Young Dickie’s desk was nearer the door. Three desks only in this room, once a budgerigar shop. His, Dickie’s and the boss’s, rarely used. Next door another shop constructed into an office where the sales manager, crease-waist-coated, chain smoking, and two typists lived.
Dalrymple fixed on Dickie. Dalrymple was mad fit to bust a gasket. “Every day, I tell you. There he is, head stuck in a book. Never buys. And always something happens when he’s in my shop.”
“Something?” Dickie’s bright, intelligent face prompting. Everything in life was superbly interesting to Dickie Armstrong.
“He’s a walking jinx. One day a bookcase collapsed. Another day a shelf fell down.”
Ten seconds.
Butty was looking yearningly into the patch of sunshine wanting them all to shove off, wanting five-thirty so that he could take his head and running nose home. Looked across at Dunn & Co next door to Pricerite, then above the High Street shops to the tall chimneys of the industrial estate beyond. Smokeless zone. No smoke. A bit of steam from one of the chimneys. Steam? He supposed steam was all right in a smokeless zone. The wind whipping it downwards in eddies. Lasting a long time for steam. Picketing didn’t seem to stop industrial activities. WAR CRIMINALS. BAN GERM WARFARE. Funny, his tired mind said, you can see banners go on picket every day and the ads on commercial telly, you never remember what they’re proclaiming. It wasn’t germ warfare. That was down in Dorset.
“He just comes in and books fall off top shelves and lay old ladies out. Right now a whole table collapsed. He wasn’t within yards of it.” Dalrymple scrubbed his gray stubble with a coarse fingernail. “But it’s him, he’s the cause. Some people are like that. Wherever they go they bring disaster around them.”
Three seconds. He shot off, in case someone was helping himself to his precious, secondhand books. His voice floated back: “Don’t have him near you.”
The publisher smiled indulgently, he knew how to handle bums. And then there were no seconds left; and it was happening and they were all on their feet and minds were racing with shock and emotions close to fear and Butty for the moment forgot his throat and head, Dickie forgot he wanted to go to the toilet, and the publisher thought, “It’s a smash and grab,” and slammed the office safe door shut.
What happened outside was reconstructed from the evidence of many, many people, curiously including Dickie Armstrong, who bolted out into the street immediately things began. No one person was able to give the whole complete story. But when the police car arrived — which it did within a minute or so of the occurrence; it was cruising the length of the High Street — the hysteria was at its height and they had to use extreme patience to cut through the gabble.
As they reconstructed it, this was what happened. A bus came along the High Street. Nothing remarkable in that. Buses came like bananas along that High Street, in bunches. Dickie told the cops he was sure it was a 99A; he’d seen it for a glimpse. Which puzzled the cops, because a 99A did not run along that route.
Butty and the publisher watched from the doorway. Then the publisher went running towards the group, and he seemed excited and that wasn’t usual. But Butty didn’t move. Behind his glasses his eyes took in the picture. All traffic at a standstill in the High Street. One car mounted on the pavement, bonnet thrust through the window of Jolly’s Sandwich Bar—‘Take Away Or Consume On Premises’. People lying on the ground in a state of shock. Like a battlefield. Some people running around in hysterics, but most just standing, looking dazed, or walking irresolutely, as if in some trance-like state. And that group now surrounding the police car, all talking, arguing among themselves, shouting. And young Dickie’s bright face there, somehow the center of events.
All witnesses at a certain stage agreed that there was Something Funny About That Bus. Funny? queried the senior policeman. He was Welsh, from the Valleys, and you had to be smart to put one past his acute mind. What did they mean by funny? And at that they all seemed to hesitate, at a loss, and look at each other, and only young Dickie had the answer.
“The passengers. They didn’t seem — well, real, human. You know what I mean. Well, like tailors’ dummies. I caught a glimpse.”
Everyone began to talk, to agree. Yes, that was it, that’s what it was like, why the bus was funny. The passengers, swaying there, smiling or not smiling, staring fixedly ahead. Tailors’ dummies. That’s what they thought at the time.
“All right, so the bus was full of tailors’ dummies,” said the Welsh bobby, not allowing even a hint of sarcasm, surprise or disbelief to mar his tones. “So what happened?”
They told him, prompting each other, and it was surprising how much sharp young Dickie knew of events.
The bus came along. It pulled into a stop outside Boots. The conductress, shortish, fattish, blue uniform very shiny from use (curious how observant some of those people were, each supplementing the other’s details), called, “Plenty of room on top!” Very brisk and hearty, everyone said. And then?
Now, that was puzzling. The story varied only slightly. A tiny queue of people shuffled forward to get on the bus. An oldish woman — some said a very old woman — was first in the queue. She was reaching for the handrail to haul herself on to the platform and then—
“And then what?” asked the Welsh cop as all seemed to pause. His oppo, a big young bobby from Bradford, was trying to keep pace with the talk, looking somewhat unfamiliar with pencil and notebook.
Then the conductress lifted a stout leg, her foot planted itself on the chest of the oldish woman, straightened and the poor old duck went flying back into the queue, knocking them for six.
And then the conductress rang the bell three times, which means, keep going, mate, we don’t stop for anyone now, and the bus seemed to jump into top speed immediately and went careering along the High Street, while the conductress held on to the brass rail and laughed uproariously at the tumbled queue and shouted, “Plenty of room on top!”
The Welsh cop looked startled for a moment, tried to see how his Bradford chum was reacting, then recovered. He stared at a High Street that looked as if war had come to it — crowds of people seemed to be racing in from side streets. Someone had phoned the ambulance service and now they were coming in relays on to the street. A motorcycle cop parked his machine, then like a thing from outer space came pushing through to join his comrades.
It was what happened when the bus leapt away from the stop that was so startling. So many people clamored to tell the story, and again Dickie was one of them, more articulate than the rest, so that in time the Welsh cop was addressing most of his questions to the young editorial dogsbody.
People had been crossing the High Street at the zebra crossing between the Co-op and the George. A woman pushing a pram was there — one of those pushcart things designed to take twins, and twins were in it. An oldish man with a limp was on the crossing. Two or three housewives with their shopping. Another old woman, though everyone agreed she’d been pretty sprightly and leapt for it, clear of danger.
And the bus didn’t stop. On the contrary it was accelerating all the way from Boots. The horror of that moment was too strong for many of them and someone fainted and others had to go and sit down and not be reminded of it.
The bus deliberately drove into the people on the crossing. The woman with the pushchair thing saw it bearing down on her, towering above her, and started to scream and everyone down that street heard the terrible sound.