by Michael Shawyer
The underground train rocked and my cello case toppled towards Lonely Lennie from Leamington Spa.
“If that hits me I’ll sue for PTSV.”
PTSV? What was he? Special forces? I’d never met Lonely Lennie before and profoundly hoped this would be the only time. I needed a cushion. Not to sit on. I always hide behind a cushion whenever any kind of violent super-hero is on television and three-dimensional Lonely Lennie with his PTSV was a good fit. He was a bit of a mind-reader as well because he read my confusion.
“Post Traumatic Stress by Violin.”
And a comedian. Was there no end to his talents?
Perhaps that’s why he was lonely. I should have been ready with a smart answer but didn’t want to breathe. Multi-talented Lonely Lennie from Leamington Spa smelled like a 3-day ashtray.
“Get a taxi ‘stead of taking up space with all that clobber.” Presbyterian Percy, a plumber from Pimlico, emphasised his words by waving a spirit-level like a knight of the round table and a nasal voice from behind a girly magazine announced.
“S’not right. Shouldn’t be allowed.”
Presbyterian Percy poked the girly magazine cover.
“What shouldn’t be allowed? Your picture-book or that guitar?” “Cello,” corrected nasal voice and a tramp in the reserved seat chipped in.
“Bloody hippy living off our taxes. Puffing on bubble pipes. All that free love.”
“Free love? No such thing.”
Lonely Lennie was on a promise if he finished tiling the bathroom by Saturday evening but things didn’t look good. He’d run out of grout and the tile shop closed at midday.
I briefly wondered what a bubble pipe was and then tuned the other passengers out. The next stop, adjacent to a redundant station, was mine. Mine and Rosalind. I gazed at the underground map and divided Victoria into syllables. It worked, sort of, but when I did the same with Rosalind it was music.
Like Bruce Springsteen and Rosalita.
Skeins of spiders web criss-crossed the tunnel and latched on to me. Mercifully the redundant station was less contaminated and I sat on a wooden trolley where I brushed the icky things off.
Rosalind was late and I checked the time while the bum-numbing surface fuelled my impatience. Stand, pace, sit. The cello nestled against my shoulder with the nonchalance of a familiar lover.
Crotchets and quavers from Camille Saint- Saëns danced like pixies amongst the cobwebs. Choreography by Nureyev taking me on a magic carpet ride. Better than chemicals, better than puffing green. Better than anything.
“Sorry, Nigel. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Delays at Shepherds Bush and Notting Hill. The central lines a mess.”
Rosalind’s words tumbled over each other and she grinned. A sparkling grin guaranteed to sweeten the sourest of moods and of course I dived in. Would Ros-a-lind be my first girlfriend?
“Your bowing is beautiful. I love The Swan. Heard you miles away.” I preferred Rosalind’s saxophone to my humble cello. Listeners weeped when she encouraged her saxophone to wail like a widow at the graveside.
“We’ve got the second carriage. No one here, apart from Billy Bong. He’s in the other one.”
“Hi Rosalind.”
Billy Bong with a pony tail and a pirate eye-patch, smiled at each of us in turn.
“You must be Nigel. Love your cello. I could listen for hours.” A musky odour surrounded Billy Bong and I didn’t want to get close in case I got high on whatever he was smoking. Never can tell, best keep your distance, Mother always said.
Should I shake his hand or do some kind of hippy greeting? Without mother to advise me I opted for a half-wave.
Streetwise Rosalind picked up her saxophone case.
“Let’s go. Catch Saturday shoppers with money to burn. We have to get them before the pickpockets.”
Someone had brushed against me at the ticket barrier and I groped under my shirt. Rosalind stepped back.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking my money belt.”
“You have a money belt?”
I’m used to ridicule for some of the things I do and nodded. “Where do we start?”
I hoped to avoid an inquisition from Rosalind by changing the subject and pinched the base of my thumb until it hurt.
“How much?”
“What?”
“How much is in your money belt?”
“ Don’t know.”
£19.87. . . Don’t tell her, she’ll laugh.
“Where do we start?”
“Oxford Circus. Yuppies with money to burn. No football fans.” I hadn’t considered football fans with their tribal posturing and the shakes spread upwards from my knees. Rosalind, bless her, touched my stress-filled face.
“Don’t get yourself at it Nigel. We’ll be good for an hour. Forty quid easy.”
Huh, try being me and say don’t get yourself at it but her cool hands had magicked away the shakes.
A different tunnel. Darker than night. More yucky, dust-covered cobwebs. There had to be spiders. The great big ones from my nightmares. Man-eaters with eyes on stalks marching towards me. Football fans taunting, squaring up to each other.
Cool hands where are you? It was awkward squeezing the base of my thumb with a cello on my back.
Fifty yards from the exit Rosalind pinched my arm and I yelped. Convinced her pinch was the bite of a cobweb-dwelling man-eating spider wearing a Millwall football shirt.
“Keep it down.”
She motioned at a figure bent over a sports-bag, “Shoplifter.” “Shirt-lifter?”
A term used by my mother whenever anyone mentioned her ex-husband. How did Rosalind identify the figure bent over a sports-bag as a shirt lifter?
“Shoplifter Nigel. Shoplifter.”
Clarification didn’t matter. Both words unfamiliar as girly magazines and bubble pipes.
“Why doesn’t he take his stuff from the bag?”
“They have to be ready to run.”
Rosalind looked at me like I’d arrived on a flight from the moon.
“From security guys. They don’t take prisoners.”
“What do they do?”
My voice high-pitched and squeaky, “Keep it for themselves?” Rosalind shushed too late and the shoplifter’s head swivelled like a meerkat. I searched the shadows. Never mind meerkats and man-eating spiders. David Attenborough and his sepulchral commentary must be nearby.
Rosalind coiled like a spring. Fight or flight? She was excellent at both, saved me from school bully Doug-The-Thug and his gang more than once.
The shoplifter took off. So did Rosalind. Towards the bag he’d abandoned. Wires, batteries, insulating tape topped off with a flashing digital timer.
The number nine flickered and she shouted. The clatter of her feet louder than her words, faster than the digital blinking. I had no chance of keeping up and grabbed a handful of wires.
Seven.
You prat, what are you doing? Mr. Calm? Where did you come from? What are you doing in my head?
Five.
Hang on, what happened to six?
Pull, yelled Mr. Calm and my fingers slipped. I swore out loud for the first time in my life. A word I didn’t know I knew.
Three.
Huh?
I wrapped the wires tighter and yanked. . .
Footsteps like the double beats of bongo drums in a Meytal Cohen style. Quicker than a hand could move. Like the drummer had overdosed on
Mother’s slimming pills.
I was downstairs where Satan dwelled with horned demons. Had to be. School bullies. Football fans. The floor a mass of wriggling, nibbling eyes-on-stalks spiders and I screwed up my eyelids, forbidding them to open.
Come on you tart.
Mr Calm was still in my head and I peeped. The shoplifter’s unblinking bag at my feet. Wires embedded in my fingers.
“Run! It’s a fucking bomb.”
Rosalind’s words, those I’d missed earlier and I hunched my shoulders, glad mother hadn’t heard me utter the Eff word. My feet drummed erratically and the cello on my back kicked like Frankie Dettori with the man from the Inland Revenue in pursuit.
A shadow staggered in front of me and I collided with the shoplifter. My cello swung free and clouted him far harder then I could ever have done. I gripped his collar, don’t ask me why, and dragged him onto the platform. Rosalind scrunched up on the wooden trolley. Hands around her knees.
A questioning stare at me reinforced by raised arms, palms outward. “Didn’t go off.”
“What?”
“It didn’t go off.”
She pointed, “Who’s that?”
“The shoplifter.”
“Did you knock him out?”
“My cello did.”
Rosalind looked confused.
“Why are your fingers bleeding?”
“Didn’t know they were.”
I turned to our carriage and opened the padlock.
“What are you doing?”
“Going home.”
The shoplifter stirred and Rosalind jumped.
“What about him?”
“Tie him up, give him to the cops. Whatever.”
I wasn’t bothered if Lonely Lennie and his cronies were on the train. Mum laid-in Saturdays, catching up on East Enders and I crossed my fingers.
Perhaps she hadn’t found the post-it.
Michael Shawyer’s father often admonished him for spinning yarns. His mother claimed he could talk the hind leg off a donkey. Despite these questionable attributes he didn’t start writing until 2018 and has been published in LiteZine Magazine, AllYourStories, Ariel Chart, Secret Attic, Shorts Magazine, Neurological Magazine, Apricot Press, Revolutionary Press, Fictionette Magazine, Literallystories2014, A Thousand Lives & More Magazine, FrontierTales.com, Medium.