The bus was the same. The once-white panels dulled by years of exhaust fumes, the melodeon doors opening with an exhausted hiss. It was already moving as they made their way up the circular stairwell and Burleigh noted how his companion had to grip the rusted rail to steady himself. Bodies are strange things, he thought to himself, prisons of a kind that must take some getting used to. The main difference was the absence of tobacco smoke. He seemed to remember choking in it, on that journey he had taken a decade or so ago. Small blessings, he thought, and watched the streets pass by through the breath-fogged window. Then, gradually, a sense of the sea overcame him. He didn’t need to see it through the dark anterior windows, but he knew it was there.
There was little need for speech between them. He could see the calloused, bricklayer’s hands gripping the seat in front of him, the dried bloodstains on the denim shirtfront that he knew would have to go. The body was ill-chosen, Burleigh knew that already without having to ask, but beggars can’t be choosers after all. And which of us is happy with our physical shape? Burleigh, alone among carnies, had spent decades unable to avoid the sight of his. That dreadful posture, sloped shoulders, slouching around his Hall of Mirrors as he worked on his optical improvements. He came to hate it in time, wished he never had to see it, but mirrors were his expertise, his destiny, and now, it finally seemed, his salvation. So maybe it would have been worth it after all. Maybe those years of effort, those unbearable years of exile, would prove to be – what? he wondered, as he stole a glance at his travelling companion. The face was buried in a grubby collar, as if loath to be seen, the hat sloped over the forehead, occluding the eyes, which maybe was a good thing, Burleigh pondered, given the mode of transport they had adopted. No one should see those eyes unless they had to, and if they had, some game was up.
‘I quite fancy,’ Burleigh heard, somewhere deep inside him, and knew the Captain was addressing him, ‘the cut of that one.’
There was a youth up in front, his shapely head framed by gigantic earphones, his muscular tattooed arms stretched across the metal frame of the top of the seat.
But Burleigh heard again and saw the mouth move this time, ‘There is someone else waiting. And every son needs a father, after all.’
And that’s when Burleigh knew there would be more blood spilt. And in the dim recesses of what we must call his soul, he remembered the housewife bent over the reflecting ball, and hoped that whatever blood was spilt, it would not be hers.
The bus juddered to a halt then, at its final stop. They both rose, as if with one instinct. And Captain Mildew, an fear drúcht, the Dewman descended the stairs with considerably more agility than he ascended them. As Burleigh followed him, past the driver who, just as he did all those years before, kept the engine running, he realised he had neglected to pay either of their fares.