Roma Tearne - Brixton Beach

‘It means a lot of people are involved,’ adds a woman nearby. ‘My mobile isn’t working.’

‘Nor mine.’

‘The network is blocked,’ someone else informs them. ‘Or they’ve been reserved for the emergency services.’

Voices cut across each other, conversations interlock. A woman with a pushchair is crying helplessly.

‘My daughter was going on a school trip today but she had a tummy bug so she stayed at home.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. They would have come to Leicester Square and gone across to the National Gallery.’

‘Some poor parents must be going mad.’

There is another wave of wailing ambulances, louder than before, nearer. How many more are needed? One stops on the wrong side of the now deserted road, flagged down by two police officers who have parked their car diagonally across the kerb. Sniffer dogs prowl at their feet. Simon runs towards the paramedics stepping out of one of the vehicles.

‘John,’ he cries, before the policemen can stop him. ‘John!’

The sniffer dog bares his teeth. Overhead a plane flies slowly through the sky. It is so low that everyone looks up, startled. The moment is frozen, trapped within a bubble of terror. Held steadily.

The plane, it has a blue and yellow tail, glides smoothly above the trees and disappears between two tall buildings.

‘Dr Swann,’ the paramedic says in surprise, and the policeman hesitates.

‘I was in the area,’ Simon says quickly and with deathly calm. ‘Can I help?’

‘They’re on standby, sir. At Tommy’s. And at Charing Cross. It’s okay,’ John tells the policeman, who discreetly lowers his gun. ‘He’s one of ours, off duty.’

And he nods, grimly, as though he has already braced himself for the sight they are expecting.

‘I think it’s a big one, sir, judging by the fuss. Everyone’s on the highest alert. Top priority. Must be bad.’

He shakes his head. He has just been called away from a pile-up on the slip road to the motorway. How many miracles are they supposed to perform in a day?

‘Let me come with you, John,’ Simon pleads as they move off together towards the tube station.

At the entrance to the underground a shudder runs through him. It travels from his feet upwards towards his head. The scene before him is of biblical proportions. A man, or is it a woman, head swathed in a makeshift bandage cut from a shirt, is being helped across to the emergency post recently set up on the grass verge. For a moment the figure hovers, stumbles, its veiled face catching the light. A photographer clicks his camera. This image of a bandaged face will become iconic, one of the images of the year, the decade, even. Someone somewhere loves the face under these bandages. Simon moves towards the emergency post. A waiter has brought chairs for the walking wounded; the lucky ones. There are others not so lucky.

Firemen are bringing out stretcher after stretcher of wounded, mutilated bodies. Cries fill his ears. A charred body, indistinguishable in every way except for a bracelet on a blackened arm, lies motionless. A man, lying face up, stares at nothing, unaware his guts are exposed to the summer breeze. A woman, legs gone from the knees downward, sliced clean, unconscious but still breathing, waits to be whisked off in an ambulance. Two paramedics are already triaging the arrivals. Some to ambulances, some to be treated first for minor injuries, others, with a sheet over them, to be identified later. A cameraman is recording the scene silently. Picasso’s Guernica , thinks Simon, before he can stop himself. And something else, too, he thinks. He sees a room, lit from above, as though with searchlights, and a cupboard that opens out to reveal the hull of a boat. He hears voices. Searching for Lost Time. A figure lies before him, long dark hair, caked with blood, eyes closed. He has seen so much blood in his life. Blood and its seepage has been the thing he deals with best. But this blood, this flesh is different. He cannot bear it. All around the drenching terrible smell of burning flesh and soot fill the bright blue sky. Scorched limbs, voices pleading with him, voices giving out instructions.

‘Help me, help me!’

‘This one’s lost a deal of blood …’

‘This one for Tommy’s …’

He is working on autopilot, going through the routines, but all the time he’s looking, looking. Every face, every limb, searching for what he dreads finding, but looking anyway. His heart is crying, he should not have come; he should have stayed in the hospital. Waited. But he is here now and he will not leave until he knows. One way or another. Perhaps, he thinks, the thought forming into words, springing into life, perhaps she’s in the tunnel. Suddenly all his strength deserts him and he feels the ground heave up towards him.

‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbles, but no one hears him.

Perhaps if he goes back she’ll ring. Perhaps she is still at Brixton Beach. Safe, trying to get hold of him. Wildly he looks around, not knowing what to do, and in this fraction of a second a woman dies in front of him. The colours of death, he thinks. Why is he thinking this now?

‘Who has done this terrible thing?’ a voice cries. ‘Who could want to hurt us this much?’

‘The people of London …’ the BBC journalist says into the microphone. He has been the first of the media presenters to arrive on the scene, the first to file copy; sensitive, sharp, precise.

‘Bastards! What have they done?’

The cry of rage reaching his ears is an ancient one, repeated from time immemorial. Arms rise heavenwards as though in prayer. Humanity’s unanswered question asked on this ghost of a morning in July. Helplessly, Simon turns towards the speaker, a man old enough to have seen the sands of Dunkirk, a man old enough to have witnessed the Battle of Britain. For on this beautiful day, even as Big Ben strikes the hour and swallows fill the summer skies, a lesser God descends. Fraught with terrible intent. Here, in the very heart of London.

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