'What can you see, then?'
'It's not light,' Ernie said, half-closing his eyes, 'and it's not dark. Everything's melting together.
'Go on.'
'I can't see the individual houses. I suppose I can only see the people who live in them. Young Frank and Susan and the little lad. Alf Beckett. Millicent Gill at the Post Office…Gus Bibby, Maurice and Dee at the chip shop. And I suppose… if I look a bit harder…'
'Aye, you do that.'
'If I look harder I can see the people who lived in the house before…The Swains – Arthur Swain and his pigeons. Alf Beckett's mother, forty-odd years a widow. I can bring them all back when I've a mind. Specially at this time of day. But that's the danger, as you get older, seeing things as they were, not as they are.'
'The trick' said Ma, 'is to see it all at same time. As it was and as it is. And when I says 'as it was' I don't just mean in your lifetime or even my lifetime. I mean as far back as yon bogman's time.'
Ernie felt himself shiver. He pushed the British Museum papers deeper into his inside pocket. Whatever secret knowledge of the bogman Ma possessed, he didn't want to know any more.
Ma said, 'You stand here long enough, you can see it all the way back, and you won't see no colours, you won't see no hard edges. Now when you're out on t'Moss, Brid'lo don't look that welcoming, does it? All cold stone. You know that, you've written about it enough. But it's not cold to us, is it? Not when we're inside. No hard edges, no bright colours, never owt like that.'
'No.'
'Only shades. Ma said, almost dreamily. 'Them's what's kept this place the way it is. Shades of things '
'Shades?'
'Old colours all run together. No clashes. Know what I'm telling you, Ernest?'
'Harmony?' Ernie said. 'Is that it? Which is not to say there's no bickering, or bits of bad feeling. But, fundamentally, I s'pose, Bridelow's one of those places where most of us are happy to be. Home. And there's no defining that. Not everybody's found it. We're lucky. We've been lucky.'
'Luck?' Something was kindling behind Ma's eyes. Eighty-five if she was a day and still didn't need glasses. 'Luck? You don't see owt, do you?' Ernie'd had glasses full-time since he was thirty-five. 'What's it got to do wi' luck?'
'Just a figure of speech, Ma.'
'Balls,' said Ma. 'Luck! What this is, it's a balancing act. Very complicated for t'likes of us. Comes natural to nature.'
Ernie smiled. 'As it would.'
'Don't you mock me, Ernest Dawber.
'I'm sorry, Ma.' She was just a shade herself now, even her blue beret faded to grey.
'Beware of bright, glaring colours,' she said. 'But most of all, beware of black. And beware of white.'
'I don't know what you mean…'
'You will,' said the little old woman. 'You're a teacher.' She put a hand on his arm. 'Ernest, I'm giving you a task.
'Oh 'eck '
'You've to think of it as the most important task you've ever had in your life. You're a man of learning, Ernest. Man wi' authority.'
'Used to be, Ma. I'm just a pensioner now…' Like you, he was going to say, then he noticed how sad and serious she was looking.
'Get that man back.'
'Who?' But he knew. 'How?' he said, aghast.
'Like I said, Ernest. Tha's got authority.'
'Not that kind of authority, for God's sake.' Nobody there. He swallowed. Nobody. Not in or near the bus shelter.
It was on his nearside, which was no good, he might get hurt, so he drove further along the road, reversing into someone's drive, heading back slowly until he could see the glass-sided shelter, an advertisement for Martini on the end panel, lit up like a cinema screen in the headlights: a handsome man with wavy hair leaning over a girl on a sofa, topping up her glass.
He was mentally measuring the distance.
What am I doing! What am I bloody doing?
I could park it just here. Leave it. Walk away. Too far, anyway, for her to hear the impact.
In his mind he saw Therese standing by the telephone kiosk, about to phone for a taxi. In his mind she stopped. She was frowning. She'd be thinking what a miserable, frightened little sod he was.
He could say there had been somebody in the bus shelter, two people. Get angry. Was he supposed to kill them? Was he supposed to do that?
But she would know.
He stopped the car, the engine idling. The bus shelter had five glass panels in a concrete frame. The glass would be fortified. He would have to take a run at it, from about sixty yards.
If he didn't she would know.
He remembered the occasions she'd lost her temper with him. He shivered, stabbed at the accelerator with the car in neutral, making it roar, clutching the handbrake, a slippery grip. Too much to lose. Gritting his teeth until his gums hurt.
Too much to lose.
And you'll feel better afterwards.
Took his foot off. Closed his eyes, breathed rapidly, in and out. The road was quiet now, the hedges high on either side, high as a railway embankment.
Shaw backed up twenty or thirty yards, pulled into the middle of the road. Felt his jaw trembling and, to stiffen it, retracted his lips into a vicious snarl.
He threw the Saab into first gear. Realised, as the stolen car spurted under him, that he was screaming aloud.
On the side of the bus shelter, the handsome man leaned over the smiling girl on the sofa, topping up her glass from the bottle. In the instant before the crash, the dark, beautiful girl held out the glass in a toast to Shaw before bringing it to her lips and biting deeply into it, and when she smiled again, her smile was full of blood.
You'll feel… better. The big lights came on in the bar and were sluiced into the forecourt through the open door where Matt Castle stood grinning broadly, with his tall red-haired wife. Behind them was the boy – big lad now, early twenties, must be. Not one of Ernie's old pupils, however; Dic had been educated in and around Manchester while his dad's band was manhandling its gear around the pubs and clubs.
'Happen he will bring a bit of new life,' Ernie said. 'He's a good man.'
'Goodness in most of us,' Ma Wagstaff said, 'is a fragile thing, as you'll have learned, Ernest.'
Ernie Dawber adjusted his glasses, looked down curiously at Ma. As the mother of Little Willie Wagstaff, long-time percussionist in Matt Castle's Band, the old girl could be expected to be at least a bit enthusiastic about Matt's plans.
Ma said, 'Look at him. See owt about him, Ernest?'
Matt Castle had wandered down the steps and was still shaking hands with people and laughing a lot. He looked, to Ernie, like a very happy man indeed, a man putting substance into a dream.
Lottie Castle had remained on the step, half inside the doorway, half her face in shadow.
'She knows,' Ma Wagstaff said.
'Eh?'
'I doubt as she can see it, but she knows, anyroad.'
'Ma…?'
'Look at him. Look hard. Look like you looked at t'street.'
Matt Castle grinning, accepting a pint. Local hero.
I don't understand,1 said Ernie Dawber. He was beginning to think he'd become incapable of understanding. Forty-odd years a teacher and he'd been reduced to little-lad level by an woman who'd most likely left school at fourteen.
