Leith - A Northern Line minute: the Northern Line

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First published in Penguin Books 2013

Copyright William Leith, 2013

Cover image: William Leith
Cover design: Jim Stoddart

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

ISBN: 978-1-84-614532-2

Im on the train, and the doors are shutting behind me, when I smell the smoke; or rather Im stepping into the train, towards the seating area, when I sense something bad, and I dont know what it is, and I sit down, and I see that the doors are shutting, and I dont know yet where the bad feeling is coming from, because when you smell something it goes straight to your memory, smell bypasses all analysis, as Proust described when he bit into the dunked cake and was transported to his childhood, and only later realized that this was because of the smell of the cake, the madeleine; I step into the train, and feel the bad feeling, the ominous feeling, that something is very wrong, its the memory of fires, but not good fires, and I sit down in the seat, and the doors close, and then I realize that Im smelling something, and its burning rubber, or plastic, or oil, or a mixture of all three, and I shift upwards in my seat, already knowing its too late, because the doors are closing; have closed.

Here I am on a Northern Line train at Belsize Park Station, and Im carrying a plastic bag, and wearing a jacket but no coat, because its a warm day in the spring, in the 1990s, and my first thought, after I think I can smell burning rubber, or plastic, is that I must be mistaken, I have to be mistaken, Im anxious about the Underground, have in fact only just started to use it again after two years of not being able to, eighteen months of not going into the stations at all, and six months of buying tickets every so often, and getting on to the platform, and not being able to get on the train, the platform appearing to close around me as the train approached; I would watch the doors open, and then close, and then Id watch the train move into the tunnel, a tight squeeze, and Id move back towards the lift, lift 1 or lift 2, mostly at Belsize Park, and feel an icy tingle in my spine as I got into the lift, and the lift would rise, a very long minute, what people call a Northern Line minute, and Id get back out of the lift, and wait for the doors to open, and Id walk out into the tiny concourse, feeling shaky, and there would be an overwhelming sense of relief when I saw the sky for the first time after being down in that tunnel.

So the first thing I do, after feeling bad, and after thinking Ive smelled the smoke, is to tell myself that Im not smelling burning rubber, or plastic, or, alternatively, that I am smelling burning plastic or rubber, but that this is normal; down here, in these tunnels, smells like this are normal, in the same way that the smell of roasting meat is normal in a restaurant, or someones kitchen; down here, in these tunnels, things are different, the puffs of strange-smelling wind, the warm and cold air, its like an alien weather system, and, whats more, the smell of slightly singed engine materials, or engine-housing materials, is only to be expected; I tell myself Im not used to being down here, its been a struggle to get this far, and now Im on the train, for the third or fourth time, Ive conquered my fear, and this mild panic at the smell of normal things normally being singed in the course of hauling these carriages through these tunnels is fine, absolutely fine.

And now the train hisses, or sneezes, and very slightly lurches, and begins taxiing along the platform, getting up to full speed, and I try to relax into my seat, try to re-imagine that feeling of hope and mild excitement I normally relish as the craft Im in starts up; I normally love it as an overground train pulls out of a station, and I look out of the window, and breathe out, and watch the backs of houses, the glinting windows, and I quite like it when planes take off, the feeling of tremendous anxiety muffled by the heavy load of denial one must use to deal with the vision of the ground angling away from you, and I sometimes feel a similar thing in the passenger seat in a car, fiddling with the window to give myself a sense of control. But I cant muster any of those feelings now; I know I must just look around me, and grit the journey out. People never tell you to have a pleasant journey on the Underground, just as people will say enjoy your meal, but never enjoy your cigarette if youre a smoker, which Im not.

Im heading for Tottenham Court Road, in the West End of London, to see a film, and Im late, and I might or might not have time to buy a coffee in a cardboard cup to take into the film; I might have to watch the film without caffeine, is what Im thinking as the tiled, lighted platform, for so long a place of fear, gives way to a more novel view the dark, cabled wall of the tunnel.

Breathing in again, and now definitely acknowledging, being unable not to acknowledge, the smell of burning rubber or plastic, my brain struggles to interpret this information in a positive way. It smells so very wrong, the sort of thing you might expect on amateur or specialist transport, somebodys weekend boat, or the car two boys made at school, using an engine and bits of scaffolding as a chassis, you could see them sometimes driving it around the school, an engineering project that was a spectacular success; youd have expected