From a bus

The world from a bus

by Christopher Mathews

  I wiped the greasy, misted windows with the back of my hand. I must have done this a thousand times on this same bus, number nineteen, upper deck, halfway down, on the right, just behind the stairs.

Naturally, the back row was reserved for teenagers: this is an unspoken law which everyone knew. The front was the window on a world of dreams for small children with their mothers on a day’s outing. The journey to the bank, where I worked took thirty-four minutes, less in the school holidays. How did I come to this? Sixty-one years old with a massive mortgage like a millstone, working long hours in the dullest job in the world. Whatever happened to my schoolboy dream to be an archaeologist discovering the wonders of history? 

‘Get your head out of the clouds and don’t be such a dreamer, just stick to maths lad.’ said the school career’s advisor, Mr Doughty the PE teacher, who despised those of us who were not good at sport.  Sixty-one from three score years and ten only leaves nine years left to bloom. 

A small boy, two seats in front was kneeling on the bench, flying a spaceship made of his mum’s washing up bottle, completely oblivious to his dull, drab surroundings, his imagination fixed on his perilous mission to save the universe in deepest space. He was piloting his rocket through meteor storms and evading the death rays of alien fighter ships carrying his precious cargo which would save his homeworld.

‘Tickets please!’ bellowed the ticket inspector in my ear, wrenching me from the copilot seat in a Fairy Liquid bottle.

I glanced at my watch, eight twenty-seven, we’re a bit late we should be on the corner where Mumbles the men’s outfitters used to stand, long gone now though.

As the bus passed that corner, a young woman was shouting at a man, everyone on the pavement stopped to look, mesmerised by the scene.  Then, with all her strength she slapped him full in the face.  He reeled back as if punched.  An audible gasp rang out from nearby shoppers. Hell hath no fury… I thought.

The bus drove on and that brief snapshot into life was gone.  But in my imagination, I filled in her back-story, the tragic details which had led up to that one moment where lives, like colliding billiard balls, suddenly break apart. 

‘What do you mean you’re leaving, we have a child, you have responsibilities now! ‘But I’ve fallen in love with… or; 

‘But you were seen kissing Mandy Bridgwater behind the bike sheds…’ or maybe;

‘You can’t go off to university, what about all our dreams…’ 

I had forgotten how turbulent the teenage years were, where everything was either wonderful bliss or unendurable pain.  Looking back, life seemed so volatile, as if anything were possible and the future could unfold in hundreds of different ways, none of which saw me working in a job I hated for forty-three years at the same dull bank.

But perhaps there was much more to this slap than we witnessed. Maybe it was part of a ‘pop-up’ street drama put on by a local acting school. Or, part of an elaborate scam where the shopper’s attention was momentarily distracted as unseen pickpockets worked through the crowd, purses heavily laden with cash for the morning shop. 

We were now passing through Weaver Street, lined with narrow terraced houses, long front gardens and parked cars.  What a shock, there at number sixty-four was a gigantic

ocean-going yacht, now rather battered and damaged obviously from a long sea voyage.  It was as if, overnight the tide had beached an enormous Blue Whale jammed between a battered old Ford Cortina up on bricks and new shiny BMW.  The bow of the yacht was within inches of the upper floor bedroom window and the stern, which was covered in tatty stickers of the flags from different countries, was jutting out over the front gate.  The mast was broken and there was a gash in the side of the hull as if a sea monster had bitten through it and after hastily patched at sea. ‘here be dragons’ the old maps said.  The underside was covered in seaweed and barnacles.  The cabin was at my eye level and I could see that the interior was a mess as if everything had been tossed around in a violent storm, the sort you get in the Southern Ocean.  An old man of about seventy, a mop of grey hair, tatty shorts, bronzed face and legs were tinkering around inside energetically, as if desperate to get her seaworthy again.

The bus passed quickly as if to rip the fascinating scene from my eyes, but it lingered on in my imagination. I saw him waving to loved-ones who stood on the quayside not knowing if they would ever see him again. He was driven by an inner storm far more powerful than any found in nature.  Each night they were glued to the radio set hoping for a crackly word from him.’

I’m now about forty miles off the coast of …. The storm has passed but… I saw a school of mermaids today…’. But the rest is lost in the wind. 

And they lived in the unspoken fear of a call, in the dead of night from some foreign coastguard saying, 

‘I regret to inform you that…’ 

And I thought of Longfellow’s poem The wreck of the Hesperus. At that moment was he too battling a frozen storm in mountainous seas, his yacht rushing down a wave-like a surfer only to plough through a wall of deep green water and turn stern over bow like a toy ship on the beach. Or, swimming on the mirrored surface of an iridescent blue sea, exposed under the vast cloudless heavens above and the bottomless bottle green sea below, remembering to tie a line to his ankle in case the wind blew. Watched on by curious sea creatures or a massive whale spouting a tall column of water.  Or perhaps, emerging out of a becalmed mist, he could hear the rumbling of engines as the vast blind bow of an enormous bulk freighter came rushing toward him, ‘No time to start the engine, I must…..’

‘Ain’t this your stop governor?’ said the conductor.  

Climbing down the steps of the bus, exhausted from my own battles with the sea as vicarious loneliness mixed with a strange exhilaration flooded through me, I thought of the place in the Bible where it says ‘God has set eternity in the heart of man’ And I too felt that longing for more, much more than just this life, it was the call of eternal significance we are all grasping for. I walked slowly up the monumental steps of the bank, as I had every working day of my life, with its stolen Ionic Greek architectural order evoking the enduring solidity of Classical Greece. I felt the familiar sinking feeling at the prospect of another grey, dull day shuffling numbers on a computer screen. Ironic Greek Order would be more fitting nowadays, given the state of modern banking. In the vast marble-lined hall, I was met by Mr Perkis-Jones, the young, sharp-suited manager who shook my hand warmly. It was a well-practised greeting, warmth tinged with regret and just a little sadness, it was very well done. On either side of him were a man and a woman dressed in grey and looking very stern in contrast to his practised engaging smile. My imagination raced at this unexpected greeting, are there going to be accusations of fraud?  But my mind was brought back as he went on in a hushed sympathetic voice.  

‘We at the bank have valued your hard work and commitment over many years Frank, urr, I mean Georg, oh yes Bernard of course,’ the woman had whispered in his ear, ‘But following the recent Blue-sky Consultancy report the bank is redirecting resources and streamline the blar, blar, blar… I recognised the management-speak at once, of course. 

‘My, our deepest commiserations’ he continued and then paused waiting for me to take it in.  He went on in a much more jovial unrehearsed voice; well, it is a very generous redundancy package and your pension is first-rate.  

‘Just think Frank, now you can fulfil all those dreams.’  

The end

© Christopher Mathews – March 2019