The Busconductor Hines (13 page)

He slithered through the snow for the last few yards up to the corner, and walked along to the stop. Several moments passed before the staffbus came bombing along. A loud screeching as the
driver moved down through the gears instead of applying the footbrake normally. Hines was positioned at a spot beyond the stop so that he could jump aboard and grab for the handrail, and as the doors bounced open at that instant beyond the stop he had jumped aboard and was grabbing for the handrail, and the doors had shut, the driver hooting his laughter while ramming the gearstick from 1st to 2nd that Hines was jerked down the aisle but managing to grab onto the safety rail by the luggage-compartment, swinging himself round to be sitting on the seat there. He gazed at the rear-view mirror, seeing the driver laughing at him and he frowned.

Heh, called the driver, dont go blaming me now Rab I mean it's a hell of a shoogly bus they've gave me. No my fucking fault; how can it be my fucking fault! Never mind but at least it's waking every cunt up. Eh?

Hines ignored him, got the lid off the tin. The driver was still laughing and glancing into the rear-view. Come on down and talk, he called. Heh, I dont even know last night's football results. Eh? Heh you hungry? I've got a couple of chits left from my dinner here you want them? Eh? Heh Rab you wanting them, I'm no feeling like them man you're welcome. Eh?

Hines had a brief coughing fit on the first drag on the smoke and then was rising to push back the small window above the big window, and he spat out the catarrh.

Heh what d'you think! last night, point for discussion, prostitute gets on my bus. I'm stopped at the lights up the top of St Vincent Street and I opens the door – thought she was just wanting to ask me the time or some fucking thing but naw, on she gets. Yoker she says but I've got no money. Aw aw I thinks. None at all she says. Know what she does? now I'm no kidding you man she must've been near 50 years of age: at least, at fucking least. Know what she does? hooks up the kilt. Hooks up the kilt man I'm no kidding you; I've no money she says.
What I says get to fuck, big smelly fanny like that you kidding, and anyhow I says it's a staffbus, staff only. What d'you mean she says. No passengers allowed, that's what I fucking mean. Well what did you stop for in the first place ya stupid looking clown ye. Eh? I mean . . . eh? Fuck sake I mean I wouldnt take that kind of patter off the wife never mind a clatty auld cunt like her man I mean – heh I says down you go before I put one on your chin. Aye just fucking try it she says and I'm no kidding you man she's all set to get the coat off and go to the boxing games. Eh? Heh Rab know what I done! Eh? Heh Rab wait till you hear this yin man: know what I done! drove right into the polis fucking office!

Hines winked at the floor.

Aye, Elliot Street – I drove right fucking in; and then out she jumps soon as I opened the doors, going like the clappers she was man christ, you want to have seen her – the 4 minute mile wasnt fucking in it . . . The driver changed suddenly down from 4th to 3rd gear, Hines' cigarette falling out of his hand and landing in a pool of water on the floor.

Heh Rab you been on your winter-week or what? I've no seen you for ages. Where you been hiding yourself eh! Heh, I heard that cunt Reilly's going to stand for Shop Steward, that right?

Hh. Hines shook his head and replied that he was about to acquire a gun. He had the lid off the tin and was lining the tobacco along the centre of the rice-paper. A gun.

A gun! what d'you mean a fucking shooter?

Aye.

The driver laughed. What're you going to kill some cunt?

That's my business.

The driver roared unintelligibly. Hines was grinning. He stopped this grinning by a prolonged stare at the saturated cigarette on the floor.

After breakfast he set off on one of his occasional rambles round the garage periphery. Then he was at the stop. An Inspector was also here, taking notes on the times of passing buses, but soon he crossed the road to continue his work. Hines leaned against the display window of an adjacent shop. The few people waiting for a bus were standing back from the kerb. Slush was being sprayed onto the pavement by passing vehicles. A young girl came along while he rolled a cigarette. She got sprayed by a big lorry. She stopped and studied herself. The slush on her clothes, dripping. She seemed surprised but not astonished. Her face had flushed. Glancing from side to side she turned and went back the way she had come, neither too slowly nor too quickly although it could be seen that something disturbed her. Hines licked the gummed edge of the rice-paper and dropped the cigarette to the paving; he took out the tin to roll another, pausing to wipe at his nostrils with the cuff of his right uniform sleeve.

He was to go home immediately.

Across the road the Inspector was strolling to a different vantage point, hands clasped behind his back. When next he looked over it was the intention of Hines to fall. If the fall was properly accomplished coins would spill from his cashbag and his uniform breeks would get soaked, and maybe he would graze a knee. All this would be worthwhile if only he could get home. Sandra would be there and would be there for a further 2 hours. It is not that a Hines should not work. A Hines should certainly of course work. Hines has always been in favour of work. He considers it good for the thing.

The fall was rejected.

Signing off sick in order that one may return home immediately is nothing less than a step to the rear, the which step belonging to the past and not the present. And the present
should not be said to be yesterday. One of the more fascinating aspects of the lower orders is their peculiar ideas on time and motion. This used to always be being exemplified by the Busconductor Hines. He had assumed the world as a State of Flux. All things aboard the world are constantly on the move. Ding ding. Being an object aboard the world I am indeed on the go. As a method of survival it is marvellous. Hines can marvel. He can look at the faces and cannot look at the faces. They approach the platform individually and in pairs and in groups, talking and not talking. They are hypocrites. The men and the women, the children. It is not that he knows this in particular but that everyone knows this and is also known to know it, by everyone else. Such a thing cannot be concealed. For each individual a guise exists but this guise is shabby, it can be seen through; face upon face, the tired the sullen the crabbit, the timid the cheery and so on. In the windows he could see their reflections, the strange frowns every now and then. That concentration.

Snow was falling. He raised the lapels of the uniform jacket, huddled his shoulders, the uniform hat squarely on his head, hands deep in the uniform trouser pockets; that fine cigarette burning away. Over the road the Inspector stamped from foot to foot, smacking his hands together, his head twisting to right and to left in his continuing search for promptness.

And Reilly had arrived, to go straight into the doorway of the shop without acknowledging his conductor's presence.

The bus was late.

A thin layer of snow now covered Hines' hat and his other exposed regions; he felt his boots, however, to be in good repair. Soon it would be time for another cigarette. At the end of this shift he would retain the price of a further ½ ounce. Too much was being spent on the habit. He had to keep Sandra
in ignorance of the extent. But more than ¾ of his pocket-money was required for it and he was not able to cope. He would have to stop. To stop is not simple. As a gesture of some sort he had reduced his own pocketmoney several weeks ago but this was only leaving him short of funds and he was having to take from the housekeeping purse or otherwise reimburse himself – frequently he retained cash from the cashbag but this cash was deducted at source from the following week's wagepacket while providing the file with additional Black Marks. Some conductors earn extra monies by means of positive ploys. Hines used to be such a conductor during his first term of transport. Nowadays circumstances have to be extremely odd before he will even contemplate action of that description. The present situation may well be demanding but the circumstances are not odd. They are baffling. They are baffling and they are not fucking baffling. He can see himself seeing the faces. Maybe he is just timewasting. The matter cannot be considered. But waiting for the bus could drive him crackers. He was standing there; he smoked 3 cigarettes. And Reilly in the doorway made things worse. He brooded about the not talking. He likes talking to Hines who doesnt not like talking to him. But what is the point in such talk. It is that which they have accomplished for years. Years are not minutes. In the garage the talk is endless. To discuss the talk of the garage is pointless. Such discussions do occur among the uniformed employees and are integral to the thing itself. Without such discussions the talk of the garage might even be becoming absent. Hines has endeavoured to reject both the talk and the discussions of the talk while aware of the absurdity of doing even that. Presently he remains silent. He is unsure as to whether the language of death is the language of the unalive. He only hopes a bus will stop soon, that it will be his.

The final notice on the gasbill had been placed upright against the wall above the mantelpiece. He did not look at it more closely. He went ben the front room to play a record, and he began the tidying. Under the boy's cot he found a neat pile of chewed food beneath a jersey. He hoovered the carpet thoroughly, swept the lobby and toilet floor, checking for other batches of food, going carefully in case he discovered signs of mice. Hines hates mice. They induce a terror in him that could be described as irrational. When Sandra or Paul is present he copes; he acts as though indifferent and can attack them quite the thing. Worrying about mice is pointless because they do not do anything much. Rats, however, can kill infants. It is not their fault. They are rats. A rat is an entity that will scavenge; and being bigger and stronger than a mouse it can tackle more onerous tasks. It can bite the neck of a wean. The infant lies sleeping in the pram and up climbs the rat softly, padding along the quilt, to pick curiously at the fleshy object. During the long hot summers the women sit downstairs in the backcourt, their chairs lining the foot of the tenement, a sun-trap, their voices carrying, that peaceful part of the afternoon when the older kids are in school. Sandra used to go down when Paul was a toddler. They were all sitting there chatting and this big rat the size of a dog got disturbed out the midden, and yet not so much panic as anger that a few moved to corner it, and a woman by the name of Joanne Hughes banged it dead with a shovel belonging to the demolition workers.

Mrs Montgomery was washing the stair when he went out.
He remarked on the weather but she replied only in a mono-syllable. Sometimes she would speak to him but generally not. She prefers Sandra. A couple of Hogmanays ago he went down to wish her the best for the coming year but for some reason got involved in an argument over religion. Although he was not sober he should not carry all of the blame. The politics of Mrs Montgomery are well away from the question.

The snow.

He decided against returning for a coat. And did he have an actual coat. Yes. He also had a good suit, plus a few other items he never seemed to have time to wear because of the putrid green. When was he last not wearing it. His last day-off. He even wore it on some of those. This is why it looked so shabby, the trousers in particular, like a pair of fucking concertinas. And when he came home after a shift he seldom bothered to change clothes unless Sandra mentioned it. And when he was due out on a backshift he usually stuck it on first thing in the morning, to save doing so later.

Paul was already in the cloakroom, his coat on and his balaclava in his hand, eager to be away. This normally meant he was in the bad books with the bosses. He wasnt wearing his mittens; they were inside his coat pockets. While Hines was fixing things he tried to find out what was what but Paul was saying nothing. It could be hard getting him to talk. This amused Sandra, that it was obvious whom he took after; but Hines had been nothing like him as a boy.

They trudged along, with Hines walking so that the boy could be stepping on the untouched snow to the side of the pavement; and he did seem interested in seeing the prints he left, but not for long. Taking off his uniform hat Hines attempted to exchange it for the balaclava, but Paul tensed and he returned it to his own head. He scraped a handful of snow from the bonnet of a parked car and gave it to him but he let it fall quite
soon. It was hopeless. What was it to be a real father. He was it, a real father. But other fathers might be finding out what was up, if something really had occurred to upset him. What could have occurred to upset him. Something or nothing.

They went into the butcher's. The man behind the counter made a fuss of weans and could also quip merrily at adults – often Sandra smiled at these quips. Then into the vegetable shop where he added an apple to the purchases, giving it to the boy on the last lap home. It was good that he liked fruit. Fruit is good for kids. Sandra works that such items go more easily. She works part-time but hopes to go full-time. Her boss' name is Buchanan. Imagine a cunt called Buchanan. Here you have a cunt by the name of Buchanan who is the boss and has always regarded one's wife in a favourable light, as someone he would always reinstate, her work having been exemplary since first she started working for the cunt directly upon leaving Secretarial College. An employee of ideal proportions. Never a day's illness but that such an illness is of a bona fide variety. A credit to all and sundry eh, excuse me madam you by any chance being employed on an informal basis by the Heads of the Monarchic State. A simple question. Give us an aye or give us a naw.