by Oliver Balch
Rob lays two sheets of newspaper in front of the wood burner and kneels down to open it. Inside is the charred mess he had warned about. ‘Move that chair, could ya?’ he asks, pointing to a low upholstered armchair resting against the wall behind him. He is bending forward to open the stove door. I guess he fears an ash cloud might envelop the room. The armchair has a circular orange seat and thin stunted legs that splay outwards. It’s all very retro, very junk-shop Hay.
‘Just put it over there. That’s fine.’
He waves a hand towards the entrance area. I lift the chair over an L-shaped sofa that faces the fire and then edge it around a protruding cupboard that separates off the kitchen-dining area, which is located at the front of the bus.
The bus isn’t much wider than a modern people carrier and measures about twice the length. It feels surprisingly spacious all the same, a sensation aided by the high roof. There’s room to swing a cat, were cats allowed. Which they aren’t; the Majestic Bus is a pet-free zone.
‘It’s a Bedford SB Plaxton Panorama.’ Rob delivers the information with uncharacteristic seriousness. He pauses a fraction to allow the full weight of the revelation to sink in. ‘1968,’ he adds, a look of beaming pleasure lighting up his face.
The vehicle used to belong to Brodyr Williams, whose name still adorns the side of the bus in an expansive blue, cursive font. Brodyr Williams is a bus firm based in the Carmarthenshire village of Upper Tumble, a fairytale name if ever there was. The company’s vehicles still ply the roads of south-west Wales, although no longer in Panorama 68s. These bow-sided forty-five seaters left regular service decades ago, replaced by slicker, more reliable models.
I can’t help but think that the world is poorer for the Panorama’s passing. It might have belched diesel fumes and struggled up hills, but the 68 had pizzazz, with its chromestriped trim and wrap-around windscreen, its Cape Canaveral radiator grille and its racy curves. Even the twin headlights – rounded, protuberant, bright as glitter balls – screamed cool.
So too does Rob and Layla’s post-restoration interior. It didn’t start out that way. Rob stripped it right back, redid the wiring, replaced the boarding and laid a timber floor. A photo montage on the wall of the outside lavatory block depicts the full transformation. The mini-exhibition is mounted beside a glass frame containing a pictorial ‘Guide to the Bees of Britain’ and above two potty seats which look like a pair of infant lifebelts, dangling in repose.
For someone like me who’s never built so much as a rabbit hutch, the entire enterprise seems like an incalculable ordeal. In the pictures, the bank has none of the picnic-perfect grass or wild flowers that adorn it now. It’s full of cable trenches, wobbly wood-plank paths and strips of plastic piping. It reminds me of a slurry pit.
Unimaginably, the sight inside is altogether worse. The first picture in the montage shows all the mouldy old seats still in place. Laced in cobweb netting and mildewy grime, they make for a noirish, macabre scene. By the fourth picture, the project is beginning to come together. The seats are gone, together with any skeletal remains once hidden beneath them. The walls are half-clad. The timber bones of the kitchenette and furnishings are taking shape. There’s no mistaking it, though: it remains a coach crash on wheels.
All of which makes standing in it now feel slightly fantastical.
At the far end is a double bed that stretches from wall to wall. Plump cushions line up in colour co-ordination along an invisible headboard, which rests against a huge back window of clear glass. The effect is that of an infinity swimming pool, tempting guests to crawl the bed’s length and spill into the night beyond. I find myself picturing the naughty schoolkids who must have once occupied the back rows, their faces pressed against the glass, blowing raspberries at passing motorists and smudging obscenities with grubby fingers on the pane.
Against the glass, a dried-flower wreath now hangs. It is perfectly centred. Observing the floral arrangement from the entrance door end, I experience a compelling sensation, as if the wreath were calling out, beckoning me towards it. Brindled with blood-orange berries and bubbling bright with purple-capped thistle heads, the floral halo has the semblance of an ancient bridal crown. I fancy the petalled headdress once belonging to a freckle-skinned silvestrian queen. Fair of hair and fair of hand, this temperate monarch passes unremembered in woodland song or Marcher lore, a victim of history’s fascination with the victorious and vainglorious.
I picture her rustic kingdom quietly contained amid these neglected, Neolithic hills, a rare refuge of peace in tumultuous times. Her loyal citizens would not have minded that their queen lacked the bridle of fame or fortune, believing that to be graced by one so fine was the very best of grace itself.
Rob continues to brush out the fire, collecting the burned remains from the chimney in a coal shovel before tipping it into a plastic bag. He is careful that not a single speck should escape. So intent is he on the task that he doesn’t look up. With nothing to break my daydreaming, I indulge my musings a minute more.
Stirred by the spirit of the place, the image of a bluebell palace pops into my head, the foot of the queen upon the threshold and her floral crown upon her head. I’d like to think her royal residence was housed upon the hillock behind, home to an ancient Iron Age fort and a panoramic view. Or else a fortress deep within a forest, in a glade beside a gushing stream. Wading the Wye and up into the hills her subjects would come, beating a path to its door. Men and beasts alike, striding along hidden pathways through the heather and purple moor grass, drawn onward by the sweet sound of merriment from its hawthorn halls.
I know Layla made the wreath. Another, larger version hangs in their living room. Until recently she was growing fresh-cut flowers to sell at Hay market. Large beds, now mostly gone to seed, continue to give their sledge-run garden its shape. Yet I prefer my imagined version of events. I relish the image of a woodland people once living harmoniously in these same hills. Just as I revel in the thought of Rob and Layla accidentally happening upon the crown of a long-forgotten queen. One of their girls stumbling across it while scrabbling under a hedge, perhaps. Or while digging for worms under a mossy rock.
Almost everything in the bus has a story to it. In that sense, its decoration could be considered organic. The cylindrical Timemaster clock by the reversing mirror, diligently calculating departure times and marking the march of the years. The key in the ignition, sparking the engine to life on a thousand wintery mornings. The peaked cap hanging from its peg, property of the German bus driver whose name adorns it: Herr Menke; employee number 54. The driving wheel, its rubber grip worn thin at ten minutes to two. The tabletops, salvaged from the wood pile. The tin kettle on the gas-stove, hissing with gossip once secretly shared. The original silver lettering above the windscreen – ‘You Are Travelling Overland Majestically’ – revealing the riddle of the Panorama’s christening.
‘Wow, Rob,’ I splutter, forcing myself back into the present. ‘This place is great.’
‘Like it, do yer?’ he says. ‘Good thing too. You should!’
The boast is in jest and I laugh. Rob is a man blissfully devoid of arrogance. It’s a rare and redeeming quality, and one that immediately warms people to him.
He beckons me to take a seat on the Majestic Bus’s cushioned corner unit, and I return to the middle of the bus and sit down. The window opposite falls at eye level and offers an unbroken view. The panelled glass is new. It runs the length of what once were three rows of passenger seats. The width is inch perfect, the vista fully framed from eastern glen to western vale. It’s as if the window were the permanent feature of the piece and the rolling landscape just a conjurer’s trick to fill the empty glass.
‘Take a look at that. Beautiful, innit?’ Rob pipes up.
He is not wrong. Fields and trees, sheep and sky, fences and footpaths, all combine and coalesce on the windowpane’s transparent canvass. By rights, the picture should be chaotic. Wild hedgerows make darting, squiggling runs towards the tree-crest
ed horizon. The farmer’s fields shrink and bloat, blindly led by the contoured countryside. It is all dips and folds. There isn’t a straight line to be seen, not even a stretched telephone wire.
The disarray works, however, and does so wondrously. For out of the seed-blown bedlam, an uncommon beauty bursts. From anarchy comes structure; from clutter, composure. Simple yet complete, it takes an artist’s eye to know the hows and whys of such a marvel. Logically, computationally, such symmetry should not be. Unity of form should no more spring from so confused a composition than darkness should beget light. There it is, though, plain as day: a scene of consummate concord.
Signs of nature’s febrile abandon do not disappear. Weeds grow. Trees tumble. Walls collapse. Yet somehow the window glass blurs their edges smooth. All become one, a merged and magnificent whole.
I shift forward in the seat, rest the back of my head against the cushions and kick out my legs. For the briefest of moments, I wish for such a window, for such a view.
‘We weren’t sure about much at the beginning,’ says Rob, looking up from the stove. ‘I always knew this is where I wanted the bus to be, though. Right here, on this spot, so people could sit where you’re sitting now and take in all this.’
He levers himself up from his position by the fire and joins me in peering out at the landscape. We’re both silent for a while. In a fold of the hill in the half-distance, a wisp of chimney smoke climbs up into the pale, late-winter sky. The house from which it emerges is hidden. I think again of the bluebell palace and involuntarily glance back at the circular wreath. It remains fixed in place, like a talisman against the plain glass, hinting at the ethereal and the blossoming promise of spring.
Rob strikes a match and lights the fire. He bends and blows a little, waiting a moment for the flame to catch fully, then shuts the stove door and gathers up the newspaper. With his spare hand he picks up his sweeping brush and a plastic bag containing the ashes from the grate.
‘Right, job done,’ he says. I follow him towards the exit and down the steps. He closes the door behind us and wipes his hands once more on his trousers. ‘Time for a cuppa tea, methinks.’
We head across to the caravan house.
*
Layla is in the kitchen putting the last touches to a lemon cake. Meri is lying on the floor beside the sofa. The infant is all smiles. Rob picks her up in his arms, and promptly puts her down again. ‘Someone needs a nappy change,’ he says. He heads through to the bedroom to collect the wipes and a changing mat.
‘Tea? Coffee?’ Layla asks.
A coffee would be great, I say. She puts the kettle on the hob and finds a cafetière. I ask how she’s doing. Everything is fine, she says. ‘Touch wood. Meri is sleeping well. She’s got a good appetite. Some of the newborn clothes are already getting too small because she’s growing so fast.’
And her girls, have they both taken well to the new arrival? ‘Goldie absolutely loves her,’ she replies. ‘She thinks she’s a cuddly toy.’ Tilda has taken a little more time to come round, but then she has her own issues to work through right now. ‘Nothing serious, just your average eight-year-old going on thirteen.’ Rob and she are learning to ride out the tantrums. ‘It’s all fine,’ she reiterates.
From certain people, the insistence on all being well might have the ring of denial to it. Living with three kids in a small space has to be stressful, even if the children are total angels. The baby still wants feeding in the middle of the night. The older girls still need to be coaxed out of bed in the morning, and then dressed, breakfasted and driven to school. The bus still has to be cleaned, the sheets and children’s clothes washed, the welcome cake made, the email enquiries answered, the garden kept, the chickens fed before the girls are picked up and fed, bathed and put to bed and the cycle begins again.
Layla, however, is remarkably determined and resourceful, which helps see her through. She also knows her own mind. She doesn’t do mums-and-tots groups, just as she kept clear of antenatal classes. There are no parenting books gracing the shelves and no Mumsnet fora open in her internet browser. She has Rob and her own maternal instinct. Together, that’s support enough.
More than anything, she is fully cognisant of the choices they have made and the implications these entail. The life they have is no accident. Arguably, it’s as curated as the bus. They knew when they moved here that if they ran out of milk or nappies, then the nearest shop would be a twenty-minute drive away. They were aware that if the diesel generator were to break down it would mean hand-washing the sheets or travelling all the way to the laundrette in town.
By the same token, she and Rob also knew they would have the independence to do what they wanted, when they wanted. They aren’t shirkers. As with all their other previous ventures, they built up the bus business off their own backs. And they pay their own way. There are no benefit cheques arriving in the post when bookings slow up.
The upside is manifest: they control their own agendas and can shape their own destinies. For that reason, their girls can be raised in open countryside where the air is clean and adventures ever-present. As parents, they can both be on hand to share in their childhoods. The girls need never hear words like ‘boss’, ‘office’, ‘commute’, ‘childcare’. No minder will ever pick them up from school or cook their tea. No babysitter will ever tuck them in at night.
It is this willingness to be different and to chart their own course that I find so refreshing about Rob and Layla. They could easily be working low-wage jobs, striving to meet their house repayments, returning home at night to a cramped city flat. Or, just as easily, I suppose, they could be high-flyers jetting off around the world on company business.
Instead, they started by opting for the life they wanted and worked back from there, devising a way to make it happen. Emma and I can empathise. Although our vision of what that ideal life looks like may be slightly different, our rationale for moving here has much in common.
The Marches, in this sense, is a broad and accommodating church. Culturally, the area is remarkably non-dogmatic. It allows you the space and freedom to do your own thing, to explore your own path. Being non-conventional is actively encouraged, in fact. It’s a place where every other person seems to be embarking on their own project or running their own venture. One incomer I know has set up a lavender farm deep in the hills. Another runs a Buddhist retreat.
Of course, not everyone is like this. There are plenty of folk living ordinary lives, happily clocking in and clocking out. The point is that there is licence here to do otherwise. In that respect, it reminds me a lot of Argentina, where everyone is always experimenting with the new and reinventing the old.
‘Do you take sugar?’ Layla asks.
‘No, thanks. Just a bit of milk.’
She places the cup on the table in front of me and returns to the kitchen to put the cake in the oven.
The kitchen occupies a small internal alcove at the edge of the twin caravan. Beneath a large window that looks out onto the garden below stands a small plywood unit with flamingo-pink doors. Adjacent to it sits a 1950s kitchen sink that Rob picked up on eBay. The cooker is similarly sourced. Above it, where you might expect an extractor hood, hangs a rack of china mugs. Beside it, boxes of herbal teas rest on a shelf.
On the opposite wall stands a kitchen dresser, its doors painted a milky white and its upper shelves weighed down with saucepans. An overlapping display of old photographs covers its midsection, creating a wallpaper of flash-brightened smiles and red-dotted eyes. The remains of Layla’s cake-baking cover the wooden work surface: sieve, mixing bowl, grater, flour. She begins to tidy them up.
Between the cupboard and the oven is an empty doorway that leads into a narrow corridor. A small bathroom lies straight ahead, with the main bedroom off to the left. Goldie’s box-shaped bedroom is reached via her parents’ room, while Tilda’s bedroom is located at the far end of the living room. It doubles as the girls’ play area.
That’s the house, half a doz
en small to middling-sized rooms. A raised decking area outside the front door provides some additional space in the summer. The only stairs in the whole place are the three or four that lead up to the deck from the sloping driveway below.
With Rob still on nappy-changing duties and Layla clearing up the kitchen, I kill time by scanning the decorations on the wall. Children’s drawings compose the bulk of what’s on show. Observed together, the artwork acts as a sort of childhood retrospective, building up from a toddler’s crayon squiggles on a blank page through to well-crafted and clearly discernible depictions of cartoon cats.
Beside the latter is a short story. The square paragraph of text is printed on a white sheet and mounted on yellow card. ‘Mad Town’, the title reads in bold Helvetica script. The story describes the life of Turbo Tom, who dashes across the city and enjoys eating flying pop. He has one friend, Egg Eater, who works on a farm and whose favourite animals are chickens. This is despite not having any chickens of her own. The tale ends abruptly with the author’s name: ‘Matilda’.
I reread it, intrigued in particular by the character of Egg Eater. In such a short space, she opens up a Pandora’s Box of ethical and psychological dilemmas. How, for example, does her proclaimed passion for chickens fit with an egg-based diet? Is Egg Eater unaware that she’s wolfing down her favourite animal’s progeny? If so, are we to suppose that a harsh coming-of-age is heading her way?
‘Put a log on the fire, could you, Rob?’ Layla shouts from around the corner.
‘Give us a sec, I’m just finishing up with Meri,’ he replies, turning to the infant and asking which of the two Babygros she wants. Pink or white? The girl giggles, all dimples and delight for her father. He opts for white.
‘I hope Tilda got a good mark for this,’ I say, loud enough for both parents to hear.
‘Yeah, top of the class,’ Rob and Layla reply in unison.
It’s a habit they have, this tendency to say the same thing at the same time. Or a gift, I guess. They complete one another’s sentences as well. One will start and then, if they pause or stutter, the other will carry on. It’s entirely natural. I doubt very much they even realise that they do it.