oysters

Waiting tonight on Houndsditch for the 42, my bought tea stretching out the deformed Tesco carrier. I’m wrapped against the winter cold. The 78 passes, then the 100, and another one, a double-decker, the number - something or other - three of them, including a ‘2’. I left my gloves on a train a month ago, heading home for Christmas, and with no replacement the plastic carrier straps chop up the skin in the curve of my fingers and create numb swollen puffs between the white plastic. When I put down the bags and straighten my fingers, the rucks and puffs remain like the tired blistered hands of the decrepit.

The 42. I reach down with my right hand and fuss with the sloppy carrier now ranging across the floor and signal with my left. I look up – NOT IN SERVICE – ungh! I reverse the motion to lower the bag and prepare to recompose against the cold. Unexpectedly the bus shudders to a halt a little after my stop, it’s away from the curb, stopped in it’s tracks type of thing - there in the middle of the street. The doors wind open and the little wizened old lady I’ve previously seen driving the 42 - long died black hair, lots or rings, one signet - calls out to me from behind the wheel to hop aboard.

She asks where I’m heading and I say close to the depot, guessing she’s returning the bus after her shift, and we’re roaring off down Houndsditch, me on the raised little seat at the front by the driver – courteous - she at the wheel.

“If folks put vey’re arm aat when I ain’t in service, I always pick em up” she reassures me, in a foreign accent finished with East End polish, “if ah fink vey’re desprit”

As we approach Tower Bridge she is chatting about the daughter who has moved to Sydney with the husband and two kids. There’s a bit of cussing as the road narrows and she manoeuvres her bus vying for a place in the traffic stream telling me how she started on the buses sixteen years ago when she arrived in London from Greece. Her husband has been dead five years and she’s had enough. “It’s all crap pay and long haars in London, ain’t it luv?”

She asks me what I do and do I have kids, no I say, ‘What, never married ?” no, I reply. Past the Tower of London, The Tower Hotel – ka-bonk - as we rumble over the gap between the bascules of the bridge and downhill past Butlers Wharf and on and away towards Bermondsey. “I’ve saved up - gonna see Dawn in Sydney vis Friday, and me grandchildren, lovely. Gonna move aat vey’re when I give up va busses. Where dya want me ta drop yer love?”

We spin off the Bricklayers roundabout and head towards the depot, “Just on the corner here is great,” I say. A hiss and groan, and we come to a halt outside my flat, the doors whip open with a slap and the breaks fart. “Cheers luv, best a luck” and I step off the juddering red bus at my front door - I’m home. The bus hauls itself off on the final leg of its journey to the depot and I jangle the keys in the lock of the gates, with a wry smile. My own bus to the door, I haven’t left anything onboard, she’s off to Sidney, Dawn and the kids, I’ve my tea in my bag and the flat’s as warm as toast.

And I didn’t have to touch in or out with oyster.