Lilac Bus (7 page)

‘Maybe.’

‘Of course you will, and all this other stuff will sort itself out.’

‘Do you know about him?’ She was genuinely surprised.

‘This is Ireland, child. I’m a doctor, he’s a doctor, well a sort of one – when they get to that level it’s hard to know.’

‘How did you hear?’

‘Somebody saw you and thought I should know, I think, a long time ago.’

‘It’s over now.’

‘It may be for a while . . .’

‘Oh no it is, tonight.’

‘Why so suddenly?’

‘He’s a liar and nothing else; he lied to her and to me – why do people do that?’

‘Because they see themselves as having lost out and they want some of everything, and society doesn’t let us have that so we have to tell lies. And in a funny way the secrecy keeps it all going and makes it more exciting at the start.’

‘You know what it’s like all right; I don’t know how you could.’

‘Oh, the same way as your fellow does.’

‘DADDY. No, not you. I don’t believe it.’

‘Oh years and years ago. You were only a toddler.’

‘Did Mummy know?’

‘I don’t think so. I hope not. But she never said anyway.’

‘And what happened to the girl?’

‘Oh she’s fine; she hated me for a bit, that was the worst part – if she had been just a little bit understanding. Just a small bit.’

‘But why should she?’ Dee was indignant.

‘Why, because she was young and lovely like you are and she had the world before her, and I had made my way and it was nice but a bit, you know . . . a bit samey.’

‘She should have shook your hand like a chap and said, “No hard feelings, Johnny Burke, you’ll be a treasured memory”,’ Dee was scathing.

‘Something like that,’ her father laughed.

‘Maybe she should have.’ Dee linked her father companionably. ‘Because you’re a much nicer man than Sam Barry will ever be. I think he deserves a bit of roasting, actually.’

‘Ah well, roast away,’ her father said good-naturedly. ‘You’ve never listened to me up to now – there’s no reason why you should now.’

Dee sat in her room and looked down at the town. She thought she saw Nancy Morris sitting on the wall near the chip shop, but decided that it couldn’t be. Nancy . . . pay for a whole portion of chips . . . ridiculous.

Mikey always said that you couldn’t come across a nicer crowd of girls than the ones who worked in the bank. The men were grand fellows too but they were often busy with their careers and they wouldn’t have all that time to talk. And one of the men, a young buck who’d be some kind of a high manager before he was thirty had taken it upon himself to say to Mikey that it would be appreciated if he watched his sense of humour since the bank ladies had found it rather coarse on occasions. Mikey had been very embarrassed and had said nothing all day. So silent was he that the nice Anna Kelly who was pure gold asked him if he felt all right. He had told her what the young buck said, and Anna Kelly had said that banks were stuffy old places and maybe the buck had a point: jokes were fine with friends, but God the bank, it wouldn’t know how to laugh if you were tickling its funny bone for a year.

So he understood now and he never uttered a
pleasantry within the bank walls again. If he met them on the street that was different; he could pass a remark or make a joke like anyone then because they were all on neutral ground. And he used to tell the girls about his family in Rathdoon, well, about the family that Billy and Mary had really. The twins with the red hairs and the freckles and then Gretta with the pigtails and the baby, a big roll of butter with a laugh you could hear half a mile away. He told Anna Kelly that sometimes on the summer evenings when it would be very bright the twins wouldn’t have gone to bed, and they’d be sitting at their window waiting till the Lilac Bus turned into the street and Uncle Mikey would get off. They collected stamps and badges, any kind of badges, and he had them all on the lookout for anything of that order so as he never went home empty-handed.

He was the only one of the bank porters who came from the country. The rest were all Dubliners: they used to laugh at him and say there’d have to be an official inquiry as to how he got the job. But they were a very good-natured lot, and there was great chat all day as they manned the doors, or wheeled the big boxes on trolleys where and when more money was needed or had to be put away. They delivered letters and documents up and down the street. They knew a lot of the customers by name and they got great Christmas presents altogether.

The Lilac Bus had started just when Mikey had needed it. His father was getting senile now, and it was hard on poor Billy and Mary to have the whole business of looking after him. But it would have been a long way to come back without Tom Fitzgerald and the little minibus that dropped you at the door. Imagine having to get yourself to the town by a crowded train, packed on a Friday night and maybe not a seat, and then after that to try and organise the seventeen miles home. It would take all day and all night and you’d be exhausted.

His old father was pleased to see him sometimes, but other times the old man didn’t seem to know who he was. Mikey would take his turn spooning the food, and combing the matted hair. He would play the Souza marches his father liked on the record player, and put the dirty clothes in the big buckets of Dettol and water out in the back. Mary, who was Billy’s wife and a sort of a saint, said that there was no problem to it if you thought of it all as children’s nappies. Into a bucket of disinfectant for a while, throw that out, into a bucket of water a while and throw that out and then wash them. Weren’t they lucky to have space out the back and a tap and a drain and all. It would be desperate altogether for people who lived in a flat, say.

And the nurse came twice a week and she was very good too. She even said once to Mikey that he needn’t
come back
every
weekend, it was above the call of duty. But Mikey had said he couldn’t leave it all to Billy and Mary, it wasn’t fair. ‘But they’d be getting the house: what would Mikey be getting?’ the nurse had pointed out. Mikey said that sort of thing didn’t come into it. And anyway, wasn’t it a grand thing to come back to your own place.

The twins told Mikey that there was never any fighting when he came home and Mikey was surprised.

‘Why would there be fighting in this house?’ he asked.

The twins shrugged. Phil and Paddy were afraid of being disloyal.

‘Sure you couldn’t be fighting with your poor old grandfather, he would never harm the hair of your heads,’ Mikey said.

The twins agreed and the matter was dropped.

They loved Mikey around the house and he had a fund of jokes for them. Not risky ones of course, but ones they could tell anyone. Gretta even wrote them down sometimes so that she’d remember them to tell them in class. Mikey never told the same one twice; they told him he should be on the television telling them one after another with a studio audience. Mikey loved the notion of it. He had once hoped that he might be asked to do a turn for the bank’s revue but
nobody had suggested it, and when he had whispered it to that nice Anna Kelly, she said she had heard that you had to be a member of the union to be invited, that only members of the IBOA were allowed to perform. He had been pleased to know that, because otherwise he would have felt they were passing him over.

He had his doubts about the Lilac Bus when he arrived the very first Friday. Tom Fitzgerald had asked them to be sure not to wave any money at him, because the legalities of the whole thing were what you might call a grey area. He did have the proper insurance and everything, and the Lilac Bus had a passenger service vehicle licence, but there was no point in courting disaster. Let them all give him the money when they were home in Rathdoon where it would be nice and calm. None of them had understood the ins and outs of it but they all agreed. Mikey wondered if people like Dr Burke’s daughter and Mr Green’s son Rupert would fancy sharing a journey home with Mikey Burns the bank porter and the son of poor Joey Burns who before he lost his wits had been a great man for standing waiting till Ryan’s pub opened and nothing much else. But Dee and Rupert were the salt of the earth, it turned out. There wasn’t an ounce of snobbery between the pair of them. And Mrs Hickey, she was a lady too but she always seemed pleased to see him. Nancy Morris was the
same as she always had been since she was a schoolgirl, awkward and self-conscious. Nothing would get her out of that, she’d be an old maid yet. Celia Ryan was another fish altogether: it was a mystery she hadn’t married someone by now. She always looked as if her mind was far away, yet she was meant to be a powerful nurse. He knew a man who’d been in Celia’s ward, and he couldn’t speak highly enough of her. He said she was like a legend in the hospital.

Nowadays he enjoyed the journey home, after he had got over his shyness of the first few runs. He would tell them a joke or two; they weren’t a great audience, not like Gretta and Phil and Paddy, but they did smile and laugh a little and didn’t it cheer them up?

Sometimes he sat beside Celia and he would tell her tales of the world of banking. He told her of all the new machines, and the days of bank inspections, and how the tourists would drive you mad, and how in the summer you’d have a line half a mile long of Spanish and French students all wanting to change about £1 each of their foreign money. Celia didn’t tell many tales of the hospital, but she often gave him helpful advice about his own father, all in a low voice so that the others didn’t hear her talking about incontinence pads and velcro fastenings for clothes.

But tonight it was the young Kennedy fellow sitting beside him. There was something seriously wrong
with that boy. His brothers Bart and Eddie were the nicest fellows you could meet in a day’s walk, but whatever had happened to young Kev he looked as if he had seen the Day of Judgement. You only had to address a civil word to him to have him leap out of his skin. Try to tell him a good story and he’d miss the point altogether. Mikey thought he’d teach him a few tricks that might be of use to him, to be able to do a trick in a pub. But the young fellow looked at him with the two eyes staring out of his head and didn’t take in a word of it. In the end Mikey let him be, staring out the window as if the goblins were going to leap out of the hedges and climb into the bus after him.

Mikey nodded off. It was easy to sleep in the bus. The two girls behind him were already asleep, dreaming of fellows probably. Mikey dreamed that his father was well and strong again and had opened some kind of import and export agency in Rathdoon and that he, Mikey, was the manager and that he was able to give grand summer jobs to Phil and Paddy and Gretta delivering letters to people up and down the street. He often dreamed of the children. But he never saw a wife for himself in the dream. Mikey Burns had missed the boat as far as wives were concerned. Too nervous and eejity at the time he should have been looking for one, and now at forty-five he wasn’t the kind of forty-five-year-old that would be in the race at all. Better not make a fool of
yourself going to dances or picking up fast-knowing women in pubs and being made to look thick altogether.

When they crossed the river and were really in the West they paused for the ten-minute comfort stop, and the half pint to open the throat a bit. Celia came up to him quietly and put an envelope into his hand.

‘That’s for the bedsores: it’s all written on it, keep him moving as much as you can.’

‘Aw Celia you’re terribly good, can I pay for this?’

‘Are you mad Mikey? Do you think I paid for it? Dublin Health Authority would like you to have it as a little gift.’ They laughed. She was very nice.

What a pity he hadn’t found a grand girl like Celia when he was young and promising looking. After all, he had a grand well-paid job now, he’d be able to make a home for anyone. The reason he didn’t really have one wasn’t money, it was lack of interest. He couldn’t be buying a place and furnishing it and getting tables and chairs in it all for himself. The room he rented was grand and comfortable and he denied himself nothing. He had a grand big telly and he had bought a mirror himself to fix to the front of the wardrobe the way he’d go out properly dressed. He had a lovely radio beside the bed which was a lamp and a clock and an alarm all in one. When he went out to people’s houses, and the Dublin fellows often invited him up to their places, he was always able to bring a big box of chocolates, a fancy one with ribbon
on it. He was able to give a good account of himself.

But when he’d been a young lad, who were they except the sons of poor Joey Burns and his mother had taken in washing and cleaned people’s floors? It hadn’t held Billy back: Billy strutted round Rathdoon as if he owned it, as if he were as good as any other citizen of the place. And wasn’t he right? Look where he was now, he had all kinds of business interests, he employed five people in Rathdoon. He had the take away shop; nobody believed there was a need for it until it appeared. Half the families in the place ate Billy’s chicken and chips on a Saturday night, and they had fried fish too, and hamburgers. And they sold cans of lemonade, and stayed open late to get the crowds going home from Ryan’s, and Billy had put up two huge mesh litter bins at his own expense and everyone was delighted with him.