A - Raynes Park

Raynes Park

It was the scarf that really did it. The scraggedy trees along the high
street hadn't finished dropping their leaves and yet this morning he
had fished his grey scarf out of the back of the sock draw and stood in
front of the mirror in the hall with his long coat on, fiddling with
the scarf. It had never been entirely clear to him how best to wear a
scarf and this morning, peering at his over-shaved face in the heavy
dawn light, it was a complete mystery. The women at work all wore light
blue or pink scarves. There was, apparently, no confusion over how a
woman should wear a scarf. They all simply folded it in two, tossed it
around their neck and tucked the loose ends though the loop. Simple. He
tried it in the mirror again but couldn't get past the idea that it
made him look French. He pulled it off and draped it over his
shoulders: Less French, but no protection at all against the cold, he
decided. Throwing one end over his other shoulder seemed ridiculous and
not overly warm. Shrugging his coat off his shoulders, he tried the
same arrangement but inside his coat which resulted in a near
strangulation incident and a curious lump in his back. It also meant
that the expensive shirt he was wearing would go unseen by any women on
the train. Although he wasn't even sure if women noticed that kind of
thing. He pulled the scarf out from under his coat and threw it over
the back of the chair in the hall and began to re-do his tie. Perhaps,
he thought as he fiddled with his collar in the mirror, that dark
haired woman who just might have been flirting with him would get on at
Wimbledon again.

Having flattened down his shirt as best he could and ignored the
post-it note on the mirror that said 'Gas bill - this week!' in his
housemate's handwriting, he walked out of the door, patting his pocket
to check for keys before closing it behind him. The wet wind made him
hunch his shoulders up with his hands in his pockets as he walked,
scarfless, up the street towards the station. It was only really a
combination of luck and a friend of his housemate's dad that meant they
could live in a house 5 minutes walk away from a station that was 20
minutes away from central London. It had been this friend's aunt's
house, or something like that, and he had agreed to rent it to them for
much less than the going rate for the area. It was a great piece of
luck, but also left him feeling indebted to his housemate and
housemate's family. They'd been living there for two years now and he
still sometimes felt as though he was staying over at a friend's house.
When they had decided to decorate, Jim's entire family had come over to
help. He looked down at his feet, trying to avoid a puddle where an
uneven paving slab had made a wedge shaped hollow which seemed to be
full of water year round, and noticed that his shoes could do with a
polish. If his bosses even noticed things like that. The cars nose to
arse on either side of the road were pasted with wet leaves from the
half naked trees and the thought flashed through his head that if one
was left there all through autumn, then dried out with a hair-dryer, it
might be possible to make a papier-m?ch? model of a car. Shaking his
head against the idea, he crossed the road between two cars, avoiding
the leaf-strangled gutter. Towards the top of his street, nearer the
high street, the identical houses with small paving slab front gardens
gave way to a Chinese takeaway, a corner shop, a blockbuster video, a
curry house, an ex-pub with pine furniture and a wine list but the same
clientele of grumpy old men as ever and all the other nearly-good
things that go with living in nearly-London. Lifting up the back of his
long coat, he stepped over a low-slung chain barrier to cut through the
mini-cab car park towards the station.

Standing at the traffic lights he scrutinised the people in each car
that swept past, saying to himself that he was hoping to see someone he
knew, which was just possible but very unlikely, but knowing that he
was really just looking for attractive women he would never meet. This
game was best played on escalators in the tube, but with some practice
the high-speed traffic lights version was possible. Beggars can't be
choosers, he thought and fuffed at himself for sounding so pathetic.
Momentarily distracted, he missed a gap in the traffic and the three or
four people who were standing next to him shot across the road and into
the station. By the time he realised, it was too late to safely cross
and he was left standing on his own, feeling stupid and cold. He dug
his hands further down into his coat pockets and hunched his shoulders
up.

From the curiously raised platform of Raynes Park station you can see
across a jumble of rooftops, chimneys and TV aerials, stretching out in
all directions under the flat sky. The red-brown roof tiles had a wet
gleam that somehow reflected sunlight that wasn't there. They look
almost polished, he thought, standing on tip-toes and counting the
rooftops down to his house, as he sometimes did. The roof and chimney
looked the same as all the others, but he knew that under that
particular one lay his loft bedroom complete with unmade bed, arty
posters by people he hadn't really heard of, computer desk and
computer, clothes on floor, half-full pack of hopeful condoms, washed
shirts hanging from every available perch, a painting done by a friend
at university leaning against the wall still un-hung after two years,
guilty pile of magazines, stereo and higgledy-piggledy pile of CDs,
white cotton and pine chair bought from Ikea, unused dumb-bells in the
corner, bookshelf full of second-hand paperbacks bought mainly from the
trestle-table market underneath Waterloo bridge and a barely-played
guitar. His eyes slipped beyond the shiny rooftop, over the main road
to the playing fields, where a flock of birds were wheeling black
against the grey sky. A figure in a red wind-cheater was walking a dog,
wetly, in the park.

The lilting automatic voice brought him back to the platform and the
yellow line at his feet. 'The train now approaching platform one is the
. . . eight eleven service for London Waterloo, calling at Wimbledon,
Earlsfield, Clapham Junction, Vauxhall and London Waterloo.' He took a
small step back as the train came to a slow, screeching halt. He walked
left, then right, trying to judge where the train would eventually stop
and which door he should aim for. The crowd around him were all playing
the same game, but each person went in different directions at
different times. These uncertain morning staggers, he thought, were
proof that everyone saw the world differently. The image of a world in
which everyone judged the stopping of the train equally flashed through
his mind. Morning commuters performed a grotesquely synchronised
Riverdance before stepping onto the train through their chosen door.
The image carried him through the double doors and straight into an
empty rear facing seat.

Diagonally across from him was a professional looking woman in her
mid-forties, who he could possibly have found attractive if he put his
mind to it. She had her legs crossed, and one finely shod foot stuck
out towards the opposite seats, effectively squashing him against the
beige wall and scratch-graffiti of the window as he wouldn't dream of
brushing against that foot. The woman hoisted her paper and ruffled it,
whether to read something at the bottom of the page or to avoid looking
at him, he couldn't be sure. She was probably on her way to a meeting
or something. For all he knew, she might be his boss' boss' boss. As
the train moved off, one of the loiterers in the area between the doors
broke from the crowd and slunk into the seat beside him. A young man,
Asian, baseball cap and gold earring. He put one white trainer up on
the seat next to the business woman and the newspaper ruffled. Taking
furtive sidelong glances from the very extreme corner of his eye he
could see that the man was in fact more of a boy, each of his fifteen
years underlined by a wispy moustache. Rubbing the sore dry skin on his
chin, he reflected that he couldn't have grown any kind of moustache,
wispy or otherwise, at fifteen. He doubted he could grow a proper one
now, at 24. He'd probably have to quit his job before he could put that
to the test as going in to work unshaven, even if it were a putative
moustache, was unthinkable. He considered whether people ever took
holiday time to grow facial hair before reappearing, bearded and newly
confident, in the office. The thought put him briefly in mind of
Gerard, who he'd met in Barcelona. He was an enormously fat friend of a
friend who had grown a thin and carefully cropped beard in an attempt
to separate his shapeless face from his equally shapeless neck. It must
have been a fine art, he thought, to keep the beard thick enough to be
seen, but thin enough not to further widen his already well-upholstered
cheeks.

He looked out the window and saw the trees and houses moving slower and
slower until eventually they stopped, as usual, just outside Wimbledon
station. He looked at the sports page on the back of the
businesswoman's newspaper. A picture of Michael Owen smiled back at
him, cheekily. He fuffed. Underneath was a picture of a cricketer he
didn't recognise. Unbeckoned and unwelcome, the details of the
morning's work stepped out from behind other thoughts. He blinked his
eyes and tried to focus on the story about Michael Owen but the print
was too small and he would have had to lean forward to read it. His
current task at the publishing house was to find advertising space for
a new management self-help book they were releasing. He felt his
buttocks tense at the thought of it. Bollocks, he thought. He was going
to have to phone the advertising department of the Surrey Comet and
stuff a billion envelopes with crap about a crap book full of crap
advice on how to find your 'opportunity nexus'. Or some such crap. His
lips mouthed the word at the sports page. Crap.

Finally, the train jerked and started to move. He heard the faint
premature announcement from the station: 'The train now standing at
platform . . .'. Slowly, the train came to a halt at the platform. His
eyes tracked along the platform, jumping from suit to skirt to suit,
searching for the little dark-haired woman who had smiled at him the
week before. More suits, more skirts, more tights, more ties, an out of
place group of sixteen year old skaters, more suits and then there she
was. Standing between the time-table board and the chocolate machine.
The train had almost, but almost stopped moving, and he could hardly
believe it as it seemed the train would stop with the doors to his
carriage directly in front of her. He had looked for her every day
since she'd sat diagonally across from him on the other side of the
isle the previous Tuesday but had by now almost given up hope. He
watched as the train slowed and slowed and slowed, but kept moving and
moving and moving down the platform until finally the girl was placed
almost exactly between the doors to two different carriages. He watched
as her feet - shiny black leather shoes with tassels which momentarily
put him off - didn't shuffle from side to side trying to anticipate
which door to head for. Her feet were perfectly still, although her
right hand flicked unconsciously from one side of her face to the
other, tucking the ends of her hair behind her ears. Her hair was only
just long enough to be tucked, and every time there was a gust of wind
it came loose again and needed re-tucking. Long seconds passed before
she turned and headed towards the huddle squeezing through the doors to
the other carriage. He watched her slide sideways through the press of
standing bodies and briefly considered getting up and moving to the
next carriage in the hope of catching her eye but the closing doors put
him out of his doubt. He heard the sudden rustle and stamp of people
stumbling into each other as the train moved off.

Watching the station draw away from him, his thoughts wandered back
towards Barcelona and the gap year spent living in a crowded flat way
up in the north of Gracia. A good forty minute walk from the centre,
but only five from the metro. A windowless bedroom with an ill-fitting
wooden door and a bed far harder and dirtier than the carpetless floor.
There were posters on the wall left by the previous occupant and damp
on all the walls but also an undeniable sense of grandeur only recently
faded. He had felt, sitting mercifully alone one afternoon in the dark
flat, that if he half closed his eyes and ears he could see through the
intervening dust of years back to when men in high collars and women in
long dresses would have clicked primly across the tiled floor. The
motion of the train rocked his head slightly and he let his focus slip
from the dull morning reflection of his face in the window to the
yellow signs of Chinese restaurants and zig-zag white lines approaching
traffic lights and taxis and the sudden rush of identical suburban
streets in profile. A shifting shadow showed him a sudden reflection of
a frown in the window as the beginning of Earlsfield platform slid into
view.

The double doors let in a heaving and jostling crowd that pushed past
the loiterers and took up every available seat like water filling the
gaps between stones. The boy next to him leaned against his shoulder to
let two large west Indian women squeeze past. They sat down next to
each to other on two empty seats either side of the aisle, facing him.
The nearest spilled over slightly into the business woman's seat and
she shuffled towards the window behind her paper. The two of them came
into the carriage talking loudly to each other with the confidence of
people who know they can't be understood. He strained to understand
what they were saying but caught nothing more than a few place names
and began to think that perhaps they might even be speaking French.
Nevertheless he could imagine the so-she-said-to-me-and-I-said-to-her's
that were flying back and forth between them. They each wore thick grey
overcoats with brightly coloured shirts poking out at the neck and
carried string shopping bags on their laps, large fingers clasped over
them. One of them wore a think gold wedding band. He watched the
conversation intently, following hands as they unclasped and waved
signs in the air before reclasping over the shopping bags. He wondered
how long they had lived in London and if they had found it difficult to
come here. As he listened to the mysterious chatter he was overcome by
the desire to lean forward and ask them if it was difficult to leave
your home and go to live somewhere completely different. One of the
women laughed out loud. On a train.

He had actually cleared his throat before he realised that he didn't
dare talk to a stranger on the train. Perhaps it was different in
Jamaica or Martinique or wherever they came from. Perhaps people spoke
to each other on trains. Perhaps they didn't have trains. As the train
pulled away he reached into his pocket and pulled out a battered copy
of Lucky Jim he had bought the week before but didn't open it. Would it
really be so bad to lean across and ask these two women about their
experiences of coming to England? Apart from anything else, why would
they want to tell him about themselves? Because everyone likes to talk
about themselves, came back the answer from some corner of his brain.
He thumbed through the book, thinking that they didn't exactly look
unhappy here.

The platform at Clapham Junction was heaving with young city types
sporting bright yellow ties, neatly tangled hair and eyes like
piss-holes in the snow. They all seemed to know exactly what they were
doing and why they were doing it, he thought as he saw them stroll past
the window, one by one. They each had some kind of bag, full of
important documents, laptops and, no doubt, expensive drugs. He carried
nothing with him to work except a paperback. Carrying papers too and
from the office was one of those things he had always expected to
suddenly become a part of his life but hadn't yet arrived.
Understanding taxes and mortgages, being able to give thoughtful advice
on relationships, an interest in politics and a sense of knowing
self-confidence also fell into this category. He looked down from the
suits now piling through the doors into the already packed train to the
suit he was wearing himself. The expensive shirt, the cufflinks, the
polished shoes, the tidily gelled hair, the shaving rash on his chin.
Who was to say that, from the outside, he didn't look exactly like all
the others? Perhaps people thought he knew what he was doing. Perhaps
the trick was simply to believe you did know what you were about. He
ran a finger round the inside of his collar and thought: "I used to go
four or five days without shaving."

At Vauxhall the MI6 headquarters loomed over the platform. Craning his
neck, he looked up at its great towers and sound-proofed windows. Some
trick of reflection showed him the back of a woman standing between the
doors, hanging on to a pole. She had a shoulder length curly blonde
hair and a nice arse in tight black trousers. He let his eyes flick
between the fortified tower-block and the arse he would never see
again. Did MI6 need Spanish speakers? Hadn't they arrested Venezuelans
at Heathrow the other month? It was getting hot in the crowded
carriage.

As the train pulled into Waterloo station people started to fidget and
grasp at coats and bags. The career-woman folded away her paper and
slipped It into a leather document bag at her feet. Someone a few seats
down the carriage stood up prematurely and had to stay standing with
his head bent sideways under the luggage rack until the train came to a
halt. Nobody spoke in the brief silence after the train had stopped. He
wondered what would happen if the doors never opened. Would there be
some kind of panic? It was only when things went wrong that people
looked at each other and muttered a few words. He remembered once a
hugely fat man squeezing into the full train and shouting, "Room for a
little one?" as he did so. People had laughed, but not looked at him.
The hiss of the doors came at last like the end of a held breath and
bodies spilled out onto the platform. He stayed seated, feeling a
curiosity about the people around him he hadn't felt since he first
started the daily commute. The West Indian women, still talking, sidled
out of the train. The boy next to him suddenly leapt out of his seat
and set off with a bouncy walk. He jumped down from the train. The
businesswoman looked at him briefly from the corner of her eye before
picking up her bag. She looked at her watch as she left the train.
Other people he hadn't paid any attention to filed past him, one by one
as if on parade. He felt very small sitting in the corner. Finally,
when he was almost alone in the carriage, he got up.

As usual, there was no one on the gate to check his season ticket and
he walked through struggling to squeeze the paperback into the inside
pocket of his coat. The blue departure screens flickered as he walked
under them, all shifting one place to the left. People without end
swarmed around him and he let his feet find their own path through them
as he watched face after face pass him by. As he walked the crowds
became those outside the Corte Ingl?s in Pla?a Catalunya and he
imagined himself coming out of the doors and turning right towards
Urquinaona to meet Juan for a coffee. The illusion carried him outside
into a wind which had cleared the sky slightly. A few shifting patches
of blue hung over the grey buildings. His mind flicked back to that
other city four years ago. He remembered once seeing a friend, Montse,
on the other side of the road amongst the crowds. She had caught his
eye and smiled, both hands full of shopping bags. She shrugged her red
coated shoulders and waggled her eyebrows. In London, he stopped and
raised a hand to wave. People pushed past him on all sides, muttering.
Blinking, he headed down into the subway and up onto Waterloo
Bridge.

The river wind tugged at his hair as he walked, bouncing a tight fist
along the rough stone wall as he went. He had to turn sideways to
squeeze past the crush of a foreign school group going the other way.
The smell of a bus exhaust took him back to a time at university, one
of those times when you've just recovered from a cold and the world
takes on a new smell, sitting on a wall outside the union waiting for
Sarah. He hadn't seen her since they he had left university. He stopped
walking and leant against the wall of the bridge, feeling its cold
stone press against his thighs and belly. He pressed harder until he
felt the hardness of his hips against the bricks. He looked at the
river and a boat passed out from under his feet. Out of sight under the
bridge was the trestle-table book market. His mind was wandering down
the Ramblas, between the stalls selling magazines, videos, birds,
lizards, books, pottery and antiques. At the sides, waiters fussed from
table to table and across the road into cafes carrying trays full of
glasses and bottles.

His watch beeped twice, surprising the knowledge in him that he wasn't
going to work. The thought rose up like a bubble along his spine in the
bath, set free by some slight rearrangement of his body, and popped He
wasn't going to work. He smiled at the thought, shocked at himself but
knowing now that he couldn't possibly walk into the carpeted,
pot-planted and air conditioned building. He slapped the cold stone and
pushed himself away from the wall.

It seemed he could feel the swell of the water under his feet as he
walked. At the end of the bridge he passed the red motorbikes parked
outside the Inland Revenue offices which always made him smile. On the
corner, he stopped and waited for the traffic lights. Men and women
walked past him as he stood, staring beyond London.

Jingling coins his pocket, he crossed the road and walked between the
theatres towards Covent Garden and an espresso he hadn't tasted since
he left Barcelona.