By now quite a crowd has gathered at the bus-stop. People are sitting on the pavement, shivering, with their heads in their hands; women are breast-feeding their babies; small children are wailing and moaning and running around in distracted circles. It’s like a scene from a refugee camp. And you are also incredibly hungry. The little Cypriot shop behind you is still open, and you wonder whether you should perform an act of charity, because it is within your power to put all these people out of their misery. Because you know that if you step inside that shop, just for thirty seconds, to buy a bar of chocolate, a bus will immediately come around the corner, and it will have gone again by the time you get outside. There is absolutely no doubt in your mind about this. But at the same time you can’t help wondering if it might be worth taking the risk: given that the bus will appear, not immediately when you enter the shop, but at the precise moment when you hand over your money to the shopkeeper — mightn’t there still be time for you to collect the change, run outside and leap on the bus? It’s worth a try. So you go inside, and you choose a bar of chocolate, and the Cypriot shopkeeper has gone to lunch and left his eight-year-old son to look after the till, and you hand over a fifty-pence piece, and glance anxiously out of the window, and the bus has come, and the little Cypriot boy is scratching his head because he doesn’t have the faintest idea how to subtract twenty-four from fifty, and you shout ‘Twenty-six! Twenty-six!’, and he opens the till but there are no ten — or twenty-pence pieces, and he slowly begins counting the whole thing out in coppers, and you look out of the window and see that the last person is just getting on to the bus, and you shout, ‘Forget it, kid, forget it!’, and run outside just as the bus is pulling away, and the driver sees you but he doesn’t stop for you, because he’s a complete and utter bastard.
What follows is a short burst of hysterical laughter, and then the descent of a strange, immutable calm. It seems deathly quiet after the crowd of people has got on the bus, and there is no longer any traffic of any description on the roads. You look at your watch but it means nothing to you because you have now entered upon a different plane of temporal consciousness in which normal earthly time has no meaning. You feel serene and content. You begin to feel that the arrival of another bus would be unwelcome, because it would break the spell of this new and lovely euphoria. The thought of spending the rest of your life at this bus-stop fills you with benign indifference. Waiting here now seems to have been a rich and fulfilling experience because it has taught you a philosophical detachment which many greater men would envy. You are now master of an heroic fortitude which makes Sir Thomas More on the day of his execution look pathetic and petulant. Your Stoical composure makes Socrates, with the hemlock poised at his lips, look like some neurotic cry-baby. It feels as though nothing on earth has the power to harm you any more.
Just then, something comes around the corner, heading in your direction. It is a taxi, with its yellow light on. Not even bothering to check whether you can afford the fare, you hail it, and jump inside.
*
‘Sorry I’m late,’ I said, nodding apologetically to Chester. ‘I had a bit of trouble catching a bus.’
Harry, Martin, Jake and Chester were all sitting around a small table near the bar. Nobody looked particularly cheerful. Jake had a book open on his lap.
‘That’s all right,’ said Chester. ‘No harm done.’ He smiled at me, straightened his cap, and sipped his beer.
‘I’ll just go and get something to drink,’ I said, ‘since you’ve all got one.’
I was served at the bar by this woman who was fairly new to The White Goat. I’d only seen her two or three times before, and although on one of these occasions we’d had a bit of a chat, I wasn’t sure that she’d remember me. She did, though. She had long, thick auburn hair and a Scottish accent, and her voice was gentle and quiet, like her eyes. I didn’t like to admit it to myself, but I was very attracted to her. I couldn’t work out what she was doing in a place like this, pulling drinks. She seemed abstracted half of the time, her mind on something completely different, and she didn’t talk to most of the customers, which made it twice as odd that she had talked to me. Today I was determined to find out her name.
‘It’s me again,’ I said, unable to think of a witty opening line.
‘Oh, hello. Becks, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right.’ She fetched a bottle from the cold tray. ‘Is there no band today, then?’
‘You missed them. They only played for about forty minutes. They weren’t very good.’
The White Goat had a policy of showcasing new bands on Sunday lunchtimes. The Alaska Factory had played there once, in fact. We had only played for forty minutes and we hadn’t been very good. I was glad that this had been before her time.
‘Are you a friend of Chester’s?’ she asked.
‘That’s right. Do you know him?’
‘I’m getting to know him. He comes in here all the time. Very strange company he keeps, sometimes. All sorts of shady-looking characters.’
‘Chester’s our manager.’
‘Oh? You’re a musician, too?’
‘Yes, I’m a pianist really.’ I jerked my thumb in the direction of the others. ‘We just do this for a laugh.’
‘They don’t seem to be laughing much,’ she said, looking over at them.
‘Well, we’re going through a bit of a crisis right now. You know, stagnating, that sort of thing.’
‘That’s a shame.’
I shrugged. ‘It’s nothing that a few minor personnel changes wouldn’t put right. We need a new guitarist, and a new drummer.’ She handed me my drink. ‘And probably a new singer, too.’
‘Uh-huh.’ Then she said, in an off-hand way, ‘I sing a bit.’
‘Really?’
‘Well, I used to. I still do, now and again.’
‘What sorts of things?’
‘All sorts of things.’
‘I see.’ I watched her, increasingly fascinated, as she counted out my change. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Karla. Karla with a K.’
‘I’m William.’
‘Hello, William.’ She pressed the change into my hand.
‘Are you singing with anyone at the moment? A band or anything?’
‘No, nothing like that.’
I tried to imagine her singing. Perhaps she would have a breathy voice, redolent of smoke-filled cafés and sad, sensual ballads from the thirties and forties. Perhaps her voice would be bright and clear, like a Scottish stream, and she would sing folk songs and good, strong tunes from her native country.
‘Where are you from?’ I asked.