The Lilac Bus

by Maeve Binchy

  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.

  ‘You don’t usually come in here,’ Celia said.

  ‘It’s a free country and I’m over twenty-one,’ Nancy said snappishly.

  ‘Oh Jesus, take it easy,’ Celia had said. ‘It’s too early for the fights.’

  There was a phone in a booth and she saw Dee Burke making a call; their phone must be out of order at home. Nancy waved but Dee didn’t see her. Biddy Brady who had been two classes below Nancy at school had got engaged and she was celebrating with a group of the girls. The ring was being passed around and admired. She waved Nancy over to the group, and rather than sit on her own she went.

  ‘We’re putting a sum into the kitty each and then the drinks keep coming and we pay for it until the money runs out,’ said one girl helpfully.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think I’ll be here all that long,’ Nancy said hastily, and noticed a few odd looks being exchanged.

  She waved at Mikey Burns who was carrying two drinks over to a corner.

  ‘Have you any pub jokes?’ Nancy asked, hoping he might stop and entertain them for a moment.

  ‘Not tonight, Nancy,’ he said, and didn’t even pause. Mikey! Who would do anything for an audience! He was heading for the corner, a woman with her head down sat there, it looked like Billy Burns’ wife.

  Billy was Mikey’s brother, the one that got the looks and the brains and the luck people said.

  There was a bit of commotion behind the bar and Celia’s mother seemed to be shouting at her. It was hushed up but Celia looked very anxious. One of the Kennedy brothers had stepped in behind the bar to help wash glasses.

  Nancy felt a bit dizzy. She had drunk two gins and orange which she had bought for herself and two as part of Biddy Brady’s celebration. She had had nothing to eat since lunchtime. She decided to get some fresh air and some chips in that order. She could always come back. She sat on the wall near the chip shop and ate them slowly. You could see the whole town from here: the Burkes’ house with all that lovely creeper cut away from the windows so neatly. She thought she saw Dee leaning out of a window smoking but it was darkish, she couldn’t be certain. Then there was the Fitzgeralds’ drapery, Tom’s family’s business. His two brothers and their wives worked there, as well as his father. They had a craft shop now attached to it, and they made up Irish tweeds into skirts for the visitors. Mrs Casey lived about a mile out so she couldn’t glare at her windows and imagine her mother eating lamb chops and looking at television, counting the days with Mrs Casey until the Late Late Show came back from its summer break. When they had been planning the Dublin trip they had wanted Mairead and Nancy to get them tickets for the show, and Mairead had actually written and found out what the chances were. Nancy had thought it was madness of the first order.

  It was chilly and the last chip was gone. She walked back to Ryan’s and thought she would go in the side entrance and visit the Ladies’ on the way. She nearly fell over Mrs Ryan who was sitting on the step.

  ‘Oh, it’s Miss Morris,’ the woman said with a very snide little laugh.

  ‘Goodnight, Mrs Ryan,’ said Nancy a bit nervously.

  ‘Oh Miss Morris, Miss Mean Morris. Mean as all get out, they say about you.’

  She didn’t sound drunk. Her voice was steady and cold.

  ‘Who says that about me?’ Nancy was equally cold.

  ‘Everyone. Every single person who ever speaks your name. Poor Biddy Brady’s crowd of girls, just to mention a few. You sat down and took a couple of spirits off them and walked off. That’s class, Miss Morris, strong men have wanted to be able to do that and they’re not.’

  ‘Why do you call me Miss Morris?’

  ‘Because that’s what you call yourself, that’s what you think you are. And by God that’s the way you’re going to stay. No man would take you on, Miss Morris, a mean woman is worse than a nag and a slut put together . . .’

  ‘I’ll be off, I think, Mrs Ryan.’

  ‘Oh I would, Miss Morris; those little girls in there have had a few drinks now and if you haven’t come back to put a couple of fivers into their kitty, I think you’d be far better to be off.’

  ‘Put what into their kitty?’ Nancy was stunned.

  ‘Oh, be off, Miss Morris, I beg of you.’

  But her blood was up now. She pushed past the woman and went into the smoke and heat.

  ‘Sorry Biddy,’ she said loudly, ‘I went home for change. I hadn’t my money with me. Can I put this into the kitty and I’m having a gin and orange when the round comes.’

  They looked at her in disbelief and with some guilt. Those who had been loudest against her were abashed.

  ‘A large gin and orange for Nancy,’ they called and Celia who was working alone with only Bart Kennedy to help her raised her eyebrows. Nancy Morris ordering large ones.

  ‘They cost a fair whack nowadays, Nancy,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, will you give me a drink not a sermon,’ Nancy said and the others all laughed.

  They were singing ‘By The River of Babylon, where I sat down,’ but Nancy was only mouthing the words.

  Mean, Mean, Mean. That was what Mairead thought, what she told her mother and her aunt, why she wanted her out of the flat; that’s what Mrs Casey thought, that’s what her mother had felt tonight, that’s what the Kennedys’ father had been jeering at in the shop. That’s what Celia meant now, talking about the price of a drink. That is what Mrs Ryan, who must have gone stone mad tonight, meant, sitting on the floor of her own public house in the side entrance.

  Mean.

  But she wasn’t mean: she was careful, she was sensible, she was not going to throw away her money. She was going to spend it on what she wanted. Which was . . . which was . . . Well, she didn’t know yet. It certainly wasn’t clothes, or a holiday or a car. And it wasn’t on dear things to furnish rented accommodation, and it wasn’t on going to dances or discos or to hotels with fancy prices. And it wasn’t on smart hairdressers or Italian shoes or fillet steaks or a stereo radio with headphones.

  They had linked arms now and they were singing ‘Sailing’ and swaying from side to side. Mrs Ryan had come back and was singing with the best; in fact she was standing up in the middle of the circle and playing the Rod Stewart role with somebody’s golf club as a microphone.

  Celia was pulling pints still; she looked at her mother with neither embarrassment nor pride – it was just as if she were another customer. Tom Fitzgerald was talking to her over the bar. They were very thick, those two. Tears came down Nancy’s face at Mrs Ryan’s words. A mean woman. She wasn’t at all mean. But if people thought she was, then she must be. Mustn’t she?

  Deirdre had once said she was a bit tight with money, but she had thought that was Deirdre being all American and accusing people face to face of things. Her brother in Cork had once said that she must own massive property up in Dublin now, what with her earning a good salary and paying hardly a penny out a week except her rent and the Lilac Bus. She had said nonsense, that it cost a packet to live in Dublin. He had pointed out that she had a bicycle and she got a three-course meal in the hospital at midday, and what else did she spend it on? The conversation had ended fairly unsatisfactorily, she had thought. Now she realised that he was saying she was mean. Mean.

  Suppose people really thought she was mean? Should she explain that it wasn’t meanness, and she was only making sure she didn’t throw money away? No, somehow it was one of those things that you couldn’t explain. It was either there, the belief, or it wasn’t there. And so, unfair as it was, she was now going to have to go overboard the other way.

  Tomorrow she would suggest to her mother that she take them both to a nice Sunday lunch in the hotel as a treat. It was too late to do anything about Mairead, there was no promising to b
e more generous or to spend more or whatever it was people wanted. And maybe she could get some posters of Ireland and send them to Deirdre’s children. Happy birthday Shane or April or Erin from your Auntie Nancy in the Emerald Isle. And to the silent brother in Cork, some book about fishing and a pressing invitation to visit her when next he came up for the Spring Show.

  It must work: look at Biddy Brady’s party, they were delighted with her. But why shouldn’t they be, she had put ten whole pounds into their bowl on the table. But it seemed to please them a lot and they were raising their glasses a bit crookedly and saying Nancy Whiskey and things to her that they’d never have said otherwise.

  There was no sign of Mrs Ryan; she had gone out again after her party piece. Nancy would like to have thanked her. Because now she had a lot of problems licked. And the great thing, the really great thing was this: it needn’t cost a lot of money. In fact, if she was very careful it need cost hardly anything. She could take a lot of those glucose sweets and put them in a box, say, that could be a present for her mother one week. And she could give as presents those paperweights which she got from the drug companies – sometimes you could hardly see the name of the medicine they were advertising. And wasn’t it just as well she had told nobody about the rise in her wages. She had negotiated it herself quietly, so no one need ever know about that at all.

  DEE

  They often had a drink on a Friday night in the pub beside the office. Dee would only stay for half an hour. The Lilac Bus wouldn’t wait, she knew that. She knew too that a lot of people in the practice were surprised that she went home every weekend. It was so far, and there was so much to do in Dublin. Wasn’t she very dutiful? Oh no, she had denied, no. It was selfishness: she went home because it was peaceful, there were no distractions, she could study at home. But the law books that crossed Ireland in her canvas bag came back again unopened as often as not. Dee Burke spent much of her weekends sitting at her bedroom window and staring out at Rathdoon. Until it was time to go back to Dublin again on Sunday evening.

  And of course her parents were pleased. She could get off the bus at the corner and walk up to the golf club, waving cheerily as the Lilac Bus went on into town. For every Friday night in human memory Dr and Mrs Burke were at the golf club, and if there was a birth or a death or something untoward in between, people knew to phone the club and the Doctor would take the call.

  They had been surprised at the beginning of the summer when she began to come home so regularly. Surprised but glad. It was great to have company round the house, and Dee was always the liveliest of the family. They would jump up with pleasure when she put her face around the door on a Friday night to join them and whoever else in the club bar. Her father would get her a toasted sandwich and put his arm around her shoulder if she stood beside him at the bar counter. Her mother would smile over from the table. They were so delighted to have Dee home again. Sometimes her stomach rose and fell at their innocence and their kind welcome. What did people do when they didn’t have the Burkes to go back to, Dee wondered? Went mad maybe? Went to discos? Got sense? Pulled themselves together? Oh, who knew what other people did? Who cared?

  Tom Fitzgerald was quite handsome; she had never thought of it until tonight when he was laughing at her for flinging her own bag up on the roof rack. He had a lovely grin. He was an odd fellow – you could never get a straight answer out of him on anything. She knew nothing about him, nothing at all, and she had grown up fifty yards from him and his brothers. She didn’t even know what he did for a living. She had asked her mother once.

  ‘Don’t you travel across the country sitting beside him? Why don’t you ask him yourself?’ her mother had said, not unreasonably.

  ‘Oh, he’s not the kind you could ask,’ Dee had said.

  ‘Well then, you’ll have to remain ignorant,’ her mother had laughed.

  ‘At this stage of my life I’m not going to go into the drapery and ask personal questions to the Fitzgeralds about what occupation their son follows.’

  Nancy Morris was sitting in the bus, first as usual. She looked different somehow. Was it a new blouse or her hair? Dee wasn’t sure – she wouldn’t ask in case Nancy would start bewailing the cost of everything as she usually did. And yet she was getting a fine big salary, so Sam had told her. Far more than any of the receptionists or clerks were getting in the solicitors’ office. Maybe I won’t sit beside her tonight, Dee resolved, but she knew she would. Who else knew Sam, who else could tell her about Sam Barry and his daily life except Nancy? Imagine being able to travel home with Sam’s receptionist every weekend. It was like having a bit of Sam with her. It took a lot of the loneliness away just to be able to talk about him. Even very indirectly, even if it meant talking about Mr Boring White and Mr Boring Charles as well. Because Nancy must never, never know that it was only Mr Sam Barry that she was interested in.

  Nancy would talk for ever: she explained the routine and the kind of problems the consultants had, not being able to get beds quickly enough in the hospital, and all the complications of the Voluntary Health Insurance and the forms and people not understanding them. But she knew nothing about their lives outside the hospital. Nothing except what they told her and what the nurses told her, and that was little.

  ‘Do their wives ever ring them at work?’ Dee asked. It was like probing a sore tooth; she knew she shouldn’t ask.

  ‘Oh yes, sometimes they do.’ Nancy was maddening.

  ‘And what do they say?’

  ‘They’re all very nice, they call me by my name.’

  That surprised Dee: Nancy was so unforthcoming and businesslike, you couldn’t imagine anyone chatting to her.

  ‘Oh yes, “Hallo Miss Morris,” they say. All of them: Mrs White, Mrs Charles, Mrs Barry.’

  So that’s what she meant by calling her by her name!

  ‘And has Mrs Barry much of a Canadian accent?’

  ‘Gosh, Dee, you do have a great memory for them all. No wonder you’re so brainy and going to be a solicitor. Imagine you remembering she was a Canadian. No, not much of an accent, but you’d know she was from over there. American sounding.’

  Imagine my remembering she was Canadian? Imagine my being able to forget it! She doesn’t know many people here; she’s far from home; it’s not as if she grew up here and has her own circle of friends; she needs time to make a life for herself; we have to wait until things settle down.

  Dee could never understand the logic of that. If they were going to wait until Candy Barry settled into Irish life they were building up more and more trouble for themselves. Why didn’t they settle her back into Canadian life, she wanted to know? Before she had become isolated from her roots there. Why? Because of the children of course, the two little Barrys, small clones of their father, five and seven. He wasn’t going to let those go four and a half thousand miles away and see them once a year on a visit.

  But what about the children that he and Dee would have together? That would be different. Wonderful but different. You didn’t parcel away your two lovely sons because you were going to have a new family with somebody else. No indeed. Dee was immature to suggest it.

  Sam used that word as a great insult. He said it had nothing to do with age. People younger than Dee could be mature and people much older than both of them would never achieve it. She didn’t like the word, it seemed to mean whatever he wanted it to mean. Like when you’re playing poker and the two is wild, the two can be any card you want it to be.

  She didn’t know why she asked Nancy about his work. She never learned anything new, but it was like seeing a photograph of some scene that you knew well; it was always interesting to see it again from another angle. The only bit she shouldn’t have asked was about their wives ringing up. That had made her uneasy now.

  Sam said that Candy never called him at work and yet Nancy Morris said she did. Nancy probably wanted to show off about how well she knew them all. Boasting. She was in the middle of some complicated diatribe about the telephone sy
stem now. Dee felt her eyes closing. She slept and dreamed that she was getting her parchment from the Chief Justice and Sam was there congratulating her, and a photographer from the Evening Press had the three of them lined up and was writing their names down in his notebook.

  Dee often dreamed that Sam was part of her life: she felt that this must signify that she was not guilty about him and that everything they had together was above board and out in the open. Not too much out in the open of course, but not hole-in-the-corner either. For example, her flat-mate Aideen knew all about Sam, and met him when he called. And Sam’s friend Tom knew too: he used to go out to meals with them sometimes. So it wasn’t as furtive as you might think. Sam had wanted to know why her parents didn’t cop on, but Dee had said it would never cross their minds, and anyway she was softening them up for the future by insisting she had no romantic interests yet but would certainly fall for somebody highly unsuitable when the time came. Dee had pealed with laughter over this, and Sam had looked sad. She had stopped laughing suddenly and he had been very quiet.

  ‘The future mightn’t be perfect,’ he said. ‘Not for us: you shouldn’t hope too much, you know.’

  ‘The future’s not going to be perfect for most people,’ she had said cheerfully. ‘But they have to keep hoping, otherwise what’s the point of anything?’

  That had seemed to cheer him a little, but he had been quieter than usual.

  Dee wasn’t sure why she came home so often now. Aideen couldn’t understand it either.

  ‘Sure if you’re down there, he’ll never see you. Can’t he ring you here, if he has a free minute?’

  True. But he was having less and less free minutes. Candy’s parents were over from Toronto. They had to be shown round. One of the little blond boys had fallen off a bicycle and opened his forehead; he had to be visited in hospital, and looked after when he got home.