was on a No 3 double-decker bus going back to Malpas when the guy sat the other side of Dennis Potter said, "Hey, that play, Pennies from Heaven, Dennis, I really liked that play. What are you doing now?"

My heart ached for Dennis. He was so polite, he couldn't just say to this guy, "Hey, dummy, I'm dead, remember?" I leaned over, excused myself for butting in and said, "This is a recording, pal, you know? You remember the interview with Melvyn Bragg? Dennis had to stop every few minutes to take morphine, his cancer was hurting him that much."

Dennis smiled at me and I said to the guy, "See, it's a recording, Dennis isn't really here."

I put out my hand and Dennis held it. He was warmer than I expected. "Well, what's he doing on the bus to Malpas then?" this guy said. I didn't answer. Sometimes there is no answer. Dennis really did feel warm.

At the front of the bus, well two or three seats in front of me, my first wife was sitting. She was staring at the back of the driver's head. Kathy wasn't dead, at least, I didn't think she was, just forever gone, with a piece of me, and me a little dead. Her long fair hair was perfect. I was too scared to get up and go forward. The bus was going very fast and lurching from left to right.

I wanted Kathy to turn round. I wanted to look at her face. Just after the divorce I had gone to see her at her parents. She had come to the door in long black flared trousers and a white blouse. She had lost weight and her eyes were bright. She'd told me she'd got a job behind a bar to get herself out more and things were OK. She couldn't let me in, she said, her father would kill me, but she did walk down to the pub with me. Everybody there knew her and she smiled a lot and her eyes were wide. She told me that a guy who fixed washing machines had asked her out. What did I think?

"Go for it," I said. I had wanted to say, "Let's go home and try again," but I told Kathy it was great she was getting out more. She had touched my thigh for a moment, taken a slow breath and looked away for about ten seconds.

At the front of the bus, on the dashboard, next to the driver, there was a small silver casket. I knew it contained my daughter's eye, the one she lost in Birmingham. I saw it, then I looked away like Kathy had done, for a few seconds. When I looked back the casket was gold; either that or the sun was making it look like gold. My gut ached and Dennis Potter squeezed my hand.

We were passing along a quiet, smooth black road. One side was the sea, a bright, light-blue, full of promise. The other side, soldiers stood slowly to watch us go by. They were all dirty, they looked tired, but every now and then one would half raise his hand as if to say hello as the bus roared on. Then the bus was going the other way and now the sea was on the right instead of the left and the soldiers just stared. Then I heard the Mindbenders singing "Groovy Kind of Love" and Kathy got up to come back and say a quick hello.

"Our song," she said. "How are you, Jim?"

I was cold. "OK," I said. "And you?"

"I had a kid," she said. "A girl, Melanie. Me and the guy from Leeds, we split up."

"What guy from Leeds?" I didn't know any guy from Leeds.

"The one who fixed washing-machines. I told you in that last letter, when I said we had to stop writing."

"Oh," I said. That was when I'd stopped loving Kathy because she wasn't clever. I was about to marry Jenny. My insides had been black as Hell. I had burned the letter. I must have missed the thing about the guy from Leeds.

"I'd really like it, if you could sit next to me," I said.

"Maybe later," Kathy said, "but I'm with someone."

She put her hand on my thigh for a moment. Then she took a breath and looked away. Then she went back to her seat. Outside there were trees, tall thin trees, pines, evergreens of some kind, row upon row, and in between the dark trunks, in the dark forest, shining yellow eyes.

After Kathy went back up north, after the split-up, but before the divorce, there was a time when women seemed to think there was something about me. I was empty and dark but they saw me as charged and driven and they wanted to screw me. One was called Tina, she had a retarded son, and there was her friend—Carol, I think, whose husband wasn't very tall, and once they set me up with some woman I took home for the worst sex of my life, with Otis Redding's My Girl playing on repeat. I don't think she wanted to. She was dry and she only felt vaguely amorous when Otis was singing My Girl. That was the time when I was trying to do the poetry. She was sad and the night was dark. I still think the Otis Redding version of My Girl was way better than the Temptations, though the Temptations version was good.

I can't remember her name. She lived in a cottage in Caerleon and was sort of living with a caretaker from St Cadoc's. She was the ugliest woman I ever slept with. At work, when I laughed about her, I called her a good-looking monkey. Now I wish I could buy two dozen roses and send them Interflora "From an admirer." I never set out to be a bastard. It just happened.

Jenny was clever, learned almost, and she was large and safe and solid. She wanted me to study, to write more, and I liked talking to her. Somehow we had sex, but I was never, you know, really into her that way. Maybe that was why we got married and why, three weeks later, I rang Carol and we went up the mountain and screwed the once for old time's sake.

Then Jenny was pregnant and we bought a house, a stereo, some nice glasses and some cutlery in Howells of Cardiff. Toby was born. I was still playing football then, still fixing televisions, studying. I used to take Toby to training and put his carry-cot on the touch-line. I couldn't believe this, this thing, was possible. Having a kid wasn't that real. It was only when Clare came along that it began to be real. Two kids, I couldn't pretend any more. I think Jenny, Toby and Clare are upstairs on the bus. Sometimes I think I can hear them talking. But Clare's eye is in the casket on the dash, by the driver.

I'm thinking all of this and I know that Dennis Potter will understand me. I think Dennis knows I didn't set out to be a bastard, it just happened. At least he hasn't let go of my hand.

I don't know if falling in love with Ruth counts as being a bastard. I really did fall in love, probably the only time. With Kathy, getting married, it was the idea, the thing that came next in life; with Jenny I thought it was the right time to do something solid, and with Sally it was obsession, pure and simple. Over that I was a bastard, but I thought at the time that it wasn't my fault.

But Ruth was what I was, deep, deep inside—tiny, timid, frightened, but with scarlet dreams twice as big as the world and a desperate, desperate need to share them with someone. She read my poems in her room while I cracked jokes in the bar and the next day, our last, we walked through manicured gardens by the side of water, and she gave me a letter told me to read it and put a finger to her lips when I asked her why.

She had written about what love is and that she was going then, me, blind and raucous, letting this little bird fly away, to agonise and re-read the letter, re-read the letter, re-read the letter. But she let me take her to the train and we sat together, holding hands in the station buffet, and it was so joyful, and so very, very dark. And pain and love I knew then were indistinguishable and the one needed the other. But what was different was that for the first time the pain was mine and not someone else's, and now for this first time I wished I was a better person.

Yes, we eventually found a way to commit adultery—I was persistent, even then—in some hotel near Potters Bar which backed onto the fume-smeared Great North Road, and overlooked a light-blue swimming-pool, a gleaming, flashing pool, a white bridge, sunshine.

And I kissed Ruth's tiny, nut-brown body. She had a Caesarean scar just like Jack Kerouac's tiny lover, Terry, her hips so narrow she couldn't bear a child without being gashed open. But for us it was no weary morning and our shelf was next to the A1, but it was delicious yes, and tearful, and there was no time to fall asleep.

For we were wretched, damned, bloody. We were damned, for there were other things present, beside our bodies, souls. There were commandments, commitments, children, consequences. And Ruth, so tiny, was so strong, and she left us. And though for a while we telephoned across seas, we never met again and on my thirtieth birthday she said, "Let us stop. The pain, the pain is far too great."

And I told Jenny and I destroyed her. I needed to be allowed to cry so I told my wife. I did this for me, to explain my tears, and it destroyed her.

With Ruth I might have learned what being human was. Without her, I was just a man and a cruel, poor man to boot. A good man would have suffered alone, become a drunk, a workaholic—perhaps run dizzy distances on the moors; but I had drifted into being a bastard, a simple, selfish, bastard and I poured my needs, my dreams into a closed world, a paper world. I had once been a mechanic, a technician, then an academic, now I was a writer—but first and foremost I had perfected a fine selfishness and I had brandished it, roared it, let anger and bitterness be some flag, some hypocritical badge of honour, as if failing was a sign of strength and cheating was the mark of greatness.

And now, I think fittingly, I am on the bus to Malpas.

Jenny and I did not split up, not then. No, we were adults, academics, sensible. Toby was, I think, four, Clare less than two, and we stayed together, citing the children as our excuse for not admitting we came from different worlds, were different colours, and had incompatible dreams. Instead, we built things, we strove, we worked hard. Jenny turned back to study, gained a masters, a PhD, a professorship, I graduated, sold things, made money, then switched to writing full time and learned to smile for my book-jackets.

And I learned to loathe, to be disgusted, to see nothing but falseness in those around me. I even learned how to make the magic in my children fade to black. Until one day I ripped out my daughter's eye and I was complete.

I was practised. Jenny was practised. I did my duties and this one, this day, was a picnic in a park, somewhere just far enough a drive to stop me doing anything else. It may have been a nice day, but that's immaterial.

We had eaten. We were going to walk. Jenny had asked, "We should go for a walk now." I did not want to walk. We both knew this, but the game was now perfected. "Do we have to?" I said even as I rose and walked away from the unlocked car, my neck prickling.

And she shouted after me, "The car!" and I thought, "Fuck you!" and she shouted again, "The keys!" and I turned, and I saw her, really saw her, this woman made ugly by the ugliness in me, and she shouted "Keys!" again, and I threw them, tossed them like a grenade at her, and I almost turned my back.

The people upstairs on this bus might understand this, the driver might understand. I don't quite understand, but I knew, right then, I knew the instant I had thrown the keys, what was going to happen. The keys contained every foul moment of my then life, every dark frustrated second of our hypocritical contract, all the red anger, all the nightcold beds, all the pathetic technical screwing, the smiles at candlelit dinner-parties, and me no longer being able to see the light dimming in my children.

It was sunny. The sky was bright blue. And the keys, my coward's dagger, sailed in a mathematically perfect arc towards Jenny's hands and then, just, just, over them. And Clare, my little baby, barely walking, still open, still untouched, still sweet enough and innocent enough, looked up and smiled and guided all my anger straight into her, into her eyeball.

Of course we tried. We rushed to a hospital, a police escort wailing and flashing blue, but my baby had lost her eye. She had lost it long before, on my thirtieth birthday but the wickedness had taken a long time landing.

Then, in the December, Clare finally got her glass eye, an amazing technical achievement. They gave it to her on Christmas Eve and Clare ran into my arms as if she didn't care, as if she didn't know, what I had done.

And Dennis still holds my hand. Dennis isn't really here, this is just a recording but he still holds my hand. He holds my hand, even though this is a recording and the guy sitting by the window, next to him, can't get it through his thick skull.

Oh, I loved Pennies from Heaven, I loved Lipstick on Your Collar. And The Singing Detective, that was his masterpiece but I think I identified with Pennies From Heaven, with Bob Hoskins, with being executed.

After Clare's eye—we called it an accident—I tried a little harder, and we looked almost normal for a while, but then I gave up on the writing and went back to making money. I hadn't been happy before, but a part of me had thought itself satisfied, but now I felt I didn't have the right not to earn money any more and going back into the real world made me more weary. It was a little easier to sleep.

Sally was next, Sally was my secretary. I don't really feel like talking about her but that seems to be the thing on the bus and I'd hate it if Dennis Potter let go of my hand. My secretary. It happened slowly. When I realised, I avoided it, avoided her, but it happened and I thought it was love again, Ruth again, and one night I just didn't go home. I had started writing again, sitting in the dark again, drinking more than was wise, and Sally, well she just seemed to want me and didn't think I was a bastard, and I thought I could see a faint, distant light. I didn't go home.

Yes, Dennis, I was a bastard. Toby was hurt. Clare, my little Nelson, was hurt. And they put on weight, they became difficult, they fell away at school. Oh, I ached when I thought of them, Dennis, cried when I could, but I was a man, Dennis, and screwing myself silly, walking into the bathroom just to see Sally in the bath, her flat belly, round, still-firm breasts, the sad triangle, perfect triangle of her sex, the deep darkness of her, the place where I died, night after night after night after bloody dark night. You know this, Dennis? How through all this pain I can still feel hard thinking of her?

But that is finished, as it had to be, and I am on the bus.

I think there are more people on the bus I will have known. Kathy is up the front, though she seems to be OK, and upstairs, there's Jenny and the kids. Ruth's husband, I wonder if he's up there? I never did meet him, just smelled his pain. The others are sat behind me.

The bus is slowing, one side the sea, the other side, the forest, no soldiers. I have to let go of Dennis Potter's warm hand. He smiles. Dennis has such gentle, intelligent eyes. As I get up, incredible pain in my joints, and my skin itches. I see the driver's eyes in his mirror but they smile too because he knows my decision. Now the bus is going the other way again and we pass the soldiers and we really are headed for Malpas now. The soldiers look disappointed.

The bus comes to a halt at the last stop before the terminus, near the house where my parents lived. They've been dead a while. This is really Malpas, and the bus is real, yellow and green, smelling of diesel, and with the town's crest on its side, two fish, and a shield, gold and silver and red.

I don't know why I decided to come back here right now, except it seemed fitting. The specialist explained. Months, years, even decades, he said. They could treat the pain, make it not too bad, but the side effects would mean less time. He thought, on balance, that to take the analgesia was best. He said that nobody deserved this kind of pain, but I wasn't sure he was right. I said I would think about it, take a train back to my home town and think about it for a weekend.

I am not a brave man so saying no to the doctor wasn't easy. But then I got on the bus to Malpas. I could have stayed on the bus, gone the quick easy way, but I got off one stop before the terminus, things to do, still.

There are times when I wonder where I found the courage, but then I don't think it's courage, just the need to find a balance. And I had help; if you discount the pain, the last couple of years haven't been too bad and I think Clare and I have come to an understanding. Toby has made it into university already, and with a little help from me, Clare's heading the same way. I think Kathy is all right, it may even be I did the right thing there. I try not to remember Ruth, and Sally, well she's one of those people who always comes out on top.

Jenny's hair has gone prematurely grey, but she says it was the long nights studying, not us. I have a little flat and I'm writing again. At Christmas, my second one already, Toby and Clare bought me Dennis Potter's biography. He suffered so long, so very long, but he finished what he had to finish and he ended a fine, warm and intelligent man.

As for sending those flowers, red roses, I think not. I am trying to be wise. The gesture would be for me, not for a small, sad and less than pretty lady. The brief false light they might mean would only make the next darkness darker for her. I think, on balance, best she waits for the next bus.

© Alex Keegan