The Busconductor Hines (12 page)

Once she had gone into work he went back to bed and attempted to sleep but this was not to be possible because of the boy who was both playing with toys and watching the television. He got up. He too watched television, drinking tea, smoking cigarettes; then he went to the front room with the quilt, put on a record and lay stretched out on the settee. Paul entered. He got up, he walked to the windows. Aye, he said, real winter stuff the day. He frowned at the sky.

Paul continued to stand near the settee. Hines sniffed and nodded to him then returned to the kitchen. The atmosphere had clouded, the tobacco smoke. He leaned over the sink to force up the window a bit. One of its sides was jammed. He tugged on the other side first then applied pressure with both hands to the jammed side; it appeared stuck fast; he got a small hammer from the toolbox beneath the sink and gave it a few taps until able to move it by hand. Paul was watching him. Hines nodded. It's these auld mineworkings son, causes subsidence. He shrugged, filled a kettle to heat for tea, or possibly coffee. What about you? he said, d'you want some milk or what?

Yes.

Milk you mean?

He nodded.

What about a piece? want a piece on jam or something?

Paul grinned.

Hh; god. Hines shook his head with a smile.

This rectangle is formed by the backsides of the buildings – in fact it's maybe even a square. A square: 4 sides of equal length and each 2 lines being angled onto each other at 90°. Okay now: this backcourt a square and for each unit of dwellers up each tenement close there exists the
midden being equal to 2 dustbins. For every 3 closes you have the 1 midden containing 6 dustbins. But then you've got the prowlers coming round when every cunt's asleep. They go exchanging holey dustbins for nice new yins. Holey dustbins: the bottom only portionally there so the rubbish remains on the ground when said dustbins are being uplifted. What a bastard. Lift a dustbin then aware of how light it feels and then to be finding all the rubbish lying in a heap on the fucking floor – having to rush out to the midden-motor and get your shovel and back again to swipe it all away before the animals get a whiff and come out to get into it. Animals eat everything. No matter what it is they'll fucking eat it. They're starving right enough. And they are not to be having anywhere to live. They keep trying to stay one jump ahead of the demolition men. You get the building knocked down and then the equipment gets transferred round the corner, and so on down the line, getting nearer and nearer to this very window. And all the time the poor auld fucking animals go running for cover, scrambling along beneath the floorboards and up and down the stair they go dropping between walls, in behind all those layers and layers of fucking wallpaper dating back to christ knows when son it must be near a hundred bastarn years the dump has been standing, which throws you a century's rodent shit plus the decayed corpses all lying wedged here there and everyfuckingwhere no doubt supplying sustenance by christ to lesser mites so that springing to life the rising generations and even evolution for fuck sake what next.

The District of D.

There can be long hot summers in the District of D. Dont let anybody tell you different. And it can be good in the long hot summers. Even the fucking buses, these early mornings, before the bastards are up and about and jumping aboard your platform. Great, the dawns, when the alarm goes off and it's daylight already and there you are there you are there you fucking are right enough. It is baffling. It is baffling and yet it is not fucking baffling. Here you've got a family comprising husband wife and wean whose astounding circumstances are oddly normal. This trio are as 1. But the husband is to be no doubt leaving his job of work to take to another. And the reason is clear: he has failed to make a go of things at this the third time of asking. It is his considered opinion that the door must soon be shown him for being a bad busconductor. And in the long run it'll probably prove possible that just being an actual conductor will be reason enough because 1-man-buses are the vehicular items of the not too distant future. He would to have become a busdriver in view of this, to have been preparing for that. But there is now no hope of his ever becoming a busdriver. Okay: so, either he leaves of his own fucking volition or else he gets the boot. Fine. And the broo does seem the thing to do. Fuck sake but he has been knowing that for a while. Let it pass, fine, okay, as long as the course is foreseeable past opinions on the future are irrelevant. Shut all that kind of stuff away, away. It is a straightforward matter, a simple question of producing the finishing line. And the actual means of production though important are nevertheless not too important. Of course you're still left with the fucking house.

What might be worth noting here is the strange kettle of cabbage. It is fucking a strange carry on altogether. Here you have a house – a flat – a flat cum house – up a close in a tenement building. Now: there is a – many in fact – singular bits involved in this problem about the house. Not least is an item
of an apparently insurmountable nature. It calls for wide heads. The past and the present have got to be considered. When the immediate past is not only today but also tomorrow. What the fuck. The time things they set you up. 5 years is never to be described as 10 minutes. That would be fucking ridiculous. 5 years is a host of days; then for each 1 you get 3. Even if you only want the 1 you've got another 2 stuck on. You're best paying no attention. You just go along. You can just go along okay. You can be getting along fine, just going along, you can eh – then the house coming on top of the job or maybe beforehand, the flat, it is to be being demolished so the flit out from here to the next place and getting the space, clearing for the space, getting shot of the auld brickwork and concrete, the debris, you get it stacked then wheel it away in your wheelbarrow, right up the ramp and into the skip, the debris. Your head gets thick. You can be watching and waiting. It is fucking a strange carry on because then there you are. And you are not able to look properly.

She had spoken. He glanced at her, replied, and she nodded. When she got to the oven she switched off the gas and poured the boiling water out of the kettle into the two mugs and added the milk and the sugar, and carried one to him and the other back with her to the chair; sitting down there and resuming reading; about four inches of wrist showing beneath her jumper sleeves; her chin resting on her cupped left hand, hair shielding most of her face. He said that the coffee was good and she asked if he wanted anything to go with it, there being biscuits in the tin. And the movement of the book
as she settled into position, the concentration, left leg crossing to the right, the foot to be resting halfway there on it, between the knee and the crotch; she scratched at her ankle. When she had walked to the oven her steps appeared as though measured.

She asked if he wanted the telly on it wouldnt bother her but he said no, only if she did. She looked at him. A moment later he looked away, shrugged; he reached for the tin and got the lid off, the cigarette made.

She was yawning. Closing her book she got up and left the kitchen. The lavatory door creaking; soon the plug being pulled and the crash of the cistern emptying. Then her footsteps from the front room; she was now undressed, and getting into bed, to be facing into the recess wall.

Eventually he turned the gas-fire down to its minimum power and settled his heels on the fender, lifted the cigarette from the ashtray, but put it down again and lay back on the chair; he looked at the ceiling and smiled, shaking his head briefly. It seemed as though there was nothing to say. That that which could be said must have been said already. She was in bed and facing the wall, her breathing inaudible but eyes maybe open, attentive – waiting for him to move, even for the match being struck perhaps that a further 10 minutes till the light went out and he in beside her. They had looked at each other. What could be sadder than that. Nothing could be sadder than that. It is terrible. Nothing has ever been more terrible. In 10 minutes she would be asleep. She would be unwilling to sleep so soon but soon she would be. She can sleep like a trooper. Then next day; it will soon be Christmas and the New Year comes next and the house to be tumbling and the layers of wallpaper, the slow thud of snow on the window, the poor auld fucking eskimos right enough. Hines is to get away, away; he is to get away. There is
the red and there is the white, the pure and the pure, this is the trouble nowadays, not being 5 years or even 6, not being the 6 but today, this night, her facing the wall from him and their inability to talk, he having nothing to say, and it being that that she is so well aware of, that has stopped her from talking. Here he is and they are here, the unit, the trio. And it is all so fucking long, so long, and yet here he is, still fucking here and not doing, not doing anything, still here, on the buses, back on the third term. And if the connection is now to be severed there can be no return. It is the third term of transport and fourths are not having ever been heard of. Thirds are unlikely and fourths are out of the question. He was fortunate to get reinstated the last time and is to have been being on his best behaviour throughout the term. Nothing further can be said. He should just never have returned. It is bad that here he is. Sandra told him he was daft, that returning was a step to the rear, steps to the rear not being of the present. But if he was daft he was also not daft. The latter stages of the last spell on the broo had blinded him to certain items. These items are not always apparent. Life on the broo had not been good, however, offering as it did, nothing. And so he neglected to consider the certain items.

Now, these items, while of great importance on some occasions, are not too important on others.