2013 part 4.

Then the spring came and nature was irrepressible, it persisted, oblivious to the horrors it seeped through. Every crack in the asphalt erupted in shoots and vines. The buddleia, bindweed and willow herb shot up in the derelict houses. Areas in the city, abandoned, sealed off and guarded became havens for foxgloves, nettles and dandelions. The cherry blossom and the hawthorn came as they always did, heralding renewal and joy and fertility. I wasn’t alone in feeling mocked and betrayed.

I drifted through dank phosphorescent corridors. Cold then hot, blasts of icy air, then down a stuck escalator to a dull, stifling warmth where little corridors branched off, some with grilles partitioning them, some with pink neon, others candle light. We walked down a service tunnel; it was a tiled tube, yellow tiles with a film of black grease and dust daubed with messages, undecipherable glyphs and mundane ones, declarations of love in marker pen and missing signs. Has anyone seen Shirley? The tile was clean where the photo had been tacked up with gaffer tape.

The tunnel was long and lit intermittently by strip lights. I could hear a dog barking, the patrols, Jean said. I walked along slowly, with a sense of unease. It was dangerous people said, there were strange smells, burnt plastic, paraffin and calor gas heaters, disinfectant and bleach. I could smell spaghetti hoops being heated on a baby belling stove, an uncanny lull into childhood comfort. I could hear a woman’s voice, an argument, bawling shouting, it was over a tin of soup, a fight echoing through the caverns. It was like the drinking schools in the Salvation Army, the bitching, squabbling mass sunk a mile below ground. I commented on the smears of congealed blood on the walls. It’s nothing Jean said. It didn’t mean anything, the life down here was brutal, the scraps, the yelps, the day to day tearing and grabbing just to survive. I saw people caged up alone, they’d built cells around themselves for protection with welded supermarket trolleys, corrugated iron, abandoned car parts. It was like a Piranesi engraving, one I could never have possibly seen, the art deco architecture of the stations and these labyrinthine constructions spanning every tunnel and atrium.

Jean was lucky, she had one of the prized control offices, and it was a coveted space and had to be well secured. There were three of them in it in little zed beds, a calor gas stove in the middle and all these dials and levers. It’s a place to sleep Jean shrugged. She spent the days, like most people, just roaming, looking for chances, ways out, but this was a secure place to sleep at night and that was the most important thing.

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