82 to North Finchley

by Judy Upton

latte to go

If you’ve ever been to, or lived in London then you know Sam. “11 To Fulham Broadway.” That’s Sam. “Horse-guards Parade” - that’s her. “185 To Lewisham”. That’s Sam again. “Dulwich Plough.” All over London, on every bus, you’re travelling with Sam.

Sam, you see, is the voice that announces the bus stops. Sam with her perfect, posh and perky pronunciation makes even the most depressing sounding destinations seem delightful. “Broke Walk” and “Beggars Hill” seem like places you might actually wish to visit. Travelling on any London bus is a bit like receiving a long, warm, loving hug. At least that’s how it seems to me. Never mind how long you’ve waited or that the weather is awful and the traffic congestion will make you late again. Just sit back, relax and listen to Sam.

“Archway”. Whenever I think of a place now, if it has a bus stop, I hear Sam’s voice announce it in my head. Sam, or Samantha Willard if we’re being formal, is an actress. You won’t have seen her in anything though, not yet. There’ve been a couple of plays on the fringe, but nobody apart from the family and friends of the cast saw them. That was a shame - the rest of you missed a treat.

The buses have provided Sam with her biggest job to date. It took four months to record all those destinations. I remember the day when the pay cheque came in. Sam went straight out and bought a car. She was feeling self-conscious about being the voice of the bus. So the choice was either get a set of wheels or start taking the tube.

I still go to work by bus. I can’t afford a car of my own, but that’s alright. In a funny way, catching the bus alone means we spend more of the day together. I work as a stage manager. That’s how we met. On one of the plays nobody came to. You honestly missed a treat though there. Sam was brilliant. She never mislaid any of the props either, which is important if you’re trying to impress the stage manager. Impressed I certainly was, and madly in love.  

Sam can really inhabit a part. She can play tough, she can play fragile, and in real life, neither word describes her. She holds something back when she’s offstage. Even after three years together, there is still that hint of mystery. Until recently I’ve loved that about her. It’s only now in her absence that I’m starting to fret about that.

You see the thing is that yesterday, when I came home, the flat was empty. There was no note and her car was still parked outside. I tried calling, but her phone was switched off. This wasn’t like Sam, not at all. I still made dinner as I’d bought the ingredients, but it just sat there and went cold, the bottle of wine unopened. I became more worried still. Worried, but also a little suspicious. We’d been bickering more in the last couple of weeks, about little things mainly.  “Pratt Street”

   

 “What?”

“29 To Trafalgar Square. Pratt Street.” Sam had also seemed slightly preoccupied lately. Distant, dreamy, elsewhere. “Harrods.” No, it was more than just wanting to visit a shop, though Sam certainly did like shopping. “492 To Bluewater.” No, I don’t think it was a credit card splurge she was craving.

                                         

I awoke in the night with my mind going crazy, imagining all kinds of things. Sam with some stranger from “Loveday Road.” I couldn’t help myself. I kept picturing them together in “Beddington Park, Cock Lane, Balls Pond Road, Harden Street, Mount Close, Paradise Passage, Yes… Yes…. Yester Road.”

I sat bolt upright in bed. I needed to pull myself together. I needed to trust her. I’d no real reason to suspect she would leave me for anyone else. My friend Toni came over to offer moral support. She assured me that Sam would turn up. From all the years I’ve known Toni I could see she was holding something back however.

“You saw Sam on Monday, at that drinks thing, didn’t you? Did anything strike you as odd about her there?” Toni sipped her tea, pensive.

   

“Not then. No.”

   

“Not then? But you’re saying that there’s been another time when you’ve seen my Sammy behaving strangely?”

    

“Maybe.” Toni looked away. “…Look, it’s not what I’ve seen, Dani… it’s what I’ve heard…”

    

“You’ve heard something about Sam? A rumour? Some gossip?” Toni shook her head emphatically.

“No.  It’s just something I’ve heard Sam saying. Or rather how it was said.” She paused and took a deep breath. “Remember when I did that lighting gig at the Hampstead Theatre last month, I got the bus up there? The 82 to North Finchley. Have you ever caught that bus, Dani?” I hadn’t as I recalled. Toni refused to elaborate further, saying that the best way to understand what she meant was to catch that bus, and then to listen hard.

Sam and I live in Pimlico and according to Toni the first stop on the “82 To North Finchley” was “Victoria Station”. In my head I tried to recall Sam announcing the bus that we needed to get there. “24 To Hampstead Heath”. It would take us to Victoria Station where we could board the “82 To North Finchley”.

After a seven-minute wait at the stop near the entrance to the Victoria Line, a number 82 swished in. Toni and I boarded, swiping our oyster cards and sat down. That’s when I heard it. “82 To North Finchley”. I went cold. I looked at Toni and Toni looked at me.

“Oh my God! It’s the way she says it!” Toni grimaced. My love had just announced North Finchley as if the place itself held an exciting, intoxicating promise. She had purred that number and those words as if describing a luxury hotel in a desert oasis or an exclusive beach resort for lovers. Sam had nuanced ‘North Finchley’ as if it was a secret destination that would somehow fulfil your every delight and desire.

“Have you ever been to North Finchley?” I asked Toni anxiously. “Is it a world of exotic, intoxicating delights? Does it make you feel renewed, enriched, invigorated? Is North Finchley paradise? Because if my Sam isn’t in love with the place itself then it must be with someone who lives there.” I was in no doubt about that from what I’d just heard. It was the voice of a woman in the full throes of passion, a woman burning with a deliciously strong but illicit desire.

The rest of the bus journey was agony. The nearer we got to our final destination the happier Sam’s voice announcing the stops sounded. Toni had by now put on her headphones and was listening to Kiss FM as was her habit.  “St. Johns Wood Station.” Sam annunciated each syllable with a crisp, smug satisfaction. “Swiss Cottage” she practically gloated. At “Finchley Road Station” her supple vocal chords lingered suggestively long over the ‘f’. Sam was exultant, ecstatic almost. It was unbearable. I needed to escape.

I got off the bus at the shopping centre near the tube and went into the bookshop to calm my nerves. For a moment I lingered near the transport section, as if I might find my answer there, in a bus spotter’s guide, but I knew in my heart that I was just putting off the inevitable.

Ten minutes later there I was standing at the northbound bus stop again, waiting for the next “82 To North Finchley” to arrive. I waited there for at least ten minutes, before I even remembered Toni. I must have left our original bus without her even noticing I’d left her behind. I got as far as taking out my phone to call her, but then I saw the bus approaching. With a deep breath I prepared myself mentally to travel on to my destiny.

“North Finchley”. Sam announced that the bus terminated here. I stepped into the street, hearing the doors hiss shut behind me. I didn’t turn to watch it depart. I just stood there motionless, not even daring to look around me. When I finally made myself view my surroundings, a knot of dread formed in my stomach. For North Finchley was indeed not paradise. It was completely unremarkable. If it wasn’t the place itself that had infused Sam with an aura of loved-up bliss, then clearly it must be someone who lived here.

I walked the streets for a bit, but it was pointless. I had no clue to the identity of my love rival. She or he could live in any of those houses and shops, own one of those cars, and buy lunch or coffee in one of those shops. It was starting to rain. There was nothing more I could do. I crossed the road to the opposite stop to catch the “82 To Victoria Station”. As I boarded the bus I immediately heard the difference. Sam did not sound excited about the return journey. The tone in which she made the announcement was flat. She did not feel as warm and tender about a bus that could return her to me.

It was eerily quiet. When we reached the next stop there was no announcement from Sam telling us the name of its landmark or adjoining street. I approached the driver’s cab. With a quick irritated glance, he snapped that the automatic bus tracker wasn’t working. I sat back down dejectedly. Now not only had Sam left me in person, even my her voice was gone. I was alone, completely forsaken, as the bus headed down the Finchley Road.

My phone shrilled in my pocket. I took it out, expecting it to be Toni, demanding an explanation over being deserted on a bus. Instead I saw Sam’s name on the screen. “Sam! Hello? Sam? Where are you?”

“Royal Free Hospital.” The signal cut out, living the sentence in isolation, like a stop announcement. The bus I was on didn’t pass the Royal Free. I left it at the next stop, which was Swiss Cottage, and after checking the timetables displayed there flagged down a C11. Sam’s voice welcomed me aboard.

“Royal Free Hospital”. At reception they gave me directions to Sam’s ward. There she was, in hospital issue pyjamas, sitting by a bed, with bruises on her face and a piece of plaster forming a diagonal across her forehead. Gradually I pieced together what happened, both from Sam, and from the nurse who arrived to check her blood pressure.

Sam had been admitted to the ward after being brought in by a concerned passer-by. She had been discovered wandering in the street, looking dazed. “Where were you found?” Sam looked at me, her plastered brow knotting in the effort to remember.

  

“Finchley, I think it was” the nurse butted in. From what I could gather, Sam been standing up on a bus, when it had braked sharply and she had toppled forwards, head hitting one of those metal poles near the door. The concussion had caused temporary memory loss.

That was a fortnight ago. Now Sam is completely recovered and if anything, we’re even closer than we were before. One thing still bothers me though. “Sam? Where were you heading when you boarded that bus? You know, the 82 To North Finchley?” She swears she can’t remember.

To me though there’s still that nagging sense of unease. It centres on that bus announcement. You’ll probably think I’m obsessed, but every day since Sam has returned, I’ve made that journey alone. I catch that bus and travel the whole route on the ’82 To North Finchley’. I close my eyes and concentrate on the tone of delivery of every syllable. Still I hear it. The anticipation, the arousal, the lust, and the delight as she luxuriates in the knowledge that she knows something that the rest of us do not. ’82 To North Finchley’.

True Grit

by Judy Upton

chocolate milkshake 

“Good afternoon Mr Lowe. I’m the duty solicitor today. I should advise you that the charges against you are very serious and if you do have a personal legal representative, you should probably inform them.” The young woman in the sharp suit spoke in a brusque, impersonal manner, but after spending the night in a police cell, I was happy to see even a none-to-friendly face. I told her I didn’t have a lawyer I could call, as I’d never been in trouble with the police. “Well you certainly appear to be in trouble now, Mr Lowe” she scowled. Clearly trying to put her client at his ease wasn’t on her agenda. “Have you watched the news at all in last few hours?” she added. I looked at her in disbelief.

“Watched the news? Err hello - I’ve been in a police cell for the last nine hours.” 

“And they’ve not updated you on the latest developments?” she continued, ignoring the sarcasm in my tone. ‘Developments’ sounded ominous. I decided not to ask. “You do know it’s still snowing, Mr Lowe? Snowing heavily. It’s chaos all over the borough, complete chaos.” The knot in my stomach tightened. More snow. This was the worst news possible, if worse news was actually possible. Things had been looking pretty bleak at the point I was arrested, though as I should point out, none of it was my fault. Well not really. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

It all began yesterday. It was my first day in a new job. I’d been promoted to head of the Highways Department at the council. Finally, I had my well-deserved leadership position, with a whole department to run, my own office and best of all a salary of seventy five thousand pounds per anum. I’d worked incredibly hard for this promotion, really putting in the overtime. They’d interviewed loads of people for the role, but the thing that swung it for me, is that I’m really good at stretching budgets and cutting costs. That’s the most important thing these days isn’t it? 

So it was my first morning in the job and about an hour in, I received a call from a council in the north of Scotland. They’ve still got really icy weather up there this spring. Their problem was they were running short of grit for their roads. So in desperation they were ringing around councils in the south of England where the weather’s far milder, to see if anyone had got any left. Up to that point they’d had no luck, but I did a quick check on my screen and discovered we still had thirty-two tonnes of grit left. As it’s May now, we weren’t going to see any more ice and snow here until next winter, were we? 

The Scottish council said they were willing to pay twenty thousand for all our remaining grit. I told them I was sorry but I couldn’t let it go for less than thirty. What could they do? They’d already told me they’d tried everywhere else. We were their last resort. They agreed to cough up. So on my first day in the job, I’d already made the council thirty grand! 

I rang the wife to tell her the good news. We were on the verge of getting divorced before I got this promotion. We’d drifted apart, during the long hours I’d been putting in. Well, it was that, and her discovering a number of non work-related texts from Gemma in Environmental Health on my phone. Anyway I still imagined Anna would be pleased I was making such a success of my new role, but in truth she sounded a little worried.

“Have you seen the weather forecast, Jonas? A gale from the Atlantic is bringing severe icy conditions to the South East this evening.” This was not something I wanted to hear. My heart began to pound. Perhaps it hadn’t been such a good idea to sell our entire grit supply this morning. Anna’s gasp of horror at this news was all I needed to hear, to realise the scale of my error. Promising to call her back later, I ran downstairs to our depot to cancel the order. It was unfortunately too late. All the lorries had already left for Scotland. All our grit was gone, and the payment for it had gone through. I couldn’t call the lorries back. The goods were legally sold. That’s when I really started to panic.

I rang every council in the country, but wherever I tried, I received the same answer as Scottish council had, before I’d rashly sold them all our grit. Nobody had any grit to spare. It was an emergency, and there was only thing I do in emergencies. I rang my wife. For some reason though, she did not sound happy to hear from me. “You again. What now?” she snapped.

   “Darling… where can I get hold of a large amount of grit, privately?” I asked. Anna thought for a moment and then suggested I try all the local garden centres. If they were running short then pet shops might be able to put me in touch with their suppliers of budgie or chicken grit. Failing that, a council in an area with a beach might have some tiny shingle that could be shovelled from the seashore and sent my way. I told Anna that she was amazing and that I love her. I don’t know what I’d do without that woman sometimes.

Unfortunately it turned out that the garden centres had all sold out to private customers that morning, budgie grit comes in tiny packets, and there are bylaws preventing the removal of sand and shingle from beaches. I rang Anna back. When she answered she sounded rather annoyed, saying she was just going shopping. “Yes, but I’ve still got a bit of a problem, love. No joy getting any grit, and they’re saying a hard frost is expected by tonight’s rush hour and that means black ice.” I heard her sigh deeply. She suggested we meet in the supermarket in half an hour. She’d try to think of something. 

I met Anna in the first of the grocery aisles. She was looking about her and shushed me when I went to speak. She told me she was searching for products that were brown in colour and gritty in texture. I pointed out that just because a product resembled grit, it might not work like grit when applied to a road surface. Anna rolled her eyes in exasperation. 

“At this point, if it even looks like grit, it’s a start. Do you want to lose your job, Jonas? If not, you’re going have put something down on the roads. Something that looks like grit, even if it isn’t.” I was horrified. What was she thinking? I insisted that there was no way I was going to put anything that wasn’t actually grit down on our borough’s roads. “So what are you going to do, Jonas?” Anna sneered. “Re-invent the wheel so it doesn’t slip? That’s not possible, so the next best thing is this. Re-invent road grit. Use another product.” 

I had to admit she had a point. I looked at the row of jars on the shelf in front of me. Peanut butter! That was brown and lumpy. Anna groaned. “It’ll stick to the tyres, you idiot.” We walked on around the shop.

    “Rocky Road ice cream.” I suggested in the freezer aisle.

“Ice cream is the same as ice. You’d put ice on ice? Do try to focus, Jonas” my wife scolded. 

By now we had reached the section containing breakfast cereals, and that’s where Anna found the answer to my prayers. Chocolate cornflakes! It was so perfect I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it. Crushed under the wheels of vehicles they’d be gritty and stop them from skidding. The only problem was that we couldn’t just waltz up to the checkout with the entire stock. It would arouse suspicion. Anna however had the solution. I should return to my office and order the chocolate cornflakes direct from the factory, by the lorry-load, loose. This would ensure that onlookers seeing the trucks approaching the council depot would assume that they contained legitimate grit, and also, it should mean I could purchase the cornflakes at a wholesale rather than retail price.

“You’re a genius, Anna. What would I do without you?” My wife still looked less than charmed however, dismissing me curtly, saying she had other things to be getting on with.

Back in the office I got straight on to a breakfast cereal manufacturer. They turned out to be based less than fifty miles away and assured me that they could get the stuff into their lorries and straight out to us immediately for thirty grand. Bang went all the money I’d made a few hours previously from selling our grit. Easy come easy go, I suppose. As soon as the trucks containing the chocolate cornflakes arrived, I put on my hard hat and went down to the depot to supervise the filling of the gritters. It was freezing cold out there already. I told our gritting lorry drivers that this was a new, improved grit formula so it looked slightly different from the old stuff. They seemed content with this explanation. 

I stayed at the depot supervising the transfer of the cornflakes from supply trucks to gritting lorries all afternoon. It was starting to get icy as I drove home. The roads had fortunately been gritted, well ‘cornflaked’ by then however. The surface of the tarmac was crunchy, but not slippery. I detected a certain aura of smugness about Anna over dinner. Anna always saves the day and Anna is always right, but that is in part why I married her. As we cleared the plates away, my phone rang. It was Gemma from Environmental Health. Apparently they had a bit of a pigeon problem. Birds were flocking down onto roads and streets all over the borough. People were having to drive around them. I told her that the pigeons were just huddling together for warmth like penguins do because it was so cold. She seemed to buy it.

Anna frowned when she realised who it was on the phone. She gets very jealous, does Anna, well where Gemma is concerned anyway. At least it would be dark soon. The birds would go to roost and stop eating the chocolate cornflakes that were gritting the roads. Then I had a slightly worrying thought “Hey love, foxes don’t eat breakfast cereal do they?” Anna though was staring out of the window. 

    “Oh look it’s snowing now” she said, a strange, tight little smile on her face. 

It continued to snow heavily all evening. Soon it was ten centimetres deep. My phone rang again. It was the driver of one of the gritting lorries, reporting that cars were skidding off the road and into each other all over the borough. The grit seemed to somehow have gone soggy in the snow, he said, adding that in his opinion something was very wrong with it. Apparently the AA was now analysing samples of it. My mouth went dry. I looked at Anna. 

“Don’t look at me,” she said.

 “But what do I do?” 

“I don’t know. You can’t expect me to have all the answers. This is your mess, Jonas.”

It certainly was. A huge, great sticky, chocolately mess to be precise. What should I do? Should I confess? If I did, I’d be charged with fraud or criminal negligence. It could be even more serious if anyone was actually hurt, or killed. If I confess, I reasoned, I’ll probably go to prison. Perhaps instead I could pretend it was some kind of ordering error. I could say I ticked the wrong box and received cereal, not grit. As an excuse it was not the best, but it was better than nothing.        

                      

I went back to the office, trudging through the snow rather than risking driving. On the way I saw cars stuck in hedges or just left abandoned in the snow. From the office I called the local radio and TV stations. I told them that because of extremely adverse weather conditions, the council was strongly advising everyone to leave their vehicles wherever they were and to seek shelter. “Do not drive under any circumstances.” That should do it, I hoped, firmly crossing my fingers. At least no calls had come in yet where someone mentioned that the road grit that had failed to stop their swerving car had smelt of chocolate. 

An hour later, still at the office, I switched on the TV to check they were broadcasting my warning. There on the local news, standing outside our house and talking to a reporter was my wife. She was standing with her hair freshly combed, wearing a smart skirt and sweater and her favourite red lipstick, as if she had been somehow expecting the TV crew’s arrival. “As a public-spirited individual I felt I simply must come forward to let the country know the terrible thing my soon-to-be-ex husband has done.” I dropped the remote and just gawped at the screen. “No more questions for now I’m afraid” Anna then purred, that smug look again on her face “as I’ve already sold the exclusive story to a national newspaper, of my life with the cereal fraudster.” 

I paused in my story to check that the solicitor was still listening to what I was telling her. She certainly appeared to be, and had even made a few scrawled notes, but there was still nothing remotely resembling understanding on her face. In fact her eyes appeared harder and angrier than when she had walked in. I took a deep breath.

“So you see the whole thing is actually my wife’s idea. She’s set me up by suggesting I have the roads of the borough gritted with chocolate cornflakes. Now she’ll get a divorce settlement and a big fat cheque from the newspaper. While me, Iend up in jail and sued by just about everyone.” 

The solicitor nodded curtly.

 “It certainly looks like that way, doesn’t it?” she agreed.

“As a solicitor shouldn’t you be just a little bit more sympathetic?” 

The solicitor glared at me. “My car’s a write off from skidding on ice on my way here, Mr Lowe.” Her voice was now icier than the weather. 

“But isn’t there something you can do?” I pleaded. 

“Well let me see,” she smiled, with malice rather than pity in her eyes “I could see if the custody sergeant will bring you a nice cup of tea. And how about some breakfast eh? A nice bowl of chocolate cornflakes perhaps?”

About the author

 Judy has won The George Devine Award for her stage play ASHES AND SAND and Verity Bargate Award for BRUISES. Plays include: ASHES AND SAND, Royal Court; BRUISES, Royal Court; SLIDING WITH SUZANNE, Royal Court; TEAM SPIRIT, National Theatre; THE GIRLZ, Orange Tree; NOCTROPIA, Hampstead Theatre. Her feature films are ASHES AND SAND and MY IMPRISONED HEART.

She has had 6 original dramas broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and one on BBC TV. She has had a number of short stories published and her first novel MAISIE AND MRS WEBSTER has just been published by Orion Books as part of Hometown Tales, South Coast. Her website is at www.judyupton.co.uk