A maintenance gang in gaudy dungarees, clicketing at the coils on the ground. Heads turned. A pallid Irish face with sad and smoky eyes, a black man closed on an anger which would never speak. Here they are, trapped in the mine of life, tapping. But who has come?

"Hey, mate—"

Another man nudged the speaker.

They stood aside, to let him go by.

The black man said: "Tea urn next platform. Don't go no further."

As he passed, Malach raised his hand, and the black man clapped his own into it. It was a salute seldom shared with a white, but in this case, for some reason, permissible.

When Malach had gone by, the black man found a note of money in his palm, stuck there like a butterfly wing.

"Mary, Mother of God," said the Irishman.

They stood, looking at the note.

Out on the platform the half-orange-clad foreman in his vest, gaped at Malach passing down the line.

"Here, you—"

Malach paid no attention.

The man at the urn shook his head. "Leave it, Eddie."

Beyond the station, another stretch of the dark, and then more lights, and a group of women bundled in dungarees with silver faces gauzed in little breathing masks. One sang in a low and burning voice, "Every time we say good-bye—"

The song was stilled. As the maintenance gang had done, the gang of women fluffers stared. They were the moths beneath the earth who brushed off the dense black powder of shed skin, webbed hair, the dregs of expiry, psychic shadow and decay, pumped daily out into these curved arteries. They were a lost tribe, living by night like vampires, in the coffins of the tube.

"Darlin'," said one to Malach, "don't go on no further."

"No, lovey," said another. "There's a dead 'un."

"She means," said the singer, and her voice was honey, spoiled by rust, "the next station, it's closed."

"Since the 1950s," said another, a fat woman.

"Not tonight," said Malach.

The women drew aside. "You ain't with that?"

"No," Malach said.

"Scum," said the woman who had not sung. "I'd do for 'em. But we can't do nothing."

"You hear it," said the singer. "Far off."

"Tonight," said Malach, "silence will come."

They looked. The singer nodded. She sang, in a murmur, not like the sea but like some distant train moving over honey: "I die a little."

Malach took her hand. He drew close to her, and put down his head until his forehead rested on her dusty hair. She smelled of trying to keep clean against great odds. Never had a man held her, touched her, as this one did. Never such a man. And never again.

When he was gone, the one who did not sing, laughed. But then she stopped laughing.

"Look."

They looked at the note.

"Toy-Town money," said one of them.

"Must be."

The dark had swallowed him, the turn toward the ghost station.