There are Other Stations
Sir, he said, shuffling the loose blotting-paper pages of the London A-Z compulsively, and watching them narrowly as they moved, I will have none of the official tube map, that well-loved but treacherous wiring diagram, in its bright primary colours, that illusion of light and order. I have instead charted the lines alongside the streets, sir, you will see them here in my black ink, and if you have a mind to it you will also discern the shapes they make. Look closely. Is there not a serpent? And there, a cockatrice? And here, horns, undoubtedly. But there is something more than that and I would not tell it, were it not so urgent to be known.
Have
you ever, walking the streets, heard the rattle and the groan of the trains
beneath, caught the rush of them on the wind? Very well, but what would you say
if, armed with my map, you heard the same sound where no lines run, where there
is no station near? See for yourself: there are gaps, places that should be
silent of the subterranean tremors. And yet some of them are manifestly not.
Here, I have marked the points where I have heard these things. Indeed, yes,
several, and you will see too what happens when I join them up. Ah, you notice
now? It is a hard thing to know, sir. What do I make of it? Why, that there is
a devil’s railway sir, underneath us all, what else? But what it is for and
where it goes, and, moreover, who travels upon it, these things I have not
discovered, yet.
The Cards
A few of the cards were found pasted behind the endpapers of old books and some were also discovered used as cartes de visites, with scribbled signatures and messages on them. They are from no known set: like, but not, the tarocchi. The symbols of the four suits seem to be the quarter moon, the arrow, the star and the spiral, and their attributes are, perhaps:
A
Stranger/A sleight/A trick or turn in the world
A
Messenger/A sign/Some clue, where least expected
A
Lover/A sunray/Sudden illumination
A
Spy/A shadow/Darkness, concealment
It
has been suggested that all the cards record visits, though we do not know the
visitors.
Signatures
I have always enjoyed the incidentals of
books: the wear and tear on covers, often like abstract paintings; the letters
and shopping lists and tickets left inside; the marginalia; the bookplates; the
presentation inscriptions; and in particular the signatures of past owners,
sometimes with dates and places. The names, not always easy to make out, and
the flourish of the handwriting, often suggest what sort of person they might
have been, and then I begin to imagine more about them. All I really know is that
they once had this book, that they used blue or black or some rarer colour in
their pen, and, when recorded, that they existed on a certain date and at a
certain place. But that does not stop me wondering. Who was Henrietta Rattray,
for example, who wrote boldly in blue ink across the top of the title page of Gobi
or Shamo by Gilbert Murray? Who was Eirene Beck, who signed a copy of Cyril
Connolly’s The Unquiet Grave in black ink in April 1946 and left a
shopping list inside, which included Wine, Marmalade, Batteries, Hovis Biscuits
and Caspian Mist (presumably a perfume)? And who was Gandar or Gandor or Gardar
or Gardae who wrote so assertively diagonally across the free front endpaper of
Richard Middleton’s The Ghost Ship? And why only one name?
These signatures of lost readers surely have
their own stories to tell.
Mark Valentine lives in the North of England. A chapbook, Astarology, was issued by Salo Press in 2021. His poetry has appeared in PN Review, Agenda, Volume, ink, sweat and tears, M58, aswirl and elsewhere. His short story 'Qx' was recently selected for Best British Short Stories 2023 (Salt).