Home At long Last
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Hughie trudged onto the only bus of the day on the final leg of his homeward journey.
The conductor clicked his ticket and looked him over with a lazy interest. “You’ll have a fair stretch of the legs when you get off,” he said, guessing from the cut of him he was heading for the country.
Hugh nodded. Having lived in England for too many years he had though he’d have to walk the entire way from the town to his home place. He hadn’t realised there even was a bus service. “We’re glad we can take you part of the way,” the conductor continued, as if reading his mind.
Hugh nodded again. He’d forgotten how curious the locals were about strangers. He half expected him to ask him where he was coming from and where he was going. But he’d learned to keep his business to himself. It had been a hard lesson to learn. Coming from a place where everybody knew everybody else’s business he had found the indifference and suspicion of city life strange. To walk the streets of London, Manchester and the other places he had found himself and not recognize a single familiar face or receive a friendly nod. After a few years away, he too had stopped making eye contact with people on the street and on the trains and buses.
The bus rattled along the narrow road slowing down or stopping every now and then to pull in close to the hedge when it met another vehicle; so close that the hedges scraped the bus window. Hugh looked across the green fields he had run and played in as a boy. Many, many times, when he was out of work and sleeping on somebody’s floor he had kept himself sane by remembering every gap in the hedge, every whin bush that had tugged at the jumpers his mother bought for him in the second hand clothes shop she insisted he wore to school so he could save his best for Sunday. He half smiled thinking of the many times he deliberately went through the hedge backwards letting the thorny bushes reach out and pull at him until the jumpers were past mending and were only fit for black leading the range. He never ever told her how much he hated wearing clothes other people had worn before him
“We’re stopping in the village for a short while,” the conductor, informed him, ambling down the bus, the ticket machine secured to his chest with a broad black strap.
Hugh nodded again. He’d get off and walk around. He wondered if the small Post office was still there. It was where his mother sent him to see if the money order had come from his father away working on Birmingham. Hugh had rarely seen him as he grew up. He was just a tall thin man in a grey wrinkled suit that came back at Christmas and sometimes in the summer; stayed for a few weeks and went away again.
He was 90 now. Hugh wondered would there be a spark of recognition when they met after all these years.
“You’ll have time to whet yer whistle,” the conductor said. “You can leave the oul case. Not a being will bother about it,” he went on as Hugh started to gather up his stuff.
Hugh took it with him anyway. Its contents were all he had of this place, his mother and his boyhood.
“Half an hour or so, before we’re on the road again,” the driver commented to Hugh’s back as the bus doors clattered open.
Hugh wanted to ask what the holdup was but he knew the loss of his local dialogue would mark him out an s a stranger in these parts. He had been a stranger from his youth. He didn’t want to be a stranger in his home place.
He looked up and down the street. “Will ye be back?” the conductor’s voice asked as he came to stand in the open doorway of the bus.
It was the question Hugh’s mother had asked him nearly 40 years before. The wandering lust was in his blood. He had no answer then either.
He was pleasantly surprise to see baskets of flowers decorated the windowsill of several houses and shops. Directly across the street was a café. He remember when he was a lad it had been small dark pub – a drinking man’s pub where his mother slipped into the snug and spent the money his father sent her from England to feed and clothe them on a glass of port for her and a glass of lemonade for him. A wee treat she told him.
He made his way further up the street. Beside the Church of Saint Louis on the way out of the town was the old graveyard. He pushed the gate open and went in. Many of the headstones were crumbling and fallen down with age. There was the occasional nearly new one like his mother’s. He walked up and down the strip of walkway between the rows until he found hers. He stood motionless for a while looking down at the wild daisies, primroses and scattering of bluebells and dandelions that dressed her grave. He made no attempt to weed them out. Their vibrant splash of orange, yellows and purple reminded him of her vitality for life. He wondered had she kept it into old age.
He put the case down and sat on the edge of the grave to chat to her. “I’m back Ma,” he said. “It wasn’t what I expected. “The sun came out from behind a cloud and shone down on the wild flowers making them shimmer. He knew it was her smile – her way of way of welcoming him home. Why he had stayed away so long he didn’t know. Changing digs and moving from place to place he had lost contact with her over the years.
He bent his head and prayed the childish prayers him and her prayed morning and night. He hadn’t thought to pray for years. A peace settled on him
The rattle of the bus passing the graveyard gates reminded him he’d be walking the rest of the way to his old homestead. It didn’t matter. He was home…at last.
Gemma Hill ©2021
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