Lilac Bus

by Maeve Binchy

  But then Dee was nice and she had great breeding. People like that were courteous, Nancy always thought and they had the manners to be interested in other people.

  Rupert Green arrived next. He was wearing a very smart jacket.

  ‘Merciful God, Rupert, is that Italian? Is that the real thing?’ Dee asked, feeling the sleeve as Rupert got in.

  ‘Yes it is actually.’ Rupert’s pale face flushed with pleasure. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Aren’t I worn out looking at them in magazines. It’s gorgeous.’

  ‘Yes, it’s a second, or a discontinued line or something, but a friend got it for me anyway.’ Rupert was very pleased that it had caused such a stir.

  ‘Well, they’d need to be a second or something, otherwise your father would have to sell his practice to buy it,’ Dee laughed. Rupert’s father was the solicitor, and it was through Mr Green she had got her apprenticeship in Dublin. Nancy looked at them enviously. It must be great to have such an easy way of going on. It was like a kind of shorthand in professional families, she noticed, they could all talk to each other at the drop of a hat. She felt a twinge of annoyance that her father, long dead, had been a postman and not a lawyer. The annoyance was followed by a stronger twinge of guilt. Her father had worked long and hard and had been pleased to see them all do well at their books and get secretarial or clerical jobs.

  Rupert went to the back seat and almost on cue Mrs Hickey arrived. Suntanned even in winter she looked healthy and strong and as if she might be any age. Nancy knew she must be in her late fifties, but that was only by questioning people and piecing it all together. Judy Hickey worked in some kind of mad place that sold herbal cures and grain and nuts, and she even grew some of the things herself which was why she came home every weekend to harvest them and bring them back to this shop in Dublin. Nancy had never been to the shop; Dee told her it was marvellous, that everyone should go and see it just for the experience of it but Nancy took her position as receptionist to three of Dublin’s leading consultants very seriously. It wouldn’t do for her to be seen going in and out of some quack’s shop, would it?

  Judy went to sit beside Rupert in the back and Mikey Burns had begun to squeeze himself in to the front seat. Laughing and rubbing his hands he told them a joke about hairy tennis balls. Everyone smiled and Mikey seemed to be able to settle down now that he had told at least one dirty story. He looked out eagerly.

  ‘Will I be lucky and get the beautiful Celia beside me or do I get Mr Kennedy? Oh dear, just your luck Mikey, here comes Mr Kennedy.’

  Kev sneaked into the bus looking over his shoulder as if he expected a guard to lay a hand on him and say Just a minute like they do in films. Nancy thought she had never seen anyone who looked so furtive. If you spoke to Kev Kennedy he jumped a foot in the air, and he never said much in reply so he wasn’t spoken to much.

  And lastly Celia came. Big and sort of handsome in a way, though Nancy didn’t admire those kind of looks. She often wore tight belts; as she wore them when she was nursing, she had probably got used to them. They made her figure very obvious. Not sexy, but it certainly divided it for all to see: a jutting out top half in front and a big jutting out bottom half at the back. Nancy would have thought she might have been wiser to wear something more floppy.

  Celia sat in beside Tom: the last person always sat beside the driver. It was only twenty to seven and they set off with five minutes in hand.

  ‘I have you very well trained,’ Tom laughed as he nosed the minibus out into the Friday evening traffic.

  ‘Indeed you have. No wee-wees until we’re across the Shannon,’ said Mikey looking round for approval, and since he didn’t hear any he said it again. This time a few people smiled back at him.

  Nancy told Dee all about Mr Charles and Mr White and Mr Barry and how they saw their private patients on certain days of the week and how she kept their appointment books and shuffled people around and how patients were often very grateful to her and gave her little presents at Christmas. Dee wanted to know were they well thought of, the doctors, and whether people praised them. Nancy tried to dredge examples but couldn’t. She was more on the administrative side, she kept insisting. Dee wanted to know whether she met them socially, and Nancy had laughed to think such a thing was possible. That was the joy of being a doctor’s daughter, you didn’t think class distinctions existed any more. No, of course she didn’t get involved in their home lives. Mr Barry had a Canadian wife and two children, Mr White’s wife was a teacher and they had four children, and Mr Charles and his wife had no children. Yes, she sometimes spoke to their wives on the phone; they all seemed very nice, they all remembered her name. ‘Hallo Miss Morris,’ they would say.

  Dee fell asleep when Nancy was explaining about the hospital switchboard which was very awkward and how they had been looking for a separate switchboard for the consultants for ages, but maybe things would get better with the new set-up in the phone headquarters. Nancy was a bit embarrassed at that. Maybe she had been rabbiting on, possibly she did irritate people by talking too much about little things; sometimes her own mother got up and went to bed in the middle of one of their conversations. Mairead might be right. But no, that couldn’t be, Dee had been positively pressing her for details of her working life, she had asked question after question. No, Nancy couldn’t blame herself for being boring. Not this time. She sighed and looked at the fields flying by.

  Soon she nodded off too. Behind her Judy Hickey and Rupert Green were talking about someone they knew who had gone to an Ashram in India and everyone had to wear yellow or saffron. In front of her Kev Kennedy was half-listening as Mikey Burns explained a card trick with a glass of water. Mikey said that it was better if you saw it done but you could still grasp the point if you concentrated.

  In front of them Tom was saying something to Celia; she was nodding and agreeing with it, whatever it was. It was very comfortable and warm, and even if she did lean over a bit in sleep and slump on top of Dee, well it didn’t matter. She wouldn’t have let herself doze if she were beside one of the men. Or indeed beside Judy Hickey: there was something very odd about her.

  Nancy was asleep.

  Her mother was still at the kitchen table when she got in. She was writing a letter to her daughter in America.

  ‘There you are,’ she said.

  ‘All in one piece,’ said Nancy.

  It wasn’t much of a greeting between mother and daughter when the whole country had been crossed. But they had never been a demonstrative family. No hugging and kissing, no linking arms.

  ‘How was the journey?’ her mother asked.

  ‘Oh, the same. I had a bit of a sleep so I have a crick in my neck.’ Nancy rubbed it thoughtfully.

  ‘It’s great to be able to sleep on that road, with maniacs screeching past you in all directions.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not that bad.’ Nancy looked around. ‘Well, what’s been happening?’

  Her mother was poor at handing out news. Nancy would have liked her to get up, wet a pot of tea and come back full of detail and information. She wanted to hear the week’s events and who had been home, who had been heard from, who had revealed what. But somehow it was never like that.

  ‘Whatever happens? Nothing’s been happening – weren’t you here until Sunday night?’ Her mother went back to the letter, sighing, ‘Do you never write to Deirdre at all? Wouldn’t it be a Christian thing to write to your own sister in America and tell her what’s going on? She loves to hear little things you know.’

  ‘So do I, but you can never remember anything to tell me!’ Nancy cried in complaint.

  ‘Ah, will you stop that nonsense, sure aren’t you here the whole time? You only go up to Dublin for a couple of days in the week. Poor Deirdre’s on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.’

  ‘Poor Deirdre has a husband and three children and a freezer and an icebox and a sprinkler in her garden. Poor Deirdre indeed.’

  ‘Couldn’t you have all that yourself if you w
anted to? Stop grudging things to your sister. Have some bit of niceness in you.’

  ‘I’ve plenty of niceness.’ Nancy felt her lip tremble.

  ‘Well stop giving out about Deirdre then, and go on, take a sheet of paper and put it in with mine. It’ll save you getting a stamp and everything.’

  Her mother shoved a writing pad across the table. Nancy hadn’t even sat down yet. The big suitcase with the hard corners was in the middle of the floor. She felt this was a shabby welcome home, but she was also a practical person. If she scribbled off a page to Deirdre now, well it would save her having to do it some other time, and it would please her mother who might go and bring out some soda bread and apple tart if she was in a good humour. Nancy wrote a few lines hoping that Deirdre and Sean and Shane and April and Erin were all well, and saying she’d love to come over and see them all but the fares were desperate and it was much easier for them to come over this way because of the pound and the dollar. She told Deirdre about Mr White’s new car, and Mr Charles going to Russia on his holidays and Mr Barry’s wife having a new handbag that was made from the skin of a baby crocodile and had cost what you wouldn’t believe. She added that it was nice to get back to Rathdoon at weekends because … She paused at this point. It was nice to get back to Rathdoon because … She looked at her mother sitting at the table frowning over the letter writing. No, that wasn’t why she came home. Her mother was only mildly pleased, and if she wasn’t here there was the television or Mrs Casey or the bingo or half a dozen other things. Sometimes on the long summer evenings, Nancy had come home and found the house empty and her mother out at ten o’clock. She didn’t come home for the dance like Celia did, or Kev or Mikey on the bus. She had not got what you’d call friends in Rathdoon.

  She finished the letter, ‘It’s nice to get back at the weekends because the Lilac Bus is really very good value and you’d spend a small fortune in Dublin over the weekend without even noticing it.’

  Her mother was packing up for bed. No tea, no apple tart.

  ‘I think I’ll just make myself a sandwich,’ Nancy said.

  ‘Did you have no tea? Aren’t you very disorganised for a high-up receptionist?’ said her mother, who went to bed without a word of goodnight.

  It was a bright sunny September Saturday. The tourists were mainly gone but there were always a few golfers around. Nancy wandered up the street with no plan. She could have bought a newspaper and gone to the hotel to have coffee, but apart from the money altogether she wouldn’t do that. It was being uppity going in there sitting as if you were the type. No. She saw Celia’s mother washing the step of the pub. She looked older, her face was lined like that gypsy-looking Judy Hickey’s. She called out a greeting, but Celia’s mother didn’t hear, she kept scrubbing. Nancy wondered was Celia still in bed or was she helping to clean up inside. Celia worked weekends in the pub, that’s why she came home. Her mother must have made it worth her while, because it was a hard job to stand on your feet all weekend there after having stood on your feet as a nurse all week. But you’d never know the time of day with Celia, she was so tight with information or anything at all. It was odd to see her talking away to Tom on the bus last night; usually she looked out the window with a moon face. Not like Dee, who was so full of life and so interested in everything. Nancy often wished that things were different, and that she could call on Dee at the weekend, or go off somewhere with her. But she wouldn’t dream of going up to Burkes. Not in a million years would she call on the house. The surgery was a different matter, that was the way things were.

  She passed Judy Hickey’s cottage and saw signs of great activity out in the back. Big packing boxes were laid all round, and Judy was wearing old trousers and had her hair tied up in a scarf. The house itself was shabby and needed a coat of paint but the garden was immaculate. It was odd that so many people watered and weeded and kept the birds off for Mrs Hickey, Nancy thought; she wasn’t the kind of woman that you’d think people would like at all. She only went to Mass one Sunday in four, if that. She never spoke of her husband and children. They had gone away years ago when the young lad was only a baby; Nancy could hardly remember the time there were children in that house. Anyway, up and away with the father and the two children and not a word out of the mother. She never got the court to give them back to her; people had said there must be some fine secrets there that they didn’t want to come out, otherwise she would surely have gone to law. And for years her working in this shop which sold things gurus used out in the East and things that must be disapproved of, ginseng and all that. Still Judy Hickey seemed to have more friends than a few. Even now there were two of Kev Kennedy’s brothers helping her, and last week Mikey Burns was there with his shovel. Young Rupert would probably have been in the team but his father was very sick and that’s why he had been coming home every weekend.

  Nancy sighed and passed on. A half-thought that she might help too had come in one side of her mind but flashed quickly out the other. Why should she dig and get dirty in Judy Hickey’s garden for nothing? She had better things to do. When she got back home and there was a note on the kitchen table, she wondered what better things she meant. Her mother had scribbled that Mrs Casey had called to take her for a spin. Mrs Casey had learned to drive late in life and had a dangerous-looking old car which was the joy of her heart. It had brightened life for many people including Nancy’s mother, indeed there was talk of a few of them coming the whole way to Dublin in it. The plan had been that Mrs Casey and Mrs Morris would stay at the flat. After all, Mrs Casey was Mairead’s aunt. Now there would be no flat and no Mairead. Nancy’s heart lurched at the memory of it all.

  And nothing for the lunch and no mention of when the spin would be over, and nothing much in the press or in the little fridge, nothing you could eat. Nancy put on two potatoes to boil and went across to Kennedy’s shop.

  ‘Can I have two small rashers, please?’

  ‘Two pounds is it?’ Kev Kennedy’s father didn’t listen much to people: he was always listening to the radio in the shop.

  ‘No, just two single ones.’

  ‘Huh,’ he said picking two out and weighing them.

  ‘You see my mother hasn’t done the shopping yet so I don’t know what she wants.’

  ‘You can’t go far wrong on two slices of bacon,’ Mr Kennedy agreed, morosely wrapping them in greaseproof paper and putting them in a bag. ‘She’ll never accuse you of getting the family into debt over that.’

  She heard a laugh and to her annoyance noticed that Tom Fitzgerald was in the shop. For some reason she didn’t like him hearing her being made fun of like that.

  ‘Oh, Miss Mouse is a great one to live dangerously,’ he said.

  Nancy managed a smile and went out.

  The afternoon seemed long. There was nothing on the radio, and nothing to read. She washed her two blouses and put them out on the line. She remembered with great annoyance that nobody, not even her mother, had remarked on her perm. What was the point of getting one if people didn’t notice? Paying good money for one of the newest perms. Well, paying money if she had had to: fortunately she hadn’t. At six she heard the banging of car doors and voices.

  ‘Oh, there you are, Nancy.’ Her mother always seemed surprised to see her. ‘Mrs Casey and I’ve been for a great drive altogether.’

  ‘Hallo Mrs Casey. That’s nice,’ Nancy said grumpily.

  ‘Did you get us any supper?’ Her mother looked expectant.

  ‘No. Well, you didn’t say. There wasn’t anything there.’ Nancy was confused.

  ‘Oh, come on Maire, she’s only joking. Surely you’ve something made for your mother, Nancy?’

  Nancy hated Mrs Casey’s arch voice treating her as if she was a slow-minded five-year-old.

  ‘No, why should I have? There was no food there. I presumed my mam was getting something.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘And there was nothing for lunch either,’ she said in an aggrieved tone. ‘I had to go over t
o Kennedy’s to get rashers.’

  ‘Well we’ll have rashers for our supper,’ Mrs Morris brightened up.

  ‘I’ve eaten them,’ Nancy said.

  ‘All of them?’ Mrs Casey was disbelieving.

  ‘I only got two,’ she said.

  There was another silence.

  ‘Right,’ Mrs Casey said, ‘that settles it. I wanted your mother to come back with me but she said no, that you’d probably have the tea made for us all and she didn’t want to disappoint you. I said it was far from likely, judging from what I’d heard. But she had to come back, nothing would do her.’ She was halfway back to the door. ‘Come on, Maire, leave the young people be… . They have better things to do than getting tea for the likes of us.’ Nancy looked at her mother, whose face was set in a hard line of disappointment and shame.

  ‘Enjoy your evening then, Nance,’ she said. And they were gone. The car was starting with a series of jumps and leaps.

  What could Mrs Casey have heard, what did she mean? The only person she could have heard anything from was Mairead, or Mairead’s mother. What could they have been saying – that Nancy was irritating? Was that it?

  She didn’t want to be in when they came back but where could she go? She had arranged no lift to the dance: she would as soon be hanged as to go out on the straight road and hitch all the way to the night entertainment which she wouldn’t enjoy anyway. She supposed she could always go to Ryan’s pub. She’d be bound to know people and it was her own home town and she was twenty-five years of age so she could do what she liked. She put on one of her freshly cleaned blouses which she ironed with great care. She decided the perm was an undoubted success and gave herself a spray of the perfume she had bought her mother last Christmas and set out.

  It wasn’t bad in Ryan’s; some of the golfing people were buying big rounds, shouting at each other from the counter: what did you want with the vodka, Brian, did you want water with the Power’s, Derek? Celia was behind the counter helping her mother.