A contribution for Portrait of Words
He walked through the village one afternoon as the school was coming out, and I noticed him right away. Oh, it wasn’t just the way he was dressed, although that was unconventional, to say the least. It was raining hard, and only about fifteen degrees above freezing, and yet he had no jacket, just some kind of thin zip-up top and a pair of slim black cotton jeans. Oh, and a hat. A fedora, no less.
He had a large black bag slung over one shoulder, and despite his jaunty stride, it seemed to weigh him down, but that was true for most of the young men now streaming along the pavement. No, it wasn’t that, but there was something odd.
I could feel my brow wrinkle in thought, and immediately made the effort to relax it, though it was too late to worry about wrinkles now, and there was no-one to notice anyway. Old habits. I blinked, and focussed again on the young stranger.
Ah! That was it! The crowds of schoolkids flowed around him as if he wasn’t there. They moved for him, but didn’t seem to know – or care - exactly why they did it.. It happens to me whenever I walk through them. But I’m used to being invisible, I’m well past sixty years old, and of absolutely no interest to them at all and I find it quite amusing, actually. But this young man was hardly older than the most senior sixth former, and people that age usually at least got a glance, if not a vaguely respectful nod.
He came on jauntily up the road, seemingly unaware of his invisibility, until he got to the junction opposite my house and then he stopped. He stood there looking up at the broken signpost with the rain dripping off the back of his hat, and suddenly he reminded me of David.
On impulse, I let the curtain drop and found an umbrella, then I went out into the dreadful weather and called to him from across the road.
‘Are you lost, young man?’
He swivelled around and gave me a huge grin.
‘Yeah, I think so. I need to get to Norford – to the bus station. What happened to the sign?’
‘Oh! Er … the traffic calming … it makes people take risks, you see.  A lorry hit it last week,’ I said, answering the last part first. ‘But … the bus station? There is no bus station at Norford!’
His face fell, and as he stood there in the rain, the resemblance to my son increased.
‘You must mean Northfold,’ I said, pronouncing it phonetically. ‘Yes, Northfold. It’s pronounced the same, but it’s spelled differently, and it’s a much bigger place. There is definitely a bus station there. Most of the locals call our Norford ‘Little Norford’ to avoid confusion, but you wouldn’t know that.’
I was rambling. Oh dear. I glanced at him, taking in the drowned rat appearance, the sudden despondency and the utter youthfulness of him.
‘Look, come in and have a cup of tea. Or coffee. You can dry out a bit and we’ll see what we can do about getting you to your bus.’
The grin reappeared and lit up his thin face with the kind of spontaneity that I hadn’t seen for a long time.
We shared my umbrella back across the road, and when we were inside, he unzipped the front of his top, rather awkwardly, without putting down his bag. Underneath, he wore an old fashioned white vest and a whole bunch of cheap jewellery.  At least three necklaces hung around his neck with such a variety of trinkets hanging from them that it reminded me of something, or someone, but I couldn’t think who, or what.  There was a string of beads, a bobble chain with a key swinging from it, a couple of leather thongs with little clusters of charms … there was something in there that looked like some kind of club symbol, and a girl’s earring, and a dog tag … oh, such a very odd collection! With that boldly striped cardigan-like top and the hat he looked a bit like a modern clown - or maybe a street performer - and I found myself staring. I half expected him to break into a song and dance routine, but all he did was shift a little on his feet, hitching the bag more securely on his shoulder.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, apologetically. ‘I’m being very rude. Do come through into the kitchen, and I’ll put the kettle on. Tea, or coffee?’
He gave me a funny little half bow, half nod. ‘Coffee, please – black, three sugars.’
He followed me in and sat down, keeping the hat on, and placing his bag carefully between his feet, and I thought perhaps he hadn’t much to his name and had been on the road for a while. Maybe he was younger than I thought. Maybe he’d left home and no-one knew where he was? But no, although he seemed very young he was surely over eighteen, and therefore could please himself, and he seemed harmless enough. I found I was enjoying having him there at my kitchen table. It had been a long time since David had left to stay with a friend, and he … well, he had never come back.
I found that I was staring into space, and got a little bit flustered. I busied myself with the coffee, rattling the mugs in my haste and nearly dropping the lid of the sugar jar. Memories! I gave myself a mental shake.
‘So, what time does your bus go?’
He looked a little surprised for a moment, then said he was catching the National coach to London to try his luck there. I thought he might not have anywhere to stay, so I asked him outright.
‘Look, I know it’s none of my business, but is anyone expecting you? I mean .. you do have somewhere to go?’
‘Somewhere to go? Oh .. Oh, yes. I have to meet someone. I’ll be OK, don’t worry about me. I’m a survivor.’ He winked, but somehow it wasn’t offensive. He just looked like a cheeky schoolboy.
I put the hot, dark brew in front of him and sat down with my own. ‘You know,’ I said thoughtfully, ‘I think I have a waterproof jacket upstairs that needs a home. It’ll be rather big on you, but it would keep you dry’
By the time we left the house, I’d fed him cheese sandwiches, made him a second coffee, found him the waterproof and slipped a tenner into his pocket. It was more than I could afford really, but I couldn’t help thinking how grateful I’d have been if someone had only done that for David, soaking wet and lost and at the mercy of strangers.
He wouldn’t take the damp vest off, but I’d popped his cardi into the tumble drier, and at least that was dry before we set out.
He sat clutching his precious bag on his lap all the way to Northfold, and we chatted about this and that. But then he told me he’d just finished a stint as a pianist in a bar, that it had been a good job, but there’d been a fire and he’d lost most of his stuff and the place had closed for renovations, and I felt so sorry for him. I almost wished that he didn’t have someone to meet in London. I’d have looked after him and put some meat on his bones, maybe found him a job, too. He’d have been company for me.
But soon we were at the bus station in Northfold, and there was nowhere to park, so I dropped him off on the double yellows and he thanked me politely and then he was gone.
Later than evening I was watching the local news and was shocked and appalled to hear that the 6.30 pm bus to London had exploded. Apparently, someone had planted a nail bomb in the luggage compartment, right underneath the passenger seats. I sat with my hands over my mouth, watching the details unfold, thinking of the oddly cheerful young man who had sat right there in my kitchen, and was now quite possibly dead. Just like David.
I went to bed early and cried for him, and I slept so badly that the sky was still grey with the lingering dawn when I got up, and I was making an early breakfast when a heavy knock came at the door. Two unsmiling police officers stood there, wanting to come in and ‘ask a few questions’ because they were ‘making enquiries’.
Turned out that my young friend had been noticed in Northfold asking about the London bus, and had bought a ticket but hadn’t boarded and it had left without him. He’d put that heavy bag of his on board though, and then disappeared.
Several people in the village had phoned in to say they’d seen someone of his description here yesterday, and one person had seen me go out and talk to him, and take him into my house with me.  So, naturally, they wanted to know if I knew him. And since I said I didn’t, they wanted to know what I remembered. What had he said? What did he look like? How old was he? How tall, how heavy, what was he wearing, what colour were his hair and eyes?
And now that I thought about it, I couldn’t remember a damn thing about the boy himself. He was thin, and he was young … and he carried a heavy bag, yes. He had no jacket, so he was soaking wet. And he wore a boldly striped cardi and a vest, and wore a fedora, and he had lots of funny-looking jewellery.
The older of the policeman sighed.
‘All designed to catch your attention and stop you noticing what he really looked like,’ he said. ‘Clever little bugger.’
In the end, it was David’s jacket that trapped him. I’d given the police a description of it, and what the ‘little bugger’ didn’t know, of course, was that I’d written our post-code across the back of it with an ultra-violet pen when David was working for the council and always having things pinched.
It turned out that Mr Stripey Cardi wasn’t a common or garden terrorist. He was a young man with a grudge, his name was Adrian Collins, and his mother had died in the dentist’s chair during a tooth extraction. She’d had a heart attack and just died. Not the dentist’s fault, but that wasn’t the way Adrian had seen it, and he’d gone quite mad. He’d made several attempts on the dentist’s life, and the police had their eye on him for months, frustrated because they couldn’t prove a thing. The dentist had been on board that bus, of course, and so they’d been and checked young Adrian’s house and found traces of explosives along with a few rusty nails in the spare room. It would be a long process, but they thought they would make the charge stick.
I told them I’d like to know when the trial would be, and I’d like to know where he was sent when he was convicted. I’d heard there was a prisoner befriending scheme and, well …
You have to love a young man who would do so much for his mother, don’t you?