by David Nobbs
It was to be his domain! In this great city lay his life’s work. He strode on, past the Salvation Dining Rooms, the Midland Station, the Hippodrome Cinema, the Telegraph and Chronicle Building and the Temperance Launderette. He passed the imposing façade of the Neo-Gothic Town Hall, on whose well-kept lawns summer time crowds enjoyed, in son et lumière, the dramatised history of the Chamber of Commerce. He passed the sandstone and soot cathedral and the Northern Productivity Pavilion, and the whole bustle of the early-morning life of the city fired his imagination. He drank in the atmosphere as if he could not have enough of it. It was a beautiful morning. Quite soon it would snow, but at this moment the sun, high above the slate roofs, was shining on the upturned faces of the buses. The city was full of noise. The market was situated on the hill. The politicians were driven in the big, black cars. The pencil was in the pocket of the publican. The tourist was purchasing a tin of luncheon meat. The street trader was displaying many kinds of produce. The townsfolk were travelling to work. See, the merchant has raised his glass and is drinking. Why, the newsvendor is selling those journals with ease.
So the city went about its business, and Fletcher watched. This was the promised land, and it seemed natural that a military ceremony should take place and martial music should sweep him into battle. He was not certain of the purpose of the parade, nor did he know the identity of the elderly lady who stood in the uniform of a field marshal on the dais, but he stood near her and watched the troops march past. Contingent after contingent swept by in perfect step. The sun shone on the green berets of the Third Battalion the Queen’s Own Mexborough Fusiliers and glinted off the campaign medals on the chests of the Old Comrades and the veterans of Ladysmith. There was cheering from the crowds as the military bands played and swept Fletcher towards his duty. There was so much that must be saved. As he marched he saw the world waiting to be saved. Africa, Asia, America, Europe. Mountains, rivers and forests. Rivers running through the forests. Mountains emerging out of the forests. Fletcher running through the forests. Fletcher emerging out of the forests. Fletcher at the summit, on the raised dais. Fletcher, the universal panacea for all mankind.
The bands stopped. The ceremony was over. He must get a job, and he set off down the hill and bought a copy of the Telegraph and Chronicle.
Chapter 7
TELEPHONISTS REQUIRED. APPLY IN WRITING TO Deputy Superintendant of Communications, Northern Lead Tubes Ltd., stating age, experience and details of National Automatic Dial Proficiency Tests passed.
Museum attendants wanted. Apply Box 80.
Are you an enthusiastic, ambitious and healthy university graduate, with an alert mind, a penchant for new gimmicks, a driving licence, and a solid grounding in the container production industry, who welcomes innovations, believes in expansion, can mix with industrial leaders, speaks Flemish, has advanced views on lid design and would be prepared to share bathroom with radiator mechanic? If so, apply Personnel Manager, the Conical Canister Corporation.
Applications are invited from those qualified to fill the post of CHIEF ENTOMOLOGIST at Badi El Swami Agricultural Research Centre, in the Republic of the Sudan. The selected officer would be expected to unify existing research on insect migration, and must have first-hand knowledge of tropical spiders and modern methods of aerial spray. Starting salary £1,750.
Spoon roughers and insiders, throstlers and large ingot men required. Apply British Watkinson Dessert Spoons and Sons.
Bus conductors required by City Corporation. Apply Ledge Street Garage.
Fletcher felt depressed after reading this list. It was not much use knowing that British Watkinson Dessert Spoons and Sons required spoon roughers and insiders, throstlers and large ingot men, unless you were a spoon rougher and insider, a throstler, or a large ingot man. But if you were any of these you would almost certainly have a job already, and so it was with every other one of the vacancies on the list. They demanded that you were already what they offered that you should become, and Fletcher, whose life consisted so largely of wanting to be what he was not, felt at a distinct disadvantage.
The only thing to do, he decided, was to apply for those jobs where the gap between their requirements and his capabilities seemed least. Obviously there was no chance of his becoming a Chief Entomologist, and he had never passed any Automatic Dial Proficiency Tests. He might have been designed as the direct opposite of what was required by the Conical Canister Corporation, and as for British Watkinson Dessert Spoons, he did not even know the meaning of most of the words in their advertisement.
No, it would have to be either a museum attendant or a bus conductor. It hardly mattered which, really. It was the fact of working, the fact of being of service, of fulfilling a function in the bustling city world, that mattered. Yet the fact that a decision is unimportant does not make it any easier to reach, and he was relieved when Mrs Pollard spoke.
“Not found much?” she asked.
“No. It seems to be either a bus conductor or a museum attendant.”
“I don’t know why you don’t go back to teaching.”
“I wasn’t very successful as a teacher.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.”
“I couldn’t cope.”
“What a shame.”
“So it seems to be either a bus conductor or a museum attendant.”
“Very bad for the health, these museums. It’s one thing to look round them and another thing to actually live there.”
“Yes.”
“I knew a man who worked in one. He caught Egyptology disease. He was very well preserved, for his years, but as dead as they come. It’s his wife I’m sorry for. You never know how you might end up, if one of those places got a hold over you.”
“Yes.”
“Of course there are the treasures. You can’t say that about a bus.”
“No.”
“You don’t get the exhibits on a bus. Or the coins. It’s just pennies, threepences and sixpences there. No variety. But then again you never know where you are with it in these museums. Roman coins, Saxon coins, everything.”
“Yes.”
“I mean you could go for the museums if you wanted to.”
“Yes.”
“But you know where you are on the buses. I’d choose the buses, if I were you.”
Chapter 8
THE INTERVIEW RAISED NO PROBLEMS AT ALL, MUCH to his surprise, and he formed the impression that it was easy to become a bus conductor, much easier than it was not to. The next morning he reported for training, and in common with about twenty-five other “new boys” he saw a series of films demonstrating the right and wrong ways of preventing dogs from sitting downstairs, ejecting spitters, recognising Irish coins and asking for the correct change without giving offence. Within two days he had been assigned to his route—the 92, from Woodlands to Pratts Lane Corner, via City—and had learned the fares between every fare stage on the route, in both directions.
On his first day of full duty he presented himself at the Ledge Street Garage at 5.27 a.m. It was a cold, windy morning, with flurries of tiny snowflakes. He was introduced to his driver, 3802 Driver Foster, a surly man who didn’t even wave to the other drivers on his route, and then he entered the bus. He felt acutely conscious of himself in this strange uniform and wished only that the bus would open and swallow him up. When he was younger he had assumed that his nervousness would abate as he grew older. Now, when he was older, he found that his inexperience in each new job seemed even more noticeable and ludicrous, and he felt more nervous than ever.
Driver Foster started his engine with a cold ruthlessness that served only to mock his fears, and the great vehicle nosed slowly out of the garage and set off down the open road. At first there were only a few early-morning workers on the bus, but gradually it filled up with rush hour crowds and Fletcher’s nervousness began to abate. He began to feel that joy which always came to him while working. He was in on the great struggle, helping. There was an orderly routine about his wo
rk which provided him with a sense of comfort and security. The duties were onerous enough to give him a constant sense of his usefulness without being so onerous as to induce nervous prostration. Up there in the grim loneliness of his cab Driver Foster treated each day as a battle, giving and asking no quarter and regarding it as a major defeat if he was forced to give way at a pedestrian crossing, especially to women with prams. In the crowded sociability of the lower and upper saloons, however, life was more than a battle. It was a crusade. Fletcher had suddenly realised that human life consists of a never-ending struggle to be in the right place at the right time. Each busload that he carried on the 92 route became, to his romantic imagination, a vital contribution towards ending that struggle. One day, if he worked hard, there would come a time of magic equilibrium, when everyone was already where he wanted to be.
And how hard he worked! What crowds he carried! He found it impossible to turn people away from his bus, when there was this great struggle to be won. He wanted to serve everyone, without distinction of class, creed, race or time of arrival. He believed in the freedom of the individual, pending the arrival of the purpose of existence.
Fletcher was thorough rather than swift. He found it difficult to collect all the fares even under normal conditions, and when his bus was particularly full he found it impossible. The rush hour crowds soon learnt that there was a distinct possibility of a free ride, and Fletcher’s bus began to grow fuller still. Even more free rides were to be had, and even greater crowds were attracted. Soon the Inspector heard tales of the strange bus on route 92. He decided to inspect it.
The Inspector was a tall, tightly knit man, like an old walking stick, with grim caustic eyes set deep into his grizzle. Born to inspect, he had not been slow to do so. But he had never felt his sense of vocation so strongly as he did that cold windy morning, as he stood in front of the Pike House, waiting.
The Inspector signalled Fletcher’s bus to a halt, and when he had boarded it—no easy matter, this, for the platform was crowded with passengers, he looked around for Fletcher. In vain. There was not a Fletcher to be seen. He noticed that none of the people who were thronging the corridor and stairs had any tickets, and the harsh gleam of inspection lit up his eyes. His face narrowed until it became as long as it had been broad, his eyes became slits and his lean nose was raised and thrust forward. He was a hound which had found the scent, and he would have bayed, had it been possible to do so with dignity.
“Where is the conductor?” he asked in a crisp, dry, thinly-sliced, unbuttered voice. A few heads turned slowly towards him and he repeated: “Where is the conductor?” There was something terrible about the man’s inflexibility.
Nobody actually answered, but he formed the impression that Fletcher was upstairs. It was obviously impossible for him to climb the stairs, packed as they were with travellers, so he clung desperately to the platform while he worked out how to deal with the problem. He was aware that for a majority of the passengers, including most of the younger ones and the old age pensioners, the crowding was a small price to pay for the pleasure of a free ride. He was aware, too, of a deep public resentment of his calling. People always took his presence on the bus as a personal affront to their integrity. He would have to tread warily, and, deeply though it pained him to let so much as a single two-penny juvenile fare be evaded, he realised that only when the bus was emptier would he be able to take any effective action. He judged that it would be impolitic to turn anyone off the bus, but that he could safely refuse to allow anyone else on without inflaming public prejudice.
By the time they reached the Goldplank Asylum and City Abattoir, living conditions had become tolerable again, and the Inspector was able to make his way upstairs. There he found Fletcher, looking stunned and exhausted by his work.
If Fletcher had looked stunned before, he was knocked flat when he saw the Inspector. He had an infinite capacity for being stunned.
“What is the meaning of this?” asked the Inspector. “Why was the bus so crowded? Why were so many fares uncollected?”
Fletcher, who was bending over to give an old lady her change, stood petrified in that position for a few moments. He felt as powerless, attempting to explain himself to this man, as a romantic lover might feel in trying to describe his emotions to a second row forward. But he knew that he must try, and slowly he rose to his full height, like an Indian rope trick. He looked the Inspector straight in the eyes and said: “I—er—that is.”
“Yes?”
“I don’t see why I should refuse people admission to this bus. They want to travel. I…”
“You what?”
“I have the means to enable them to travel.”
“Oh, nice. Very nice. Very nice.” The Inspector, suddenly leaning forward as if he was barely restraining himself from lifting Fletcher off the ground by his neck, barked: “Why don’t you organise a running buffet into the bargain? Eh?”
“The passengers seemed happy enough,” said Fletcher.
“What have they got to do with it?”
“I tried to give them what they needed.”
The bus swung round into Riddings Close, and a cry of dismay rose from a thin-lipped man in a trilby.
“Why are we going down Riddings Close?” he wailed. “This is an 87, isn’t it?”
“No,” said the Inspector with relish, like an old spinster producing one last spade which nobody thought she’d got. “It’s a 92.”
“83,” cried an old lady. “It says an 83.”
“80.”
“72.”
“I thought it was a 75,” volunteered a confectioner.
The Inspector immediately stopped the bus, his whole frame quivering with excitement. He used so little energy up in the rest of his life that he had a great surplus of intensity waiting in reserve for situations such as this. He got out of the bus and went round to the front.
The board indicated a 65, bound for Huggenthorpe! This was clearly false. The 65 went to Stoneytown Bridge, unless it was turned round at Sodge Moor Top. The Huggenthorpe bus was a 67, and in any case Huggenthorpe was in the opposite direction, beyond Market Edge. He stormed back to the bus in a carefully calculated fit of uncontrollable temper and confronted Fletcher, who was standing on the platform in great distress.
“Well?” said the Inspector, and waited patiently for a reply. Time was on his side.
“I don’t understand it.”
“Well I certainly don’t.” The Inspector led the way upstairs, and he immediately noticed that the four front seats were empty. Four youths, he remembered with the facility born of long experience, had been sitting there like a display of barrack room brooms. The back of the indicator board—one of the old type that are adjusted from upstairs—was open. He turned towards Fletcher.
“You left the indicator board unlocked. That’s what’s happened. Those four youths have changed the board between each stop. You see what happens when you let too many people on a bus.”
The public, their free journeys forgotten, turned on the man whom they held responsible. Ugly mutterings arose, and the Inspector, his triumph complete, felt able to protect his conductor from their threats.
When he had quietened the passengers the Inspector made a brief inquiry and found that only ten of the passengers were bound for stops on the 92 route. Routes on which passengers believed themselves to be travelling included the 87, 83, 80, 77, 75, 72, 68 and 65.
His inquiry over, the Inspector apologised to the passengers and told them that their tickets would be valid for the return journey to the City, where they could catch their proper buses. He informed the passengers who wanted the 92 route that they would have to wait for the next bus, as Fletcher had developed a defect and was being taken out of service. They grunted, as if to imply that it was not his fault, and then, casting ugly glances at Fletcher, they stepped out into the snow.
The Inspector went round to the cab and spoke to Driver Foster. “Why did you do nothing about all this, Foster?” he
asked.
“All what, sir?” asked Driver Foster.
“All this overcrowding on the bus,” said the Inspector.
“I obey the bells, sir. Two rings, and I start. One ring, and I stop. Three rings, bus running to full capacity. And I’ve never once had three rings. Two, one, but not three. I’ve never once had the bell that indicated to me: ‘Bus running to full capacity.’ So there’s never been any reason for me to bother with overcrowding.”
“Drive us back to the garage, Foster,” said the Inspector.
Fletcher and the Inspector sat side by side in the empty bus as they drove to the garage. Only a few sweet papers and cigarette ends bore witness to the fact that the bus had ever served a useful purpose in society—or ever would again.
“I’m taking you to see the Chief Inspector, Fletcher,” said the Inspector.
“Yes, sir.”
“Why can’t you be more like Foster?” the Inspector asked sadly.
Fletcher could think of no reply.
Chapter 9
“THIS IS AN ODD BUSINESS, FLETCHER,” SAID CHIEF Inspector Wilkins, and even as he spoke Fletcher felt that this was a man to whom he would be able to talk.
“I wanted to serve,” he said.
“There’s nothing wrong in that, though it has never appealed to me,” said the Inspector. “But who did you want to serve?”
