had discovered it by accident, just playing games, a kind of contest. But I soon realised that after his marathon sessions Danny was always calmer, sometimes almost normal. So once or twice, when he looked like getting over-excited, I had tried it out; getting him to hold his breath and see what happened. It had worked. He had held and held and held, and by the time he let go, the crisis would have passed. That was my secret; the thing I never told Maurice or Mom. The little bit of power I held in the family circle.
I watched him now as we walked. I watched him as closely as I could, convinced that he must have some way of cheating. But I couldn’t see it. He wasn’t taking tiny quick ones, and he wasn’t letting anything in or out, even slowly.
And it was working. I could see the lucidity returning to his eyes. I hoped that by the time he was finished holding I’d be able to talk some sense into him.
But he held all the way to the bus station. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t have a watch so I couldn’t time him, but it must have been more like seven minutes than five. When we got there I couldn’t believe he was still standing, let alone walking. But what mattered was that my trick had worked. He was sane and calm, and now he might listen. The early coach to Dublin was standing ready, but for some reason no one had been allowed to get on yet, and quite a queue had formed. Danny moved forward to join it, but I pulled him away and pinned him against the wall.
‘Now, Danny,’ I said, trying to sound brotherly and clever; sounding like a teacher instead. ‘I don’t think this is a great idea, not just now. What do you think?’
In answer he shoved the fistful of notes into my hand and said, ‘You buy the tickets, Christie.’
‘I will, Danny,’ I said. ‘But I don’t think this is the best bus to go on, do you?’
‘Yes,’ said Danny. ‘Best bus.’
‘But this is the Dublin bus,’ I said. ‘It’s not the Scotland bus.’
A shadow of doubt crossed Danny’s face, but then his face brightened again.
‘Dublin first,’ he said. ‘Then the boat. Then Scotland.’
He pushed away from me and made to join the line. Everyone turned and looked at Danny, and then pretended that they weren’t looking, which was worse. But, unusually, no one looked back. There was a nervous intensity about the people in the queue and I tuned in to a nearby conversation.
‘It’s on account of the oil crisis,’ a smartly-dressed woman was saying to a young man with a briefcase. ‘It’s all getting much worse, you know. There’s talk of all kinds of emergencies happening. The bus might not run at all.’
I tried to hide my relief. That would have been perfect as far as I was concerned. It would avoid the blow-up that was now beginning to seem inevitable.
‘Do you hear that, Danny?’ I said. ‘The bus might not be going at all.’
‘We can walk,’ said Danny.
I laughed, but I wasn’t so sure that he was joking. I had seen him in action before. If he made up his mind to do something, nothing short of sedatives would stop him.
Just then a driver broke away from a blue-uniformed gathering by the office and came over to our bus.
‘We’ll bring you to Dublin,’ he announced, ‘But you’ll have to understand that we can’t guarantee any buses coming back. We haven’t got a directive from the minister, yet. But any bus could be the last.’
People nodded and murmured and glanced at each other, but not at us.
‘So if you don’t have to travel, we advise you not to, all right?’
One or two dropped out of the queue and walked away, presumably going home, but the others tightened up the line, expressing their mutual decision to travel. The driver opened the bus door and got into his seat.
I tried to draw Danny aside, but he had begun to press forward with the other travellers.
‘Now wait, Danny,’ I said. ‘Let’s talk about this some more.’
‘No talking,’ said Danny. ‘Going to