Boswell's Bus Pass (27 page)

As the return bus to Musselburgh negotiated the last roundabout we saw that a horse race was underway on the track which runs alongside the road into the town. In an instant the bus morphed into a betting shop, the man at the back who had been shouting the odds for much of the journey now did it for real, the ticket machine dispensed betting slips, the driver steered with his knees as he tic-tacked furiously into his mirror. The smaller passengers threw off their bobble hats and replaced them with jockey caps of many hues. Nostrils flared and throats whinnied. The whole bus roared and the grandstand stood as the last furlong came into sight.

It was Saturday 20
^th
November 1773. It was Friday 26
^th
November 2010. It was time, 100 days after he arrived in Scotland for Johnson to go back to London. Rather than just putting the old boy on the coach with a travelling rug and a few good books Boswell was determined to squeeze the last dregs of vicarious pleasure from his tour and arranged for them both to visit Roslin, Hawthornden, Cranston and
Borthwick
Castle on the road South before they parted.

The winter sun shone, my spirits soared. It was partly the prospect of travelling again, partly having Rory as my companion for the first time since the initial foray into Scotland from Berwick. Although limping badly and dependent on his newly-acquired collapsible walking stick he was up for it.

Edinburgh bus station was suffused with an incongruous serenity. Queues moved with a synchronised calm; a traveller nodded
courteously
as he was swatted sideways by a backpack containing at least a donkey, and possibly other farmyard beasts. Vegans smiled
indulgently
at the woman flaunting her Hollywood fur coat made from the sewn-together skins of numerous small and threatened species. As a single whistle blew the bus drivers emerged sheepishly from their trenches, shook the caked mud from their boots, wished each other a merry Christmas and started a game of football in the no man’s land between stands 7 and 8.

The resumption of hostilities was announced by a girl in her
mid-twenties
bellowing into her mobile, ‘Why didn’t I get paid? That’s a good question!’

Nanny had left her mark on the 51 to Dalkeith. HANDS UP IF YOU KNOW HOW TO CATCH A BUS – JUST HOLD OUT YOUR HAND TO LET THE DRIVER KNOW YOU WANT THE BUS TO STOP … DON’T GET LEFT BEHIND! At last, an explanation of why all those buses had, for decades, swept past lengthy queues and returned, ahead of schedule and completely empty to the depot. The Samaritans too had noticed a correlation between this new poster campaign and a marked fall in the number of bus drivers phoning in, just wanting someone to talk to someone, anyone, about their feelings of rejection and loneliness.

From the unaccustomed vantage point of the sideways disabled seats it was easier to observe the early fruits of genetic cloning in Midlothian. All of the passengers were identical, all were women, seventy plus, all with exactly the same rigid white permed hair. A frozen sea, all waves equidistant from each other, peaks and troughs aligned with the moon. Had any one of these women been strapped to a drilling appliance they would have cut curls off granite. Despite the pleasing symmetry of shape and colour there was a hint of menace about this formidable army of veterans equipped with standard issue beige handbags and bus passes that enabled them to travel the land by stealth and wreak a type of havoc only surpassed by the locust and the mercenary. Four years after his Highland jaunt Dr Johnson wrote, ‘If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life driving briskly in a
post-chaise
with a pretty woman.’ He never travelled on the Number 2.

We passed through Bonnyrigg and the Orchard Centre in Lothian Road. I was tempted to break the journey and visit the café staffed by members of the community many of whom were on the long journey back from mental illness. Johnson could have peeled off his stinking clothes and joined the aromatherapy class. Boswell could have exorcised some of his demons by making his own mosaic, each stone representing a betrayal. Both of them would have benefited from the laughter that flowed through the building. A therapy preferable to the self-flagellation that Johnson practised to preserve his sanity, or the head shaving rituals in which Boswell indulged.

The 141 to Roslin carried an open invitation to attend a FIRST BUS USER FORUM which, we were assured, would raise
awareness 
of all the things passengers could do ‘to ensure they stay safe when travelling on our buses and address any other queries.’ Rory who had never really understood bus safety, took note of the time and place. He was still perplexed by the pelvis injury sustained when
pole-dancing
in the bus doorway; likewise the fire-eating episode on the replacement single decker and the costs incurred, not to mention the man who died during the let’s see-who-can-hold-their-breath-
the-longest
competition on the night bus. He needed answers.

We both needed answers to explain why the doubtless good citizens of Loanhead had erected a statue to a dubious-looking character who was clearly trying to entice a small girl from her horse.

Until Rory lifted the shades from my eyes I had not known that Midlothian is no more than a patchwork of bowling clubs built on clannish adherence to now closed pits. In the same sentence Rory forged a link between the circumstances of Edward Heath’s
resignation
and an anonymous bowling club manager who was promised a new car in his garage if he patronised a different brewer.

It was Boswell, ever the overeager tour guide, who suggested that they visit Roslin on the journey South. ‘We surveyed Rosslyn Castle, the romantic scene around it, and the beautiful Gothic chapel, and dined and drank tea at the inn; after which we proceeded to Hawthornden and viewed the caves.’ Johnson makes no mention of the detour, nor does he engage with passing professors on the merits of the
Da Vinci Code
.

The overflow car park was full. The pilgrims clutched large blow ups of the last supper and cardboard cutouts of the chalice. They wore
Judas Escariot Sucks
and
Dan’s the Man
lapel badges. Film crews battered each other with clappers and empty reel cans. Lines of lawyers and litigants wielded quill pens and precedents by the score. We glanced at the cult followers of the Knights that go Neep, the stalls selling plaster casts of twisted pillars and the relatives of the murdered apprentice boy demanding justice.

Inside the tiny chapel the guide feigned enthusiasm as she repeated the same phrases and made the same jokes. She intoned the litany of religious artifacts rumoured to be hidden in the vaults; the mummified head of Jesus, the Holy Grail, random rivets rescued from the Ark of the Covenant, splinters from the Cross and at least four of the Dead Sea scrolls. It must be more of an underground car park than a vault with shelf upon shelf of neatly-labelled relics all catalogued in strict adherence of the principles of the Dewey system.

The ancient archivist in white gloves gently shook the vial containing the blood of St Vitus to ensure it had not vitrified. He seemed to have mislaid Lucifer’s tooth and the desiccated corsets of the Mother Superior from the Convent of Fetid Thoughts were not standing up to the passage of time. Ditto the over contemplated fluff from the navel of the Buddha. He didn’t have his troubles to seek. Word from head office had filtered down reminding him that the Jedi knights were now a religion recognized for the purposes of the national census. People just decide these things without thinking them through.

The chapel was pleasant enough.

Boswell had been eager to see Dr Johnson standing in the same house where his namesake Ben once held forth. They scurried from Roslin via the castle to Hawthornden, now a writer’s retreat. I had previously phoned the centre to see if they would let us visit. After dropping the phone three times the caretaker croaked out the information that new boilers were being fitted and the place was in chaos. I was keen to visit nonetheless and left Rory to rest in the freezing garden attached to the Rosslin Inn. His knees were hurting and he needed to sit.

In the predictable absence of a bus linking Roslin to Hawthornden I decided to walk the two miles or so along the river. This would let me see Wallace’s Cave that Boswell also mentions. This was a great mistake. As the riverside path was closed I started to fight my way through the wet undergrowth that clung to the steep sides of the glen. Within minutes I had slipped and was travelling at a fairly constant speed towards the drop into the water. Struck by the total absurdity of being the first person to be fatally injured when following in the footsteps I clutched at every passing straw and tendril until the momentum of my decline was halted. ‘Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon’ played in my head except there was no horizon. As a child I watched older boys dropping into the mud off Southsea pier for money.

‘The country ranger who found the man said he had been alerted by the sound of sobbing coming from the undergrowth. “I found the old boy curled up like a baby, sucking his thumb. He shouted something like, “Bozzy is to blame for this.’’ The man who cannot be named for legal reasons in currently undergoing psychiatric assessment at St John’s Hospital.’

I climbed back up to the road and startled a man who had been
staring up at the trees while juggling a calibrated wheel and a clipboard. He had no idea where the road led and proved to be worse than useless. It was strange to think that someone was paying him good money to count trees.

A man with a dog directed me to a distant bungalow which he thought was built above the cave. I succeeded in setting off various alarms sensitive to unauthorized footfalls before climbing the fence. The owners had thought of this too and had carefully disguised a mud-filled elephant trap with foliage.

Eventually I saw a gaggle of people with several prams in the distance. I caught up with them and asked for directions. One of the parents stepped away from the multi-layered pram and pointed towards the horizon. The moment he turned away the pram toppled over hurling a small infant onto the road in a mess of snot, tears and howling. Feeling a kinship with Herod I thanked him and tried for one last time. The woman on whose door I knocked reacted as if Beelzebub was trying to sell her clothes pegs before pointing me down her garden path towards the cave.

It was a nondescript hole in a rock, a manmade construct, utterly pointless.

Having suffered sufficient disappointments and aware of the
infrequency
of buses from Roslin I decided to forego the dubious pleasure of trespassing into the grounds of Hawthornden. At least I was sparing myself any unwanted encounter with Ian Rankin foraging for bodies and clichés. It would have been good, though, to meet Alasdair Gray wandering in his pyjamas squeaking in delight at a new thought.

As we waited at the stop for a bus back into Dalkeith a long convoy of double deckers swept past en route to IKEA. Dreams of Trondheim bedside tables, Figgjo mirrors, Kajsa Trad quilt covers and two pillowcases, not to mention the Malmo black and brown bed frame were about to be consummated, and all those lives would be made better and all those marriages saved.

Possibly because his brain had been addled by Roslyn Chapel nonsense Rory had an epiphany in the bus shelter. He fell to his knees,
or would have done had they not caused him such pain, and beyond speech pointed with a sense of wonder in his eyes at a pattern on the stone wall adjacent to the shelter. No wonder his gob was smacked. A face, eyes, nose and mouth with a hint of a sardonic smile were clearly visible. It was a message, a sign that we were the chosen ones.

Boswell and Johnson were due to stay that evening with Sir John Dalrymple at Cranston. They arrived late and their host was extremely grumpy especially as he had allegedly slaughtered a seven year old sheep for their evening meal, and now it was ruined. This sheep was the cause of much private mockery from the guests. Perhaps Johnson’s spirits were lifting now that the end of the journey was in sight. Boswell suggested that the sheep, irrespective of how many years it had lived, was a figment of Dalrymple’s imagination. An imaginary friend is one thing, an imaginary sheep something else altogether. The sheep fantasist wreaked his revenge on his smirking guests by ensuring that their bedrooms were utterly frozen. Boswell reflects on their less than pleasant evening, ‘Our conversation was not brilliant. We supped, and went to bed in ancient rooms which would have better suited the climate of Italy in summer than that of Scotland in the month of November.’

Things were little better in the morning as the sheep was again the main topic of discussion over the breakfast table. Presumably in an effort to stop Johnson from thumping Dalrymple Boswell suggested they visit Borthwick Castle.

This then was our next port of call. The posters on the 141 reminded us that ACCIDENTS HAPPEN WHEN GETTING ON AND OFF THE BUS. Locals of a nervous disposition no longer travel on First Buses, their resolve long since eroded by endless fear laden warnings. Each journey becomes a risk-taking gambit, a lottery ticket to disaster or at least minor injury. The bus company has established clinics for passengers traumatised by recurrent thoughts of what might happen to them if they ever again travel by bus.

A shy young girl tried to protect her space by placing her bag on the seat next to her. It didn’t work. An elderly man, his face pocked and picked by cigarettes and an unrelentingly hard life, coughed his way into the seat. She hastily retrieved her bag before it was crushed by a weight too horrible for her to contemplate, and stared out of the window.

In an unguarded moment a small woman positions herself between two poles without touching either and, balancing carefully, enjoys the sensation of rocking from one to the other.

As Borthwick Castle is a fair walk from Middleton Rory continued on the x95 into Stow where he was confident of finding a warm pub while I set off along the track. My breath hung in the air of the cold dusk. Black cattle looked up and then returned to the cud; the birds and bats darted while they could.