There are few people who don’t admit to doing a spot of people-watching from time to time, and for a writer such an activity is positively compulsory. It might seem a luxury to relax in a cafe or on a park bench watching the world go by, but I can assure you it’s serious business, and as much a part of the job description as sitting at one’s desk agonising over a chapter ending.
My second book is set in London, and lately I’ve been spending lots of time there, dashing from Paddington down to Victoria for research meetings with a variety of senior police officers. On the way I watch people. Men, women, old, young… I watch them go about their business, oblivious they are being scrutinised. Creepy? I can see how it might seem that way, but this is idle observation, no more than anyone else does on the edge of a crowd.
A writer’s mind is a fertile thing, but sometimes I need to do more than simply mine the well of my imagination. I need to write what I can actually see. It’s the difference between the painter working from memory in his studio, and the students with their life model, noting down the way each muscle tenses; interpreting the expression on the model’s face.
Last week I sat on the Central line opposite a man in his early thirties. He wore a suit too broad for him, the drooping shoulders mirroring the air of defeat on his face. Unlike the people either side of him he wasn’t fiddling with his phone, or reading the paper: he stared into the space between his feet and mine, his eyes trained on the ground. Where was he going? I wondered. Where had he been? The lines etched around his eyes were born from more than temporary stress; this was a man for whom anxiety was a longterm companion.
I would use him as my life model, I decided. A five minute pen picture to help me add more authenticity, more colour, to the scenes in my novel set on the Underground. I pulled out my notebook and began writing. I took notes; no structure or story to my scribblings, just a bullet pointed description that forced me to capture the tiny detail I might not see in my imagination. The frayed end on one of his shoelaces, as though a dog had been at it. The Underground map, badly folded so that it protruded from his pocket, confirming what I had already deduced; that this wasn’t his usual habitat.
As I wrote, I became aware that I, too, was being watched. Tilting my head just a fraction to my left, I let my eyes travel from my page, to land upon the woman next to me. She held a book firmly in front of her (S J Watson’s Second Life, I noted, and I resisted the temptation to ask her how she was finding it) but she wasn’t looking at it. Instead she was staring at my notebook, looking faintly alarmed. From the corner of my eye I saw her glance at the man opposite, taking in the three dimensional version of my bullet points.
I flushed, a wave of heat making me feel slightly nauseous. I remembered an article I’d once read in the Evening Standard, about a website dedicated to photos of women eating on the Tube. I remembered how outraged I’d been about the invasion of their privacy; the objectification of women who had no clue they were being observed. This was different though. These were just my private notes; a creative writing exercise, not a prelude to public humiliation. It wasn’t the same at all. Was it?
The woman’s gaze burned into me. I imagined her calling me out; snatching my notebook and reading it out, whipping the entire carriage into a witch-burning frenzy. I’d be pilloried on social media; decried in the papers, and all because I wanted to hone my skills.
I contempated writing IT’S OK, I’M AN AUTHOR at the top of the page, block capitals and underlined, but it seemed a little unsubtle, a little too defensive. Instead I turnd the page, my pencil resting on a clean, white sheet.
‘Once upon a time,’ I began, ‘there was a woman who liked to ride the Underground. She watched her fellow passengers, and she made up stories about what she saw.’
We reached St Paul’s and the woman stood up. I looked at her and gave her what I hoped was a reassuring smile, but I suspect was a little too fervent for two strangers on a train. She hurriedly gathered her belongings, and I wondered if she really was getting off at St Paul’s, or if she would run down the platform and get in the next carriage, a safe distance from the mad woman with the notebook. Either way, she had gone.
I think we were both relieved.