Read Above His Station for Free Online

in the lock, the fourth went in but wouldn’t turn, but the fifth – well, the fifth gave a confident ‘SNAP!’ and as I pushed on the gate, to my delight, it opened! I wanted to do a little jig right there and then, had my leg not been throbbing so badly. My nightmarish morning was finally at an end!
    ‘Well? Are you coming or not?’ I asked the rat.
    It didn’t budge. ‘You do remember I said that was a bad idea, right?’
    ‘Yes, but I don’t have much of a choice, do I?’ I insisted. ‘I told you, I have to report what’s happened. I can’t just leave a dead tiger lying about the place, can I?’
    The rat puffed out its furry little cheeks. ‘Okay…well, in that case, I’d better tag along. At least then I’ll be there to say I told you so…and I will, by the way…but things topside might be pretty scary for you, man.’
    I grinned. ‘Oh, I don’t know. I think it’s all rather exciting, really.’
    ‘It is?’ asked the rat.
    ‘Of course!’ I said, gleefully. ‘After all, it’s not every day you get to meet the Queen, is it?’
     

2
     
    I decided to leave my heavy suitcase behind and stowed it underneath one of the benches on the platform. It should be quite safe as long as I locked the gate behind me, which I did, before entering Regal Street station proper. Feeling sorry for the rat on account of its tiny little legs, I scooped it up and let it sit on my shoulder where it could get a decent view of things. The cleanliness of the platform (before the tiger had made such a mess of it, of course) extended throughout, with pristine walls and spotless floors, and quite unlike all other Tube stations, Regal Street was completely devoid of any advertisements plastered over the walls. The escalator still wasn’t functioning, so we walked up the stairs with a brisk stroll and through the station’s winding tunnels. I seemed to instinctively know my way about the place. Once again I paid particular notice to how clean everything was and I hoped I wasn’t going to get the blame for the tiger. That was the nudist train driver’s fault, not mine. The last thing I wanted was to get a black mark against my name on my first day in the job. At least I had the rat as testament to my innocence…as long as talking vermin are accepted as character witnesses at an industrial tribunal.
    ‘I wonder where that beast escaped from,’ I mumbled, not really to my rodent companion; the recipient by circumstance only. ‘Tigers are awfully expensive, so surely somebody will be out of pocket. I still can’t believe that no one was looking for it. Tigers don’t usually wander into a Tube station in the middle of rush hour and go for a little stroll along the tracks unnoticed, do they?’
    ‘All evidence to the contrary,’ said the rat. ‘But then today’s not exactly what you’d class as ‘usual’, is it? So are we really going to see the Queen?’
    ‘We might bump into her,’ I said, feeling a bit cautious, for I could lose my job if I revealed too much. ‘This station is reserved for the private use of the Royal Family. The tracks were formerly used by the Royal Mail to deliver post all over London until the mid-forties, but when World War 2 broke out, it became necessary to ensure that the Royals could get safely out of London. King George VI was forced to use it several times during the Blitz, apparently. All of this is top secret, you understand. It wouldn’t do for people to hear that the monarchy had their own personal escape route, leaving everyone else to fend for themselves.’
    ‘Has the Queen ever used it?’ asked the rat, appearing to be genuinely interested and so I found myself rambling, spilling secrets that I knew I should not.
    ‘Several times. The last time I think was in the 80’s when we had all those IRA bomb threats. Of course, that was long before this al-Qaeda business.’
    ‘So…it’s your job to look after this secret station that no one knows about?’
    ‘Yes,