The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories by Connie Willis Read Free Book Online

of children, an Indian woman in a sari, a housewife with a string bag, finally catching up to him as he turned out onto the crowded platform.
    “Did you feel that wind?” I asked, taking hold of his sleeve. “Just now, in the tunnel?”
    He looked alarmed, and then, as I spoke, tolerant. “You’refrom the States, aren’t you? There’s always a slight rush of air as a train enters one of the tunnels. It’s perfectly ordinary. Nothing to be alarmed about.” He looked pointedly at my hand on his sleeve.
    “But this one was ice-cold,” I persisted. It—”
    “Ah, yes, well, we’re very near the river here,” he said, looking less tolerant. “If you’ll excuse me.” He freed his arm. “Have a pleasant holiday,”he said and walked away through the crowd to the farthest end of the platform.
    I let him go. He clearly hadn’t felt it. But he had to, I thought. He was right in front of me.
    Unless it wasn’t real, and I was experiencing some bizarre form of hallucination.
    “Finally,” a woman said, looking down the track, and I saw a train was approaching. Wind fluttered a flyer stuck on the wall and then theblonde hair of the woman standing closest to the edge. She turned unconcernedly toward the man next to her, saying something to him, shifting the leather strap of the bag on her shoulder.
    It hit again, an onslaught of cold and chemicals and corruption, a stench of decay.
    He has to have felt that, I thought, looking down the platform, but he was unconcernedly boarding the train, the touristsnext to him were looking up at the train and back down at their tube maps, unaware.
    They have to have felt it, I thought, and saw the elderly black man. He was halfway down the platform, wearing a plaid jacket. He shuddered as the wind hit, and then hunched his gray grizzled head into his shoulders like a turtle withdrawing into its shell.
    He
felt it, I thought, and started toward him, but hewas already getting on the train, the doors were already starting to close. Even running, I wouldn’t reach him.
    I bounded ontothe nearest car as the doors whooshed shut and stood there just inside the door, waiting for the next station. As soon as the doors opened I jumped out, holding onto the edge of the door, to see if he got off. He didn’t, or at the next station, and Bond Street was easy.Nobody got off.
    “Marble Arch,” the disembodied voice said, and the train pulled into the tiled station.
    What the hell was at Marble Arch? There had never been this many people when Cath and I stayed at the Royal Hernia. Everybody on the train was getting off.
    But was the old man? I leaned out from the door, trying to see if he’d gotten off.
    I couldn’t see him for the crowd. I stepped forwardand was immediately elbowed aside by an equally large herd of people getting on.
    I headed down the platform toward his car, craning my neck to spot his plaid jacket, his grizzled head in the exodus.
    “The doors are closing,” the voice of the tube said, and I turned just in time to see the train pull out, and the old man sitting inside, looking out at me.
    And now what? I thought, standing onthe abruptly deserted platform. Go back to Holborn and see if it happened again and somebody else felt it? Somebody who wasn’t getting on a train.
    Certainly nothing was going to happen here. This was our station, the one we had set out from every morning, come home to every night, the first time we were here, and there hadn’t been any strange winds. The Royal Hernia was only three blocks away,and we had run up the drafty stairs, holding hands, laughing about what the Old Man had said to the verger in Canterbury when he had shown us Thomas More’s grave—
    The Old Man. He would know what was causing the winds, or how to find out. He loved mysteries. He had dragged us to Greenwich, the British Museum, and down into the crypt of St. Paul’s, trying to find out what had happened to the armNelson lost in one of his naval battles. If anybody