Plume. Will Wiles

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СКАЧАТЬ I said. Then winced.

      Alan frowned. ‘You need to have a word. You guys used to be the best, a right treat to work with – good as Monocle, good as Condé fucking Nast. Taxis, expenses, assistants …’

      ‘Times are tough.’ I couldn’t remember the last time Eddie had sprung for a taxi. The no taxis rule was so strict and long-established it might be in the Old Testament.

      ‘How’d it turn out?’

      ‘It turned out fine.’ It had been, perhaps, half a step from becoming an unstoppable meltdown that rendered my career an uninhabitable fallout zone. But the photography was not at fault.

      I really didn’t care to have that piece – and the multiplying failures in the magazine’s treatment of its freelancers – brought up again. And I had a fearful premonition as to how this morning was going to go. Alan, I suspected, was going to get on with Pierce a lot better than me. I would be left on one side, stammering, watching them form an easy, down-to-earth rapport. I had too much at stake, I was just too impressed by Pierce, almost star-struck. Alan would not be so hindered, and would chat freely, drop impressive names, and they’d find they had friends in common; I’d be left going oh-please-sign-my-books-Mr-Pierce and where-do-you-get-your-ideas-from. I wasn’t too worried about appearing drunk – I am an expert at concealing it. If anything the problem was that I was not drunk enough, that I would freeze up, that my hands would shake, that I’d be visibly, palpably ill-at-ease. Not even that: visibly ill, lacking, empty. Perhaps Pierce would be cool, offer me a glass of wine, a bottle of something from the fridge? Those bottles were always tiny compared to a good, solid, weighty can, but it would be something. But it was futile to hope, we’d be there at 11 a.m., no one offers their guests booze at 11 a.m.

      Fuck Alan and his relaxed, class-transcending bonhomie. He would ruin the whole morning.

      A recorded announcement played.

      ‘Did you hear that?’ I said. ‘Inspector Sands.’

      ‘I wasn’t listening,’ Alan said. ‘What did they say?’

      ‘“Inspector Sands to the operations room”,’ I said. ‘It’s code. It means there’s a fire alarm that needs to be checked out.’

      ‘And this Sands guy’ll do it?’

      ‘No. There is no Sands. It’s just a code. When there might be a fire somewhere but they don’t know and they don’t want to cause any panic.’

      ‘I didn’t hear anything.’

      ‘That’s the point, it’s a very bland, boring, routine message, people tune it out, don’t know what it means.’

      ‘You know what it means,’ Alan said. ‘Can’t be that secret.’

      ‘Seriously, though, can you smell burning?’

      I asked because I could smell burning – the acrid smell of an electrical fire, melting copper, blistering insulation. We must be surrounded by equipment handling the Underground’s canalised lighting, all of it out of warranty, overdue for replacement, caked in dust. I had seen it in documentaries. The men who went into the tunnels at night. The Tube acts as a giant vacuum cleaner, sucking human detritus from the light into the darkness. I could see those documentaries again, now, in my mind’s eye: a gloved hand bringing up a smoking grey fistful from the ballast around the tracks, like a robot submersible on the ocean bed. This accreted dust and hair burned very well.

      ‘I can’t smell anything,’ Alan said.

      He was wrong, surely. Though it did not seem to be stronger, I felt that the smell had become inescapable; perhaps because I was more focused on it, it had begun to block out all other sensations, almost as if it were welling up within me, a toxic spasm in the lungs rather than a scorched and poisoned breath from the tunnel.

      I looked about to see if anyone else had smelled fire, expecting others on the platform to raise their heads, frown, sniff the air – the herd detecting danger, abandoning their quiet little worlds of phone and newspaper to confront an environment that had become unsafe. But no one raised their eyes, no one even stirred. Couldn’t they sense it too? How could they all be so oblivious?

      The breeze from the tunnel grew stronger, and I could see it now, see the smoke, a steadily thickening haze carried on the back of the column of air pushed out by the approaching train. And I could feel it on my skin, in my eyes, hot and stinging. I raised my hand to my face and did not lower it. I was hot to the touch. I coughed, and fell into a fit of coughing, unable to stop. Hair and skin, on fire in the darkness, one of those coal seam fires that burn for decades, inextinguishable, slow death to the communities above. I felt ready to vomit.

      ‘You OK, mate?’

      Alan was scowling at me, but not without kindness. I barely registered his expression, though; behind him, the sealed panels looked about ready to start jetting smoke, opaque and heavy yellow-stained smoke, any second it would begin.

      ‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ I said, barely able to speak, each word displacing more poison into my lungs.

      ‘What? Train’ll be here in a second.’

      A second was too late. The air was going, it was gone, no way to get at it. Suck it in and the poison would come too, into the blood, into the brain. Then the light. It was almost too late. I needed cold air, cold water on my face, coldness in my throat.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. And I ran.

       THREE

      Self-control came easier back in the cold street air, but I still felt that my inside was coated with grime and soot. Coughing would not shift whatever had been exhaled from the tunnel. My efforts instead brought up a belch that made me rush to the nearest bin, ready to puke. But I did not, disappointing the couple of passers-by who had turned their heads and scowled. I sat on a stone step with a view of the top of the station escalators, waiting for the alarms, the stern announcements, the fire engines.

      Wishing for them, in fact. A real emergency, an event that I could live through. I knew the shape of it: an exodus up those escalators and a crowd forming around me. Long minutes of confusion and shared fear and excitement, people thrown together, enjoying the interruption to their routine even as they cursed it. Then the adrenalin would turn to cold and boredom and mere annoyance and we would all call our offices or appointments and tell them we were late.

      Or more serious than that, and my imagination was disgustingly eager to spill the details into my reverie: a fire in the tunnel, fumes spreading fast, national news, fatalities, this stretch of line closed for days, an inquiry, a slow trickle of consequences over months and years: fund-raising, one or two of the survivors being held up as inspirational figures for saving others or overcoming horrible injuries, marathons completed, popular books written, mayoral bids considered. A plaque at this station, perhaps only feet from this cold stone step, and if I came by this way with someone, I’d go a little quiet and break my pace, and I’d say, ‘I was here that day, when it happened,’ in a voice that really stressed how I didn’t talk about it often but it had stayed with me, picturing a great dignified weight, the memory of those x souls, my gratitude at having escaped in time, tempered with noble guilt at being a survivor, my respect for the emergency services. Perhaps poor СКАЧАТЬ