The Underground train rocked, and my cello case toppled towards Lonely Lennie from Leamingston Spa.
“If that hits me I’ll sue for PTSV.”
PTSV? Was he special forces? A veteran of some kind? I’d never met Lonely Lennie before and profoundly hoped this would be the only time. I hid behind a cushion whenever any kind of violent super-hero came on television. Lonely Lennie read my confusion.
“Post Traumatic Stress by Violin.”
I should have been ready with a smart answer but didn’t want to breathe. Lonely Lennie smelled like a 3-day ashtray.
“Get a taxi ‘stead of taking up space with all that clobber.”
Presbyterian Percy, a plumber from Pimlico, emphasised his words by waving a spirit-level like he was D’Artagnan and a nasal voice from behind a girly magazine announced, “S’not right. Shouldn’t be allowed.”
Presbyterian Percy poked the magazine cover.
“What shouldn’t be allowed? Your picture-book or that guitar?”
“Cello,” Corrected nasal voice and a tramp in the reserved seat chipped in.
“Bloody hippy living off our taxes. Puffing on bubble pipes. All that free love.”
“Free love? No such thing.” Lonely Lennie was on a promise if he finished tiling the bathroom by Saturday evening and he’d run out of grout.
I briefly wondered what a bubble pipe was and then tuned the other passengers out. The next stop, adjacent to a redundant station, was mine.
Mine and Rosalind.
I gazed at the underground map and divided Victoria into syllables. It worked, sort of, but when I did the same with Rosalind it was music. Like Bruce Springsteen and Rosalita.
I was nuts about Rosalind and leant my cello case against the wall. Apart from cobwebs the station was empty. I checked my watch. Where was Ros-a-lind? I’d chosen an abandoned wooden trolley to sit on and the bum-numbing surface fuelled my impatience until the cello nestled against my shoulder with the nonchalance of a familiar lover.
Notes from The Swan danced like pixies amongst the cobwebs and my heart slowed.
Crotchets and quavers from Camille Saint- Saëns.
Choreography by Nureyev taking me on a magic carpet ride.
Better than chemicals, better than puffing green. Better than anything.
“Sorry, Nigel. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Delays at Shepherds Bush and Notting Hill. The central line’s a mess.” Rosalind’s words tumbled over each other and she smiled. A sparkling grin guaranteed to sweeten the sourest of moods and I dived in.
Would Ros-a-lind be my first girlfriend?
“Your playing is beautiful. I love The Swan. Heard you miles away.”
I preferred Rosalind’s saxophone to my humble cello. She could make her saxophone wail like a widow at the graveside.
Now that was magically beautiful.
“We’ve got the second carriage. No one here, apart from Billy Bong. He’s in the other one.”
“Hi Rosalind.”
Billy Bong with a pony tail and a pirate eye-patch, smiled at each of us in turn.
“You must be Nigel.”
A musky odour surrounded Billy Bong and I didn’t want to get near in case I got high on whatever he was smoking.
Never can tell, best keep your distance. Mother always said.
Should I shake his hand or do some kind of hippy greeting? Without mother to advise me I opted for a half-wave.
“Let’s go. Catch Saturday shoppers with money to burn.” Streetwise Rosalind picked up her saxophone case. “They’re more generous than people going to work. We have to get them before the pickpockets.”
Pickpockets?
Someone had brushed against me at the ticket barrier and I groped under my shirt. Rosalind stepped back.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking my money belt.”
“You have a money belt?”
I’m used to ridicule for some of the things I do and nodded.
“Where do we start?”
I’d managed to keep both the panic on my shoulder and Rosalind at bay by changing the subject. Cobwebs in dark tunnels and panic would be all over me like measles. I pinched the base of my thumb until it hurt.
“How much?”
“What?”
“How much is in your money belt?”
“ Don’t know.”
£19.87. . .Don’t tell her, she’ll laugh.
“Where do we start?”
“Oxford Circus. Yuppies with money to burn. No football fans.”
I hadn’t considered football fans with their tribal posturing and the shakes started. My knees first and Rosalind, bless her, touched my stress-filled face.
“Don’t get yourself at it Nigel. We’ll be good for an hour. Forty quid easy.”
Don’t get yourself at it? Try being panic-pants me and say don’t get yourself at it.
Rosalind led the way, a tunnel and my fears avalanched. It was dark as night. Yucky dust-covered cobwebs brushed my face. There had to be spiders. Great big ones. Man-eaters. Football fans, taunting and squaring up to each other.
Mummm. . .
The base of my thumb ached.
Fifty yards from the exit Rosalind squeezed my arm and I yelped, sure her pinch was the bite of a cobweb dwelling, man-eating spider wearing a Millwall football shirt.
“Keep it down.” She motioned at a figure bent over a sports-bag, “Shoplifter.”
“Shirt-lifter?” A term used by my mother whenever anyone mentioned her ex-husband. Was the figure bent over the sports-bag a shirt-lifter?
“Shoplifter Nigel. Shoplifter.”
Clarification didn’t matter. Both words unfamiliar as girly magazines and bubble pipes.
“Why doesn’t he take his stuff from the bag?”
“They have to be ready to run.” Rosalind looked at me like I’d arrived on a flight from the moon, “From security guys. They don’t take prisoners.”
“What do they do?” My voice high-pitched and squeaky, “Beat them up? Keep it for themselves?”
Rosalind shushed but it was too late. The shoplifter’s head swivelled like a meerkat and I searched the shadows. Never mind man-eating spiders, David Attenborough must be around somewhere. Rosalind was tightly coiled. Fight or flight?
She was excellent at both, saved me from school bully Doug-The-Thug and his gang more than once. The shoplifter wasn’t fussed about Doug-The-Thug and took off. So did Rosalind, towards the bag he’d abandoned. Wires, batteries, insulating tape topped off with a flashing digital timer. The number nine flickered and she shouted. The clatter of her feet noisier than her words and faster than the digital blinking.
I had no chance of keeping up with Rosalind and grabbed a handful of wires.
Seven.
You prat, what are you doing? Where did Mr. Calm, grab a hand full of wires, come from?
Five.
Hang on, what happened to six?
“Pull!” yelled Mr. Calm.
My fingers slipped and I swore out loud for the first time in my life. A word I didn’t know I knew.
Three.
Huh?
I wrapped the wires tighter and yanked. . .
Bongo drums rumbled in a Meytal Cohen style. The double beats quicker than a hand could move. Like the drummer had overdosed on slimming pills. I must be downstairs where Satan dwelled with horned demons, school bullies, football fans. The floor would be a mass of spiders and I trembled.
Come on you tart, open your eyes.
Mr Calm still with me and I looked down. The shoplifter’s unblinking bag at my feet. Wires embedded in my fingers.
“Run! It’s a fucking bomb.” Rosalind’s words, those I’d missed earlier and I hunched my shoulders. Glad mother hadn’t heard me utter the Eff word. My feet drummed erratically when the cello on my back kicked like Frankie Dettori with the man from the Inland Revenue on his tail.
Rosalind was scrunched up on the wooden trolley, hands around her knees. A questioning stare reinforced by raised arms, palms outward.
“Didn’t go off.”
“What?”
“It didn’t go off.”
“Why are your fingers bleeding?”
I turned to our carriage and opened the padlock. Stopped. Looked down.
“I don’t know.”
“What are you doing?”
“Going home.”
I didn’t care if Lonely Lennie and his cronies were on the train. Mum laid-in on Saturdays, catching up on East Enders, and I crossed my fingers. Perhaps she hadn’t read the post-it.
Image: London Underground train full of travellers from pixabay.com. A red and white train with the doors open and lots of passengers inside.
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