Sinister: how i fell in love with belle and sebastian

[Kieran Devaney]

I only ever saw a double decker bus fall over once. It was the number 
eleven, over in Bourneville, not five minutes from the chocolate factory. 
You might remember the story, it was all over the newspapers at the time, 
with accusations of blame falling on all and sundry – was it the drivers 
negligence that caused his death, and the death of his passengers? Was it an 
unclearly marked road? Poor visibility? No firm conclusion was reached, but 
I mention it so that if you have some recollection of the news items of the 
time, you may be able to piece together a visual more vivid and accurate 
than the one my words could ever conjure. I had just gotten off at the 
previous stop. It was still morning. There was drizzle in the air, a 
hangover from the previous night’s rain, the sky was a great grey duvet and 
the road gleamed wet. The bus pulled away from my stop, turned a little too 
sharply into a corner, causing the wheels to mount the pavement, which in 
turn caused a nearby man out walking his dog to jump back in alarm. The bus 
then clipped an unfortunately positioned lamppost, teetered uncomfortably, 
and for one silent second lay in that awful no man’s land of precariousness, 
between balance and imbalance, between life and death in fact. It could have 
been any number of factors which caused it to fall rather than simply and 
happily righting itself – if the road hadn’t been so wet, if there hadn’t 
been so many passengers sitting on the wrong side of the bus, if the wind 
even had been slightly less strong that morning. All of us there, and no 
doubt those unfortunates still on the bus willed it back onto four wheels, 
held our breath, perhaps even swayed slightly to the left, but the bus, with 
a mind of its own and those tricky laws of physics to obey described a slow, 
painful arabesque, and fell flat into a puddle in the road. The contents of 
the puddle flew back upwards, as though mocking the bus with negative 
motion, and landed, soaking the man and his dog.

One day in very fortnight I would skip school. You might not think if you 
spoke to me that I’d be the sort to do that, or that I’d be very good at it 
if I was. But I did, and I was. Usually, I would pick the day to skip a long 
while in advance, so I could plan exactly what to do and then ensure I’d be 
ok to do it. Most truants know to stay away from town centres, but most 
truants overestimate the vigilance of our police force. If you’re not 
wearing a school uniform then they’ll leave you alone – much easier to dream 
up a training day or a particularly youthful looking college student than to 
have to fill in all the relevant paperwork and make all the phone calls and 
ask all the questions. Anything for a quiet life. My plan for the day in 
question had been to go into town. I would get changed in the McDonald’s 
toilets during the morning rush, and then sit on a bench somewhere, eat my 
sandwiches and watch the people until it was time to go home. I still love 
to do that.

Or at least that had been the plan, a long tried and tested one with a 
history of success at that, until a couple of days beforehand a boy at 
school called Simon told me all about the number eleven bus. He said that 
the number eleven has the longest route of any bus service in the entire 
country. I’m not sure if this is really true, and Simon was often engaging 
in tedious practical jokes, but this seemed such a ridiculous thing to 
bother lying about that I believed him then, and I suppose I still believe 
him now. As soon as he told me, I knew I had to ride the number eleven all 
the way round, the whole circle, and that the next opportunity to do this 
would be Thursday, the day I planned to skip. Normally I wasn’t nearly so 
impetuous – I would make a schedule and stick to it, indeed, the careful 
planning and execution became almost ceremonial to me, and the longer I kept 
playing truant the more detailed and elaborate those schedules became. Not 
that I ever did anything particularly daring or likely to get me in trouble 
– so much did I fear getting caught, but even this meagre risk was more than 
enough for me. The thought of it fills me with a tangible sense of dread 
even now. The night before a truant day I would often lie awake torturing 
myself with the potential questions that a tawdry parade of police, teachers 
and parents would rain down upon me – “Where did you go?” “Why there?” 
“What’s wrong with school?” I could answer none of them satisfactorily, not 
even to myself. I guess that illicit thrill, however much of a cliché, 
played a big part in why I did it, why I kept doing it, for the continuing 
forgery of sick notes, odd excuses meant that getting found out became 
increasingly likely over the months and years, and the later I actually was 
discovered, the harsher the consequences. But, like those who leap off 
mountains, or travel to the poles, or even just watch horror films, it was 
the proximity to danger, to fear, that made me appreciate both danger and 
fear, and the lack of it in my everyday existence, all the more.

And how wonderful those stolen days were, spent in odd places, places I 
wouldn’t ever dream of going at the weekend or during the holidays – any 
bleak concrete shopping centre, or ugly cul-de-sac became an adventure, 
fraught with perils, but containing infinite hidden riches and excitement. I 
even began to think that places withheld their charm to me during my real 
free time, and that only in those few midday, midweek hours would they show 
themselves in full bloom. And the looks people would give me, the ‘shouldn’t 
you be in school?’ scorn, the envious glance, the knowing wink, I loved them 
all. It all filled me with a kind of succulent ambivalence which squirmed 
and undulated all through me on those days, and made me savour them in a way 
I couldn’t savour any other day, everything seemed clearer, as though only 
once a fortnight I put glasses on and saw the world properly after thirteen 
days of murky half-blindness.

For this particular Thursday, however, I didn’t make much of a plan, 
reasoning in part that simply sitting on a bus and riding round didn’t 
warrant it, but also I had an odd nervous feeling about prospect, a niggling 
sense of premonition. Forgive me, please, if you feel I’m foreshadowing 
events, or that I, with hindsight, am endowing myself with the power of 
premonition, but I distinctly felt a slight discomfort at my hastily decided 
preparations. At the time I dismissed it as mere nerves at having changed my 
mind so soon before the allotted day, and perhaps that’s all it was, but to 
calm myself on Wednesday night I sketched a rough map of the route, and 
listed all the places I could think of that it passed through – from Yardley 
on to Stetchford, past the swimming baths, past where my best friend from 
primary school who I don’t see anymore still, to my knowledge, lives, 
through the awkward junction where it crosses the fourteen route, up the 
hill to the Fox and Goose and on to Erdington’s rows of charity shops and 
the grimness of a local shopping centre dying out to supermarkets and Merry 
Hill, and yet further, to Aston, where I was supposed to be at school, Perry 
Bar, Handsworth and so on, all the way round and back to where I started. 
But even this list didn’t calm me.

Thursday morning arrived in unspectacular fashion, but I awoke feeling much 
more comfortable and excited about the forthcoming day. So elated was I, in 
fact, that I could barely conceal my glee from my mother, who looked 
questioningly at me. I don’t think she suspected a thing though, and happily 
I bounded out of the house and into the damp morning. I turned off my usual 
route as soon as I was out of sight of the house and walked the half-mile to 
the eleven stop. Unusually, I didn’t have too long to wait before a bus 
turned up, it was long enough ago for it to have been one of those grey and 
blue ones, the old design. I got on and showed my pass. My favourite seat 
was even free, which was fortunate for the time of day – I like to sit 
downstairs, on the back seat by the window, preferably on the same side as 
the doors, but that bit isn’t too important. Today I got the perfect seat – 
nothing, I thought could ruin today, and I settled back. The driver took 
things leisurely up Stoney Lane, that pleased me, nothing worse than bus 
drivers rushing, and I gazed happily at the familiar territory, the health 
centre, the swimming baths, my old friend’s house, all well known to me. On 
we carried, up past what would soon become the ghastly new Retail Park, but 
was then just derelict warehouses and yet further onto the Fox and Goose, 
with its giant bingo hall and pragmatic post-war architecture, not a dribble 
of concrete wasted, not on the covered walkways of the shopping complex, not 
on the car park, nowhere. Everywhere bustled with the new morning, people 
rushing now, a bit late to school or work perhaps, and nowhere yet filled 
with those gangs of youths who would ask all kinds of difficult questions 
about your haircut. It was nice to start like this, on well known territory, 
and I relished the thought of the less familiar places yet to come, perhaps 
a few eleven stops were still completely unknown to me, and then later on 
the places would grow more and familiar as I came gloriously full circle.

One stop after the Fox and Goose a boy and a girl got on and came and sat 
down at the back, by the other window, just a little down from me. I noticed 
them right away, so different were they from anyone else on the bus, or 
anyone else that you ever saw on the whole eleven route even. They looked a 
few years my senior, but probably still of school age, and, if you were in 
the right company, you might say they dressed twee. Of course that word, and 
indeed the whole notion was unfamiliar to me at the time. I saw a boy with 
longish straight dark hair, parted on one side, a sort of bowl cut, wearing 
glasses with thick black frames, a thick brown duffle coat and black flared 
cords. I couldn’t see what was under the coat. I saw a girl with two blonde 
pigtails, a flowery blouse underneath her coat, the collar of which I could 
just make out, and a dark skirt which looked like it was made of tweed or 
something like that, black tights and red mary-janes. They were both thin 
and small, but they held hands and sat and whispered and giggled to each 
other on the back seat as though oblivious to all else. I was fascinated. I 
don’t think I’d ever seen people dressed like that before, nor a couple so 
quietly content. It’s difficult to put into perspective now of course, but I 
was instantly attracted. To say I fancied either of them, or both of them 
would be a misinterpretation though, I was too young and naïve for such 
desires to be properly manifest then, rather their presence aroused in me a 
kind of new curiosity. Their look, their comportment, even from just the 
fleeting glimpse I got, suggested a kind of quiet defiance, an embrace, a 
clinging to even, of certain values, certain ideas of youth or of love or of 
the world, and an outright rejection of others – and perhaps they were wrong 
to reject the values they did, if they did (far be it for me to put words in 
the mouths of those I’ll never know), but on the number eleven, headed 
towards Erdington high street, they spoke another world to me.

We carried on riding like that for some time. I stole occasional glance over 
at them, or attempted to eavesdrop on their conversation, but to no avail. 
After a while, somewhere around Handsworth, the girl pulled a walkman out of 
her bag, and she and the boy took one earphone each, and from then on they 
sat silently listening to the girl’s tape and holding hands. Some three 
quarters of an hour later, they turned the tape over and resumed listening. 
By now we were a good way along the route, just getting into Bourneville – I 
had more or less left the couple to themselves, so caught up were they in 
the music and each other that I couldn’t get much else out of them than what 
I already had. But I was grateful for that at least. I gazed absent-mindedly 
out at the pretty houses and trees and factories, enjoying myself, thinking 
that this wasn’t taking quite as long as I’d anticipated, and that maybe I’d 
have time to go into town for a bit afterwards as well. Just then, as we 
approached another stop, I noticed, standing there in the small queue, and 
even doing that pointless shuffle forward that people about to get on buses 
so often do, Simon, a friend of my mothers. I cursed inwardly. I couldn’t 
let him spot me here, he certainly wasn’t the sort I could confide in, quite 
the opposite in fact, and even if he had been, this was my secret, and I 
wasn’t about to go confessing it, even to the most sympathetic ear. Cursing 
him again, I stood up, glancing back for the last time at the couple on the 
bus. Apart from me they had been on the bus the longest of anyone, and there 
were certainly quicker ways of getting to these parts than the eleven, I 
wondered if they had the same plan as me. This thought, though I would never 
find out an answer to its implied question, comforted me as I turned away 
and shielded my face, disembarking just as Simon climbed aboard. I’m pretty 
sure he didn’t see me – he’d be the sort to say something if he had, but 
I’ll never know that for sure either. I decided at the bus stop that all was 
not lost; I would simply get on the next bus that came along and finish the 
route. It would be almost as good.

And this is what happened. The bus took a corner too fast, it hit a 
lamppost, which caused it to overbalance, and it fell over. The noise made 
by the impact was horrendous, for weeks afterwards everything else seemed 
quiet in comparison. People stopped. Cars stopped. I, powered more by some 
neglected reflex than real intention, ran straight across the road to where 
the bus was lying. A bus on its side is still taller than most people. The 
whole of the driver’s side had been completely crushed. The metal twisted 
and distressed, the paint cracked, the windows broken, the tyres popped. 
Everyone on the bus had died instantly. I peered into the hole where the 
back window had been. Everything was slow and still and silent. Inside, 
bodies wee crushed and askew, stricken, some pierced by shards of glass or 
pieces of metal, others near invisible under piles of others, unrecognisable 
under seats and bars, limbs protruded at sickening angles, the whole frame 
had collapsed in on itself. It was hardly recognisable as the same bus I’d 
been riding not a minute beforehand. I looked over for the boy and girl. 
They lay against each other, a trickle of blood ran from the corner of the 
boy’s mouth onto the girl’s forehead and then down the side of her mangled 
face, mingling with her own blood, a whole pool of it now oozed out from 
under the bus. And the last newspaper article I remember about the incident 
was a complaint from some local resident about how some of the bloodstains 
on the road were yet to be removed. Their walkman lay between them, 
strangely unharmed by the wreckage. I reached inside and managed to pull it 
out, there was some blood on the casing. I removed the tape, and put the 
walkman back inside. By now more people were arriving, so I pocketed the 
tape and left quickly, still prominent in my mind was the idea that I could 
be caught playing truant. But I knew too that this would be the last time I 
ever could, and the last time I could ever take the number eleven too. I 
walked the whole way home, shaken.

That evening I pulled the tape from my pocket. On one side it said 
‘Tigermilk’ and on the other, ‘Sinister’, which rather dates the piece. 
Without bothering to rewind it I put the ‘Tigermilk’ side on. All at once 
the words filled my room – “Why don’t you lead me to a living end…” And 
that’s how I fell in love with Belle and Sebastian.

_________________________________________________________________
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