The Busconductor Hines (11 page)

Ah we'll be long gone by then.

Will we?

Course.

You never know though. Even just painting it. Anything to cover it up; it's awful. I'm surprised Paul doesnt get nightmares just from seeing it. Can you imagine having to lie there night after night!

Hines nodded.

And it isnt as if it would cost much . . . The soup had reheated. She switched off the gas, ladled the soup into a bowl and quickly spread margarine on the bread. In fact a 2½ litre tin might do it all.

I'll get you one for Christmas.

O thanks!

He grinned, taking the food from her, and he began to eat. Back at the oven she got the kettle; then she laughed suddenly. Rab – God – mind I was telling you about Doreen the cleaner the other day? the one with the three grandchildren? what a scream she is. This afternoon at tea-break – you know how Mr Buchanan's away down in London just now – o God. Sandra laughed. Jean had sent her out for cream doughnuts, for herself and me and Mrs Monaghan . . .

And Sandra continued with this tale about the cleaner coming back from the baker with the 4 cakes and going on about this the cakes, her coming back with the cakes and not the cream doughnuts it was, she was continuing on about this, the Cleaner Being Sent For The Cream Doughnuts And Not The Cakes while Mr the erstwhile fucking Buchanan was off down in London on a Brief Business Trip very strictly speaking in all probability not playing about at all, no, just being forced into it of course, he would much rather be staying at home in the nice Suburbs having by no means any notion of gallivanting about the place, yes, 1 thing about auld Bufuckingcanan, he's the salt of the bastarn Earth. I dont know what it is with you
Sandra I really dont I mean . . . He shook his head. He had glanced away from her. And he placed the soup and the bread up on the mantelpiece. Then he turned: I mean something definitely stinks about sending a woman like Doreen out for cream doughnuts. A grandmother for christ sake. Out for cream fucking doughnuts; Jesus christ almighty! He flung the
Evening Times
from his lap and grabbed the tobacco, getting the lid off the tin, seeing the fingers twitch, the fingers twitching away, in their grasp at the lid, of the tin.

DANGER: HM Govt. Health Depts' WARNING
THE MORE YOU SMOKE
THE MORE YOU RISK YOUR HEALTH.

The door closed. The door had been closing. And its bang. He pressed a forefinger against a nostril of his nose and blew through the other. There is a gas-fire such that 3 sections exist, each containing 24 toty rectangles behind which lurk several 100 pointed particles of an unknown nature but that they glow whitely when at hot heat; this gas-fire can be leaking mysteriously. The occasional whiff 1st thing in the morning. It is the gas. The inhalation of such fumes doth annihilate the white corpuscles of one's bloodstream. Hence the cause of death. In you come night after night and slump into your chair – a chair you have been positioning as close to the feedpipe as is surreptitiously possible – and so on till the loss of the white fills your being with total red unto black. Get yourself insured and that's you the bona fide articles for the etceteras, the wife and 38 weans being provided for. All you need is a short note: Dear Sandra, As I've often told you in the past, most people either know they've got to die and wont believe it or believe they've got to die and know they wont, but what I want to say is this – 1 thing and 1 thing only, and you can give us an aye or give us
a naw – re. you and the boy, the wee Paul fellow, you and him, aye, just the pair of you, I want to talk to yous a minute, you and him, no other cunt, nobody, nobody else, none, forget the lot of them cause it's just the pair of you, no other cunt at all, they dont matter the bastards, the dirty fucking bastards, not

a no chance, not an iota the bastards

Sandra was standing at the door. Listen, she had said. She was still wearing the pale-coloured blouse, the tan-coloured skirt, the top three buttons of the blouse being undone still. Standing with her arms folded beneath her breasts and the nipples firm against the material there. She was saying how Hines didnt have the right to say what he had said, that he hadnt the right, that he was treating her like somebody that, somebody that. She was not able to make contact in this part of it, not able to say just how she saw herself being treated by him but that this treatment she regarded as totally wrong, as really unjustified. A crucial factor: the cleaner has always finished a certain part of her work in time for tea-break so she can join in the chat with the office-staff, that she likes a cake the same as the next person, that it's never a question of her being sent but that she offers and is usually doing nothing till commencing the next part of her work, that . . . Doreen.

Hines looked away. He stared at the soup and began rolling a cigarette.

He looked at her and shook his head, closed his eyelids; he opened them and replaced the cigarette makings in the tin and shut it. O fuck . . . he rubbed at his eyes and gazed at the fire.

Rab. She had come across, parting his knees and resting her knees on the edge of his chair. She gripped his shoulders, forcing him to meet her gaze.

He laughed; it was derisive and become a low snorting sound. She made him continue facing her. Then she gave him a shake! Jesus. He shook his head. Sorry.

Shut up. She hated him saying that. She leaned to whisper into his ear and he embraced her quite roughly, his face averted; and he sat forwards so her position would be more easy to maintain but it wasnt, and she fell on him and he went against the back of the chair. Both laughed, and she pretended to nibble the lobe of his ear till he shook her off from it. I wonder why you dont like me doing that? she chuckled.

Too tickly.

Liar.

What d'you mean! He kissed her again, attempting to make it last a while but not able to do so because of a shortage of breath, being unable to breathe properly, and having to stop and try to breathe more regularly before continuing. He tugged the blouse out from the waistband of her skirt, and got the catch unclipped at the back of her bra. Hang on . . . and she got off the chair, arms snug to the sides of her body, stepping to the sink to draw the blind.

These helicopters, everywhere.

She smiled; saucily, it was a saucy smile she was giving him; it was really great to look at. He grinned at her noticing his watching her. She was balancing herself – the right hand on the arm of the chair – to take off her tights – at the last stage of that manoeuvre. She was sticking her tongue out at him; and a smile – but not directly to him – while turning to get into bed. There she shivered. A mime. Come on, she shivered, while getting the blankets to her chin.

When he was in beside her she clung to him, still shivering.

Naw, he laughed, there's plenty of time.

There better be.

They were kissing then and very soon he moved to enter her. Once he had climaxed she told him it felt good. His breathing wasnt right to answer yet. But he kissed her, and
eventually rolled onto his back; she laid her head on his chest, then said. What a waste!

He chuckled.

Well, you're still hard.

No I'm not.

Feels like it to me.

Ah you could probably bend it in two the way it is.

Rab!

He laughed. And you're the one that wanted to be a nurse too!

She shuddered: a mime, the way she could shudder in the circumstances. He held her there, on his chest, stroking the side of her arm, her hair on his left cheek.

When have you got to go back?

A while.

Are you sure?

Aye. He sniffed slightly, gazed at the ceiling for a moment, before shutting his eyelids. He opened them again.

The man on the kerb was sitting so that he seemed to be attempting an actual connection of his feet with the tar and stonework. How to manage it; there are the feet encased in the socks and the boots and there is the street upon which they have settled. Shoes he's wearing, not boots. A man of uncertain age but a dosser of course, and waiting for the garage canteen to open to strangers, strangers not being permitted entry until breakfast has been eaten by the garage employees.
He stares at the shoes on the street; a rigorous posture though it could appear relaxed, his elbows fixed or resting on his raised knees. The cigarette Hines has been smoking he chips to land less than a yard from the man's left shoe but the man made no outward movement. He steps in the man's direction, as though preparing to clobber him a hard one on the shoulder but instead of doing that he just continued along the street.

A driver came striding round the corner and nodded to him in passing, then he called something which Hines ignored.

Along the pavement of the main thoroughfare he was swinging his machine-case while walking. Snow started to fall. The bus was at the stop. Beside it stood another driver and a bespectacled Inspector by the name of Mackie. Then out from a shop doorway strode a busconductor exhibiting a mixture of relief and annoyance, the annoyance now taking precedence; and he headed toward Hines. Fuck sake Rab what happened to you?

Slept in, grinned Hines. He drew the cuff of the sleeve of his uniform jacket under his nostrils and sniffed. He smiled at the Inspector. But the deepest form of frown screwed the Inspector's eyebrows and he was wanting to know what bloody time this was to arrive. Hines chuckled. Aboard the bus the faces of the passengers. And the driver already inside his cabin and adjusting his seat and rear-view mirror. As soon as Hines stepped on the automatic doors banged shut and within moments all moved at a fair clip. He blew his nose into a piece of toilet paper before arranging his machine and cashbag. Some passengers watched. He shook his head with a smile and was soon conducting his duties. And his nose dripped again, 1 drop on his wrist while another onto the ticket he was issuing to an aged male passenger. The poor auld latter! What he did was hold the ticket by the skin of its teeth then place it with tremendous aplomb on the spare bit of the seat beside him. Blooming nose, said Hines, been like this for months so it has!

He continued down the aisle, collecting the rest of the outstanding fares.

Soon he was asking the driver to halt at the next convenient general stores. And he got off to buy a packet of paper handkerchiefs as well as the ½ ounce of tobacco, making the payment from the cashbag. When he came out the bespectacled Inspector was there – he would have been on the bus immediately following that of Hines. He gazed sternly, saying: Name and number?

Hines grinned. He replied and yawned, proceeded back onto the bus, to be followed there by the Inspector. Opening the packet he took out a handkerchief and blew noisily into it. The blow was a good one but and he felt the benefit. Am I being booked? he said.

Course you're being bloody booked, whispered the Inspector, glancing over his spectacles at the passengers; then he began to write into his notebook.

Hines nodded. He enclosed the pinkie of his right hand in the handkerchief and stuck it up his right nostril, and he yanked about there. That's how I went into the shop, to buy them, these handkerchiefs. Runny noses! Murder polis so they are.

Get the bus moving, the Inspector told the driver.

Is it no a bona fide excuse?

Under no circumstances is a conductor allowed to leave his bus, as well you know. He lowered his voice. And dont try to take the effing piss out of me Hines, I'm warning you.

Hines sniffed and looked at him.

The bus had been going. Just before the next stop the Inspector nodded at the driver and soon the bus halted, and he got down onto the pavement to stand there with his hands clasped behind his back, and facing away from the bus. Then the bus moving and the driver engrossed in that, the passengers gazing at various objects of interest but not connected to
this situation. It was quite peculiar in a sense, and Hines raised his left arm though soon he lowered it. He muttered.

What was that? said the driver, his head twisting to the side then back to the front. What d'you say Rab?

Mackie.

Hh. The driver shook his head. I mind him before he became an Inspector.

So do I. I conducted to him quite a few times.

Did you? the driver glanced round.

Aye. Hines sniffed. I hadnt long started in the job right enough.

The driver nodded, turning his head but then returning it at once and he was hitting the footbrake . . . Knew he was going to do that, stupid fucking . . . He shook his head, and he glanced back to Hines.

Aye, quite a few times.

Hh! The driver now reaching behind his seat for another bottle of milk and he swigged a long one then replaced it and getting a packet of his tipped cigarettes from the panel above the dashboard, and glancing at Hines and also to the front while extracting a cigarette.

Aye; I hadnt long started in the job right enough.

The driver fiddling with the box of matches, eyebrows raised. Hines turned and began to manoeuvre the farestage numbering device on his machine; he shrugged and went up the stairs. It wasnt busy. Towards the rear he sat down and he rolled a cigarette.