The Last Stop

                                                                  THE LAST STOP



    It was just after three in the afternoon but already the sky was darkening.
A heavy mist snaked its way through the streets making the visibility poor.
This route was the worst, the quietest. Sometimes it seemed more like a personal taxi service than a public bus route. Bill had to fight to stay awake most of the time. Still, he consoled himself with the fact that this was his last day and then he would be finished.

    His ideas on retirement were vague, but he had some plans and dreams that he had been running over in his head for the last few years now. Somewhere peaceful, a little village with good people and a good pub down the road… and a garden.
He was looking forward to a garden instead of the dingy back yard they had in Finchley. It was going to be their time, finally, just him and the wife. The kids had all left home now and were doing their own thing. The last and youngest had needed a gentle push but he was standing on his own two feet now, buying his own flat, doing well for himself.
They all were.

  God knows it had been a long time coming; he had started driving when he was twenty-one and he would be turning sixty-five the week after next.
Forty-four years on the buses. He felt he had served his time.  He had had no real plans when he left school and had just drifted aimlessly for a few years but his Dad had talked him round. A good honest job was what he had needed. It had all been for the best.

He had been a bit of a tearaway when he was a youth, got into a bit of trouble with the law; the job on the buses had grounded him.
His Dad thought it would teach him a bit of responsibility.
‘You’ll see son, every person on that bus will be in your care.’ he said.
‘It’s a big responsibility you know, being a bus driver. Those passengers are precious cargo; they will be relying on you. Sometimes you‘ll be the only person they get to talk to each day.’
Things had changed though in the last forty odd years, now days you were more likely to get a mouthful of abuse than any form of gratitude.

  The day seemed to be going too quickly.  Seemed ironic really. Bill had spent a lifetime longing for this and now, well, if he was honest with himself he was apprehensive about the future and didn’t really want the day to come to an end. This was his life, it was all he knew.
There had been the usual show of faces, and the usual banter with various passengers he had come to think of as friends over the years.
All of this would be over, could he cope, he wondered with a quiet life, away from all of this. He had been pre-occupied for days now thinking about the future, his plans for a life away from all of the hustle of the city; his mind hadn’t really been on the job.

The streetlights suddenly clicked on, their vaporous glow giving an eerie light to the streets.
He caught a glance of himself in the mirror and was shocked. His face was so lined and aged; it showed a lifetime of stress and worry. Where had that young man gone?

When he was a lad, he had been fearless, ready for anything, whatever challenge life could throw at him.
‘It’s only when you get older, that you become more frightened’ he thought, ‘when you realise that life can deal you some rough blows, some too much to bear.’
He gripped the steering wheel tightly and looked at his hands, skin paper-thin and age spotted.
‘A lifetime,’ he thought, a lifetime nearly over.
 
    He rubbed a hand over his eyes, trying to rouse himself, pull himself out of this depression, and keep his mind on the traffic.
It was busy at this time of day, everyone panicking to get home. Like it was some sort of race.
Glancing back at the passengers, he realised there were only a few left on now. The day would soon be over.
This job was more about community care than taking people from A to B.
The majority of the passengers were mostly pensioners, all of them wrapped up in their own little lives, their own dramas, looking for company more than anything else.
Someone was hailing the bus at the next stop; he could barely see them, just a hazy outline with a hand outstretched. As he approached, she stepped back to avoid the spray from the puddles, He could see her now, she was just a kid really, no more than sixteen or seventeen.
She looked vaguely familiar to him, but that was nothing new, same people turned up on this route all the time.
But he was sure he knew her from somewhere, maybe one of his daughter’s old friends.
She had a pre-occupied expression on her face as if she wasn’t sure where she was, hesitating before climbing the bus steps as if she was unsure whether to get on or not.
‘Come on love.’ he said, ’Got a timetable to keep to you know.’ he was already running late, with all of his reminiscing he was behind schedule.
The girl pushed her dirty blond hair back behind her ears as she fiddled around in her bag trying to find her purse.
It seemed to startle her hearing his voice but got the right reaction; she carefully counted out the exact fare into the tray, glancing at him briefly, nervously, as if she were going to burst into tears at any moment. He was shocked to see a nasty looking scar running along one side of her face and onto her neck. She looked straight into his eyes sensing him looking and gave him a look of such hatred it took him back for a minute. Feeling embarrassed he avoided eye contact and got her ticket from the machine, passing it to her while counting out her fare. 
She snatched the ticket from him and pulled the collar of her coat higher and tighter, hiding the scars, then walked shakily to the back of the bus, not a word or a smile.  Bill wasn’t sure whether she had been drinking she looked so unsteady, but he hadn’t smelt alcohol.
Her face had a strange pallor and she had been trembling when she handed over her money. He glanced back in his mirror and watched her walking, waiting until she had sat down before pulling away; she looked like she could barely make it to the seat.
He felt bad now for hurrying her. She had obviously been through a tough time. ‘Yet another castaway on the streets of London.’ he thought. They all had their stories to tell.
He pulled away gently from the stop. The rain was getting heavier now, and the mist, it wasn’t helping driving conditions at all. The visibility was almost non-existent; he was driving at a crawl.

  Only a couple of more stops.
He would be glad when today was over. It had been a weird one, probably because his head was all over the place. Everything seemed a bit surreal, not quite right somehow.
The last of the natural daylight had filtered away now, the streetlights on full glare, and the night air thick and impenetrable. The mist acted like a blanket, not a star in sight. He pulled in to let the last few people off, checking back in his rear view mirror to see if the girl was okay. She was getting off at the last stop.  She did look ill; he hoped she had a family waiting for her somewhere, someone to look after her. There was something so fragile about her. He felt sympathy for her, for whatever had happened in her life, but he would be relieved when she was off the bus. She made him feel uncomfortable and he wasn’t sure why.
  She looked edgy and nervous, catching his eye as he glanced at her and staring back at him, unflinching and challenging almost. There was something about her that wasn’t quite right.

At the next stop, he would put his jacket on; this mist was chilling him to the bone.

  His thoughts were still on the girl when suddenly headlights were coming straight towards him. He swerved sharply to the left, mounting the pavement and praying to god there were no pedestrians in sight as he frantically tried to gain control of the bus.
He turned off the ignition, the bus askew on the pavement, blocking any access for passers by.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he whispered under his breath, ‘that was a close one.’ he breathed a sigh of relief with the realisation of how close he had been of having a major accident.
‘What the hell were they doing, stupid idiots had been on the wrong side of the road.’
He hadn’t even managed to get a good look at the vehicle. He could not understand how he had managed to avoid them. They had been heading straight for him, literally been on top of him.
Trying to compose himself, he climbed down the steps, his legs feeling unsteady and shaky. He looked from left to right but there wasn’t a vehicle in sight. They would be long gone now, the speed they were travelling at, and maybe someone else had seen what happened. He couldn’t see a single soul, but then who could blame them with the weather like this.  It was strange though, no traffic in sight whatsoever. There were the quieter times in London, but never at any time could he remember no traffic at all.  He walked slowly up and down the pavement for a while trying to stop the tremor in his legs and the fluttering in his chest.  To hell with the timetable, this had shaken him up more than he would like to admit. He had a distinct feeling that something was very wrong.
.
  He climbed up the bus steps and slumped back in the driver’s seat, sat, listened, and waited for a while, the bus still half on the pavement.
Something weird was going on, but he was damned if he knew what.
The girl seemed completely oblivious to the fact that anything had happened; she was rummaging around for something in her bag, completely unperturbed.
It suddenly occurred to him that there must have been an incident or something, an accident, which would explain it; there must be some sort of roadblock, for all the traffic to disappear like that. Maybe the police were after whoever it was that tried to mow him down just now.
‘I had better take it easy,’ he thought, ’take my time; don’t want an accident in my last week. Never had an accident in my life.’
He turned the ignition and took a deep breath.
‘Well only the once, and that was years ago. He had done his best to forget about that. Real life took over sometimes, forcing some memories to the back of your mind. He carefully reversed the bus back on to the main road. He could see the next stop from here and there were no passengers waiting. He was relieved, just the girl left now and she was due to get off soon.
Funny, how things come back to haunt you in old age. You think you recover, but really they are just tucked away ready to torment you when you‘re least prepared.

    It was a lifetime ago, they had just been kids really, joy riding, not one of them old enough to drive and all of them had been drinking.
He didn’t like to think about it even now, he had spent his whole life trying to forget it, put it out of his mind.  The guilt had always been with him. There had been a life lost and all down to their stupidity, they hadn’t been found out, and they had covered their tracks well. It had been in the papers a few days later and the talk of their neighbourhood, a young girl, hit and run.
‘What sort of people did things like’ that everyone said; ‘just leaving her as if she was some sort of animal.’
As in all neighbourhoods, it had been the talk of the town for a few weeks, but it was soon pushed to the back of everyone’s mind as fresh news appeared.
He had a feeling his Dad suspected something, he  knew he hadn’t been acting normally in the following days, he had hardly eaten and spent most of the time in his room, avoiding contact with anyone and trying to come to terms with what they had done. His Dad never questioned him and he had been thankful for that. That would have just been too much. One word of kindness from his Dad and he would have just broken down.

    The friends he’d been with at the time had lost contact. Each time they had met it had just brought the horror of it all back, forced them from being reckless young boys to men with a heavy conscience. They were a constant reminder to each other of what had happened that night.
The others were both gone now, he was the only one of them still alive and that somehow made the burden harder to bear.
He rubbed the signet ring on his finger that his Dad had given him for his twenty first, old and battered now. It had been more than just a signet ring, he knew it was his Dad’s way of saying he had faith in him. Whether he was ever sure he’d been involved in the accident or not, Bill would never know. But this gift was his Dads way of saying; he had respect for him and whatever mistakes had been made, to look to the future. Some things cannot be undone. He never took the ring off, it felt soldered to his skin now.

He drove at as slow a speed as you could without being pulled off the road, still shaky, still fazed by the fact that all the traffic seemed to have disappeared.

‘Ah, that explains it.’  He thought, relief flooding through him. Up ahead was a spangle of lights punching through the mist, police, ambulance, the whole crew were there. Clearly, it was a serious accident for them all to be out.
He put his foot slowly on the brake to see if he could do anything to help, but nothing happened, the bus was not slowing.
He slammed his foot on the brake pedal up and down, up and down, still nothing.
What was happening now?
The lights at the accident scene were almost blinding him through the windscreen and he couldn’t even stop.
The brakes, it must be, the brakes had failed.
He raised his foot and slammed it down on the pedal with all his weight behind it, almost standing in his seat with the force. There was a loud mechanical grating sound and the bus started to slow.
Thank God, it was going to be okay, he looked back at the girl, and she seemed to be sleeping; surely, all of this commotion would have woken her. She was slumped in the seat her head against the window completely unaware of what was happening.
Pulling the bus alongside the carnage on the road, he craned his head to get a closer look.
The police and paramedics seemed oblivious to the fact that he was there.
He shouted to them. ‘‘Anything I can do to help,?’’ but they just carried on with their work.
It was a mess; another bus, that made him more on edge, could be one of his mates. It wasn’t easily recognisable now; twisted shards of metal and lethal looking slivers of glass covered the tarmac. Nobody surely, could survive an impact like that.
He sat stunned as the emergency crew carried on with their work.
‘The poor driver,’ he thought, ‘I must know him, it’s one of our buses. ‘What the hell could have caused all this damage.
Two of the paramedics were carrying a stretcher to the waiting ambulance, their heads bowed.
One of them, the one in front lost his footing, nearly fell to the ground and the stretcher lurched forward. A mans arm slipped from under the blanket and dangled over the side, the flesh blood smeared. The flashing lights of the ambulance glinted on a ring on his left hand.
The inside of the bus suddenly turned cold, he felt light headed as if he was going to pass out.
His vision was blurred, images swimming in front of him, his wife, the kids, his parents; everything was a jumbled up mess inside his head, he could not seem to focus on anything.
He shouted again to the police, the paramedics, anyone, to please, please tell him what was happening, but they were still ignoring him.
He looked closer at the ring, now he could see the cuffs of the victim’s jacket, a bus driver’s jacket, his jacket.
Everything seemed to stop.
‘Dear God . . .  He said to himself, ’What is this?’ his eyes fixed on the scene taking place below him.
He saw the paramedics shaking their heads while looking down at the pavement where another body lay, smaller, a woman, or . . . A girl.
One young police officer was standing aside from the rest, his back turned, shoulders shaking.
He shut his eyes tightly, wishing this away, it was not really happening, it couldn’t be.
Slumped in his seat, his breathing slowed and finally he understood. Of course, that’s what all this was about. The girl looking familiar, not one of his daughter’s friends at all, he still had the newspaper clipping in his bedside drawer at home from almost half a century ago. It was faded and brittle now, the picture hazy and yellowed with age, but it was her, definitely her, the look in her eyes made it unmistakeable.
Now he knew, now he understood. He almost welcomed it, living his whole life looking over his shoulder, waiting to be found out. All he felt now was relief.

The bus was picking up speed again now, leaving the accident scene behind him. His feet weren’t even touching the accelerator pedal, it was moving on its own. Too shaken to do anything about it, he realised that nothing he could do would make any difference

  He turned as he felt a hand softly touching his shoulder, it was the girl, standing next to him, and he looked straight into her eyes where all he saw was sorrow and regret.
The bus was going faster and faster, out of his control now.
All he could see out of the window was a solid mass of blackness, just the dark, no streetlights, no stars, nothing.
And the bus travelled on. . .