Lilac Bus (19 page)

Emer had been in high good humour she had won a hundred pounds on the hospital draw. Each week
they all had to buy a ticket for the building fund. It cost fifty pence, and they
had
to buy it – there wasn’t any choice. Three hundred fifty pences added up to £150 and every second week the prize was £50 and every other one it was £100. It kept people interested and that small weekly contribution to the building fund was assured. Even if you were going to be on holidays you had to give someone else your sub. The winning ticket was announced on a Friday afternoon by number and you went to Wages to collect the prize. Emer was going to say nothing about it at home. Not one word. They would never hear. They would want jeans, they’d want a holiday, they’d think you could go on a holiday for a hundred quid. They’d want to go to Macdonalds every night for a month, they’d want a video. Her husband would say it should go into the building society, it should be saved in case he never worked again. No, much better to keep it for herself. She and Celia would have a night out next week. Celia had laughed at her affectionately. ‘Sure,’ she had said. ‘People do what they want in the end, isn’t that what you always say?’

She knew that what Emer would want despite all the protestations of independence and keeping the money to herself was totally different. She would want to arrive home this Friday night bursting with the news. She would want to send out for chicken and chips and plan endless treats which would indeed include jeans and a bit saved to please her anxious
husband and a promise to look into the economics of a down payment on a video. That’s what Emer would want and that’s what she would do in the end. They both knew it.

And if Celia had a husband and kids she hoped that’s what she would want too. Otherwise what was the point of the whole thing?

She was tired. It had been a long day. In other hospitals they worked twelve hour shifts: eight in the morning till eight at night. Celia thought she’d be ready to strangle some of the patients, most of the visitors and all of the staff if they had to have that routine. It had been quite enough to have eight hours today. A young woman had become desperately upset because at visiting time her a brother, a priest, had said that he was saying a special Mass for her in their house. He had thought she would be pleased; she had thought that this meant it was the end. Then her husband told the priest that he had a neck to come in and upset the wife and there was a row of such proportions that everyone in the ward stopped talking to their own visitors and began to listen. Celia had been called. She pulled the curtains round the bed, she organised some light sedation, she explained in a crisp cool voice that the woman’s diagnosis had been entirely optimistic, that nothing was being hidden from her or from anyone. She said that since priests had the power to say the Mass, what could be more
natural than he would say one in the family home as a thanksgiving for her recovery so far and a hope that it would continue?

She also said with a particularly pointed look at the priest that it was a pity some people couldn’t explain things sensibly without using voices laden with doom and ritual, and have some sensitivity about people’s association of having Masses said with being very ill indeed. Then with a reprimanding glance at the husband she said that the whole point of a visiting hour was for the patient to be made more comfortable and happy and not to be plunged into the middle of a huge family row with accusations being hurled for the whole ward to hear. They were all younger than her except the priest, and he was probably under thirty. They took it very well and nodded their apologies to her and to each other. She drew the curtains open again and busied herself around the ward until she was sure they were all properly calm again. When the priest and the husband had gone she sat with the woman and held her hand and told her not to be an eejit: priests would want to say a Mass in a house at the drop of a hat. And after all it was their life. If they didn’t believe it was important, who did? It was only the rest of the world, Celia explained, who thought that Masses and God were only brought in when all else had failed. For priests they were there all the time. She hit the right note exactly and the woman was laughing by the time she left the ward.

Would that it were going to be so easy at home.

Last weekend Bart Kennedy had let slip that he had been there several nights during the week as well as the weekends. She was alarmed. She and Bart never spoke of the reason for him being there. He never said that her mother was drunk, he would say she needed a bit of a hand. He never said that her mother had insulted one of the customers, he would say there had been a bit of a barney but it was probably all sorted out now. She had asked him to take wages for himself, and he had laughed and said not at all. He was only helping out and how could he go and sign on if he was getting a regular salary? He assured her that he took the odd pint for himself and offered one to a friend occasionally but it was peanuts and couldn’t go on. Emer wondered had he perhaps any hopes of marrying into the establishment, but Celia said that was nonsense – Bart wasn’t the type. Nothing funny about him, mind you, but just one that would never marry. Don’t forget, Celia knew all about those: she had served her time for five years on a hopeless cause. She could spot them a mile off now.

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.