The Bus Driver. Part 6.

I find I can have an idea for a story, often this comes in the form of an idea for how it may start. Then I get the ending come to mind in some way, and if I am able to get to my note pad I can write it down and map the beginning and ending out. But I always struggle to get the middle pieces, or at the least get the middle pieces to map together to join a story together.

So like always, this story is mapped with the beginning, and the end already done. The middle is actually mapped out with a timeline but the little details, the days and changes between events are still being formed. But part 6 is finally set.

—The end of Summer—

The daily routine of going to work on the weekday, having a shift pattern with the only driver who seemed to work weekdays and not weekends, along with the one who could get away with not having to wear the official shirt, all seemed to come easily for Agatha. Once she had washed the fish smell out of the ‘uniform’ that is.

After the first week Del’s daily motions conversation seemed to flow slightly easier, there were quiet moments along the route that Agatha realised there would be no point in trying to break. But the hand requesting sweets still came. With each request she felt the warmth of the man in the driver’s seat slowly grow. Progress is progress, no matter how small it may seem.

Throughout the summer, the different plans that fluttered around Agatha seemed to take a shape of their own. The garden quickly developed into a series of beds, however, Andy had appeared to limit the size of some of them as by the end of summer new shoots of grass could be seen appearing in the soil. Why, after so many years, he suddenly had decided to slow down his own plans for the garden and vegetable beds was a mystery to her. She did decide that not going to comment, as he may start to think about it and change his mind. The pub quiz team that they found were steadily in 3rd place each week. Despite Agatha making sure that the sports section was their strongest, they seemed to struggle on topics such as pop culture and current music trends. In her new working life, the music choice of Del didn’t appear to help in this, 80s classic rock and folk style rock music didn’t appear to come up in the quiz.

But Agatha smiled each morning when she left for work, so by the time summer came to an end her routine was safely set, she had quickly found that after working for a month through the summer that her place in her new home was becoming settled after the past troubled year.

To Andy, anyhow, this change over the last month was seen differently. The 3rd place in the pub quiz, after Agatha winning the sports round each week, meant that he was having to find his own round to step up to in order to support Agatha. Sitting quietly, enjoying the company and the local beer was not going to be enough as 3rd place, although respectable, was not good enough. What his specialty was to be he still did not know, but one day he would have to find his thing to be bring to the team. The grass shoots that were growing up came from multiple reasons. The first was the not so subtle consequence of seeing the eyes staring at the beds each evening when sharing a pot of tea, along with comments about how much food one pair of elderly people could eat in a year. This was coupled with the growing twinge in his back. This was actually aggravated more from his efforts to try to hide his discomfort as opposed to the original cause of it. But the big change that made all the comments, sneaking off to the garden centre and the seeing his wife go to work each day after retiring pale in comparison, was the morning he noticed she didn’t sit there for breakfast and breath in her tea. To many this would have gone unnoticed. But Andy saw.

It was a tradition that she started about 15 years before, a small querk of her routine that started after they had a difficult period, and it only came back during times of stress or when she was unsettled. It was one that Andy always looked out for and could judge how she was. After 2 and a half weeks of working on the bus, she woke up, ate her breakfast and simply drank her tea. That was the day he decided to grass over some of the beds, sit back and rest. It was also on that day, that evening in fact, he was found on the garden sofa, sleeping. But for the first time Agatha saw him not lying there to rest his back, conked out from a hard day in the garden, but to simply enjoy the sun in the garden with a good book and half a beer drank, well more like one quarter drank at best.

So it was a quiet summer evening, early September, Andy and Agatha sat there eating their dinner together while the news was on in the background summarising the global, national and sports news. It wasn’t until the local headlines came up that Agatha realised something was about to happen.

‘Thank you Jill, we were at a local primary today seeing how they are getting ready to welcome back all the students after their long summer tomorrow.’

Agatha dropped her fork and knife as she realised that the bus would suddenly be crowded in the morning and afternoon with all the local children. On mass. Without their parents keeping an eye on them. She was used to meeting troubled children in the past, but this was in small groups if not just one. Not tomorrow. Thankfully they generally had bus passes that Tom had set up to make it easier for the local children to prepay and not carry money around.

But come tomorrow, all the children would be out, the good ,and the bad.

Continue the story with Part 7.