only window in the waiting room, the passengers gathered up their bags and cases. The driver, his mood avuncular, stood at the foot of the coach steps.
“Come along, ladies and gents,” he said, taking May by the crook of her elbow and helping her up onto the bottom step of the coach. “Mind how you go, my dear.”
Some of the male passengers saluted as they boarded and the driver returned the gesture of mock-deference, touching his cap, the smartest part of his otherwise shabby uniform. Several of the women around May clutched thermoses, their curlers visible beneath their headscarves. They spread woollen rugs over their knees and soon the driver was swinging the bus out of the station, the large steering wheel sliding easily through his fingers like a seal slipping through a circus hoop.
May settled back into the velvety moquette seat, tucking her gloveless hands beneath her thighs to warm them up. As a child she had often hidden her hands, not for warmth but in embarrassment, longing for them to turn as pale as those of her brother and mother. Only recently had she accepted the inexplicable, that just like the rest of her body, they would always be a slightly deeper colour than those of the rest of her family.
The journey to London took up much of the day as flasks of tea were passed up and down between the aisle, and jam sandwiches in little greaseproof packets were offered to those who had come unprepared. May had not eaten since leaving the ship and was grateful when an elderly man gestured to her and Sam to help themselves to his own supply. Each time the coach hit an uneven patch of road the man put his hand to his mouth.
“It’s my teeth,” he explained. “These new ones cost me an arm and a leg and I don’t want them shooting out onto the floor. Might never find them again.”
Eventually the soothing sway of the coach encouraged sleep. Every so often the coach stopped in a city bus station to pick up and drop off more passengers and twice the coach drew into the forecourt of a public house where a chatty line formed outside the door to the ladies’ facilities, while the men vanished behind the back of the building, whistling. Each time the coach paused, first at Birkenhead, then Chester, and then Whitchurch, the interruption to the motion woke May from her doze. She watched the tiny breath clouds that hung for a moment in the outside air as more London-bound travellers came huffing onto the bus, visibly disappointed to find that the presence of a group of human bodies had made little effect on the cold inside.
At Oxford, the last stop before the end of the two-hundred-mile journey to London, May and Sam left the coach for some fresh air. A barely lit cigarette stub was clinging to the corner of the driver’s bottom lip and the front crease down the length of his trousers had disappeared. He looked crumpled and tired, the bonhomie of the early part of the journey squeezed out of him. Sam offered him a Player’s from his own packet and, with an embarrassed shrug of the shoulders, the driver apologised for his dishevelled appearance. He confided that he still preferred his winter uniform to the summer variety. The white linen jacket, compulsory throughout July and August, was never free from oil and smuts and he dreaded the ignominy of being confused for an ice-cream salesman.
An insipid watercolour sun was setting as the men stood and smoked outside the bus in the half-ghostly light. May stared at the skyline ahead of them.
“Matthew Arnold says ‘the dreaming spires of Oxford need not June for beauty’s heightening.’” Sam recited. “I learned the poem at school but I never thought I would see the place for myself.”
May was mesmerised by the dramatic outline of the city and the silhouetted buildings with their towers and spires, which glinted with a romantic beauty. She was barely awake when she felt Sam putting his hand inside her own glove before leading her across the bus terminal at Victoria. The National Omnibus let them off at Bethnal Green Road. Night had fallen and struggling through the darkness with their heavy cases they left the busy main road and soon arrived at a short terrace of small brick houses abutting a park. Children swung off ropes tied to the waists of the gas lamps and May had to