Being Light 2011 Read Free

few services that still uses the hop-on hop-off Routemaster buses with conductors. She has travelled from Brixton to Oxford Circus and is now on her way back home again.
    Looking through the windows of the top deck of the bus, she can see a silvery, shimmery bright sun. I must learn to see the world the way others see it, she thinks. There is something fanciful about the way I see things and I have to stop. Everyone knows the sun is gold or yellow. Even very young children know it, if you look at their drawings. I’ve always seen the sun as silver. If I can learn to see that colour as yellow, I’ll be like other people. I’ll be normal.
    Mrs Fitzgerald is thinking about madness. More than anything else, more than poverty or war or assaults from local teenagers, Mrs Fitzgerald fears going mad like her brother. What are the signs? She hopes to learn from her fellow passengers.
    When she looks outside again, as the bus pulls out of Lambeth Road and turns right towards Kennington, the world seems to have gone wrong. Her position at the front of the bus on the top deck gives her an excellent 270 ° vantage point. There to her left, as it should be, is the Imperial War Museum , formerly Bedlam. In front of the bus, behind the bus, all around the bus, there is a sea of people as far she can see. Most are walking but some are on bicycles. It’s impossible to tell whether the atmosphere is jolly or menacing. It has something of a carnival feel, which usually means a mixture of both. Mrs Fitzgerald can hear booming music and the shrill, discordant sound from whistles strung round people’s necks on coloured strings, jammed in their mouths, blowing at full volume.
    ‘Reclaim London ’ is written on home-made banners waving above the crowds. Mrs Fitzgerald has the sudden, icy fear that these are mad people, spilling out from Bedlam, reclaiming the capital city and taking her with them as one of them. Looking around the bus, she sees she’s quite alone on the top deck. There are enough people outside to pick up the bus and carry it along on their shoulders, Mrs Fitzgerald above them like some carnival queen of the mad people. Is it possible that they know ? Is she so like them that they can sense that she sees the sun as silver? ‘The sun is yellow, the sun is yellow, the sun is yellow,’ chants Mrs Fitzgerald, seizing on the thing that will make her normal and different from them. ‘The sun is yellow, the sunny’s yellow, the sunnys yellow, sunnys yellow, sunnys yellow, sunnysyellow.’
    The conductor lays a gentle hand on her shoulder. God, there are so many disturbed people on the bus these days, he should get a care worker’s allowance. The conductor’s fingers smell faintly of the grease from the roast chicken sandwiches he has been eating from their tinfoil wrapper a moment before. ‘It’s a demo, love. Anti-traffic, anti-vehicles. Bloody cyclists. They think they own London . You might be better slipping off the bus and taking the Tube. You can stay if you want, though.’ Sometimes they just like somewhere warm to sit.
    Mrs Fitzgerald, dry-mouthed, cannot bring herself to reply. Outside, head and shoulders above the other demonstrators, a beautiful blond young man balances on the pedals of a unicycle. He’s wearing a dress. He holds his hand up to the bus driver through the open sliding door that gives access to the driver’s seat. The driver keeps it open against regulations because he thinks it looks cool. The demonstrator’s hand, palm up, loose at the wrist, looks like a foppish invitation to the bus driver to dance. He wakes up all his muscles at once and lunges from the unicycle, pulling the driver from his seat and taking his place in front of the wheel, the bus engine still idling.
    Jeremy grips the wheel, his hands in position at ten to two, leaning forward slightly, mastering the great machine. He moves the gear stick on the shaft below the over-sized wheel into first gear and the bus edges forward,