"The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 13" - читать интересную книгу автора (S S S, J J J, Kidd Chico, Fowler Christopher, Campbell Ramsey, McAuley Paul,...)

II: Swiss Cottage to St John’s Wood

Many projects to build new Tube lines were abandoned due to spiralling costs and sheer impracticability. An unfinished station tunnel at South Kensington served as a signalling school in the 1930s, and was later equipped to record delayed-action bombs falling into the Thames that might damage the underwater Tube tunnels. The Northern Heights project to extend the Northern Line to Alexandra Palace was halted by the Blitz. After this, the government built a number of deep-level air-raid shelters connected to existing Tube stations, several of which were so far underground that they were leased after the war as secure archives. Aslate as the 1970s, many pedestrian Tube subways still looked like passageways between bank vaults. Vast riveted doors could be used to seal off tunnels in the event of fire or flood. There was a subterranean acridity in the air. You saw the light rounding the dark bend ahead, heard the pinging of the albescent lines, perhaps glimpsed something long sealed away. Not all of the system has changed. Even now there are tunnels that lead nowhere, and platforms where only ghosts of the past wait for trains placed permanently out of service.

Trying to make sure that nobody got off when the doors opened would have been easier if the children had been wearing school uniforms. But their casual clothes blended into a morass of bright colours, and I had to rely on Deborah keeping the head-count from her side of the carriage. In my earlier days at Invicta the pupils wore regulation navy blue with a single yellow stripe, and the only symbol of non-conformity you saw — apart from the standard array of faddish haircuts — was the arrangement of their socks, pulled down or the wrong colour, small victories for little rebels.

I avoided thinking about the brick and soil pressing down on us, but was perspiring freely by now. I concentrated on the children, and had counted to fifteen when half a dozen jolly American matrons piled into the car, making it hard to finish the tally. I moved as many of the children as I could to one side, indicating that they should stay in crocodile formation. I instinctively knew that most of them were present, but I couldn’t see the sad little boy. ‘Connor,’ I called, ‘make yourself known please.’ An elliptical head popped out between two huge tourists. So unsmiling. I wondered if he had a nemesis, someone in the class who was making his life hell. Bullies are often small and aggressive because of their height. They go for the bigger, softer boys to enhance their reputation, and they’re often popular with games teachers because of their bravado. There’s not much I don’t know about bullies. I was married to one for twelve years.

‘I’ve got these new assignment books in my bag,’ said Deborah, relooping her hair through her scrunchie and checking her reflection in the glass. ‘Some government psychology group wants to test out a theory about how kids look at animals. More bloody paperwork. It’s not rocket science, is it, the little sods just see it as a day off and a chance to piss about.’

‘You may be right,’ I admitted. ‘But children are shaped far more by their external environment than anyone cares to admit.’

‘How’s that, then?’

‘They recently carried out an experiment in a New York public school,’ I explained, ‘placing well-behaved kids and those with a history of disruption in two different teaching areas, one clean and bright, the other poorly lit and untidy. They found that children automatically misbehaved in surroundings of chaos — not just the troubled children but all of them, equally.’

Deborah looked at me oddly, swaying with the movement of the train. Grey cables looped past the windows like stone garlands, or immense spider webs. ‘You don’t miss much, do you? Is that how you knew Connor was hiding behind those women?’

‘No, that’s just instinct. But I’ve been reading a bit about behavioural science. It’s very interesting.’ I didn’t tell her that before I was married I had been a teacher for nearly fourteen years. The only thing I didn’t know about children was what it was like to have one.

‘Well, I’m sorry, I know it’s a vocation with some people, but not me. It’s just a job. God, I’m dying for a fag.’ She hiked her bag further up her shoulder. ‘Didn’t your old man want you to work, then?’

‘Not really. But I would have come back earlier. Only. ’ I felt uncomfortable talking to this young woman in such a crowded place, knowing that I could be overheard.

‘Only what?’

‘After I’d been at home for a while, I found I had trouble going out.’

‘Agoraphobia?’

‘Not really. More like a loss of balance. A density of people. Disorienting architecture, shopping malls, exhibition halls, things like that.’

‘I thought you didn’t look very comfortable back there on the platform. The Tube gets so crowded now.’

‘With the Tube it’s different. It’s not the crowds, it’s the tunnels. The shapes they make. Circles. Spirals. The converging lines. Perhaps I’ve become allergic to buildings.’ Deborah wasn’t listening, she was looking out of the window and unwrapping a piece of gum. Just as well, I thought. I didn’t want her to get the impression that I wasn’t up to the job. But I could feel the pressure in the air, the scented heat of the passengers, the proximity of the curving walls. An over-sensitivity to public surroundings, that was what the doctor called it. I could tell what he was thinking: Oh God, another stir-crazy housewife. He had started writing out a prescription while I was still telling him how I felt.

‘We’re coming into Baker Street. Christ, not again. There must have been delays earlier.’ Through the windows I could see a solid wall of tourists waiting to board. We slowed to a halt and the doors opened.