End of the Line
My life was not so different than everybody else’s. It was a predictable journey down, decisions I didn’t know I was making pushing me faster in that direction. Even so, I never saw it coming.
We were the five who met at five. A call to arms every Friday at the Well & Bucket. Our nights were loud, our memories patchy and our weekends saved by a hangover. Everyone did it now and again, we did it every week. Bethnal Green was different then—our wild laughter was the neighbourhood’s beating heart, our fearlessness its soul.
I was the youngest, always the youngest. I bunked off school early, backpack slung over a shoulder. The others trickled in from work. Cashier, mechanic, painter and Greg—nobody knew what he did, it changed so often. Cheap shitty beers emptying and refilling as the evening became the night. When our jokes became too vulgar, or when we ran out of things to joke about, we would trip our way to Liverpool Street Station. It was a long walk, usually cold and raining, but most times we were too buggered to notice.
The station was dark and grimy then, a labyrinth of drafty tunnels leading to dimly lit platforms. Police stalked the empty streets, while young boys sold stimulants, or their bodies, to anyone needing an escape and willing to part with their cash. We’d whistle at the police and ignore the dealers. Our goal was to get on a train and ride it till the end of the line. No questions, no exceptions.
We had no money, nowhere to stay, but together we were home.
One night our Friday routine unfolded uneventfully as it usually did: the pub, maybe a fight or two, and a train ride until we were far from Bethnal Green. We didn’t roam the city and settle on a park bench that night. We followed lights and sounds until we were pushing ourselves into a crowd of laughter and drink. Inside the chaos of blotchy decorations and moving bodies was a woman selling candy apples. Her crooked body was hunched over a stool, that thick white hair a shocking contrast to the untamed youth encircling her. She made me think of my dead gran and I gave her the little money I had on me. As I walked away, a knobbly hand grabbed my arm and tucked the money back into my jacket pocket.
Her blue eyes smiled, and she placed a stick with a shiny pink apple between my fingers. Greg pulled me into the Ferris wheel before I could thank her. I devoured the food greedily, my mouth and cheeks sticky. As we settled into the ride, the chairs swung precariously back and forth, my stomach lurching as I gripped the metal bar in front of me. Greg raised a closed hand to my face. When he opened it, a pill sat in his palm. It was a white and orange pill. A tiny, little pill. He said the night would fly with it; I trusted him, and it did.
Time stopped that night. I laughed. I really laughed like I’d done as a child, before Dad left and his countless replacements ravaged my childhood. The cold didn’t seep into my clothes that night. I forgot the groping hands, the raised voices and the fists that came down hard. But like most things, happiness too came with a catch.
The following week edged forwards, each day extending forever, Friday never appearing on the horizon. I wanted another pill, ten other pills. I wanted my laughter to feel like laughter again. Just one more time, I reassured myself—or maybe just a few more times.
Then it was Friday, finally Friday. The Well & Bucket. The five at five. But the moment bore no resemblance to the hope I had clung to all week. Being wankered, no longer enough. We got on the train. I asked Greg again. He shook his head again. Lights zoomed by me, then pastures. I didn’t know where we were going—we never did—and I didn’t care. Greg rubbed his eyebrows. I searched his pockets, removed every belonging from the rucksack he stored his life in, but nowhere held the treasure I desperately sought. The faces of the annoyed night commuters crowded my sight. Their shaking heads and loud sighs meant nothing to me then. I yelled at them and spat at one man.
I was wrong. I see that now.
I open my eyes, released of this worn string of memories. I want to return to the fair, the candy apple and that first pill, the night I was both freed and shackled. But I can’t go back. My thoughts are hazy, and my mind stills. It’s cold so I burrow inside my sleeping bag’s exhausted nylon casing. Commuters walk around me, to them I barely exist—I’m always there, and I’m always begging. The cold is my closest companion, but it is unpredictable, and I prefer to ignore it tonight. In my head I am back in the train, surrounded by friends and heading towards the unknown. The darkening sky runs behind us, but it is catching up quickly. The dark finally touches me and I’m surprised as I feel warm for the first time in so long.
*
“She’s gone,” whispers the EMT. The empty gaze and wrinkled face of the rough sleeper outside the Bethnal Green tube station seems to smile as two men remove her body from the dirty floor.
~