mns  2005-07-25 00:50   

Six weeks ago, I came to London to find a place to live, put down a deposit, and plan my next move. I flew into Heathrow – everything feeling new and exciting because my brief was different. I was used to flying in to meet my editor, my agent or my publishers on a fairly regular basis, but this time I was coming as a prospective resident and I was looking at the city with new eyes.
The Underground from Heathrow to Kings Cross brought with it its own set of events, and instead of shrugging off these things as I might normally have done, I found I was singularly unsettled at the end of the journey.
At South Ealing a girl stepped into the carriage – foreign, possibly Romanian going by her dress, maybe fourteen years old, quite beautiful, but her eyes were dead… she must have been a good eight months pregnant. She was carrying a piece of cardboard on which were the words ‘Give me mony for nappis. (sic)’ She thrust this in the direction of each person as she moved up the carriage. I was the last person before the door to the next. Like everyone else, I shook my head, and then to my horror she approached the door on which was written ‘Do not open on risk of death.’ Just as I screamed out, ‘don’t don’t,’ she turned the handle, swung the door open, stepped across what looked like empty space, and opened the next carriage and disappeared leaving both doors swinging wide. The man opposite me got up and closed the door; and she was gone with her torn piece of cardboard and the dead eyes in her beautiful child’s face.
No one spoke, no one made eye contact, and I sat there shocked. I have no idea what I expected or what should have happened. All I know is that a child, who possibly couldn’t read, heavily pregnant, walked through those doors that specifically said, go not here.

There followed three hectic days as I met up with my partner – hereafter known as JC – who had come down from Cheshire. Fortunately we had been advised by friends, and had confined ourselves to two potential areas, one being Islington, the other near Waterloo, and on day one we were ferried by car around Waterloo by an estate agent at an almighty and terrifying speed. Sounding like Darth Vader with a streaming cold, he told us that the secret to driving in London was aggression or else we would never get anywhere. Eventually on day two, we found a place in Islington – a place with enough light because that is where I will be working, a skyline of roofs where a seagull is nesting and a view of a garden several floors below, a place where I will sit at my computer with my books around me, pursuing my work, a place that seems safe with both theatres and cinemas close by and the potential for happiness and laughter.
I took the Underground back to Heathrow on the Sunday morning, slightly unnerved by the monumental move I was about to make, knowing I wouldn’t see JC again for four long weeks and that in that time my next novel would be published. There would be publicity, interviews both with newspapers and radio, and I would be packing up the home I had lived in for almost nineteen years, leaving my children both of whom are now in university, and leaving my friends, my family and all that I was used to. Just before the doors closed in Holborn, a voice came over the loudspeaker saying that due to a terrorist threat the train would not be stopping at the next station. The Underground was packed. I was standing clutching the rail with my case propped against my legs, jammed between other passengers. I glanced around and every pair of eyes was doing what I was doing – we looked at each other and up at the wall to see the next station was Covent Garden, then back to each other. There was the most incredible silence and then the voice came over the loudspeaker again. ‘Sorry about that, someone pressed the wrong button. We meant to tell you to stand clear of the doors.’ The relief was palpable. People smiled – we caught each other’s eyes and we grinned. It was nothing. We were safe. Life would go on as normal.

I went home with the memory of the pregnant child with her lacklustre eyes clear in my mind. The loudspeaker message on the Underground, with bitter irony, faded to the back of my mind.

END OF JULY 2005

I keep being asked what it’s like being in London since the 7th July. And I don’t know whether to reply that there is something different on the surface or something different underneath. I can’t work it out.

But there is a difference.

There are some things that are too moving to describe in any detail. Everyone has seen on the television the flowers outside Kings Cross and the other stations. The first time I passed it on the bus I found I was crying. And the same thing happened when I picked up our local Islington Tribune and realised that so many of those killed were from around here. I felt swamped by sadness, for them, their families and friends, and for the awfulness of what had happened.

I read in a paper last weekend, an article written by a journalist who described a trip on the Underground in the last week. A man with a rucksack got on, and everyone discreetly eyed him. As the journalist pointed out he was probably just going somewhere for the weekend, but the more he was cautiously eyed, the more he fidgeted, and the more he fidgeted with the rucksack, the more he was eyed. He got off a few stops later, and a man opposite the journalist said, with a sigh of relief, ‘wouldn’t you think he’d have the sense to travel without the rucksack.’

And I identify with all that happened on that carriage – the sense of heightened awareness and of connection. JC and I were on the bus going to Camden Town last Friday night (for bridge) and the bus was diverted through what I can only describe as a concrete and mud wasteland somewhere behind Kings Cross. The bus was packed and I had done my discreet eyeing of those I could see in front of me, squashed as I was against the window.
And then the bus stopped – in the middle of nowhere.
There was silence.
Everyone appeared to be looking out the window beside me. I followed their eyes but I saw nothing. Suddenly there was the slamming of a door at the back of the bus. And yes, I nearly jumped out of my skin – to JC’s amusement, and to the amusement of those who saw me lift off my seat. It transpired that the driver had stopped the bus, got off, gone around to the back to close an open door (it must have been the emergency one), and then I saw him walking back along the side of the bus and off we set. People were grinning and there was a strange feeling of camaraderie. (Admittedly this feeling by-passed me as I was trying to get my heart to beat at a normal pace again). But I was aware of it.

And I’m wondering is that the difference in London in the last few weeks – is it that there is a feeling of people being on the same side? A sense of unity replacing the individualism of before? A combination of stoicism and the sense that Londoners will stick together?