Connie Willis - The Winds Of Marble Arch

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The Winds of Marble Arch
The Winds of Marble Arch
by Connie Willis
Cath refused to take the tube.
"You loved it the last time we were here," I said, rummaging through my suitcase for a tie.
"Correction. You loved it," she said, brushing her short hair. "I thought it was dirty and smelly and
dangerous."
"You’re thinking of the New York subway. This is the London Underground." The tie wasn’t there. I
unzipped the side pocket and jammed my hand down it. "You rode the tube the last time we were here."
"I also carried my suitcase up five flights of stairs at that awful bed and breakfast we stayed at. I have no
intention of doing that either."
She wouldn’t have to. The Connaught had a lift and a bellman.
"I hated the tube," she said. "I only took it because we couldn’t afford taxis. And now we can."
We certainly could. We could also afford a hotel with carpet on the floor and a bathroom in our room
instead of down the hall. A far cry from the–what was it called? It had had brown linoleum floors you
hadn’t wanted to walk on in your bare feet, and you had to put coins in a meter above the bathtub to get
hot water.
"What was the name of that place we stayed at?" I asked Cath.
"I’ve repressed it," she said. "All I remember is that the tube station had the name of a cemetery."
"Marble Arch," I said, "and it wasn’t named after a cemetery. It was named after the copy of the Roman
arch of Constantine in Hyde Park."
"Well, it sounded like a cemetery."
"The Royal Hernia!" I said, suddenly remembering.
Cath grinned. "The Royal Heritage."
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The Winds of Marble Arch
"The Royal Hernia of Marble Arch," I said. "We should go visit it, just for old times’ sake."
"I doubt if it’s still there," she said, putting on her earrings. "It’s been twenty years."
"Of course it’s still there," I said. "Scummy showers and all. Do you remember those narrow beds? They
were just like coffins, only at least coffins have sides so you don’t roll off." The tie wasn’t there. I
started taking shirts out of the suitcase and piling them on the bed. "These aren’t much better. It makes
you wonder how the British have managed to reproduce all these years."
"We seemed to manage all right," Cath said, putting on her shoes. "What time does the conference start?"
"Ten," I said, dumping socks and underwear onto the bed. "What time are you meeting Sara?"
"Nine-thirty," she said, looking at her watch. "Will you have time to pick up the tickets for the play?"
"Sure," I said. "The Old Man won’t show up before eleven."
"Good," she said. "Sara and Elliott can only go Saturday. They’ve got something tomorrow night, and
we’ve got dinner with Milford Hughes’s widow and her sons Friday night. Is Arthur going with us to the
play? Did you get in touch with him?"
"No, but I know the Old Man’ll want to go. What are we seeing?" I asked, giving up on the tie.
"Ragtime, if we can get tickets. It’s at the Adelphi. If not, try to get The Tempest or Sunset Boulevard,
and if they’re sold out, Endgames. Hayley Mills is in it."
"Kismet isn’t playing?"
She grinned again. "Kismet isn’t playing."
"Which tube stop does it say for the Adelphi?"
"Charing Cross," she said, consulting the map. "Sunset Boulevard’s at the Old Vic, and The Tempest’s at
the Duke of York. On Shaftesbury Avenue. You could get the tickets through a ticket agent. It would be
a lot faster than going to the theaters."
"Not on the tube, it won’t," I said. "It’s a snap to go anywhere. And ticket agents are for tourists."
She looked skeptical. "Get third row if you can, but not on the sides. And no farther back than the dress
circle."
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The Winds of Marble Arch
"Not the balcony?" I asked. The farthest, steepest seats had been all we could afford the first time we
were here, so high up all you could see was the tops of the actors’ heads. When we’d gone to Kismet, the
Old Man had spent the entire time leaning forward to look down the well-endowed Lalume’s Arabian
costume through a pair of rental binoculars.
"Not the balcony," Cath said, sticking an umbrella and the guidebook in her bag. "Put it on the American
Express, if they’ll take it. If not, the Visa."
"Are you sure the third row’s a good idea?" I said. "Remember, the Old Man nearly got us thrown out of
the upper balcony the last time, and there wasn’t even anybody else up there."
Cath stopped putting things in her bag. "Tom," she said, looking worried. "It’s been twenty years, and
you haven’t seen Arthur in over five."
"And you think the Old Man will have grown up in the meantime?" I said. "Not a chance. This is the guy
who got us thrown out of Graceland five years ago. He’ll still be the same."
Cath looked like she was going to say something else, and then began putting stuff in her bag again.
"What time is the cocktail party tonight?"
"Sherry party," I said. "They have sherry parties in this country. Six. I’ll meet you back here, okay? Or is
that enough time for you and Sara to buy out the town and catch up on–what is it?–three years’ gossip?"
I’d seen Elliott and Sara last year in Atlanta and the year before that in Barcelona, but Cath hadn’t come
with me to either conference. "Where are you doing all this shopping?" Iasked.
"Harrods," she said. "Remember the tea set I bought the first time we were here? I’m going to buy the
matching china. And a scarf at Liberty’s and a cashmere cardigan, all the things we couldn’t afford last
time." She looked at her watch again. "And I’d better get going. The traffic’s going to be bad in this
rain."
"The tube would be faster," I said. "And drier. You take the Piccadilly line to Knightsbridge, and you’re
right there. You don’t even have to go outside. There’s an entrance to Harrods right in the tube station."
"I am not maneuvering shopping bags up and down those awful escalators," she said. "They’re broken
half the time. Besides, there are rats."
"You saw one mouse in Piccadilly Circus one time, and it was down on the tracks," I said.
"It’s been twenty years," she said, coming over to the bed and deftly pulling my tie out of the mess.
"There are probably thousands of rats down there now." She kissed me on the cheek. "Good luck
presenting your paper." She grabbed up an umbrella. "You take the tube," she said, going out the door.
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The Winds of Marble Arch
"You’re the one who’s crazy about it.
"I intend to," I called after her, but the lift had already closed.
* * *
In spite of Cath’s dire predictions, the tube was exactly the same as it had been twenty years ago. Well,
maybe not exactly. There were ticket machines now, and automated stiles that sucked up my five-day
pass and spit it out to me again. And the escalators were metal now instead of wooden. But they were as
steep as ever, and the posters for musicals and plays that lined them had hardly changed at all. Kismet
and Cats had been playing then. Now it was Showboat and Cats.
Cath was right–I did love the tube. It’s the best underground system in the world. Boston’s T is old and
decrepit, Tokyo’s subway system is a sardine can, and Washington’s looks like it was designed as a
bomb shelter. The Metro’s not bad, but it has the handicap of being in Paris. BART’s in San Francisco,
but it doesn’t go anywhere.
The tube goes everywhere, all the way to Heathrow and Hampton Court and beyond, to obscure
suburban stops like Cockfosters and Mudchute. There’s a stop at every tourist attraction, and it’s
impossible to get lost.
But it isn’t just an efficient way of getting from the Tower to Westminster Abbey to Buckingham
Palace. It’s a place in itself, a wonderful underground warren of tunnels and stairs and corridors, as
colorful as the billboard-sized theater posters on the walls of the platforms, as the maps posted on every
pillar and wall and forking of the tunnels.
I stopped in front of one, studying the crisscrossing green and blue and red lines. Charing Cross. I
needed the gray line. What was that? Jubilee.
I followed the signs down a curving platform and out onto the eastbound platform.
A train was pulling out. An LED sign above the tracks said NEXT TRAIN 6 MIN. The train started into
the narrow tunnel, and I waited for the blast of wind that would follow it, pushing the air in front of it as
the train disappeared.
It came, smelling faintly of diesel and dust, ruffling the hair of the woman standing next to me, rippling
her skirt. NEXT TRAIN 5 MIN., the sign said.
I filled the time by watching a pair of newlyweds holding hands and reading the posters on the tunnel
walls for Sunset Boulevard and Sliding Doors and Harrods. "A Blast from the Past," the one on the end
said. "Experience the London Blitz at the Imperial War Museum. Elephant and Castle Tube Station."
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The Winds of Marble Arch
"Train approaching," a voice said from nowhere, and I stepped forward to the yellow line.
The familiar MIND THE GAP sign was still painted on the edge of the platform. Cath had always
refused to stand anywhere near the edge. She had stood nervously against the tiled wall as if she
expected the train to suddenly leap off the tracks and plow into us.
The train pulled in. Right on time, shining chrome and plastic, no gum on the floor, no unknown
substances on the orange plush seats.
"I beg your pardon," the woman next to me said, shifting her shopping bag so I could sit down.
Even the people who rode the tube were more polite than people on any other subway. And better read.
The man opposite me was reading Dickens’s Bleak House.
The train slowed. "Regent’s Park," the flat voice announced.
Regent’s Park. The last time we were here, the Old Man had shouted "To the head!" and vaulted off the
train at this station.
He had been taking us on a riotous tour of Sir Thomas More’s body. We had gone to the Tower of
London to see the Crown Jewels, and Cath, reading her Frommer’s England on $40 a Day while we
stood in line, had said, "Sir Thomas More is buried in the church here. You know, A Man for All
Seasons," and we had all trooped over to see his grave.
"Want to see the rest of him?" the Old Man had said.
"The rest of him?" Sara had asked.
"Only his body’s buried there," the Old Man had said. "You need to see his head!" and had led us off to
London Bridge, where More’s head had been stuck on a pike and the Chelsea garden where his daughter
Margaret had buried it after she took it down, and then off to Canterbury, with the Old Man turned
around and talking to us as he drove, to the small church where the head was buried now.
"Thomas More’s Remains: The World Tour," he had said, driving us back at breakneck speed.
"Except for Lake Havasu," Elliott had said. "Isn’t that where the original London Bridge is?" And when
the annual conference was in San Diego, the Old Man had roared up in a rental car and highjacked us all
to Arizona to see it.
I couldn’t wait to see him. There was no telling what wild sightseeing he had in mind this time. This
was, after all, the man who had gotten us thrown out of Alcatraz.
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The Winds of Marble Arch
He hadn’t been at the last four conferences–he’d been off in Nepal for the first one and finishing a book
the last three–and I was eager to hear what he’d been up to.
"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 Shaftesbury, 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.
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The Winds of Marble Arch
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 their 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 felt 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 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 the
smell hit. The train 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.
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The Winds of Marble Arch
I went back out into 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. Standing in the lobby and 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."
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The Winds of Marble Arch
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 Jim 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 his 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 was 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.
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The Winds of Marble Arch
"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 that 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?"
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