At the Wheel
He was sitting in the acrid unpleasantness of a London fog holding a steering-wheel and—the lives of men and women. It was Sunday.
Inside the well-lit and almost pleasant omnibus a young man, wearing his Sunday hat, and a young girl, completely Sundayfied, sat holding hands as they pretended to read a newspaper. They saw no more than each other's eyes, and what more could they possibly have seen? Portentous women with unnaturally clean children entered or made a fussy exit from time to time, bent, no doubt, on that awfulness of a London Sunday—a visit to relatives. On some faces you could read a kind of comfortable condescension that somehow suggested a glittering descent on poor relations; on others a dutiful resignation—the composure of an ordained martyr preparing to meet the lions—and you pictured a stiff and patronizing tea in a distant but exalted suburb, with criticism underlying an afternoon of smooth insincerity!
All the time the Man at the Wheel exhibited a broad and stocky back to the human comedy he was carrying; sometimes his face, tense and questioning, was turned towards the lit interior as he tried to gauge the right moment to accelerate after the descent of an agile passenger. Mostly, however, he just sat there peering into the white cotton-wool world of fog that was hung with saffron lights, his big hands in gloves, expertly and suddenly taking his vehicle from an unexpected near rush of light as a tramcar clanged past. And the passengers did not notice him. They had paid twopence to be taken in safety through the fog!
* * *
I sat there frankly admiring him.
I have never heard of any poet writing an ode to a London omnibus driver, but he always strikes me as worthy subject of praise. He may not possess the social charm of the old horse-omnibus driver, who, according to legend, wore a top hat and used his whip butt on London as a lecturer uses a wand. He is a more solemn character. Machines always leave their mark on men. The big petrol engine has created a grim, silent, crouching character who, fortunately for London and Londoner's wives and families, has no time for social pleasantries as he urges his great, red, double-decked steed through the thousand perils of a crowded street.
He has, I think, developed a sixth sense. His whole being seems acutely conscious of inches. Watch the way a press of omnibuses in High Holborn or Tottenham Court Road, or any other famous hold-up, will edge and nudge a way with a mere inch between their mudguards, all so skilfully and calmly done as though the scarlet sides of the vehicles had nerves—invisible feelers—that carried warning of danger to the rough, deft hands at the wheel.
As we crawled through the fog I watched his taut concentration, admired his judgment as he executed a circling movement round a candidate for suicide, as he jammed on the brakes within a yard of a halted motor-car, as he put on speed over a thin patch of fog, and as he shot ahead past a less speedy driver.
Now and then he had to crawl through a whiteness as dense as that terrible billowing mist that rolls down a Scottish mountain. Here and there pin-points of fire shone out, changed swiftly on approach into objects like long hair aflame in the wind, and, nearer still, stood revealed as tall fog flares shooting up in fire from metal standards.
At the terminus I watched the drivers dismount, stiff and cold, pull off their big gloves, and hit their cold hands across their chests. Wet particles of fog shone on their moustaches.
Pretty bad at Camden Town, and Baker Street was like a tunnel! Couldn't see a yard at Brixton. Fine and clear at the Crystal Palace.... So these adventurers of the London fog compared notes before, groping in remote recesses, they found money to buy coffee from a stall. Then a whistle, the roar of a chilled engine, and off again on their perilous pilgrimages across London.
Surely every man who has driven through fog with eyes that ache and imagine phantoms at each cross-road will be glad to raise his hat to the bulky figure behind the wheel of a London omnibus as he steers his living cargo to safety with no thought of praise because—it's all in the day's work?