Above His Station (3 page)

I got up from the bench and decided to venture deeper into the station, but to my horror I found my intention denied by a locked 6 feet high iron gate. I gave it a shake, for all the good it did; its clang echoed around the tunnel, reminding me that I was stuck there. I squeezed as much of my face through the bars as I could, seeing the white walls extending into the distance with a gentle curve to the left, and I made out the bottom of the stairs next to the escalator (that was not functioning). I refused to let panic sink in, but I couldn’t help but wonder what I would do if my contact did not show up. It wasn’t as if this station was even on the main Underground line. It was accessible from it yes, but not served by any timetable and I couldn’t just hop on the next train along as I knew very well that there wouldn’t be one. And if I couldn’t open the barred gate then I couldn’t get into the station and so I couldn’t get up to ground level and get a bus anywhere either. With my face pressed through the bars of the gate, I called out for assistance. Only my own voice came back to me. I despised the sound of it at the best of times, but none more so than on this particular occasion when it only confirmed what I had already suspected. I was completely alone, and it looked as if I was going to be so for the duration.

I began to regret not taking Claire’s advice to buy a mobile telephone, but I questioned whether I would have got a signal down there anyway. And then I really did start to panic. I called out again, but again there was nothing and no one within earshot. As the nerves began to eat away at what had previously been a formidable resolve, I even started to wonder if this was a practical joke like you see on TV, and right at that moment I was being recorded (to be humiliated at a later date). I told myself that I wouldn’t mind, as long as the joker announced himself soon and got me out of that place. At least Jeremy Beadle could be relied upon to pop his head around the corner before things got
really
out of hand, usually dressed in the poorest excuse for a disguise going, but back then he had one of the most recognisable faces on TV, so it can’t have been easy for him. So I looked all around for the cameras but I could see none. But then, cameras are so small these days that they could have been anywhere, hidden inside the tiniest of spaces. I turned around and approached the edge of the platform, leaning over as far as I dared. Thinking about cameras suddenly reminded me. They were positioned in all of the tunnels and stations, and soon I found the place where Regal Street’s was located, but only cameras with green lights on the top were active, so this one was either turned off or broken. There was no sound from the tunnel to my left, and I knew that it terminated just a short way to my right. Regal Street was the end of the line. So I headed back to the gate and gave it another shake, hoping that it might realise how anxious I was and decide to unlock itself. I was wasting my time. Nothing short of a rampaging rhinoceros would be able to smash that gate down and the likelihood of my finding one cooperative enough to perform the task at this hour of the day was very slim.

I shuffled back to my bench. My little island; where everything seemed to make a lot more sense. I lowered myself back down onto it carefully, trying to plant my buttocks in the exact same spot that I had previously warmed up. My old bones were never shy about voicing their opinions and even though I managed to get at least 75% of my backside onto the warm spot, it did nothing to ease my discomfort. I felt as if all the blood in my veins had become diluted to half-strength. Even though I was wearing a vest (under my shirt beneath my burgundy cardigan and below my regulation navy-blue uniform jacket that was under my anorak with a scarf around my neck) I still felt the cold. Only this cold was far colder than usual. I was used to the Underground, to the way the chill travelled through the tunnels to its own timetable, but this cold went deeper into the flesh, penetrating all my layers as if was naked. I flapped my arms around my body penguin-like and wondered if I should pop another sweater on. As I would be located down here for sustained periods of time I had packed carefully, anticipating the cold. My new employers had supplied me with a uniform, plus the spare that was in my suitcase, but beyond that (not including my socks and underwear, of course) I didn’t have very many clothes. A lightweight fluorescent vest for high visibility, a couple of thick sweaters, my old faithful cardigan that (although still old and faithful) had become a trifle dog-eared over the years, my slippers, a pair of faded denim jeans that Claire used to take the rise out of, and some casual slacks that she’d bought me because apparently I “
needed some clothes that were made in this century
”. She said they were called ‘cargo pants’, but why they had earned this title is beyond me. Presumably the ‘cargo’ bit was because they looked like they were made from the old canvas material we used to ship large quantities of mail on the trains. I had no idea what the ‘pants’ bit was all about, but I suspected this was something to do with the Americans.

I untied my mental leash and allowed my mind to amble about freely. It was far easier that way. Instead of thinking this was all a practical joke, now I was starting to think that it was some sort of punishment. I was effectively a prisoner and the metal gate bore more than a passing resemblance to the bars of a jail cell. I don’t get claustrophobic - I wouldn’t have lasted all theses years on the Underground if I did - but the more I told myself that everything would be perfectly fine, the more I began to disbelieve it. I could feel the tension in my chest getting worse and I hoped that I wasn’t having a heart attack. That would really top my day off. I snatched at my wrist, feeling for my pulse but I couldn’t find it, which meant that either I was doing it wrong or I was dead. Wonderful, I thought. Not only am I a prisoner, now I’m a dead one as well! But that train of thought (no pun intended) did me only more harm, for I began to wonder why I wasn’t in Heaven if I was dead. With its gleaming white walls and spotless floors, the station certainly looked the part, so where was St Peter? Where was everyone that was supposed to be here waiting for me? Where was Molly, elbowing her way through the crowd to give me a cuddle? Perhaps this was just standard operating procedure for Heaven, I thought. Thousands, possibly millions, of people must die every day and that was an awful lot of paperwork to get through. I should imagine that poor St Peter had his hands full checking everyone’s names against his list, so that explained why he was taking so long to get to me. I wondered if he ever had a day off, and if so, why didn’t he have a deputy or someone to help cover his workload? Maybe I’d died and gone to Heaven on the one day in the month when St Peter was off playing golf with God. But after a further 18 minutes when still no one came for me, I started to think that maybe I had got it backwards. Maybe this was Hell, although if that was the case then it was a bit chillier than I had been led to believe.

Deciding that I was going to get nowhere trying to think my way out of my fix, I knew that I had to act. I had been on the station for more than 2 hours by now and enough was enough. So I got up from my bench and looked around for something that I could use as a hammer. The iron gate was sturdy, but if I could smash the tiles on the wall, maybe I could weaken the fixings enough for me to tear it down. How I wished to be 30 (no, make that 40) years younger. As I heard something in the distance coming from the station’s tunnel, I admit that I beamed with glee. At last, I thought, someone’s realised their awful mistake and now they’ve turned up, full of apologetic smiles and perfectly reasonable excuses as to why they’ve left me down here for so long. I strained my ears, trying to pinpoint the sound. It could be the grinding echo of an approaching train, I thought. But then…why was it so intermittent, seeming to come and go in waves? It could be the footsteps of the contact that I was supposed to meet, I thought. But then why was he approaching via the tunnel?

‘If you want to get out of this alive, do exactly as I say,’ said a voice to my rear, and I spun around to the iron-barred gate to see no one there.

I greeted this disembodied voice with a frown, thinking that it must have been a figment of my overactive (and not to mention currently overwrought) imagination, and then returned my attention to categorizing the strange sound that was coming from the tunnel. It was made easier by the fact that it was getting a bit louder (and by definition a bit closer) with every passing second. I narrowed down the origin of the noise to one of only five possibilities, and by way of a clever process of elimination, I came to realise that I was mistaken about four of them and the fifth was far too impossible to be true. 

‘Didn’t you hear what I just said?’ asked the voice.

I turned around again to greet this newcomer, but once more I couldn’t see a soul.

‘Where
are
you?’ I asked the voice with no body.

‘Down here,’ it answered.

So I looked down.

‘Lower,’ it said.

So I looked down lower.

‘Bit more.’

So I looked down a bit more.

‘
Annnnnnd
you’ve got me,’ said the voice, which was no longer disembodied but belonging to (or at least in the current possession of) a small, grey-furred rat.

I looked at the rat and the rat looked back.

‘Sorry, but are you talking to me?’ I asked it, which seemed a fair question under normal circumstances, even if I was beginning to think that these particular circumstances were anything but.

‘Of course I’m talking to you!’ snapped the rat. ‘Do you see anyone else here?’

The cheek of the bloody thing! It was me that’d been sat down here on my own for over 2 hours freezing my knackers off.

‘As I said,’ continued the rat, seemingly oblivious to the fact that I wasn’t yet convinced that any of this was really happening, ‘if you want to get out of this without being eaten, you’ve got to do exactly as I say.’

‘Did you just say
eaten?
’ I gasped.

‘We don’t have time for this, Gramps! Now, are you ready?’

I wasn’t confident of being able to exhibit a coherent response so I opted for a nod.

‘It’s hunting you,’ said the rat, ‘and by the sounds of it, it’s already got your scent, so you’ve got maybe thirty seconds to get off this platform.’

‘I can’t get off! The bloody gate is locked!’ I told the rat.

‘Okay, not to worry. Have you got anything you can use as a weapon?’

I felt a thrilling rush of triumph as I rummaged around inside my satchel and pulled out my Swiss Army knife.

As well as never before having engaged in conversation with a rat, let alone one that seemed insistent on giving me advice on how I might survive being eaten by whatever it was that was hunting me, there was something else that I had never before experienced.

‘A fucking penknife, are you serious?’ said the rat. ‘How do you expect to kill a tiger with that? Who do you think you are – fucking
Tarzan?
’

A talking rat had been a surprise, a sarcastic talking rat also, but complete and utter astonishment is the only way to describe how I felt upon hearing one use such foul language.

‘Did you just say
tiger?
’ I gasped. ‘But this is London! We don’t
have
tigers here!’

‘And I expect you don’t have talking rats here either, do you?’ asked the talking rat, to which I shook my head quite vigorously. ‘Now think! Have you got anything else you can defend yourself with?’

I did as I was instructed and thought, although it wasn’t a particularly easy task, I must admit. I consulted a mental inventory of my belongings and besides a few of Molly’s china ornaments, a silver picture frame, an almost full bottle of
Captain Morgan’s
and my novels, I didn’t have anything that could be used as a weapon.

In my defence, I hadn’t expected to have to fight a tiger on my first day in the job.

‘Sorry, no,’ I replied. ‘I don’t have anything at all.’

‘Okay then…in that case you’re pretty much screwed.’

I gave the iron-barred gate another shake, but it was still locked. Now it was more than a minor inconvenience, it was a matter of life and death. I could hear the growling from the tunnel more distinctly now and the tiger was close. So far it could only smell me, not see me, which worked in my favour.

I looked around for somewhere to hide, but the platform complied by offering me nothing. I rushed over to the right-hand end and peered into the darkness. Regal Street was designed to be completely inaccessible for commuters from the main Underground line but the tunnels were still connected. I wondered if perhaps there was a maintenance hatch or something that I could use, but as the tunnel terminated less than a hundred yards ahead, I’d be blundering around in darkness searching for something with no idea what it looked like. The tiger could see in the dark, whereas I could not. As I peered into the void of the tunnel I quickly spotted something with the potential to be my salvation: fixed to the wall just beyond the barrier was an emergency telephone. I looked over my shoulder nervously just in case the tiger had sneaked up behind me, but the coast was clear. And then I looked over at the rat, who tapped its wrist in the exact spot where you or I might wear our watches. I did not work well under pressure, even more so when it came from a talking rodent. Strangely, as I pushed through the barrier at the end of the platform and made my way down onto the tracks, the first thought that entered my head was how dirty my new uniform was going to get.

I made it successfully to the emergency telephone and, sticking the receiver to my ear, I pressed the connect button and waited. The line rang constantly and I tapped my foot. What was the point of having an emergency telephone if no one bothered to answer it in an emergency? I tried it again several times but it appeared that the telephone operator was having an emergency of his own. As far as I was concerned whatever it was, it wasn’t nearly as much of an emergency as the one that I had on my plate at that moment.