The Girl at the Bus-Stop (6 page)

After a fit of uncontrollable laughter, Rudge eventually caught his breath and calmed down enough to take a sip of his coffee.

‘I can’t wait to go into work tomorrow now. Armed with that tit-bit of information, I think I’ll ask him for a pay rise.’

‘If this book of yours is published, will you need to go back to work?’

‘It depends on how much money I make out of it I suppose,’ he replied, ‘or should I say ‘we’ make out of it. If you’ll agree to become Raspberry Caine then everything should be fine and dandy, but without your valuable contribution I’m stuffed.’

‘Impersonating a writer isn’t exactly difficult is it? I mean, look at Jeffrey Archer.’

‘Very good,’ Rudge replied with a chuckle.

‘What about Mrs Rudge?’

‘What about her?’ said Rudge, his smile vanishing in an instant.

‘Couldn’t she be Raspberry Caine?’

Rudge started laughing again, and almost fell off his chair.

‘I take it that’s a “no” then? O
kay, you’ve got yourself a deal, Mr Rudge, but no funny business. If this turns out to be a big wind-up I’ll use more than my knee in your groin next time.’

‘I assure you this is purely unfunny business,’ Rudge replied sincerely, reaching into his inside pocket and pulling out his wallet.

He started to pull out some ten pound notes, and Becky slammed her hand hard down on the table, spilling his coffee.

 
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ she said, looking around furtively at the passers-by.

‘As a sign of good faith I was going to give you a hundred pounds in advance. Just to show you that it’s not “a wind-up”,
 
as you put it.’

‘Put that money away,’ she said in an angry whisper, looking round again. ‘An older bloke handing cash to young woman, do you want people to think I’m on the game or something?’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t think,’ said Rudge frowning. ‘I tell you what I’ll give it you on the bus in the morning.’

‘I don’t need an advance, thanks all the same,’ she said. ‘I think I can trust you. Just let me know the travel arrangements for Thursday. What do you want me to wear?’

‘I hadn’t really thought about it,’ replied Rudge, ‘what would you normally wear for an interview?’

‘I’ve got a two piece charcoal grey pinstripe suit,’ she said, ‘it won’t go with my hair colour but I can soon fix that.’

‘Sounds ideal, and if you have to buy anything else for the occasion just let me know and I’ll pay for it.’

‘You sound like a Sugar Daddy.’

‘I wish,’ said Rudge, ‘but I’ve been married far too long to have any interest whatsoever in other women, even one as young and attractive as you.’

‘That’s very nice of you to say so,’ she replied. ‘Mind you, I suppose at your age all young women look attractive, even the ugly ones.’

‘My age indeed, thanks a bunch,’ said Rudge looking hurt. ‘But no one can accuse you of being ugly, Becky, far from it. You remind me of that pop singer, what’s her name? That American bird who wears all those flamboyant outfits and wigs and things,
Lah
-Di-Dah-Dah is it?’

‘Lady Gaga you mean,’ said Beck with a chuckle, ‘some of my friends have pointed that out as well. They reckon I should join one of those looky-likey agencies.’

‘You should give it a try,’ suggested Rudge. ‘Then if this Raspberry Caine thing doesn’t work out, anything’s got to be better than Chinese car components.’

  
At ten to six on Thursday morning, Rudge was waiting anxiously at the bus-stop for Becky to show up. He’d told Mrs Rudge that he was attending an interview for a new job in London, and after picking-up his best suit from the dry cleaners the previous afternoon she’d grudgingly ironed a clean shirt for him.

 
By ten past six, one bus had already come and gone, and with still no sign of Becky, Rudge was beginning to wish he’d thought of a Plan B. He was regretting not ordering a transvestite outfit for the larger man via the Net when he had the chance; it would have been delivered by now.
 
If all else failed he could try and find an Evans Outsizes type shop in London, if indeed such a place still existed. Failing that, he could always nip into a hairdresser’s for a trendy short punk style spiky haircut and highlights. After getting his ears and his nostrils pierced, bending his shirt collar up and adjusting his tie so that it was only six inches long, in his loud pinstriped suit he’d easily pass for a butch lesbian.

A smart-looking young woman with long black hair walked up and stood behind Rudge in the bus queue of one, and Rudge glanced at his watch again. He looked up the road to see if he could see Becky walking, and shook his head.

‘You don’t recognise me do you?’ a familiar voice said from behind.

Rudge turned around and looked down at the woman, his expression blank for a few moments.

‘Becky?’ Rudge replied, ‘Bloody Hell, is that really you?’

‘Of course it’s me. I thought the jet-black hair would go well with the suit, and the image of this author woman I’m supposed to be, and
 
I’ve had it straightened as well. It came to thirty five quid altogether, if that’s okay with you?’

 
‘Okay?’ he replied, ‘It’s more than okay, they’ve done a marvellous job you look absolutely beautiful.’

‘No need to go overboard,’ she said, turning her head away, ‘I scrub up well but I’m still the same tatty me underneath.’

They boarded the six twenty bus to take them to the railway station, and Rudge handed over her return train ticket to Waterloo. On the busy commuter train they were lucky to find a vacant seat. Two stops further on, newly-boarded passengers had to either sit on the floor, or stand in the aisle for the whole journey.

‘I never knew it was going to be so overcrowded,’ Rudge whispered to Becky, ‘I was hoping to brief you properly on the book, but we can’t really talk in front of this lot.’

‘Imagine doing this every day,’ she replied, ‘it’s like a cattle truck.’

The buffet trolley trundling along the aisle forced a few of the standing
 
passengers to shuffle towards the exits to allow it through.

‘Fancy a drink?’ Rudge asked.

‘I think I need a vodka shot or two, or three,’ replied Becky, ‘I’m starting to feel nervous about the whole thing now.’

‘Do they sell spirits this early in the morning?’

‘I’m joking,’ said Becky, ‘a cup of tea will be fine.’

After buying two cups from the trolley, Rudge handed one to Becky and then went through the South West Trains tea ceremony. This involved removing the tight lid of the red hot cardboard cup, pouring milk from a long thin tubular sachet without squirting it into the eyes of the passengers seated opposite, adding the inadequately portioned sugar and stirring it with a lollipop stick not much thicker than a match. Once the ingredients had been added, the next phase of the operation was to mash the minimalist tea bag with its bendy foil strip to give the beverage some semblance of colour and flavour.

‘What do we do with the tea-bag?’ whispered Rudge. ‘There’s nowhere to put it.’

‘I think you have to leave it in for the duration,’ Becky whispered back, sniggering.

‘If I’d known buying a cup of tea was going to be this complicated, I’d have ordered the vodkas.’

They finished their tea in silence as the train cut through the Hampshire countryside towards the capital.

‘Just a thought,’ Becky said, ‘where are you going to be when I’m seeing the publisher?’

‘I’ll come in with you if I can,’ he replied, ‘I thought I could pretend to be your driver or something.’

‘That won’t work,’ she said, ‘if you’re a driver surely you’d have to wait in reception, or outside in the car, which of course we haven’t got.’

‘Shit, I hadn’t thought of that.’

‘How about my personal manager?’ she suggested. ‘Then you could talk business with them on my behalf.’

 
Rudge thought for a few moments and looked out of the window at the trees and houses hurtling by.

‘I’m not sure,’ he said, ‘if they think you’ve got some hard-nosed bastard negotiating on your behalf, it may put the mockers on the whole thing.’

‘Secretary then? The young dynamic writer employs an older man as her personal secretary.’

‘That might work,’ he replied, ‘and it would certainly go with the theme of some of the book’s content. You know, a dominant young woman with her submissive older male in tow.’

‘I’ll definitely have to read this book I’m supposed to have written. What pages are the juicy bits on?’

They both had a fit of the giggles, much to the annoyance of the passengers around them who glared at the pair of them disapprovingly.

As the train crawled in to Waterloo station, many of the hardened commuters had already crammed into the vacant space in the aisles. With coats fastened, laptop bags and rucksacks dangling from their shoulders, they queued patiently, waiting for the train to come to a complete halt. They endured an agonising further few seconds wait for the buttons to light-up on the switches which operated the external doors. They filed though the carriages and leapt out of the doors on to the platform like D-Day paratroopers exiting a DC-3, on a mission to get to their respective workplaces as quickly as possible.

Rudge and Becky remained seated, fascinated as they watched the mass exodus. There was no point in them joining the fast-flowing river of quick-paced people rushing along the platform. The appointment at the publishing house wasn’t until nine thirty, and it was only eight fifteen.

By the time they’d left the train and ambled through the concourse towards one of the exits, the tide of humanity washing through the station had ebbed. The couple made their way slowly and silently out into the cold, and headed towards Waterloo Bridge.

On a South Bank pavement café, Becky yawned as she cupped the latté Rudge had bought her. She gazed across the grey-brown river at the trickle of barges and pleasure cruisers passing slowly by. Rudge read and re-read the printed e-mail in his hand, the edges flapping in the waterside breeze.

‘We may have to jump into a taxi. It looks too far to walk.’

‘That’s a shame,’ said Becky ‘I know it’s a bit nippy, but it’s glorious in the sunshine.’

‘We need to get this thing done and dusted as quickly as possible, but perhaps we can take a leisurely stroll back to catch the train home.’

‘I don’t know about you, but I feel like running back to the station and catching the next train home.’

‘Don’t say that, Becky, you’re giving me the collywobbles now.’

The offices of Fantasy Lit Limited were housed in a modern purpose-built block shared by twenty or so other companies. The communal reception area was soul-less and clinical, and the security man on reception seemed reluctant to break off his personal telephone call to Accra to deal with Rudge and Becky’s enquiry.

‘Go to the fifth floor, the lift is over there,’ he said gruffly, ‘but wait, you will need to wear these visitor passes at all times. Hand them back when you leave.’