by Carys Bray
The tracks are flanked by brambles and grass. There are hub caps and plastic bags in the undergrowth, a partially deflated football, limp sheets of newspaper – God, people are filthy. He can hear a train in the distance. He waits. There it is, a sluggish chugger, just two carriages. After it disappears beneath him he strolls down the hill of the bridge, heading for town.
It helps to walk to work. To either the garage or Lord Street, depending on his shift. It helps to have a good breakfast. Three Weetabix and a mug of tea, no sugar. Sometimes he sits down as he eats. Sometimes he doesn’t. It depends. Even after all this time, he occasionally dreams of Becky, and he wakes in the third bedroom, in his single bed, not knowing where he is. As it comes back to him, he is poleaxed by the old ache of missing her and he lies there, imagining the judgements she would levy were she to inspect the particulars of his life. When he goes downstairs he sees the house both as it is and as it was, and he eats his Weetabix on his feet, facing the worktop, his back to the jumble of the kitchen. On those mornings, when dream is clinging to him like a spider’s web, and no amount of rubbing or swiping can remove the sticky feeling, the walk scours him.
He passes a yellow bin of grit salt. Winter seems a lifetime away. The sky is like glass. He hasn’t brought a jacket. No point. Just his lunch and a water bottle in a carrier bag.
The thump of his feet and the in-out of his breath beat Clover’s name in time with his thoughts: Clo-ver, Clo-ver. How did she get to be twelve? Twelve years old and fine, as far as he can tell – no, better than that: fine, as far as anyone can tell.
Once there was a bit of argy-bargy on the bus between some local lads and the buskers. ‘Why don’t you and your accordions go back to where you came from?’ – that sort of thing. At the next stop Darren twisted in his seat and talked the lads off the bus. There’s no one to tell Clover: Once, your dad talked some racist knob-heads off a bus. He could tell her himself, of course, but it wouldn’t be the same. And there is no mystery about his words, which were: ‘You! Off! Now!’
He waits halfway down Lord Street for the changeover. Switches his phone to silent and puts it in the carrier bag with his water and sandwiches.
Ed pulls in, bang on time. He lets the customers get off and on first, then he opens the cab and steps out of the bus. ‘All yours,’ he says. ‘Okay?’
‘Yeah. Another hot one today,’ Darren replies.
‘Hotter than a whore’s drawers. I’ve made sure every window’s open.’ Ed rubs his damp forehead with the back of his hand before wiping it on his trousers. ‘Look at me, sweatier than a Scouser during Crimewatch. It’s shorts weather, this. Any reasonable company’d give you the option. One of these days I’m going to take me kecks off and drive in me skivvies. That’ll learn them!’
The air on board is soupy. Darren climbs into the cab, hangs his carrier bag from the hook and shuts himself in. He checks the running board and adjusts the seat. Not a bad shift, ten till six. No need to worry about disappointing the biddies who line up early and gripe when he won’t let them on board at twenty-seven minutes past nine, three minutes before their passes are valid. No late-night shenanigans, either. Liverpool and back, twice. That’s it. He places his left foot on the rest, wraps his hands around the warm plastic of the steering wheel, indicates, and edges out into the traffic. A kid starts to cry and a woman begins to sing ‘The Wheels on the Bus’ in a wheedling, baby voice.
‘The driver on the bus says, “Any more fares? Any more fares? Any more fares?” All day long.’
Darren has never said ‘Any more Fares?’. Ever. He doesn’t mind crying babies, but he hates crap music. There should be a list of acceptable songs – they could stick it alongside the NO STANDING PASSENGERS ALLOWED BEYOND THIS POINT sign or the BUS TICKET TO UR MOBILE adverts. They could do a customer consultation – ha! No input from petrol heads, though, they’d get it all wrong – you couldn’t stop for passengers if you were listening to ‘Highway Star’, you’d have to drive past them, through a foot-deep puddle. SONGS PERMITTED ON THIS BUS, that’s what the sign would say, with a list below: ‘Bus Stop’ by The Hollies, and The Beatles’ ‘Magical Mystery Tour’. What else would work? The Who’s ‘Magic Bus’ and The Divine Comedy’s ‘National Express,’ of course – shit – he brakes and beeps at an old codger as he steps into the road, just feet away from a pedestrian crossing. Bloody hell. What is it with old people who do that?
‘The horn on the bus goes beep, beep, beep! Beep, beep, beep! Beep, beep, beep!’
He waves to the weird kid who waits outside Mecca Bingo during the school holidays, bus-spotting notebook in hand, and then he slows as he approaches the last stop on Lord Street. He opens the doors. ‘Wheels on the Bus’ woman gets off with her still-snivelling kid. Result! And the waiting people spill on.
‘It is – and no rain forecast.’
‘There you are, ta.’
‘Air conditioning? Ha!’
As he checks passes and issues tickets, he gradually becomes aware of Jim, standing on the pavement, ushering people ahead of him, earning smiles and thanks from a woman with a buggy and an old bloke carrying a dog. Darren tries to ignore him. In recent weeks he has noticed him, lean as a wrench, tramping around town. There is something in his walk that reminds Darren of the high-stepping Thunderbird puppets that used to be on the telly. It’s in the bounce of his knees, the way his feet smack the pavement and his arms swing, busy hands clenching and unclenching as he marches.
When everyone’s on, Jim leans in, head first, undecided. ‘All right?’ he says.
Darren nods. ‘You?’
‘I’ll just park myself here for a stop or two.’ He steps aboard and positions himself in front of the yellow line on the floor that everyone must wait behind. His hands are shaking and he’s got food stains on his T-shirt – ketchup or a bit of baked bean sauce. ‘Giddy up,’ he says.
Darren shakes his head.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll nip straight off if any of your lot get on. Scout’s honour.’
‘You can park yourself on a seat, after you’ve paid.’
‘Ah come on, Dazza.’
‘After you’ve paid.’ He folds his arms and nods at the wheel. No hands, no budging.
‘Look at you. Working for the man when you should be sticking it to him.’
‘Give over. Are you going to pay?’
‘Don’t see why I should.’
‘Get off, then.’
‘No one’d think we’re family.’ Jim lifts his arm for emphasis, displaying a raw elbow-ring of psoriasis.
His grubby clothes and trembling hands, his evident itching and urgent walking – these are warnings, apparent to anyone who looks closely, and, regardless of how inattentive he has been in the past, or perhaps because of it, Darren is now someone who looks closely. ‘Family when it suits,’ he says. ‘You haven’t seen Clover for weeks.’
Jim seems to be about to address the issue of his absence but, after a glance at the engrossed pensioners occupying the accessible seats at the front of the bus, he reconsiders. ‘Yeah. Well,’ he says and steps down on to the pavement.
Darren calls, ‘Have a nice day,’ as the doors close, and Jim flips the bird at him. It’s tempting to flip one back, but it isn’t worth it.
He indicates and pulls into the traffic. Once, Darren Quinn talked Jim Brookfield off a bus –he’ll have to go and see him, but not today. There isn’t space in his head for new worries today. He is already preoccupied.
After Clover was born a deep seam of imagination opened and he can’t help mining it once in a while. He feels a wave of pity for the daughter of his dark daydreams, the fictional creature who is, at this exact moment, pining for company. He allows himself to be afraid for a moment, to consider the possibility that this milestone, this first unsupervised school holiday, may trigger the very thing he’s been seeking to avoid. Then he buries the feeling. Because, of course, this adjustment is necessary and for the good. He forces himself back to the surface, where it’s
possible to exist for long stretches of time, largely undaunted by her vulnerability. He remembers when she was three and had to wear the eyepatch. As he fastened the patch to her trusting, upturned face, the doctor explained that she might bump into things on her blind side and warned about watching her on the stairs. Darren suspected he’d confront the first stranger who so much as looked at her the wrong way – that, or cry, which was ridiculous, as it was nothing, just a square of sticking plaster under her glasses. But there was something so painful about watching her, suddenly runtish and teetering, that, in the weeks that followed, he taught her to say ‘Arrrgh’ and to answer to Dread Pirate Roberts. And when they were out and about and people spoke to her, through him – ‘Would she like a drink?’ ‘Is she a good girl?’ – he’d reply, ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to speak to the Dread Pirate Roberts, herself. She’s the boss.’ And, right on cue, she’d growl, ‘Arrrgh.’ People didn’t know whether it was okay to laugh, which meant they ended up feeling awkward and embarrassed, not Clover, who was too busy returning his conspiratorial grins.
After Lord Street morphs into Lulworth Road it’s like driving in a different town. Detached houses sit behind in-out driveways, and Italian-style fountains decorate manicured lawns. Darren drives up the hill and past the golf course. These houses may be posh but they’re still rumbled by vibrations from buses and, a little further along the road, by the trains that pass through Hillside station. Every rut and divot in the road judders the tyres and trembles the floor. The windows shudder in their frames, and the engine belts out the high-low tune it sings around town, an undulating song of acceleration and deceleration. This noise – the rattling tremor that begins in his feet and hands before quivering into his legs and shoulders, and finally his chest – is the loudest noise in Darren’s life.
He believes he’s concentrating as he responds to the bell and pulls over at the last stop before the bypass to let an oldie off, but as he begins to drive away, a second pensioner staggers past the cab. She stumbles and he watches helplessly as she just about manages to right herself. He brakes, reopens the doors and calls an apology which she either can’t hear or won’t accept. Ninety-five per cent of accidents occur as a result of driver distraction. Concentrate, Darren.
On the bypass, air whooshes through the open windows. Although it is hot, blooming with pollen from the wheat and barley fields, it’s welcome. He turns off the bypass at the first roundabout and trundles through Formby. While he waits for a minute and a half at the Formby Cross Green timing point, he resolves not to think about home and listens instead to the muted sound of the stationary engine and the turbine of an old bloke’s chest. Back on the bypass he is overtaken by cars, white vans and a removal truck. He pushes for a last burst of speed on the A565, bombing down the road, before he hits the 30mph limit again, the power and weight of what’s behind him – the lives of the people, fifty seats, moulded metal, plastic, foam, fabric, the hot engine – pressing on his back and shoulders. He’s got the whole bus in his hands – ha!
The landscape and the bus get more crowded as he approaches the city. Red-brick terraces stream parallel to the roads, and motoring, smoky voices sputter into coughs. Nearly there now. He can see wind turbines, the tips of tower blocks and a glimpse of the docks; John Moores University and the Radio City Tower – buses everywhere, chugging past the World Museum, St John’s Gardens and the Marriott Hotel. Finally, he turns into Queen Square bus station, the last stop of the outbound journey, and everyone gets off.
When he is alone, he edges down the hill to the number 10 stop where he opens the doors and allows the bus to fill again: a gang of lads wearing their baseball caps backwards, a bloke with a hearing dog, an old woman whose shopping is lashed into a baby’s buggy with rope and a carabiner.
‘Yeah, toasty, isn’t it?’
‘Don’t forget your change.’
Once, he wondered whether the man on the bridge had just been sitting there. Hadn’t been planning to jump at all. Was, in fact, stretching his legs. Letting them dangle. Taking a risk, the kind some people take in order to feel properly alive. A small, private gamble, before mobile phones and YouTube, before planking and skywalking. Sitting on the bridge with his legs swinging, thinking I could, I could. Maybe that was it.
He stops at the lights by The Royal and stares at the derelict building. The ground-floor windows shuttered, the second- and third-floor windows missing, along with most of the roof, except for a circular turret that grows up from one of the building’s corners and is topped by an ice-cream cone of slate tiles. A car behind him beeps and he blinks. Concentrate, Darren.
People get off as he leaves the city. Those few who remain settle into their seats, some doze off, cheeks pressed against the glass. After he passes the shops at Crosby the streets are tree-lined again, and as he steers under the leafy canopy he feels the tug of home.
He’s coming off the bypass when he realises he is chewing his cheeks. He lets the skin go and tongues the ridge on each side, stamped with the pattern of his teeth. Clover will be fine. Perhaps he’ll call her when he gets back to Lord Street and it’s time for his break.
It helps to get out of the cab at Formby Cross Green timing point and stretch his legs for a moment. The passengers watch and he feels obliged to exaggerate this stretching so they feel reassured, certain of his purpose. Arms up, back arched – that’s it.
When he gets back in the cab he listens as the engine belts out its high-low tune; noises which verify that, in the back of the bus, under the protective layers of metal, pistons are moving, fuel is being injected into the cylinders and the exhaust valves are opening. And, as he approaches Lord Street, he finally allows himself to think about the noises Jim is making and what could be happening under his protective layers of arseyness. He wonders what the catalyst might be this time and how much of the responsibility he will be expected to shoulder.
The kid with the notebook is still bus-spotting; Darren waves at him before he pulls in at the changeover stop. He lets people off and on and then he opens the cab, lifts his carrier bag off the hook and climbs out.
‘All right, Terry?’
‘Yeah, you?’
‘Hot.’
‘Don’t you go wishing for rain; I’m off to Cornwall next week.’
After Terry has pulled away, Darren crosses the road and walks to a shady spot on the steps of one of the war memorial colonnades. Maybe Clover is back from the allotment now and about to eat her lunch, too. He could call her mobile. But she often leaves it in her room when it’s not a school day, in case it slides out of her pocket as she cycles. He could call home, instead. But if he does and she’s out, he’ll worry, and that would be worse than not calling at all. He settles for a text.
Hope ur ok. Don’t forget sun cream & helmet. Look after the key. Lock the door behind you. Careful crossing roads. He stops himself. Deletes everything but the first sentence. Hope ur ok. Adds a couple of kisses and hits send.
A hopeful pigeon lands on the step, eyeing his sandwiches. He used to sit here with Colin sometimes on Saturday afternoons, after they’d wasted all their change on the 2p machines at Silcock’s Funland. There was a Woolworths on the other side of the memorial back then, with two whole aisles of pick-and-mix sweets. The skater kids practised kickflips and grinding on the monument steps, but he and Colin weren’t bothered about skateboarding, they were hoping the birdman would turn up and put on a bit of a show. The birdman spoke in an uncanny, avian voice. His coat was the coarse, woollen kind and there must have been bits of millet clinging to its fibres because the birds perched all over him, even before he started pulling handfuls of seed out of his pockets.
Darren shuffles down a few steps, away from the pigeon and out of the shade. The stone warms the backs of his legs through his work trousers. He closes his eyes for a moment and tilts his face skyward. As he’s got older the world has shrunk. It sometimes feels as if everything is moving around him and he is stuck, feet in concrete. It’s understandab
le when he’s at home and the trains squeal past the house on their way to Manchester and beyond, but it also happens while he’s driving the bus; he sits at the wheel and it’s as if the houses and the trees and the fields are whipping past as he remains still, holding tight until he’s allowed to get off. He thought he’d be long gone by now, and yet here he is, circling the slight perimeter of his life: his old house, his primary and secondary schools, the parks, the hospital, the hospice. If he could go back to being a boy he’d retrieve every wish for time to accelerate; his rush to reach double figures, to be thirteen, to be seventeen – he made those wishes never believing there might be a day when he would wish in reverse – to be seventeen, and thirteen, and ten.
He’d like to think he’s a different Darren Quinn from the one who laughed at the birdman. But he remains the boy who watched The NeverEnding Story six times. Who would wait in front of Dad’s cuckoo clocks in the hall, a minute before the hour, trying to guess which trapdoor would spring first; who got bladdered on Diamond White and Hooch and threw up on Colin’s mum’s living-room carpet during a rendition of ‘Boom! Shake the Room’; who, when asked by the careers teacher to list ten things he wanted to get out of life, didn’t think to include happiness.
It doesn’t feel like six o’clock. The sun is high and hot and his polo shirt is damp under the arms and down the middle of the back where it was sandwiched between his skin and the seat. He’s finished in plenty of time to get home for the start of the new series of the baking programme Clover likes. And, given her text – I’m fine!!! xx – there’s time to visit Dad, too.