Lilac Bus

by Maeve Binchy

  But enough: she wasn’t going to think of that fellow any more. That was all behind her and at least the humiliations weren’t known in Rathdoon. It was to another town that she had followed him hopefully at weekends, thinking that there was much more to it than there was, being there, being available; eventually because it seemed the one thing he was sure he wanted she had slept with him. That was what he had called it but there was no sleeping involved: it was guilt for fear of discovery, and not very much pleasure for either of them. She hadn’t lost him because she had been too easy to get; she hadn’t lost him at all because he was never hers to lose; he had no intention of disturbing the very even pattern of his life by a wife and house and children. No no, no, he would stay on with his parents while they lived and maybe with a sister later. There would always be girls – girls now and later women – who would believe that they had the secret and the key to unlock his independence. No, Celia could write a book on the Irish bachelor if she wanted to, but she hadn’t time: she HAD to sort it out this weekend, otherwise she’d better leave the hospital and come home. It wasn’t fair on everyone else in Rathdoon.

  She was glad that Kev Kennedy was a little bit ahead of her. That meant that he would sit beside Mikey. Tonight she was not in the mood for Mikey’s jokes; some evenings she could take a few and then turn to her own thoughts but there was too much on her mind, and Mikey was so easily hurt. It was good not to have this battle between offending him or going mad herself. She slipped easily in beside Tom the driver. He leaned over her and slammed the door shut.

  ‘It’s only twenty to seven. I have you all very well trained,’ he said and they all laughed with him as the bus went out into the traffic and headed for home.

  Tom was a fine companion. He always answered agreeably and gave long answers if he were in the mood to chat and short ones if he weren’t. The silences were companionable. He never talked to the people behind because it distracted him, and he liked the person sitting beside him to tell him if it was all clear on the left as they nosed onto main roads from side roads. Much nicer than the rest of the Fitzgeralds up in the craft shop, but then it was silly to expect families to be the same. Look at Billy Burns: he’d buy and sell Mikey a dozen times before breakfast. Nancy Morris – there was something wrong with her, Celia thought. She had a very fixed look, a look that really was fixed on nothing. Celia had seen it in hospital sometimes. Nancy was as different from that laughing Deirdre, her sister in America, as she was different to a Martian. And there was poor Kev, Bart’s young brother behind her there in the bus. And possibly she was different to her own brothers and sister. At the thought of her own family her brow darkened. Why would none of them do a thing to help? How had it happened? She could write them a round robin: ‘Dear Maire and Harry and Dan, Sorry to have to tell you but Mam is hitting the bottle worse than ever Dad did. What will we do? Looking forward to hearing by return from New South Wales, Cowley, Oxfordshire, and Detroit, Michigan, Your loving sister, Celia, Dublin.’ That was the point: Dublin. It was only up the road as far as they were concerned, and she wasn’t married, that was even more the point wasn’t it? If she had been a wife then none of them would have expected her to abandon that and look after her mother, no matter how near she was. But being a nurse, an angel of mercy, helping the sick and earning her living … that would be written off.

  And what’s more they wouldn’t understand, any of them. Maire would write from Woolowogga or wherever she had gone on a course – she was always going to ludicrous places on courses – and she would say it was Blessed to give and Blessed to help. Great. Harry would write from Detroit and say she must do what she thought was best as she was the one on the ground. He would add something about it being a nice tidy living for her, and probably put in a really sensitive bit about not wanting his share out of the family business yet. Dan would write, he might even ring from England: he’d encourage her like mad to go home, he’d say that nursing wasn’t a REAL career or anything, and that it was all for the best. His bit of tact might be to hope that now she was known as the landlady of a pub in all but name perhaps Celia might get a few offers of marriage. She was only twenty-six, why had they written her off in three countries? She was their baby sister, she remembered them as big and strong and great fun, but in their letters and their rare appearances they were selfish and they were strangers. And they thought of her as an old maid.

  ‘Do your family drive you mad?’ she asked Tom as they had just overtaken a huge dangerous-looking lorry that seemed about to shed everything it had on everything that was near it.

  ‘Oh yes, of course they do,’ Tom said. ‘I mean that IS what drives people mad actually, families. It’s not strangers in the street or the Bomb or the economy, it’s always their relations.’

  ‘Or love, I suppose, or lack of it?’ Celia was impersonal, interested in talking about ideas. So was Tom. That’s why they found their chats easy and never found their long silences threatening.

  ‘Yes, love, but love usually involves some idea of family: you love someone, you want her to be your wife; she won’t, you go mad. That’s family. You hate your wife, you don’t love her any more, you wish she’d fly off on the next space shuttle. That’s family.’

  Celia laughed. ‘God you’d be great in one of those family counselling places with psychiatrists and all.’

  ‘I’m always surprised they never asked me in on one,’ said Tom, and they didn’t speak for another fifty miles.

  She was glad to get out and stretch. She had heard of other buses where they got stuck into a pub like this one for a real session and maybe it would be an hour and a half before people got back on the road. But Tom Fitzgerald ruled his Lilac Bus very firmly, it was time to visit the Ladies’ and a very quick drink. There really wasn’t even time for a coffee because they always took such ages to make it in pubs, and indeed in Ryan’s of Rathdoon they wouldn’t make it at all.

  ‘What’ll you have Celia?’ Dee had a knack of getting to the counter quickest and an even better knack of getting served. Celia had a bottle of Guinness and a few words. Dee had never changed, not since she was a schoolgirl bursting with pride at her new uniform and coming into the bar to show it off to the Ryans. She had been everywhere to show it off, and everyone had given her a lemonade, or a bar of chocolate or even half a crown. Nobody had anything but good wishes for the doctor’s daughter off to her posh convent boarding school. Dr Burke was part of every life and death in Rathdoon, nobody would have a jealous thought about his children and what they had. Who would deserve it more?

  She slipped Mikey some ointment that they used up in the hospital to ease bedsores. She didn’t want to let Dee see her in case it was thought that she might be trying to improve on the doctor, but Dee would probably never think that in a million years. She was a grand girl with a very infectious laugh, and of course she had the patience of Job that she could talk to Nancy Morris so animatedly about Nancy’s boring job and her endless tales of Mr This the consultant and Mr That the consultant. How did Dee put up with it and even look interested and remember their bloody names? The ten minutes were up and they were back in the dark comfort again.

  She saw that Tom had tapes in the van; she had never noticed them before.

  ‘Is that a player as well as a wireless?’ she asked with interest when they were on the road again.

  ‘Yes, do you wonder I have to guard this vehicle with my life? All I own is tied up in her,’ he laughed.

  ‘You don’t play any, while we’re driving?’

  ‘No. I thought about it: everyone would have a different taste and I wouldn’t want to inflict my choice on all of you.’

  ‘Oh, it would have to be yours, would it?’ Celia threw back her head of thick brown hair, laughing at him. ‘Where’s the democratic bit then? Why couldn’t everybody choose their own, even bring one each week?’

  ‘Because if I had to hear any more of the Nashville sound than I already hear by accident in my life, I think I’d drive off the
road and into the deepest bog that would close over us,’ he said.

  ‘Let’s have no music then,’ Celia said agreeably and they drove on thinking their own thoughts. Celia was wondering what time she would catch her mother at the most receptive. There must be some moments in the day when the unfortunate woman was not suffering from a hangover or withdrawal or had got stuck into it again. There must be a time – late morning maybe – when she could ask Bart to man the place. Not that anyone came in much on a Saturday until it was well into lunchtime. She could always put CLOSED on the door, Father Reilly put closed on the presbytery for heaven’s sake when he simply had to have an hour to himself, or maybe it was for some poor divil that couldn’t be disturbed. That was it, no more drawing on poor Bart. Anyway he liked to work with Judy Hickey during the daytime when she was home for the weekend. She could put CLOSED on the door for an hour or two, but apart from chaining her mother by both wrists and ankles how was she going to get her to stay and listen to the very unwelcome view that she was now incapable of managing her own pub and must get herself into an alcoholic unit before it was too late? It was gone beyond false promises now, and assurances and little games. Celia had been present when a surgeon told a forty-two-year-old man last month that he had terminal cancer and had less than two months to live. This is what it felt like again. That sense of dread and half hoping the world would end before you had to say it. Of course it had turned out very oddly in the hospital; they had thought the shock might be intense and that was why Celia was there as part of a back-up. But he had been very quiet, the man, and said, ‘Is that a fact?’ They had stood dumbfounded, Celia, the great surgeon and the anaesthetist. Then the man had said, ‘And I never went to America. Imagine in my whole life I never saw America. Isn’t it ridiculous in this day and age.’ He had said that several times before he died; it seemed to disturb him more than death itself and leaving his wife and three young children.

  Suppose her mother were to say something equally unexpected like that she had been wondering was this what was wrong with her, and she would like to go at once as a voluntary patient to some kind of place that would dry her out. Stop thinking like Alice in Wonderland, Celia told herself sternly. You’re a grown-up, it’s no use shutting your eyes wishing things would happen.

  ‘There’s a lot of rags tied to a bush coming up now. I think it’s a holy well or a wishing tree or something,’ Tom said suddenly. ‘Maybe we should all get out and tie our shirts to it,’ Celia said. They passed it, and indeed there were ribbons and what looked like holy pictures pinned onto it.

  ‘I never saw that before, and all the times we must have driven past it,’ Celia said, looking back over her shoulder. She thought she saw Dee Burke crying, her face was working in that sort of way a child’s does to keep off the sobs. But Nancy Morris was yammering on as usual so there couldn’t be anything really wrong.

  ‘I never saw it before. Maybe it’s a new saint; you know the way they get crossed off like St Philomena, maybe one got put on.’

  ‘Why DID St Philomena get crossed off, I wonder?’ asked Celia.

  ‘I don’t know, maybe they found her out,’ Tom grinned. ‘I know my sister Phil was very annoyed indeed at the time, she felt it was an attack of some sort.’

  ‘Oh yes, Phil, that would be her name. How is Phil by the way? I haven’t seen her for a while.’

  ‘She’s fine,’ Tom said shortly.

  Celia went back to the tree for conversation. ‘Are they pagan or are they religious, I wonder?’ she said.

  ‘A mixture, I think.’ He was still short.

  Celia thought about the tree. Wouldn’t it be great to go there and pray to some saint who had a special interest in drunken mothers, leave an offering or whatever they left and then go home and discover that it had worked. Bart Kennedy would be serving behind the bar and her mother would be sitting with a packed suitcase and a face full of optimism.

  ‘See you during the weekend,’ Tom said with a friendly smile.

  She nodded. He had been a bit moody tonight, she thought. She didn’t mind their stops and starts normally, in fact she liked it. But tonight she had wanted to talk. Actually what she had really wanted was Emer. You could say anything to Emer and you knew she would think about it but she wouldn’t bring it out again on every occasion and ask you how you felt about it. Emer would give you advice but not be annoyed if you didn’t take it. ‘Everyone does what they want to in the end’ she would say. She wasn’t as specific when it came to knowing how to convince someone else to do the right thing. Or the best thing. Celia had long discussions with her over this. Did you wire the jaws of fat kids who were compulsive eaters? Did you have medical cards for smokers and only those who were certified as having good strong lungs and no trace of emphesema would be allowed to buy a packet – they’d have to show the card first. That would save life wouldn’t it? Celia might suggest. Emer would shrug. Temporarily only: the child with the wired jaw would wait eagerly until the contraption was removed; the smoker would get the cigarettes somehow or smoke butts. But then why were drugs banned? Why not just sell heroin by the kilo in Quinnsworth and be done with it. Those who wanted to kill themselves would and there would be no drugs racket and pushers and people having to turn to prostitution or theft for it.

  Emer said that drugs were different: they were poison, they killed. You wouldn’t sell arsenic or strychnine would you?

  What about alcohol: that killed, they had seen enough rotted livers to know that; they could see the slow death around them. Emer said that if Celia felt as strongly as that she shouldn’t own a pub, and she should have a temperance banner. Then they would both have a bottle of Guinness and talk about something else. But she was such a comfort; no wonder that her handsome husband and her three giant children were always waiting so eagerly for her to come home from work. And she wasn’t a Super-woman either. There were bad times and low times in Emer’s life as well as in everyone else’s. That’s why she was so good to talk to.

  ‘Goodnight,’ she nodded, and added, ‘Thanks for getting us here.’ She didn’t want to be curt with Tom just because he hadn’t been like Emer! That would be unfair.

  ‘Best to the West, as Mikey would say,’ Tom laughed.

  ‘Don’t encourage him – he has enough catch-phrases already.’ She went in the door and knew from the loud greeting that her mother called across the bar that it was going to be a long hard hour and a half. She put her bag in the kitchen, she hung up her jacket and came out quietly to stand beside Bart Kennedy who patted her on the arm as she wordlessly began to pull the pints.

  Her mother shouted for two hours when the pub eventually closed. She sat at one of the tables and hurled abuse as Celia methodically emptied the ashtrays and wiped the surfaces. She would NOT be patronised in her own pub, she cried, she would not have Celia coming off the bus and taking over as if she owned the place. Celia did NOT own the place and in fact the place would never be hers. She hoped that Celia knew this. She had made a will with that nice young Mr MacMahon in Mr Green’s office, and she had said that after her death the pub should be sold and the money divided equally in four and shared out between Maire and Harry and Dan and Celia. So now. Celia said nothing. She washed the glasses under hot water first, then under cold, then turned them upside down to drain on a plastic grid: that way the air got at them from all angles and dried them without smears.

  Her mother had a brandy bottle on the table beside her. Celia made no attempt to touch it. She just moved past her and locked the door. The place was now ready for the next day. She gulped a bit at the thought of the conversation she was going to have in the morning when the CLOSED sign would appear on Ryan’s door for the first time since her father’s funeral.

  ‘Aren’t you going to have the common manners to say goodnight, Miss High and Mighty?’ her mother called.

  ‘Goodnight Mam,’ said Celia as she went up the narrow stairs wearily to the small white bedroom with the iron bed. She lay awake for a while. Long
enough to hear her mother stumbling up the stairs and hitting off the chest of drawers on the landing. She must have known it was there: it had been there for thirty-eight years, all her married life.

  It was very sunny, too sunny. Celia woke with a jump. The curtains had been pulled back, and there was her mother with a cup of tea.

  ‘I thought you might like this, after your week’s work, and you must have stayed up late last night doing the glasses.’ The voice was steady enough and the hand wasn’t shaking as it passed the tea-cup and saucer.

  Celia sat up and rubbed her eyes. ‘You were with me when I washed the glasses,’ she said.

  ‘I know, I know, of course,’ her mother was flustered, she hadn’t remembered. ‘Yes well, naturally, but thanks for … um … organising it all the same.’

  There was no smell of drink but Celia realised that she must have had a cure, maybe a vodka. That’s why she was able to cope. She had smartened herself up too, combed her hair and worn a dress with a white collar. Apart from her eyes which looked terrible, Mrs Ryan didn’t cut too bad a figure at all.

  This might be the time. Celia swung her legs out of the bed, and took a great swig of the tea.

  ‘Thanks Mam. Listen, I wanted to say something to you. I’ve been trying to get a good time …’

  ‘I have a kettle on downstairs; I’ll come back up to you when I have a minute.’

  She was gone. There was no kettle on. Celia got up and dressed quickly. She decided against jeans and put on a skirt and blouse and a big wide belt. It made her look more authoritative, more nurse-like in a way. There was no sign of her mother in the kitchen. Where could she have gone? There was a sound of scrubbing out the side entrance, and there was Mrs Ryan on hands and knees with bucket and scrubbing brush working away.