Tunnel Vision

The rail gleams dully in the centre of the track. The live rail. The death rail. Menacing, beckoning . And suddenly, into my head pops a verse:

Tell me please, Mr Conductor,
Said a lady, old and frail,
Shall I be electrocuted
If I step upon that rail?

Oh no, replied the young conductor,
You will be all right, he said,
Unless you take your other leg and place it
On that power line overhead.

No power lines overhead: just the rail. No one really knows what electricity is. Oh, we know how to generate it, how to use it. But we don’t really know what it is.

We know what it can do, though. If you fall onto that rail, it’s “Goodnight Vienna”. No need to get that tooth fixed now. All over in a second. Okay maybe two. No wonder it’s such a popular exit from this vale of tears. A bit unfair to the commuters, perhaps. Make them late for their tea – some of them may not even feel like their tea, not after witnessing the pyrotechnics: flash, sizzle; a soft thump as the body is thrown back towards the platform; a faint whiff of burnt flesh in the electric air.

The indicator board flashes: the next train will arrive in two minutes. Just think of all the things you can do in two minutes: boil a kettle; sneeze several times; have a pee; tell someone you love them; say you’re sorry; oh yes, and change your mind! How many times can you change your mind in two minutes?

I stand with my toes just on the yellow line: the safety line. Passengers are commanded to keep behind this line. I’m “toeing the line”, something I have done all my life. There are people to either side of me; I sense, rather than see them. I am taken over by my own thoughts. I once read, in a “self-help” book: your thoughts are not you. Well, they may not be, but just now I can’t separate them from whatever other bit is “Me”.

During the London Blitz, people came and slept down here, out of the way of the bombs. That must have been really weird: sleeping in these tiled tunnels. Safe though: the perfect air-raid shelter. They switched off the power. So if little Alfred accidentally pushed baby’s pram over the edge of the platform, damage would be minimal. (Prams were sturdily built in those days.)

The two minutes must be nearly up. I don’t hear the train yet, but it can’t be far off.
I am trying to imagine what those final two seconds might be like – after you hit the rail. Would there be time to feel any pain? I doubt it, because just think what happens when, say, you bang your knee getting in the car: for the first few moments you feel nothing - then the pain starts. This way, there’d only be those first few moments.

A rumble in the tunnel. I look down at my feet: I take good care of my shoes; see how they shine, note how the highly polished toecaps reflect the pallid lighting. But wait! My shiny toecaps have moved! They are close to the platform edge. I have crossed the line.


*************************************


Arm round my neck. Head jerked upwards and back. Choking. Swung round and thrown, face down, onto the platform. The breath knocked from my body. Cold tiles against my cheekbone, pinned by a boot against my other ear. Arms forced behind me. Steel snapped around wrists. A knee in my back. Smooth metal pressed against the side of my neck. Hands everywhere: Over my body. Between my legs. Down to my ankles. Sheer terror.

When I am finally hauled, shaking, to my feet, I see that the platform is empty. Empty of commuters, that is. It is crawling with black uniforms. Baseball caps and flak jackets. Machine guns. The two men holding me have automatic pistols. It must have been the barrel of one of them that I felt pressed against my neck.
A youngish man, slim, smart suit, fawn raincoat – he looks for all the world like one of those Mormon people who knock on your door on a Sunday morning - walks up. But he has not come to offer me salvation. He stares at me with such hatred that I think for a moment he is going to hit me, and I wince. But he doesn’t hit me. Instead, with a jerk of his blond head, he motions the other two to take me outside. They drag me across the platform, up the tunnel and out into the street.

Pushed with my back up against an armoured personnel carrier, I am forced to watch my rucksack destroyed in a controlled explosion.