Under the Arches
By Chris Amies


Martin found a public lavatory under the railway arches near Clapham Junction. He made his way down the tiled staircase and inside the gents'. It was remarkably clean; no graffiti, no smashed tiles, certainly no syringes or silver foil. There was a large, dark figure standing near the entrance. He’s just the attendant, Martin thought, and made for a cubicle and locked himself in.
The dark figure was there still as he left the cubicle; hunched yet taller than him, not just dark but clad all in rough, black clothing. The big man glanced at Martin and nodded slightly.
Martin put his hands under the curved chrome beak of the tap and water gushed out over them.
He squirted soap over his hands, washed them.
The attendant handed him a towel. Martin, surprised, looked at him and said,
“Thank you.” The attendant cracked his face into something that was probably a smile, exposing chunky canine teeth. Why should I be frightened? Martin wondered, though he had been. The fellow just looks a bit unfortunate. Shaggy hair, heavy brows, a wide nose; scarcely any wonder he ended up working in a toilet. He handed the man a pound coin.
“It's nice here,” Martin said. “Very clean.”
The attendant nodded.
“Very clean,” the attendant said. “Work here long time.”
“How long,” Martin said. “How long have you been working here?”
“Years,” the attendant said. “Many, many years.” The voice was rough but somehow reassuring, deep and solid, but the way he said ‘many years’ made it sound like many indeed..
“I show you,” the man said, and padded off out of the mens' room. Martin followed. the attendant opened a door in the vestibule and showed him a small room, a large mattress on the floor – it would need to be large to suit the fellow – an old armchair and a television. But it was the items on the table that interested the attendant.
The big man picked one up. A rusted sword in a scabbard. He handed it to Martin, who at first got no feeling from it, but then he had a clear vision of drifting black smoke, men on horses, shouting, fire going up; and after that, an island of apples, a castle ruled by a royal couple come from far away; also here. The sword thrown into the river, where Battersea Bridge is now.
And the next? Propped against the wall in the corner?
The creature lifted it easily, but Martin could barely raise the stained war-club from the ground. Its story? The building of a city in the bend of the river; and after that, a council that made peace among the warring tribes.

Then the attendant took another item from the table: a triangular object, roughly cut into a blade, and lashed to a broken shaft as long as Martin's forearm. The attendant poked his own considerable chest.
“Me,” he said, “Long time ago. When the ice was. Here.”
Martin reached out and touched the thing and at once a new vision came to him, blue skies, tundra and a broad river, and many people, broad-faced and heavy-browed, men and women, children too, in a village of round huts in the shadow of the towering ice. And yet that place was also here, Battersea.
“But why do you stay here?” Martin asked.
The attendant touched his own face.
“Different,” he said. “Their enemy. It is all you people, now.”
Then the attendant picked up another item. Heroes, Martin thought. These are the weapons of heroes. And the spearhead ... his. He, the chief of a village ten thousand years ago, the first to live here.
“You,” he said. “a hero also.” The last of your kind. Had he really been here that long; or just the descendant of the ancient tribes, living here in the shadows and the dark spaces, where they could hide?
“No,” the big fellow said. “Now, I must work.” He ushered Martin out.
Martin climbed the stairs into the half-darkness of the arches. The next week he came back but the lavatory was closed and boarded up.


- - -
Chris Amies lives in London and works for the Civil Service. He has had one novel published, one non-fiction book of archive photographs, and about a dozen stories in anthologies and magazines. His main preoccupations are music, weird stuff generally, and languages - he previously taught English in Thessaloniki, Greece.