Exile

Chapter 26

Leslie slipped her arm through Maureen's and they made their way back to the bus station. It was cold and misty as they walked down the hill. Maureen's bag banged off her back as they hurried across the busy street.

The night-bus passengers were gathered together in the freezing concourse, smoking hard, trying to get enough nicotine into their systems to last the seven-hour journey Apart from a couple of well-fed, healthy students, who were roughing it, most of the travelers were going to London to look for work, to fulfill errands or to visit family who had moved away. The shoal of waiting passengers started at some invisible stimulus, grabbing their bags, shuffling quickly towards the glass wall, itching to get on. Maureen looked around but the bus doors weren't open and the lights weren't on. The crowd put their bags down again, lighting another last fag, bidding another last good-bye.

The night bus to London is a Glaswegian rite of passage. Most people try it once, attracted by the twenty-quid ticket, the comfortable seating and the promise of arriving in London as fresh as a daisy early in the morning. Only the poor or desperate do it twice. Maureen had done it many times. She always forgot how bad the journey was until she got to the station but her experience had given her a number of tips. The upstairs deck was the most comfortable because it was far from the smell of the chemical toilet and was usually warmer, which made it possible to sleep. It tended to attract the crazies but it filled up more slowly, making it easier to get and keep a double seat to herself. The double seat was the big prize: it meant she could stretch out and leave the bus without aching everywhere.

She took off her overcoat and put it into a plastic bag, pulled on a big jumper and took out a newspaper, a bottle of Coke and the bag of chocolate toffees Leslie had brought for her. Leslie pulled the neck of Maureen's jumper straight and looked angry. "Phone me. Take care when you're down there, okay?"

"I'll be fine, Leslie, don't fuss me."

They stood close together, smoking and watching for signs of the driver. A gangly man wearing a blue nylon uniform sauntered casually down the side of the bus, keeping his head down, pretending not to notice the forty pairs of eyes behind the glass watching him like an aquarium of hungry piranhas. He leaned down to the side, unlocked the boot, and the mob surged towards him, shoving and jostling to be first. He checked Maureen's ticket, took her bag and threw it into the hold.

"Right," said Leslie. "Take care."

"I will."

They hugged each other tight. Leslie backed away, stepping onto the shallow pavement in front of the glass wall as Maureen climbed on board. A different driver was waiting to double-check her ticket. He was short with a fags-and-sunbed-withered face, a jet black curly Afro perm and blindingly white false teeth. "On ye go," he said, in a strangled, nasal squeal.

She had to wait patiently in the queue, edging up the stairs one at a time. The top deck was full of people sorting themselves into the chairs. Maureen bagsied a double seat one down from the back row and sat by the aisle, putting her paper and sweets and Coke on the seat by the window. She had learned that the best method for keeping a double seat was to look more obnoxious and unwelcoming than anyone else. She pretended to read her paper, sticking her elbows across the armrests, refusing to look at anyone coming up the stairs. The crowd outside the window diminished as the passengers filtered onto the bus, the aisle emptied and the passengers settled. Maureen was beginning to think she'd get the double seat to herself. Leslie stood on the pavement, watching her, looking very small and far away. She waved and Maureen waved back.

A mob of cheery drunk men appeared at the side of the bus, flinging their bags at the driver and piling in through the door. They climbed the stairs with difficulty, pulling at one another and laughing. The first man up the stairs spotted the empty backseat. "Look, boys," he shouted, "the very dab."

They fell up the aisle in a haze of stale smoke and beer, taking up the back row behind Maureen, tugging their jackets off and congratulating one another on their den. They were almost settled when a disheveled wee man emerged from the stairwell. He was a good fifteen years older than the rest of them and wore thick specs and a dirty yellow anorak zipped up tight at the neck. He looked around, spotted his pals on the backseat and cursed. "D'yees no' save a seat for me?"

Behind Maureen's head the men jeered at him, telling him to sit down.

"Cunts," he said, spotting Maureen's precious extra seat. He stood next to her, waiting for her to move. Maureen sighed and stood up, moving over to the window, sitting the sweets and Coke on her lap. The man aimed his body and fell into the seat, landing heavily and clearing his throat. "Right, hen?" he asked the headrest in front of him. He turned and squared up to her, making a small, defensive mouth. The lenses on his glasses were so thick they distorted his eyes into tiny things, a blurry mess of blue and red and crumbs. "Are ye no' fucking talking tae me? Too good fur me, is it?"

A bald man shoved his face between the headrests behind her. "Jokey," he said, "shut it."

Jokey looked around the bus indignantly. He coughed and nonchalantly scratched his bollocks.

"Don't worry, hen," the bald man said to Maureen, "he'll be sleeping in a minute."

Maureen was looking at a long night of Jokey snoring and dribbling, with nothing to comfort her but a bottle of Coke and a bag of chocolate toffees. Leslie waved from the pavement again and Maureen waved back at her. A speaker above the stairs crackled to life and the Afroed driver spoke, sounding bored and telling them that they were in Glasgow but were going to London. He must have been doing the job for a long time because he had anticipated all their tricks. "There will be no smoking on this journey," he said. "There will be no drinking." The backseat gang interrupted the announcement to cheer the mention of drink. "There will be no fighting." They cheered louder. "Passengers are informed that they must keep their feet and bags out of the aisle at all times." The men hoo-rayed and whistled. "Anyone found to be breaking these rules," continued the driver, "will be put off the bus at the side of the motorway and left there."

The men stopped cheering.

"We will be stopping at the Knutsford services at three thirty a.m. for refreshments. We will be leaving the Knutsford services at three fifty a.m. Any passengers not on board will be left behind. A member of the team will shortly be coming around to serve you tea, coffee and sandwiches. We hope you enjoy your journey with Caledonia Buses."

The Tannoy crackled to a stop and a frightened silence fell over the top deck.

"He's a bit fucking harsh, isn't he?" whispered the bald guy.

The engine spluttered to life, sending rolling bug-a-lug vibrations through the windows and seats. Leslie waved conscientiously from the pavement as the bus backed out of the loading bay and into the street.

Maureen was looking calmly out of the window, chewing the first chocolate toffee of the night, when she saw him. Vik was striding up the road to the bus station, his leather coat flapping open, checking his watch and walking fast. He had come to see her off. Maureen stood up, forgetting herself and dropping the bag of sweets to the floor. She banged her fists on the window and shouted, "Oi," but he didn't see her. She banged harder, turning, her eyes fixed on him as the bus sped away up Cathedral Street. He was a little licorice strip on the pavement and the bus station receded to a strip of light below a black hanging sky. Vik had come to see her off. The bald man stuck his face through the headrests again. "I know," he said, smiling kindly. "I hate the Pakis too."

"He's my boyfriend," said Maureen.

Uncomfortable at his faux pas, the bald man sat back in his chair and puffed out his chest. "Aye, very good anyway," he told his sniggering pals. "I was just trying to be nice."

The road was clear. The bus rumbled through Blackhill, passing the chimneys of Barlinnie prison. They passed the fire-blackened flats of Easterhouse, boarded up with fiberglass, and the driver dimmed the lights to let the passengers sleep. A hush fell over the cabin as the lights slipped past the window. They turned south at the Crosshill Junction, a knot of lanes and slip roads in a bed of gentle hills. A spired church and cemetery sat on a summit, an angular protestation against the soft, snow-covered countryside. Vik had come to see her off.

As the bus warmed up Jokey began to give off a strange smell, like dirty hair and stale cheese mixed together. He was fighting sleep, nodding off and jerking awake again. After one particularly vigorous convulsion he turned around in the aisle and shouted, "Cunts," at the men in the backseat. The bald man reached his hand through the headrests and patted Jokey's shoulder. "Steady, Tiger," he said, and Jokey surrendered to sleep, nuzzling his elbow into Maureen's soft side.

The driver who had packed her bag into the boot came up the shuddering stairs offering sandwiches and taking orders for cups of tea. Someone on the top deck started playing with a Game Boy – Maureen could hear the tingling, mindless tune. She realized suddenly that the music was coming from her pocket. She took out her pager, nervous that it might wake Jokey.

Message is

hope you are

well lot*

of love Leslie

She had been working her way through the sweets and reading the paper for an hour or so before the smell of Jokey became so distracting that she gave up. She looked out of the window at the dark countryside. They were crawling uphill, out of a deep glen. They were so high that Maureen lost perspective but then the wind shook the windows and scattered the mist below. An old drover's road appeared below them, paralleling the burn, a wavy pencil line through the foot of the hills. At the mouth of the glen stood an abandoned cottage, souvenir of a wild and lonely time. Vik had come to see her off but she was glad he had been too late. She wouldn't have known what to tell him. She was on the edge of her life, trapped on the spur by all the big questions.

She leaned her head on the vibrating window and thought of Ann standing in a cold office in her underwear, letting a stranger take pictures of her tired body, bruised and battered by the want of drink, as if her addiction were trying to scratch through her skin.

The announcement and the rush of cold air from the stairwell woke her up. The bus had stopped in a car park. Hidden behind the rows of freight lorries were the bright lights of a service station. Jokey's pals woke him up and told him to come on. His smell had accumulated in his anorak while he slept and as he reached up for the back of the chair the stench escaped through the sealed neck in an ardent gust. Maureen waited until he was well down the stairs before getting up herself, stretching her stiff legs and running her tongue over her fur-coated teeth.

The cold was a shock after the nuzzled warmth on the top deck. She lit a fag in the windy car park and followed the stream of passengers to the service station. The backseat men headed to the restaurant for hot food with Jokey at their heels. Maureen went to the newsagent's, looking for something to buy. The sandwiches cost a fiver and the crisps only came in ludicrously big bags but she was in a shop in the middle of the night and felt she had to buy something. She chose an A-Z of London and a spiral-bound notepad to write things on. She went back to the bus, smoking another fag as she strolled across the windy car park, looking out for the nice driver, the one who had packed her bag in the boot. She checked the cab but he wasn't there so she scouted around the bus and found him hiding in the dark shadows at the back, smoking. He nodded to her briefly, trying to shake her off.

"How are ye?" she asked, smiling.

"Aye," he said, and went back to kicking the dirt.

"Can I show ye a photo of someone?"

The driver was intrigued. "What for?"

"My pal went missing and I think she took this bus."

"Ah, well now"-he looked wary-"we get a lot of people on the buses, ye know."

Maureen took out the photocopy of Ann's face, holding it up in front of the driver so that it caught the light from inside the bus cab.

He looked at it for a moment. "She had yellow hair and a red face," said Maureen. "Smelt of drink, a bit."

He looked at the picture and was surprised that he remembered her. "That's amazing," he said. "Up and down she was, just before Christmas."

"Up and down?"

"I seen her a few times. I remember because she was up and down every few days and sometimes she'd keep her bag on her knee, a big bag." He drew a one-foot square in front of him with his fag-free hand.

"When did ye last see her?"

"Months ago," he said. "Start of December. I remember because she was on the way up and got off the bus for the break and never got back on again."

"She got left at this service station?"

"Aye, well, across the road." He pointed to a covered walkway bridging the motorway.

"Was she just too late?"

"Don't know," he said, wanting to be alone in the dark with his cigarette.

Aware that she was running short of time, Maureen fumbled the Polaroid out of her pocket. "Did ye ever see this guy with her?"

The driver shrugged, looking at the picture, getting impatient. "I wouldn't know, hen."

"Listen, thanks," said Maureen. "Thanks a lot."

She backed off, leaving him to his break, and climbed the stairs into the cab feeling elated. Liam had been right. Ann was up and down and she might have been running for the loan sharks, she might have been running for Hutton. But if she was running for loan sharks she would only have carried the bag one way, not up and down again. She stretched out, enjoying the whole of her seat while she could, before Jokey came back.

The engine started softly, shaking her awake. She opened her eyes to see Jokey falling into his seat like a malodorous avalanche in an anorak. They were pulling out of the service station, leaving the big lorries and the bright lights and sliding along the slip road onto the quiet carriageway.

It was five a.m. and the gray monochrome was broken only by the red taillights of overtaking cars. The land was very flat: they were in the middle of a plain so vast the edges were beyond the horizon. Farmhouses and tiny hamlets flashed by. They passed a small set of horse jumps in a paddock and then sudden banks of the motorway came up, enclosing the road. They passed a village, then through a town and into the country again. The towns began to blend together, meeting at their thinning outer edges, closer and closer until they were tumbling over one another, houses and houses and houses blanketing the shallow hills.

They left the motorway, following the broad road to the city, passing through Swiss Cottage. Houses gave way to small blocks of flats and the small blocks to bigger blocks to high-rises to massive glass and steel offices. The clumsy bus rattled through the dark city, stopping at lights and rumbling across roundabouts. They pulled slowly into King's Cross, stopping by the great blind arches of St. Pancras. The Afroed driver spoke over the Tannoy, telling them they were in London, so get off and thank you.

The bus emptied quickly. A crowd gathered by the boot while the other driver pulled out the bags and sat them on the pavement. Maureen lit a well-deserved cigarette, enjoying the feel of Vik's chrome lighter in the palm of her hand. She took off her jersey and rolled it up, pulling her overcoat out of the plastic bag, unraveling it and slipping it on. It didn't seem very cold, a little frosty, but not like winter at all. She spotted her cycle bag being thrown onto the pavement and stepped over a couple of suitcases to get to it. She waited until everyone else had claimed their baggage before she cornered the driver again. "See, about that girl…"

The driver looked up at her. His eyes were red-rimmed and he looked exhausted. "Look," he said, slamming the boot shut and locking it, "I cannae mind the guy."

"You look knackered," she said, and offered him a fag. He took one and she lit it for him. "No, I just wanted to ask about her bag. Did she always have it with her? Could she have just had it with her on the way down?"

The tired man exhaled. "She put it in the boot sometimes."

"Was it when she was going home or coming here?"

The driver took a draw and looked at the tip, frowning and trying to remember. "Now ye say that, I think it was just the one way"-he looked up at her-"but I cannae remember which."

"Did ye have an unclaimed bag left in the boot in Glasgow," prompted Maureen, "the last time, the time she got left behind at the service station?"

The driver smiled at his fag and nodded. "On the way up," he said. "She kept it on her lap on the way up."