The two girls sit on low stools behind small windows in a Perspex screen with fingermarks all over it. There are fingermarks next to the ceiling. Someone must have stood on the counter to do it. In front of one window is an old woman trying to get a bus to a village that fell into the sea sixty years ago. In about half an hour, she’ll try to pay with a money-off voucher for shampoo. In front of the other window is a woman trying to buy a student pass for her son, who isn’t with her. She’ll be going through all the possible variants.
‘Well, he could go to Birmingham by bus, then get the train to Cardiff, and then get the local line to his digs. How can we do that?’
It turns out that we can do that by filling in eighteen ninety-page documents, while everyone else waits and the old woman by the other window gets older. After filling out the documents and handing them over, it turns out that the woman can’t have any passes or tickets because her son has to sign everything, twice. Besides, he might be better off with a super saver plus for part of his journey but he’ll need to go to Cardiff to see about that.
The old woman remembers the name of the village she wants to go to, and it isn’t the one she’d been talking about after all. That was something she saw on television.
The mother decides to leave it, she’ll pop back later and bring her son along. He’ll need a passport photograph, but he won’t be able to get one at the travel centre because the photo booth is broken. There are two obnoxious children in it, surreptitiously pinching one another under the sign asking parents not to let their children play in the photo booth. No one claims the children. Everyone ignores them, secretly hoping that they’ll do themselves some severe harm.
The mother’s place at the window is taken by another woman with a son who also needs a student pass or a free ticket to somewhere. This time the student is with her, looking bored and mumbling. The old woman gets her return ticket to Barmouth, which hasn’t fallen into the sea and is where she wanted to go all along, and discovers that she has to pay for it. This hadn’t occurred to her. She’s about a hundred and fifty but she hasn’t got the hang of shops. She produces a purse and begins taking very small coins from it, one by one. Her ticket will cost her eighteen pounds something, and she’s prepared to count small change until she gets there.
The son won’t tell the girl behind the counter where he wants to go. He mumbles embarrassedly. He can see the bright white shape of the girl’s bra through her crisp white blouse. He tries to look away, but it’s difficult. He is hunched over the form because he has an erection. He’s seventeen and his mother is with him. He puts together a series of unlikely fantasies involving himself and the two girls and many of the other people in the travel centre, including the old woman with the endless supply of sixpences and, of course, his own mother.
Everyone else has the right money, and they have it ready, and they know what they want. One of the two children in the photo booth swears meaninglessly. No one pays any attention.
I know all about the travel centre, because I get my bus pass from it. Once a month my bus pass needs renewing and the travel centre is where I have to go to renew it. I stand in the queue and, in the fullness of time, I get to the front and get another month’s travel on the randomly driven and unevenly scheduled buses.
For months I noticed one of the girls serving there. She was attractive, I thought. I noticed her eyes. I also noticed that she was at the other window, whichever window I got to. As I only went there once a month the chances of getting to her window were low. At twenty-eight day intervals I would look sideways at her while someone else sorted out my bus pass. She had a name badge on, but I couldn’t read it at that angle. Once, while I was trying to make out her name I caught the girl who was serving me eyeing me the way you’d eye a cockroach in the butter dish. From her point of view, I was glancing sidelong at her colleague’s chest. I looked at her chest instead but it didn’t cheer her up.
I began to consider getting a different type of bus pass, so that I could go in at fortnightly intervals.
I don’t know what it was that I found attractive about her. I find strange things attractive. This has been a bonus, considering some of the things I’ve been through. She had neat hair and tidy features. She had angular cheekbones and a straight nose. It looked as though someone had gone over her face with a geometry set, sorting it all out and getting it symmetrical. She had dark eyes. I couldn’t say what colour they were because I was always off to one side of her and never less than three yards away. I wanted to know. She was thin, and I liked that. She had wrists like a sparrow’s ankles. She didn’t have any rings on her fingers. This was good on two counts. Firstly, it meant that she wasn’t married or engaged. Or that she was, but she was embarrassed about it. Secondly, it might mean that she didn’t like jewellery, which was a good thing. I couldn’t afford to buy jewellery.
I was planning birthday presents for a girl I had never spoken to. Things were getting serious before they’d had a chance to be frivolous. The next month I arrived at the front of the queue and found that I was yet again at the wrong window. I went to the back of the queue again. I had a feeling that I needed to move the relationship forward. Speaking to her, for example. When I got to the front of the queue, I thought, I’d ask her out.
I waited for what felt a ridiculously long time, moving forward in slow shuffles, hoping she wouldn’t go to lunch or die of old age before I reached her. Over the dandruff-strewn shoulders of grubby Midlanders I watched her dark eyes. She called the main office to ask about timetables. She advised people where to get off. She gave bank cards to the third woman, who came out of her small office blinking and sullen to check them. A person away from her, one transaction away, I lost my nerve and went home.
I had to find change for a month’s worth of bus travel. I got most of it from down the back of my sofa.
A month later I went through the same procedure, but this time I kept my nerve and asked her out.
Her name was Judy, which wasn’t surprising. She said she’d go out with me, which was. Her eyes were a very dark blue. If they’d been a shade of paint, they’d have been called something like Midnight Shades. Her fringe was so straight it looked like it’d cut you if you touched it. She either had a local accent or a cold. I was so stunned when she said that she’d go out with me that I forgot to get my bus pass.
I had to find change for a month’s worth of bus travel. There was nothing left down the back of the sofa. I had to buy things that only cost four pence so that I’d have the ninety-six pence fare in change. Even in Dudley there isn’t much that only costs four pence. Some of the buildings, perhaps, or the freedom of the city.
Even without a bus pass I had to travel to meet Judy. We met at pubs and at the cinema, where I tried to find out what she wanted to see while looking as though I was deciding. There’s a ten-screen cinema close to Dudley; nine of the screens show the latest blockbusters, and the other one is closed for cleaning. We saw the latest blockbusters, and I bought us four pence worth of assorted sweets from the pick’n’mix booth.
If you’re ever in the position of having to spend very little money on confectionery that’s paid for by weight, go with marshmallows. They don’t weigh much at all and they’re bulky.
With our bag of two marshmallows we’d sit and watch Arnie save the day, listening to stray parts of the soundtracks of other films. As the lights went down Judy’s eyes would get darker. I had trouble not looking at them. I had trouble not looking at Judy.
We passed the two-week mark, moving into what was, for me, new territory.
She kept on going out with me. What was wrong with her? I kept buying her small quantities of cheap marshmallows and meeting her when the travel was cheapest. She seemed to like it.
One thing led to another, and that led to itself, repeatedly.
The time came to introduce her to my friends. I didn’t know where Darren and Spin had got to, and I didn’t have friends at the office. It’d have to be Jack. If she wasn’t put off by Dudley pubs, and sweets with the consistency of sandy snot, then she might just be able to take Jack.