The Baroness Bought a Bus

How it begins

The baroness bought the bus without asking whether it stopped.

Daniel Pike considered this an unfortunate beginning for a public transport enterprise.

"It was an excellent price," Beatrice Hale said.

"So is a wardrobe. I wouldn't drive one down the hill."

The bus stood in the yard behind his workshop, cream paint peeling from its roof and a red destination board promising a place the railway had bypassed ten years earlier.

Beatrice looked at it with an affection usually reserved for animals people had been warned not to adopt.

"Can you repair it?"

"Probably."

"And drive it?"

"Certainly."

"Then we have an agreement."

Daniel wiped his hands on a cloth.

"No. We have two answers. An agreement would involve asking what I want."

She looked at him properly.

Beyond the yard, the market district was waking into a morning organized around other people's timetables. Women waited for lifts into town. A man wheeled a bicycle with a broken chain. Beatrice had spent the past winter discovering that independence meant very little if the nearest station required permission to borrow a car.

"What do you want?" she asked.

"To repair engines. And to teach you to drive this one if you're serious."

"I am serious."

"Good. Then you'll need shoes that permit you to feel your feet."

She looked down at her polished heels.

It had been some time since anyone had criticized her footwear for practical reasons. Usually the objection concerned dignity.

From the bus came a small metallic sound. Something dropped beneath it and rolled across the yard.

Daniel watched the piece settle by his boot.

Beatrice waited.

"Is that important?"

"Everything's important eventually. Some things are simply more urgent before departure."

She removed her gloves and set them on the bonnet.

"Then perhaps," she said, "we should begin with those."

For the first time since the bus arrived, Daniel smiled.