Lilac Bus Read Online Free Page A

leaps.
    What
could Mrs Casey have heard, what did she mean? The only person she could have heard anything from was Mairead, or Mairead’s mother. What could they have been saying – that Nancy was irritating? Was that it?
    She didn’t want to be in when they came back but where could she go? She had arranged no lift to the dance: she would as soon be hanged as to go out on the straight road and hitch all the way to the night entertainment which she wouldn’t enjoy anyway. She supposed she could always go to Ryan’s pub. She’d be bound to know people and it was her own home town and she was twenty-five years of age so she could do what she liked. She put on one of her freshly cleaned blouses which she ironed with great care. She decided the perm was an undoubted success and gave herself a spray of the perfume she had bought her mother last Christmas and set out.
    It wasn’t bad in Ryan’s; some of the golfing people were buying big rounds, shouting at each other from the counter: what did you want with the vodka, Brian, did you want water with the Power’s, Derek? Celia was behind the counter helping her mother.
    ‘You don’t usually come in here,’ Celia said.
    ‘It’s a free country and I’m over twenty-one,’ Nancy said snappishly.
    ‘Oh Jesus, take it easy,’ Celia had said. ‘It’s too early for the fights.’
    There was a phone in a booth and she saw Dee Burke making a call; their phone must be out of order at home. Nancy waved but Dee didn’t see her. Biddy Brady who had been two classes below Nancy at school had got engaged and she was celebrating with a group of the girls. The ring was being passed around and admired. She waved Nancy over to the group, and rather than sit on her own she went.
    ‘We’re putting a sum into the kitty each and then the drinks keep coming and we pay for it until the money runs out,’ said one girl helpfully.
    ‘Oh, I don’t think I’ll be here all that long,’ Nancy said hastily, and noticed a few odd looks being exchanged.
    She waved at Mikey Burns who was carrying two drinks over to a corner.
    ‘Have you any pub jokes?’ Nancy asked, hoping he might stop and entertain them for a moment.
    ‘Not tonight, Nancy,’ he said, and didn’t evenpause. Mikey! Who would do anything for an audience! He was heading for the corner, a woman with her head down sat there, it looked like Billy Burns’ wife.
    Billy was Mikey’s brother, the one that got the looks and the brains and the luck people said.
    There was a bit of commotion behind the bar and Celia’s mother seemed to be shouting at her. It was hushed up but Celia looked very anxious. One of the Kennedy brothers had stepped in behind the bar to help wash glasses.
    Nancy felt a bit dizzy. She had drunk two gins and orange which she had bought for herself and two as part of Biddy Brady’s celebration. She had had nothing to eat since lunchtime. She decided to get some fresh air and some chips in that order. She could always come back. She sat on the wall near the chip shop and ate them slowly. You could see the whole town from here: the Burkes’ house with all that lovely creeper cut away from the windows so neatly. She thought she saw Dee leaning out of a window smoking but it was darkish, she couldn’t be certain. Then there was the Fitzgeralds’ drapery, Tom’s family’s business. His two brothers and their wives worked there, as well as his father. They had a craft shop now attached to it, and they made up Irish tweeds into skirts for the visitors. Mrs Casey lived about a mile out so she couldn’t glare at her windows and imagine her mother eating lamb chops andlooking at television, counting the days with Mrs Casey until the
Late Late Show
came back from its summer break. When they had been planning the Dublin trip they had wanted Mairead and Nancy to get them tickets for the show, and Mairead had actually written and found out what the chances were. Nancy had thought it was madness of the first