Walter patted his top pocket, his flat fingers finding the cylinders of the pens that poked out above. He patted his two jacket pockets – pat (left) handkerchief, pat (right) wallet folded flat with one five pound note in it, no more no less. Next the left upper quadrant of his jacket where his inside pocket would bear the square ridged outline of his bus pass. But there was nothing. He stopped, hand in mid-air while the anomaly sank in.
He began again. Top pocket. Jacket pockets. Inside pocket. Still no bus pass. He started on his trouser pockets even though he never put the bus pass there and he was conflicted as to which scenario would be most unsettling – not finding the bus pass where it should be, or finding it where it had no business being. Pat pat. There on the left was the other handkerchief; bulky, crumpled and with brown tea stains on it; on the right, small change jangled next to his door key. The bus pass, which shouldn’t be there anyway, was not in evidence, giving rise in Walter to a brief spasm of relief that was rapidly overtaken by the reality of the bus pass’s continued absence.
He started again: top pocket – pens; side pockets – handkerchief and wallet; top inside pocket – nothing. Hot stickiness began to glove his hands and his face reddened, damp furrows chasing across his forehead. He thrust his hands into his pockets one at a time to probe the contents and they were all as expected, except the one on the inside top left. This one was wrong now in two ways: the bus pass that should be there wasn’t, and a frayed hole that shouldn’t be there was. The bus pass was gone, evidently out through the hole and away to god-knows-where.
Walter withdrew his hand and began patting again: it would change nothing but it was soothing and it kept his mind from bursting out of his head with its thoughts about the consequences. No bus pass meant no museum; no museum meant no cup of tea, and no cup of tea meant no teabag to bring home and put with the others in his chest of drawers.
He checked his watch: it was almost one o clock, he had just three minutes thirty five seconds to get to the bus stop.
But he couldn’t take the bus without the pass.
He couldn’t use the small change because that was for the tea.
He couldn’t use the five pound note either because that was for emergencies.
He couldn’t walk there because walking was for coming home via the newsagents next to the dry cleaners that used to be the shoe shop where he had wrapped the shoes in their boxes with precise corners and symmetrical folds. Walter shuffled his feet, danced on the spot and patted at his pockets in mounting frustration.
The doorbell rang; a penetrating ding dong of an intrusion with a frosted shape at the window in the top half of the door. The shape bobbed up and pressed against the glass, then it bobbed sideways and the bell rang again. Walter stared down the hallway at the commotion; put his knuckles to his mouth and bit them.
Suddenly, the letterbox clacked open, ‘Mr Williams? Are you there?’ A pair of eyes appeared in the gap and pinned Walter to the statue of himself, one foot raised, his hand in his mouth.
‘Mr Williams – Walter – it’s Maisy from the museum.’
This was wrong. Maisy from the museum should be at the museum and not at his door. Museum Maisy could not be Doorstep Maisy. Walter shook his head at how wrong it was.
‘Walter, I’ve got your bus pass.’
That was even more wrong. Museum Maisy could not have his bus pass because the bus pass was lost through the hole in his pocket.
‘You must have dropped it yesterday, somebody put it on my desk, thought I’d pop it in on my way home.’ The eyebrows lifted a little and the whole eyebrows/eyes/forehead arrangement tilted sideways, obscuring one eye and revealing a bit of nose. ‘Probably missed the bus now though, sorry.’
The letter box closed with a clunk then opened again and something square and shiny sailed through. Walter scuttled up the hall to pick it up; it was indeed his bus pass, there was his photograph and his signature. He was about to put it in his pocket – the one inside top left of his jacket – but then remembered the hole. It could not go in the pocket with the hole. He danced on the spot while he thought about it, gripping the card so tightly it almost cut into his hand. He looked at it, noticed his watch strap and remembered about the time; he had only fifteen seconds now to get to the bus stop and it took one minute twenty-two seconds even if the pedestrian crossing lights were in his favour. Museum/Doorstep Maisy was too late even though she obviously knew about the bus. He thrust his hand into his mouth again and bit down, he wouldn’t have today’s teabag now because of her, or a TV schedule to check as the evening’s viewing progressed.
Walter retreated to his front room and stared at the television, the programming accuracy of which he could not now monitor. He tipped it over onto the floor and drove his heel through the screen. Then he went upstairs and tipped over the chest of drawers containing the used teabags, cascading them onto the carpet like so many lumpen leaves.
From the bedside table that used to be his dad’s, he took the match box that had also been his dad’s and counted the matches; thirty four. He removed two, struck them, and fluttered the yellow flames onto the sepia drift at his feet, watching the fire begin to flick and lick until he was sure he wouldn’t need to strike more matches.

Back downstairs in his kitchen, Walter sat looking out of the window onto the overgrown vegetable patch. Maisy would be very sorry when she heard about the trouble she’d caused.

Suzanne Conboy-Hill 2017

Image by DALL-E.