By Bus

A bead of sweat slowly tumbled down the nape of Mark’s neck, testing his patience. An unexpected Indian summer was inflicting a punishing dry heat on Northern Europe, and waiting at the Southampton Airport Parkway bus stop for an interminable length of time, Mark felt like an ant under a magnifying glass. He forced himself to remain calm as the bead avalanched interminably and excruciatingly past his collar-line. The only other person at the bus stop was a small and frail old lady, leaning on a walking stick with a rucksack hanging off her narrow shoulders. She seemed completely unaffected by the heat. Mark wasn’t sure whether to marvel at her casual stoicism or to feel embarrassed by his relative inability to endure.

Before he could reach a satisfactory conclusion to this problem, the Uni-Link bus arrived and pulled up in front of the pair and the sliding doors huffed open. The elderly lady boarded ahead of Mark, and once he had wrestled his over-stuffed suitcase on-board and bought a single ticket, he found her peering up the stairwell towards the top deck, as if trying to gauge whether the climb was beyond her. The bus lurched into motion and she turned to look at Mark.

                ‘Well, are you going to help me or what!’ she said expectantly, but with a hint of cheekiness that prevented her tone from sliding into impertinence. Mark grunted in assent and heaved his suitcase into the rack, before turning and offering a forearm to the lady, which she grasped lightly. ‘Thank you, my dear. I want to sit at the front. It’s more fun at the front.’ An increasingly bemused Mark guided her up the swaying steps to the front seats of the bus, which afforded a grand panoramic view of the Southampton streets that rushed by on either side. Mark helped her out of her rucksack and she sat down. She seemed pleased, and Mark, unsure as to whether his duties were fulfilled, turned to go.

                ‘So gentlemanly for one so young, thank you my dear.’ She indicated for Mark to sit alongside her. ‘My name is Nancy, but my friends call me Nancy. And how may I address you?’ Mark laughed.

                ‘Mark. My friends call me…Mark.’

                ‘And are you student here, Mark?’

                ‘I am. In fact –’ he said, as the bus rounded the final corner of Wessex Lane, bringing Montefiore Halls into view on the right, ‘– my old room is that one.’ He pointed towards a long but narrow block of flats with a fading, weather-worn façade. ‘Are you?’ Nancy smirked in response. The bus stopped outside Montefiore and a group of Chinese students boarded.

                ‘I was. Of course, this concrete monstrosity that you had the misfortune of calling home did not exist back then. I was a resident of Stoneham House, built in an age where architecture wasn’t dictated by the latest in prison building trends!’ Stoneham House lay across the road from Montefiore, situated with some degree of grandeur in the middle of a few acres of well-cultivated garden. The late-baroque façade was compromised somewhat by the awkward, abandoned overflow accommodation tower that loomed incongruently on the west wing, like a builder that had somehow stumbled into a high-society dinner party.

A group of Chinese pre-sessional students boarded and the bus pulled away. Nancy requested for Mark to open the window for her and he did so. There was a lull in conversation as Nancy tilted her head back and allowed the cooling draft to blow through her hair as the bus barrelled along Burgess Road up towards the university. Noticing the Karrimat strapped to her rucksack, Mark broke the silence.

                ‘What’s with the mat? Are you roughing it?’

                ‘I’m going to Bestival.’

                ‘Bestival?’ Mark repeated incredulously.

                ‘Bestival’.

                ‘You’re kidding me.’

‘I most certainly am not.’ Mark burst out laughing: he couldn’t help himself. Nancy looked peeved. After he had composed himself, Mark continued.

‘Why on earth are you going to Bestival? I don’t think I’m being rude when I say you’re not exactly the typical festival-goer.’

‘Well, perhaps not. I’m going to see Elton John. He’s not playing anywhere else in the UK this year, so this year I’m going to Bestival. We fell in love with him in 1970, Doreen and I, when he released ‘Your Song’ in 1970. You might know it from that film with that handsome Scottish chap. Anyway, we’ve been to see him every year since.’

‘So you’re something of a megafan?’

‘I’m not a lunatic, if that’s what you mean,’ came the defensive reply.

Embarrassed, Mark resumed looking onto the outside world. They were passing through the university campus, all but abandoned in the summer months by the student population. Small groups of parents of prospective students were being shown around campus by enthusiastic student ambassadors wearing brightly coloured t-shirts, while their offspring lagged behind, eyeing each other up. The driver of an oncoming bus threw up a salute as he passed. A crowd of ravens hopped and bickered on what the student population had dubbed the “intercourse” – the strip of grass that separated the bus interchange and the concourse. Nancy drew his attention back into the confines of the bus.

‘You haven’t told me your destination yet.’

                ‘I’m off to the Island, same as you. My eldest sister squeezed out a baby girl two days ago so I’m rushing home for the celebration. Baby Caroline – I’ve only seen heavily pixelated photos so far. I can’t wait to see her. I usually find babies annoying but when it’s a new family member I might be more tolerant.’

                ‘You will adore her, no doubt about it. Your sister and her husband, however, will be driven crazy eventually. There’s a much longer grace period when it’s your own baby. It’s a race to stay sane until they become toddlers, which is when they become lovely again, and develop a personality.’

                ‘I’ll make sure to tell Kate that’ said Mark facetiously. ‘Do you have children of your own, then?’

                ‘No, but I saw enough of Doreen’s to know a bit about them. They were terrors until they were three and a half. Terrors, but she loved them anyway, of course. I helped out when they got a bit much. They turned into little angels almost overnight.’

                ‘Doreen’s your best friend, right?’ Mark ventured.

                ‘Yes. My best and oldest friend. Would you like to see a picture of her?’ Without waiting for a response, Nancy opened her purse and took out a dog-eared and crumpled black-and-white photo. A jaded-looking, post-concert Elton John smiled wearily into the lens of the past, his evident exhaustion contrasting with the exuberant smiles of the two women flanking him. ‘I’m the short, fat one on the right, if you can’t tell. Doreen was always the looker of the two of us. We were devastated when we found out Elton hadn’t much interest in girls! It was taken after a performance at the Royal Albert. Fantastic, he was, and with just a piano, a microphone and a spotlight.’ She broke off to hum a few bars of ‘Your Song’, without very much skill.

‘And you’re meeting her on the Island?’ At this, Nancy shook her head slightly and looked deeply into Mark’s eyes for a moment then back to the photo, but didn’t say anything. The cogs in Mark’s brain clunked. Suddenly it was obvious. ‘Oh! I’m so sorry, I should have realised’. Mark instinctively looked down and fiddled with a button on his coat, uncomfortable with this unexpected revelation and unsure how to act. He reached out and gave Nancy’s fragile hand a squeeze and waited patiently for her to gather herself. She sighed and made a visible effort to shake off her grief by squaring her shoulders, scrunching up her eyes a few times and swallowing to ease out the lump in her throat.

‘She passed two weeks ago, but we already had our tickets by that point, so I decided to come anyway by myself. I think it’s what she would’ve wanted. I’ve got this -’ she waggled the photo, ‘and this!’ she said, pulling out a hip flask. ‘Limoncello!’ she said gleefully. The bus was going past the Common; a trickle of sweaty-shiny joggers flickered in and out of the long shadows cast by the trees lining the footpath. ‘It keeps me young.’ Nancy flipped open the cap and took a slug of the potent yellow ooze, and held the flask out to Mark, who declined.

                ‘No thanks, can’t stand the stuff.’

                ‘You don’t drink? You should, you know, it’s good for the soul.’ Mark laughed.

                ‘Nancy, I’m a student. If my lecture notes were etched into the bottom of a pint glass, I would be getting full marks. I spent practically all summer half-cut, if not fully-cut, on Hampstead Heath. But Limoncello is a vile liquid.’

                ‘You live in London, then?’

                ‘Nope, Southampton, but this summer I was living with my boyfriend in London.’ Nancy hooted.

                ‘I didn’t have you down as a “follower of Elton”! You don’t dress nearly well enough.’

                ‘Cheers,’ replied Mark drily over Nancy’s merry giggles. ‘A “follower of Elton” is your euphemism for homosexual, I suppose?’ he chuckled at Nancy’s strange phrase. ‘I’ve heard worse, I’ve got to admit’. Nancy took another swig from her flask in an attempt to calm herself.

                ‘So, Mark, other than drinking in a park, what else did you do this summer?’ Nancy asked pointedly. Mark grinned wickedly and met her gaze.

                ‘Oh not much, just…bumming around’. Nancy erupted into a fit of laughter again, and Mark joined in, too. ‘Some people would feel sick if I made a joke like that around them.’

                ‘My dear, I too am a follower of Elton, just not quite in the same way. I have done my best to live a prejudice free life. Homophobia is for the feeble-minded.’ Mark mimed raising a glass.

                ‘I’ll drink to that.’

The U1A approached the Red Funnel ferry terminal, and the pair settled into a steady rhythm, both enjoying the unexpected camaraderie that had developed between them over the course of the bus journey through the heart of Southampton. Once on the Isle of Wight, the two went their separate ways: Mark to celebrate the birth of his niece, and Nancy to say farewell to Doreen in a moment of introspection unnoticed by the 20’000-strong crowd surrounding her that were caught up in Elton John’s masterful balladry, as she had been years before.