Lilac Bus (14 page)

‘But where would you like your birthday drink then and when?’ There was no area for argument in the proposal, only a small margin of latitude for the time and place.

‘Well, wherever you like of course, and at about six. Is that all right?’

Kev was eager. The Pelican nodded. He named a city centre pub.

‘We’ll give you a drink each, and as you no doubt saw there’s five of us, so that’s five drinks.’

‘Oh, God, that would be great altogether,’ Kev said. ‘Are there five of you? I didn’t notice.’

The Pelican nodded approvingly. He swung his way back to the van and in beside the driver who looked like a champion wrestler.

‘Six o’clock,’ he called cheerfully out the window.

It wasn’t discovered until four thirty. A lot of offices on the sixth floor weren’t occupied yet. Some people just assumed that the bathrooms were being
refitted, and sighing had gone to other floors. It was only when one of the secretaries said she was getting dropped arches and told Mr Daly that it was an extraordinary thing to think that brand new cloakrooms should be redone within three months that any kind of alarm was raised. The broad-daylightness of it all staggered them. The guards were called, the confusion was enormous. Kev had difficulty in getting away by six. He was ninety per cent sure that they wouldn’t be there. They could be walking into a trap for all they knew. How were they to know that they were dealing with Kev Kennedy who never told anybody anything? They might have assumed he would have plain-clothes guards drinking pints of shandy all round the pub. But just in case. And just in case they came back and dealt with him. After all they knew where he worked, he knew nothing about them.

They were all there.

‘There was a bit of commotion at work, I got delayed,’ he said.

‘Ah, you would all right,’ said the Pelican generously. He was introduced to Daff and John, and Ned and Crutch Casey.

‘What’s your real name?’ he asked the man with the twisted leg.

‘Crutch,’ the man said, surprised to be asked.

They each bought him a pint and they raised their glasses solemnly and said Happy Birthday at each round. By the fourth round he was feeling very
wretched. He had never drunk more than three pints in Ryan’s and never more than two anywhere else. Ryan’s led you to be daring because even if you fell down you got home on all fours without too much difficulty.

Daff was the man like a wrestler. Kev wondered why he was called that but he decided it might not be wise. Daff bought the last drink and handed Kev an envelope.

‘We were sorry to see a culchie all on his own with no-one to wish him a happy birthday, so that’s a small present from Pelican, Crutch, John, Ned and me.’ He smiled as if he were a foolish, generous uncle dying for the nephew to open the electric train set and begin to call out with excitement.

Kev politely opened the envelope and saw a bundle of blue twenty pound notes. The room went backwards and forwards and began to move slowly around to the left. He steadied himself on the bar stool.

‘I couldn’t take this, sure you don’t know me at all.’

‘And you don’t know us,’ Daff beamed.

‘Which is as it should be,’ the Pelican said approvingly.

‘But I’d not know you, without . . . without this, you know.’

He looked at the envelope as if it contained explosives. There were at least six notes, maybe more. He didn’t want to count them.

‘Ah but this is better, this MARKS the day for all of us, why don’t we meet here every week around this time, and if you’ve that invested properly then you could buy us a drink, and slowly we could sort of GET to know each other.’

Kev’s mouth felt full of lemon juice.

‘Well I’d love to . . . sort of keep in touch with you all . . . but, honestly, this is too much. Like, I mean, I’d feel bad.’

‘Not at all, you wouldn’t,’ smiled the Pelican and they were gone.

Every Tuesday since he had met them; sometimes it was just a drink. Sometimes it was more. Once it had been a driving job. He would never forget it to his dying day. They went into a new block of flats and carefully unrolled the brand new stair carpet. They had heard that the fitting men were coming that afternoon so they had anticipated the visit by removing every scrap of it. The timing had been of the essence on that one. The expensive wool carpet had arrived that morning; there was only a four-hour period when it could be removed, and that meant watching the flats very carefully in case any untoward enquiries were made. It was all completely successful, of course, like all their enterprises seemed to be. Kev had taken a day off work for the carpet heist but the carpet heist had taken years off his life. He felt as if he had been put down on the street and the whole
crowd coming out of Moran Park had walked over him. He couldn’t understand how they remained so untouched. Crutch Casey told of horses that had fallen at the last fence. Ned and John were more dog people, they talked of evil minded and corrupt greyhounds who KNEW how to slow down through some instinct. The Pelican told long tales full of people that nobody knew, and Daff seemed to say nothing much but he was as relaxed as a man coming out after a swim about to light his pipe on the beach on a sunny day.

They never told him he HAD to join in, and they didn’t ask him so much that he felt he should run away to America to escape them. Often he didn’t have to do anything except what they called ‘resorting’. That might mean wrapping a whole load of Waterford Glass which arrived from a hotel before it got time to get out of its boxes, into different kinds of containers. Each glass to be held carefully and sorted according to type, wrapped in purple tissue paper in gift boxes of six. He became quite an authority on the various designs, or suites as they were called, and decided that the Colleen Suite was his favourite; and that when he got married he would have two dozen Colleen brandy glasses and use them around the house as ordinary everyday glasses, or in the bathroom for his toothbrush. Then he remembered what he was doing and the fantasy would disappear. He would look around the garage and keep parcelling in
the nice anonymous gift boxes. He never knew where they went, and what happened to them. He never asked. Not once. That’s why they liked him, that’s why they trusted him utterly. From that very first day in the loading area they thought he was one of their own, and it was too late now to tell them that he wasn’t. The longer it went on, the more ludicrous it would be trying to get out.

On calmer days Kev asked himself what was so terrible. They never took from individuals, they didn’t do people’s houses and flats: it was companies who had to replace miles of red wool carpet, boxes of prestigious glassware, rooms full of sanitary fittings. They never did over old women, young couples, they never carried a weapon, not even a cosh. In many ways they weren’t bad fellows at all. Of course they never actually went out to work in a normal way, and they did lie to people, with their clipboards and their air of being perfectly legitimate. And people did get into trouble after they’d visited places, like poor old Mr Daly who’d been hauled in by everyone and though it was never said, the thought had been in the air that he might be getting too old for the job. And they stole. They stole things almost every week and by no standards could that be a thing that Kev Kennedy from Rathdoon wanted to be in. Or worse, caught in. It was unthinkable. They still talked about that young fellow who was a cousin of the Fitzgeralds and worked in their shop for a bit; he was given three
years for doing a post office in Cork. The whole of Rathdoon had buzzed with it for months and Mrs Fitzgerald, Tom’s mother, had said she hoped everyone realised that he wasn’t a first cousin, he was a very far out one, and they had tried to give him a start and look at the thanks they got. Could you imagine what old Da would have to go through? And all Red’s hopes of getting some gorgeous wife would go for their tea, and poor Bart was so decent and helpful, wouldn’t it be a shame on him for ever?

But how did you get out? He couldn’t live in a city that contained the Pelican and Daff and Crutch Casey if they thought he had ratted on them. There was no point trying to pretend that he had left town or anything. They knew everything: it was their business to know things, to know when deliveries were expected, when watchmen went for their coffee, when regular porters were on holidays, when managers were young and nervous, when shops were too busy to notice their furniture being loaded into private vans. They knew where Kev lived and worked; he wouldn’t dream of lying to them.

But he got out of weekend work. That’s when they did some of their bigger jobs, and he wanted to be well away from it. He told them vaguely that he had to go out of town. He had been going home that very first weekend after they met him and so it had seemed a natural continuation, not a new pattern of behaviour. He didn’t say it was Rathdoon, he didn’t
say it was home, but they knew he wasn’t lying when he was saying that he went out of town for weekends, Crutch Casey had said goodnight to him one Sunday night outside the house where he had a room, and Kev knew that it was just a routine inspection. He had been cleared now, even the Pelican whom he had met by accident just on the corner knew that he was leaving Dublin for the weekend – he didn’t even bother to check.

But how could he get out of working for them midweek? Some of the jobs were getting bigger and Kev was getting tenser. Once or twice Daff had asked him not to be so jumpy – that he was like some actor playing a nervous crook in an old black and white B movie. It was fine for Daff who didn’t have a nerve in his body. Simply fine for him. Others didn’t find it so easy. The very sight of a guard was enough to weaken Kev’s legs, even the shadow of anyone fairly big was enough to make him jump. Oddly enough it hadn’t made him feel guilty about religion: he went to Mass and at Christmas and Easter to communion; he knew that God knew that there wasn’t much Sin involved. No Grievous Bodily Harm or anything. But he had never been much of a one for talking to God individually like you were meant to: he didn’t feel like putting the question personally. And there was nobody else really BUT God when all was said and done because everyone else would have a very strong view one way or the other, and mainly the other. Like
get out of that gang at a rate of knots, Kev Kennedy, and stop acting the eejit.

Mikey’s poor kind face was there a few inches from him, Mikey Burns who’d be the kind of bank porter that would get shot in a raid, certainly not like Kev, the kind of security man who had become best buddies with the gang that had ripped off all the fittings from the place he worked. Mikey Burns sleeping with a little smile dreaming about something, jokes with glasses of water and coins maybe, and there was he, Kev, who had driven get-away vans and done watch duty and helped to reparcel stolen goods. Kev felt alien as he looked out at the darkening countryside. Lonely and guilty as hell.

His father told him after the news that Red had notions about a farmer’s daughter and was going to bring her to tea during the weekend no less, and they were all to keep their shoes on, talk nicely and put butter on a plate and the milk in a jug. He said that he thought Bart might as well join the Franciscans and put on sandals and carry a begging bowl for all the good he was ever going to do with his life and his share of the business. When he wasn’t digging up Mrs Hickey’s foxgloves and hemlocks or whatever it was she grew he was helping Mrs Ryan in the pub to stand on her own two shaky legs and serving the customers from behind the bar and not a penny piece was he getting from either of them. He was surprised
that Bart hadn’t gone into Fitzgerald’s shop and said that if they’d like someone to stand there and serve for a few days a week without wages he’d be happy to do it. Kev didn’t know what to say to this. He nibbled a slice of cake and thought about the difference between people. There was Daff who had a nice big open face like Bart, organising the transfer of twenty microwave ovens from one warehouse to another by a deceptively simple scheme which involved Ned who was the most forgettable of them all going up with a sheaf of papers, an air of bewilderment and an instruction that they were apparently to go back to have something checked. And there was Bart Kennedy who had a big open face like Daff digging Judy Hickey’s garden for her and helping Celia’s mother to stay upright in Ryan’s. God, what different worlds he moved in; Kev thought with a shudder at the danger of it all. ‘Are you not going down to the pub?’ his father asked.

‘No, I’m tired after the week, and the long journey, I’ll just go up and lie on my bed,’ he said.

His father shook his head: ‘I really wish I knew what brings you home, you do so little when you arrive, and you’ve lost your interest in football entirely. You could have been a good footballer if you’d put your mind to it.’

‘No, I was never any good. You only say that because you wanted a son a county footballer, I’m no good.’

‘Well what does bring you back here, what are you running from . . . ?’ He hadn’t finished but the cup was in pieces on the floor and Kev’s face was snow white.

‘Running, what do you mean?’

‘I mean is it the violence up there or the dirt, or those blackguards roaming in tribes or what? Haven’t you good wages and you’re always very generous giving me the few quid here . . . but a young man of your age, you should be up to all kinds of divilment and diversions, shouldn’t you?’

‘I don’t know, Da, I don’t think I was ever much good at anything, football, divilment, anything.’ He sounded very glum.

‘Haven’t you got a fine job up in one of the finest buildings in the land, and you earn your own living which is more than those two boyos there – oh they’re a great pair I have on my hands. One a sort of Martin de Porres going round the place giving half his cloak to everyone he meets, one a dandy who has the bright red hair nearly combed off his scalp and the mirrors nearly cracked in bits staring into them. You’re the best of them, Kev, don’t be running yourself down.’

Kev Kennedy went up to bed without a word, and he lay there as the sounds of Rathdoon which were not very loud went past his window, a small window over the shop, which looked out on the main street.