Tramp Life

by Tony Telford

  The bus’s engine rumbled and growled, and the smell of petrol was starting to make me feel sick. Outside there was nothing but blackness and the lights of the occasional car. I wondered what O’Hare was doing upstairs. Had he seen me getting on? And where was he going? My knee was throbbing from where I’d bumped it on the pew. It had been quite a night.

  I looked at Boo. Poor thing, she seemed so vulnerable lying there, with her bristly chin resting on one thin leg. It was pretty cruel of me, putting her through all this. I stared out into the dark and wondered where we were going and what this new day would bring. Then, before I knew it, I started dropping off myself. That would be a disaster. I picked up a newspaper that someone had left on the seat opposite and tried to read it, but the light was too dim and I was too tired, anyway.

  The bus rattled on without stopping through deserted villages and towns. Eventually it came to a bigger town. I peered through the window, trying to find the name on signs or shop-fronts. Two o’clock in the morning and I hadn’t the foggiest idea where I was.

  A sudden loud buzz nearly made me fall off my seat. Someone had pressed the stop button—someone upstairs. I pulled Boo onto my lap, snatched up the newspaper and held it open in front of us. It was a pretty pathetic camouflage, but what else could I do? The bus slowed, footsteps stomped down the stairs. I sneaked a look round the newspaper. A stocky man in a beanie was waiting at the front.

  The driver let him off and we moved on into the town. A couple of men on the lower deck got off at a big factory. Then, as we were coming into city streets, there was another buzz from someone upstairs. I held the paper up in front of us again. This time the footsteps on the stairs were slower and lighter. At the bottom, whoever it was stopped and seemed to stand there for ages. I spread the newspaper as wide as I could, wishing it had been one of the big posh papers. At last, as the bus was slowing down, I heard the person moving towards the front. I peeped round the newspaper. It was O’Hare. He was standing near the driver with his back to me, his hands buried in the pockets of his black overcoat, his glossy black hair hanging halfway down his back. In front of him, bright raindrops clung to the window between each sweep of the wiper. Suddenly I realized he might be able to see me in the reflection. I ducked behind the newspaper again and stayed like that until he got off.

  As the bus roared away from the stop, I looked out just in time to see O’Hare striding off towards a traffic roundabout. I punched the stop button, threw on my rucksack and satchel, tucked Boo tightly under my arm and lumbered down the aisle as fast as I could. Stepping out into cold, drenching rain, I hurried back towards the blazing lights of the roundabout. As I was approaching it, I saw O’Hare heading down a street on the opposite side. I jogged straight across the roundabout and down the street until I was only about 100 yards behind him. He turned through a gap between some terrace houses and crossed a patch of waste ground. On the other side there was a long, low building with rows of lighted windows, like a beached ocean liner. It was the railway station.

  I was only fifty yards behind O’Hare as I followed him in through the main entrance. The big, echoey hall was almost empty. O’Hare walked right past the ticket machines and went towards the platforms. Maybe he already had a ticket—a return journey, then. I watched as he passed through the turnstiles for Platform 3. The information board above my head said the next train from Platform 3 would leave at 2.57 a.m. I think I already knew where it was going.

  I looked at the station clock. It was 2:54.

  I went to a ticket machine, bought a single fare to the City and ran full-pelt across the station with Boo cantering along at my heels. O’Hare was just getting on the train as I went through the turnstile. I could see him clearly as he moved down the empty carriage and took a seat halfway along. Luckily, he sat facing forward. I got on at the rear door of the same carriage. There was a passageway here with a couple of toilets. Looking along the carriage I could see the back of O’Hare’s head above the seats. I’d be able to keep an eye on him from here, and if he came this way I could hide in one of the loos.

  A minute later we were on our way. The train slid out of the station and racketed past the backs of shops and houses. Then suddenly we were out in the pitch-black of the countryside. For a long time I leaned against the doorway, watching O’Hare. His head was tilted forward. Reading, or asleep? I wondered why he was going to the City. Did he live there now? Had he left school? I realized I didn’t know anything about his family. Did he even have a family?

  The train swung through darkness. Boo was already curled up on the floor, eyes tight-shut, nose tucked under a back leg. As for me, I’d never felt so tired in my whole life. Blinking out into the dark, I suddenly realized I’d read about this situation—travelling on a train late at night, going to some unknown destination. It must have been some story, or a poem…

  Then I remembered. One day in English, we were ‘tabulating elements of poetic texts’, or something like that, and I’d just about had enough. I mean, every lesson we were doing these stupid things, as if English was just another science or something. It wasn’t Mrs Worthley’s fault, of course. She had to teach that stuff if she wanted to keep her job. Anyway, on the worksheet I didn’t even bother writing the proper answers. I just scribbled this huge long equation, ‘Poetry = x+2 + m – y + 3.4562’, or whatever, and then at the bottom, in big red letters, I wrote ‘WHY CAN’T WE JUST READ SOME POETRY??!!!’ Mrs W never said anything when I handed up the sheet at the end of the lesson. But in the next English class, as she was walking past me, she quietly placed a book at the top of my desk.

  Before anyone else could see, I quickly put the book away in my bag. I didn’t think about it again all day long. God knows I had enough else to think about, with O’Hare staring at me wherever I went and Mr Mullins showing me up in front of the class just because I’d forgotten to do a draft of the stupid History essay. But late that night, when I was organising my stuff for the next morning, I came across Mrs W’s book at the bottom of my bag. It was called The Progress of Poetry, a collection of poems with a torn yellow cover and thick, crinkly pages that smelled of mildew and something spicy. On the title page there was a message in tiny old-fashioned writing: ‘To Pearly, from Mrs W.’ I turned the pages, reading titles here and there. ‘The Sick Rose’, ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, ‘Sailing to Byzantium’… Then there was, ‘The Night-Ride’, a poem about a train journey. The title got me in straight away—‘The Night-Ride’!—and before I knew it I was under the spell of those long, hypnotic lines. In a way, I wasn’t ‘reading’ at all. Not the way they make you read in school, anyhow. Instead, I was just there on that train, going who knows where at night, with the rails knocking and the passengers breathing in their sleep and this one guy talking to you in the dark. Suddenly the train stops at some little station in the middle of nowhere. The speaker pulls up the blind and sees milk-tins, and packages with strange labels, and mysterious travellers slouching along the platform in the gaslight. Next minute, ‘bells cry out’ and ‘the night-ride starts again’, and he’s thinking about how, soon, he’ll be looking out into blackness… And that was it. Just a short poem, a dozen lines or so, can’t even remember who it’s by. But it gave me such a feeling… I don’t know, like I was reading a message from another world, a world where everything hasn’t been made ordinary and predictable. Except it wasn’t another world at all. It was this world…

  But my God I was tired now. Just had to rest my eyes for a bit. I checked on O’Hare one last time. His head was tilted way over to one side. Asleep, surely. He wouldn’t be going anywhere soon. I slid down the wall to the floor. ‘The City,’ I thought. ‘I’m going to the City.’ My head dropped to my chest. Yeah, the City—and who would have thought I’d be going there like this? Next minute I was being carried along in a warm rushing river that sounded just like a fast train.

  5

  The voice seemed to be right next to my ear. A wheedling, metallic voice going on and on about customer this and
customer that… I tried to ignore it. All I wanted to do was fall back into the lovely warm nothingness. But the voice wouldn’t shut up. ‘Customers are advised…connections with other services…onward journeys…City Central.’ City Central? That woke me. Struggling to my feet, I looked in panic down the carriage. It was full. Absolutely packed. Where on earth had all these people come from, and how long had I been asleep? And what about O’Hare? Oh, thank God, he was still in his seat.

  Boo heaved herself up and took a few groggy steps. Lights were skimming past the window now, blurred at first but gradually slowing down. There was a bustle as people prepared to get off. O’Hare stretched, ran his hands over his hair and stood up. The next second he was walking down the aisle towards me. I grabbed my bags, scooped Boo under one arm, tore open the nearest toilet door, threw myself inside, and yanked the door shut behind me. I’d hardly been able to take a breath when someone started fiddling with the door handle. Oh God, I’d actually forgotten to lock it. I seized the little knob with both hands and pulled it hard towards me. I could feel the other person pulling too. It was like a little tug-of-war game for a few seconds, but then they gave up. I slid the latch right across and sank back against the washbasin, feeling all trembly and lightheaded. That might have been him. Just imagine if he’d managed to open the door.

  We waited there in the cramped, smelly cubicle as the train slowed to a crawl. There was a lot of clattering as we crossed other railway tracks, and I could hear people talking and moving around just outside the toilet door. Then, with a soft jerk, we stopped, doors banged open and dozens of pairs of feet tramped out. I stayed right where I was until everyone seemed to have gone. Then I opened the cubicle door an inch or two. The carriage was deserted. I threw the door wide open and went out into the cold and noise of the biggest railway station I’d ever seen. High above me there was an arched roof of glass and black iron, like the inside of a gigantic barrel. Just below it, hundreds of orange lights hovered in the gloom. I looked along the platform. Most of the passengers from our train had already disappeared through the turnstiles at the far end. I put Boo down, slipped on my rucksack and ran the length of the platform. At the turnstiles I had to search every pocket twice before I found my ticket. Then we were out in a huge plaza with a shiny marble floor and glitzy shops and cafés and billboards and business types hurrying past with phones glued to their ears.

  I spotted O’Hare right away—on the other side of the plaza, standing with a plastic cup at a snack bar. That was lucky. If he’d gone straight out I would have lost him. He strolled across the plaza, sipping at his drink, dropped the cup in a bin and passed through glass doors leading to the street. Boo and I raced across the slippery floor, cutting in front of people and nearly crashing into someone with a cello or something in a big case. I pushed through the glass doors, and for the first time in my life found myself in the City. Traffic was thundering past on the shiny wet road and the cold air vibrated with an infinity of other sounds—footsteps, laughter, shouts, coughs, whistles, sirens, car-horns, squeals, thuds, hisses, clangs and booms, and always the constant thrumming of machines. Everything was bigger, louder, faster here. People even seemed to be walking faster. The electronic billboard across the road said it was 7.21 a.m., but the sky was still dark and the wind was like ice.

  I scanned the crowd and caught sight of O’Hare striding off down the road. I ran until I was just a few steps behind him, then I slowed to a walk and followed him past phone shops, hairdressers and boutiques. Everywhere was lit up like a fairground. At the next junction O’Hare turned right down a smaller street with old terrace houses. There weren’t as many people here, so I dropped back a bit. Then he turned left up a steep, narrow street with lots of dingy shops and boarded-up houses. As we climbed, I could see the lights of the City spread out in every direction like strings of pearls. Across the other side of town a red light smouldered at the top of a gigantic tower.

  Just over the hill, the street dipped and passed under an old railway bridge. I followed O’Hare underneath and suddenly found myself all but blind. There was a smell like rotting cabbage, and water dripped down the back of my collar. Someone coughed.

  ‘Spare some change, love?’ It sounded more like a crow than a man. I could just make out his shape, lying there by the wall. I hooked a coin from my pocket and held it out towards him. Calloused fingers pinched it away. ‘Ta, darlin’.’ Then he started coughing again.

  I hurried on. At the other side of the bridge I could see all the way down the street, but O’Hare was nowhere in sight. I walked on to the next corner, then the next, looking left and right down the side roads and checking every shop and café. Nothing. After all this bother, I’d lost him. I slouched back up the road feeling so mad that I wanted to kick the rubbish sacks piled outside the shops. But then as the anger faded I began to realize what I’d got myself into—lost in a huge, unfamiliar city with no food, nowhere to stay, hardly any money.…

  As I approached the bridge again, I heard a familiar hacking cough. I took a deep breath and went back under the arches. The tramp was still lying there against the wall, a black shape in the clammy darkness.

  ‘Excuse me, did you see that guy who came through here just before me?’

  He propped himself up and I saw light glint on a bottle as he lifted it to his mouth. ‘Oh, ’im in the overcoat, with the long ’air? I know ’im.’

  I was astonished. ‘You know him?’

  He took another swig. ‘Yeah. Comes past all the time. Never given me so much as a penny, the miserable—’ He swore so savagely it made him start coughing again. ‘Some people’ve got no ’art,’ he spluttered.

  ‘Do you know if he lives round here?’

  He chuckled. ‘Z’e yer boyfriend then, darlin’?’

  ‘No way. He’s just someone from school. But I need to talk to him. It’s really important.’

  ‘Mmmm.’ Suddenly he seemed to have lost interest. The bottle flashed again as it went to his mouth. Money, I thought, he wants more money. I felt for a coin in my pocket and held it out to him. ‘Here, do you want—’ He snatched it away. ‘Got any idea where he lives?’ I said.

  ‘Not exack-ly,’ he said, stretching out the words as if he was really trying to think. ‘But I reckon it’s round ’ere somewhere. ’E comes past ’ere jus’ ‘bout evry mornin’. Goes for the paper at José’s shop up there.’ He pointed towards the top of the hill.

  ‘And he goes back down the hill?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And he never talks to you or anything?’

  ‘Huh, not likely. ’E did give me somethin’ once, though.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘A dog turd.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘Nah, it’s true, I swear. Big dog turd wrapped up in silver paper. I thought it was a baguette at first. Come to think of it, maybe it was one of ’is turds.’

  ‘My God,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Not your fault, darlin’.’

  We talked for a bit longer. Then I thanked him and wandered off down the hill again, not knowing what to do next. It was daylight now, half past eight on a cold grey Wednesday morning, or was it Thursday. People hurried past in an endless stream but no one seemed to take the least notice of me. I trudged on for a few more blocks until all of a sudden I felt like I couldn’t take another step. I didn’t care about finding O’Hare any more. I wasn’t even bothered about being lost in this huge, cold, unfriendly city. All I cared about was sleep. Then I looked down and there was Boo, watching me with her big dark eyes. God help me, I’d forgotten all about her.

  ‘Oh, Boo!’ I knelt and gave her the biggest hug. ‘Poor Boo, you must be wondering what’s going on. And I bet you’re starving, aren’t you?’ She gave my face a little lick. I rummaged through my satchel and found two squashed fruit bars. ‘Here you are, Boo. One for you and one for me.’

  We ate the fruit bars and walked on for another few blocks. My limbs felt like sacks of w
et sand and the pain in my knee was worse than ever. At the next corner there was a war memorial with a mountain of new poppy wreaths. Round the back of it I found a patch of grass, hidden from the road by a line of bushes. This would do us. I used what was left of my strength to scrape some of the fallen leaves into a pile and laid my rucksack across one end for a pillow. It was more comfortable than I expected. As I curled up on my crackly new bed, Boo nuzzled in close to my chest. Then we were sailing to Oblivion.

  6

  Spots of yellow light flickered across my eyelids, dragging me from the depths. I opened my eyes to the sun shimmering through tawny leaves. Then eyelids dropped and I was drifting again, strange dream-thoughts mixing with birdsong and sounds of traffic.

  Footsteps crunched on leaves. They came closer, very close, then stopped. I opened my eyes. A guy was looking at me. He was about my age. His bulky brown jacket had fluorescent orange stripes on the collar and along the top of the breast pocket. Thick dark curly hair sprang out under his tweed cap. His eyes were squinty and smiling.

  ‘Hi,’ he said.

  ‘Hi.’ I sat up, feeling embarrassed and a bit scared.

  He was just smiling and looking at me. His smile made you wonder what he was thinking. He was incredibly good-looking.

  He nodded at Boo. ‘Are you two okay?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Are you hungry?’

  ‘No, no, it’s okay.’

  He could tell I was on my guard. ‘My friends and I live just over there.’ He pointed beyond the trees. ‘We’re squatting. Got this big old place. We’ll be having dinner soon. You’d be welcome to join us.’