Final Ride on Our Piccadilly Line

LONDON
We board the Piccadilly Line at our Tube stop: Turnpike Lane.  At 10am the commuters who would normally crowd the platform are already at work.  There is plenty of room.  We see on the screen that the next train terminates at Heathrow – good.  The train slows and stops.  The doors slide open.  Dragging our 13 pieces of luggage, we lumber into the car with effort but without incident.  The Piccadilly Line cars are designed with luggage-bearing travelers in mind because it serves King’s Cross-St. Pancras train station and Heathrow Airport.  Each of us claims one of the corner spaces on either side of the four double doors and arranges our luggage.  There aren’t available seats next to our luggage yet, but we know folks will get off at Finsbury Park to switch over to the faster Victoria Line.

When we pull into King’s Cross our train car is full.  We are all seated next to our bags, Lily and Beth across from each other.  There is an exhalation of people heading for trains and the Circle Line Tube.  Our car inhales an equal number of people and more luggage.  Two families with teenagers board.  They appear to be eastern European or Russian.  The boy gets caught in the door as it is closing.  It reopens with a jerk.  He slips into the car.  His mother scowls and scolds him.  By Holburn the train is very full.  As usual many business people get off with their brief cases and shined shoes.  A woman in a black knit dress and neat black raincoat absorbed in Buying Fashion, which appears to be a text book, gives a starts.  She jumps up and exits through the doors pushing past incoming passengers as she stuffs the book in her shoulder bag.

At Leicester Square two middle aged women sit down across from me.  They are deep in animated conversation.  The shorter woman is wearing black leather calf-high boots.  The top four inches have a decorated LV (Louis Vitton) pattern.  When her friend with a dozen bangles on her left wrist and oversized black and silver watch on her right crosses her legs I see her black boots have a bold “CC” (Channel) logo.  Without stopping their conversation they exit three stops later at Knightsbridge -- the Harrod's department store stop.

A Sikh boy and his father are standing opposite my luggage.  The boy is maybe ten.  His hair is tied up in a black bun.  His father’s short cropped black hair is uncovered.  They exit at South Kensington.  I imagine they are going on a school-holiday outing to one of the museums. Science?, Natural History? V+A?

By Baron’s Court nearly all riders have luggage in their laps, propped in front of them, or in the luggage corners like ours.  We’ve passed out of Zone One and are heading on the long stretch west toward Heathrow. A Chinese man has joined us.  He has two enormous bags that make our large bags look like carry-ons.  In Zone Four a woman with luggage gets off at Hounslow West.  She must live out here and arrived in London from somewhere by train. She is South Asian.  This reminds me of Bend it Like Beckham, a movie we saw recently about a soccer-mad Indian girl who lives near Heathrow.

It’s been 90 minutes since we boarded.  Lily has finished Room.  She’ll leave it at the airport to save space and weight in her carry on. Our train’s automated voice finally announces “Heathrow Terminals 1, 3 and 4.”  The four of us rise, along with our other passengers, and arrange our luggage around us.  Our Tube cars trundle along.  Conversations have picked up as people confer about tickets, terminals, luggage. We sway forward as the car brakes.   The train stops and the doors slide open.  I pull the two sets of rolling bags off behind me.  I look down the platform and there is Abby with her two rolling bags and purple JanSport backpack.  Lily winks.  Beth has her luggage and is smiling.  Lily straightens the hood on Beth’s black coat.

We move off in a line toward the escalator and exit barriers leading into the airport. 


Peter