Gathering storm
Jeremy Clarke
Irested my chin on my hand and watched the passing scenery all the way to London. For most of the journey the sky was filled with towering black clouds and from time to time rain smashed against the window. The train seemed to be racing just ahead of a deep, fast-moving depression travelling west to east. Passengers with a raincoat or umbrella stowed on the luggage rack were probably quietly congratulating themselves for their forward thinking.
At Paddington station I stepped down from the train and went and stood on smokers’ corner and smoked a fag in violently gusting wind and bright sunshine. I was headed for a rooftop party. Squinting up between the buildings, I tried to work out whether or not it was going to rain. Black clouds streamed across the London sky like outriders of a marauding army.
I went by underground train from Paddington to Piccadilly Circus. As I trod the steps up to ground level, I saw that the sky was now almost entirely black. Great gusts of wind were knocking young and old off balance. Strange it was, but thrilling, too, to be experiencing wild, open-country weather like this in the heart of the capital. As I walked down Haymarket I fancied that somehow I’d accidentally acquired shamanic powers and had brought the gathering storm to town with me.
As I turned right at the bottom of Haymarket, I felt the first spot of rain on my face. I crossed over the Mall and skirted St James’s Park. Steady rain was now pattering on the leaves of the plane trees along Horseguards Road. I had no umbrella. No raincoat. I hoped to make it across to Birdcage Walk before seeking shelter. But before I’d reached the war memorial half-way across, someone opened a celestial stop-cock and the rain accelerated to a thunderous deluge. I ran towards a narrow pathway that appeared to lead deep into a shrubbery, and found, a short distance along it, the open door of a gentleman’s lavatory. I dived inside and shook the water from my hair.
I’d guess it was a late-Victorian gents lavatory: brick-built; spacious; tall, solid urinals. Daylight, such as it was, was admitted via a narrow opaque window above head height. Four men were in there already. They were smartly dressed and not wet at all. They appeared to know each other and were standing against the far wall in a relaxed, proprietary manner, as if it was a place where they often met to while away a summer afternoon. They weren’t speaking, but their silence was comradely. They were facing the door as though expecting other friends to arrive at any moment. I said hallo and smiled, and received a couple of guarded ones back. ‘This’ll keep the dust down,’ I said, unzipping and making for the urinal, reasoning that I might as well make use of the opportunity while I was there.
While I was up there on the plinth, two other men emerged simultaneously from the cubicles. I only saw them with my peripheral vision, but I think they came out of the same one. The rain hammered on the roof and cascaded noisily down from the overflowing guttering outside. Then some city types came bounding in and then three drenched cyclists came in, pushing their bikes ahead of them. Then more men in suits came in, some of them talking into their mobile phones, and then an elderly man pulling a long-haired dachshund on a lead. And then a party of about 40 French schoolchildren, plus three teachers wearing luminous yellow tabards, forced their way in. The French schoolchildren were babbling excitedly among themselves, as French schoolchildren in England generally do, finding each other far more fascinating and congenial than anything our poor benighted country might have to offer.
While I stood waiting for the rain to stop, I tested this observation by transplanting this particular party of French schoolchildren via my imagination to the Cenotaph during the minute’s silence on Remembrance Day, and from there to a tie-breaking frame of the world snooker final.
The dinning on the roof decreased slightly. I exchanged hopeful glances with one of the men recently out of the cubicle. Yes, it was definitely easing off. Men straightened their shoulders and smoothed their hair as though waiting to disembark from a plane. The rain slowed, then ceased as suddenly as it had started. We filed out under the dripping plane trees and went our separate ways. The volume and intensity of the French schoolchildren’s chatter was the same going as it was coming. The rain held off for the duration of the rooftop party.
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