Lilac Bus

by Maeve Binchy

  Aideen said she should fight harder for him, force him to leave that Candy. He had been so keen on Dee at the start that he would have done anything for her; now she had let him believe that he could have it both ways. But Dee thought she might want it both ways too. She didn’t want a huge scandal, and having to leave her apprenticeship and end up half-qualified, half-married, half-home-wrecker and half-disgraced. Aideen said that was nonsense and that Dee’s parents had been able to accept that her brother was living with a girl, so why couldn’t they accept what she planned to do. Dee thought there was a lot of difference between Fergal living with his girlfriend when everyone knew that they would get married soon anyway, and her making off with a well known Dublin consultant and forcing him to abandon his wife and two little boys. It was a matter of degree. Aideen had said that was nonsense, it was all Sin and it was all not Respectable. So why not do it?

  Why not? It wasn’t really up to her any more: Sam was not nearly so ardent. In fact once or twice he had made excuses that seemed just like the things he had said to Candy on the phone a year ago. ‘Sorry love, I tried, but it’s useless, there’s this meeting, it’s the only time they can get all the people together. I pulled out last time. I can’t be seen to do it again.’ Very familiar. Frighteningly familiar. But was he making excuses to his young mistress so that he could be with his middle-aged Canadian wife? Or was there another young mistress? Someone even younger than twenty-three? Someone who didn’t sigh and groan when he cancelled an arrangement? Someone who never suggested that Candy be sent back to Toronto?

  Dee was remarkably calm about the possibility of a rival. She couldn’t take it seriously. He really was a busy man, by anyone’s standards; he worked long hours and there were still more people straining to see him. He had barely time for one relationship, not to mention two. To think of three would be ridiculous. Nobody could juggle that many romances and promises and endearments in the air. Nobody.

  She was glad when they stopped, just for the chance to stretch her legs. Tom gave them ten minutes and not a minute more in the pub beside the garage where he filled up the Lilac Bus. The men usually had a half-pint each and sometimes Dee bought Nancy a gin and orange and Celia a bottle of Guinness. She would have a little brandy herself if her stomach felt cold and nervous. But tonight she felt all right. Sam was away on his conference.

  He had rung her from the airport to say goodbye. He had said he loved her and that he’d see her on Monday night, late when he got back from London. He’d tell Candy the conference went on until Tuesday. That was fine, it was ages since he had been able to stay a full night, she would make sure that there’d be no confrontation and scenes. Just like it had been in the beginning.

  They were settling back in the bus. Poor Mikey Burns, the bank porter, who was so nice apart from all his lavatory jokes, said that he felt much better now that he’d shaken hands with the wife’s best friend. He said it twice in case people hadn’t got it. Kev Kennedy still hadn’t.

  ‘You’re not married, Mikey,’ he had said.

  Mikey looked defeated.

  Dee said she mustn’t sleep too much on the bus, it gave her a cramp in her shoulders, and Nancy said there was a great way of getting rid of tension in the neck: you had to hang your head down as if it was a great weight and then roll it around. Judy Hickey joined in the conversation unexpectedly and said that this was one of the principles of yoga and seemed greatly in agreement. Dee thought Nancy was put out by this, as if she didn’t want to join up with yoga over anything.

  He would be in London now, staying in that big posh hotel near the American Embassy where she had once spent a weekend with him as Mrs Barry. It had been so racy, and she kept thinking she’d meet someone from home as if anyone from Rathdoon would ever go inside a place like that. He had said there would be a reception at 8.30 and they would all wear name badges. It would have begun now. She felt an urge to talk about him again. This would be her last chance since she wouldn’t be able to mention him at home.

  ‘I expect they go away a lot on conferences, professional sort of things,’ she said to Nancy.

  ‘Sometimes.’ Nancy was vague. ‘Not often. Of course they’ve all had their holidays in August, and you’ve no idea how hard it is to fix appointments; people don’t understand that doctors, specialists, have to have holidays like anyone else. More than anyone else,’ she added righteously.

  Dee wasn’t going to go down that martyr road; she wanted to hear about Mr Barry being invited to this very prestigious gathering in London. She wanted to hear what he said when he got the invitation, and she wanted to hear Nancy say that he was coming back on Tuesday, so she could hug that to herself like a little secret.

  ‘Yes, but didn’t you say one of them was off to a conference this weekend?’ she said.

  ‘No.’ Nancy was puzzled. ‘No, definitely not.’

  ‘Maybe they’d go and not tell you?’ Dee’s heart had started to move in a very unacceptable rhythm.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Nancy was lofty. ‘But anyway it wouldn’t be this weekend, because I know where they’re all going, as it happens. It’s a big do. Mr and Mrs Barry – she’s a Canadian you know – well, they’re having their tenth wedding anniversary party tomorrow, and it’s going to be a big barbecue. Mr Barry asked me to pray specially that it wouldn’t rain.’

  She didn’t hear anything else for the rest of the journey home. But she must have managed to nod or smile or something because she certainly didn’t notice Nancy looking at her puzzled or anything. She felt as if somebody had opened her throat just under the gold horseshoe he had bought her as a pendant that time in London, and poured in a jug of iced water. The water was freezing up again. Why? That was all she wanted to know. Why the elaborate lies? Filled with such detail, about the name badges, the names of Americans and French and Germans that he was going to meet? Did these people exist at all, or had he picked names out of a phone book or out of literature? Why? If he and his wife had such a good marriage that they were gloating publicly with a big babyish barbecue over the whole thing … then why did he need Dee as well?

  She went over it all, from the very start, when they had met at a party on the day of a Rugby International. It had been a big lunch where people had been invited to pre-match snacks and most people had such a good time they had stayed on and watched the match on telly instead. Dee had felt guilty about their tickets and all the young disappointed hopefuls who could have used them and Sam had gathered up half a dozen and run out on the road and given them to the first crowd of passers-by he saw. They had looked through the window and laughed at the waving kids and the eager way they had run towards Lansdowne Road. She and Sam had laughed a lot that afternoon, Candy was at the other end of the room talking about recipes. When they were leaving, Sam had said, ‘I must see you again,’ and she had laughed a peal of delight, and told him it was pure Hollywood.

  ‘I am pure Hollywood,’ Sam had said, and somehow it had sounded endearing and nice. She had given him work and home numbers and he had called the next day. He had pursued her, yes, that wasn’t too strong a word for it. Pursued. She had said she didn’t want to get involved with a married man, and he said that he knew it was more pure Hollywood and pure corn and pure things-that-married-men-said, but actually his marriage was empty and a great mistake and something he should never have done but he had been in Canada and lonely and far from home; and that, apart from Dee altogether, he and Candy would undoubtedly drift their separate ways when the children were old enough to understand, and that he would be very gentle and careful, and that he would love her always. Now why would someone do that? If you loved one person and thought they were smashing and lovely and fresh why would you then have big parties and hand-holding and a lot of bullshit with another person? What was the point? Or suppose you loved the other person and enjoyed being married to her for ten years and adored the two little boys and everything then why would you tell lies about being fresh and lovely and tell tall tales about c
onferences in London with name badges to someone else? It was beyond understanding, and Dee felt that something in her head was about to break with the effort of understanding. She bent forward a little. Tom’s eyes in the mirror caught the movement.

  ‘Are you OK Dee?’ he called.

  ‘Sure,’ she muttered.

  ‘Right, coming to your corner in five minutes,’ he said. He must have thought she was car-sick.

  ‘We’re never home already?’ She was genuinely shocked. She thought they were seventy miles from Rathdoon. ‘You should try driving Concorde,’ she said, managing a sort of joke for him.

  ‘Sure that would be child’s play after the Lilac Bus,’ Tom grinned back at her.

  She wondered should she go straight home and not get off at the golf club. But that would be worse, back to an empty house on her own. No, better join in and be with people who would talk and laugh and be pleased to see her.

  She opened her bag and got out a mirror before she went in. Unbelievably she was not too bad, her face tanned from all those weekends at home, her hair straight and shoulder length – Sam said it was like an advertisement for shampoo, which was high praise. Her eyes normal looking, not wild. No, she wouldn’t frighten her parents and their friends. In she would go and when they asked her what she’d have she’d say she had a stomach upset and could she have a brandy and port. Someone told her once that this was a great drink and it cured every ill. Or most ills anyway.

  They were delighted to see her as always, but they were bursting with news. They couldn’t wait for the drink to be in her hand so that they could drink a toast. They had had a phone call from Fergal – what do you think, he and Kate had bought the ring, they were getting married just before Christmas, wasn’t it marvellous? And Kate’s parents had been on the phone too and they had all said wasn’t it wonderful the way things turned out, and maybe young people nowadays were much wiser than their parents and didn’t rush into things. Dee Burke raised her glass of port and brandy and drank the health of her brother Fergal and her new sister-in-law-to-be, Kate, and she wondered with her mother what they both would wear to the wedding. And the drink went down through that channel where there had been iced water before, and it sort of burned it with a fiery anaesthetic and she began to think that whoever said it cured all ills might have had a point.

  But it didn’t bring sleep. And she had to move gently if she moved at all. The big old house was full of creaks and bumps. If you went to the lavatory during the night you woke the whole house. It was considered courteous to arrange your functions so that you didn’t have to. Her parents talked on long downstairs. They had been married for thirty years, she realised. They never made much of anniversaries and when her mother was fifty last year it had been very politely ignored. No showy barbecues for them, no public displays.

  But that didn’t matter. What was she going to do? Was she going to pretend that she knew nothing, let him lie on about London? No, that would be living out a total dishonesty. But then wasn’t he prepared to do that with her? Some of the time. And with Candy some of the time. He didn’t have this high regard for total honesty. How had he not known that Nancy would prattle about it? She had told him that she travelled home on the same minibus every weekend as his receptionist. But Sam didn’t know that she talked to Nancy about the consultants, and Sam would never believe for one moment that Nancy would mention something as trivial as his party to someone who was not meant to know him. Would she ring him at home and confront him? What earthly good would that do? None.

  She would try to be calm and wait until daylight. What was that thing you were meant to do to your neck and shoulders? She tried what she remembered of the instructions but it just made her feel worse.

  An hour later she understood what insomnia was about. She had never understood why people didn’t just turn on the light and read if they couldn’t go to sleep.

  Another hour later she laughed mirthlessly to herself about her lack of sleeping pills. There she was, a doctor’s daughter, and another doctor’s lover and she hadn’t one little Mogadon to call her own. A bit after that she started to cry and she cried until she fell asleep at twenty to eight just as her mother was creaking down the stairs to put on the coffee.

  She woke after one o’clock: her mother was standing by the bed.

  ‘Is your tummy better?’

  Dee had forgotten the so-called gastric attack to excuse the ports and brandy.

  ‘I think so,’ she said bewildered. ‘If you’re well enough, can you do me a favour? We’ve had another phone call from Fergal,’ her mother paused expectantly.

  ‘The wedding’s off?’ Dee said rubbing her eyes.

  ‘No, stupid, but they’re coming this evening, about six o’clock. Can you run me into town, I’ll want to get things.’ ‘Into town’ meant the big town seventeen miles away. ‘Down town’ meant Rathdoon itself.

  ‘What do we want to go into town for?’

  ‘You can’t get anything nice here, anything different.’

  ‘Mummy, in the name of God, isn’t it only Fergal? Why do we want anything nice, anything different for Fergal?’

  ‘But it’s Kate as well.’

  ‘But hasn’t he been living with Kate for a year? Are you losing your marbles or something, what would she want anything nice and different for? Can’t we go to Kennedy’s and get some ham or lamb or whatever we’d be having anyway?’

  ‘Well if you don’t want to drive me, you need only say so. I’m sure your father won’t mind giving me a quick spin into town,’ her mother was huffy now and annoyed.

  ‘It’s not a quick spin, you know it, it’s seventeen miles. It’s a bad road, it’s jam packed with shoppers on a Saturday in there, we’ll never get a parking place, the whole thing will take three hours.’

  ‘Well, don’t you worry about it, Madam: you’re so busy you can sleep on into the broad daylight – I see what a demanding life you have. No, your father may be able to give up his one game of golf a week to take me.’

  Dee got out of bed, and picked up a dressing gown.

  ‘I’ll have a bath and I’ll take you now, but I want you to know that there’s a grave danger you’re going mad. Next week you’ll be going into town to get something nice and unusual for me.’

  ‘If you were bringing home a fiancé I’d be glad to,’ her mother said. ‘And by the way, do you never wear pyjamas or a nightdress or anything? Isn’t it very peculiar to wear nothing at all in bed?’

  ‘It’s very peculiar Mummy – I’d say I’d be locked up if anyone knew.’

  ‘Oh there’s nothing like a smart aleck, nothing as lovely as your own daughter turning into a smart aleck,’ said her mother and went downstairs happily to make a list.

  Mrs Burke bought a new tablecloth and six napkins to match. Dee cast her eyes to heaven so often her mother asked her not to come into the next shop to be making a show of her. She was moved on three times by guards, hot harassed men who could never have dreamed that this is what it would be like when they joined the force. She saw a woman slap her three-year-old hard on the legs until he roared in fright and his father thought she had gone too far and gave the woman a hard shove. Marriage! Dee thought. Family life. If a Martian were looking at us, he would think we must be insane to run towards it like a crowd of lemmings. And it’s all we want, everywhere: romantic books, Dallas on the telly, everyone we know. Nobody seems to learn any lessons on the way.

  Her mother came out weighed down with parcels just as a guard was coming at her again; she dragged the parcels and her mother into the car with one movement.

  ‘You’re becoming very rough Dee, very ill-mannered,’ Mother said, annoyed and flustered.

  ‘It’s all this naked sleeping,’ Dee said, smiling up at the guard. ‘That’s the cause of it, I’m certain.’

  Halfway home Dee realised what had happened. That stupid Nancy had got the weekend wrong. That was it. Hadn’t Sam said he’d be tied up with the family, next weekend. Imagine believing
the daylight from Nancy Morris. She really was going mad, it wasn’t just a joke she made to her mother, of course that was it. Nancy was fussing and filling in her appointment book and complaining about the cost of living and she hadn’t heard.

  The relief was immense: it was the joy of getting an exam, it was like going to confession, not that there had been much of that lately – it was like passing your driving test.

  She laughed happily and her mother looked at her in alarm.

  ‘Mummy, I was just thinking of the day I passed my driving test,’ she began.

  ‘Well I don’t know whether you’d pass it if you had it to do again,’ her mother said. ‘You’ve been hitting those potholes at a great rate, your father wouldn’t like his car to be belted about like that.’

  ‘No, I was just thinking of the lovely feeling when the man said I passed. Would you like me to teach you to drive, Mummy, seriously?’

  ‘I would not,’ her mother said. ‘And what’s more I don’t think I’ll ever sit in a car with you again. Will you look at the road, Dee!’

  ‘It’s an open invitation. One lesson on a Saturday, one on a Sunday – sure you could drive us all to Fergal’s wedding.’

  She felt light-headed and happy. If she saw stupid Miss Mouse as Tom called her, she would have mown her down.

  When Fergal and Kate arrived, Dee thought they both looked slightly touched. They were a revolting mixture of over-talkativeness and utter wordlessness. They explained at tedious length how they had become mature in the last few months and both of them had developed this sense of their immaturity and lack of responsibility at exactly the same time. They wanted to make their commitment now in front of everyone, rather than shilly-shallying any longer. Dr Burke, who looked as if he wouldn’t have minded if they never married, nodded and grunted appreciatively. Fergal’s mother gasped and pounced on every word, and reminded them of every detail of John’s wedding five years before, every detail that is except the one that his bride was four months’ pregnant. Dee switched off for a little and thought of Sam in London. He had said there would be papers all of Saturday afternoon but that he was going to skip the official dinner. Together they had looked at an English newspaper and circled plays or shows he might see. She wondered was it a nice warm night in London as it was here. Then it hit her like a tennis ball coming suddenly into her stomach. He had asked Nancy Morris to pray for a fine weekend for the barbecue. This weekend.