A couple of days ago, after a hastily prepared breakfast of oatmeal and coffee, I donned a dark blue coat, wrapped a purple scarf around my neck, and located my purse and house keys. Locking the front door behind me, I headed down the steps to the street. The laurel hedge lay in wait for me as usual, a reminder of my past discretions. I almost vanquished it the previous November, cutting it from eight foot in height right down to eighteen inches, a knee-jerk reaction after the break-in at our house. The hedge provided a very dense curtain behind which potential thieves could hide and it had to go. So I hacked at it over several evenings while the torrential rain poured, getting to know a few bemused neighbours in the process.
The lady in the bungalow opposite us came over with her equally inquisitive white Scottie dog and asked if everything was alright. I looked at her dog poking round my muddied shoes, smiled grimly and said that the laurel hedge and I could not co-exist. She looked at me pityingly and dragged Scottie away.
The following day, Gigi from next door brought over a plate of specially baked Portuguese doughnuts.
“This will give you strength to fight the hedge!” she whispered knowingly. “Your husband, he is sick, no? " I shook my head. “He no help you with the cut cut?”Again I shook my head. My other half would have nothing to do with the massacre of the laurel hedge, which was totally ok by me. “That is a disgrace”, she muttered, and left.
Now the stark roughly cut branches reared up out of the ground, with hardly a leaf in sight. I made a mental note that serious landscaping was needed come the spring as I trundled down the road towards the sky train. My job was in the city centre. I walked quickly and within a few minutes arrived at the station. There was obviously a cull on free loaders, as a uniformed inspector firmly asked for my ticket before I could get on to the platform.
It was seven thirty and still dark. The lights of a distant train were visible, becoming ever brighter as it approached the station. The train came to a halt, and I walked on board. The cars were mostly full, with standing room only for newcomers. I stood, eyeing the adverts on the inside of the car as the train moved away from the platform. There were a few common themes: pregnancy tests, educational courses and the ubiquitous ad for those sinking into financial catastrophe.
“If you are facing bankruptcy, we can help!” blared the ad with a picture of a man who managed to look terribly handsome and terribly worried at the same time. Next to it was another advert telling us how we could all become chartered accountants in just three years and we did not have to quit our day jobs. While the thought of changing jobs was appealing, the idea of becoming a chartered accountant was even less so.
I looked around me. We had an assorted crowd today – some asleep, some gazing blindly off into space, others half way through reading the latest bestseller. The faint smell of nicotine emanated from the young women in a green coat next to me. I tried to ignore the incessant drum beat from the not so silent headphones of the rap music fan standing to the other side of her.
On commutes such as these, I considered reading a book with an interesting title on the train just to get a reaction. How about “The Island of the Secret Love Nun” with the equally lurid cover, or that well loved pamphlet, “Lock Picking Simplified.” The problem was, with everyone wrapped up in their own world, I did not think anyone would notice.
Two stops after I got on, the train drew up to Hyde Street Station. A sizeable woman of about fifty edged her way into the compartment. She was professionally dressed in a maroon suit, and sported blond streaked wavy hair. At that moment I glanced down the other end of the train, which in retrospect, was a pity, because I missed the pivotal moment of the journey.
Immediately I heard a commotion to the side of me and I turned back to see the woman in the dark red suit being ejected from the train by a stockily built man. He had dark curly collar length hair, a black sports jacket, blue jeans and runners. This was no gentle nudge. I saw him use both hands to push her violently out of the train. She fell backwards on to the platform.
A moment later, the woman came barrelling back in to the train, spewing colourful invective and proceeded to kick the perpetrator. He responded by punching her.
In the meantime the incongruously cheerful jingle sounded to denote that the train was departing the station. The doors closed with the two warring parties very much on board and the train left the station, quickly picking up speed. The kicking, shoving and swearing continued, not six feet away from where I stood.
This was a packed train. About sixty people witnessed the scene. In the immediate aftermath, except for some shuffling of feet, there was a stunned silence. Nobody spoke and nobody moved; well apart from the two people apparently determined to beat the life out of each other. It became obvious that they weren’t about to stop anytime soon.
“You bastard,” she yelled repeatedly, “You threw me off the train”.
“You’re crazy,” he shouted. “Get off me.”
She slapped him round the side of the face, causing him to curse and wince. He shoved her backwards against the side of the car.
After the initial shock I was thinking of ways to intervene without risk to life and limb. These two individuals were not short of stature. A black belt in martial arts might be of assistance in situations like this. For a moment, I thought that someone needed to tell the driver and quickly. Then I remembered that on these computer operated trains, we had no driver. I imagined that I wasn’t the only one thinking about what to do next and how to stop this mayhem. Perhaps some of us were thinking about the incident in Narrowton a few weeks back when a bystander intervened in a fight in front of a restaurant and paid for it with her life. Whilst I was pondering the situation, a man next to me stepped into the breach. He was six foot tall, not a hair on his head, dressed in casual business clothes. He stepped towards them.
“Come on, now, you two, tone it down, tone it down,” he said.
The two of them, still punching and kicking each other, either did not hear or chose to ignore him, and carried on fighting. Sir Lancelot did not give up. He put himself between them, earning a swipe across the chest from the man, but he persisted and forced them apart. Arms flailed and legs swung, the swearing continued. He pulled the woman away from the man, talking firmly but calmly all the time.
“Tone it down; this isn’t the way to settle things.”
Separated from her attacker, the women, who had an Australian accent, tried to bait him.
“I’m on medication, but you should be.” she flung at him.
I thought that was an interesting choice of words. As if to say, she was crazy but what was his excuse?
He ignored her, looking the other way. Lancelot stayed between them, continually talking softly to the women, stopping her from starting the fracas again. An uneasy calm prevailed in the carriage.
A couple of stops later, the woman got off with the shining knight, and they left, all the while she complained about how terrible the other man had been, and that he should be arrested.
The train carried on towards Bognor Street. As it entered the station, the train stopped, and came to a complete stand still for about thirty seconds, the doors remaining shut. Three guards on the platform peered into each carriage. Clearly someone had pressed the silent alarm.
After a few moments the train moved forward again, coming to a halt. I looked at the man who had been in the fight. He looked small, insignificant somehow, blending in with the crowd. He stepped off the train at the same time that I did. No one pointed him out, and no one stopped him. The crowd flowed out of the platform and up the escalator. I watched him as he disappeared from sight, trying to retain his description in my mind.
I proceeded to the office, describing the incident to my colleagues. I was sure the story was relayed in dozens of workplaces across the city. In thirty minutes or less, I imagined over a thousand people knew about the fight, each with a different picture of the events earlier that morning. I wondered if Lancelot told the story with himself as the hero. I imagined not; he did not seem the type. Quiet, effective action appeared to be his mode of operation.
I thought about the incident frequently for the rest of the day. I wondered what the women had done to provoke such a violent reaction from a total stranger. Maybe she had bumped into him. It still did not explain the force of his reaction.
As I walked home that evening, I slowly walked along the footpath to my home. The laurel hedge, eighteen inches in height, lay in front of me again. I stood and stared at it. I contemplated that if sixty people in a crowd did nothing while a fight went on under their collective noses, what were the chances of anyone intervening if they saw someone trying to break into our home? Was all that cutting for nought? I silently apologized to the remains of the hedge as I slowly climbed the steps into the house.
