In this space a century later they guide us onto the platform. White-gloved, red-suited, the attendants unclipping the velvet ropes one by one to let us pass. They are unfailingly polite and we make our little bows to them as they take the little golden tickets from our shirt pockets and purses, from where we have crumpled them into little balls in our fists. The fathers and mothers and their children go under the stone arch in twos and trees. The arms of the peeling wallpaper encircle us, we are lost in the gold filigree. Under our feet the carpet thick with dust and mildew seems to swallow our feet. In the space of memory there is little distinction between the painting and the frame, such that as they take us down the cracked stone steps, past the flecked sans-serif signs, there is no break, no loss in continuity from one room to another; the sepia undercoat remains as it is unbroken and spilling across the walls and frames of the rusted fire shutters, and there are flowers sprouting between the spaces of the ungrouted tiles. At the platform they placed a little trolleycar, big enough to fit four, driven by tiny belts running underneath the tracks. We follow into the dark where the trains once fled. Our guide points out features above us: look at the patches where the old mural used to be, where now a dim light shines to preserve what's left of its colour. Look at the vaults, the columns, the airwell. The gaps between the grand plaster trees. We nod silently, we disembark. In the gift shop behind the glass cases are lost umbrellas, left-behind luggage, a stuffed monkey with patches of fur missing from its long arms… I remember how I used to hold it as a child, how the imprint of my hand stayed when I let it go. How in the old days they used to build things softly. Layering them on one at a time so that you did not notice how much time had passed when they were done. Once there was no station and suddenly there was. Then suddenly there was no station and we are left trudging through the gap of it all. The tunnel roaring like stormwater through the heart.