This short story was commissioned by Kaye Webb for Puffin Post in 1980. The day after Webb asked for a new story, Jan caught a bus into Norwich, one that she didn’t customarily use. On the top deck some boys were playing a rather unusual game. By the time they reached Norwich, Jan had her story. ‘Shameless eavesdropping,’ she admitted …

THERE WAS ONE long seat running most of the way across the front of the top deck, then the gangway, then a sole unsociable seat, all by itself in the corner. There were two more like it, lined up in single file behind the first, to make room for the hole where the stairs went down, and after that the seats were in pairs and the passengers sat there, two by two. Heming, Seymour, Bracey and Ballard were not interested in sitting two by two, or one by one in the single seats. It was the front row they were after and they were prepared to go to desperate lengths to get it.

This was easy enough to achieve in the morning because they were the first people to get on the bus, and it rocked hollowly along the lanes for several miles before anyone else flagged it down. Afternoons were a different matter. The bus stopped right outside the school, but by the time it arrived it was already full. If they caught it outside Woolworth’s there was more room, but they still could not depend on getting the front seat. The only way to secure that was to belt up Claygate, in at the back of Marks and Spencer’s and out at the front, catercorner at the roundabout, through Boots where they were will known but not popular, across the traffic jam down St. Augustines and into the bus station.

Even then they might be beaten to it by the Snob Mob from the King’s School, but most days they managed to reach the 705 stop before anyone else: anyone else who mattered, that was. There were plenty of other passengers at the head of the queue, old ladies mostly, as immovable as traffic bollards and not to be pushed around, but no one else who wanted the front seat. Even the Snob Mob didn’t really want it, they just liked to keep the 705 Sports Club fuming impotently at the back until the bus reached Hay Heath, where the Snob Mob all got out. People from other schools smoked cigarettes on the bus. The Snob Mob smoked a cigar, one between the five of them, and held noisy debates about whether it was the done thing to take the band off first.

As a matter of fact, it was not even the front seat that they wanted. They were not particularly anxious to sit together for friendship’s sake, for Heming disliked Bracey and Ballard despised Seymour, but they were prepared to sink their differences in the interests of the Sports Club, and what the Sports Club was after was the long metal ledge that ran right across the front of the bus, just below the window. At one end was the periscope that enabled the driver to look up from his cab below and observe misdeeds in the convex mirror that hung above it, but after that the ledge stretched away uninterrupted, with only a flat seam across the middle; the centre line.

The Sports Club had begun by accident, one winter morning. Seymour had had words with Ballard at the bus stop, and was sitting away by himself in the corner, on one of the small seats, sulking over the maths homework that he hadn’t done last night. Ballard, full of early morning malice, had begun flicking old bus tickets at him, rolled into sharp little balls, from the other end of the ledge. Seymour, who had his books spread out on the ledge, ignored the first half dozen missiles, but when one landed in the middle of his theorem he put down his pen and flicked it back to Ballard. Bracey intercepted and sent it down to Seymour’s end, but Seymour pounced on it, tucked it under his thumb and ran his fingers along the ledge toward Ballard. Just in time Heming drew a goal post in the steam on the window, Seymour scored a try and Bracey converted it. Heming put the ball back on the centre line and drew a scoreboard on the front window. Ballard kicked off, Bracey raced to meet him and their hands met in a scrum of knuckles, surging up and down the ledge as fast as their fingers would carry them. Seymour hooked out the ball with his thumb and flicked it down the stair well. Heming booked him for wasting time and drew a grandstand on the left hand window, full of grinning faces. Bracey drew floodlights. Heming found another bus ticket and play recommenced.

This time things were more orderly. Ballard and Seymour were the opposing teams, Bracey was the scorer and Heming was the ref. Seymour won by 29-8 and did not complete his maths homework. After the maths lesson, in which things were said, Heming booked him for bringing the game into disrepute.

On the way home, Seymour had another go at his maths homework and also finished his English essay, so that he could give his full attention to slaughtering Ballard next morning; but next morning Ballard turned up equipped with two matchsticks which he bent, near the ends, into neat little hooks, and a business-like sphere of silver paper with a ball-bearing inside it.

‘Hockey today,’ said Ballard, putting the ball on the centre line. Seymour took the other matchstick and they bullied off. Seymour secured the ball and began dribbling but Ballard tripped him with a well-placed finger. Heming booked Ballard and awarded Seymour a penalty flick. Bracey said the ball was lethal, especially to windows, and insisted that they went back to using bus tickets. Heming confiscated the ball-bearing and booked Ballard for bringing the bus into disrepair. Ballard said he hadn’t, yet, and was going to appeal and Heming had better give him back his ball-bearing. Heming and Ballard then had an argument that lasted for the rest of the ride and the game was abandoned before half time. Ballard and Seymour agreed to finish it on the return journey, but were prevented from doing so by the presence of the Snob Mob and their cigar in the front seat. It was after this that the evening dash for the bus became a necessity and a habit.

The Sports Club became well established during the Spring Term. They played hockey in the mornings and football on the way home. The Snob Mob jeered openly but as Easter approached, Bracey pointed out that they were moving closer and closer to the front of the bus, and when play got really exciting they left their seats altogether and gathered round to watch. The Sports Club developed sinewy forearms and muscular fingers.

On the first day of the Summer Term they reassembled, having steered clear of each other throughout the holiday, and waited for Ballard to produce his two bent matches, but Ballard had a surprise for them. He brought out six matches, a lump of plasticine and an aniseed ball.

‘Not even slightly sucked,’ said Ballard, rolling the aniseed ball up and down the playing field.

‘What’s all this, then?’ said Heming, who had his notebook all ready to book Ballard.

‘Cricket,’ said Ballard, setting up stumps, three at each end and stuck into the plasticine.

‘It’s summer, isn’t it?’

There was a slight snowstorm going on outside, but no one argued. After all, the Cup Final was over and done with so it must be summer. If they didn’t get some cricket in quickly the summer would be over and the football season starting again.

‘Ball looks a bit hard,’ said the cautious Bracey.

‘But it’s the right colour,’ said Ballard.

‘Kerry Packer’s team use a white one,’ said Heming.

‘OK. OK. I’ll suck it,’ said Ballard and put the ball in his mouth. When it came out again it was white and shiny. Ballard waved it about a bit to dry it out.

‘We’ll start with one-day matches,’ said Ballard. Just to get our hands in. We should be ready for the First Test about half term.’ The stumps were Swan Vestas. Bracey extracted one, struck it on the floor and set fire to a bus ticket.

‘The Ashes,’ he said, replacing what was left of the stump. Heming booked him for damaging the pitch.

‘Where’s the bat?’ said Seymour. ‘A matchstick’ll never stand up to that ball.

‘I thought of that,’ said Ballard, and took from his pocket an emery board. ‘My sister uses it for filing her nails, or her teeth, or something.’

‘It’s got bits of your sister on it,’ said Heming.

‘I made seventy-six not out with this, last night,’ said Ballard. ‘Left hand against right.’

‘I bet left hand was bowling,’ said Heming.

Ballard rolled the ball along the pitch and hit it with the emery board. It would have been a six but for the intervention of the window. There was a loud cracking sound and although the window did not break, Bracey became nervous and erected batting screens; an atlas at one end of the pitch and his history folder at the other. Seymour bowled, Ballard hit out for the boundary. The ball, still slightly moist, rolled through the Ashes and emerged looking like a truffle.

Seymour bowled again, Ballard swung willy and Bracey just caught the ball as it was arcing towards the stair well. Heming wrote Ballard c Bracey b Seymour and went into the outfield at the top of the stairs.

Then Seymour bowled to Bracey scattered his stumps as Bracey got the bat jammed under his thumbnail. Heming wrote Bracey tw b Seymour.

‘What’s that mean?’ Bracey demanded, using the bat to file down his nail in case of a repetition.

‘Thumb before wicket,’ said Heming.

Bracey took up the ball and bowled to Seymour. Seymour gave it a tentative pat and it trickled toward Bracey, then whizzed back again as the bus tilted into a double bend.

‘Run, you fool,’ Heming cried as the bus took the second corner and the ball began its return journey.

‘How? Where?’ said Seymour, ready to race down the gangway.

‘First two fingers,’ said Ballard, and Seymour began his dash for the other end, on the points of his nails, but he was run out by Bracey, sneaking up to the wicket, also on finger-tips and with the ball wedged between his knuckles. When stumps were drawn Bracey had made eight, Seymour five, Ballard twelve and Heming had been out for a duck four times. Ballard, whose hands were in training, had taken five wickets. Bracey, last man in, declared, and the game was resumed on the way home.

‘How about a new ball?’ said Seymour, looking at the old one which was by now pitted like an asteroid and would not roll. Ballard nipped off the bus to get another; a gob-stopper from the vending machine at the corner of the bus station. While he was gone the bus left without him. It passed him on the way out and after that the Sports Club caught entertaining glimpses of Ballard as he hurtled back through outside

the city to intercept the bus Woolworth’s. Bracey remarked that he had never seen Ballard move so fast. Heming said that when they got tired of cricket they could introduce track events. Seymour said yes, but the fact that Ballard was fast on his feet didn’t mean that he was fast on his fingers and anyway, they could only do sprints on the window ledge.

Ballard arrived at Woolworth’s just in time to leap on the bus as the doors were closing. He staggered upstairs and tossed the ball onto the pitch. It was bright orange.

‘Even Packer doesn’t use an orange ball, said Heming.

‘It was green when I bought it, Ballard gasped, sinking into his seat.

‘Have you been sucking this one too?’ said Heming, eyeing the glistening globe with distaste.

‘I had to get the size down,’ said Ballard, self-righteously. ‘And I nearly choked, running with that thing in my mouth.’

‘I’ll bring a marble tomorrow,’ said Seymour.

‘Dodgy,’ said Bracey, setting up the screens again.

Seymour was first in, Ballard bowling.

Heming retired to the stairs again and Bracey was wicket-keeper, point and silly mid-off; right hand, left hand and nose, respectively.

Seymour played a careful game and his score crept remorselessly toward double figures. Then the bus suddenly jerked to a halt at the level crossing and Seymour, off guard, hit out. The ball zipped straight past all of Bracey’s fielders, missing silly mid-off by a millimetre, through Heming’s unsuspecting fingers and away down the aisle between the seats.

‘Get after it, man!’ Bracey yelled, still quivering with shock. Heming recovered his wits and went after the ball. There was no sign of it. Heming fell to his knees and began looking under the seats, but it was not only seats that he had to contend with. The bus was full, and for every double seat there were four legs, duffle bags, briefcases, shopping baskets, a dog …

A dog.

Heming put his head under the seat and scanned the dog anxiously, but it showed no signs of having just eaten a cricket ball.

However, it showed every sign of desiring to eat Heming. A bristly growl stirred it from snout to tail tip. Heming withdrew.

‘Have you lost something?’ asked the owner of the dog.

‘A gob-stopper,’ said Heming, without thinking in advance how this might sound.

‘A gob-stopper?’ said the dog’s owner. ‘Is it worth looking for? It won’t be exactly edible when you find it.’

Heming decided against trying to explain and moved on, banging his head on the underside of the seat.

Two middle-aged women had overheard the conversation. ‘Fancy crawling about on the floor after a penny gob-stopper, said one, in a when-I-was-his-age sort of voice.

‘You’d think boys from that school would be able to afford another one,’ said her friend. ‘I thought you had to pay to go to that school.’

Heming recalled that he was in uniform, and that to be seen crawling about the top deck of a bus in pursuit of a gob-stopper would do nothing for the Good Name of the School, especially among the Snob Mob from King’s, who were watching him with overt sneers. ‘Poor starving thing,’ said one, and dropped a crust to him, over the back of the seat. He would have to book himself for bringing the school into disrepute.

Meanwhile, at the front of the bus, Seymour had made thirty-three runs and was still going, although with flagging fingers.

‘Can’t I use my whole hand?’ he pleaded.

‘No,’ said the implacable Ballard. ‘I made seventy-six last night, I told you.’

‘Not all at once, I bet,’ said Seymour. ‘And I bet it was on a tablecloth. Thirty-seven?

Heming looked plaintively over Bracey’s shoulder.

‘I can’t find it. Make him declare.’

‘I declare. I declare!’ said Seymour. ‘Forty-one.’

‘No you don’t, said Bracey, brutally. ‘Go and have another look. It must be up here somewhere.’

Heming went to the rear of the bus, on fours again. It was amazing how much rubbish had accumulated under the seats during the day. He found half a packet of Tunes and ten pence, which normally would have made him very happy, but not today. Fumbling in the dark him; he put his hand on a woman’s leg and she kicked with good reason, Heming thought, looking at his filthy sticky hands. He was beginning to attract an unwelcome amount of attention, but not so much attention as the cricket match was. The whole of the Snob Mob had risen to its feet and crowded up to the boundary, chanting in unison, ‘… sixty-eight … sixty-nine … seventy!’ Two or three total strangers had joined in urging Seymour towards his century.

‘I’m going to declare,’ said Seymour, buckling at the knuckles. ‘Get me a brandy. Take me home to Mother. I can’t go on.’

‘Yes you can,’ said Bracey. Ballard fought his way through the spectators and joined Heming. He flung himself full length on the floor and began scything under the seats with outstretched arms. ‘Get a move on, Heming,’ he said. ‘Seymour’s wiping the floor with us.’

‘He needn’t bother,’ said Heming. ‘We’re doing all right by ourselves … Hey!’

The bus had stopped on the steep slope of Hay Heath and people were climbing over them to reach the stairs. Simultaneously, something else started to leave, as well. Down the aisle, covered in fluff, came the cricket ball. Heming and Ballard hurled themselves at it but it trundled by, ricocheted off a passing boot and went downstairs. Heming was first on his feet, as Ballard fell over the dog, and plunged after it. He was just in time to see the door closing as the cricket ball rolled across the lower deck and left the bus. At the same moment there came a great shout from above, followed by a spattering of applause.

‘What’s going on up there?’ said the driver. ‘Tell those lads to sit down or I’ll be up and they’ll be off.’

The bus started. The ball was gone, the game was over. Heming ascended the stairs and encountered the entire Snob Mob on its way down, having become so engrossed in Seymour’s century that they had forgotten to get off.

Seymour had broken a nail and swore that he was developing blisters. Bracey had banged his head on the window when the bus stopped. Ballard had been bitten by the dog and Heming booked them all, because he felt like it. Next day Seymour brought along a pack of cards and they played Stud Poker, for matchsticks.

(c) The Estate of Jan Mark. All rights reserved.