Lilac Bus (20 page)

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.

‘I was noticing this last night: it’s in a very bad way, we mustn’t let the place go to rack and ruin around us.’ She was sweating and puffing. Celia let her at it. She went back into the kitchen and made more tea. Eventually her mother had to come back in.

‘There, that’s much better,’ she said.

‘Good,’ said Celia.

‘I saw that Nancy Morris, a proper little madam that one. “Hallo Mrs Ryan” if it suits her, and wouldn’t give you the time of day if it didn’t. I pretended I didn’t hear her. She has her mother scalded coming home every weekend.’

‘I’m sure,’ Celia said. Mrs Ryan’s jaw dropped.

‘Oh not like you. I mean it’s grand that you come home, and you’re such a help.’

‘I’m glad you think so this morning. It was a different tune last night,’ Celia said.

‘Oh you wouldn’t need to mind me on a Friday night, the place gets so crowded and they’re coming at you from all sides. I probably sounded a bit impatient, but didn’t I thank you for doing the glasses, didn’t I bring you a cup of tea in bed?’ She was pleading now, almost like a child.

Celia took the bucket and the brush away from her gently and closed the door behind her. She lulled her to the table with soft talk. She didn’t want the woman to bolt from the room.

‘Of course you brought me a cup of tea in bed, and I
know
that deep down somewhere you are grateful to me for coming back and helping out, but that’s not the point, Mam, not the point at all. You don’t remember anything about last night, not from about nine o’clock on, that’s what I’d say.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You were well gone when I arrived – that was before ten. You fought with a man and said he’d only given you a fiver not a ten. You told young Biddy Brady that you didn’t want a whole crowd of her girl friends cluttering up the pub tomorrow – fortunately Bart got us out of that one. You spilled a whole bottle of lime juice and you wouldn’t let anyone wipe it up so that the counter was sticky all night. You couldn’t find the tin of potato crisps and you told a group who had come here for the golfing that you didn’t give a damn whether you found them or not, because they smelled to you like a child’s fart. Yes, Mam, that’s what you said.’

Her mother looked up at her across the table. She showed no signs of getting up to run away. She looked at Celia quite calmly.

‘I don’t know why you are saying all this,’ she said.

‘Because it happened, Mam.’ Celia begged her:
‘Believe me, it all happened, and more and much more other nights.’

‘And why would you make this up?’

‘I didn’t. It was like that; it will be like that again tonight, Mam, you’re not able to cope. You’ve had a drink already today, I can see. I’m only telling you for your own good.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Celia.’ She was about to stand up. Celia reached out and held her there. Hard by the wrist.

‘I haven’t written to the others yet: I didn’t want to alarm them, I thought it might pass. I thought it was only weekends when you were under a bit of pressure. Mam, you have to accept it and DO something about it.’

‘Others?’

‘Maire, Harry, Dan.’

‘You’re going to write all over the world with these tales?’

‘Not if you can help yourself first. Mam, you’re drinking far too much, you can’t control it. What you’re going to have to do is . . .’

‘I’m going to have to do nothing, thank you very much indeed. I may have had one too many sometimes and all right I’ll watch that. Now will that satisfy you? Is the interrogation over? Can we get on with the day?’

‘PLEASE Mam, listen. Anyone will tell you, will I get Bart in here to tell you what it’s been like? Mrs
Casey was saying, Billy Burns was saying, they were all saying . . . it’s getting too much for you here . . .’

‘You were always prudish about drink, Celia, even when your father was alive. You didn’t realise that in a bar you have to be sociable and drink with the customers and be pleasant. You’re not cut out for a pub the way we were, the way I am. You’re too solemn, too sticky for people. That’s always been your mistake.’

There was no point in putting CLOSED on the door, she wouldn’t talk. The most she would admit was a drop too much on some occasions. She denied all the scenes, she remembered none of the conversations.

People started drifting in around lunchtime. Celia watched her mother accept a small whiskey from Dr Burke who had come in to get some drink to celebrate his son’s engagement. Celia wished that Dee’s father would lean over the counter to her mother and say ‘Mrs Ryan, your eyes are all bloodshot and there are big lines under them; for your health’s sake you must give up drink.’ She wished that Father O’Reilly would come down from the presbytery on a home visit and tell her that for the good of her soul she must go and have some treatment and then take the pledge. But doctors and priests didn’t interfere enough these days maybe.

The phone box was way at the end of the bar, quiet and discreet. No wonder half of Rathdoon made their calls from there rather than beside the eager ears of the post office people.

Emer was just getting the lunch. They had all been to the pictures last night on her winnings and tonight they might go again. Videos had gone through the roof: even the kids realised that a video was out of the question.