true today. You hear them discussing holidays in Greece and Yugoslavia, not to mention Italy and the Costa Brava. They’re not poor, our present-day clients. You should see what they buy in the way of souvenirs and presents. How the devil they get all the stuff home I sometimes wonder. You find, too, that a number of them have already had a holiday on the Continent that very same summer. They tell us they like to take one of our tours ‘to unwind’. Times have changed with a vengeance! Instead of saving up for a rainy day they reckon the Welfare State will provide the umbrella for that, so the slogan is:
‘However, while it does last, your company is not ungrateful.’
‘Well, hang it all, our passengers get their money’s worth, and they know it. Of course, they’d do things a lot cheaper in a caravan or at a holiday camp, but they prefer to travel in our coaches. After all, it’s a grand way to see the country, even if you can’t choose your stopping-places. Then, something which appeals very much to the women, all the meals are laid on and there’s no washing up to do.’
‘The meals? Ah, yes, a most important part of any holiday.’
‘Also, there are no problems for them with regard to their luggage. Once it’s on the coach we handle it for them everywhere they stay. Apart from putting it outside their bedroom doors so that we can collect it while they’re at breakfast each morning, they don’t have to tote it about at all, and that’s a big concession to elderly people.’
‘And the meals?’
‘Oh, we get very few complaints about those. We used also to provide early tea and daily and Sunday newspapers free of charge, but most hotels haven’t the staff nowadays to take round early tea, so they put a contraption in each room so that people can make their own. We discontinued newspapers because of the cost, and the same goes for afternoon teas.’
‘No afternoon teas? That must have caused some heart-burning.’
‘Oh, the driver always pulls up at some suitable place at some time between four o’clock and five, so that those who can’t do without their cuppa can get one. The only difference is that it isn’t included nowadays in the fare. We do include after-lunch and after-dinner coffee, though. We always ask to have it served in the lounge. It makes a social occasion of it, you see, with general conversation. Helps people to get together and sort themselves out.’
‘And do people object to paying extra for their teas? Would they be inclined to reproach the driver?’
‘I’ve never heard of that. From our point of view, you know, the teas were a waste of money, particularly in Scotland and the West Country. When people have eaten bread, butter and jam, baps, scones and cakes, or Cornish pasties and perhaps stewed fruit and clotted cream at tea-time, many of them are not hungry enough to do justice to a three- or four-course dinner, especially when they’ve had a cooked breakfast and a three-course lunch as well as their tea.’
‘How are the halts for tea-time organised?’
‘They’re not. It’s up to the driver to pick out suitable stopping-places.’
‘That seems to lay an unreasonable burden on them, does it not?’
‘Well, I admit they don’t like it much. The easiest stops nowadays are on the motorways, of course, but we don’t use those more than we can help because it means such monotonous travel. In remote districts, though, it’s sometimes very difficult to find a suitable cafe at about the right time of day, and then perhaps the driver does come in for some criticism.’
‘Would that be sufficient to cause disaffection among your drivers?’
‘Enough to make them pack in the job and beetle off without giving notice, do you mean? Oh, I shouldn’t think they’d do that. After all, if they don’t like the conditions, they have only to say so and go back to the buses. There would be no need to disappear off the face of the earth as these two fellows seem to have done.’
‘It really does seem curious, but how do
‘Well, the board of directors seem to think they’d like you to make your own enquiries without reference to what the police may or may not intend to do.’
‘Their resources are very much greater than mine, you know.’
‘I pointed that out and said I didn’t see what you could do.’
‘Would you asperse me and my efforts?’
‘No, of course not. As my chairman pointed out, the police are not really interested, so their enquiries will be a matter of routine, not of urgency.’
‘Have you yourself formed any theory which might account for your men’s disappearance?’
‘Not unless they’ve both had domestic troubles. We’ve contacted passengers and so have the police, but there isn’t a clue. Nothing has gone wrong on any of our tours, so far as we know. These two drivers simply disappeared and haven’t been seen since. I cannot understand it. I’ll tell you something, though, which convinces my chairman that there’s some kind of mystery afoot. In Pembrokeshire we mislaid a coach as well as its driver. It reappeared, but miles from where the driver should have left it. We found it abandoned in Swansea.’
‘And where exactly, did you mislay it?’
‘It disappeared at some time during the middle of the morning from Dantwylch, right out on the west coast. That’s miles away from Swansea, where the Welsh police tracked it down.’
‘This, I gather, was the second incident, but you have mislaid no other coaches?’
‘No. We’re glad of that, of course, but it’s the missing drivers who concern us. The driver-courier is the king-pin of any tour. He’s the all-pervasive, all-persuasive adhesive which binds the coach-party together and holds it firm. He’s the father-figure, if you like, of the tourists. They trust him absolutely.’
‘And you have lost a couple of these paternal fixatives! Dear me!’
‘And replacements aren’t easy to find, especially as we’ve got another chap on sick leave. We’re having to over-schedule our other men, and that’s not going to make us very popular with them. A driver isn’t a bit thrilled
