“Oxford Circus,” the flat voice said. Two more stops to Charing Cross.
I leaned out to look at the station as we stopped. Each station has its own distinctive design, its own identifying color: St. Pancras green edged with navy, Euston Square black and orange, Bond Street red. Oxford Circus had a blue chutes and ladders design that was new since the first time we’d been here.
The train pulled out, picked up speed. I would be there in five minutes and to the Adelphi in ten, a lot faster than Cath in her taxi, and at least as comfortable.
I was there in eight, up the escalators and out in the rain, up the Strand to the Adelphi in twenty. It would have been fifteen, but I had to wait ten (huddled under an awning and wishing I’d taken Cath’s advice about an umbrella) to cross the Strand. Black London taxis, bumper to bumper, and double-decker buses, and minis, all going nowhere fast.
Ragtime was sold out. I got a theater map from the rack in the lobby and looked to see where the Duke of York was. It was over on Shaftes-bury, with the nearest tube stop Leicester Square. I went back to Charing Cross, and went down the escalator and into the passage that led to the Northern Line. I still had half an hour, which would be cutting it close, but not impossible.
I started down the left-hand tunnel toward the trains, keeping pace with the crowd, straining to hear the rumble of a train pulling in over the muffled din of voices, the crisp clatter of high heels.
People began to walk faster. The high heels beat a quicker tattoo. I got the tube map out of my back pocket. I could take the Piccadilly Line to South Kensington and change to the District and—
The wind hit me like the blast from an explosion. I reeled back, nearly losing my balance. My head snapped back sharply like I’d been punched in the jaw. I groped wildly for the tiled wall.
The IRA’s blown up a train! I thought.
But there was no sound accompanying the sudden blast of searing air, only a dank, horrible smell.
Sarin gas, I thought, and reflexively put my hand over my nose and mouth, but I could still smell it. Sulfur and a wet earthy smell, and something else. Gunpowder? Dynamite? I sniffed at the air, trying to identify it.
But whatever it was, it was already over. The wind had stopped as abruptly as it had hit me, and so had the smell. Not even a trace of it lingered in the dry, stuffy air.
And it must not have been an explosion, or poison gas, because no one else had even slackened their steps. The sound of high heels retained its brisk, even clatter down the tiled passage. Two German teenagers with backpacks hurried past, giggling, and a businessman in a gray topcoat, the Times tucked under his arm, and a young woman in floppy sandals, all of them oblivious.
Hadn’t any of them felt it? Or was it a usual occurrence in Charing Cross Station and they were used to it?
How could anybody possibly get used to a blast like that? They must not have felt it.
Had I felt it?
It was like an earthquake back home in California, a jolt, and then before you could even register it, it was over, and you weren’t sure it had really happened. The only way you could tell for sure was by asking Cath or the kids, “Did you feel that?” or by the picture tilted on the wall.
The only pictures on the walls down here were pasted on, and the German students, the businessman, had already told me the answer to “Did you feel that?”
But I did feel it, I thought, and tried to reconstruct it.
Heat, and the sharp tang of sulfur and wet dirt. But that wasn’t what had made me lose my balance, what had sent me staggering against the wall. It was the smell of panic and of people screaming, of a bomb going off.
But it couldn’t be a bomb. The IRA was in peace negotiations with the British, there hadn’t been an incident for over a year, and bombs didn’t stop in mid-blast. There had been bombs in the Tube before—the mechanical voice would be saying, “Please exit up the escalator immediately,” not “Mind the gap.”
But if it wasn’t a bomb, what was it? And where had it come from? I looked up at the roof of the passage, but there wasn’t a grate or a vent, no water pipes running along the ceiling. I walked along the tunnel, sniffing the air, but there were only the usual smells—dust and damp wool and cigarette smoke, and, where the passage went up a short flight of stairs, a strong smell of oil.
A train rumbled in somewhere down the passage. The train. There had been one pulling in when it hit. It must be causing the wind somehow. I went out onto the platform and stood there looking down the tunnel, half-hoping, half-dreading it would happen again.
The train pulled in and stopped, and a handful of people got off. “Mind the gap!” the computerized voice said. The doors whooshed shut, and the train pulled out. A wind picked up the scraps of paper on the track and whirled them into the side walls, and I braced myself, my feet apart, but it was just an ordinary breeze, smelling of nothing in particular.
I went back out in the passage and examined the walls for doors, felt along the tiles for drafts, stood in the same place as before, waiting for another train to come in.
But there was nothing, and I was in the way. People going around me murmured “Sorry” over and over, which I have never been able to get used to, even though I know it’s merely the British equivalent of “Excuse me.” It still sounded like they were apologizing, when I was the one blocking traffic. And I needed to get to the conference.
And whatever had caused the wind, it was probably just a fluke. The passages connecting the trains and the different lines and levels were like a rabbit warren. The wind could have come from anywhere. Maybe somebody on the Jubilee Line had been transporting a carton of rotten eggs. Or blood samples. Or both.
I went up to the Northern Line, caught a train that had just pulled in, and made it to the conference in time for the eleven o’clock session, but the episode must have unnerved me more than I’d admitted to myself. As I stood in the lobby pinning on my registration badge, the outside door opened, letting in a blast of air.
I flinched away from it and then stood there, staring blindly at the door, until the woman at the registration table asked, “Are you all right?”
I nodded. “Have the Old Man or Elliott Templeton registered yet?”
“An old man?” the woman said, bewilderedly.
“Not an old man, the Old Man,” I said impatiently. “Arthur Birdsall.”
“The morning session’s already started,” she said, looking through the ranked badges. “Have you looked in the ballroom?”
The Old Man had never attended a session in his life.
“Mr. Templeton’s here,” she said, still looking. “No, Mr. Birdsall hasn’t registered yet.”
“Daniel Drecker’s here,” Marjorie O’Donnell said, descending on me. “You heard about his daughter, didn’t you?”
“No,” I said, scanning the room for Elliott.
“She’s in an institution,” she said. “Schizophrenia.”
I wondered if she was telling me this because she thought I was acting unbalanced, too, but she added, “So, for heaven’s sake, don’t ask him about her. And don’t ask Peter Jamieson if Leslie’s here. They’re separated.”
“I won’t,” I said and escaped to the first session. Elliott wasn’t in the audience, or at lunch. I sat down next to John McCord, who lived in London, and said, without preamble, “I was in the Tube this morning.”
“Wretched, isn’t it?” McCord said. “And so expensive. What’s a day pass now? Two pounds fifty?”
“While I was in Charing Cross Station, there was this strange wind.”
McCord nodded knowingly. “The trains cause them. When they pull out of a station, they push the air in front of them,” he said, illustrating the pushing with this hands, “and because they fill the tunnel, it creates a slight vacuum in the train’s wake, and air rushes in behind to fill the vacuum, and it creates a wind. The same thing happens in reverse as trains pull into the station.”
“I know,” I said impatiently. “But this one w
as like an explosion, and it smelled—”
“It’s all the dirt down there. And the beggars. They sleep in the passages, you know. Some of them even urinate on the walls. I’m afraid the Underground’s deteriorated considerably in the past few years.”
“Everything in London has,” the woman across the table said. “Did you know there’s a Disney store in Regent Street?”
“And a Gap,” McCord said.
“Mind the Gap,” I said, but they were off on the subject of the Decline and Fall of London. I said I needed to go look for Elliott.
He was nowhere to be found. The afternoon session was starting. I sat down next to John and Irene Watson.
“You haven’t seen Arthur Birdsall or Elliott Templeton, have you?” I said, scanning the ballroom.
“Elliott was here before the morning session,” John said. “Stewart’s here.”
Irene leaned across John. “You heard about his surgery, didn’t you? Colon cancer.”
“The doctors say they got it all,” John said.
“I hate coming to these things anymore,” Irene said, leaning confidingly across John again. “Everybody’s either gotten old or sick or divorced. You heard Hari Srinivasau died, didn’t you? Heart attack.”
“I see somebody over there I need to talk to,” I said. “I’ll be right back.” I started up the aisle.
And ran straight into Stewart.
“Tom!” he said. “How have you been?”
“How have you been?” I said. “I heard you’ve been ill.”
“I’m fine. The doctors tell me they caught it in time, that they got it all,” he said. “It isn’t so much the cancer coming back that worries me as knowing this is the kind of thing in store for us as we get older. You heard about Paul Wurman?”
“No,” I said. “Look, I have to go make a phone call before the session starts.” And before he could fill me in on the Decline and Fall of Everybody.
I took off for the lobby. “Where have you been?” Elliott said, clapping a hand on my shoulder. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”
“Where have I been?” I said, like a shipwreck victim who’d been on a raft for days. “You have no idea how glad I am to see you,” I said, looking happily at him. He looked just the same as ever, tall, in shape, his hairline not even receding. “Everyone else is falling apart.”
“Including you,” he said, grinning. “You look like you need a drink.”
“Is the Old Man with you?” I asked, looking around for him.
“No,” he said. “Do you have any notion where the bar is in this place?”
“In there.” I pointed.
“Lead the way,” he said. “I’ve got all sorts of things to tell you. I’ve just talked Evers and Associates into a new project. I’ll tell you all about it over a couple of pints.”
He did, and then told me about what he and Sara had been doing since the last conference.
“I thought the Old Man would be here today,” I said. “He’ll be here tonight, though?”
“I think so,” Elliott said. “Or tomorrow.”
“He’s all right, isn’t he?” I said, looking across the bar to where Stewart stood talking. “He’s not sick or anything?”
“I don’t think so,” Elliott said, looking reassuringly surprised. “He lives in Cambridge now, you know. And Sara and I won’t be there, either. Evers and Associates are taking us out to dinner to celebrate. We’ll stop by for a few minutes on our way, though. Sara insisted. She wants to see you. She’s been so excited about your visit. She’s talked of nothing else for weeks. She couldn’t wait to go shopping with Cath.” He went over to the bar and got us two more pints. “Speaking of which, Sara said I’m to tell you we’re definitely on for the play and supper Saturday. What are we going to see? Please tell me it’s not Sunset Boulevard.”
“Oh, my God!” I said. “It’s not anything. I forgot to get the tickets.” I glanced hastily at my watch. Three forty-five. “Do you think the box offices will be open now?”
He nodded.
“Good.” I snatched up my coat and started for the lobby.
“And not Cats!” Elliott called after me.
I would be lucky if I got anything, I thought, sprinting down to the tube station and pushing my way through the turnstile, including a train at this hour. The escalators were so jammed I had trouble getting the list of theaters out of my pocket. The Tempest was at the Duke of York. Leicester Square. I pulled my tube map out—Piccadilly Line.
The passage to the Piccadilly Line was even more crowded than the escalator, and slower. The elderly woman ahead of me, in a gray head scarf and an ancient brown coat, was shuffling at a snail’s pace, clutching her coat collar to her throat with a blue-veined hand, her head down and her body hunched forward as if she were struggling against a hurricane.
I tried to get around her, but the way was blocked by more teenagers with backpacks, Spanish this time, walking four abreast and discussing una visita a la Torre de Londres.
I missed the train and had to wait for the next one, checking the NEXT TRAIN 4 MIN. sign every fifteen seconds and listening to the American couple behind me bitterly arguing.
“I told you it started at four,” the woman said. “Now we’ll be late.”
“Who was the one who had to take one more picture?” the man said. “You’ve already taken five hundred pictures, but oh, no, you had to take one more.”
“I wanted to have something to remember our vacation by,” she said bitterly. “Our happy, happy vacation.”
The train came in, and I mashed my way on and grabbed a pole and then stood there, squashed, reading my list. The Wyndham was near Leicester Square, too. What was at the Wyndham?
Cats.
No good. But Death of a Salesman was at the Prince Edward, which was only a few blocks over. And there was a whole row of theaters on Shaftesbury.
“Leicester Square,” the automated voice said, and I forced my way off the train, down the passage, and up the escalators and into Leicester Square.
The traffic up top was even worse, and it took me nearly twenty minutes to get to the Duke of York, only to find that its box office was closed until six. The Prince Edward was open, but it only had two sets of single seats fifteen rows apart for Death of a Salesman. “The soonest I can get you five seats all together,” the black-lipsticked girl said, tapping keys on a computer, “is March fifteenth.”
The Ides of March, I thought. How fitting, since Cath would kill me if I came home without the tickets.
“Where’s the nearest ticket agent?” I asked the girl.
“There’s one on Cannon Street,” she said vaguely.
Cannon Street. That was the name of a tube station. I consulted my tube map. District and Circle Line. I could take the Northern Line down to Embankment and catch the District and Circle from there.
I looked at my watch. It was already four-thirty. We were supposed to be at the sherry party at six. I would be cutting it close. I sprinted back to Leicester Square, down to the Northern Line, and onto a train. It was even more jammed, but everyone was still polite. They held their books above the fray and continued to read in spite of the crush. Madame Bovary and Geoff Ryman’s 253 and Charles Williams’s Descent into Hell.
“Cannon Street,” the computer voice said, and I pushed my way off and headed for the exit.
I was halfway down the passage when it hit again, the same violent blast as before, the same smell. No, not the same, I thought, regaining my footing, watching unconcerned commuters walk past. There had been the same sharp smell of sulfur and explosives, but no musty wetness. And this time there was the smell of smoke.
But no fire alarms had gone off, no sprinkler system been activated. No one had even noticed it.
Maybe it’s one of those things where it’s so common the locals don’t even notice it, I thought, they can’t even smell it anymore. Like a lumber mill or chemical plant. We had gone to see Cath’s uncle in Nebraska one time, and I’d a
sked him if he minded the smell from the feedlots.
“What smell?” he’d said.
But manure didn’t smell like violence, like panic. And the smell from the feedlots had been everywhere. If this was a persistent, pervasive smell, why hadn’t I smelled it in Piccadilly Circus or Leicester Square?
I was all the way to South Kensington before I realized I had gone back down the passage without even being aware of it, boarded a train, ridden seven stops. And not gotten the tickets.
I got off the train, half-intending to go back, and then stood there on the platform uncertainly. This was no carton of rotten eggs, or blood samples, no localized phenomenon of Charing Cross. So what was it?
A woman got off the train, glancing irritatedly at her watch. I looked at mine. Five-thirty. It was too late to go back to the ticket agent’s, too late to do anything but figure out which line to take to get home.
I felt a rush of relief that I wouldn’t have to go back to Cannon Street, wouldn’t have to face that wind again. What were they, I wondered, pulling out my tube map, that they produced such a feeling of fear?
I thought about it all the way back to the hotel, wondering if I should tell Cath. It would only confirm her in her opinion of the Tube, and she would hardly be in the mood for wild stories about winds in the Tube, not if she’d been waiting for me to show up. Cath hated being late to things, and it was already after six. By the time I made it back to the hotel it would be nearly six-thirty.
It was six forty-five. I pushed unavailingly on the lift button for five minutes and then took the stairs. Maybe she was running late, too. When she and Sara started shopping, they lost all track of time. I fished the room key out of my pants pocket.
Cath opened the door.
“I’m late, I know,” I said, unpinning my nametag and peeling my jacket off. “Give me five minutes. Are you ready?”
“Yes,” she said. She walked over and sat down on the bed, watching me.
“How was Harrods?” I said, unbuttoning my shirt. “Did you get your china?”