Lyrics
The Hot Side of the Bus
Bob had sat down on the hot side of the bus. That was his mistake. They always waited in the station for about twenty minutes, and the side of the bus facing the sun would heat up and heat up, until it was almost unbearable. If you were right under the glass of the window, it was like sitting in an oven. Still, he’d sat down now. He wasn’t going to get up and change seats. He just hoped the bus would get moving soon.
A young man in a suit climbed aboard carrying a briefcase. An office worker of some kind, presumably. He sat down on the other side of the bus in the same row as Bob, pulled a book out of his case and started reading.
While the office worker read, a skinny, untidy-looking man with a backpack stepped onto the bus. He fished around in the backpack for some time, producing a number of items which he laid on the luggage rack, then said to the driver, ‘I bought a return ticket, but I have – I seem to have lost it.’
Well, too bad, thought Bob. If you don’t have a ticket, you can’t ride on the bus. But this man clearly thought, either that the driver was going to let him ride for free, or that someone else would pay for him. No-one had ever allowed Bob to ride on a bus without a ticket. He had once lost his ticket on the bus, and oh, how embarrassed he’d been when the conductor came round and he realised he couldn’t find it. And he didn’t have enough money to pay for another, so he’d had to get off at the next stop, and even though it was an icy cold day, his face had still felt like it would burn up. He didn’t bear the conductor any ill will, though; you didn’t get something for nothing in this life, and you shouldn’t expect it either.
It looked as if the man with the backpack was going to, though. The office worker, putting down his book, had shuffled to the front and offered to pay for a replacement ticket, an offer which was readily accepted. With his presence on the bus now rendered legitimate, the man gathered his belongings, stuffed them in his backpack, and fell into a seat, directing a grateful smile at the office worker. Bob didn’t mind that. If someone else wanted to give their money away, that was fine, even though it was plain the man had never had a return ticket, and probably did the same routine every time he wanted to travel anywhere. Bob was travelling for free too, as it happened, but that was different: he had gone to war in Europe, and then come back home and worked hard for another forty years; letting him travel on buses for free was his thanks for the good he had done for the country. This man looked like he’d never done anyone any good, unless it was a pub landlord.
Anyway, the resolution of that particular drama did at least mean that the bus finally started moving, letting a bit of a breeze in to cool it down. It didn’t get more than a few yards, though, before it came to a halt again. A woman was running next to the bus, signalling that she wanted to get on. She looked something like Bob’s late wife, Rosie. Before they were married, Rosie had run, like that, alongside the train that took him away to the fighting, not wanting to lose sight of him until the last possible moment.
The doors of the bus swung open. The woman got on and sat down. The office worker carried on reading his book. The man with the backpack fell asleep. As they pulled into his home village, Bob was thinking about the way it had looked the night he got home from the war; how, still wearing his uniform, he had gone down to the pub, and everyone had welcomed him home. Rosie had cried on his shoulder, and his dad had bought him a beer.
