. Not like normal, when they close after a short period of time, whether you are ready or not. This is a concession. They are making a concession for us.
On the platform, I can hear a man saying to another man, ‘It was the brakes. It was the brakes. The brakes.’ I walk along the platform. I look up at the digital display. It says: ‘Morden via Charing Cross 1 min’. A sign says ‘Way Out’.
And I step on to the escalator, and I wonder what I will do next, and I can’t think of what I want to do. I have no idea what I want to do. It’s a long escalator. I make a vow never to travel on the Underground again, a vow I will break and reinstate several times. Travelling through tunnels in London, it turns out, is a pretty good way to get around. If you live in London, those tunnels will become part of your life.
On the escalator, I’m thinking: I was right! That was smoke.
And: That was terrible.
And: That was not too bad.
And: I came through that pretty well.
And: That resolute man! He was so cool!
And: I was right! It was smoke!
And: I am saved!
And: Yes!
And: This escalator!
And: How long is this taking?
It takes a minute, a Northern Line minute, to get to the top of the escalator. At the ticket machine, they still expect me to have my ticket. Nobody up here seems to know what has happened to me. My ticket is deep in the pocket of my jeans. I realize I probably could not get a refund. I walk out of the station, and into the street. Then I walk a few blocks north, retracing my underground route.
I walk past the market I wished I was in. I don’t wish I was in it now. I walk across the road, and stand above the point where I think we were stuck. I look down at the pavement.
A few hundred yards up the road is Chalk Farm Station, where I should have got off – where, in my new life, I would get off. I buy a bar of chocolate at the station newsagent. I cross the road, and then the bridge. I walk along Regent’s Park Road, across Primrose Hill, and into Regent’s Park.
The elephants are not there. But I can see some lemurs. I sit down on a bench. I think of the moment I got on the train, the moment the doors closed, the moment I did not get off at Chalk Farm. When the people came rushing in.
I take my book out. I place it in my lap. The cracked spine; the yellow edges of the pages. I think of the escalator. I think of the concourse.
I look at the sky, and feel the need to cry.