Chapter 6: Coasting to the coast

The final leg of the day’s journey in the minibus took about 90 minutes, during which time the bus was pretty quiet, Monty thought, even quieter than Sofija had hinted it would be during their lunch break at the M5 service station near Worcester.

Sofija had told Monty that particularly the older ones often napped during the afternoon following lunch and they sometimes did the same when they went on short daily outings and this particular trip was even longer than normal trips.

Monty looks across at the nurse sitting in the front seat of the bus. The nurse’s chin was resting on her chest, her body rolling within the constraints of the seat belt with the movement of the minibus.

‘I think that she’s asleep, too,’ Monty thought, ‘she’s nowhere near as old as her patients, I guess mid-50s. She seems to be attentive to them but her use of their NHS numbers does seem odd, although she admits that she does know their names too. Odd person, but working in an environment where everyone was closer to the end of their lives than the average patient, must have some effect on your feelings. I think that from what I’ve observed, it means that deep down she really cares for them even if show won’t admit it.’

George didn’t sleep on that final leg of the outward journey, as he was completely occupied with his own thoughts and didn’t want to be interrupted by Molly.

His late wife seemed to sense his wish to reflect and didn’t continue their conversation at first.

Reflecting on their walk around the service station after sharing lunch together was revealing to George, inasmuch as he had never really felt lonely before. He wasn’t lonely then, while walking comfortably with a woman he had only just met but he knew that something different was happening to him, even it it wasn’t simply down to transferring some of his interest to the woman.

George didn’t feel lonely at that moment, being in company with this younger woman, Sally. It made George realise that although he had never felt lonely before, it was because he had always denied himself the feeling of loneliness. He thought that the constant ghostly presence of his dead wife gave him the illusion of still being with somebody, only his late wife didn’t have a body, not one that he could squeeze or who would tuck her arm in his like Sally had after only a dozen steps on their shared walk. That act made him realise that, for the first time since Molly died, a woman’s soft breast was being squeezed against his arm. And he quite liked that feeling, it had put a spring in his step and a smile on his face.

And, still reflecting in his mini-bus seat, sitting next to this same woman who he has only just met, made him think more positively about a future for him, for her, and for them.

He smiled at the recent memory of their relaxed walk together. They actually walked around the food hall complex five times before time had passed sufficiently to force them to go back to where the mini-bus was parked.

By the third circuit both George and Sally had each exhausted their own subjects of conversation. They had each spoken a little about their families, Sally mostly spoke about her daughters and how they differed in personalities, how independent both were and how strong their relationships with their partners appeared to be at least from Sally’s perception. She hoped that was a true reflection of their state of happiness. She herself, was married young, at 21 years of age and at the time she first fell pregnant, only months into her marriage, she had worked in a general office, filing and typing on typewriters with carbon papers in those pre-personal computer days. When the second of her two children started school and she felt that she wanted to contribute to the family finances by returning to work, she discovered to her regret that she was regarded as unskilled and could only get work in a local school kitchen, basically because the job allowed her to work school hours. That way she could be at home with the children by the time the school day ended and also be at home with them during the school holidays.

George told Sally about his truck and car service business, how he was the last intake of conscript soldiers in 1964 and after they left the Army once again became a professional army, some 25 years after the Second World War had started in 1939 and the Army had rapidly expanded in numbers to face the threat of invasion by Hitler’s Germany. In the mid-1960s, as the military conscription of two years in the Army ended and George signed on for another four years, there was suddenly a sense of being part of a professional army again within the military machine. For one thing, the regular soldiers didn’t have this previously continuous large wave of new, mostly uninterested and unmotivated recruits to bother with, the majority of recruits became men and women who wanted to be soldiers and were enthusiastic to learn and be part of a team.

As a consequence of this change, came a feeling of being part of a profession, and George was able to delve deeper into the maintenance of engines and the subtleties of engineering design and manufacture, learning how to get the best out of the vehicles presented to him. As he became more proficient in servicing vehicles, he could see that everyone around him was similarly increasing their levels of skills, that the enthusiasm was infectious and that there was a much improved atmosphere of mutual respect. Immediately, he noticed, that the NCOs didn’t need to bellow orders at the men all the time because the men already knew what they were doing without being told and mistakes were less common and George really enjoyed the new atmosphere.

However much he enjoyed the Army life, Molly, the girl he left behind, still drew him back from signing on for any longer term of service. He missed her and after his six years in the military, he returned to her and started working as a mechanic in a local garage. The work was much less strenuous but also much less satisfying, far less professional and the atmosphere in that first commercial workplace and the two others he worked in afterwards, as he searched for a more enjoyable job, was an unhappy one.

Molly had immediately noticed how unhappy her man was and it was she who was the driving force behind him as they strived to set up their own business together. It was Molly that researched the reasons why good businesses worked, that they needed good finance and excellent financial management; she found out the steps involved; she drew up the business plan; she negotiated the core investment into the business by her parents, arranged additional finance through bank loans, the permissions to legally register the change of use necessary with the local council to run the garage business from home, convinced a fuel company to help the new business by installing fuel tanks and pumps with a deferred payment plan over three years, and furthermore she developed the convenience store behind the core business of the garage.

Molly took all of the strain of managing the finances and finding new customers and growing the business, leaving George to concentrate on the physical servicing work. He did the mechanical work alone at first and he soon attracted more than enough work for one man to do. Once his working day reached the point where it almost doubled to fourteen hours a day, he thought that it was worth the risk to take on their first paid full-time employee in the business. He advertised and took on another mechanic. Molly dealt with all the tax and national insurance processes and found out what the agreed pay rates and statutory holiday allowances should be and George ensured that the output work from the new man was good.

George told Sally on their stroll around the service station that he was extremely lucky with the appointment of his first employee, a Polish-born car mechanic who originally came to England as a young man, coming over as soon as his homeland Poland was overrun by Germany in 1939 and he joined the Royal Air Force working on aircraft engines, usually with Polish pilots in British squadrons. He was double George’s age and also called George, but he soon accepted Molly’s nickname of “G2” as his own workplace moniker. He was a good worker and in the fifteen years he worked for George, until he retired, he helped train the succession of able apprentices that George took on every couple of years or so.

When he did get a little time for himself, George indulged in his childhood hobby that he shared with his father, keeping and breeding racing pigeons. He had kept a few birds of his own and had a small aviary at home behind the garage. On Sundays during the summer he and Molly would drive out into the countryside and release some of his birds on short training runs and return home to welcome the birds’ return from their temporary freedom. Later he raced them against fellow members in the local pigeon fanciers’ club. He had given it all up when he moved into their small retirement flat and Molly’s death, as Molly had contributed so much to the hobby and without her physical involvement his participation wasn’t the same. He still belonged to the local club, even though he didn’t keep pigeons any more but kept up with progress in the sport, especially the electronic tagging and timing devices and he still enjoyed going out with the club, as an experience helper, when they did their mass releases on racing days.

Sally could tell from his conversation that George had led a full and enjoyable life, or at least he had until he lost Molly.

Sally in turn spoke a little about her own home life, touched briefly on her relationship with her late husband, leaving much unsaid. Dan had not been a perfect husband and she didn’t enjoy married life as much as George apparently had; she felt that she didn’t really blossom until she had become a widow and was able to raise her teenage children in a much more relaxed family atmosphere. She didn’t miss her husband at all and hadn’t developed any appetite for seeking a new husband. She felt she had also coped well without her children after they had left home for their own independent lives; her husband’s life insurance had settled the mortgage, even given her a comfortable nest egg so she was able to work part-time without straining herself and felt no pressure to build a relationship with another man.

Sally admitted to George, though, that since her recent fall alone at home, she was conscious that she needed to have people around her who she felt she could call on for help.

She mentioned to George that in the six weeks or so since her fall, her car hadn’t been locked in her garage at home as it usually was and she was concerned if it would be all right being left out on the drive. She said that she often had trouble starting it in winter if it was left out overnight and wondered whether she would ever get it started again after all this time sitting there without being used.

George offered to go home with her to check the car out after the weekend. Her house was not too far away from the care home, on the other side of the village of Lower Songlebridge, maybe twenty minutes’ walk for his long legs, maybe half-an-hour if he was walking there with Sally. Buses were very infrequent in the village and, although they did pick up passengers at the bus stop across the road from the care home, they only went halfway towards the area of the village where Sally lived, but she felt that she could manage to walk from there. George had a small tool bag of essentials that he could take on the bus and, if she could give him a lift back afterwards, he would happily check the car over for her. Her car was about ten years old and, although he had been out of the car maintenance and servicing business for twelve years, he was familiar with her car make and model and he had still kept his hand in since retiring with the odd private servicing job. George told her that he actually still serviced the care home mini-bus, which he said although it was an old bus, and not as powerful as a more modern bus carrying a full load of passengers or heavy battery wheelchairs, it was still well maintained and safe.

So, back in the mini-bus, after all the fresh air and more walking than she had done in a couple of months, Sally’s head soon nodded and she fell asleep, leaning on George’s offered shoulder rather than on the cold hard window. George didn’t mind her leaning on him and Molly, who had kept quiet throughout the walk, as well as through George’s considered reflections on that walk, opined only that ‘Sally is adorable.’

George nodded in agreement.

Sally had closed her eyes almost as soon as the mini-bus started in motion. She was relaxed and felt at ease.

George and Sally had comfortably finished talking on the third circuit of the food hall section of the service station and, although she had tired somewhat during the walk, she didn’t want to cry off another circuit as she was enjoying the company so much. Early on in the walk, when she stumbled slightly on a bit of uneven pavement, which she considered her own fault as she didn’t lift her foot quite high enough, George had caught her arm and, unconsciously solicitous, he tucked her arm in his and she naturally leaned into him with her shoulder as they continued their ambling walk. In the mini-bus, which gently swayed on the long motorway drive, Sally relaxed further and, as she dropped off, she leaned on George and fell asleep on his shoulder.