The Past and Other Lies (47 page)

‘You’re never going to drive one of them big old Generals?’ Aunt Nora exclaimed.

‘How exciting, Bertha!’ Janie gasped a second time, her eyes wide with the thrill of it all. ‘Wish I could sign up...’ A glance at her mother quickly put paid to that idea.

‘It is a General, yes,’ Bertha confirmed. ‘I explained to the superintendent that I had driven before and they were very impressed. They signed me up on the spot. I receive my training at six o’clock and then I do my first shift at seven.’

‘Well, I never did!’ said Aunt Nora again.

It was dark and quite late by the time she arrived home. Mrs Lake and Aunt Daisy had finished tea, washed up and put everything away, and were sitting in the lounge expectantly.

‘But where’s Matthew?’ Mrs Lake inquired, looking past Bertha as though she suspected her of leaving him out in the street at the mercy of itinerant robbers and bandits.

‘Escorting my sister home,’ Bertha replied tartly. ‘It was dark and she had the baby and there are so many people out on the streets...’

‘Goodness!’ said Mrs Lake, alarmed, and Aunt Daisy looked quite faint and asked did she think they were quite safe alone here in the house, especially during the day when Matthew was out?

Bertha smiled wordlessly at Mrs Lake and fetched Aunt Daisy’s rug from upstairs and made them both another cup of tea, washed up the empty milk bottles and placed them outside on the doorstep.

‘Where
can
Matthew be?’ said Mrs Lake for the fifth time, peering at the clock on the mantelpiece as if it would provide some clue. The clock said it was half past nine.

‘Do you think something has happened?’ replied Aunt Daisy, but no one could answer her.

At ten o’clock Aunt Daisy put away her knitting and Mrs Lake set out the breakfast things on the table for morning, then they said their goodnights. Where was Matthew?
Could
something have happened?

Bertha waited till the quarter hour struck then she too climbed the narrow staircase to the bedroom at the front of the house that she and Matthew had shared for the last six months. She undressed and lay awake beneath the cold sheets.

Footsteps in the street outside, the squeak of the gate and a key in the lock downstairs heralded Matthew’s return. The floorboards in the hallway creaked then a moment later she heard heavy footsteps on the stairs, the bedroom door open and close. A smell of damp outside air, tweed and smoke filled the room. He undressed in the darkness, slowly, folding his clothes as he always did: trousers and braces over the back of the chair, shoes side by side beneath the bed, jacket on a hanger in the wardrobe, shirt carefully folded and placed on the chair...

No. Shirt not folded. Bertha peered at him in the moonlight. Shirt screwed up and pushed hastily beneath the bed.

Then he pulled on his nightshirt and climbed into bed. All in the dark, all in silence. He turned over, pulled the bedclothes over himself, and Bertha couldn’t tell whether he slept or not.

She imagined him running the gauntlet through Chiswick, driving his bus through a throng of angry pickets. Fearless. A volunteer. She ought to be proud. Any decent wife would be. Was she proud? She didn’t know. She had said nothing. And she had intended to tell him she had signed up but had said nothing about that either. Now it was too late.

Now his shirt lay screwed up beneath the bed. Out of the way. Out of sight.

The old grandfather clock in the hallway struck eleven times and in six hours she would rise.

She was up at five o’clock, indeed had hardly slept more than a few hours. It was light outside and she dressed silently and crept down the stairs. No one else was awake and she cut herself a slice of bread and butter and drank a mug of milk rather than risk the sound of the kettle waking them.

Matthew hadn’t stirred though he would be up soon. The huge number of telegrams created by the strike was swamping the post office and he had been told to begin his shift early this morning. His shift on the bus would have to be allocated to another driver.

To me? she wondered. Did you choose which route you did? No, of course not, it wasn’t a schoolyard game; this was Real Life.

She let herself out of the front door, wincing as the door latch slid noisily back into place.

Ought she to have told him?

He would have stopped her. She knew it as surely as she knew anything. She would tell him, of course, but afterwards. When it was too late.

Outside the sun was shining brightly and the dawn chorus was loud in the sycamores. The blossom on the cherry trees glowed in the morning light and she was going off to drive a bus in the strike. Everything was perfect.

She was early so she walked along Acton Lane and beneath the red-painted iron bridge over which the trains to Kew and Brentford rattled. She crossed Winchester Street, walked briskly along High Street and turned into Steyne Road. The early workers were already beginning their steady trek eastward on foot and the first delivery carts rattled in from the provinces heading towards the city and Bertha smiled and waved at every driver that caught her eye. Ahead was the bus garage and she was relieved to see there were no strikers outside yet.

Turning in through the gates she saw five big red Generals lined up and waiting to go. Beside them, two young men in Oxford bags and college scarves and a stout middle-aged lady with her sleeves rolled up and a determined look on her face turned to stare at her.

‘Miss Flaxheed?’ called the lady.

Bertha nodded. ‘Yes, I’m here to—’

‘I’m Miss Gordon. This is Mr Parks,’ she said, indicating the first young man, ‘and Mr...?’

‘Sutton,’ supplied the other young man, reaching out to shake Bertha’s hand.

‘Hello, I—’

‘Good, good. Now, you’ll soon pick it up. Step this way and we’ll do a bit of theory to get things rolling.’

Bertha and the two young men, Parks and Sutton, followed at a respectful distance as Miss Gordon led them over to the first bus, flung open the engine cover and proceeded to give them a brief lecture on the mysteries of the internal combustion engine.

Bertha listened and nodded and began to be alarmed. Would they be tested on this? She watched the two young men who leaned eagerly over the engine and nodded vigorously and made ‘Oh, right’ and ‘Yes, of course’ noises every so often. Bertha felt fairly certain neither one of them had ever looked inside an engine before in their lives.

‘Now, this is your standard S-Type omnibus,’ Miss Gordon was saying, closing the engine cover and standing back to indicate the massive vehicle with a flourish.

All three of them nodded wisely.

‘The S is gradually replacing the older K-Types which were only twenty-eight horsepowers. This is a Daimler engine, thirty-five horsepower.’

She paused to let this sink in and they all looked impressed.

‘She’s got a twenty-four foot, eight-inch body and weighs four tons unloaded. Carries fifty-four passengers: twenty-six downstairs, twenty-eight outside. You’ve got your forward control, of course.’

‘Forward control?’ prompted Parks—or was it Sutton?

‘Driver sits beside the engine rather than behind it.’

‘Ah...’

‘You’ve got your basic bell-and-cord arrangement inside, means your conductor or your passengers can tell you when to stop.’ She reached inside the bus and pulled the cord to demonstrate.

‘Right then, who’s first?’ and Bertha gulped and realised this was it.

‘Well done, Miss Flaxheed. Now, there’s your steering column, your gearstick, your accelerator, and—most important of all—your brake. Now, who can tell me the speed limit?’

‘Twelve miles an hour?’ hazarded Sutton.

‘Excellent! Now then, Miss Flaxheed, once around the block then you’re on your way!’

With Miss Gordon sitting behind her and Parks and Sutton cheering encouragement from behind, Bertha lurched and ground her way out of the yard and into Steyne Road then left into High Street. Really, once you got the hang of the gears, it was just like driving the traction engine! She turned left twice more and sailed—with some aplomb—back through the gates of the garage just as Jem appeared in her conductor’s cap and armband, ready to start her shift, Mum waiting with Baby and the perambulator just beyond the gate.

Jemima jumped out of the way and stared openmouthed and wide-eyed as Bertha swung the General round the corner and turned a neat circle in the yard, bringing the bus to a halt facing the gates. Then she missed the gear and the bus lurched then the engine cut out with a bump.

‘Bravo! Well done, Miss Flaxheed,’ said Miss Gordon beaming, and Bertha sat in the driver’s seat glowing and not a little flushed.

The superintendent lumbered out of his office, a cigar in the side of his mouth, carrying a sheaf of papers.

‘This one ready?’ he inquired of Miss Gordon with a nod towards Bertha.

‘Ready for action, Mr Royale!’ confirmed Miss Gordon, climbing down.

Mr Royale turned to Bertha and regarded her through a puff of cigar smoke. ‘Right you are. Here’s your route map. Don’t worry about the schedule. Just get her there and back. In one piece. Got it?’

Bertha took the map and nodded grimly.

Jem, who had been sitting on a wall watching with a raised eyebrow, now stood up.

‘Extraordinary,’ she observed dryly. ‘Are they really going to let you out with this?’

‘Of course,’ replied Bertha annoyed.

Jemima looked up and down the yard and her frown deepened. ‘Where’s Matthew?’

Bertha restarted the engine and gripped the steering wheel so that her knuckles turned white. In front of her was the high brick wall of the garage and beneath her hands the engine of the four-ton General throbbed disarmingly. What would happen, how much damage would there be, if the bus shot forward and smashed into the wall? Would it smash, a jumble of shattered glass and twisted metal? Or would the bricks crumble and disintegrate?

‘Matthew’s working’, she replied. ‘Early, at the post office. He won’t be here till later. Much later. You can ride with me. Is that all right, Mr Royale? If I take Mrs Booth as my conductor? She’s my sister, you see.’

‘Is she?’ Mr Royale looked at Jemima through another cloud of cigar smoke as if such a thing was hardly to be contemplated. ‘Well. That should be fine. Hurry up then, no time to be dallying here.’

Jemima stood very still and said nothing and for a moment it seemed she would refuse to get on board. Then she hitched up her ticket machine and climbed up on the platform, pausing as she passed the driver’s cab.

‘You think, don’t you, that by being here you can keep an eye on him?’ And she laughed.

There was already a line of people waiting to board and Bertha sat quite still, her foot poised over the accelerator, as an elderly gentleman and a nanny in a black uniform and a cloak, clutching a small child, climbed on board and went up top, Jemima close on their heels. The engine chugged erratically as she idled, waiting for the gates to be opened once more.

It was seven twenty.

‘Are we ever going to get a move on?’ called Jemima impatiently from her position halfway up the stairs.

‘Remember your route!’ called Mr Royale as he swung back the gates and stood to one side to let her pass.

Bertha eased down on the accelerator and the bus lurched forward. She waved goodbye to Mr Royale and to Miss Gordon and to Parks and Sutton and to the other volunteers who were arriving to start their shifts. Beyond the gates Mum stood beside the big old perambulator, Caroline perched on her hip, Mum holding the baby’s hand up in a wave of farewell.

The S-Type General, all four tons of it, roared into life and thundered out through the gates and onto Uxbridge Road, swinging out between a private motor car that swerved to avoid it and a charabanc loaded with shopgirls who cheered as the bus shot across the Gunnersbury Lane junction and disappeared from view.

All the characters and events portrayed in this work are fictitious.

THE PAST AND OTHER LIES

A Felony & Mayhem mystery

PUBLISHING HISTORY
First edition (Murdoch Books, Australia): 2009
Felony & Mayhem print and digital editions: 2013

Copyright © 2009 by Maggie Joel