Low life | 15 November 2012

Two policemen and a policewoman were the first of the emergency services to arrive on the platform. The policemen ran about like headless chickens. The woman was calmer. She quickly grasped the essentials of the situation, such as under which wheel the suicide lay, and who had been driving the train.

Then more police arrived, and a paramedic team. One of the paramedics knelt down, then got his head and shoulders under the carriage and reached down and felt the dead man’s wrist for a pulse. Then the policewoman, noticing that there were passengers still on the train, indignantly ordered the train manager to evacuate it.

This he did, netting around a dozen of us. He shepherded us down two flights of metal steps and told us to wait there, at the foot of the embankment. Typically, perhaps, for a random cross-section of the travelling public taken late on a Sunday night, we were a motley crowd. Most noticeable among us was a pair of teenage lovers who couldn’t keep their hands off one another; a gentle, ruddy-faced giant roused from sleep with his hair sticking up; a Pre-Raphaelite beauty placidly texting on her iPhone; and an obese woman with purple lipstick proclaiming her African heritage with an ankle-length cotton dress and multicoloured shawl.

Ten minutes later, the train manager returned. We gathered round him, eager for information. More than likely a bus would be sent to pick us up and take us to our final destinations, he said, but exactly when this bus might arrive he couldn’t yet say. He appreciated that it was a freezing night, but he hoped we would all be on our way again soon. Nobody asked him a question about the ‘fatality’.