Taking the bus

I like to travel if you can call taking the bus travelling, but it's
a kind of voyage sometimes back into the past. There's always something
to see or hear. I've been taking the bus since way back. I never
bothered with cars, I can escape for a few hours or an afternoon, when
I've got time and the kids are at school or with their dad. Sometimes
instead of going to school my sister and I would take the bus to the
west end. The number 8 from Bethnal Green, which is where we started
out. then, my mother moved to West London and it was the number 37 from
Hounslow bus garage to Peckham. Nowadays, the bus stops at Clapham
Junction and you have to wait for another one if you want to go all the
way to Peckham.
Anyway, it was a Sunday afternoon not so long ago and I was taking the
bus and I'd already got as far as Clapham Junction. I was on my wy back
to Victoria where I'd take a coach to get me home. The bus was crowded
with young trendy types, all speaking into their mobile phones. How
things had changed, I remembered the friday nights when we'd storm out
of the disco with our ghetto blasters. No mobile phones or cd
walkmans.
I sat in my seat on that Sunday afternoon watching the other passengers
then I spotted her. It was Maria, I couldn't believe my eyes, I hadn't
seen her in over twenty years. She was dressed in black and she'd put
on a bit of weight. She was wearing black three quarter length trousers
with red trimming around the edge and a pair of backless training shoes
that everyone seems to wear nowadays. She must be in her late 30s. I'm
40 and she was a little younger than me.
Then my mind drifted back to the summer of 81. Could I, should I say
hullo, people kept blocking my view and most of the time she had her
back to me. She'd got on at Arding and hobbs and stood by the doors as
the bus was crowded. Was she going to see her parents in Latchmere Rd?
I remember them as quiet people. Jason, her brother, her dad who was a
taxi driver and her mother a housewife who'd had a hysterectomy. They
lived in a little house not far from Clapham Common. I don't know how
we'd become friends, Maria and I, but I remember going to Battersea
Park to watch the rollerskaters. Maria used to watch Leon. They'd been
going out together since school. He was fair skinned, his parents were
from Barbados. he was so big, like a big bear with enormous feet. maria
was so tiny and they were different in every way. He was loud and
arrogant and had problems at home, he didn't get on with his stepdad
who threw him out.

I wondered where Maria was going now with a bunch of flowers in her
hand, could she be visiting her parents they must be getting on. Or
maybe her daughter Naomi who looked exactly like Leon.

When I met Maria in the summer of 81 she was young and in love. When
she got pregnant for the second or third time Leon demanded that she
keep the baby. I think he wanted to spite her parents because they just
didn't like him. Although he demanded that she keep the baby we all
knew that he wouldn't stand by her. I had a boyfriend too, but it was
an on/off thing and he was a friend of Leon. Anyhow, Maria had her baby
girl who is twenty now and Leon left her, just like we thought he
would. My son or daughter would have been about the same age. I felt
like calling out to Maria but I couldn't . It was then that she got off
with a man, she started to speak spanish maybe it was Maria at all.
Maybe it wasn't Maria at all, Maria was only a ghost who wasn't coming
back and neither was that summer of 81. Life is a little like that, it
must have been my imagination playing tricks on me. But in Hounslow the
other week I could have sworn that I saw Leon but I didn't say hullo.
Anyway, I'd better go home now, I'll probably take the bus next week, I
wonder who I'll see.