Neverwhere(78)

“See what?” He was standing on an empty, dimly lit station platform, a lonely mausoleum of a place. And then . . .

The noise and the light struck him like a bottle across the face: he was standing on Blackfriars Station, in the middle of the rush hour. People bustled by him: a riot of noise and light, of shoving, moving humanity. There was an Underground train waiting at the platform, and, reflected in its window, Richard could see himself. He looked crazy; he had a week’s growth of beard; food was crusted around his mouth; one eye had recently been blackened, and a boil, an angry red carbuncle, was coming up on the side of his nose; he was filthy, covered in a black, encrusted dirt which filled his pores and lived under his fingernails; his eyes were red and bleary, his hair was matted and snarled. He was a crazy homeless person, standing on a platform of a busy Underground station, in the heart of the rush hour. Richard buried his face deep in his hands. When he raised his face, the other people were gone. The platform was dark again, and he was alone. He sat down on a bench and closed his eyes. A hand found his hand, held it for some moments, and then squeezed it. A woman’s hand: he could smell a familiar perfume.

The other Richard sat on his left, and now Jessica sat on his right, holding his hand in hers, looking at him compassionately. He had never seen that expression on her face before.

“Jess?” he said.

Jessica shook her head. She let go of his hand. “I’m afraid not,” she said. “I’m still you. But you have to listen, darling. You’re the closest to reality you’ve been—“

“You people keep saying, the closest to reality, the closest to sanity, I don’t know what you . . . ” He paused. Something came back to him, then. He looked at the other version of himself, at the woman he had loved. “Is this part of the ordeal?” he demanded.

“Ordeal?” asked Jessica. She exchanged a concerned glance with the-other-Richard-who-wasn’t-him.

“Yes. Ordeal. With the Black Friars who live under London,” Richard said. As he said it, it became more real, “There’s a key I have to get for this angel called Islington. If I get him the key, he’ll send me home again . . . ” His mouth dried up, and he could talk no longer.

“Listen to yourself,” said the other Richard, gently. “Can’t you tell how ridiculous all this sounds?” Jessica looked as if she were trying not to cry. Her eyes glistened. “You’re not going through an ordeal, Richard. You—you had some kind of nervous breakdown. A couple of weeks ago. I think you just cracked up. I broke off our engagement—you’d been acting so strangely, it was like you were a different person, I—I couldn’t cope . . . Then you vanished . . . ” The tears began to run down her cheeks, and she stopped talking to blow her nose on a tissue.

The other Richard began to speak. “I wandered, alone and crazy, through the streets of London, sleeping under bridges, eating food from garbage cans. Shivering and lost and alone. Muttering to myself, talking to people who weren’t there . . . “

“I’m so sorry, Richard,” said Jessica. She was crying, now, her face contorted and unattractive. Her mascara was beginning to run, and her nose was red. He had never seen her hurting before, and he realized how much he wanted to take her pain away. Richard reached out for her, to try to hold her, to comfort and reassure her, but the world slid and twisted and changed . . .

Someone stumbled into him, cursed and walked away. Richard was lying prone on the platform, in the rush-hour glare. The side of his face was sticky and cold. He pulled his head up off the ground. He had been lying in a pool of his own vomit. At least, he hoped it was his own. Passersby stared at him with revulsion, or, after one flick of the eyes, did not look at him again.

He wiped at his face with his hands and tried to get up, but he could no longer remember how. Richard began to whimper. He shut his eyes tightly, and he kept them shut. When he opened them, thirty seconds, or an hour, or a day later, the platform was in semidarkness. He climbed to his feet. There was nobody there. “Hello?” he called. “Help me. Please.”

Gary was sitting on the bench, watching him. “What, you still need someone to tell you what to do?” Gary got up and walked over to where Richard was standing. “Richard,” he said, urgently. “I’m you. The only advice I can give you is what you’re telling yourself. Only, maybe you’re too scared to listen.”

“You aren’t me,” said Richard, but he no longer believed it.

“Touch me,” said Gary.

Richard reached a hand out: his hand pushed into Gary’s face, squashing and distorting it, as if it were pushing into warm bubble gum. Richard felt nothing in the air around his hand. He pulled his fingers out of Gary’s face.