The Maintenance of Headway

Eight

The road was clogged with slow-moving traffic. I’d been sitting behind the same lorry for almost half an hour as we inched glacially towards the southern outpost. On the back of this lorry was a sign that said: IF YOU CAN’T SEE MY MIRRORS I CAN’T SEE YOU.

I had read these words so many times during the past thirty minutes that they’d become stuck in my head. I’d even set them to music and convinced myself I had the makings of a pop song:

If you can’t see my mirrors

I can’t see you any more

I can’t see you…any more

If you believe in mirrors

You won’t see me any more

You won’t see me…any more

All I needed now was an agent.

Sitting in a bus composing songs might seem pointless, but there was nothing else to do. My people had long since departed, having finally summoned up the courage to ask me to let them out of the bus. Now I was quite alone, and had to entertain myself somehow. As a matter of fact I couldn’t see his mirrors, but in truth I didn’t care any more. I was right up his arse, as we used to say, and that was where I was staying for the foreseeable future. The queue of vehicles appeared to go on forever. Periodically, we’d all start moving forward and hopes would be raised. Then after a few yards we’d all stop again. About ten minutes previously the cab radio had woken from its slumbers with a ‘bus-wide’ announcement concerning a burst water main near the southern outpost. I remembered the antics of the man with the large key and decided he must be responsible for the present situation.

More time passed, and eventually a bus came along travelling in the opposite direction. Driving it was Coleen. She stopped beside me and spoke through her window.

“Fucking chaos down there,” she said. “I’m forty-five minutes late.”

“Any officials?” I asked.

“Only Baker,” she replied. “He’s running round like a headless chicken.”

After Coleen had gone I reflected on her words. There were many inspectors who flapped at the first sign of crisis, and Baker was indeed one of them. It required someone of the calibre of Breslin to sort things out properly. I wondered if he was riding to the rescue at this very moment. Probably not, I concluded. All the inspectors travelled by bus, and the southbound buses weren’t going anywhere. The service on this particular route was sporadic at best. Today it was virtually non-existent.

After an age of progressing at little more than walking speed I arrived at the point where the mains had burst. It was exactly the same place I’d been held up the other day: a disaster area with water flooding all over the road and water company vans parked everywhere. I could also see the matter wasn’t being helped by the temporary lights that had recently been rigged up. These were meant to alleviate the problem by regulating the flow of traffic. However, it was immediately clear to me that the timing was all wrong. The only passable section of road was narrow and very muddy. Accordingly, some motorists were advancing with extreme care and caution. Whoever was in charge of the lights had made no allowance for this, so that they turned from green to red while vehicles were still only halfway. Traffic then began coming through from the other end. As usual nobody would yield to anyone else, and the result was stalemate.

As I sat surveying this scene I noticed the man from the water company standing by his van. He happened to glance at my bus and appeared to recognise me from our previous encounter. Then he came walking over, grinning as if we were friends from way back when. I decided to go along with it.

“More problems?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied. “The pressure became too much, I’m afraid.”

“Be able to fix it, will you?”

“Eventually, yes,” he said. “Could take a few days though.”

“I see you’ve got some temporary lights.”

“Indeed we have,” said my friend from the water company. “I was instrumental in setting them up.”

I couldn’t bring myself to say anything further, and to my relief he was called away by one of his colleagues. As I waited for the lights to change it struck me that there were a lot of people who ‘knew’ me from the buses. The garage currently employed about two hundred drivers, and until a year ago there had been just as many conductors. I was also on speaking terms with several drivers from other garages. Then there were all the people who had tried the buses and left to do something else. Busmen (and buswomen) were divided into three main groups. Firstly, there were the long-termers like me, Edward, Davy and possibly Jeff, who were established in the job and quite liked it (despite our moaning). Next came the ones who stayed about eighteen months before moving on. Finally there were those who completed their training and disappeared after only a few weeks because it just did not suit them. The middle category was by far the largest and consequently there were countless ex-busworkers whose faces I recognised. From time to time I’d see someone from the past and, depending how well we’d got on together, we would exchange greetings. I remember once I was obliged to slow down and manoeuvre my bus round a van that was being unloaded on the ring road. As I did so I noticed that one of the blokes involved had been a driver at our garage about two years earlier. I hooted my horn to say hello. His natural reaction was to scowl angrily. Unloading was illegal on this stretch of road and he doubtless thought my hoot referred to the fact. The moment of recognition came just as he was about to make a rude sign at me. Suddenly he was all smiles and giving me the ‘thumbs-up’. Quickly he came over to the bus and we shook hands and asked one another how we were. (We were both fine.) It was only after I left him behind that it occurred to me we’d barely spoken a dozen words when he worked at the garage. I had no idea what his name was and never saw him again after that.

Then there was the sad case of the man who came wandering into the canteen one drizzly Sunday afternoon. Apparently he’d been a bus driver in former times and had dropped by to renew some old acquaintanceships. He had been employed at the garage for about eighteen months. Unfortunately, nobody seemed to recall him nor any of the names he reeled off. Somehow he latched onto me and I had to spend half an hour going through a list of conductors whom he claimed to have worked with.

They had all gone now and I didn’t know where they were, yet still this man persisted in questioning me about them. He also wanted to know which routes we were operating these days, and what type of buses we had. Didn’t he have anything better to do, I asked myself, than come here and talk about buses? As darkness fell he finally went back out into the drizzle. I felt quite sorry for him.

Another person who only remained at the garage for eighteen months was a driver called Thompson. He differed from the others in that he didn’t leave of his own accord. He was given the sack, which was most unusual on the buses, but no one could remember him except me.

§

By the following morning the water mains repair work was well underway. The problem with the traffic lights had finally been attended to, and they were operating in long sequences that allowed vehicles to get clear before changing from green to red. Nonetheless, as I travelled south I noticed there were still long queues on the northbound side. Such delays were unavoidable really, this being the height of the morning rush. There was simply more traffic going towards town than coming away. I wanted to avoid running late, so as soon as I got to the southern outpost I spun the bus around and prepared to leave again.

“Stop!” cried a voice behind me as I pulled off from the stand. It was Baker. I stopped and waited as he came marching up.

“You’re not due to leave for another ten minutes,” he said. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“If I don’t leave now I’ll be late,” I replied. “The traffic’s terrible back there.”

“I’m quite aware of the situation,” said Baker, regarding me from beneath the brim of his black peaked cap.

Clearly he had regained his composure since yesterday’s crisis. He further informed me that I was not to depart until my proper scheduled time and he would hear no protests to the contrary. Which meant, needless to say, that the moment I set off again I would be late. Naturally I obeyed Baker’s command and left the southern outpost with marked punctuality. When at last I reached the common I saw Breslin standing outside the underground station. I was long overdue, but as I passed by he gave me the usual satisfactory nod. Indeed, he appeared more than satisfied. He was almost smiling. I had noticed similar behaviour on many previous occasions: whenever the buses were all running late, the senior inspectors seemed quite happy.

When next I was in the canteen I discussed this odd state of affairs with Edward, Davy and Jeff.

“Yes, I thought they looked decidedly jolly this morning,” agreed Davy. “Breslin curtailed me to the arch and he was very friendly about it.”

“The truth is they’d rather you were late than early,” said Edward.

“But that’s preposterous!” said Jeff.

“Preposterous or not,” Edward replied. “Lateness is something they know how to deal with. They can quantify it, label it and apportion the blame accordingly. In some circumstances they can write it off altogether. There’s no excuse for being early but there are plenty for being late. Look at your log cards: each one is preprinted with about ten different causes of delay.”

With a flourish he then produced a log card from his inside pocket and read out a list of examples:

“‘Traffic delay; no serviceable bus; ticket machine failure; extra mileage; road traffic accident; mechanical fault; road closure; staff shortage; other operating causes (unspecified)’.” He put the card away again. “It all proves they’re quite prepared to accept lateness without question. What they don’t like is wilful earliness.”

“But what about the maintenance of headway?” I asked. “I thought that was supposed to be paramount.”

“The answer is fiendishly simple,” said Edward. “They make sure every bus is late by exactly the same degree.”

“In other words it’s a conspiracy,” remarked Jeff.

“Correct.”

“So there’s no point in trying to run on time.”

“None at all. The timetables are a complete sham. You’ve probably seen the notices at the bus stops: “Buses depart at these minutes past each hour.” It’s all meaningless: a line of dots and a set of random numbers; no more than a sleight of hand to fool the people.”

“They’re not fooled,” said Jeff.

“Of course they’re not,” said Edward. “Neither are they ever satisfied. If the bus happens to arrive on schedule it’s good for the public record but little else. Nobody believes the timetables. Waiting for buses is therefore paradoxical; hence the refrain: ‘the people expect the bus to be late, yet they go to the bus stop early and wait’.”*

≡ Original source unknown: possibly from a nursery rhyme.