Читать книгу Under the Channel - Gilles Pétel - Страница 6

Perhaps it was enough just to have made it to St Pancras despite the Friday traffic, to have noted the time of the train on the departures board and to have savoured the prospect of the journey, the arrival at Gare du Nord, the glass of champagne at Terminus Brasserie. Was it really worth actually making the trip?

John glanced briefly at his watch, a Rolex he had bought five years earlier. Five years already? he wondered. It was five o’clock now. His train left at 18.05, so he would definitely have time for a couple of pints of Guinness at the Black Swan, a pub he was getting to know quite well.

John Burny was treating himself to a weekend in Paris, as he often did. Two nights in a hotel, a few good meals and some action would recharge his batteries. He would be back at work on Monday morning revitalised.

To John, the weekend started the moment he closed the smart, wide glass door of the Chelsea estate agent where he worked. The anticipation of the journey that lay ahead made him see everything in a different light. He was already somewhere else without having taken a single step. The run-of-the-mill corner pub he often stopped at after work suddenly had a renewed appeal, and he started to regret not being able to drink there this weekend. He felt ready for new experiences and was falling in love again with the proud city he had been so in awe of when he arrived as a young man. He had come to London barely twenty years old from his native Glasgow. His accent betrayed not only his country of origin but also his modest background. He quickly learned how to turn this to his advantage. The rich clients he served at the agency found him entertaining and were charmed as much by the good-looking man’s broad Scots vowels as by the luxurious apartments he showed them. They liked John for his lack of pretension which they judged came from him being a provincial with a strong accent. Now that his time was entirely his own, with a train ticket in hand and three-quarters of an hour to spare, John looked at London with a new desire to make the most of it and to conquer it.

‘Shit,’ he realised. ‘It’s raining.’

Hurrying across the Euston Road by St Pancras, John was almost run over by a double-decker. The bus driver blasted his horn, forcing John to make for the pavement in two giant strides, which almost catapulted him into the arms of an Indian man waiting to cross. Embarrassed, John mumbled his apologies, before noticing how attractive the young man was. He was about to speak to him, but the man had already taken off. John watched him admiringly as he crossed, moving gracefully in his white tunic. Then he vanished, swallowed up by the mouth of the tube. The one good thing about the Empire, thought John, was that it had brought variety to the drabness of old England. The weather didn’t look like brightening up. A north-easterly wind had begun to blow and the cloud was thickening. The rain was setting in. He was now desperate for a pint.

‘Guinness,’ he yelled to get the attention of the barman, probably a Brazilian judging from his accent and facial features. He wore a look of constant surprise and, in common with many of Rio’s Cariocas, was perma-tanned.

He was a good-looking guy, doing the best job he could – quite a bad job – of keeping up with the orders being thrown at him from all sides of the bar. The young Englishwoman beside him was making heavy work of drying a glass, ignoring the baying hordes and staring up at the wall-mounted flatscreen TV, which was tuned to a news channel broadcasting stories on a loop. Since the beginning of that week, all anyone had talked about was the collapse of Lehman Brothers. The picture showed trainee bankers trailing out onto the street with a pocket summary of their careers – a computer, three or four folders and a handful of plastic wallets – shoved hastily inside cardboard boxes of the kind used for supermarket deliveries. Repeated over and over like the images of 9/11, the footage made a deep impression on viewers who were always receptive to a catastrophe, whether ecological, terrorist or, indeed, financial. In spite of himself, John turned to look at the ill-boding screen, as fascinated as everyone else by the strings of negative numbers flashing up in a box to one side of the picture. It was possible to take in the fluctuations of the stock market and the looks of despair on the faces of the Lehman Brothers staff all at once. John knew the figures. His boss, a wily old Scot, had called his two agents to a meeting that very morning in order to discuss the state of the market. House prices in London were falling; sales were slowing down. The picture onscreen had abruptly changed and now depicted the aftermath of a car bombing in Baghdad. Seventy-two people had been killed. At the sight of the victims’ maimed bodies, a section of the audience had to avert their eyes. John realised his glass was empty.

‘Guinness,’ he yelled again.

Was it really such a great idea to splash three thousand pounds on a trip to Paris? John paused to consider. ‘If I’m going to get sacked next week,’ he thought to himself, ‘I may as well blow the bank one last time – while the banks are still open.’ When he got back, he would tighten his belt. His pint had just been set down on the bar in front of him. The sight of it lifted his spirits. The financial crisis was just a blip. The Financial Times was predicting the economy would bounce back in January. Worst-case scenario, February or March. The company would get through it. The venerable Mr McGallan wouldn’t give up his pride and joy that easily. John slowly wet his lips with the cool, white, thick head of his Guinness. How could his boss even consider getting rid of him? There was no way Kate could cope alone. But would that always be the case?

John sipped his second beer, his mind divided between background anxiety and the pleasure of the moment. This was a much more enjoyable pint than the first, which he had drunk too quickly, almost in one go. The same went for sex, it occurred to John. It was always better the second time; once the nervous fumbling was out of the way, it was more intense, more confident, more assured.

The previous weekend as he was leaving a performance of Mahler’s last symphony at the Royal Albert Hall, John had met a young Saudi guy. The man had been innocently walking down Kensington Gore when John practically knocked him over in his hurry to flag down a taxi amid the crowds spilling out of the concert hall. The stunned look on the Saudi’s face quickly gave way to one of pleasant surprise. John stopped in his tracks, gave up on the cab and struck up a conversation. The rest of the night had gone like a dream. Bar, club, hotel room at the Hilton where the guy had booked in for just over three weeks. They had seen each other again that Tuesday. They had made another date for this weekend. But – and this was a source of regret to him – if John was fond of second times, and the satisfaction of possessing what he had lusted after, the same could not be said of the third. It was one time too many. It made him feel trapped.

When preparing to leave the office, John had weighed up his options – Paris or Ali the Saudi – as if there was ever really any question in his mind. Just then, his colleague Kate had come over and asked him to get her a box of fruit jellies from Hédiard. She was mad about those sweets, and though she could easily get hold of them at Harrods or Fortnum’s, she preferred to wait until a friend, such as John, could bring some back from France for her.

‘Just a little box!’ she added as her colleague’s face dropped.

He didn’t like being sent on shopping missions. Kate was taking advantage. On the other hand, John knew he could count on her to cover for him if he ever needed to slip out of the office. He could hardly turn down her modest request. The die was cast. Paris it was.

Outside the office, he had taken out his mobile phone and sent a message to the Saudi guy: ‘Come down with beast of a cold. Staying in bed all weekend. Sorry.’ A few seconds later he wrote him a second text: ‘See you soon baby.’

17.25. Time was ticking on. John still hadn’t quite made up his mind. The barman really wasn’t half bad. He was currently serving a group of what could only be office workers, judging by their drab suits, blue and white checked shirts and ties in clashing colours that had been loosened on the way to the pub. The five friends huddled around the bar, talking loudly about football and women. They were, what, thirty? Thirty-five? And three of them already had receding hairlines and greying temples. Little pot bellies peeked through their checked shirts, a reminder of the fifteen pints they drank every weekend. Although John was forty-five, he was fairly sure he looked younger than every one of them. He ran his hand over his stomach to confirm this. It was almost washboard flat. Glancing back at the group, whose raucous laughter was attracting stares, he told himself it would nevertheless be a good idea to go to the gym five times a week rather than his usual three. He had to be careful not to let himself go, as so many others had. Not the barman, though, whom John could watch filling glasses at his leisure. It wasn’t just his pretty face, with those exotic, rugged features. On top of that, he had incredible muscles, probably thanks to daily workouts. His biceps were especially impressive. Perfection. Good enough to eat. John was practically drooling when the barman turned round and shot him a huge smile. Taken aback, John felt a surge of heat through his body as his engine stirred into action. ‘Son of a bitch!’ he muttered to himself. By the time he had regained his composure and smiled back, the barman had returned to serving his customers in an outrageously friendly manner.

17.35. He should have left by now. With his first class ticket, John was allowed to check in up to ten minutes before the train’s departure time, rather than the half-hour required of standard class passengers. Even so, the station would be busy on a Friday night, and there was bound to be a queue to get through security. If they were checking people thoroughly, as they increasingly did, John might be pushed back and risk missing his train. But wasn’t that exactly what he wanted? He looked around for the barman and saw him busily serving at the other end of the bar. Meanwhile his colleague had finally got her arse in gear and was taking an order.

‘What an airhead!’ John said to himself. ‘And as for the other one! Why run off when he’s just been making eyes at me?’

He thought about moving to the other end of the bar to order a third pint and force that hunk to look at him again. What was he going to do in Paris? The need for this trip was becoming less and less clear to him. The weather would be just the same over there. Rain, for certain. France was going downhill. The food was often sub-standard and the service unfriendly. John was on the verge of calling the whole thing off. He glanced up to feast his eyes once more on the Brazilian, but he had disappeared, vanished, been abducted! Ridiculous as it was, a rush of panic swept over John, a sense of having been abandoned not only by the barman but by everyone in this old man’s pub in which he was suddenly aware of being out of place in his smart polo shirt, designer jeans and luxury travel bag. London itself seemed like a distant, foreign city. He had not been born here. So why not go to Paris? In one decisive swoop John picked up his bag, turned his back on the bar and made his way out of the crowded pub as though charging across a battlefield. He must emerge victorious.

At the check-in barrier, the Afro-Caribbean girl on duty refused to let him through. He was too late. The train was leaving in less than ten minutes. The queue for the next one was already forming. John made his case: a client had held him up at work and then the Tube had delayed him further. He was expected in Paris. He simply had to take this train. The check-in assistant held an impeccably polite smile as John reeled off his excuses, but refused to budge. The minutes were ticking by. John was beginning to lose his cool. He asked to speak to the manager. The girl went on smiling but had ceased to listen. Other passengers were thronging around her asking for information, describing passport problems, an issue regarding their children. Can my daughter travel alone? Eventually the departure of the 18.05 was announced over the Tannoy.

‘There, you see,’ the girl said turning back to John, whose face had drained of all colour. ‘You couldn’t have made it,’ she added with a sneer of satisfaction. ‘There’s just enough time to exchange your ticket for the next train.’

John always travelled first class and bought a fully flexible ticket. He preferred to pay top whack and have the freedom to amend or cancel the booking if he changed his mind at the last minute. The same question was tapping away at him again. Why go? It seemed as though the whole universe was conspiring to keep him in London. It didn’t usually take much to convince him to put off a trip. A glimpse of a good-looking face and the prospect of a bit of fun were enough to keep him out on the town all weekend, undoing in a flash his carefully laid plans. Why press on this time when everything was stacking up against him?

The only reason John could see for his own persistence was the date that lay ahead of him in Paris. For the past two weeks he had been exchanging steamy emails with a young Moroccan guy, whose photos had got him hot under the collar. Mohamed or Mustapha, John couldn’t remember, was an apprentice butcher in the twentieth arrondissement. One of the pictures showed him posing proudly outside his shop in his apron and white hat. The two men had agreed to meet on the night of John’s arrival, around eleven o’clock on Place de la Bastille. But Mohamed or Mustapha might very well stand him up and the whole thing would be a waste of time – and not for the first time. Already waiting in line for the next departure, John continued to weigh up the pros and cons. On the one hand there was Mustapha, who wasn’t yet in the bag, and on the other was Ali, whom he knew too well. Wasn’t it about time he broadened his horizons? Brazilian guys were gorgeous and they were ten a penny in London. The barman at the Black Swan could be a good place to start. John had reached this point in his deliberations when he found himself at the front of the queue. Without further thought, he asked for a ticket for the next departure.

‘The 19.03?’ the man behind the desk asked in a tone simultaneously obsequious and self-important, the tone the little people take on the rare occasion they find themselves in a position of power.

‘Yes. A first class seat. I’m exchanging my ticket.’

‘That train’s full, sir.’

‘What do you mean, full? It can’t be!’

‘It’s full, sir,’ the man repeated. He seemed to take pleasure in observing his customer’s incredulous reaction.

Once again, as with the woman on the check-in desk, John attempted the impossible. His doubts had dissolved. He wanted to go to Paris and he had to take this train.

‘Add another carriage!’

The man in front of him, a wizened old Indian fellow whose retirement was surely long overdue, would not be moved. John had to face facts. He would not be getting on this train. Paris now seemed to him like the most marvellous city in the world. Mohamed would be there waiting for him. An unforgettable night lay in store. Soon John would be stroking his date’s hand, subtly, so no one else would see. Mustapha would shoot him a glance that sent thrills down his spine. They would walk the streets of Paris before diving into some hidden doorway for a kiss.

‘Have you made up your mind, sir?’

‘I’ll take a seat on the last train.’

The last train left at 20.04. John quickly worked out he had ninety minutes before he needed to be back at the gate. It was too much time to sit around doing nothing, but not enough to attempt to do anything. There was no way he could contemplate leaving the area. By the time he got down to Soho to see if anyone was around, the train would have left without him. On the other hand, spending in excess of an hour traipsing around the station was a dismal prospect. ‘I’d look like I was trying to pick someone up,’ he thought wearily.

Out of habit, he glanced at his phone. He had no messages, obviously. His friends thought he had already left the country. He felt a twinge of sadness. How many friends could he really count on, when all was said and done? Six or seven, at most. Feeling increasingly sorry for himself, he realised it was more like five. Included in this revised total was the famous Ali of London, but John couldn’t exactly claim Ali as a friend. Could he even refer to him as an acquaintance? So the number was four, in fact. Kate, David, Philip and Enrico, an Italian John had met some ten years earlier. They had carried on seeing one another fairly regularly, two or three times a year. Did that make him a friend? John held the phone up to his face again as though expecting it to perform a miracle. There was nothing lighting up the screen of the exorbitantly priced device. Three friends then, at the final count.

He had to snap out of this mood. John slid the phone inside one of the external pockets of his travel bag to try to put it out of his mind. Every cloud had a silver lining, however small that cloud had been to begin with. John’s loneliness made him appreciate his freedom. He had taken the decision to get away for the weekend. He wanted to travel. Travel meant adventure, even if all he was embarking on was an apparently straightforward return trip to Paris. He had had to overcome one obstacle after another since leaving the office, after all. He pictured those climbers making their way up Everest, battling the cold, snow and avalanches. In his own small way, John told himself he had just faced a kind of avalanche. He had got out alive and that was the most important thing. All these thoughts of peaks and summits gave John the sudden urge to take the escalator to the upper level, from where you could watch the trains coming in and out. He was beginning to feel himself again. The great glass roof of St Pancras dazzled him, like the sun going down behind the slopes of Mont Blanc. The sky-blue canopy gave off a sense of majestic vastness. The enormous arch stood as a symbol of the power of the Empire.

‘Fuck!’ John said to himself. ‘That’s really something!’

It was the first time he had ever stopped to take a proper look at the station. He had passed through it so many times, but in his rush to catch a train or get home he had never even lifted his head to see where he was. Up ahead, the Brussels train was moving off. Once more seized with anxiety, John wondered if he wouldn’t have been better off going to Belgium. He could be halfway there by now, comfortably ensconced in his first class single seat. But what would he have done with himself in Brussels? There was no one waiting for him there. Dark thoughts circled in his mind. He stared up at the roof. It was glorious, obviously. But now what? He hurried back down the escalator to the main concourse where he joined the ranks of commuters window-shopping at the smart boutiques while they waited for their trains. John’s instincts told him to get out of the station. He needed air.

The rain was still falling and the wind had brought a chill to the air. Autumn had come early. A car raced by, ploughing through the wide puddle of oily water which had formed along the gutter and which John, standing on the edge of the pavement lost in thought, had failed to notice. He was soaked.

‘Shit!’ he shouted, turning back and heading inside the station. His mood having dipped once again, he told himself the old building must be worth investigating in greater depth. Bricks and mortar were his trade, after all. The lack of interest he had hitherto shown in the place put him to shame. But where should he start? He already knew the main concourse and the upper level. He decided to concentrate on the passages running off to the sides. John had years of experience showing buyers around lavish apartments, employing every sales trick in the book, effortlessly extolling the panoramic views, the dream living space worthy of the wealthiest clients, the rococo bedrooms, the cavernous entrance halls and all the unnecessary add-ons of a luxury abode. He loved describing places, using grandiose words to exalt what he always referred to as ‘high-end specifications’; but now, before this display of neo-Gothic architecture, supposedly the very definition of wow-factor, he found himself at a loss. He wandered in and out of the various passageways, but nothing captured his attention and he kept a hurried pace. He found it all tiring to look at. He came back out onto the street five minutes later, overwhelmed. There was nothing to see in there. If tasked with selling St Pancras to a Punjabi nabob, on the other hand, John would no doubt have found the words to sing its praises. A stunning, must-see gem, perhaps.

Come to think of it, John never really looked at the apartments he showed people round. A true salesman, he made do with a quick scan around the rooms to get a feel for space, proportions, views. He would note down two or three key points about the style of the property – Victorian, Georgian or whatever – and that was it. This thought reminded him of something else. John had failed to secure an important sale the previous week. The potential buyer, a businessman from Muscat, had judged the price too high. The flat, a nicely presented two-bed, was on the market for two million pounds, and its owner, Mrs Dodd, would not listen to John’s arguments. The market was heading downwards; there was even talk of a crash. Experts were predicting that prices might plummet thirty per cent in a matter of weeks, and the flat had already been on the market for four months. Mrs Dodd was an old rich widow who had inherited the property from her late husband, George Dodd, a distant descendant of a family of plantation owners in the West Indies.

‘If I reduce the price,’ she told John, ‘I’ll feel I’m being disloyal to George.’ Besides, these oil barons from the Gulf were extremely rich. If they wanted to come over here and buy a home in London, they could jolly well pay for it, she added, sounding a note of peculiarly British pride. John watched his commission go up in smoke.

John’s rumbling stomach called time on his ruminations. Hunger gave him the excuse he had been waiting for to leave St Pancras again. Outside, there was no improvement in the weather. It was now chucking it down. On the other side of the road, two fast food outlets stood side by side, both offering cheap burgers and fried chicken. The smell of stale fat reached him fifty yards away. As he got closer, the stench made him gag. Looking through the windows, he saw scruffy diners at Formica tables, the strip lighting casting an unhealthy pallor over their faces. John hurried past, back to the Black Swan.

18.40. Peak time at the bar. Drinkers were spilling out onto the pavement. Huddling under their umbrellas, they leaned against the wall, gulping down their pints. After a brief moment of doubt, John sharpened his elbows and worked a path to the door. That’s when the real problems started. A group of merry youths were leaving the pub, pushing John back out onto the cobbled street as they did so. There was nothing he could do: there were six or seven of them and only one of him. But before he had time to get worked up about it, he found himself being swept back the other way by another group, landing him back where he started on the doorstep. The bar, just yards from the entrance, seemed impossible to reach.

‘I give up,’ John said to himself, just as he collided with another group and ended up back on the pavement once more. Carrying his travel bag in one hand and umbrella in the other, he felt his strength diminishing. He was hungry and thirsty. The memory of the Brazilian barman bucked him up. Without further ado and almost without looking where he was going, John pushed open the swing doors, walked in and veered first right and then left, muttering his excuses, finally getting somewhere. But just as he laid his hand on the bar, a drunk came falling into him. Sporting an Arsenal shirt, the guy must have been at least six foot six, and John wobbled under the weight of him. As he tried to step back, the bloke slid to the floor and spewed the contents of his stomach – at least a dozen pints, by anyone’s guess – at John’s feet. A circle formed around them. The barman had already armed himself with a bucket and mop. A rancid toilet smell hit John’s airways. The giant was pissing himself. The barman let out a groan of disgust. The circle of bystanders stood back a good yard.

‘This can’t be happening,’ thought John, as a fellow drinker called over to ask if he and the giant were together. The question left him briefly speechless. ‘Of course not!’ he eventually replied, horrified at the idea he could be mistaken for having such poor taste. ‘Am I really that much of a mess?’ he asked himself, glancing down at his rain-soaked trousers. He had to get out of there, and fast. John now realised that the barman mopping the floor was not the one he had been hoping to see. The Brazilian must have finished his shift. A Pole, judging by the accent, had replaced him. A good-looking blond, yes, but now was really not the time. On his way out of the pub, John passed two paramedics carrying a stretcher. They had come quickly.

John hurried across the main road. The stench of that man clung to his skin. He took a deep breath. The rain was coming down by the bucketload. What if the giant was dead? He might have wet himself on his way out, the muscles relaxing at the point of death. John felt a knot of anxiety forming inside his stomach. Was he too about to piss? He felt a sudden, urgent need to empty his bladder.

‘Well that’s just great,’ he thought. ‘I’ve had it.’

The two pints of Guinness he had knocked back an hour earlier were now making their presence felt.

‘Shit!’ he muttered, racing into the station in search of toilets. The flow of commuters was starting to dry up. John strode along the concourse looking left, right and straight ahead, to no avail. In his rush to locate the lavatories, he almost floored a Frenchman who had just got off the incoming train. Struggling with a map, he hadn’t seen the Scotsman flying towards him at the speed of a fighter pilot. The Frenchman apologised, as though his mere presence on foreign soil was a reason to feel guilty. But John was already a dozen yards further on, still turning his head one way and the other.

‘I’ve had it,’ he told himself once more. He felt like he might keel over any second. ‘Right. OK. I’ll go through security and passport control and then I’m heading straight to the urinals.’

The woman with the permanent smile recognised him immediately. It was seven o’clock. John had actually turned up in good time for this train. Her smile broadened. John was among the first passengers to arrive. The woman was on her own with little to do. She would have liked to strike up a conversation but John didn’t let her get a word in. He was already feeding his ticket into the mouth of the machine, which spat it out again as the barrier lifted. There was still security to get through. John threw his bag onto the conveyor belt without waiting to be asked. He set down his umbrella and took off his watch, shoes and belt, deaf to the words of the security officer who was telling him he really didn’t need to bother with his shoes. John carried on regardless, now rooting through his pockets in search of stray coins, keys, any metal object likely to set off the detector and delay his progress. He would be forced to explain himself, to unzip his bag and open it wide, when all he could think about was one thing: ‘If I don’t piss, I’ve had it.’ At passport control, he offered up his best Scottish smile along with his documents. Go ahead! A moment later, leaning against the wall of the urinals, he thought he had achieved nirvana. His face was the very picture of happiness. ‘I’m alive!’ The missed train, the rain, the giant, had all been forgotten.

*

The train doors closed automatically with a dull thud. The noise came as a relief, like a burst of oxygen coming to the aid of a deep-sea diver or a climber at the top of Everest struggling for air. John didn’t know what to think about, but at least he could feel his muscles relaxing. ‘Everything’s good. Cool. I’m off.’ The train was on time. Having taken his place in first class, John stretched out his legs and shamelessly sprawled in the comfort of his seat as the train started moving. Why go? He knew the answer now. Getting away gave you the feeling of starting over. Even if just for a couple of days, it was a clean slate each time. ‘Goodbye Kate, goodbye Ali the Incredible, goodbye everyone, I’m off, I’m leaving, who knows when I’ll be back again.’ Just getting away for the weekend gave you the space to dream and to forget everyday life for a little while. The ball of anxiety lodged in John’s stomach gradually ebbed away with each mile the train travelled. Soon there would be nothing left of it but an empty shell. John was on his way to Paris.

Row upon row of two-up-two-downs ran in front of John’s absent gaze. Now and then, a warehouse or factory building broke up the monotony of the suburban landscape. Then suddenly they were in the countryside. Like disjointed images in a dream, the working-class homes had given way abruptly to a sleepy expanse of green as night fell over Kent. Fields floated in the twilight, languid with rain. The land was falling asleep, rocked by the slow and steady movement of the water. Lovely. Not far off the beauty of a Turner. John rubbed his eyes. He was almost asleep himself. When he next looked out of the window, it was dark. 8.30 p.m. The train would soon be entering the Channel Tunnel. The darkness over the farmland would be succeeded by that of the long tunnel. There wasn’t much to tell between them. For a second, John caught sight of two little white lights flickering in the gloom. A moment later they were gone. Under the Channel there would be nothing to light the sky. Down at the bottom it was as dark as the grave, mused John, seized by the melancholy that sometimes hits once you have set off and there’s no going back. The image of the drunken giant falling at his feet came back to him. A loud burst of laughter from an English couple sitting a few rows ahead shook him from his thoughts. They were quaffing a bottle of champagne. Judging by the tone of their voices, the man was in his fifties, she perhaps a little younger. They seemed intent on spending the entire journey drinking. And really, it occurred to John, what else was there to do to pass the time? A quarter of an hour later he was back in his seat armed with enough provisions to see him to the end of the longest tunnel: a bottle of champagne, a bag of peanuts, a ham sandwich and two beers, just in case the train broke down.

Lo and behold, the train had begun to slow its pace. Outside, floodlights rained down on a futuristic expanse of steel and concrete. Barbed wire fences ran alongside the rails. The train was approaching the entrance of the tunnel. The blinding lights went out in the flick of a switch.

‘We’re in,’ thought John, tearing his gaze from the window. The gaping mouth of the tunnel had just swallowed up the train. John downed his glass of champagne in one and poured himself another. He had already read the evening paper he had bought at the station from cover to cover, twice. The news was as bad as ever, apart from on the page dedicated to the exploits of the royal family. John let the paper slide onto the floor. This weekend in Paris was an excellent idea. He was really enjoying this champagne. A week had gone by since his last taste of the stuff, during the interval of the concert at the Royal Albert Hall. The adagio of Mahler’s tenth symphony came into his head. The slow, sad movement of the music had got under John’s skin on first hearing, and he had to admit that the sense of unease, almost sadness, it had stirred in him had stayed with him for the whole week, over the course of which he had listened to the passage several more times on his iPod. John had no particular interest in classical music. He preferred to listen to pop, sometimes jazz on nights out at piano bars. But on those occasions it was usually more about the person he was with than the music itself.

Chance had brought him to the Royal Albert Hall that night. A friend, or rather a business contact, had been unable to go and had offered him his ticket. Chance sometimes arranged things rather well, John thought as he searched his bag for his iPod. Happening to meet someone you liked, happening upon a new piece of music: you never knew what might come of it. John had found out online that the symphony had been left unfinished. This struck him as rather poetic. The musician had been felled at the height of his career, mid-composition. Deep down, he thought, most of us would like to go the same way: in the prime of life. Old age blighted your existence with disease, impotence and dependency. People could be dead well before they actually kicked the bucket. On that note, what about that fuckwit who had come out of nowhere, fallen into him, collapsed in a heap, thrown up everywhere and wet himself? Instinctively, John sniffed the sleeve of his polo shirt. ‘No. Don’t think so. Can’t smell anything. Imagine arriving in Paris smelling like crap. You’d be sent back at customs.’ The idea made him smile. It had been a tough end to the day. The train had gathered pace once more, speeding along inside the cocoon of the tunnel. Everything was going well. John put his iPod down on the tray table in front of him. He wasn’t sure he wanted to listen to the adagio again after all.

The carriage he was sitting in was only three-quarters full. The seat in front of him was occupied by a quiet young woman keeping herself to herself. She had not looked up from her laptop all journey. Out of curiosity or boredom, John leant over to try to see what she was so engrossed in. Might she be a secretary who had been forced to take work home with her? No, she was watching a film with her headphones in. The seat behind John’s had been left vacant. Up ahead, the English couple had finally settled down. She appeared to have gone to sleep, and he would most likely do the same once he finished the can of beer he was holding limply in his hand. His arm dangled over the armrest. Soundlessly flying through the night, the carriage was like a haven of peace, a happy parenthesis from the chaos of everyday life. John was struggling to keep his eyes open. He was sipping his third glass of champagne. He knew sleep would soon envelop him and was enjoying putting off the moment as long as he could. His mind was wandering. Ali meant nothing to him. He behaved like a spoilt child, and John was sick of it. With Erbil, it had been another story.

Erbil was a young man, practically a boy, whom John had met back at the start of the summer, in early June. The encounter was to be a memorable one. Out on the pull in Soho, John had spotted a young, scruffy-looking guy lurking on the pavement opposite his regular hangout, The Duke of Edinburgh. The boy’s haunting features and deep, dark eyes caught John’s attention. There was a proud air about him, which made it difficult to watch him unnoticed. It was impossible to tell what kind of body he had, whether he was well built or not. When the boy’s piercing gaze fell on John, it hit him like a body blow. He had gone inside the pub as much to escape the guy’s unsettling presence as to get something to drink. Probably a rent boy, he thought to himself, sipping his first pint. That wasn’t the kind of fun John was seeking. When he came back outside, the guy he’d had his eye on had gone. In spite of himself, John felt a pang of disappointment. Nevertheless, he brushed himself off and moved on to another bar. It wasn’t until several hours later, when he was leaving a nightclub, that John caught sight of the boy again. Once again he was leaning against a wall like a cat on the prowl. Over the course of the night, John had repeatedly flirted and been flirted with, but he had moved on at the end of every dance. He left the club alone, worn out but still buzzing. Without a second’s thought, he made a beeline for the boy he took to be a gigolo and offered him a cigarette as a conversation starter. The rest of the night was vivid in his memory. He had taken the young man home, washed him, fed him, given him too much to drink. Having got the boy half-cut, John had forced himself on him twice in succession, more carried away than he had been for ages. As he now replayed the images of that night, how he had entered the boy despite his protests, playing with his flimsy, drowsy body as though turning a matchbox over and over in his hands, kissing him full on the lips and grabbing the back of his neck to pull him closer, how he had finally made the boy come as he struggled against sleep – vivid, unshakeable images all the more violent for their fixation on the same few objects, the same parts of the body he had more or less raped (as he eventually admitted to himself a few days later, when he had ceased to act like an old rutting male); as he sank into this sexual reverie, rocked by the motion of the train, John was faced with the realisation that, three months down the line, he still felt the same burning desire to embrace that flesh.

His name was Erbil, or so he said. He came from Iraq and had entered England illegally, stowed away inside the fuel tank of an articulated lorry. He had paid top dollar for the privilege of this ‘seat’, and almost suffocated en route. But he had made it. He had succeeded, as he repeated often, beaming with childlike pride. Fate had been on his side. The lorry had got through the tunnel without being stopped. A few miles on, the driver had taken Erbil out of his hiding place and left him on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. It was a beautiful day. Erbil saw England for the first time with the sun shining. He walked for a long time before hitching a lift with a couple from Brighton who were wise enough not to ask questions.

‘So what now?’ John had asked, torn between admiration and concern. Erbil dodged the question. They had gone on seeing one another almost every night for two weeks. Erbil would wait for John outside his flat in his habitual prowling cat pose. John would take him to dinner in a local trattoria; the kid was always starving. Having raced to finish their meal, they would head back to John’s place and roll on top of one another, each desperate to rip the other’s clothes off.

‘Or was it only me who was mad about him?’ wondered John. ‘Maybe I projected my own feelings onto him. All I can say for sure is that I’d lost it.’

Several times John had tried to dig up more detail on his new lover’s life, but Erbil was always evasive. He lived in north London with relatives – sometimes cousins, sometimes an uncle, it was a different story every time – worked all over the place, did odd jobs. One evening, John put his foot down and demanded to know his address, but the answer he squeezed out of Erbil was vague. It was somewhere near Arnos Grove, not far from Woodside Park. Erbil knew how to get there but not the exact address. John had flown into a rage and kicked him out.

The train was speeding along and all its passengers appeared to be asleep. ‘After that, I stopped seeing him. And stopped thinking about him.’ A few days after his outburst, John had consulted a map of Iraq, for fun, perhaps, or out of curiosity or nostalgia. Basra, Baghdad. Looking northwards, the name of a city made him sit up: Erbil. The little bastard had palmed him off with the name of some town. Everything else he had told John was probably a lie too. Erbil – John couldn’t think what else to call him – claimed to have celebrated his eighteenth birthday soon after his arrival on British soil. It had suited John to believe him. He had no desire to be picked up by the police consorting with a minor, and an illegal immigrant at that. Yet when he stroked the boy’s delicate skin, he knew perfectly well the kid could be no older than seventeen. Leaning his head against the window, John now thought it quite possible that Erbil had been under sixteen when he met him. He really was a kid. ‘What could I have turned him into?’

The bottle of champagne had been empty for some time and the sandwich consumed without John even registering the fact. He had celebrated his forty-fifth birthday that August in Ibiza, accompanied by two guys he had met in London shortly beforehand. They had lived it up for a fortnight – eating out, going to clubs, having flings. Forty-five already, John thought to himself, sitting up straighter in his seat. He felt so old. He took out one of the two cans of beer he had stuffed into the pocket of the seat in front of him. He had just begun to sip it when the train slowed right down and lurched to a sudden halt. The fluorescent lights flickered and went out, plunging the carriage into darkness. A breakdown. This really wasn’t John’s day. He could hear raised voices around him. His fellow passengers were complaining about the lights. A Frenchman a few rows ahead cried foul. John’s beer had gone warm. He put the can down on the tray and stretched out his legs. Now was the perfect time for a nap. John was exhausted. Suddenly he felt something pass around his neck.

‘Fuck!’ he barely had time to shout.