TUBE FALLOUT: In London, the Friday morning after the attempted-murderous Thursday at first felt different from the day following the mass-murderous Thursday two weeks before. This time there was still trivia and cricket on the radio between the counter- terrorism experts. Broadcasting tone responds strictly to the numbers killed.
But a smaller incident can have greater background effect. On and beneath the streets, the fear felt deeper than in the first aftermath. On July 8th, it was possible for survivors to think they had missed the city's big bad luck. On July 22nd, the sense was not of sombre gratitude for escape but grim acceptance of the possible beginning of a pattern. According to checklists on the internet, based on Israeli experience, one way of spotting a suicide bomber on public transport is to look out for passengers who seem sweaty or anxious or who are mouthing silent prayers.
But the flaw in this technique is that almost everyone I saw on tubes or buses in yesterday morning's rush hour was glistening with apprehensive perspiration, while several seemed to be muttering secret deals with some deity. And yet none of these people wanted to kill me; they were trying to stay alive. So the eventual effect of these acts of terrorism is to make the threatening and the threatened indistinguishable.
As the rush hour began, it was the soundtrack that struck you first. It's always a sign of bad times in a city when the noise of sirens becomes as constant and unremarkable as birdsong. Perhaps one of the reasons we remember those violently killed with silences is that their killing makes a city shriek. Already, your ears almost tune out the sirens, registering only the helicopters. Soon, presumably, the blades of surveillance in the air will make no impression.
At 8am, the first 10 buses that passed me in west London looked largely empty but this was almost certainly an optical illusion. It was not that demand had fallen through commuter insecurity but that supply had been hugely increased to compensate for the suspended tube lines. Two of the buses were numberless: marked "Extra: ask driver". Further along, the buses were full, although almost all had a three-seat gap at the back of the upper deck, even though people stood crowded downstairs. Lovers and the long-legged used to compete for the high rear seats but, because both bus bombers reportedly sat there, the instinct seems to be to sit down or forwards.
At Notting Hill tube station, the crowds were smaller than normal but this may also have reflected necessity rather than terror: the District and Circle line from the station was closed. The explanatory notices from London Transport still refuse to use the word "bomb". Thursday July 7th was "the incidents"; Thursday 21st was referred to as "the network emergency". Posters appealed for sightings of the terrorist network which had caused the emergency. The toughest adjustment for Londoners is the introduction to a world in which the glimpse of a rucksack is like seeing a gun in the street.
Just short of Marble Arch, the train stopped in a tunnel. In the front carriage, we could hear through the steel door the driver calling out, "Two five, two five". Three weeks ago such conversations were nothing; now they are strange and possibly dangerous sentences that may be the last you hear.
Behind the door, a message crackled back that included the word "emergency". The driver now announced that we were being held between stations "because of a security alert at Liverpool Street". He failed to make this sound reassuring. Airlines, knowing that their clientele think constantly of death, give pilots vocal training in hiding their own fear and appeasing other people's. Tube drivers will need these acting classes. Then, without further announcement, the train rattled forward to the next station.
Later in the morning, the tubes seemed emptier than could be explained by suspended connections from other lines. My guess is that commuters who have to use the Underground in rush hour were doing so. Shoppers and tourists, who have the choice, were opting out. Terrorism seeks to kill many but disrupt the lives of most, and in this, whatever politicians say, it seems to be succeeding. On July 7th we wondered if London was the new New York: a single attack, followed by decreasing fear. On July 21st, we speculated whether the city was another Madrid: a massive attack and then a thwarted one and then nothing.
But yesterday, underground and on buses, as the news of the Stockwell shooting came through, you could feel the forming of the awful thought that abnormality might become normal. The first phase of modern terrorism turned airports into fortresses; the second phase turned everywhere into an airport, with searches, questions and frightened eyes above gulping throats.
And now, in the aftermath of the terrifying and then the nervous Thursday, every day on the London roads feels like Christmas Day (stalled traffic and no taxis to be had) while every day on the trains and buses is a bank holiday: interrupted services and half-empty carriages. In the next few weeks, we will find out if an even greater dislocation has occurred. Has London become Belfast or Tel Aviv?