George unplugged the sandwich toaster and looked
across the expanse of Victoria Station. The arches of its roof reached to the heavens
like the exposed ribs of some beached whale long since forgotten. Sparrows
chittered up high, as heavy clouds spat the first sulky blobs of rain onto the
glass.
It was time to pack up the sandwich bar for the
day. Morning was peak time for Aphrodite’s Fillings, closely followed by the
hungry commuter rush for the home counties that tapered off around 8 in the
evening. Most of his regulars were now back in the leafy lanes and Lego-like
housing developments of Surrey and Sussex. It was late, with no more passing
trade to make it worth prolonging George’s day any more.
Quiet now, just a few straggling suits heading home.
Empty food wrappers spilled out of the bins, some drifting across the concourse
like tumbleweed in a Western. This was the time for the station’s other
regulars. A population of underdogs hiding in plain sight, slumped all day in
the corners, bedraggled figures in cast-off anoraks and battered trousers held
up with string. Easily missed when you’re swept along in a sea of urban respectability.
George was looking for someone. A specific someone.
Right on cue, there he was. The huddle in front of
the announcement board parted to reveal a tall, gangly figure in a cast-off
raincoat from Marks & Spencer’s 1987 ladies’ collection streaked with grime
that no self-respecting M&S matron would tolerate. Someone’s misplaced old school
tie served as a belt, but the right-hand buttoning and jaunty details at the
cuffs which ended halfway up his arms were a dead give-away. His long stringy hair
was plastered greasily to sunken cheeks. An old leather satchel was slung across
his body and he carried a placard proclaiming ‘THE END IS NIGH’.
Eyes burning from beneath eyebrows as shaggy as a
wolfhound fixed on George, and he opened his mouth in a smile that revealed teeth
as blackened and crooked as ancient tombstones.
George motioned him over. Crazy Ori was one of
those uninvited reminders of the ever-widening holes in society’s safety net
that pricked his conscience every time he saw him. Broken but harmless, he was
enough of a jolt to his normality to make him feel uncomfortable. Guilty. Not
much, but enough to make him hand over what was left over from the day’s
baguettes, wraps and pittas.
It was a year since George and his father had taken
over the sandwich bar concession in the station, and a full twelve months since
his father had set foot in it. Every day, George was there, serving up snacks
as divine as the goddess of love that his dad insisted they name it after, in
honour of the island he had left as a young man thirty years ago. Just 19 years
old, George was a hard-worker and good with the customers – chatting brightly
and flashing his doe-eyes at customers as he filled their sandwiches.
He couldn’t recall when he’d first noticed Ori’s
rambling, shambling presence. It was like he’d always been there, part of the
army of invisible unfortunates who reminded ‘ordinary’ folk of what might be if
they strayed too far from normality. But he could not forget the first time he'd
first heard his voice. Like the rasp of a key turning in a rusty lock, stiff
and creaky from lack of use.
The old-timer had reached over and lightly touched
the ornate Orthodox cross his mother insisted he wear, nestled in the dark
curls poking up over the neckline of his shirt. “You believe?” he’d asked.
“Yeah, of course, mate. Got to, don’t you?”
“But have you repented?”
George thought back to the last time his mum had
dragged him to confession at St Sofia’s, shrugged and rolled his eyes.
“Well, not officially. But I do, you know, feel bad
about some stuff. It’s hard when you’re busy, innit?”
Ori had nodded sagely with the solemnity gave
George’s reply far more weight than it warranted.
“Not long now. I’ve seen the signs. It’s coming,”
he growled conspiratorially. “Any time now, the call will come.” He glanced
with meaning at the battered transistor radio in his hand with the flap hanging
off its empty battery compartment.
That must have been six months ago, and still no call
had summoned Ori to his higher cause. And at the end of every busy day, he
would appear and George would give him a few pieces of bread, a hunk of haloumi
starting to sweat under the lights, maybe a dollop of taramosalata or hummus,
the occasional cheese pie and anything else that wouldn’t survive a night in
the fridge and come out as fresh as a daisy for the morning punters.
“Evening, Ori,” said the young lad cheerily,
putting out his hand as the tramp approached the stand.
“Orifiel,” he replied, fumbling in his bag.
“Yeah, right. I get that too – my real name’s
Yiorgios, but everyone calls me George. I’ve got a nice bit of turkey for you
today.”
Ori pulled out a square lunchbox made from white
opaque plastic. There were three indentations in the lid, where once a plastic
knife, fork and spoon would have slotted. Once upon a time. Long since lost now.
He then turned to argue with a pigeon picking at the
crumbs on the floor.
As George opened the box, the stench of a thousand
leftover meals hit him. Though empty, its side were streaked with the remains
of old sandwiches, half-eaten pasties rescued from bins and salads well past
their best.
He was a kind-hearted boy from a good Cypriot
family, his cherubic cheeks a testament to his mother’s home cooking and her
insistence on sending him off to work every morning with a healthy portion of
the family’s meal from the night before. Today, it had been a doorstep-sized chunk
of moussaka, Mama Lucia insisting as she did every morning that he needed more
than “bits of toast” to keep him going through the day.
He put Ori’s stinking lunchbox to one side, making
a mental note to return it perfectly clean later, and eyed the old feta
container that had held his moussaka, empty and dutifully rinsed out (even
though George knew his mother would scrub it with scalding hot water at home).
He made a decision. Putting Ori’s lunchbox to one side and vowing to take it
home and clean it properly (or leave it to the mercies of Mama Lucia), he piled
the day’s leftovers into the box that had held his lunch.
Ori had won his argument with the pigeon and was
now scanning the station roof for some kind of sign, his ear cocked like a
puppy waiting hear “Walkies!”. George put the box on the counter and was about to
explain that he’d wash and return the original, when Ori’s eyes swivelled at
the sound of a cab’s horn impatiently tooting in the taxi rank outside.
“The call!” He grabbed the box without giving it a
glance and stuffed it into his satchel.
“I’ll remember you in The Reckoning,” he told
George, then turned on his heel and strode across the station towards the
Underground.
George shrugged. He’d heard no special call, just the
ceaseless soundtrack of the city. He shook his head sadly as he watched the entrance
to the Underground swallow up Ori and wondered if he’d ever had a family or
someone to look care for him.
++++++++++++++++
It was quiet, or as quiet as it ever gets, as Ori
walked down the steps to the Tube. Too late for commuters, too early for revellers.
Station staff stood wearily on guard, dampened by nearly eight hours of duty
and dreaming of a hot meal and a hotter bath when they got home. One watched
Ori as he approached the barrier but paid no attention when his coat sleeve produced
the same beep a valid ticket would have and opened the way. Nor did he wonder
at the sight of the crazy old loon dragging the placard onto the escalator.
He’d been working the London Underground for nearly thirty years – it took much
more than that to make him raise an eyebrow.
Ori mounted the creaking, cranking elevator that
would take him juddering down into the bowels of the earth to the platform. A
platform that had seen a great deal since it opened in the cold autumn of 1896.
Billions of journeys, thousands sheltered from bombs dropping overhead, more
suicides than it cared to remember, and a million romances, break-ups, new
dreams, old despairs.
He was alone. The stale breeze of the train that
left just moments before lingered in the air as he emerged onto the cracked
cream tiles. Looking both ways to check no-one was watching, Ori leaned his
placard against the wall and jumped down onto the track far more nimbly than a
man his age should be able to and stepped into the darkness of the tunnel.
Feeling his way along the damp brick walls, his
eyes gradually adjusted to the gloom the deeper he went. The wall stopped at a
recess, easily mistaken for passing space for workers or storage for their
equipment, that went back a good four feet to a rusted metal door.
Ori tried the handle. It opened with a clunking
creak and he walked through into the sulphur yellow glow of the streetlights in
Limekiln Lane.
It was good to be back. He swept his hair – now a
glowing, flowing mane of silver in the lamplight – over his shoulder and looked
around.
Standing before him was Gabe, horn still in his hand,
his broad grin shining through the darkness. Behind him Val, as always resplendent
but slightly scary in her biker’s leathers, Haniel in sensible shoes and wings
flapping gently behind her, and Zachariel looking sulky and resentful. To one
side stood two out-of-place mortals, a scruffy man in a trilby and great coat,
and a respectable housewife knocking back espressos.
Gabriel, Haniel and Zachariel each held something small, white and plastic. A knife, a fork and a spoon, designed to
slot into the grooves on Ori’s lunchbox and signal the beginning of the Last Great
Battle.
Ori smiled and reached into his bag. But what he
pulled out was greeted with groans of dismay.
“Great! Just great, man,” blurted Gabe, fingering
the trumpet in one hand and banging his knife against the box with the other.
“How is this going to work if you can’t even be trusted to bring the
right box?”
Val muttered “Men!” under her breath, angry sparks
flashing in her icy blue eyes.
Ori looked down at the box in his hands, took off
the lid and held it out. “Cheese pie?”
