Bakerloo - Northbound

By Emma McKeown

I sat on the 453 toward Elephant and Castle, running my palm flat against the side of my head to make sure there were no fly away hairs. I’d gone for a slick back bun, lathering gel on my scalp until the hair hardened like plaster. It made my face look more angular and I’d been too tired to wash my hair again the night before. I had a quick look at my makeup in my compact mirror, just to check that I looked alright in natural lighting. The texture of my pores like the skin of an orange beside my nose made me slam it shut.

The bus was relatively empty, but it was 11am on a raining Wednesday in October so that was to be expected. An older man sat by himself on one of the disability seats beside the door. The glass pane beside him was cracked. I looked around at the peeling orange paint on every metal poll, the faded white symbols on each of the stop buttons, the brown wetness on the floor. I didn’t belong here. Despite there being plenty of seats, another man, that looked about in his fifties, announced himself on the bus by screaming ‘thank you driver!’ in an obnoxious London accent before plonking himself down next to me. I was now cornered between a middle-aged man that smelt like rotting grass and the flimsy plastic wall of the bus. I couldn’t tell which one I was more willing to get pressed against so I hovered right in the middle, breathing only through my mouth.

The bus lurched forward before resting at my stop. I impulsively grabbed the metal bar in front of my seat to stabilise myself. As soon as the bus halted, I ripped the hand away as if the orange paint had burnt me. I looked at the man next to me expectantly to show him I needed past and shuffled out of my seat to get off, holding the infected hand out in front of me. I let out a deep sigh to make sure he knew that he had at least partially contributed to my discontent.

I stepped on to the pavement and then inwards, away from the road, so I could crouch down and open my handbag. I began rifling through it one-handedly, the bag hanging from my arm, as a piece of gum glued to the concrete beneath taunted it. This was a search based on feel not sight. My free hand eventually emerged holding a small bottle of hand sanitiser. I coated both hands and wrists in it, feeling it settle into the tiny bits of exposed flesh cuts around my nails. I’d gone too far with cuticle trimming and I was paying a hefty price. I made fists until the stinging began to die away before standing upright and heading for the tube station. I had to make a conscious effort to look straight in front of me and not down. My posture was better when I looked straight ahead. Plus, I seemed more confident. Effortless. I tried to lean my upper body back and elongate my neck.

I walked into the entrance and tapped my card on the turnstile before hurrying into the lift. My jumper was too thin and I’d already started shivering a little bit after being outside for a few minutes. Plus, it was leaving little balls of burgundy fluff on the suede of my bag. I looked down at my bare legs and they were already starting to come up in little goosebumps just above my knee-high boots. I adjusted my mini skirt slightly so that the partial slit was in the right place. Accidentally sexy, not unashamedly slutty. I tried to gauge my appearance in the blurred reflection of the metal doors until I noticed the only other person in the lift doing the same thing.

She was wearing a long black wool coat that just brushed her calves, open to show her outfit. Her sunglasses were hooked on the neckline of her white shirt. She ran her perfectly manicured, gold ringed hand through her dark glossy hair. It bounced back, delicately falling in front of her face, framing it perfectly. It looked like she was fresh out of the hair salon. Maybe she was. I feigned a smile at her and got nothing back. I wasn’t even sure if she’d seen me. I felt my pores absorbing her perfume. I wondered what scent she was wearing. I wondered if it was expensive. A girl like her would never get the bus. She belonged in the back of an uber. Or on rare occasions like today, if she was in a real rush, maybe the tube.

There was something undeniably more tasteful about the tube. Which is weird because often times it seemed dirtier. If I was going to emerge from any form of transport with some sort of odd stain on my jacket it would be from the tube not the bus. But still. There was something about it. Career types got the tube. People who needed to be somewhere fast got the tube. People who lived by the tube station got the tube. Men in trench coats and turtle necks and women in heels and pencil skirts swished through the turnstiles and you just knew they had somewhere to be.

I stared down at the bumpy metal pattern on the floor of the lift, hearing its familiar hum and feeling the air get slightly clammier as we moved underground. There was something comforting about feeling the texture underneath my feet. I looked up again quickly, remembering my posture, resentment building for this sweet-smelling woman whose perfume cloud had seeped into my effortless, confident air. The lift dinged and both of our blurry reflections disappeared as the walls swallowed the lift doors. She breezed out in front of me throwing her hair behind her shoulder as she went.

I pushed my handbag strap further up my shoulder and walked out after her, wishing I’d wore my hair down. I always did this. I was always too lazy to wash my hair every morning and then every time I didn’t I regretted it. I turned the corner, following the signs for the Bakerloo line – Northbound even though I knew exactly where I was going. I loved that feeling. I could just imagine how I looked, strolling through the underground without so much as bothering to look at the signs because I didn’t need to, I had places to be and I knew how to get there.

I skipped down the steps to the platform. The station was as empty as the bus. The only other person on the platform was the girl from the lift. She stood near the edge of the platform with one hip popped, clacking her perfect nails on her phone. I hesitated at the arched entrance before strolling in at my own pace and standing a couple of metres to her left. I looked up at the overhead board which told me when the next train was coming, pretending I didn’t already know.

The breeze of the tube started rippling through the platform, making me fear for my hair, while elevator girl looked like she was standing for a photoshoot in front of a wind machine. The tube lights came into sight and for a moment I imagined someone leaping in behind her to throw her on to the tracks. I smiled as the train began to slow down in front of us. I glanced to my left at the carriage furthest from me and then to my right where the girl was casually waiting for the middle carriage to empty out. She grabbed the handle nearest the door and stepped into the train. I followed her.

She sat herself down at one end of the seats and I sat on the row opposite her a few seats further into the middle. I sat down hastily then stood up again to check if my seat was clean. The window sill behind me was blackened with God knows what and there was a large blue bottle trapped between the two panes of glass behind my head. I turned slightly and ran my finger along the glass where it was stuck. The tip of my finger turned slightly grey. I wiped it on my thigh and kept wiping until the fingerprint faded.

The tube lingered as it did when it was at the end of a line. The girl was still mindlessly tapping at her phone and every thirty seconds seemed to naturally reach up and touch her hair in some way. I turned back to the window to have a quick look at my hair and pressed my flat hand against either side again. The doors began to beep, the voice over filled the carriage and it was time to start.

Hardly anyone got on at the first stop. It was like that at either end of most lines. But it always felt better to go south to north. Like I was rising up not falling down. And then when I did come down it’s only because I had made it all the way to the top. Plus, often the prospects got better the further over the bridge I went. I had learnt my lesson when it came to rush hour. No one was leisurely looking about the tube between the hours of 7.30am and 9.30am. But they were during their mid-morning coffee break. That’s why around 11 was always perfect. The same again during their lunch. And rush hour on the way home was a different ball game completely. For one, everyone was going home. And you could tell a lot about a person by which stop they got off at to go home.

When we drew up near Waterloo, I looked over at the elevator girl. She was sitting down with her bag open on her lap, looking like she had no intention of moving. I told myself it was fine. The busiest stations were only coming up. Surely, she would get off at one of them. This had happened once before, on the circle line. That girl hadn’t gotten off until the second last stop. Then she’d looked at me like she wondered where I was going.

Every line had a stop where things started to pick up, Bakerloo’s was Piccadilly. I was always itchy at the earlier stations. Especially if it was a particularly slow day like today. We were the only two in the carriage. But I couldn’t bring myself to hop on at a later station or get off and on again. Knowing my luck that would be the one time I’d miss out.

As we pulled into Piccadilly Station, I saw people crowding the platform. Bodies started pouring into the carriage, brushing past each other, adjusting their collars, looking around for a seat. A tall man in a grey suit sat down in the seat opposite me. He was carrying a black leather briefcase-esque bag, a black leather belt and black leather shoes. Not too shabby. He set his bag by his feet and ran his hand along his freshly shaved jaw. His top button was open but his shirt was crisp and white. I could tell from looking at him that he smelled good. I glanced at elevator girl. Glass half full – he sat opposite me. Glass half empty – he sat beside her.

He wouldn’t sit beside her if he wanted to look at her. When you go on a date with someone you sit opposite them. So that you can enjoy the view. You don’t go to a museum and sit beside your favourite painting. They put the benches opposite them on purpose.

She hadn’t seemed to notice him, still slowly scrolling on her baby pink iPhone. I settled myself, careful to look around casually while keeping him in my peripheral vision. Dark hair, light eyes, a soft tan, no freckles. If I had to guess height, I’d say around 6’2. I mentally paused. Had I seen him before? Sometimes this happened. It wasn’t always a bad thing. Sometimes it was even a good thing.

I’d met the last guy on the Jubilee line and his chat up line was grounded in the fact that we had seen each other before. He’d gotten on at Queensbury and I’d watched him do it three times that month. After the first two times, I looked out for him as we pulled up to the platform, always sitting in a roughly middle carriage. I think he was looking for me too. He had visibly noticed me the fourth time we bumped into each other as he got in the carriage. He sat down beside me before leaning into my ear and saying, ‘We always seem to be going the same places, maybe we should try going together?’

I felt like I had seen this guy before. I tried to cast my mind back to the week before. Was he wearing navy? Had he been standing instead? Possibly. I pulled myself out of my reflections and started rifling through my bag for my book. I popped my airpods in and pretended to start music by tapping my phone’s black screen. I looked up innocently, absent-mindedly. He had settled into his seat, slumping slightly and pressing his back against the felt. He looked to his left briefly at elevator girl before looking back around him again. I tried not to let out an obvious sigh of relief. He didn’t seem too interested. He didn’t even seem to have noticed her.

Or maybe he did. Maybe he noticed her all too much and was going out of his way to not notice her. Did men do things like that? Surely not. They had no issue glaring in public if they wanted to, so if he wanted to glare at her he would. But he also wasn’t glaring at me. I didn’t want him to, that’s not the type of guy I thought he was and definitely not who I wanted him to be. Maybe he’d side-glanced at me as well. The whole point of a side-glance is that it was subtle. I must have missed it. Elevator girl had missed hers too.

I looked up at the lights above me then at the baby two seats down from me sitting on his mother’s lap. I smiled and waggled my fingers at him and he giggled back, showing his bare gums and bouncing his chubby little legs. Perfect. I looked in front of me again and grey suit man was also smiling at the little boy. And then at me. I smiled back and held eye contact for a second before looking at my lap and breathing a light laugh. I looked up again. He was still looking. I made a mental note to notice babies on carriages in the future.

I looked back down at my book. This part was key. If you stare, you’re coming on to strong, you look too keen. If you don’t look up at all it’s like you don’t want their attention and they might think you’re unavailable. But you can’t go into flirting or you’re ruining the chase. And making them think that they are the one’s chasing is the most vital part. It’s all about striking that balance. Heart open, legs closed. I could still feel his gaze on me. I tried not to grin with pride.

The carriage was getting more and more packed as we moved toward Baker Street. I could see him looking up at the map as if to check if his stop was next. He looked at me and stood up as the tube began to pull in. I placed my book in my bag and stood up too avoiding his gaze, casually placing my hands on the seat as if to push myself off. I finally looked up, doe eyed and scattered, pretending to only just notice he had just stood up to leave as well. We made eye-contact, he held out his hand as the carriage pulled in motioning for me to go on before him. I smiled at him and mouthed ‘thank you’ heart pounding.

I turned my back to him and hopped out of the carriage, looking either side of me for a way out sign that I already knew where to find. And then I heard a male voice behind me, ‘I’m sorry to bother you, but have we met before?’