a pit, dating from the plague of 1666. The engineers of the Circle line had dug the station out through
archaeological strata of human remains. Liverpool Street, he recalled, was the site of Bedlam, home to generations of lunatics.
Khrushchev sniffed the air.
Soot or madness or death? Troy wondered. Railways always put Troy in mind of Anna Karenina’s death under the wheels of a train. Grace Kelly had never, as far as he knew, played
Anna—the version he knew was Garbo’s. That mournful, miserable beauty. The moist smell of the underground, that ancient mixture of soot and humanity, was as strong as the reek of
cordite to him, inseparable from the thought of death, the thought of the woman in black laying her head upon the tracks.
Khrushchev’s gaze swept around from the low, dark, dirty roof, across the clutter of signs and posters to the lantern glow of the bar once more. He walked back towards Troy, his short legs
shooting out stiffly like a tin soldier’s, and placed his empty glass on the bar.
‘It lacks unity,’ he said.
Unity was an impossibility. Only in the 1930s had it even approached unity and that was in terms of aspects of style. Troy would put it no more strongly than that—Beck’s map, the
Nuremberg lighting at Arnos Grove, the modernist lines of the newer stations out along the far reaches of the Piccadilly line. By now, in the mid-fifties, that short burst of style had been
absorbed and the true nature of tlie system reasserted itself. There was only one word for it.
‘It’s ramshackle,’ he told Khrushchev. ‘But it works.’
‘It works, but can you be proud of it?’
‘I don’t think Londoners think of it with pride. I doubt whether they think of it at all.’
‘Why not?’ he said. ‘A little awe for the works of men would not be out of place. You have cathedrals and palaces galore. Where is the palace of the people? What is the
palace of the people if not a railway station?’
Troy had no answer as yet, and fielded Khrushchev’s question with one of his own that had been nagging at him for quarter of an hour.
‘What is it you can smell? You’ve done that at every place we stopped.’
Khrushchev breathed in deeply.
‘Soot,’ he said. ‘Soot and … and … despair.’
Troy looked out towards the tunnel, to the drizzling misery of a black night in London. For so long now it had struck him as some makeshift shanty, shabbytown, shorn of all pride, laid bare,
without dignity. But despair? How had Khrushchev noticed that? Where had he seen it—where, since it seemed his operational mode, had he smelt it? Was this what the national odour of wet
gabardine spelt out to the perceptive nose?
‘Soot,’ Khrushchev said again. ‘And despair … and someone frying bacon.’
He wanted Khrushchev to see Stepney Green. After his outburst to the Labour Party on the matter of who had done what in the war, it was fitting that he should see some of what London had been
through. They left the underground at Whitechapel. By the Blind Beggar, a pub gaining a reputation for trouble, and deemed by Troy to be highly unsuitable for the experiment they were essaying,
they crossed over the Mile End Road. At the junction of Hannibal Road and Stepney Green they turned right, down the side of the Green, past the London Jewish Hospital and rows of abandoned
houses—windowless, some floorless, with the zigzag shadows of collapsed staircases scorched onto the walls and blackened hearths stranded halfway up without rooms to wrap them—and out
into the blitzed remains of Cardigan Street.
It had not occurred to Troy before that every other street in this neck of the woods was named after one aspect or another of the last war Britain had actually fought with Russia—unless
you counted Murmansk, which Troy did not and Khrushchev surely would. The importance of Stepney Green to Troy was that it was as flat today as the day Hitler had levelled it in 1940. Hundreds of
homes blown to dust.
archaeological strata of human remains. Liverpool Street, he recalled, was the site of Bedlam, home to generations of lunatics.
Khrushchev sniffed the air.
Soot or madness or death? Troy wondered. Railways always put Troy in mind of Anna Karenina’s death under the wheels of a train. Grace Kelly had never, as far as he knew, played
Anna—the version he knew was Garbo’s. That mournful, miserable beauty. The moist smell of the underground, that ancient mixture of soot and humanity, was as strong as the reek of
cordite to him, inseparable from the thought of death, the thought of the woman in black laying her head upon the tracks.
Khrushchev’s gaze swept around from the low, dark, dirty roof, across the clutter of signs and posters to the lantern glow of the bar once more. He walked back towards Troy, his short legs
shooting out stiffly like a tin soldier’s, and placed his empty glass on the bar.
‘It lacks unity,’ he said.
Unity was an impossibility. Only in the 1930s had it even approached unity and that was in terms of aspects of style. Troy would put it no more strongly than that—Beck’s map, the
Nuremberg lighting at Arnos Grove, the modernist lines of the newer stations out along the far reaches of the Piccadilly line. By now, in the mid-fifties, that short burst of style had been
absorbed and the true nature of tlie system reasserted itself. There was only one word for it.
‘It’s ramshackle,’ he told Khrushchev. ‘But it works.’
‘It works, but can you be proud of it?’
‘I don’t think Londoners think of it with pride. I doubt whether they think of it at all.’
‘Why not?’ he said. ‘A little awe for the works of men would not be out of place. You have cathedrals and palaces galore. Where is the palace of the people? What is the
palace of the people if not a railway station?’
Troy had no answer as yet, and fielded Khrushchev’s question with one of his own that had been nagging at him for quarter of an hour.
‘What is it you can smell? You’ve done that at every place we stopped.’
Khrushchev breathed in deeply.
‘Soot,’ he said. ‘Soot and … and … despair.’
Troy looked out towards the tunnel, to the drizzling misery of a black night in London. For so long now it had struck him as some makeshift shanty, shabbytown, shorn of all pride, laid bare,
without dignity. But despair? How had Khrushchev noticed that? Where had he seen it—where, since it seemed his operational mode, had he smelt it? Was this what the national odour of wet
gabardine spelt out to the perceptive nose?
‘Soot,’ Khrushchev said again. ‘And despair … and someone frying bacon.’
He wanted Khrushchev to see Stepney Green. After his outburst to the Labour Party on the matter of who had done what in the war, it was fitting that he should see some of what London had been
through. They left the underground at Whitechapel. By the Blind Beggar, a pub gaining a reputation for trouble, and deemed by Troy to be highly unsuitable for the experiment they were essaying,
they crossed over the Mile End Road. At the junction of Hannibal Road and Stepney Green they turned right, down the side of the Green, past the London Jewish Hospital and rows of abandoned
houses—windowless, some floorless, with the zigzag shadows of collapsed staircases scorched onto the walls and blackened hearths stranded halfway up without rooms to wrap them—and out
into the blitzed remains of Cardigan Street.
It had not occurred to Troy before that every other street in this neck of the woods was named after one aspect or another of the last war Britain had actually fought with Russia—unless
you counted Murmansk, which Troy did not and Khrushchev surely would. The importance of Stepney Green to Troy was that it was as flat today as the day Hitler had levelled it in 1940. Hundreds of
homes blown to dust.
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