“Stop!” cried an anxious voice behind me.
In my mirror I saw Baker running as fast as his legs would carry him. In fact he was making such an effort that he had to hold onto his black peaked cap to keep it on his head. I stopped and waited while he caught me up. He stood there panting, and for a few seconds I thought he was going to have a funny turn.
“What’s got into you lot?” he said, when he’d finally recovered. “All rushing off one after the other?”
Baker was one of the more reasonable inspectors, yet I knew I had to be circumspect with my reply.
“Just trying to maintain headway,” I ventured. “Cedric went eight minutes ago.”
“But you’re still four minutes early,” Baker retorted. “There’s no excuse for being early.”
I said nothing. There was no point. Baker was quite correct. There was no excuse for being early. He gave a long sigh, as if all the burdens of the world were fallen upon him.
“This isn’t a bus service,” he declared. “It’s a pursuit race.”
Four
Jeff and I were sitting in the canteen when Davy joined us.
“You know what never ceases to amaze me?” he asked.
“No,” I replied. “Do tell us.”
“What never ceases to amaze me is how people can stand at a bus stop watching you come along the road, and then not put their hands out.”
“Oh, yes,” I said. “You have mentioned it before. On three hundred and twenty previous occasions, actually.”
“Unbelievable,” said Davy. “Some of these people depend on buses as their only means of transport, yet they persistently refuse to give the appropriate signal.”
“Which stop are we talking about?” enquired Jeff.
“You know the one just after you leave the ring road? By the national archive.”
“Yeah,” said Jeff. “Request stop.”
“Precisely,” said Davy. “It’s a request stop and about thirty of them stood there gawping at me as I drove up. Not one person moved a muscle.”
“So you didn’t stop then?”
“Course I didn’t stop!” Davy exclaimed. “Nobody requested me!”
“What if they complain?” asked Jeff.
“They won’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Look,” said Davy. “If people are too lazy to stick their hand out, they’re hardly going to bother writing a letter of complaint, are they?”
“They might phone up.”
“Verbal complaints aren’t accepted,” Davy rejoined. “Besides which, there’s no case to answer.”
“You took the proper course of action,” I said. “If you’d stopped you would have set a very awkward precedent.”
“They’d start taking it for granted.”
“Indeed.”
“It’s perfectly clear,” Davy announced. “A request stop means exactly what it says.”
He stood up and demonstrated.
“To catch a bus at a request stop, people are supposed to stand adjacent to the kerb and put their arm out at right-angles,” he said. “Like this.” He held his arm out straight.
“Not this.” He poked out one finger.
“Nor this.” He stuck out a leg.
“Nor this.” He fluttered his hand like a butterfly.
“Not even this.” He turned his back and waved his arm.
“Only this.” He faced us again and held his arm out straight.
“An arm extended in full view of the bus is the only acceptable signal,” he concluded, before finally sitting down.
During Davy’s brief lecture Edward had come into the canteen.
“What about compulsory stops?” he said. “Do you always serve them?”
“Of course,” Davy answered. “I stop even when they don’t put their hands out.”
“What if the stop is empty?”
“In that case I don’t bother.”
“Well, strictly speaking you’re supposed to halt and apply the handbrake.”
“But that’s preposterous!” said Jeff.
“Preposterous or not,” Edward replied. “The rule book says compulsory stops should be honoured at all times, even when empty.”
“I presume we can thank the Board of Transport for that,” I said. “Sounds like one of their pronouncements.”
“Correct.”
“But I thought the Board consisted entirely of ex-busmen,” said Davy. “Why do they make such unreasonable demands?”
“A very good question,” said Edward. “They do tend to be rather high-handed with their legislation.”
“I’ll say.”
“In this particular instance, however, the Board was far from unanimous. As a matter of fact, the question of compulsory stops was almost the cause of a great schism.”
“Really?” I said. “When was this?”
“Oh, years ago,” said Edward. “When policy was still being formulated. You’re quite right, Davy, they were all ex-busmen: drivers, conductors and engineers who’d risen up through the ranks. Many of them could remember the old days when buses operated on a purely commercial basis. Buses stopped wherever there were people waiting. Obvious really. Then the decision was taken to flood the metropolis with more and more buses, and the network was expanded. Bus stops appeared all over the place and it followed that some were busier than others. A few were hardly used at all. The de facto practice was that if a stop was completely empty of people, the bus needn’t come to a halt.”
“Common sense,” remarked Davy.
“At this point the engineers intervened,” continued Edward. “They’d always found that the frequent bus stops provided a useful way of checking the brakes were in good order. If they squealed it meant they were almost worn out and needed replacing immediately. Simple as that. One or two nasty accidents had occurred in the past, when the squeals had been ignored, and the engineers didn’t want any repeats. Consequently the new stopping arrangements made them very uneasy. The system was far too casual for their liking. This was before they’d developed the rolling road, don’t forget.”
“The rolling road?” said Jeff. “I thought that was a famous poem.”
“It is.”
“‘The rolling country drunkard built the rolling country road’.”
Edward gave Jeff a penetrating look.
“Near enough,” he said. “It’s also the name of a machine for testing the brakes on buses. Shall I go on?”
“You might as well,” I said. “Now you’ve started.”
“Very soon the engineers began to insist on compulsory stopping. Naturally, the ex-drivers and conductors were opposed to this: they wanted the buses to flow as freely as possible. For a while the Board was in turmoil. Resignations were offered and rejected. The arguments went on and on for weeks until eventually they reached a compromise. They agreed compulsory stops would be placed at random along every route; the remainder would be request stops. In addition, they would be differentiated by colour: white for compulsory, red for request. It’s been like that ever since.”
“But now they’ve installed a rolling road at every garage,” said Davy. “They could get rid of the white stops.”
“They could,” Edward acknowledged. “But they never will.”
Jeff glanced at his watch, stood up and walked away from the table.
“That reminds me,” I said. “You know you mentioned the entire Board was composed of ex-busmen?”
“Yes,” Edward replied.
“Does that apply to the lower echelons as well?”
“Everybody,” said Edward. “Garage managers, assistant garage managers, schedules managers, pay clerks, recruitment officers, driving instructors, examiners, route controllers, revenue protection officials. All of them are ex-busmen. And ex-buswomen, of course. Why do you ask?”