Read Online Last Days of the Bus Club by Chris Stewart - Free Book Online Page B

and foul-mouthed slug of an individual whose name escapes me but who was a comic genius and in charge of the tea. And the man who had called me a cunt was Fred the crane driver, surprisingly likable and amusing. Then, just as everyone was settling themselves in for the start of the job, the door opened and a young man sidled in and unfurled his tattered flares from their bicycle clips. He was Dave the Student, who had dropped out of an engineering course at the local tech and was trying to save enough money for a trip to India. This then was the cast of characters who would fill my life for the next few months.

    Jim Brunt was the foreman and thus it fell to him to keep this rabble of brutes under control, and get the broken bridge rebuilt. He was a gentle and amiable man, not a little bumbling, and, though the butt of constant ragging, most of the men seemed to hold him in respect and affection. He was the only one to wear a hard hat, which seemed to confer authority. Things were different then: you wore what you liked on site, no compulsory hard hats, steel-toed boots or hi-vis fluorescent vests. If there was any uniform, it was the blue donkey jacket which I too wore over my jeans and T-shirt and sneakers. I guess I was just lucky: during my time on the building site nothing unpleasant ever fell on my head, nothing penetrated my shoes, and I didn’t get run down and crushed by a drott. I came through more or less unscathed.
    The men slung their kit on hooks, gathered tools and lumbered out into the cool sunlit morning, each to fill his allotted task. Jim kept me back until everybody had left the hut. ‘Right Chris, later on this mornin’ there’s a lorryload o’ cement comin’, but till then I want you bottomin’ up behind Mervyn. Fetch yourself a shovel.’
    This was the moment I had been waiting for: the work. Of course I hadn’t a clue what ‘bottoming up’ might be, but I took a shovel and followed Jim outside. A surprising degree of order reigned, with the men each having embarked upon his allotted task. Mervyn’s task was to dig a trench for some pipes with the JCB.
    ‘I want you down in that ’ole wi’ Jim Reilly there, an’ bottom up, nice ’n’ neat like. And mind the back actor now.’
    I jumped down into the trench. There was not a lot of room down there, what with Jim Reilly, and Merv’s back actor (the hydraulic arm on the back of a JCB). But Merv was good: they said he could pick up a sixpence with his back actor, or even scratch his balls. It was one thing keeping out of the way of the great mechanical arm; it was another keeping clear of the awful Jim Reilly. Reilly was around sixty, I should have guessed, and lacking in the merest shred of agreeableness; he would never offer anybody a friendly word nor a smile – he just wasn’t made like that. What he did was work with a terrifying ferocity, jabbing and thrusting with pick or shovel, accompanying himself with a constant stream of the vilest invective.
    ‘Bastards, I’ll show the fuckers, this work’s shit, shitty fuckin’ shit … I’ll rare up on ’em an beat the shit outa ’em … they’re all bastards, every bloody man Jack of ’em!’
    This unending and meaningless tirade of abuse was not aimed at anyone in particular, but it seemed to providethe energy that drove this horrible old man to ever greater feats of shovelling and pickaxing. As he worked, his elbows and arms flailed out in all directions and you had to take care not to catch a nasty blow from the pick or shovel, an occurrence that would have given Jim Reilly immense satisfaction. To my surprise I heard mention that he had a missus and I found myself wondering what sort of a woman could live with such a man. It seemed unlikely that the marriage was a happy one, but love is a strange thing.
    Bottoming up, it appeared, was a matter of finishing off neatly the job that Mervyn had done with his back actor, smoothing out the sides and taking off the little hillocks