“They’re too tired to get out of their seats,” he once told me. “They’d feel better if they stretched their legs, but they won’t.”
The worker ants had several other identifying traits. They were often seen, for instance, with more than the average number of people travelling in their buses. Which in turn meant they had to stop more frequently to drop them all off again. This situation arose because they did not understand the Theory of Early Running. The theory comprised a few basic laws which any bus driver should have known. The first law stated that the closer a bus was to the preceding bus, the fewer the people it was likely to pick up. The second law stated that the earlier a bus was running, the more easily it could avoid being late. The third law functioned in the negative. It stated that if a bus was running late, the number of people waiting for it would increase exponentially. The Theory of Early Running was self-evident: it could be proved by mathematical induction; yet the worker ants never put it to the test. Instead they endeavoured to run exactly on schedule, and as a result carried more than their fair share of passengers. Then, at the end of the day when they finished work late, they failed to claim the overtime. The reason they gave was that they didn’t want to be any trouble to the bus company. I tried to explain that the company preferred them to claim the overtime because it showed they hadn’t been running early, but they wouldn’t listen to me. They just continued making life difficult for themselves.
I was still trying to think of a way to coax Dean out of his vehicle when a car horn blared angrily nearby. There followed the sound of a vocal altercation, further horns were blown, and then a bus came ploughing onto the stand. It juddered to a halt and a moment later out stepped Jason.
“Fucking cunt,” he said.
“Who?” I asked.
“That car.”
“What did he do?”
“Got in my way,” said Jason. “Cunt.”
Jason definitely wasn’t a worker ant. True, he came to work, spent the day driving a bus up and down the road, and then went home again; but there the similarity ended. For a start, his buses were usually empty, or close to empty, and were often seen going past crowded bus stops at high speeds. He also had what might be called an ‘offensive’ approach to other road users. He would use his bus to bully smaller vehicles into submission, and he had no patience whatsoever with bicycles. He once abandoned a bus to give chase to a cyclist who’d jumped a red light and caused him to brake hard. The cyclist could count himself very lucky he wasn’t caught: he only escaped because Jason was on foot. Shortly after the incident I asked Jason if he regretted his action.
“Of course I regret it,” he replied. “I should have run the cunt over while I had the chance.”
Naturally, Jason practised the Theory of Early Running, though I doubt if he ever considered its subtleties. These were numerous and varied. In my experience it was important to apply the theory selectively according to specific circumstances. On certain journeys, at certain times of day, there was nothing to be gained from running early; indeed, on some occasions, it actually paid to be late! Moreover, a driver needed to apply the theory sparingly. Too much early running simply earned the wrath of the officials, a scenario that was best avoided.
Such concerns held no interest for Jason. By contrast, he operated under a shadowy fourth law. This stated that a bus running very early was impossible to catch, and therefore might just as well not run at all. Jason was, in short, a serial early runner. That is to say, he ran early whenever it was physically possible to do so. His complete disregard for the schedules was well known.
“Who’s this?” he enquired, nodding towards the other bus.
“Dean,” I replied.
“Oh, good,” he said. “Someone to follow up the road. Want a tea?”
“No thanks,” I said. “I’ve just had one up the cross.”
“Suit yourself.” I watched Jason as he walked over to the van, and recalled the first time I met him years before. I was a new driver, learning the route as a passenger on a VPB. The bus was being driven quite ferociously and I mentioned the fact to the conductor.
“Don’t you mind being thrown around like this?” I asked.
“Doesn’t bother me,” came the reply. “As long as we get to the other end as fast as possible so I can have a fag.”
I could plainly see the logic of his argument. He told me it was a long-distance route and he only survived the journey by going upstairs and breathing other people’s smoke. I later worked with this conductor myself. His name was Gunter and he was very quick on the bell. Whenever we approached a compulsory bus stop and there was nobody getting on or off he would give me a double ring, which was his way of saying ‘don’t bother to stop’. As a consequence, we usually arrived at our destination early. We got booked by the inspectors from time to time, but this was all part of a new recruit’s initiation. The driver of the VPB that first day was Jason, and clearly he matched Gunter’s requirements. They were both very friendly to me, I should add, and when they went and bought tea I was included as a matter of course. Gunter had left the bus company when the VPB became obsolete, but Jason was still with us. Now he came marching back empty-handed.
“I’ve just told that bloke he ought to learn how to make tea properly.”
“Didn’t you get any then?” I asked.
“Yes, I did,” Jason answered. “But I poured it away in front of him to teach him a lesson.”
“Why don’t you go to that place up the road?” I said. “Tea’s quite nice there.”
“Can’t be arsed.”
Dean’s bus started up and a few moments later he moved off.
“Right, that’s my cue,” said Jason, heading for his own bus. He fired it up, then sat idling for a couple of minutes prior to departure. When he took his leave he revved his engine hard before releasing the handbrake, so that the vehicle screeched away in a dense cloud of exhaust fumes. I looked at my watch. I wasn’t due to go for another quarter of an hour. The official headway was supposed to be eight minutes and I was just beginning to think Jason had left me in a bit of a lurch when yet another bus appeared. The driver was Cedric. He paused briefly to speak to me.
“The engineers have been fixing my bus,” he said. “I’ve been off the circuit for the past hour.”
This probably explained why Greeves had altered my flight path: by sending me directly to the southern outpost he was trying to plug a gap. As the truth dawned, I marvelled at the sheer ingenuity of his scheme. Meanwhile, Cedric was rapidly filling in his log card.
“What was wrong with your bus?” I asked.
“The back doors kept opening and closing of their own accord.”
“Oh yes, that happened to me once,” I said. “Drives you up the wall, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Cedric glanced along the bus stand. “Jason’s left already, has he?”
“Afraid so,” I said.
“Right,” he snapped. “I’d better get after him.”
I stepped out of the way as Cedric put his foot down. Then he too was gone. Cedric had departed four minutes before his proper time, leaving me no choice but to begin making my own preparations to move. I decided to follow suit and likewise ‘steal’ four minutes. Even so there were still a further eight minutes to wait, which required all the patience I could muster. I had a vivid mental picture of Cedric chasing Jason, who in turn was chasing Dean into the distance, leaving behind them a great long road totally bereft of buses. And a road without buses could be a lonely place. I paced back and forth, glancing repeatedly at my watch, until the chosen time eventually arrived. Then I got in my bus, started up and set off.