A boy boarded the bus in front of me at the shops in Kingswood. It was a warm morning, though still early in the year, and I feel he reminded me of Carl, about seventeen, lightish hair with delicate red streaks, a slightly angular but otherwise unremarkable face, not the kind you would notice at all, and wearing a black Kurt Cobain T-shirt but when I think back I had not yet met him so my memory is playing tricks. He swiped his phone against the ticket machine and went to sit downstairs. I went up where there were about ten people, it being near the start of the journey. A rough looking man who surely smelt of drink, I had seen him a few times, they called him George but not sure whether that would be his real name. Two teenage girls in school uniform trying not to giggle at his presence, a few office staff going to work, and two elderly ladies near the back. Their voices not loud but clear enough from the seat two in front of them, and their conversation was easy to follow.
“They’re getting everywhere you know,” said the older of the two, a white haired woman past retirement age, coat securely buttoned.
“Oh, Joyce, you’re going loopy. You’ll be in a home if you carry on like that.”
“The government don’t want us to know. But no loopiness here Lizzie. She took here hat off and I heard her bang it three times on her head. Who knows what they do, these people.”
A couple more passengers came upstairs but there was a buzz of silence, tension developing on the top deck. We passed the clothing factory where staff were arriving for work. For some reason I started thinking of my father, I didn't like too but he was in my head. He didn't like me being single, working in Chatterton’s, neither ambition or romance, he said. Old fashioned man. You could at least have a job at Tesco’s. Career prospects and decent pension. The guy up front, too close to the girls at the best of times, had started paying attention to them. They just seemed to treat it as a bit of a joke. The bus jolted its way down the hill and lurched to the next stop; Three people came upstairs and the college boy moved up to the top deck, perhaps it was quite crowded below. He sat two seats behind the girls. The rough looking man made a bolder attempt.
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“I used to teach at a school like yours. In Tottenham. St something College. What was it now.” It didn't seem to fit as his accent was obviously from Glasgow. “I was the school caretaker.” Suddenly everyone’s attention was directed towards the front of the deck. “St Dunstan’s, that was it.”
He sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. In his mind revolved images of happier days with a decent job which he was unable to hold down for drinking too much. Or perhaps the easy assumptions of the other passengers were correct. I have this problem with my mind, it works overtime. He got off at the bakery, and the boy followed him down. I must have been wrong because he would have to go way further down if he was going to college. His T-shirt did not say Kurt Cobain, it was REM. Checking his phone he turned along the pavement in the same direction as the man, who had disappeared into a newsagent’s. The woman with the white hair, Joyce I had heard her friend say, watched him from the window, turning her head around as the bus moved on and he slipped out of sight.
It stopped at the shopping street in St George as it had every day for the last ten years, and on the way out I noticed that the boy was still on the lower deck. Confused, I looked briefly at him, did not make eye contact. His T-shirt clearly said Kurt Cobain. Too early in the morning, I thought. Outside Chatterton’s a lady sat on the street. I chucked a twenty p coin into her hat. My colleagues would tell me off. All those twenty ps. I didn’t worry, it was hardly going to beggar me. I slipped into work with ten minutes in the back room before my shift was due.
The old man, George, I never saw him again.